Richard Bowes - Days Red and Green.rtf

Days Red And Green

by Richard Bowes

1:17 P.M.

It was a brisk Sixteenth of March, in a 1954 more or less like any other. The A-bomb had gone off on schedule. Ike was in the White House and Elvis had started oiling his hair.

Agent Jake Stockley, of the Time Rangers, eased a two- year-old blue and white Ford Mercury sedan to a stop on a deserted service road near the harbor in Boston. He wore a suit and hat and looked every inch a cop.

Behind agent Stockley, a subway train ran on elevated tracks, a yard engine pulled freight and cars rolled on the expressway. Before him, hulks of World War Two cargo ships rusted on the sand. Out on the water a tug guided a freighter loaded with United Fruit bananas.

One minute, the only other human visible was an old guy out on a strip of sand, feeding seagulls, mimicking their cries.

The next, a man was striding towards the Mercury. He was in his late twenties, the same age as Agent Stockley, wide shouldered, his overcoat open and billowing, one hand on his hat.

Stockley rolled down the window, turned what had seemed to be a plain silver ring so that a raised spiral design could be seen. Holding up his hand casually he said, "God bless an honest Irish neighborhood where looking like a lawman is a perfect disguise. How are you Ed?"

Ed Brown slid into the front seat, opened his hand and flashed a similar ring. "Upstream, when people see me looking like this, they want to know why I'm dressed up as Dick Tracey."

Stockley looked at the other man. "Something's different," he said. "A promotion, maybe. Deputy Centurion? First in our class!"

"More trouble than it's worth," Brown shrugged. "Nancy sent word you had something to show us."

"Someone to show you," said Stockley. "And I know right where he is." He made a fast U-turn and headed back the way he had come.

Brown glanced around, taking his bearings. "Finding this location is one pain in the ass," he said. "Thought the co-ordinates were off."

"Right on the Main Stream," said Stockley. "Everything just as the gods like it. Well, almost everything."

"Easy to miss, is what I mean," Brown said, gazing at streets lined with wooden three-decker houses. "See one 1954, you've seen them all. They pulled me off a bad '43 for this. You know how wrong stuff can go that year? We got Miss J. Edgar Hoover in the White House. And that's the normal part."

They turned onto Dorchester Boulevard and drove past a big brick church and then a school. The schoolyard buzzed with life. "Saint Killian's," said Stockley. "Saint Patrick's Day Pageant tonight. Linda's in it. She's six. In first grade."

He looked at his watch, slowed down. "Before Nancy and me hooked up, I thought Rangers raising a kid was unfair. A kid needs to grow up with one day, one year following the next in the right order. But Nance already had Linda, so I got to be a dad. And the kid's terrific. Uncanny. Last week, for instance, she said a janitor at the school wore a crown. Insisted on it. It's why you're here."

"I got dragged eleven years Upstream because of something your kid told you?" Brown asked. "You and Nance getting a little wacky in this backwater, Jakes?"

Stockley grinned. "A couple of days ago, I saw the guy. He's coming up on your left. Take a gander at the one in door."

Ed Brown turned to roll the window down an inch or two. His gaze fell casually on a man in workman's clothes standing just outside the Shannon Bar and Grill. The man's shoulders filled the doorway. His red curls blazed. His eyes were wide and blue and empty.

"Oh hell and murder!" Brown said. "Bigger than life!"

"The Red Man, himself," said Stockley with a tight smile. "Nancy wanted you to see that first."

"OK, I've seen it," Brown replied. "Take me to the boss."

1:34 P.M.

The little hand was on one and the big hand was near seven. But Linda didn't notice. Fascinated, she sat on a folding chair with her feet nowhere near the floor. On the stage of St. Killian's School auditorium, eighty shamrock-bedecked fourth grade boys and girls sang, "It's A Great Day For The Irish."

"Hands up in the air on the word, 'great,'" said Sister Amelia Clair from the piano. Sister Amelia was Linda's teacher and Linda thought she was as beautiful as the statues in the church.

