The Firefly Hours (A Silas Sharp Metaphysical Mystery): Chapter 13

 

Fireflies
by Mattie Karr

Day 13 – Summer of 1987

Ask three siblings about the same Christmas and you'll get four different stories. Ask a married couple how they first met and someone inevitably remembers the restaurant wrong. Memory is in the business of preserving meaning not facts.

By Monday evening, I had stopped asking what year it was inside the Firefly Hours. The better question was whether the neighborhood cared.

Dr. Calico Verde arrived carrying two folding chairs and a small cassette recorder.

"Going retro?" I asked, nodding at the recorder.

"I wanted something analog,” she said. "If reality starts misbehaving, I'd rather not trust a device whose first instinct is to compress information."

"I have no idea whether that's scientifically valid."

"Neither do I." She smiled. "But it feels responsible."

Dr. Calico Verde: Half psychology, half philosophy, half educated guess. She'd long since accepted that reality occasionally required more than one hundred percent.

We set up near the entrance to Laurel Lane. Arthur joined us a few minutes later carrying a thermos of coffee.

"I figured somebody ought to supervise,” he said.

"Us?" I asked.

"The neighborhood."

There we sat like a trio of sentries taking our post at the edge of reality. The fireflies emerged earlier than usual. Arthur noticed it first.

"They're ahead of schedule."

Calico frowned. "They've had a schedule?"

"They do if you've lived here long enough."

The change arrived almost immediately.

The first thing I noticed was the air smelled different. Instead of the usual idyllic aromas of fresh-cut grass and charcoal grills, a combination of hairspray, fresh asphalt and gasoline wafted around with just enough lead to remind your lungs of their own mortality.

Then came the music. Somewhere beyond the trees, a boom box crackled to life. Synthesizers. Big drums. The unmistakable confidence of the nineteen-eighties. Of course, to my knowledge, no one on Laurel Lane owned a boom box anymore. At least none I had seen or heard.

I looked toward the street. A minivan had become a station wagon. Its paint shimmered uncertainly, as though the time/space continuum couldn't decide which decade it preferred. The mailbox beside it changed next. Black plastic became weathered aluminum. A satellite dish vanished from one roof. A basketball goal reappeared over a garage that no longer existed. Children raced down the sidewalk carrying Super Soakers so bright they practically advertised the decade. One wore a T-shirt with neon geometric shapes. Another had fluorescent green shoelaces. The details arrived first. Then the years followed.

Arthur stood slowly. "I haven't seen this happen in a long time."

"What is it?" I asked.

"Too many summers remembering each other,” he said looking down the street.

For perhaps thirty seconds Laurel Lane became crowded with versions of itself. A woman watered flowers while another version of herself carried groceries into the same house. A teenage boy skateboarded through a driveway occupied by the SUV that wouldn't be purchased for another twenty-five years. Christmas lights briefly appeared beneath the gutters of a house in July. A swing set occupied a backyard swimming pool.

The years refused to stay separated.

Calico whispered, "They're overlapping."

I nodded.

"I don't think the neighborhood knows which summer this is."

The children seemed more delighted than frightened. Several laughed as though recognizing old friends. Lily pointed toward a driveway.

"There!"

I followed her finger. Two boys chased one another around a maple tree that was only half its present height. One carried a red plastic lightsaber. The other wore a baseball glove far too large for his hand. They disappeared behind the tree. Only one emerged. No one reacted except me.

The boom box changed songs. The smell of sunscreen drifted past. Somewhere, a screen door slammed. For one impossible moment the entire block looked exactly like an old family photograph. Softer. Warmer. Slightly overexposed around the edges. The sort of picture people kept in albums to back before we uploaded everything onto a cloud.

Then I saw him. He couldn't have been more than sixteen. He was tall and lean with dark hair that refused to stay combed. He wore a faded Royals T-shirt and stood beside a battered ten-speed bicycle talking with two friends outside what should have been the empty lot. He laughed the kind of laugh that belongs exclusively to people who haven't yet learned which moments will matter.

My breath caught when I recognized the smile. I'd seen it dozens of times. On Eleanor Whitcomb's mantel. In wedding photographs. In the picture she'd shown me of a fishing trip from 1986.

Harold Whitcomb. Young and very much alive. He hadn't seen me yet. He waved goodbye to his friends, picked up the bicycle and started pedaling toward me.

The closer he came, the older he became. Each year gradually gave way to the next like a time lapse photo. His dark hair turned gray appeared at his temples. His shoulders broadened. The bicycle became a lawn mower. The Royals shirt dissolved into plaid flannel. By the time he reached the place where I'd been standing, it was the Harold I'd met trimming hedges.

He paused, looked directly at me. For a moment I thought he might speak. Instead, he smiled his same polite smile. Then he continued walking toward the yellow house toward Eleanor and the home he had somehow never stopped trying to reach.

Arthur quietly exhaled beside me. "I was afraid of that."

"Afraid of what?"

He kept watching Harold disappear into the evening.

"The neighborhood isn't remembering people anymore." He looked at me gravely.

"It's remembering time,” Calico said, and Harold nodded.

*****

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