I may have taken a few liberties with Jack and Jacob's ages here - please forgive me if so! Sorry again for the delay. I'm much better healthwise, but still have another ten days of school holiday to go... Thanks so much to everyone who reads and reviews - I appreciate every comment.
Jack had instinctively shut his eyes as he stepped through the archway. It now occurred to him that this might not be wise (what if it was yet another battlefield?) and he waited for the slight moment of disorientation he experienced this time to pass, steadying himself mentally. It didn't sound like a battle. That had to be good, right?
General Jack O'Neill opened his eyes.
The shimmer still filled his vision, and he blinked. It dimmed, fluctuated, and then withdrew from the corners of his eyes, retracting down to a single, bright neon line of text. Jimmy's Bowling Alley it said, and Jack took a moment to acknowledge he was once again somewhere else, someone else, before heaving a sigh and turning around to get a better idea of where and who that was.
The bowling alley was pretty empty. The identical sign now opposite him was flickering slightly round the edges, and occasionally one of its letters would sputter out entirely, and remain dark for a moment before wearily sparking back into life. There were ten lanes, and only two had bowlers at them. A couple of teenage girls, wearing the slimline patterned dresses and cinched in waists of the 1940's, were flirting with a couple of young men in uniform, hair shaved close to their heads military fashion, some four lanes away. As he watched, one of the girls took a sip of her root beer float, pursing her lips round the straw and looking up coquettishly from under her eyelashes. The young soldier grinned down at her in appreciation, and said something Jack couldn't catch. It made her giggle, her permanently waved hair bouncing on her shoulders.
He, on the other hand... he glanced around him. Nope, no pretty teenage girls with bouncy permanent waves in this lane. His bowling companions were three older men, sipping beers and fiddling with the bowling balls, lining them up ready to play. While they had their backs to him, he studied them; bent shoulders, cardigans, gray heads. It was a surprise to him when one of them turned round to see that he was probably only in his fifties. The fact that Cameron Mitchell's face flashed briefly over the slightly sagging jowls and bristly white five o'clock shadow came as a bit of a surprise too. He'd felt an affinity with the kid, sure, when he'd met him after the battle with Anubis, but you couldn't say they were close, back in his real life. Yet here was Cam Mitchell's soul, looking out of these slightly rheumy blue eyes.
The pretty teenager was now leaning in close to her soldier boy, her hand on his arm, whispering something in his ear. Her slightly dumpier, plainer friend frowned, and picked a bit listlessly at her flowered dress; her hair was not waved, and was pulled back in a sensible band. Jack, caught looking and now rendered uncertain by the barely concealed leer in the watery old eyes in front of him, thought to glance down at himself. Button down shirt, high waisted trousers, bowling shoes. Young hands - he quickly threw a glance the way of the polished chrome bar behind him, and, despite the way the metal distorted his features, he was able to see enough to know he was a teenager himself, short hair slicked back, fresh faced.
"Eye for the pretty girls, eh?" The older man leered openly now, and winked meaningfully "Was just the same at your age, lad. So many pretty lasses, so little time." He heaved a sorry sigh, but kept a reminiscent grin on his face. "Then I met your grandma - and that was me roped and tied. Ah well." He glanced once more at Jack, and gestured behind him. "Need a top up of your soda? Reg, Joe, 'nother beer?"
"Uh, yes please." Jack suddenly realised he was right up front in this kids' head, and hastily stepped back into his recess. He had to admit he was highly amused at being Cameron's grandson; he figured perhaps he could gather up a few more homespun sayings to add to Cam's collection and confuse him with when he finally got back to Sam and the gang. Grandpa wandered off to the bar, and Jack sank down onto the rather rickety old chair he found behind him, wincing slightly when the cracked cushion nipped his thigh.
"So, kid." The other two men had finished setting up their balls, had finished with the low grade bickering they'd been having since he'd arrived in this lifetime, and, satisfied, had turned back towards him. The one who spoke, Reg, Grandpa had called him, was almost white haired, and was missing an arm; his cardigan sleeve was pinned up neatly. His face, however, was sharp as a tack, deep brown eyes twinkling. For that first moment, Jack saw Jacob Carter's features impressed clearly over the actual lines of this man's face, and started. Jacob? Hadn't he already been born in the 1940's? He was only ten years or so older than Jack...