After a moment's pause, the fourth graders began humming "Has Anybody Here Seen Kelly?" and Marjorie Banion came on stage boo-hooing into an oversized hanky. Marjorie was an eighth grader who had starred in every school pageant for the previous seven years.

Her eyes were large, almost ready to jump out of her head. Marjorie's mother, with eyes just as big as her child's, stood near the piano ready as always to mouth the words along with her daughter. "We rehearsed this all last night!" Linda heard her whisper loudly to the nun. Marjorie reached the center of the stage and turned to the audience as a dozen eighth grade boys nearly the size of grown-ups, dressed in police uniforms that looked real, marched on.

They were led by Leo Callahan, the tallest boy in the school even though he smoked. Leo, wearing sergeant's stripes, asked Marjorie in a big, phony brogue, "Sure, Bridget O'Flynn, what is wrong?"

And she replied, her brogue even bigger and phonier, "I can't find me little Tommy Kelly."

"We'll find him for you miss!" said the police in unison and the chorus behind them softly sang the first verse of "Has Anybody Here Seen Kelly? (K-e-double-l-y)." As they did, the police looked all around when suddenly the sergeant blew a whistle, pointed to the back of the hall and said, "There he is."

All the eighth grade police sprinted up the center aisle and returned bearing on their shoulders little Bobby Wright, who got excused early from school twice a week to take dance lessons. Bobby and Marjorie of the Wild Eyes step danced as chorus and cops swayed back and forth humming and finally bursting out with "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling." And that was the first act finale.

Then, Sister Gertrude George, a little fire plug of a woman, called "Two-Gun Gerty" behind her back, cleared everyone off the stage with a great flurry of black sleeves and clicks from her wooden hand signal. She told the children to go outside and play until they were ready to rehearse the second part of the program.

A few minutes later, Linda Stockley stood in the school yard. The rest of her first grade class waited for their parents to collect them. They wore coats over Dr. Dentons with little balls of cotton sewn on the flaps for tails. Many of them still had on bunny ears and sang "Hipitty-hopitty, Easter's on its' way," bouncing up and down, dazed and runny nosed. A couple of them waved to Linda as they were led away.

Unlike them, that night she would wear a dress of gold and green. Linda had a speaking part and would appear at the finale of the pageant.

She watched the young ladies of the fourth grade break out jump ropes. The boys mostly kept their green plastic derbies in paper bags and their coats buttoned up to hide foot-wide shamrock ties. They slunk about trying to fade into the ground.

The girls, though, looked pleased with themselves. Their green hoop skirts stuck out from beneath their snow jackets. Ropes flicked, saddle shoes flew as they chanted:

In came the doctor
In came the nurse
In came the lady
With the alligator purse

Because Linda was six, impulse seized her legs and she went whirling in a full circle, saw red brick school and convent, rectory and church sail around her. She ended up facing the rectory and the hedge that ran around it. In the leafless twigs was what looked like a pair of beating pearl-colored wings. They gave off a sound like tiny bells.

Linda, wide-eyed, was suddenly aware of being watched. She turned and saw Mr. Clooney.

St. Killian's had two janitors and both were from Ireland. Clooney, the chief, was small and silvery with bright, little eyes and a long crooked nose. Red, the assistant, loomed behind him, grinning, silent. Linda smiled back. The kids all loved Red.

Clooney beamed down at Linda and none could be so ingratiating as the chief janitor. "Did you see something unusual, my darling?"

The little girl, looking where she had before, now saw only Marie, the rectory housekeeper, heading up the back stairs of the priests' house. She was going to say, "That lady had wings." Instead she looked again and said, "A little bird."

Clooney nodded, his eyes gleaming without warmth, and said a soft voice, "As you say, so it is." Watching, they saw a pigeon flutter away.

Red laughed aloud. Clooney looked around and said, "Get about your business you great galoot." That made Linda feel bad. But the big man, seeming not to mind, turned and ambled off.

Clooney considered the child. She had not a wisp of protection, not even an anointed trinket or secret name that some still had put on them on the sly by grandmothers. Yet there she stood, a pebble only he recognized as a jewel. With the gift of Sight and, perhaps, Silent Talking.

