Christmas After Woodstock

By Sara K. Wall

What if you could change the future.
But you couldn’t change it back...
It’s the week before Christmas, 1969, and an unexpected gift arrives for 15-year-old Arthur August Mallory. His namesake great uncle, a man whose existence was unknown to him until the package arrived, has sent him a remarkable gift. Because of the ancient book, this teenage boy has the power to make the world over any way he wants—but not the power to overcome the unintended consequences of his actions. Who can Mallory trust to help him discover a way to deal with the problems he has created?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Indigo Sea Press
• Release date: Sep 11, 2014
• ISBN: 9781630660253

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Christmas After Woodstock

By

Sara K. Wall

Scoundrel Books

Published by Second Wind Publishing, LLC.

Kernersville

Scoundrel Books

Second Wind Publishing, LLC

931-B South Main Street, Box 145

Kernersville, NC 27284

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, locations and events are either a product of the author’s imagination, fictitious or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to any event, locale or person, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Copyright 2014 by Sara Wall

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or part in any format.

First Scoundrel Books edition published

September 2014.

Scoundrel Books, Running Angel, and all production design are trademarks of Second Wind Publishing, used under license.

For information regarding bulk purchases of this book, digital purchase and special discounts, please contact the publisher at www.secondwindpublishing.com

Cover design by Stacy Castanedo

Manufactured in the United States of America

ISBN 978-1-63066-025-3

One

Personally I have to admit that the one-legged, little-old-lady did scare me—not right when I saw her but when she realized we were there to do Christmas carols; and she started singing Yes, Jesus Loves Me real loud, it did set me back. She didn’t scare me like I thought she was going to get up out of her wheelchair and do something to me. I mean she just surprised me. You don’t expect one-legged, little-old-ladies to be loud and rowdy. Maybe that’s why she was in a nursing home.

When you’re fifteen and it’s your first time in a place like that and you’re not really sure how to act, you also aren’t sure what to expect. That’s why we were all on edge, I think—all a little scared. That’s probably the reason that afterwards, as we rode back to the church in the van, we were laughing and denying that we had been afraid.

My buddy Ronny was really wound up. I couldn’t believe that one little-old-man, he said, who stared at us with one eye shut while we stood outside his room and sang two carols; and then the nurse came by and said, ‘He’s deaf, you know.’

Before we had stopped, Jayne broke in, Didn’t you love the lady with all the dolls on her bed? She looked like somebody’s grandmother.

She looked like too many bad trips on acid, Larry said. She kept fondling those dolls the whole time we were singing and she had that stupid, eerie smile. He popped his eyes open wide and grinned viciously.

Jayne shook her head, her straight, thick hair dancing. Larry, you’re such a fascist. We’re not coming to see you when you’re old and in the nursing home.

Can you imagine how Larry will look when he’s a little-old-man? Ronny said. Jack boots. A little riding crop.

Jayne nodded. A crew cut and a monocle and a cigarette in a long holder.

Yeah, Ronny said, and his wheelchair will have a bumper sticker that says: ‘Once ROTC, always ROTC’.

We all laughed again, except Larry.

I will not grow old, he said. I’ll die young as I lead the final, victorious charge of American Marines into Hanoi, for which I will posthumously receive the Congressional Medal of Honor.

I know what it will read, too, Ronny said. ‘Shot by his own troops. A mercy killing.’

Even Larry laughed then.

The van hit a bump, maybe ran over a curb or something, and we all fell in different directions. We were reaching out and grabbing the seats and each other for support. It only made us laugh harder.

Rosie turned toward the front of the van and yelled at the youth minister, Mr. Flood. Back off, Jim! We’re all ‘easy riders’ back here.

Have you seen that flick? somebody asked. Oh, it is so good.

Somebody else picked up on it and they started talking about Easy Rider—everybody except Rosie who had gone back to being quiet. She was doing what she had always done through all the years we had been in school together—just sitting there listening to everybody else with that little smile on her face.

If you had asked before that moment, I guess I would have described her and told you she was like that; but somehow, in spite of all those years of being in the same class with her, it finally dawned on me exactly what kind of person she was. I guess it had never occurred to me how quiet she was because the few times she did say something, she was always right on. She focused on the subject and made sense every time she said something. Come to think of it, Rosie was probably the only person I’ve ever known who was always a 100% in touch with what was happening around her at any given moment.

Like right then, as I was sitting there and watching her instead of listening to what the other kids were saying about the movie, she stopped paying attention to them too and looked at me. She knew I was thinking about her. Her smile just got a little deeper, a little sweeter.

And I looked away. I was embarrassed. And you know, at that instant my relationship with Rosie changed. All those years we had gone to school together—I mean since we were in the first grade—and all of a sudden I realized I really liked her. She knew it too. That’s why I had to look away.

I tried to concentrate on what the other kids were saying.

Would you believe I talked my dad into going with me to see it? When it was over, he says, ‘I thought that was supposed to be a great movie or something.’

My folks couldn’t understand the flash-forwards. You know, my mother kept saying, ‘But how can they show something that hasn’t happened yet?’

I thought it was pretty unbelievable myself.

Oh, Larry! What a Republican.

Well, really, Larry responded, show me two long-haired bikers dumb enough to ride through the heart of Dixie and I’ll show you a couple of dudes who deserve to get blown away.

What I liked was their bikes, Ronny said. Now get this. Remember that one evil-looking little-old-lady in the chair who stared at us when we first got there tonight? Picture her with that wicked gleam in her eye riding a chopper.

The image of a frail, ninety-year-old, her head hunched low between her upraised arms as she revved her Harley-Davidson flashed into my mind. The back of the van was bobbing with our laughter.

I can see her now, standing on the pegs, popping a wheelie.

She has ‘Vicious Momma’ tattooed on her shoulder, Ronny said. She’d have been even meaner if she had teeth; but the funniest thing was the way she stared at Double A.

I jumped when he mentioned me. I guess I did remember her ancient head slowly turning as we went through the parlor of the nursing home so that she always kept her eyes on me.

She had you picked out from the beginning.

You know what I can’t believe, I said, "is that I let Ronny talk me into this. First time I go to a church youth meeting and it’s ‘Christmas Caroling the Codgers.’ I just