"So. Graduated yet?" Taking a seat beside Jack, he fumbled in his pocket with his remaining hand, and pulled out a tin of cigarettes. With the ease of long practice, he flipped open the lid, extracted one, and sucked it nimbly into his mouth. Tin returned to pocket, he leaned over to Joe, who had already struck a match, and sucked in deeply, eyes closing in contentment.
"Not yet, sir." The voice coming out of his mouth was slightly higher than Jack's own; a young voice, not completely sure of itself yet. Jack guessed his age to be around 17. The next words confirmed this impression.
"Graduation's next month, then I turn 18." The young man swallowed, hard, and his eyes turned again, as if pulled by a magnetic force, to the other group in the alley. This time though, it was the soldiers his gaze lingered on.
"Be able to enlist, if you wanted to."
The brown eyes were friendly, but the expression held a sharpness - this was something of a test question, Jack realised, and wondered if the young man knew it.
"I'm thinking about it, sir." It was blurted out, and Jack felt the young man's cheeks grow hot and his eyes drop away from that knowing brown gaze. He found himself studying the scuffed toe of the bowling shoes, now being worked into a hole in the carpet with great industry.
"Reckon that's why your mother made you come along with us old'uns tonight." His grandfather was back, shuffling slightly on the thinly carpeted floor. He handed over a soda, and passed out beers to the others, sitting down heavily with a sigh once this task was done.
"No sir!" His voice was indignant. " She didn't make me. I like spending time with you!"
Suck up, Jack thought dryly, although it had to be said that the kid's tone was sincere. His grandfather chuckled.
"You're a good kid, Pip. I can see you mean it, too, son." He sucked on his beer. "But there's got to be things a kid like you'd rather be doing on a Saturday night than hanging out with your grandad at the bowling alley." He cast a disparaging eye at his companions. "And your grandad's crumbling old chums."
"Speak for yourself!" Reg was indignant. "You've a cheek on you, Russell McCleod,..." his words were swallowed by a great hacking cough, and he bent over double, hawking and trumpeting, holding his half-smoked cigarette away from his body. Eventually, eyes streaming and chest still hitching, he sat upright, and took another pull. "Ah, one day a fit like that'll kill me." He cleared his throat noisily, took another drag, then looked at the cigarette. "Doc says these things should be clearing out all the muck in my lungs. Doesn't feel like it personally." He shook his head, dispute with Grandpa forgotten, and sank back into his chair.
"If you're quite finished hogging the conversation..." Grandpa's tone was acerbic, but his eyes were worried as they met Joe's gaze over the top of the white head.
"You go on." Reg waved his hand, tranquil again. The blue smoke wreathed around his head, and Jack felt the kid in whose body he was residing struggle to suppress a cough of his own.
The little group from down the alley was leaving, the girls gathering up their clutch bags and powdering their noses with the aid of little compacts. Jack noticed the pretty, flirty one applying a quick coat of lipstick, rolling her lips together to make it stick, and blotting on a tissue while the men quickly finished their sodas. No drinking in uniform he thought, or perhaps it was just that they weren't old enough yet. Old enough to fight for their country, yet not old enough for a beer... something screwy there...
Pip was watching them with a strange mixture of fear and longing; as they went past, the girls were chattering, even the plain one galvanised into something approaching comeliness by her enthusiasm for the topic.
"He's so handsome, with that little moustache, and those eyes...'' She heaved a deep, dreamy sigh, her eyes sparkling. She'd be pretty too, Jack thought, if she could just get over the feeling of being overshadowed by her perkier friend.
"Oh, when he said 'Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn' I nearly fainted dead away," her friend simpered, closing her eyes theatrically; and the soldier she'd been flirting with leaned in close, said in a Clark Gable'esque growl, "My dear, I don't give a damn," and she swooned gracefully, hand over her forehead, making sure to totter just enough that he had to catch her, his arm around her waist. Jack noted, amused, that he didn't let go afterward, but kept his hold on her as they all exited Jimmy's, waving goodbye to the plump barman now polishing glasses behind the little bar.
"It's not all pretty girls and flirting you know." His grandfather was watching him with an astute expression. "If that's what you're after, best to stay far away from the recruiting officers, lad." He sighed. "Your mom's terrified you're going to go off to the war and get yourself killed, Pip. You need to think carefully about what you really want to do."