No mortal would know things so readily apparent to the eye of a Cluricaun. For Clooney was one of those disreputable cousins of the thrifty Leprechaun. Even among Cluricauns who are given over to drink, gambling, and fast riding, Clooney was considered shiftless. When, a century before, through his own folly, he had found himself ensorcelled, none of them made any protest.

Now Clooney's indenture was all but up and his rightful nature about to be restored. An imp newly freed from bondage wouldn't want to come home empty handed. In the way of a black sheep returning, Clooney had cast about for a suitably impressive present to bring. Linda would be a graceful adornment indeed to the court of the Sidhe.

"Mr. Clooney!" Two-Gun Gerty called from the school door, "We need to have the rubbish taken out."

For an instant, the little man's eyes flashed. Then his mouth smiled, and he said, "As you wish, it shall be done, Sister."

The ageless little man looked around for Red and didn't see him. "Good day to you, miss," he said to Linda and headed across the schoolyard, careful not to step into the chalked hop-scotch lines. Linda listened as the girls chanted words as magic as a prayer:

He's dead said the doctor
He's dead said the nurse
He's dead said the lady
With the alligator purse

2:07 P.M.

Nancy Stockley, perfectly in period, wore a kerchief and sunglasses as she steered the blue and white Mercury along the service road. She was a pert young wife and mother who had taken the car to run errands and give an old school friend a lift.

"Seeing Jake brought it back." Ed sat beside her and drew deep on a Camel. "Ranger Academy. All of us kids escaped from bad Times and Places."

"From one end of the Twentieth Century to the other," she said. "Jake was born in 1905. I'm from 1982. You were Mr. Inbetween."

"Yeah, I remember you were so sophisticated. He was a farmer." Ed looked at the old man who sat on a chunk of concrete and watched the gulls which ignored him now that he had no food. "Checked that one out?" he asked.

"This morning when I found out you were coming. He's balmy. Harmless."

Nancy came to a stop where Jake had picked Ed up an hour before. "Now we get down to business," she said.

"Century Headquarters pulled me off a special assignment. I got told to contact '50s Decade Command concerning an impending crisis. A Minor Defraction was about to become a major problem."

Ed Brown gazed at her casually as he spoke. "The Decadian, when I got in touch with him, said it had started small. More people seeing flying saucers and commies under the bed than normal. He figured it was some naïve telepath sharing her dreams, a juvenile delinquent discovering he could run amok in the Time Stream.

"He put his best agent, someone in line to be a Station Chief, on the case. Let her husband and her settle down and investigate. For a while, things got quiet. Then, out of nowhere, the Decadian got reports of Major Variations originating right about Here and Now. At the same moment, the agent tells him she and her family have been living down the street from the Red Man. The agent, it turns out, is an old school chum." Ed Brown waited for Nancy to say something.

"Maybe living here worked out too well," she said. "Linda started first grade. Our cover is that Jake has a confidential government job. So he's gone a lot. My mother's sick, that's why I'm away when I am. It got so cozy we stopped being vigilant.

"The Defraction stabilized. Other things came up. So we let it ride. Then we discovered the Red Man. It gets better. Yesterday, we took a close look at the other janitor and noticed he was a Cluricaun." She paused and said. "I know we should have spotted them."

Ed said, "Jake told me that the local priest, somehow, has the two of them under his thumb."

"A pastor is a king around here. Monsignor Patrick Shaley rules over church and rectory, school and convent. He's got four curates, twenty-four nuns, a housekeeper, a Cluricaun and a hero of the Sidhe working for him. Quite a guy."

Ed Brown looked out at the water and up in the sky. He ground out his butt and prepared to leave. "Kind of funny, Nance. You're looking for trouble and it turns out you've been sitting on it." He wasn't smiling.

"What was it they taught us at the Academy about Minor Defractions? Sometimes people have visions. Massacre their cats. Kill all the left-handed women. Usually, that doesn't matter. Then once in a million times you get the scenario where one of the women would have gone on to be Joan of Arc."

