Repeating Echo

by

J. Timothy Hunt

Published in "Don't Open This Book!" Selected and Edited by Marvin Kaye. Doubleday, New York, 1998.

The Circle.

I have to get out of this church. I can't stand to be in here another moment. The organ, the coffins, the flowers; it's too much. I have to get out. Outside in the warm Montana air where things aren't different. Where life still looks the same.

I stumble down the narrow aisle and burst through the front doors. It's hard to see where I'm running, my eyes are all blurry with tears. It's hard to breathe and cry and run. It's hard.

There are wheat fields all around our church. It's right before the harvest and the shafts of wheat are higher than my waist. As I lurch through the dirt parking lot and run into the golden waves, it feels like I'm diving into an ocean. The wind is blowing the undulating, crackly stalks of grain brushing their heavy heads against one another with a hiss that even sounds like sea spray.

I plunge headlong into the wheat field ocean and run, gasping for air, choking on crying, racing blindly away from that church. Although I don't look back, I can feel the white wooden spire receding away from me, hear the moaning organ fade, and feel the Montana sky, so wide and clear you'd think you might fall up into it, engulf the whole tragic mess and obliterate it.

The wheat field is about a hundred acres wide. I see a rimrock mesa on the horizon. I'm going to run toward it because it's in front of me. I'll run to those rimrocks then I'll see another even further away and I'll run to them, too. I'll run until I reach the Rocky Mountain timberline. I'll run until I can't remember why I'm running.

I only get about a mile into the field when suddenly the wheat drops away. I stop and look about me. There in that vast expanse of grain is a large circular depression where the wheat is all matted down as if crushed from above by a giant round object. A crop circle. People in Billings laugh about them and joke about aliens but none of us ever really believes the crop circles are caused by anything other than something perfectly explainable -- although we can't really say what that might be.

I pant and pant, my lungs are ravenous for air. The running has knocked the crying right out of me and I stop and look around the crop circle as I calm myself and breathe. I had no idea a crop circle would be this large. I'm wondering if I should look for radiation burns or other such nonsense when I come to the center of the circle and see them. The three green stones, big as a fist and placed in a triangle a foot apart from each other. A triangle in a circle . . .

I fall to my knees and immediately begin the chant. "Lincus, Memnon, Myrmidons, Pelion. A wish! Just one wish! I want to go back and do it all over. I want to go back, then they will be alive again and will never, ever die. . . . No, wait!" I realize what I said and start to panic. By mistake I wished them immortality. I didn't mean to do it! I just blurted it out, so I quickly add a little stipulation. "But I don't want any of us to get a minute older."

The First Round.

I am no longer in the wheat field. I'm in our first apartment on Broadwater Avenue. And there's Lydia! Standing right in front of me! But her hair is different, it's . . . it's just like it was when we were still in college. In fact the whole room is just like it was our senior year.

There are party decorations all over the place, black and white balloons with big bar codes and the word "BALLOON" written across them in magic marker. It was my birthday three years ago. I had gone back three years! I am at the "generic" birthday party Lydia had so cleverly thrown for me. There are the birthday cards in white envelopes that simply say "CARD," the white cake with a black icing bar code and black block letters spelling "CAKE." She even made white T-shirts for the guests to wear that had a big bar codes across their chests and the word "GUEST" across their bellies. Everyone is eating generic salted nuts out of white cans, generic potato chips out of crinkly white bags and drinking generic beer out of white Styrofoam cups. Lydia was a genius.

I want to rush over and grab Lydia, hold her tight and tell her how wonderful it is that she is back again, but I can't move.

I'm too overwhelmed. That must be it.

The doorbell rings. "Can you get that?" Lydia asks as she gathers up an armful of paper plates and dirty glasses. But I don't want to answer the door. I want to tell her about the miracle. She needs to know about the wish.

I start to rush to her yet find myself walking in the opposite direction. "I'm coming!" I yell out and trip a little over a bump in the carpet as I headed for the front door. Why did I say that? Why am I doing this?

I answer the door and let a group of five of my college friends into the room. Lydia has been as efficient and strict as usual for each one of the newcomers is dressed head to toe in white and carries a white parcel that says "GIFT" on it. I'm engulfed in hugs and birthday wishes by people I haven't seen in years. One fellow, tall, with sideburns and dark wavy hair that cascades past the collar of his white turtleneck, hands me a small white package and claps me on the shoulder with congratulations. For the life of me, I can't remember his name.

"How'd you do on the final, Tom?" I hear myself ask him.

"Eighty-six," he says. "Solid B. Blew Professor Dickens away. I mean, I only showed up for three goddamn classes the whole quarter."

Tom. That's right, his name was Tom. And professor Dickens taught Intro to Neuroanatomy. God, I'd forgotten about that stupid course. And about Tom. I continue to observe myself hold an intelligent conversation about a topic I cannot recall with a person that I've forgotten -- and a cold chill runs through me.

