Time and Time Again | Page 3

remembered the
white-haired but still vigorous man from whom he'd parted at the outbreak of the War.
"'Morning, Dad," he greeted.
"'Morning, son. You're up early. Going to Sunday school?"
Now there was the advantage of a father who'd cut his first intellectual tooth on Tom
Paine and Bob Ingersoll; attendance at divine services was on a strictly voluntary basis.
"Why, I don't think so; I want to do some reading, this morning."
"That's always a good thing to do," Blake Hartley approved. "After breakfast, suppose
you take a walk down to the station and get me a Times." He dug in his trouser pocket
and came out with a half dollar. "Get anything you want for yourself, while you're at it."

Allan thanked his father and pocketed the coin.
"Mrs. Stauber'll still be at Mass," he suggested. "Say I get the paper now; breakfast won't
be ready till she gets here."
"Good idea." Blake Hartley nodded, pleased. "You'll have three-quarters of an hour, at
least."
* * * * *
So far, he congratulated himself, everything had gone smoothly. Finishing his toilet, he
went downstairs and onto the street, turning left at Brandon to Campbell, and left again in
the direction of the station. Before he reached the underpass, a dozen half-forgotten
memories had revived. Here was a house that would, in a few years, be gutted by fire.
Here were four dwellings standing where he had last seen a five-story apartment building.
A gasoline station and a weed-grown lot would shortly be replaced by a supermarket. The
environs of the station itself were a complete puzzle to him, until he oriented himself.
He bought a New York Times, glancing first of all at the date line. Sunday, August 5,
1945; he'd estimated pretty closely. The battle of Okinawa had been won. The Potsdam
Conference had just ended. There were still pictures of the B-25 crash against the Empire
State Building, a week ago Saturday. And Japan was still being pounded by bombs from
the air and shells from off-shore naval guns. Why, tomorrow, Hiroshima was due for the
Big Job! It amused him to reflect that he was probably the only person in Williamsport
who knew that.
On the way home, a boy, sitting on the top step of a front porch, hailed him. Allan replied
cordially, trying to remember who it was. Of course; Larry Morton! He and Allan had
been buddies. They probably had been swimming, or playing Commandos and Germans,
the afternoon before. Larry had gone to Cornell the same year that Allan had gone to
Penn State; they had both graduated in 1954. Larry had gotten into some Government
bureau, and then he had married a Pittsburgh girl, and had become twelfth vice-president
of her father's firm. He had been killed, in 1968, in a plane crash.
"You gonna Sunday school?" Larry asked, mercifully unaware of the fate Allan foresaw
for him.
"Why, no. I have some things I want to do at home." He'd have to watch himself. Larry
would spot a difference quicker than any adult. "Heck with it," he added.
"Golly, I wisht I c'ld stay home from Sunday school whenever I wanted to," Larry envied.
"How about us goin' swimmin', at the Canoe Club, 'safter?"
Allan thought fast. "Gee, I wisht I c'ld," he replied, lowering his grammatical sights. "I
gotta stay home, 'safter. We're expectin' comp'ny; coupla aunts of mine. Dad wants me to
stay home when they come."
That went over all right. Anybody knew that there was no rational accounting for the

vagaries of the adult mind, and no appeal from adult demands. The prospect of company
at the Hartley home would keep Larry away, that afternoon. He showed his
disappointment.
"Aw, jeepers creepers!" he blasphemed euphemistically.
"Mebbe t'morrow," Allan said. "If I c'n make it. I gotta go, now; ain't had breakfast yet."
He scuffed his feet boyishly, exchanged so-longs with his friend, and continued
homeward.
* * * * *
As he had hoped, the Sunday paper kept his father occupied at breakfast, to the exclusion
of any dangerous table talk. Blake Hartley was still deep in the financial section when
Allan left the table and went to the library. There should be two books there to which he
wanted badly to refer. For a while, he was afraid that his father had not acquired them
prior to 1945, but he finally found them, and carried them onto the front porch, along
with a pencil and a ruled yellow scratch pad. In his experienced future--or his
past-to-come--Allan Hartley had been accustomed to doing his thinking with a pencil. As
reporter, as novelist plotting his work, as amateur chemist in his home laboratory, as
scientific warfare research officer, his ideas had always been clarified by making notes.
He