Incident at Owl Creek Drive

A short story

I blow through the intersection right as the light changes from yellow to red, when I see the cop turning onto Owl Creek Drive heading in the opposite direction. I immediately take my foot off the gas as I speed past the patrol car. I glance in my rearview mirror to make sure the cop isn’t pulling a U-turn to come after me.

The coast is clear.

The reason I’m speeding is the call I just got from Jodi. She reminded me not to forget to pick up the hydrogen peroxide from the pharmacy for Jonathan.

I said I didn’t forget.

I totally had.

So now, I’m heading back to town, where there’s a CVS Pharmacy.

Jodi is my wife of six years. We met in high school. Kind of old-fashioned, I know. But Jodi was the first and last girl I ever loved. In fact, I can’t even remember another girl after her. I guess that's just how it goes for some people—lucky in love. Not that we don't have our troubles. We’re just like everyone in that way.

Jonathan is our son. He’s two, and he’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. The hydrogen peroxide is for his ear. Poor kid suffers from bad ear infections, which a doctor recently informed me and Jodi was because his ear is clogged with wax and needs to be flushed out. “Get some hydrogen peroxide,” the doc said. Which is why I’m headed to town on this serene fall evening.

I turn onto Midvale Avenue and find myself behind a blue Honda Accord. Some sugary-sounding pop song pumps from the open window. I see the driver in the sideview mirror. A teenage girl, swaying her head and singing along to the music, one hand on the wheel, the other out the window keeping the beat, seemingly not a care in the world. I envy her.

I roll down my window and listen. The music’s not my jam, but I can remember when it was. When I was her age. When everything is still ahead of you. Not a care in the world. Or a clue about it. And yet I was convinced I was ready to take it on, certain that life would turn out exactly how I planned.

I played three different instruments growing up: guitar, piano, and violin. At eighteen, I attended Juliard to study musical theory.

Now, ask me what I do for a living?

I’m a lawyer. Go figure.

That’s life, I guess. What’s that saying? “Man plans. God laughs.” Something like that.

Do I like being a lawyer?

Should a person ever take the stand in their own defense?

No.

That’s lawyer humor, by the way.

But hey, I make good money and there are perks. My firm has a box at the Garden. I’ve been to a few Knicks games, plus, I saw Springsteen perform there last summer. That’s about as close as I get to anything musical these days. It’s a trade-off. My days are spent litigating corporate disputes, not making music. Such is life.

The light changes, and the girl in the blue Honda turns. I drive past, glancing her way, as my head continues filling with reminisces of my life at that age.
I remember the day Jodi and I first met. School assembly. We sat next to each other. Our first official date was a concert that summer. Later, it was prom. Then college—University of Wisconsin, go Badgers! Our first apartment together in New York City. Our wedding at the St. Regis Hotel. I was so in love with her then. Can I remember how that feels now?

I think about the day our son Jonathan was born. We call him “Little John,” like from Robin Hood. Not that Jonathan is very merry. He’s a tough baby. Fussy. Wouldn’t latch with Jodi. Parenting is draining. I know it was for Jodi and me.

But then one day, your baby turns two, and it's like suddenly there is an adorable walking, talking child who speaks in catchphrases. Trust me, it’s adorable. Sure, there are still earaches that necessitate pharmacy runs for hydrogen peroxide, but the hugs Jodi and I get more than make up for it.

As for things between Jodi and me, I guess I know they’ll never be what we were. There’s no going backward. I’m not complaining. I’m just saying. How many blocks had I gone?

I’m lost on Memory Lane, driving on autopilot. My hands are on the wheel, my eyes are on the road, but my mind is off somewhere else.

I put my hand out the window and breathe in the fresh air. The sky is tinged with fiery oranges and pinks, the first day it hasn't rained in a week. A Springsteen song plays on the radio, and I start nodding to the beat. I drive past the Ogden Firehouse on Fillmore Street and find myself stopped at a red light next to a black Pontiac Firebird.

