New Stories From the Twilight Zone by Martin H Greenberg

Author:Martin H Greenberg [Greenberg, Martin H]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

ONE LIFE; FURNISHED IN EARLY POVERTY

Harlan Ellison

TELEPLAY BY Alan Brennert

AIRED December 6, 1985

STARRING Peter Reigert, Chris Hebert, Jack Kehoe

AND SO IT WAS—STRANGELY, STRANGELY—THAT I FOUND myself standing in the backyard of the house I had lived in when I was seven years old. At thirteen minutes till midnight on no special magical winter’s night, in a town that had held me only till I was physically able to run away. In Ohio, in winter, near midnight—certain I could go back.

Back to a time when what was now. . .was then.

Not truly knowing why I even wanted to go back. But certain that I could. Without magic, without science, without alchemy, without supernatural assistance; just go back. Because I had to, I needed to. . .go back.

Back; thirty-five years and more. To find myself at the age of seven, before any of it had begun; before any of the directions had been taken; to find out what turning point in my life it had been that had wrenched me from the course all little boys took to adulthood; that had set me on the road of loneliness and success ending here, back where I’d begun, in a backyard at now twelve minutes to midnight.

At forty-two I had come to that point in my life toward which I’d struggled since I’d been a child: a place of security, importance, recognition. The only one from this town who had made it. The ones who had had the most promise in school were now milkmen, used-car salesmen, married to fat, stupid, dead women who had, themselves, been girls of exceeding promise in high school. They had been trapped in this little Ohio town, never to break free. To die there, unknown. I had broken free, had done all the wonderful things I’d said I would do.

Why should it all depress me now?

Perhaps it was because Christmas was nearing and I was alone, with bad marriages and lost friendships behind me.

I walked out of the studio, away from the wet-ink-new fifty-thousand-dollar contract, got in my car and drove to International Airport. It was a straight line made up of in flight meals and jet airliners and rental cars and hastily-purchased winter clothing. A straight line to a backyard I had not seen in over thirty years.

I had to find the dragoon to go back.

Crossing the rime-frosted grass that crackled like cellophane, I walked under the shadow of the lightning-blasted pear tree. I had climbed in that tree endlessly when I was seven years old. In summer, its branches hung far over and scraped the roof of the garage. I could shinny out across the limb and drop onto the garage roof. I had once pushed Johnny Mummy off that garage roof. . .not out of meanness, but simply because I had jumped from it many times and I could not understand anyone’s not finding it a wonderful thing to do. He had sprained his ankle, and his father, a fireman, had come looking for me. I’d hidden on the garage roof.

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