Chapter Twelve: Wibbly-wobbly Timey-wimey Stuff*

"We dance around in a ring and suppose,
but the secret sits in the middle and knows."

Robert Frost

Instead of giving Daisy an answer, Enos got up, pulled the key out of his jacket pocket, and unlocked the cuff around her wrist. As soon as she was free and standing outside the jeep, he was rewarded with a hard slap across his face.

Now he had a small red handprint to go with the big red bumps. Although stunned, he wasn't completely surprised and felt partially deserving of it. Though he had made a stop at Boss's fishing cabin to 'borrow' blankets and some other supplies to make sure she was warm, he had also kept her cuffed in the front seat of her own jeep for the past three and a half hours.

She had stomped away, but now she'd rounded back on him.

"All this time. All the time I been goin' through this nightmare thinkin' I was all alone…YOU KNEW!"

He hung his head and shook it slowly. "Couldn't tell ya."

"Couldn't or wouldn't."

"You think you're the only one's been––" he choked, unable to get the words out.

"Three months, Enos. THREE MONTHS!" She crossed her arms similar to Mrs. Crabtree from Hazzard Elementary, holding a ruler in one hand and a note to his Mama and Daddy in the other.

"You don't think I know that?! An' it's not three months, it's ninety round-a-bouts, some months have thirty-one––"

"Excuse me. Are we gonna knit pick now? Ya' know, you're good at that too…changin' the subject so ya' don't have to talk about somethin'."

He got that puppy-dog look on his face that turned nearly ashen. The lump in his throat got thicker, and he felt like a first-grader being scolded for eating paste.

"Daisy. Oh, Daisy. Don'cha understand…I been livin' that nightmare too…only I was wide awake."

Daisy relaxed the hold she had on her arms slightly.

"You mean you wake up every mornin' shiverin', only ta' find Aunt Lavinia's weddin' dress hangin' on your chifforobe when you know you packed it up the night before. You stub your toe on stuff you can't even remember ever bein' in the house b'fore and get a splittin' headache 'cause there's never any damn-apsirin in the nightstand? Not to mention that my family wants to call for those nice young men in their clean white coats to come and take me away every other day! That kinda livin' it too?"**

"Yeah."

She narrowed her eyes. "Really."

"I mean…I wake up on the hood of my truck, wet from dew and shiverin' cold from the damp, with my weddin' duds hanging over the front seat, and bang my head on the antenna, or the side mirror or the steering wheel or anything else I can run into. And as for people thinkin' yer' crazy…you…you oughta tryin' ta' fast talk Sheriff Rosco ninety different ways – makes me wanna commit myself to the funny farm." (Actually, it had become somewhat of a mind-sharpening game for him. Life in the 'zone' got tedious more often than not, and he needed distractions other than keeping up with whatever squirrely antic Daisy was up to on any given day.)

That made her chuckle. But she wondered, "Hmmm, no headache?"

"Oh, that comes later when the ding-dang cricket song starts and get's inside my head."

The song! The blankety-blank song…how many times had Elton had to play it anyway. Her only comfort was that nobody but the two of them would remember it next go-around. Wait…Enos would remember…oh...Lord.

Daisy frantically began running the last ninety same-damn-days through her head to figure out what she might have to explain, apologize for, or live down. That was, in addition to the unfortunate misadventures of that very afternoon.

"I wanted to tell ya' Daisy. But I just couldn't. Aunt Livvy––"

"How'd you know it's Aunt Lavinia?"

"Does it matter?"

"Probably not, but I still want to know."

Balladeer: Seems like Daisy and Enos done forgot why they was mad at each other in the first place, don't it?

"And that's another thing, why's he always around?" Enos asked.

"Annoying, right?"

Enos looked up with a churlish expression. "Real annoyin'."

"Never mind him. I got plans on how to fix his little red wagon. We need to talk. And I mean 'talk.'"

For the next hour or so, they went over the events of the last eighty-nine do-overs. But there were unspoken verboten subjects they both unconsciously recognized and skirted, like why he claimed to have gotten the hives, the kiss in the boat, his leaving her wedding ring in his other pants, and ANYTHING to do with L.A.

