Hume denied the existence of an absolute space, in which each thing has its place; Borges denies the existence of one single time, in which all events are linked.
Jeffty received radio programs from a place that could not, in logic, in the natural scheme of the space- time universe as conceived by Einstein, exist. But that wasn’t all he received. He got mail-order premiums that no one was manufacturing. He read comic books that had been defunct for three decades. He saw movies with actors who had been dead for twenty years. He was the receiving terminal for endless joys and pleasures of the past that the world had dropped along the way. On its headlong suicidal flight toward New Tomorrows, the world had razed its treasurehouse of simple happinesses, had poured concrete over its playgrounds, had abandoned its elfin stragglers, and all of it was being impossibly, miraculously shunted back into the present through Jeffty. Revivified, updated, the traditions maintained but contemporaneous. Jeffty was the unbidding Aladdin whose very nature formed the magic lampness of his reality.
And he took me into his world with him.
Because he trusted me.
We had breakfast of Quaker Puffed Wheat Sparkies and warm Ovaltine we drank out of
Twice a month we went down to the newsstand and bought the current pulp issues of
We read comics together, and Jeffty and I both decided—separately, before we came together to discuss it—that our favorite characters were Doll Man, Airboy and The Heap. We also adored the George Carlson strips in
How to explain it? I can’t. I had enough physics in college to make some offhand guesses, but I’m more likely wrong than right. The laws of the conservation of energy occasionally break. These are laws that physicists call “weakly violated.” Perhaps Jeffty was a catalyst for the weak violation of conservation laws we’re only now beginning to realize exist. I tried doing some reading in the area—muon decay of the “forbidden” kind: gamma decay that doesn’t include the muon neutrino among its products—but nothing I encountered, not even the latest readings from the Swiss Institute for Nuclear Research near Zurich, gave me an insight. I was thrown back on a vague acceptance of the philosophy that the real name for “science” is
No explanations, but enormous good times.
The happiest time of my life.
I had the “real” world, the world of my store and my friends and my family, the world of profit&loss, of taxes and evenings with young women who talked about going shopping or the United Nations, of the rising cost of coffee and microwave ovens. And I had Jeffty’s world, in which I existed only when I was with him. The things of the past he knew as fresh and new, I could experience only when in his company. And the membrane between the two worlds grew ever thinner, more luminous and transparent. I had the best of both worlds. And knew, somehow, that I could carry nothing from one to the other.
Forgetting for just a moment, betraying Jeffty by forgetting, brought an end to it all.
Enjoying myself so much, I grew careless and failed to consider how fragile the relationship between Jeffty’s world and my world really was. There is a reason why the present begrudges the existence of the past. I never really understood. Nowhere in the beast books, where survival is shown in battles between claw and fang, tentacle and poison sac, is there recognition of the ferocity the present always brings to bear on the past. Nowhere is there a detailed statement of how the Present lies in wait for What-Was, waiting for it to become Now-This- Moment so it can shred it with its merciless jaws.
Who could know such a thing… at any age… and certainly not at my age… who could understand such a thing?
I’m trying to exculpate myself. I can’t. It was my fault.
It was another Saturday afternoon.
“What’s playing today?” I asked him, in the car, on the way downtown.
He looked up at me from the other side of the front seat and smiled one of his best smiles. “Ken Maynard in
“You’re
“Super
“Who’s in it?”
“Franchot Tone, Evelyn Keyes, Lionel Barrymore and Elisha Cook, Jr.” He was much more knowledgeable about movie actors than I’d ever been. He could name the character actors in any movie he’d ever seen. Even the crowd scenes.
“And cartoons?” I asked.
“Three of ‘em: a
“Oh boy!” I said. I was grinning from ear to ear. And then I looked down and saw the pad of purchase order forms on the seat. I’d forgotten to drop it off at the store.
“Gotta stop by the Center,” I said. “Gotta drop off something. It’ll only take a minute.”
“Okay,” Jeffty said. “But we won’t be late, will we?”
“Not on your tintype, kiddo,” I said.
When I pulled into the parking lot behind the Center, he decided to come in with me and we’d walk over to the theater. It’s not a large town. There are only two movie houses, the Utopia and the Lyric. We were going to the Utopia and it was only three blocks from the Center.
I walked into the store with the pad of forms, and it was bedlam. David and Jan were handling two customers each, and there were people standing around waiting to be helped. Jan turned a look on me and her face was a horror-mask of pleading. David was running from the stockroom to the showroom and all he could murmur as he whipped past was “Help!” and then he was gone.
“Jeffty,” I said, crouching down, “listen, give me a few minutes. Jan and David are in trouble with al: these people. We won’t be late, I promise. Just let me get rid of a couple of these customers.” He looked nervous, but