Hope Springs Eternal

1986: Hope Springs Eternal

I have lost the will to live, simply nothing more to give

There is nothing more for me, need the end to set me free

-Metallica

 

“You are… not the father!” The teen mom was shaking her head in disbelief.

Javari, the man who had just been spared 18 years of child support was exuberantly jumping up and down. You would have thought he’d just won the lottery and in his mind I guess he had. Though I did love the Maury show, I didn’t have time for it today, I turned the TV off. I needed to focus all my attention on the task at hand: killing myself. It was a Thursday, no better or worse than any other Thursday but here I sat with a loaded; cocked, .357 Magnum in my mouth. I chose a gun because I never believed you tried to kill yourself, that’s a cry for help; I was way past crying or helping.

I certainly had not as a child, laid in bed at night thinking, when I grow up I want to aimlessly drift thru life alone and unhappy up until the age of 47 and then redecorate my living room wall with brain matter but that’s exactly what’s about to happen. I’ve learned on this journey to suicide that it’s not a single event that causes you to wake up one day and kill yourself. I’ve found the journey to be like a pile of bricks, each day, week or month one, two maybe three new bricks are added to the pile, a Christmas alone, and empty apartment, or the daily grind of a job you hate. And then one day the last brick falls and it was no bigger or smaller than any other, but it tips the scale just enough.

My final brick? This morning I stopped and wondered how many people would be at my funeral. I couldn’t think of a single person. I wondered how long it would be before anyone would even miss me. How long before my body was discovered? I imagined it would be the apartment manager when they arrived to evict me. I decided not to leave a suicide note, I knew why I was doing it and as far as I was concerned that was enough. I closed my eyes, sighed and prepared to squeeze, “Wait.”

I was so unprepared for a human voice that it caused me to jump out of my chair. Standing about 10 feet away at the edge of my kitchen was a man. Fairly ordinary looking except for his cloths, they appeared to be more at home at the 1800’s than the 2000’s. But who was I to judge? I was currently wearing only my underwear and a gun.

“Woo da f*k aw ohh?” I was quickly reminded of the gun in my mouth and promptly removed it. “Who the f**k are you?” I repeated. The gun was now pointing at the stranger instead of my cerebral cortex.

“My name is Rafe Lionheart”, he smiled stroking his goatee.

“How the hell did you get in here? “

“The front door” he nonchalantly said.

It was all so confusing that for a brief moment I thought maybe I had pulled the trigger and he was either a demon or  angel sent to guide me  up or down and if I was a gambling man I would have bet it all on down. “That’s not going to help you, the gun I mean. Can you put it down?” I nodded silently and lowered it.

“I’m keeping it right here, so nothing funny.” I finally managed.

“A man about to kill himself afraid of someone hurting him. That’s rich.” Rafe said.

“How the hell did you just appear? What do you want?” I had a thousand questions and was trying to ask them all at once.

“To offer you an once-in-a-lifetime, no a once in 1000 lifetimes opportunity.” He sounded like a late-night infomercial pitch man.

“And what opportunity is that?”  I figured what the hell, I could get back to killing myself soon enough.

“The chance to travel back in time and get 15 minutes with your 19-year-old self.” I laughed out loud.

“What nuthouse did you break out of?” I was seriously thinking about lifting the gun back up.

“I’m not asking if you would, I’m asking if you will.” Rafe said. I wondered if this was some new reality TV practical joke show, was I being Jack Assed?

“What makes you think I believe you?” I asked.

“I don’t care if you believe me.”

“So for arguments sake let’s say this is real, why me?”

“Consider it your lucky day, like you just won the cosmic lottery.” He still hadn’t moved, just standing there smiling, like a used car salesman trying to get me into a Ford Pinto I didn’t really want.

” After all what do you have to lose?” Rafe asked.  “If I am lying it will only cost you 15 minutes of your life but if I am telling the truth.” He paused as all good salesmen do. I stood silently. Still not sure what to make of the situation. “Let me ask you something Zack, are you happy?”

“Well considering you walked in on me with a loaded gun in my mouth, I guess we can surmise the answer to be no.” I was getting angry.

“Well then here’s your chance to set your life on a new course and thereby a new journey, and hopefully a new destination instead of your current ending, a hollow point bullet in your brain.”

“How does it work?” I asked.

“Tomorrow at 3 p.m. I will return, this time I’ll knock, if you say no I leave and you never see me again and you can get back to… well you know. If you say yes then you pick the date you want to return to in 1986. I give you an envelope, that contains the when and where you are to meet you. I love the way that sounds.”  This was all so weird but I couldn’t stop thinking what the hell, it can’t get worse.

“What if I’m ready to go now?” I asked.

“Not until tomorrow. The boss doesn’t like buyers regret so he gives everyone 24 hours. If you do decide to go then you’ll need to think long and hard about what you’re going to say, 15 minutes to convince a 19-year-old you to change paths won’t be easy.” He was right I was thinking back to the 1986 me, I was headstrong and shortsighted; it had proven a lethal combination.  He tipped his hat and headed for the door.

