Chapter 7

13:00 Saturday, August 23, 1983

I got home just as my boss at the paper was pulling up to the house to take me to collect payment for the last week. This was the first time I got to meet most of my customers. They were all well pleased with their delivery last week. My boss showed me how to fill out the payment book for each customer and how to give them the receipt that said they’d paid for the last week. I had two families that were going on a week-long vacation before school started. That allowed me to be shown how to do a temporary stop order. So I would only get ninety-eight papers next week. The count would automatically return to a hundred the following week.

When I got home, Amaryllis was there looking at embarrassing photo albums of my early years, thanks to my two sisters. I remind them that I had twice as many embarrassing photo albums I could show the next few guys who came to pick them up for a date. I then went out to the utility shed in the backyard and put an eye hoop screw in one end of the ash staff I’d gotten from Pap-pap. Then using some nylon clothesline, I hung the staff above some spread-out newspaper and stained the whole thing with redwood stain. Amaryllis had followed me out and wanted to know what I was working on. I told her that I was staining and sealing a wood walking stick my Pap-pap had given me to help keep dogs off me on my paper route.

I waited for the stain to dry before putting on the clear coat and that gave us time to make out. I felt kind of creepy at first after the talk with my Pap-pap, but I quickly remembered that while I had memories of being older, in this reality I was just barely fifteen, and Amaryllis was the first girl I’d ever made out with, in this timeline.

After I got really worked up and needed to cool off, before we went further than two fifteen-year-old teens should, I checked on the staff. The stain was dry and it was a nice red color that still let the grain of the wood come through. I then used the lacquer to coat it. I would do three coats since it was a satin finish and not glossy. That would harden the wood significantly and yet not look like a super finished product. I planned for it to blend in with the brush behind the Circle K where Amaryllis would be attacked. I didn’t want to show up with the staff ready to fight because then I would have to explain how I knew she was going to be attacked. No, I would pick it up from the ground if I ended up needing it. After the last coat was on the wood, I walked my girlfriend home just as the sun was setting.

Her family invited me to stay for supper so I called over to my house and let them know I was eating with the Snodgrass’. Unlike my mom, who was a kitchen witch and could whip up a good wholesome meal from anything she pulled out of the fridge, Wilma Snodgrass relied on things like Shake and Bake or Hamburger and Tuna Helper to make most meals for the three of them. That night Hiram had brought home a twelve-piece bucket of KFC with all the fixings. After dinner, Amaryllis and I washed the few dishes that there were, while sneaking in some serious kissing. Soon after, I said goodnight to my girl and her family. After all, I had an early morning the next day delivering the larger Sunday edition. It would also let me see how my homemade wire baskets worked.

I needed to let go of my past to a certain extent. I went to the Five and Dime and using the last of the money I’d made helping the Snodgrass family move in, I bought a locking diary. I sat down that night and made notes of the things I wanted and needed to remember from my previous timeline. Things like May’s psycho boyfriend and the other two sets of lottery numbers in the future. Everything about the Drug Lord who blew out my knee. I was going to see him pay for that no matter what. As much about my wife the first time that I could remember. Things like, where we’d met and how we’d decided to marry. I made notes on her so that I could avoid her like the toxic mess she was at the end.

I made notes on Granny and Pap-pap and what Dad had done to the farm after Pap-pap’s passing. There were other things that Dad had done over the years that I jotted down too. I knew that the time was coming and probably sooner than later when he and I would have a reckoning. Might even happen the next time he decided that it was a good time to whip on his only son.

Then I made notes of other major events I remembered, like when Microsoft Windows came out and changed PC computing when Apple released the first iMac, the return of Steve Jobs was another one I put in the book. September 11th, Operation Desert Shield, and Desert Storm. The Columbine school shooting, Sandy Hook Elementary, and the Dark Knight Rises killings. All the dates I thought I could make a difference. The Vegas shooting and the Orlando nightclub shooting. I made a note to watch for Walmart and Walton industries to hit the stock market.

Then I added more personal things I remembered. Pap-pap’s heart attack, Granny’s death date, and the day Dad put her in the old folks home. Dad’s death. I wasn’t sure I wanted to prevent that one. Mary Jane’s graduation from college and the date she took her job teaching English in Japan. She loved the culture so much that she never came home. I didn’t know if I wanted to stop that or just remember when she went so that I could tell her how much I loved her and May.

I was hoping that if I changed May’s future that Mary Jane wouldn’t feel inclined to run to the other side of the world. Once I’d put down everything I could remember, I locked the diary and looked for a secure place to hide it. I knew better than under the bed or between the mattress and box springs. That’s how I lost my first Playboy in a couple of years. My evil twin sisters had found it and replaced it with a Cosmo magazine. While the photos of the models weren’t as good, their articles had been eye-opening for sixteen-year-old me. I learned a lot about women from that mag. Still, I didn’t want this book to fall into my sisters’ hands or anyone else’s either. For now, I put it in a shoebox under my farm boots. Then I went out back to check on my staff.

It was dry so I took it down, removed the eye bolt, and in the rising dusk went through a couple of sets of Staff fighting forums. I only had two days and wanted to be as comfortable as I could be in this scrawny body. I couldn’t wait for my workout routine to start paying off for me. Then I took my second shower of the day and crawled into bed after setting my alarm for four-twenty the next day. Got to make sure that the Sunday paper gets delivered on time.

05:30 Sunday, August 24, 1983

One Day Before The Attack

Sunday is supposed to be a day of rest unless, like me, you have a paper route. Then it’s the hardest day of the week. First, the papers are way bigger than the daily papers thanks to the TV guide and the cartoons and sales adverts. It takes longer to roll them and honestly to load and deliver them. Plus there are some customers who only get the Sunday paper. So instead of delivering one hundred papers like I do every other day of the week, I deliver one hundred and fifteen papers on Sunday.