I know what has happened to me. Time had been shifted back three years and Lydia is restored to life. I have a chance to do everything over again with full knowledge of my future mistakes. No, that's wrong. I can't do everything over again. I can only watch it happen.

And I cannot control a single thing. Not even me.

My body is moving but I'm not moving it. I'm talking, but I'm not speaking my thoughts. I'm in a strait-jacket of my own bones; gagged with my own speaking tongue. My thoughts are new; my words and actions old. With growing horror I realize, like someone seeing a film for the second time, I know full well what is going to happen at the end of the story. To Lydia. To the child to be.

I scream, or try to. I will to twist and flail my arms. I strain to kick my legs. I remember the two coffins in the church and the flames against the night sky and I'm overcome with a powerful wave of nausea.

A fat girl in the corner lights up a joint and Tom, enticed by the smoke, makes a shameless bee-line for her. I follow along and laugh at Trent Holloway doing an impression of Ronald Reagan. President Reagan is going to be shot soon because of Jody Foster. Trent Holloway is a hemophiliac who is going to come down with a new plague called AIDS no one has even heard of yet. The apartment building we are in is going to be torn down to make way for a six-plex movie house. I'm going to break the lamp next to me by accident on the day Lydia and I move to a bigger place. There's going to be a . . .

I cannot bear it. And I cannot stop it.

The Third Round.

The doorbell rings. "Can you get that?"

I trip over a bump in the rug.

"How'd you do on the final, Tom?"

"Eighty-six. Solid B. Blew Professor Dickens away. I mean, I only showed up for three goddamn classes the whole quarter."

The party again. My fourth time to see that generic birthday party: once for real and three times a visitor. In my travel down the river of time, I seem to be stuck in a whirlpool. I only get to see the same three years over and over. As awful as this is, it does have the distinct advantage of leaving me a little wiser with each cycle.

For although I have seen a piece of the future and have traveled a bit in time, I've learned that there is no such thing as fortune telling and no use to Man for time travel.

I know now that while the future does not exist at all, the past exists too well. It is chiseled in stone. The past is immutable, implacable. Those unfortunate as I am to travel to its shores will find they can only go to places they themselves have been. They can only do and say what was previously done and said. To change one grain of salt spilled on a table top would be to knock the world off its axis. The temple of the present only stands because of the foundation of the past. And the future? Like a fetus, it cannot be born until it is conceived. To conceive the future, you need to have a present moment. Being robbed of one, I have lost them both.

Curiously, I am getting accustomed to this new "life" of mine. The first time around was scary but exciting for I didn't really know how or where it was going to end. I hoped somehow that when the three years were up, the outcome would be different and we could continue on with our lives as usual. I hoped I would be free. However, that was not to be the case.

At the end of the first cycle, I ended up standing on the dark highway, just as before, watching the car speed off in the distance -- just as before -- but right before the impact, I ended up back at the birthday party, three years younger. Lydia never died, and none of us got even a minute older.

It was during the second cycle that I learned to relax a bit. The past was still young enough to be interesting, yet familiar enough to be comforting. Familiarity, though, also proves to be disquieting.

Once more I observe how Tom gives me the small white package tied with black ribbon. Of course I knew instantly the first time it was a hardback book, now that I've seen the future twice, I also know that it's going to be a vintage copy of Ovid's Metamorphosis. I unwrap the gift and look at the stained and tattered cover. I gingerly open it up to look at the date on the flyleaf. 1759, London. The pages are very brown and very brittle. Tom says he found it in an alley in back of Moss Mansion in a box of discarded papers. Old lady Moss must have been doing some spring cleaning. I guess she didn't realize she is going to die next month and her house is going to be turned into a museum.

Jesus, this must have been what Cassandra felt like.

I watch again as I carefully turn back to the index of the book and see the note in the margin. The florid calligraphy of a pre-revolutionary hand. "A wish. Triangle in a circle. Repeat the names." Four names are underlined: Lincus, Memnon, Myrmidons, Pelion.

The seventh Round.

There are no other cars on the dark highway. The baby is crying in her car seat in the back of the Datsun. Lydia pulls the car over to the side of the road slamming on the brakes so hard we skid and spin completely around on the shoulder.

"Get out! Get out!" she screams at me.

I am so furious I yell some obscenities at her and tell her to turn the car around and take us home. She starts slapping me and pushing me out of the car. I try and defend myself from her blows until I get so mad I haul off and slap her back. Hard. It knocks the breath out of her. I see a little bit of blood on the corner of her mouth. I open my door and jump out of the car. I kick the door shut so violently the whole chassis rocks side to side on its suspension.

Lydia puts the car into reverse and knocks a "YIELD" sign down. She throws the car into first and speeds off down the highway leaving me in a shower of gravel. I stand in the round pool of the street lamp and watch as she fails to yield to an oncoming gasoline truck.