"No Joan and you got a Primary Event," said Brown. "A major shift in the Time Stream. What I'm hearing is that we have another Joan situation on our hands."

"We're pulling Linda out of that pageant tonight. I've got a bad feeling."

"You alter nothing. Do exactly what you normally would until I tell you differently. Understand?"

"When will we hear?"

He looked at his watch. "I'll be back in one hour. Your time. I'll bring your orders."

Ed opened the door and got out. Above them, an American Airlines DC3 headed for Logan Airport. A speed boat cut through the harbor waves. He hummed a tune, flicked his ring around, ran his thumb along the spirals, took two steps, three, and was gone.

For a moment Nancy stared at the empty space where he had been. Then she drove away fast.

2:32 P.M.

Linda sat near Sister Amelia Claire and Sister Gertrude George. Noise came from the back of the auditorium where Red, closely supervised by Clooney, was hauling away debris. Marjorie Banion of the alarming eyes went past trailed by her mother. "She's been up all night anticipating, Sister," whispered the mother.

"Try to take a nap, Marjorie," said Sister Amelia.

"It will be no use," hissed the mother with great satisfaction and they went away.

"A dog with the look of either of those two would be put down," muttered Sister Gertrude George. Then she turned and said, "Stop your noise. We're about to start rehearsals."

"As you wish it, Sister, so it shall be done," said Clooney and yelled at Red, "Cease and desist, you great lug."

The nun, no taller than Clooney, pursed her lips and nodded, unsmiling and reserved. Deep in the Irish West Country where she had been born, people referred to fairykind as the Gentry. Everyone made it a policy to stay clear of the Gentry and not to look too closely at their doings. She found herself following that rule around Clooney.

On Clooney's part, if witnesses were not about, he would have had Red make the rubbish dance down to the fiery furnace. Earlier, under Clooney's direction, the big man had waved his hands and made six hundred and fifty-eight wooden folding chairs snap out of their stacks, march in formation and unfold themselves in unison. For Red had powers even he scarcely remembered.

As it was, Sister Amelia struck up the tune of "The Kerry Dance" and the curtain rose on seventh graders singing in their Kelly green clothes. Clooney and Red stopped to watch the second half of the pageant.

When the kids reached the lines:

Oh to think of it,
Oh to dream of it,
Fills my heart with tears

Their voices fell to a low murmur and Mark Hogan, a seventh grade boy, generally agreed to be destined for the priesthood, stepped forward and proclaimed to a girl with a loud voice who played his sister, "Sure, last night I had a wonderful dream."

"Saints preserve us, Patrick and what was that dream?" asked the loud young lady.

"I found that I have a vocation to be a priest!" Mark said. For the second part of the pageant was nothing less than a celebration of the life of Monsignor Patrick Shaley, whose saint's day and fortieth anniversary as a priest this was.

"Mark, speak up," said Sister Amelia Claire. "And with a lot more feeling."

"Sure Patrick, that is wonderful!" said the girl. "And on your saint's day too!"

There followed a long silence. It was broken by the voice of Sister Gertrude George backstage. More commanding than any drill sergeant, Two-Gun Gerty barked, "Soldiers get yourselves in there!" Half a dozen eighth graders, dressed in their grand-father's doughboy outfits, tumbled on stage.

"British soldiers looking for rebels!" the girl exclaimed. As luck would have it, they found one hiding behind a crowd of people and dragged him away. It was then that Patrick Shaley's father, played by a boy wearing a high green hat with a gold buckle on the front, announced that the family would all go to America, the land of freedom.

"Ah, Patrick, you'll pursue your vocation in the New World, I know you will," said the girl. And the chorus hummed as Mark Hogan sang "Minstrel Boy" for no reason other than his having a voice of a purity that always seemed to surprise him.

What followed was a series of brief scenes, illustrating the high points of Patrick Shaley's life. Altar boys pretended to be seminarians, the doughboys sang "Over There," and girls dressed as nuns founded Saint Killian's School.