Joe had started the game off by bowling a ball carefully down the dead centre of the lane, knocking down all but one of the pins. Pleased with himself, he grunted at Reg, indicating it was his turn to shine. Joe didn't speak much, Jack noted, and wondered how Reg, with his obvious disability, would handle the challenge.
His attention was drawn back to Pip as the youngster said, slowly, as if thinking aloud. "You signed up, Grandpa, soon as the last war started. Mom told me." He looked the older man straight in the eye. "Did you think about it much beforehand?"
Mouthy kid, Jack thought, semi approvingly. Get out of that one, Grandpa!
But Grandpa didn't seem too disturbed by the question. Instead, he rooted around in his pocket, and pulled out a pipe, stem polished with long use. With a satisfied "hmmm", he dug in the other, equally capacious, pocket and found a tin of tobacco. Using slow, measured pinches, he filled the bowl, pausing to sniff the scent of the blend appreciatively. Jack, fascinated, was gripped by his movements. God, did anyone do anything this slowly and methodically anymore? His own life, only 60 odd years from now, moved at breakneck speed. No time to sit and think about what to say next, like Grandpa was doing.
Bowl filled, Grandpa lit a match and set the pipe burning. With a long sigh he leaned back, and drew deeply. Jack, despite his distaste for smoking in general, found the smoke from this almost pleasurable. Cherry tobacco his mind supplied, and he knew that somewhere, back in his own past, he'd smelled this flavoursome scent before. The memory was gone, however, just the small tag of the smell remaining.
In front of them, Reg nimbly picked up the ball with his remaining arm, and bowled an extraordinarily accurate line, knocking out all ten of the pins. His satisfied chuckle was punctuated by Joe's sigh as he heaved himself up to take another turn; Jack noticed they left Grandpa and Pip alone to have their talk out.
"Well, you see son," Grandpa was ready to resume, "at the start of the Great War, we didn't really know what war was about." He cast a sharp eye at Pip. "We thought it was all going to be a great adventure, and that we'd give Johnny Foreigner a good whipping and be home for Christmas, eating plum pudding from Berlin."
His eyes downcast, the old man paused, lost in thought.
"See, we didn't really think about the fighting part of it. We didn't realise that Johnny Foreigner had weapons too, some damn good ones, and that he might fight back as hard as he could. We all joined up in a big gang - life in Scotland was hard back then and the army offered us adventure and excitement, not to mention a warm bed and three full meals a day." He snorted. "All lies, that was. No warm beds on the Western Front, lad, and lucky if there was a meal a day over there in France."
Pip was leaning forward, straining to catch every word. Jack, too, was gripped by the story. A first hand account of the trench warfare of World War I - this man was living history! His pipe burning steadily now, glowing with each draw, Grandpa carried on with his story.
"Reg and I, we signed up soon as we could. Wasn't all youngsters back then," he gave Pip a pointed look, 'we were in our twenties already, had been going down the mines with our fathers and grandfathers for years. We were desperate for a change."
Reg and Joe were now engaged in a fierce battle, neck and neck in the scores. Reg's drawn features were alight with the thrill of competition; Joe was feverishly adding up figures on the small notepad and muttering to himself.
"Now, if you want to know what war can do to a man, son," pulling harder on his pipe, "you only need to look at old Reg there."
Pip's eyes turned; Reg was coughing again, great tearing hacks that bent him double. Joe was batting him on the back, and Reg was ineffectually fighting him off.
"Left his arm somewhere on the Somme, and lucky that's all he left behind him. Then got himself gassed further down the line. Lucky for me I was behind the lines that time, recovering from a concussion." Grandpa's tone and face were bleak.
"All those boys we joined up with, all the lads from the village. We all went off together, more than 20 of us, Pip lad, and it was just me and Reg and two others who came back." He suddenly knocked his pipe against the standing ashtray beside him, a flare of anger in his watery old eyes. "Just the four of us, kiddo. There was nothing left for us in Scotland. The village died out with all the young men dead." His breathing evened out.
"So we came here, to America, and I met your granny. Never went back, did we Reg?"
"Naw." Reg broke off his battle with Joe, and came over to them, leaning against the railings. He grinned down at Pip. "Never married neither, I didn't. Had a very peaceful life!"
Grandpa snorted again, and the men subsided into silence. Jack, his head full of the images that had been evoked, was startled when Pip spoke up, in a diffident voice.