The Tenth Round.

The doorbell rings. "Can you get that?"

I trip over a bump in the rug.

"How'd you do on the final, Tom?"

Oh god, oh god, I don't think I can take this any more. I can't live through that final night again. The generic birthday party is always like awakening from a horrible nightmare, but it's not. I know that in three years I will make the mistake again that will lead to the same fight again that will cost all three of us our lives.

I've got to think of a way out of this. How did this happen to me? That book. Those underlines in the index. I have to read the book again more carefully next time. And there will be a next time. I'm scheduled to read Metamorphosis cover to cover while we're on our honeymoon in two months. I'll read it again two years later, right before the accident, only I'll only skip through it. The answers are in there. I'll find them.

I need to wait and endure the ride for two months until the honeymoon. It's not difficult, for it was a pleasant two months in my life, and it's actually enjoyable to relive. Sometimes, though, it gets boring watching the same TV shows and speaking the same conversations. I've learned that I can sleep while my body carries on its work of recreating the past. Of course the downside to this is that I'm wide awake while my body lies in bed with its eyes closed.

It. I now call my body "it." I suppose it's accurate. The way my life is now, my body is no more "me" than a honey jar is the honey or a light bulb is the light.

I'm tired of this. I want to bust the honey jar wide open.

I patiently wait and endure for two months. I have my birthday party. Lydia and I graduate from college. I get my B.S. in Economics, she gets her B.A. in music. We piss off all our relatives and friends by running off to Las Vegas to wed, then I relax to read a book.

By now I'm beginning to know Metamorphosis by heart. My favorite vignette in Ovid's epic poem is about the nymph Echo. Echo was very beautiful and very talkative. She was so chatty and engaging that she distracted Juno who was trying to catch her husband, Jupiter, fooling around. When Juno realized that Echo's clever talk allowed Jupiter to sneak off with a couple of young nymphs, she became so enraged that she put a curse on Echo. Echo was no longer allowed to say anything except the last words of any phrase she heard.

Jupiter later took pity on the poor, beautiful girl, and although he could not undo Juno's curse, he offered her one wish. Echo took a stick and scratched into the sand the word "immortality." Jupiter, who was very wise, was very saddened, but he granted her the wish. Being immortal himself, he knew the foolish girl should have wished for eternal youth also. Echo did live forever, but she eventually grew older and older and crumbled away in hideous decomposition until there was nothing left of her but her voice repeating the last words she hears.

That, of course, is why I added that stupid addendum to my wish in the crop circle. I didn't want to repeat Echo's mistake, but I managed to do it anyhow.

The Fourteenth Round.

The doorbell rings. "Can you get that?"

I trip over a bump in the rug.

"How'd you do on the final, Tom?"

Yes, happy twenty-second birthday to me. I'm forever twenty-two it seems, or at least it's the fifteenth time I've been twenty-two. Technically though, I've been conscious for sixty-four years and I think I look pretty good for sixty-four.

That's a joke. I've almost forgotten how to laugh at a joke, they're so stale now. It would be nice to hear a new joke just once. To read a new book. Hear a new song. See an invention made after 1984. I've combed every detail of my cyclical life looking for perhaps a previously unnoticed sunset, eavesdrop on every unremarkable conversation around me. A hungry search for something new to think about. It should be the year 2022 by now. I wonder what's happened in the world?

What I'd really love to see is a different movie. I never was much for going to the movies when I was twenty-two. However, when I was twenty-three (next year again) I happened to see E.T., The Extraterrestrial three times. After thirteen cycles, I've seen that film thirty-nine times by now. I hate it. In fifteen months and seven days, I'm going to see it again, and I'll celebrate it as a fortieth anniversary screening.

I do things like that now. Since everything happens more than once to me, everything is an occasion for an anniversary. Of course I celebrate the normal things like our wedding, our first anniversary, the birth of our child, and our second anniversary. We never quite get to make it to our third anniversary.

Reliving the wedding is always nice. Lydia and I will drive down to Las Vegas a month after we graduate and get married quickly and privately at the Little Chapel of the West in the parking lot of the Hacienda Hotel. We'll both cry when they play "Endless Love" on the cassette deck, then we'll go to an all-you-can-eat Casino buffet and steal knapsack-loads of food.

We will come home to Montana, get jobs, have a child and I will have one short-lived affair with Lydia's best friend. Lydia and I will fight, then I will be propelled back to my twenty-second birthday right before the car hits the truck head-on and bursts into flames.

This is what I have to look forward to, starting today. Happy birthday to me.

The Nineteenth Round.

Our baby daughter is crying in the back seat.

My eyes watch as Lydia's tail lights recede into the distance and the headlights of the gasoline truck appear out of nowhere. My brain feverishly begins the chant.

"Lincus, Memnon, Myrmidons, Pelion. A wish ..."

Twenty.

"Grandpa?"

THE END