At the finale, Linda came onstage carrying an envelope half as big as she was. From the wings, Sister Gertrude George pointed to the empty chairs and said, "Monsignor will be sitting right in the first row in the center. Now step forward and speak as if he was here."

Linda did as she had been told, walked past the big eighth graders and faced the hall. She saw Mr. Clooney, way at the back, watching with a little smile as she recited:

To Monsignor Shaley
Our Pastor Dear
To whom God's love
commits us here …"

There was a bit more. Then Sister Amelia at the piano said, "And tonight, you'll come down the steps and hand him the donation bouquet." Linda mimed that and Sister Amelia said, "Perfect."

Before she knew it, Linda was in her coat. She had expected her mother to meet her. But it was her stepfather who took her hand and held it so hard it almost hurt.

2:57 P.M.

Nancy deviated slightly from Ed Brown's order to do nothing until she heard from him. She had Jake pick up Linda and she went to the church looking for what Time Rangers referred to as inter-agency co-operation. Others would call it divine intervention.

Votive candles flickered before the statues. In another time and place, the Archangel Michael and Teresa of Avila might have been Mars and Minerva. The others would also once have had different names. No immortal gave any sign of being present that afternoon.

Elsewhere in the parish, Bacchus was worshipped in a dozen bars. There was even a small bower of Venus down by the elevated tracks. Nancy had no need for those. Help lay much closer.

In a little yard between the church and the convent was a shrine. The Virgin Mother had many names in many places. Here, she wore a halo that was a crown and carried the world in one hand as a scepter. A snake writhed beneath her foot. The Time Ranger held up her spiral ring. "Your ladyship," she murmured, "I am called Nancy Stockley. I serve the Lord Apollo but I request your help. There's a devil in the works." Then she added, and it was the first time she had put this into words, "I believe my child is in danger."

The face of the statue flickered. The eyes of the Mother rested on hers.

3:01 P.M.

Children collected around Agent Stockley. Not just Linda but kids old enough to walk themselves home: a third grader wearing his best cowboy outfit, a little girl carrying her angel wings. A boy with a green plastic hat. Jake took the hat and stuck it on the back of his own head as they went along.

They turned the corner of the school and their attention was riveted by the sight of Red stretched out on the church lawn. The children stopped to look.

"Red has fallen asleep," said Linda.

"Red's drunk and passed out," said an older boy gleefully.

Most other adults would have hurried along and told them this fascinating thing was none of their business. But Jake stopped and they all got to look at the small man with the crooked smile and mirthless eyes who crouched to whisper in the giant's ear.

Clooney gave a little wink and said, "Ah, he's a genius and descendant of kings, anything at all is possible for him. Even standing on his own feet." He murmured something to Red and with that, the big man lurched upright.

As they walked away, Linda glanced back and saw that Clooney watched them go. She said, "Sometimes Mr. Clooney has green skin." A couple of the other kids laughed. But her stepfather looked at her very seriously indeed.

3:05 P.M.

"Ye great galoot," said Clooney when they were alone. "Do you have an idea at all about the one who gave us so insolent a stare?"

Red shook his head, smiling.

"Well follow him and find out," Clooney commanded. "Keep him away until I've come back into my powers." And with a skip and jump he hurried off. For he had just seen several long black cars pull into the rectory driveway.

A quartet of pastors emerged from Buick four doors and Chrysler Imperials. They carried golf clubs and Monsignor Shaley of St. Killian's led them.

Kids flooded past, singly and in clumps. Some clustered around an adult or two. "Good afternoon, fathers," rolled like a chorus.

Inside the rectory, the priests put down their clubs in the hall and trampled to the study and the liquor cabinet. Shaley called, "Marie is there any ice?" with the air of a man who knows there will be. The housekeeper fairly flew, her hair a tangled white nest, her green-as-the-ocean eyes and round face oddly untouched by time.

"Patrick Michael Shaley, lucky in his help and in his chip shots," said a jolly little pastor.

