Jack at 11

October 1955

His mother was making a patchwork quilt for his bed. They had laid the squares of fabric out on the sitting room floor, creating the pattern together. Some of the cloth was familiar; he was reminded of jackets and shirts he'd grown out of, and some of his mother's dresses. The rest came from other families: the ladies at his mother's church got together sometimes and traded remnants of old clothes. When they had pieced together their quilts, they would meet again to help each other sew on the backing.

Now he was standing at her elbow holding a stack of squares and handing them to her one by one as she stitched them together with her sewing machine. Jack was nervous because his father was due back from town soon and hated to see him helping his mother.

The old Singer had belonged to his grandmother and wasn't electrified. His mother pumped the treadle with her foot and it made such a loud racket that he only realized that his father had arrived when he heard the truck door slam. His heart leaped to his throat and he looked for a clear space to set down the fabric so he could jump back and pretend to be doing something else. Suddenly he saw that the pile of patches seemed suspended in the air for a split second before they fluttered toward the floor. He looked down and saw leaves falling onto his bare feet.

September 1997
He was standing about ten paces from the shore of a mountain lake. A man with no hair at all on his head was squatting by the water, splashing some onto his face with one hand and holding his hat on his knee with the other. Before Jack could make a move the man rose unsteadily to his feet and turned away from the lake. When he saw Jack, his face lit up in a smile. The man looked older than the last time Jack had seen him, a long time ago, but not as old and sick as the time before that.

The man put on his hat, walked right up to Jack and ruffled his hair. "Whenever you turn up it's just when I been thinkin bout you," he chuckled. Then he moved past Jack and when Jack turned he saw him disappear into something... amazing. It was like a smooth blue cave with wings. After a moment the man re-emerged from the thing with some clothes in his hand. He saw Jack's expression and laughed. "Whatsa matter, tent don't look right?" He laughed even louder at his own joke.

"That's... a tent?" Jack looked back and forth between the contraption and the man.

"Yeah, they're sure fancier now than when we..." The man waved his hand in front of his face as if swatting at a fly, then held out a pair of jeans and a shirt to Jack and set two strange white shoes on the ground near him. "Here, put these on. My grandsons' clothes. They're a bit older'n you but only a little bigger. They're campin with me but went off on an ex-plore this mornin."

Jack pulled on the clothes but stared down at the shoes, perplexed. They were oddly shaped and had no laces. "Um, I'm alright barefoot. What happened to your hair?" he asked, looking up at the man.

The man lifted his hat for a few seconds then set it back on his bare scalp. "Got sick and the treatment made m'hair fall out. I'm doin alright for now, though."

"I seen you once when I was seven," Jack said. "You were even older. You were sittin on a porch swing and there were fireworks goin off far away. You gave me a harmonica to play."

The man looked away to the lake for a moment then went over to a tree trunk lying on the ground and sat down. "Fireworks, hmm? Well, now I know I'm gonna last another year at least. Guess I better buy a harmonica so I'll be ready for ya."

"When I got home I asked my daddy for a harmonica for my birthday but he didn't wanna give me one."

"Guess I don't blame him fer that," the man chuckled. "Don't suppose he never taught ya t'shoot, did he?"

"Yeah he did," Jack retorted. "But he don't never let me practice."

The man looked at Jack for a long moment. "Good thing for him." He glanced down at the ground and then back at Jack again and smiled. "I got a huntin rifle in the truck. You wanna practice here? You gotta stick around a bit longer than yer used to though. C'mere."

Jack hesitated, then followed the man as he walked over to the truck. He pulled out a rifle from the cab. "The boys always used this so guess you can handle it." He placed his hand gently on the back of Jack's neck and guided him to the edge of the lake. Jack felt sorry when he took his hand away to place the gun in his own.

"See that branch in the water? Why don't you..." he began but Jack was looking up into a tree just off to their right close to the shoreline. A bald eagle was perched near the top and looking out over the water.

"Bet I can hit that eagle," Jack said and looked up at the man eagerly.

The old man laughed. "Sure, go ahead and try."

Jack positioned the gun the way his daddy taught him and sighted carefully down the barrel. Then he felt a hand on his shoulder.

"Uh, maybe you better aim at somethin else cause them eagles're protected now. I bet yer a pretty good shot 'n we don't want the Fish n' Wildlife on our backs." The man went over to a cardboard box by the tent, rummaged inside and drew out a can. Then he walked over to a large rock a few yards in from the shore and set the can on top of it.

"There, try'n hit that. Know how ya feel bout beans so that should help yer aim."

Jack sighted and let fire but the bullet zinged off the rock and into the water. He heard a sudden flapping of wings and turned to see the eagle lift off heavily from the branch. One black feather fell away from the bird and floated toward the ground. The old man watched too, and after the eagle had soared out of sight he told Jack to take another shot at the can. He fired again and was quite satisfied to see the can of beans burst apart just before the gun clattered to the ground.

-

The sewing machine was clattering and he was standing at his mother's elbow as if he'd never left. The quilt squares were back in a tidy pile on the table. When she reached the end of a line of stitches, his mother stopped the machine and turned to look at him. She nodded to his clothes that were folded neatly next to the pile of fabric.

"While you were gone I took the opportunity to mend the rip in your jeans and sew a button back on your shirt," she said quietly. "Your daddy's waiting for you out in the barn."

As he was crossing from the house to the barn a gust of wind came up and sent leaves and dust swirling across the yard. He saw a blue jay feather mixed in with them and chased after it. When he'd caught it he brushed it back and forth across his cheek before tucking it under the porch stair. He would retrieve it later and hide it in the usual place. It would remind him of the eagle he didn't shoot and the feather he couldn't have.