My first car was a Firebird, back in high school. I loved that car. I almost never see them on the road these days. They can legitimately be considered a classic at this point, seeing as how the Firebird was discontinued, and later, Pontiac, the company that made them, was also discontinued. As such, the Firebird has become a rare bird in recent years. Whenever I see one these days—which is rarely—they look beat up, dusty, and old.

This one looks new. Sleek black paint and polished wheels, gleaming with the last colorful light of day. A pair of triangular black headlights pop up from the hood and illuminate the road. Just like mine did. It was so cool.

I can hear the music playing in the Firebird. The kid’s rocking out. Not some teenie-bopper pop song sung by a thirty-year-old woman, but a bonafide, play-it-loud, air-guitar-inducing rock song. One I even recognize. Pearl Jam’s “Alive.” Good song. I try to get a look at the driver.

My first thought is that my eyes are playing tricks on me. That it must be the onset of dusk. A trick of the fading light. Because there is no way I’m seeing what I think I am. I can’t be.

I shake my head, rub my eyes, and look again.

I don’t know how, but I’m staring at my own face.

It’s like looking into a mirror. Only one that reflects back in time. Because the kid behind the wheel of the Firebird is me. At seventeen years old.

But that’s crazy…

I suddenly feel old. Like ancient. The driver of the Firebird’s face—my face—is smooth. No permanent five o’clock shadow or any of the grooves permanently etched into my face. No short, curly, gray hairs corkscrewing through his full brown head of hair.

I shake my head again. Am I having an episode? Some kind of stroke? Do I smell oranges? Isn’t that what they say happens when you have a stroke? I’m not sure, but I don’t smell oranges. I smell the exhaust fumes from our idling cars.

What’s that psychology term? Projecting. Yeah, that’s it. I’m projecting. I was thinking about my past, and I saw the Firebird and it triggered a sense memory, so now I’m imagining that I’m seeing my seventeen-year-old self in the car next to me. When in reality, it’s some kid who looks like me when I was that age. But it’s not me. Because I’m here in my car, a thirty-year-old lawyer on his way to pick up some hydrogen peroxide from the local pharmacy before heading home to his wife and son.

I roll down the passenger window of my Mercedes to get a better look. The resemblance is uncanny. In my mind, there is no doubt. I am looking at myself at seventeen. I gasp slightly as the window to the Firebird rolls down, and he, the kid, turns and looks my way.

“Can I help you?” he says it loud enough to be heard over Pearl Jam.

“What’s your name?” I respond.

“What?” He looks confused. He turns down Eddie Vedder and asks, “Do I know you, buddy?”

“I think I know you. What’s your name?”

He scrunches up his face, trying to look defiant, but mostly looking confused, like he is wondering what exactly my deal is. “What’s your name, man?” my younger self asks uncertainly.

I think about how to answer that. Will telling him my name make him realize that as much as I am staring into the past, he is looking at a vision of his future? “My name is James,” I say.

The kid in the Firebird doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to. I catch the glint of recognition in his eye. He says, “My name is Jimmy.” Pauses a second, then adds, “But my real name is James.”

“After James Bond, right?”

The kid’s mouth hangs open. I think for a second he looks surprised, but then his mouth forms a smile and he says, “Yeah, man. You too?”

There’s someone in the car with him. A girl. The way the driver is turned towards me, I can’t see her. The sun is gone, an inky blackness has overtaken the sky, turning day to night. The streetlights are coming on, but there’s not enough light in the car for me to see the passenger, but there’s enough for me to recognize my own face on the driver—even if it’s thirteen years younger than I am now.

I’m about to ask the driver of the Firebird if I look familiar to him when the light turns green. Before I can say anything, he takes off. The Firebird hangs a right onto Fillmore Street. The left lane I’m in is supposed to go straight, but I cut the steering wheel hard and turn after him, cutting off a silver SUV that slams on its horn. I don't even notice. It's in my rearview mirror. I'm interested in my rearview past. Which is straight ahead of me speeding away.