The priests sat in the rectory study sipping whiskey and smoking cigars. They all four had parishes, but Shaley had the prize.

"It's quite a do they've got planned for you, Pat," one of them told Shaley. "Twenty-five years a pastor. You'll be able to expand the garage and turn the nun's yard into a putting green on the donations."

Shaley gave a small smile and shook his head. Some wondered why he had gone no further. In fact, he had run to the height of his ambitions. In Kerry, when he was a boy, the local pastor was the most important figure in the world of men, the only world of which people openly spoke.

Outside the window, Jake Stockley went past with Linda. He had on the green plastic hat and sang:

I'm a decent man, I am
And I don't like to shout
But I had a hat when I came in
And I'll have a hat when I go out!

"Many inhabitants are still clad in traditional native costumes," murmured a monsignor with a long sad face.

Good afternoon, monsignori," Clooney said at the door. His brogue thickened as he spoke. "I hope the afternoon wasn't too chilly for your game."

"Not at all, thanks." Monsignor Shaley scarcely glanced Clooney's way, so confident had habit made him. "A good brisk game." He smiled at the memory.

"The school hall is all ready for tonight," Clooney told Monsignor Shaley. "And I wondered if you had anything further in mind for us to do."

"Come back in an hour or two, Clooney. We have some business to go over."

"As you wish it, so it shall be," said Clooney and the other pastors marveled at Shaley's good fortune.

4:11 P.M.

The old man walked away from the water looking back on the gulls who ignored him. Nancy pulled up in the Ford Mercury and killed the motor, took a drag on her Old Gold.

Ed Brown strode out of Time a minute or two later. He wore the same hat and overcoat as before. By his stride, though, Nancy knew Ed had been promoted. From a change about the eyes, she knew a bit of time, maybe months, more likely a year or two, had passed for him.

"No trouble finding the place this trip," he said as he slipped into the car. "The route down here from the end of the century stands out like an interstate highway on a roadmap. You're sitting on a Primary Event."

Nancy put her cigarette to smolder on the ashtray. "Decadion, I salute you," she said and did that.

Ed nodded. "Nothing wrong with your powers of observation. I got my decade. Not this one, obviously. I'm further Upstream. But they left me on this case. Because I'm older and wiser. Good thing for you."

She offered him a cigarette and a light. "Being able to smoke without fear of arrest is good," he said. "What's agent Stockley doing?"

"Picking up Linda."

"Just like you had intended to do, right?"

"We decided …"

"You decided you'd fucked up your assignment so badly that defying orders wouldn't make a big difference." He gazed at her profile and asked, "You find out anything about our friend Clooney in your last sixty minutes or so?"

"Clooney's going to escape." Nancy kept her voice level, watched a freighter float by, drew on her cigarette and said, "He plans to snatch Linda when he does."

"How'd you learn all this?" Ed asked.

"Interagency intelligence," she replied, knowing he knew what had happened and what might happen and that he wanted to hear her tell the truth.

"And you want to take the kid far away before Clooney can try anything," he said.

"Jake and I have it worked out. We can go a few months Downstream and tell Mr. Clooney …"

"Nancy! What's going to happen here isn't some ripple in the Stream. The reality exists in which Clooney snatches your daughter. For reasons they didn't tell me, this is a Primary Event. A wave gathering size as Time passes. Your kid is important.

"Another event must be created. One where he doesn't grab her. We have to make that version of reality seamless. Unnoticeable. And we have to make it stick. Make that the future that exists Upstream. You know that, Nance."

Ed's tone changed. A Decadion issued orders. "I'm going to give you the solution I got handed by Century HQ."

He told her what she was going to do and Nancy made no reply. Ed Brown let a moment or two pass. Then he raised his hand with the palm open so the spiral ring showed.

"I swear by Zeus, the Lord of the Stream and by his son Apollo the bringer of life," he said. When Nancy still didn't respond, he said it again until she raised her hand and repeated the words.

"That I will keep the peace and guide the innocent amid the twisting currents …"

Thus they recited the Ranger's oath.

"That my kid will be used as b...