Enos explained to Daisy how many times he'd tried to tell her he knew, but something always stopped him. Then she started in with the crazy stuff, and as much as he knew it was because she had to do it alone, the crazier her stunts got, the madder he got. He thought the tattoo, a tiny dragonfly, wasn't the worst thing she'd done, but he was glad it didn't carry over into the next round-a-bout. And yes, he did appreciate the return of the spaghetti strap tank top and the Daisy Dukes.

What he didn't appreciate, at all, was her traipsin' up into the hills trying to enlist the aid of the Beaudry's preacher-with-the-questionable-scruple to get them married up.

"What did ya' think ya' were doin' tellin' him you was in a family way?"

"I never told him that."

"You did. I heard ya'"

"Where were…nevermind. I said that you and me was gonna have a baby."

"Ain't that the same thing?"

"No. It ain't the same thing. If you an' me was to get married, one day we'd have a baby. I just kinda, sorta let him think it was gonna be sooner rather than later. You want kids, right? I know you like kids, you're always volunteerin' out at the children's home…" She was saying it while watching Enos blush.

"'Course I want kids, Daisy. And I don't know who else I'd pick to be a better Mama than you. But I thought maybe you'd wanna do some other things first…like goin' to college, maybe studying plants and stuff. When you were talkin' about foragin' out where I first saw our little alien friend, it sounded like you got a real interest in that kind a' thing. I mean, your eyes got that lit up look you get when you're real happy."

Oh…my…God! The revelation hit her like Wild Turkey 'round about the fourth shot.

They discovered that they each had different names for the same thing, like the repeating days, and he called the things they could or couldn't do 'laws.' Daisy called them 'rules.' Same difference. It's all about perception, this time thing.

"Time duddin' really run in a straight line," Enos said. "That's just how we think of it 'cause it makes things easier. Like it goes off in different directions all at once and then loop-ta-loops back on itself…"

Balladeer wayyyy off in the background: All the while humming the theme to The Twilight Zone and reciting a litany of: "Klatuu barada nikto" – "These are not the droids you're lookin' for" – "Lights – owwwt" – "The Shadow knows" – "It's about time, it's about space…– "It's bigger on the inside, ya'll" –"We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. We can roll the image, make it flutter. We can change the focus to a soft blur, or sharpen it to crystal clarity"… ***

'Hands' (who sounded too much like that country star, you know the one, to be believed- must be some wanna-be) was sort of entertaining and weirdly informative, so they ignored him.

"…I saw this illustration once where these two astronauts was in two different places out in the blackness a' space an' lookin' down on this time arrow, kinda like a loaf of bread, and one was lookin' from this direction and the other…what?"

"Nothin'." Her smile looked as if she was hiding an Easter Egg behind it.

He looked at her sideways.

"Knew you were smarter than most people 'round here think," she said.

Enos's face turned red enough one would hardly know he had hives.

"Oh, Daisy. It don't take smarts so much as readin' up on a subject yer interested in…I got that last part from one a' my comic books…now what?"

"One of these days, if we ever get outta this, we're gonna work on your self-esteem 'cause I know it's hidin' in there somewhere. Meanwhile, we should start figurin' out why Aunt Lavinia's doin' this, 'cause I thought I had that part sorta figured out. Now, I ain't so sure anymore."

"Ya' know, there's been times lately when I thought maybe she was punishin' us for somethin'. Guess that mighta been part of why I was so outta sorts. But that don't make any sense, 'cause she was the sweetest woman I ever knew next to my Mama and Granny Hess. I'm just glad neither of us has to do it alone anymore. Guess we got Aunt Livvy to thank for that."

Oh, the References!:

* Description of time travel by Doctor Who (Doctor #10 played by david Tenet)

** Song: "They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha Haa!" written and performed by Jerry Samuels (billed as Napolean XIV) - Wikipedia

*** In Order: The Twilight Zone (previously referenced), "The Day the Earth Stood Still", "Star Wars", "Lights Out" a radio show from the 1930s and 40s, "The Shadow" originally a series of pulp novels from the 1930s, than reiterated numerous times in various media, "It's About Time" TV series theme from 1960s, description of "The Tardis (Time and Relative Dimensions in Space)" from Doctor Who", "The Outer Limits" (original series from 1960s) introduction message. Whew! There would have been more, but these are the ones that just popped into my head and I was starting to see spots before my eyes...