"Would you do it again, Grandpa? Sign up, I mean. If you could, this time round?"
Grandpa's face creased. "Heck, son, I'm supposed to be talking you out of this!" He sighed again, gloomily. "At least, until your number comes up on the draft lottery. Not much you can do if that happens."
"You know, when we went off to fight, Reg and I and the others, we didn't really know what we were fighting for." He surveyed his drink gloomily, then took a gulp. "And to this day I'm not sure I know what that war was all about. Treaties and pride and trenches..."
"But this war now, well, I have to tell you, Pip, I don't like this Hitler. I don't like the stuff I'm hearing. I'm thinking if I were a young man, I'd be wondering if perhaps I should be doing something about it." He looked sideways at Pip.
"Thing is, son, it's up to you. I can't tell you not to go, and I can't tell you to go. Neither can your mother. You have to decide for yourself." He shifted uneasily on his chair, stretching his leg out and massaging the knee.
"It's difficult to decide."
Pip was twirling his glass of soda, watching the liquid swirl perilously close to the brim of the glass. "The guys at school, they're all saying they'll be enlisting soon as graduation's over." He looked up at the place where the little group of girls and their soldier boyfriends had been, just half an hour ago. "Girls like it. Those guys get a lot of attention." He let the drink settle, then drained the glass.
"Look, Pip." Grandpa reached over and placed a wiry hand on his arm. "You have to make that sort of decision based on what's real, not on the attention it gets you. Sometimes you don't get a choice, the government decides for you, and then you gotta go. But your mom, she wants you to go to college. Get a few more years education. Your dad, God rest his soul, wanted that too."
He inhaled deeply. "War is no picnic. I can tell you the things I saw in the last one; Reg can show you the injuries he got." The breath was let out in wheezy exhalation. "But despite all that, there is a fight to be fought, and it's a fight I reckon we need to win. So, lad, you can't just blindly follow everyone else, you hear me? You need to think about it, long and hard, and make a decision, on your own. One you can believe in. For yourself."
His eyes, faded and wispy though they were, held a deep intensity, and Jack could feel the cogs in Pip's head turning. He reckoned the kid would be doing some hard thinking over the next few days. Quite a lesson to learn, not to blindly follow the herd. To make your own mind up. Make a decision you could believe in. God knew that tendency had gotten him into trouble more times than he cared to count in the military.
The thought struck him - jeez! So that was Mitchell's fault! Here he was, learning a life lesson from the man's soul that had caused him no little grief... But, to be fair, Jack acknowledged, it made him what he was too. Able to make decisions under pressure, able to stand up for what he knew was right even if the high-ups said it was wrong... Able, despite daily misgivings, to lead.
Good lesson, kid, he imparted silently to the young man in whose body he was visiting, and you're learning it young enough to make some use of it, and then was struck suddenly by the knowledge that, if he, Jack, were born around ten years from now, Pip would indeed die young. He wished he hadn't thought of that. He seemed a nice enough kid.
Grandpa had opened his mouth to say something more, but at that moment Reg, who was ready to bowl his next ball, began coughing even more violently than before. The impetus of the spasms bent him over double, and, in front of Pip's horrified eyes, spots of blood flew from his mouth, round his shaking fingers, staining the grubby floor.
"Reg! Hey, Reg!" Grandpa was on his feet, struggling forwards, and Joe was rushing back from the john, but it was Pip who got to him first, got to see the terrified eyes behind the hand, which was doing such a poor job of keeping Reg's destroyed lungs inside his body. As Pip reached him, a spasm shook the older man, and his arm caught the boy on his cheek, knocking him off balance. Pinwheeling, Pip caught his foot on a loose piece of carpet tile and fell, knocking his head a nasty shot on the railing and falling gracelessly to the floor. Through the stars dancing in his vision he saw Reg also falling, eyes rolling back in his head, arm and legs gone limp.
Not wanting to see more, or to witness his Grandpa's distress, Pip closed his eyes, and Jack, inside his head, felt the rush as his consciousness began to detach from this time and place. From Grandpa and his words of wisdom, from Reg, with his vain hope that the cigarettes might undo the damage caused by the gassing he'd received in the Great War. From Pip, who was learning that choosing how to live your life can sometimes be a lonely thing to do...
The noise of Jimmy's Bowling Alley faded...Jack was on the move again.
