Edith died back in 1984.

She had the Alzheimer's something awful that year. And she had only been sixty-two. My God, that was young.

Walter was eighty-six now… eighty seven, come New Year's. He still remembered her sticking her salad fork into her water glass, with that horrible blank stare. He had held back the tears that time, but the time that he found her screaming at her reflection in the bathroom mirror… Well, that time he had gone out to the back garage and let loose. He had turned up his Johnny Cash, and had screamed until his throat was raw. All to the tune of "A Boy Named Sue."

He still listened to Johnny Cash, even now, but he always pressed "skip" when that particular song came on. Some things—even beautiful things—could be ruined forever.

On the night before she died, Edith was catatonic. Nothing but a shell, a drooling, hollow-eyed shell. She stared right through Walter, like he wasn't even there. Like he hadn't been her husband for the last forty years. Like he hadn't been the one who had made love to her up on the roof on the night they bought this house, just because it was warm and starry. That seemed reason enough. And by God, it had been starry. Like a million Christmas lights on an infinitely vast black tree.

They had fallen asleep up there, naked on the shingles, that night. And Edith had had shingle-grit in her hair for a week. It went down the shower drain in flakes, and she smiled every time she saw it.

The day after she died, Walter began to think about building the time machine. One could say that it was the day that he lost his mind. The best part, anyway. The part that found humor in little things, and the part that learned to grieve and then go on.

He didn't keep it a secret. In fact, he told his two best friends all about it. He told Baldy how he was building it from the chassis of his 1979 Mustang. And he told Alabam how he was fooling around with magnet coils, and really "getting somewhere."

And he talked about it with fervor. And you could tell by the tone of his voice that he believed every word of it. You could also tell by the tone of his voice that he was desperate, and manically so. Baldy had told his wife that Walter had reminded him of a "loony tune" with his wide eyes and hair that stuck up in greasy uncombed stalks. "Just like some of those kids that came back from Vietnam all haywire." And his chin had trembled when he had told his wife that. And he had had to look away from her then, out of shame, and she had patted his hand, and he loved her for that.

Alabam lived alone, and had no one to tell, but he thought about Walter sometimes at night when he couldn't sleep. He thought about the vacancy in his old buddy's stare, and it chilled him. And he prayed every night that Walter would get that time machine to work. And if that made him as crazy as Walter, then so be it. Sometimes you had to be a little insane when it came to things like faith.

Of course, she'd been gone for twenty-three years now. And for twenty three years now, every night after supper, Walter came out to the back garage to tinker. He brought with him a Styrofoam cooler filled with ice and a six pack of Budweiser. Every night. He also brought one cherry Swisher Sweet cigar, for afterwards.

On Tuesdays, Baldy would usually stop by and they would sit in the old Mustang (which, by now, looked like some harebrained contraption, with its wires and magnets and other nonsensical machine parts). And they would split the six pack while they sat in the bucket seats, and they would shoot the breeze. And those were pretty good nights for Walter. He seemed almost like himself on those nights, except that he never let go of the flathead screwdriver that seemed to be a permanent fixture in his left hand. He even opened his beer cans with it. It was as if, if he let go, that he would be giving up, so he gripped it tightly at all times.

But he rarely ever did any tinkering on Tuesdays. And, after the beer was gone, Walter would smoke his cherry cigar, and Baldy would smoke a few Marlboros, and life would be good.

When Alabam came over, they would work on the machine. Of course Alabam was only doing it for show, but he took the work seriously just the same, because he knew that it made Walter feel a little more sane. And that was good. The time that Walter had pulled him out of the frozen pond was never far from Alabam's mind, and neither were all the times that Walter had made him laugh until he cried. So, if it took bolting a dead circuit board to a dashboard to make Walter feel normal, then that's what he would do. And he would do things like that until it was time for bed, and then he would shake his buddy's hand, and they would close up shop.

* * *

It was on a Tuesday night, of course—Christmas Eve, in fact—that Baldy had come over to find the back garage void of both Walter and his machine.

His first thought was to call the police, and he was about to, until he found the note pinned to Walter's bulletin board. It was written in hurried chicken-scratch, and it said this:

Baldy,

I assume that you will find me gone first. Don't worry, pal. I think I have worked out the glitches. If I'm right, I should be somewhere in the 1940's by the time you read this note, with my Edith. Please thank Alabam for all his help, and thank you both for being good guys.

Most Sincerely,
Walter

And then Baldy did call the police.

That night around midnight, the police cruiser spotted the 1979 Mustang in a ditch. The front fender was wrapped around a tree. In the passenger seat and floor were six empty beer cans. There were a few droplets of blood on the seat, but no driver was ever found. When the policeman, Ricky Linden, later shined his mag-light onto the mechanical contrivance, he spit a loogy into the grass and said, "Wait until I tell the boys about this one." Then he shook his head and radioed for help.

* * *

The water was hot, and the bathroom was filled with steam. Standing there, naked, watching the black flakes spiral down into the drain, Edith thought of Walter again, and smiled to herself. He was a dream. Simply a dream!

She opened the curtain, so that just her face was visible to Walter, who was brushing his teeth over the sink.

"Honey," she said, with a sultry smirk, "I think I need some help in here." Then her face disappeared behind the material, but her hand remained.

Walter spit into the sink.

"Well," he said. "I never turn down a damsel in distress."

Walter touched her hand, which willingly closed over his own. And he was with his Edith. Again.