Written in Time (4 page)

A commercial was on again, a pendulum swinging back and forth. Nescafé coffee was the product. It was interrupted. Cronkite’s voice came on again. “Further details . . . ”
 

John Naile took another swallow of scotch.
 

In what seemed forever, but could have been the space of a single heartbeat, Walter Cronkite was on camera, in shirtsleeves, looking very tired, less than perfectly prepared. A functioning newsroom was behind him. His desk was littered with telephones and papers.
 

John Naile listened, closed his eyes as the man whom America would one day trust more than any public official announced the shooting in Dallas, Texas, of President John F. Kennedy.
 

John Naile opened his eyes. It was an affiliate feed. A negro man wearing a white waiter’s jacket caught John Naile’s eye: the man was weeping, a crowd of people around him. Kennedy was to have addressed a luncheon, which was the reason for the camera being there.
 

John Naile heard his father’s voice. “President Kennedy is already dead, John. He died a short while ago at Parkland Hospital, never regaining consciousness. History will say that a lone man named Lee Harvey Oswald did the killing but at least well into the 1990s, no one will know for sure. More controversy will surround this assassination than has been associated with any event in American history, including the death of President Lincoln.
 

“Governor Connally,” James Naile went on, “was sitting in the front passenger seat just in front of Jack Kennedy. He was shot, but he’s going to be fine. He’ll go on to become Secretary of the Treasury.” From one of the bookshelves, James Naile took what looked like a photo album. He opened it to a page showing a dollar bill. “Look at the signature.”
 

John Naile did as he was told. It was Connally’s signature.
 

“LBJ will serve out the remainder of Jack Kennedy’s term,” James Naile said as if reciting from well-learned rote. “The conflict in Southeast Asia is going to escalate into a full-fledged war that’ll last into the 1970s, with thousands of GIs killed. Six months ago, you asked me why I had Horizon Industries gearing up for increased production. What was my motivation for working on that rocket launcher? The answer is that I knew what would happen today, John. I knew Johnson was going to succeed Jack Kennedy in the White House and that he’d knuckle under to the people at Lakewood Industries and other companies like them who’ve been pushing for a war.”
 

John Naile looked into his father’s eyes. “And Lakewood Industries wants a war because it means big bucks. The shits!”
 

“Exactly, son. And if we let Lakewood Industries profit from the war that’s coming at our expense, God knows what Lakewood will push this country into in the next century. Our only choice is to compete for those same defense dollars, and at least give the American taxpayer his money’s worth and our GIs equipment that won’t let them down. LBJ will effectively rescind an order President Kennedy recently made which would have drastically cut American involvement in Southeast Asia. LBJ’s already being sworn in aboard Air Force One. By the time LBJ runs against Goldwater in ‘64—”
 

“Senator Goldwater? Barry Goldwater?”
 

James Naile nodded, took a sip of his drink. “Barry’ll be the Republican standard-bearer. Johnson will withhold information from the electorate about the actual status of the war and Barry Goldwater won’t call LBJ on it because Senator Goldwater’s knowledge will be privileged information he’ll have due to his position with the Senate Intelligence Committee. Barry will lose. LBJ will keep using ground troops, racking up incredible casualty figures. Civil unrest in the United States will come dangerously close to true anarchy. LBJ’s vice-president will be Hubert Humphrey, who will run against Dick Nixon in ‘68 after LBJ declines to run for a second full term. Dick’ll win, then run again in ‘72 and win again, even though he’ll be under investigation concerning a burglary at the Democratic national headquarters. Dick’ll eventually resign the presidency.”
 

John almost laughed. “The President of the United States resign? Come on, Dad!”
 

“There are interesting times ahead, John. Oswald— the man I just mentioned as implicated in the killing of President Kennedy? He’ll be brought in, but he’ll never get to trial. A nightclub owner named Jack Ruby—with apparent ties to organized crime—will shoot Oswald dead in front of the television cameras, live. We’ll tape-record that, too.”
 