I gun the Mercedes, trying to catch up to the Firebird—my Firebird—and get within a few cars of it before the Firebird takes another right, heading back in the direction we just came. I step on the gas and give chase. I weave through traffic, and at the intersection, make the same right as the Firebird had. Back onto Owl Creek Drive. There’s no sign of the Firebird.

I’m not even sure what I’ll say if I catch up to the Firebird again. “Hey kid, I’m you from the future.” 

How's that going to work?

Still, if it did, I mean, if I could talk to myself, maybe I’d have the potential to change things. Fix the things I did wrong in my life. Stop myself from making stupid mistakes by preventing them before they ever happen. Even if I don't say I'm who I am, I can just plant some ideas in my younger self's head that would affect the course of his (my) life.

Who knows if doing so will change anything? If it does, I wonder what that means for me in the present, in this version of my life. Will I still be a lawyer? Married to Jodi? Would I still have Jonathan? Would I even be his father? If I could change my future by altering the past, would I?

I’m not sure.

Part of me thinks I’m losing my mind; another wonders if I’m in the middle of a stroke. Which is the reason I tell myself I want to catch up to my younger self. Because, whatever else I’m feeling, I’m certain that kid is me, that car is my Firebird, and in fact, I was speaking with my seventeen-year-old self, in the present day.

So…what if? Would knowing my future make my life better in the present?

It didn’t matter if I couldn’t find the Firebird again.

Dammit, where is it?

I speed down the road, my eyes searching the side streets, looking for any sign of the Firebird. I grew up around here. I’m about ten minutes from where I live now. Jodi grew up in a house right in this neighborhood. And suddenly I think I know where the Firebird is headed. Jodi’s house.

Could that be who was in the car with him? Me? Jodi, when she was seventeen?

After all, if I can encounter my seventeen-year-old self from the past, why couldn’t Jodi’s younger self also be here in the present? Like two-time streams overlapping.

It's full dark now, which is how I am able to spot the Firebird again stopped at the intersection. Amid a line of brake lights, I notice the Firebird’s iconic phoenix on the back spoiler, glowing a fiery red. The light changes. The Firebird—my Firebird—pulls into the intersection.

I speed to catch up to the gleaming black sports car, a symbol of my youth and roads not taken. At this moment, the chase is no longer about catching up; it's about confronting, about crossing the divide between who I was and who I have become.

I gun the engine, aiming straight for the Firebird.

Then, another memory comes to me. A date I had with Jodi. If you could call it a date. She’d come over to my house, and we’d stayed up late watching a movie. I remember we lost track of time, and when I realized how late it was, I rushed to take her home. I ended up missing her street and attempted to swing a U-turn, which is when I got sideswiped by a car coming from the other direction.

A blue Honda. Driven by a teenage girl.

I don’t see the blue Honda barreling toward me from the opposite direction, entering the intersection at Owl Creek Drive, until it is too late.

My heart lurches. I wrench the wheel of my car, attempting a desperate turn to avoid the collision. It's a maneuver reckless with symbolism, an attempt to veer off my present path and onto one that leads back through time. My phantom quarry, the Firebird, appears suddenly, a steel apparition.

And then, in the span of a heartbeat, reality contorts.

The brake lights, the glowing phoenix, the traffic lights—all merge into a blinding white flash. Pain lances through my chest, a crushing weight bearing down as metal grinds and glass shatters.

The world collapses around me in a violent, deafening roar. Time snaps like a taut wire, propelling me not forward, but backward, hurtling through the years to the pivotal moment upon which my entire existence hinged. Not in my Mercedes, on my way home to a life I had imagined cradled in the arms of a loving wife and a son I never had.

Not in the present. In the past.

Pinned in the twisted wreckage; no way to get out. As the light fades, I’m left with the stark, unyielding truth: I never made it past that night on Owl Creek Drive.

End.