“Hey Rafe what does a gig like yours pay?”

He smiled, “Not enough.” He was gone as quickly as he’d appeared. I immediately got to work.

What do I say to the 1986 me? How would I make him believe I had come from the future with a dire warning? And what would change my course? Was life’s path altered by a single choice or a series of bad decisions? Finishing college, marrying and having a family would any of those set me on a different path and thereby a different destination? But their was one thing I was sure of, my greatest weapon. Who knows me better than me? I was going to have to remember my 19 year old dreams and fears. The fear part would be easy I was still carrying those but the dreams I had lost those long ago. Sleep was hard to find that night.

The knock on the door came at exactly 3 PM. I almost didn’t open it.

“What’s your answer?” Rafe obviously wasn’t one for small talk.

“When you’ve already lost everything what do you have left to lose? Let’s do this.” I answered. A smile erupted across his face.

“What about the butterfly effect?” I blurted.

Rafe just stared waiting for me to continue. “I mean what if I do go back and I do change my life’s course. Then when I get back to the present the Chinese have conquered America.”

“You’re not that important.” It was short, brutal and true.

“Why me? How do you make time travel possible, how long have you…?”

“The clock is ticking; I don’t have time to answer all your questions.” Rafe interrupted.” And there are a few things we have to do before we send you off. First and foremost the rules, there are only two. If you break either one of them you will return to yesterday, exactly one minute before I walked in the door but this time I won’t be here to stop you and I think we both know how that story ends.” He formed his fingers into the shape of a gun and put his index finger in his mouth.  “The first is the prime directive, the Golden rule if you will: you can’t leave a 2014 footprint in 1986. Don’t try to warn your parents of their fate. Not that anyone is going to believe you’re really from the future in the short amount of time you’ll have. If you predicted the 1986 and 87 Super Bowl winners and exact scores, maybe you could start to convince people, but in a matter of a few hours, impossible. But don’t even try the boss hates it.” His eyes glanced upward towards the sky and returned to mine.

“The second rule you cannot meet you until the exact moment on this piece of paper.” He waved an envelope in his hand. “If you talk to yourself 1 minute before you are supposed to or one minute more than the allotted time.”

“I know, I know.”  It was my turn to interrupt. “I will be transported back to this very chair one minute before you arrived yesterday.” I finished for him. Rafe smiled.

” That said nothing more nothing less.” Two rules, I ought to be able to handle that I thought.

“How do I know when in 1986 I’ll arrive?” My mind was racing with questions.

“We pick the year you pick the day.” Rafe said.

“Hell I can’t remember last week much less 1986.” It was true.

“Well then sit back and enjoy the ride, while I take you back to 1986.”

The infomercial voice was back. My widescreen turned on, though neither of us had touched the remote. If he was about to show me my 1986, he would have started me down the path of believing that this was really going to happen. “Our journey begins January 1, at 12:01 AM, the start of a new year, 1986. New Year’s Eve has always been one of your favorite holidays right Zack?” I nodded yes. An image appeared on the TV, it was me sitting in my car in front of an apartment complex. It looked like an old 8mm home movie. A flood of memories washed over me so powerful I was grateful to be sitting.

“How did you get this movie?” I asked. I was sure I would have noticed someone standing beside my car filming me.

“The boss has his ways.” Rafe said. It was the second time he mentioned his boss and though I wanted to ask him who his boss was, I’ve learned there are some questions you don’t want the answers to.

”New Year’s Eve and you’re sitting outside Kristin’s apartment.” Rafe was now playing narrator. ” Her new boyfriend had arrived three hours earlier and here you sit.”

I knew this particular memory was going to be hard to watch.  I remembered it well, we had broken up less than two weeks earlier and she had either moved on quickly or simply moved in what was already there. I think she started seeing someone while we were still together. Instead of saying “I think I’ve got feelings for someone else Zack and I need to explore them, I don’t want any regrets later in my life”, no she told me twice the day before she left  how much she loved and needed me. I’d Facebooked her recently; she ended up married to a dentist, they have three kids and a vacation house on Kiawah Island, I ended up with a gun in my mouth. This memory made me realize that losing her and the recent discovery of her perfect life were two of the bricks on my suicide pile.

“Not such a great start to 1986.” I whispered. Unlocking this memory had allowed a deluge of pain to come pouring in. How I left her apartment complex and drove down Damn road and sat by the lake telling myself I was through with her, which I wasn’t, it would be another six months of pain before I totally let go, hell maybe a little piece of me never did. I was going to finish college, start my own business become rich and live happily ever after. That would show her what a mistake leaving me was. I was painfully reminded that I’d done none of the above.

“You turned things around quickly though. You had a strong January through May. A 3.9 GPA at Winthrop headed in the right direction.” Rafe now sounded like the game show host on This Is Your Life. “It was a relatively uneventful five months, your dog Quark was killed on March 17 but that wasn’t a surprise was it?”

“No it wasn’t.” I said. He would run away for days at a time, I had always known he was either going to get run over or someone was going to steal him, it was the former. But something profound struck me. I’d forgotten all about Quark until this very moment, how could I have forgotten him?