“This is sick, Dad!”
 

James Naile nodded agreement. “Sick times, son. There’ll be a string of deaths, including Ruby’s own from cancer, and Dorothy Kilgallen’s. She will be the last newswoman or reporter of any kind to talk to Ruby. She’ll die from cancer, too. In years to come, Bobby Kennedy will be killed, and so will Martin Luther King. Throughout this decade and into the next, there’ll be rioting in the cities and warfare in Asia.”
 

James Naile pointed to the television screen as he continued. “Walter Cronkite there? He’ll retire from anchoring CBS News and be replaced by that young kid Dan Rather. We’ve got records of everything that will take place up until the mid-1990s. You can read through it all for yourself, John, and have your child read it someday.”
 

John asked, “Is it okay to smoke down here?”
 

“Give me one of those cigarettes, and I’ll join you.”
 

John took out the package of Luckies, shook one out for his father and one for himself. James lit both cigarettes from his pipe lighter. “How could we have records of stuff that hasn’t happened, Dad?”
 

“I read it for myself on microfiche when I was about your age, John. Your grandfather chose the day in 1929 when the stock market was going to crash, which of course he’d known about. Of course, Horizon Enterprises was fully prepared in advance, so we actually gained ground rather than lost it during the Great Depression.”
 

“That’s crazy, Dad. With this Kennedy thing—why . . . why didn’t you just tell J. Edgar Hoover or somebody if you knew that the President was going to be killed? Why didn’t you tell Jack Kennedy himself, for God’s sake?”
 

“The same reason why neither your grandfather nor I told your mother about our knowledge of the future before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. We can’t risk changing history, and I didn’t want your Mom to share in the guilt for that. And, anyway, first thing anyone would say is what you’re saying—that it’s crazy. After I convinced them with hard evidence, they’d invariably use knowledge of the future in ways which might change the future. We can’t risk the future of all mankind in an attempt to save the life of one man or hundreds or even thousands of men.
 

“And what if Kennedy was still murdered, John?” James stubbed out the cigarette. “How can you smoke these things? What if, even if the government had alerted the Pacific Fleet, the Japs had still gotten through, somehow? What if time heals itself? Say that I’d really been able to prevent what happened just now in Dallas, but somehow in doing so I rewrote the future in such a way that we had that nuclear war we were able to avoid before history was changed? What if I caused the deaths of millions of people, maybe the destruction of all life on Earth, just by tampering with history this one time to save one man?”
 

James Naile began pacing the room, shook his head, turned off the television set. “It’ll still record. No, son, rewriting time is more responsibility than I want on my shoulders, or yours. Just because I have solid connections in Washington doesn’t mean I can go in and tell them something like this with any assurance at all that they’ll behave correctly, use the knowledge wisely.”
 

John lit another cigarette with the butt of the first one. “This is all true, isn’t it?”
 

“Jack and Ellen Naile are teenagers now, attending the same high school in Chicago. They haven’t married yet, of course, but they know one another, and a year from now they’ll start dating, and they’ll be engaged before they graduate. They’ll marry in a few years—in 1968—and they’ll have two children. One of those will be David, my father, your grandfather, who’ll be the founder of Horizon Enterprises in 1914. Even though your grandfather has yet to be born, John, you’re almost old enough to have fathered your great-grandparents—they’re only seventeen and fifteen, respectively. And their daughter, Elizabeth, will become one of the most influential women of the early twentieth century.”
 

John found a chair and sat down.
 

After a long silence, James said, “Let’s get out of here in a couple of minutes—our wives will be needing us, and lunch will be ready, anyway. You can tell Audrey if you think it’s advisable. I don’t know, son; I’d probably wait a while, but do what you think is best. Might want to wait until the night we land men on the Moon. Neil Armstrong will be the first man to set foot on the Moon. That might be a more upbeat way of letting Audrey in on things—just tell her what he’s going to say before he says it. That’s about six years from now. Think about it.”
 