“And then during session B summer school…” Rafe continued,”… on June 20 at 2:39 PM, as you’re walking to the library you cross paths with Tommy Davis, your best friend from third to ninth grade”. In tenth grade Tommy had moved to a nearby town and a new school and like most 15 year olds in the pre Facebook era we drifted apart. I hadn’t seen him in 4 years until that fateful day, the previous six, I’d seen him every day.  The TV screen flashed to a video of me getting out of my car. It again appeared I was being videoed by some unseen voyeur. I was walking across the street the memories flooding back yet again. The truck was stopped at a red light Tommy and his roommate “Las Vegas” as he was known, to this day I still don’t know why, were sitting in the bed of the pickup truck keeping a mattress secure. I was jaywalking and just happened to glance to my right.

“Tommy?”

“Zack! Hey I just moved into a new house.” Tommy said pointing to a street just up the road; it held 12 houses, seven on the right, five on the left. “Third one on the right, the blue one.” The light turned green and the pickup took a left. ”Come by tonight we’re having…”he was too far away to hear the rest. But that night I did stop by, the row of cars on both sides of the street and the overflow crowd on the patio helped me finish his sentence, “…a party.”

“That night at the party you met your soon-to-be new best friend Hassan.” Rafe continued. “It was the start of a 9 month drug alcohol and sex binge. ” I needed no help with this memory it was as clear as if it had happened yesterday, rather than 28 years ago. That night Hassan turned me on to some ecstasy and I had my first and only threesome, I was instantly hooked. “In less than month you moved into that house.” A power struggle between Hassan and “Las Vegas” had ended in the eviction of said Mr. “Vegas”, resulting in the opening up of my new home the second bedroom on the right.

“On August 24 hurricane Lloyd made landfall leaving behind a swath of destruction across Florida 60 miles wide.” Rafe said. My TV was now showing a news channel from Florida. ”Breathe a little easier Miami.” The weatherman said. “The eye is going to make landfall just north of you. But, Dania Beach, Fort Lauderdale and Oakland Park batten down the hatches you are in the direct path of the storm and this is one hell of a storm, probably the worst in 20 years.” A map behind him showed the projected path of Lloyd, the weather man faded away.

“That fall semester was a never ending party, between Tommy’s fledgling alcoholism and Hassan’s endless supply of drugs you GPA went from a 3.9 to a 0.0 in a matter of three months.” The TV screen was now filled by the image of me funneling a beer. “That’s number eight!” Tommy was announcing to all. I glanced at Rafe, then lowered my head in shame. The next scene I was eating a handful of Xanaxs followed by a line of blow, followed by another funneled beer. “You’re the man!” Some long ago forgotten blond girl screamed. Rafe said nothing he didn’t have to. They say a picture is worth a 1000 words, this one was a million and counting. “Then on December 18 you and Tommy made that fateful decision.” The TV now showed the two of us on the sofa, sharing a bowl pack and a 0.0 GPA.

“Are we going or not?” Tommy asked, exhaling a bong hit. I had a friend living just outside Miami, just a 20 minute ride away from hurricane Lloyd’s path.

“There’s a fortune to be made”, my friends words echoed in my ears as if I still had the phone in my hand. “$500 just to cut a tree off a house, you don’t even have to haul it off.” His words were so tempting and with nothing but flunking out of school and moving back in with my parents awaiting me here, I thought what the hell.

“What are you thinking?” I screamed at the TV. “You can’t even make it to class at college a quarter of mile away, do you think you’re going to be motivated enough to build a business empire? You stupid fuck. Just say no.” Instead I helplessly watched the 1986 me answer, “Let’s do it.”

“Do you know what Rafe?” I asked. “I might just go back so I can kick my own ass.” Rafe laughed.

“I think words will work better than fist.”

”Yeah I know but damn what a dumb son of a bitch I was”.

Rafe’s narration continued, “So after spending the night of your goodbye party tripping acid and drinking Tequila until 4 a.m., you left that night at 11 headed south, in more ways than one. I don’t think we need to see anymore.” Rafe was right. The TV gratefully cut off.

Some people get two or three chances at college. I would have only one and I had just watched myself (blow it). I thought for a moment, “If I meet Tommy on June 20^th I want to go back to June 13th.”

“One week before your fateful meeting, good choice.” Rafe said.” And there’s one thing I failed to mention. You will actually be going back to June 12th the day before you are to meet you.”

”Why?” I asked.

“To enjoy 1986 one last time knowing it’s for the last time. And there’s no telling what you may find in 1986.” What’s he talking about? I thought. “Here’s $200 for expenses.” I stuck the money in my pocket. “Are you ready?” Rafe asked.

“More than you will ever know.” I had spent the prior night and earlier today deciding what I was going to say. And now I had just been given an extra day. He handed me the envelope. “I can’t thank you enough Rafe.”

“The best way to thank me is by succeeding. Well then ladies and gentlemen please return your tray and seats to their upright position close your eyes, and prepare for take-off. Good luck.” It was the last time I ever saw him.

 

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