John Naile could think about nothing else but the future.
 

CHAPTER
ONE
 

The building next to City Hall had once been a very small movie theater and had a stage in the back. City Hall itself was even smaller. “I wonder if the city will get the post office once the new post office gets built?”
 

“If you’d read the newspaper, you’d have a better idea what’s going on in town, Jack.”
 

“I’ve got you to read the newspaper and tell me.” Jack Naile drifted the Suburban into the left lane, still paralleling the railroad tracks as they passed the brand-new public-safety complex. He took a U-turn over the tracks at the next crossover, getting over into the right-hand lane. “God help us if that guy wins the presidency, Ellen.” He turned right into the diagonal. They were passing the Methodist church when he added, “I mean, I try and give people the benefit of the doubt, and he’s a convincing speaker. Sometimes I’ve gotta remind myself not to believe a single word he says. And I don’t buy this moderate Democrat crap. Thinking of him with the same title as Ronald Reagan and Teddy Roosevelt—ugh!”
 

“There’s nothing you can do but vote for George Bush and hope the rest of the country has the good sense to do the same and reelect him, Jack, so wait until the election before losing your temper. Don’t forget to turn at the post office.”
 

Jack Naile made a left and turned onto the one-block long one-way street, the red-brick and gray stone post office at its corner. He parked the Suburban diagonally while Ellen took her keys from the cup holder at the front of the center console. “Bring back a check, kid.”
 

“We’ll see if it’s there.”
 

“Want me to get your door?”
 

“I’ve got it.” Ellen slipped out of the front passenger seat and closed the door behind her. Jack Naile hit the power button for the radio, hoping to catch one of his tunes. The station played what he mentally labeled as Afro-American elevator music, but he liked it. Ellen did not. Jack Naile watched Ellen as she walked up the steps. She was just as pretty as—really, prettier than—when he’d married her almost twenty-four years earlier.
 

It was the dreaded season—summer. Officially, it was still spring, but that mattered little in northeast Georgia. Summer temperatures had arrived in April, by May the humidity joining them. David and Elizabeth were out of school for three months, and that was great, but summer meant editors and everybody else he needed to do business with would be off somewhere frolicking in the sunshine while the usual nasty game of selling new projects and chasing the money owed for old ones became that much more difficult.
 

Autumn and winter were the best times. Their anniversary was in October. November meant Thanksgiving; Ellen was the best cook in the world, and he’d fight his way past a barbarian horde in order to eat a turkey she’d made—and considering some of the gatherings of relatives they’d had over the years, sword-wielding guys with a permanent case of male PMS would have been a snap to deal with. Just before Christmas, it was their nephew Clarence’s birthday. Clarence was like a son to them, raising him since his teens as they had. Right after Christmas came the kids’ birthdays, both of them born in January, two years apart. Between their birthdays, the SHOT Show, always an excuse to travel to some city or another. It would be in Houston in 1993, easy driving distance.
 

And just before Thanksgiving, of course, there was Halloween, which wouldn’t be anywhere near as spooky as the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November might be. With all the negative talk about the economy, it seemed to Jack Naile that the press was building a bad situation that really didn’t exist, merely in the hopes of unseating the incumbent and electing—Jack Naile shuddered at the thought.
 

Ellen came down the post-office steps, her long auburn hair bouncing a little as she walked. The instant she opened the passenger-side door, he started to ask, but she answered before the words were out of his mouth. “A lot of junk mail, no weird bills—ohh! And we got the advance check.”
 

“Yes! Pizza for everybody!”
 

“Do you have to always equate celebrating with pizza?”
 

“Fine. Make a turkey dinner. I like that better anyway.”
 

Ellen waved the check in front of his face, got out the checkbook and started writing out a deposit slip.
 

“You never see the character on Murder, She Wrote chasing after publishers for a check, do you?” Jack Naile asked rhetorically.
 

“She makes more royalties than we do, so she probably doesn’t have to play chase the check.”