A Tin of Keys (2 of 6)
The Packard
As you might imagine, I came inside, hugged my wife, kissed her, held her close—feeling guilty for being tempted by another woman. I hadn’t given in, though it would’ve been easy. And despite none of it being mine—not the woman, not the house, not the rifle—I knew them as if I’d lived that life.
I knew the weight of the Springfield rifle without thinking. I remembered firing it. I knew how it felt to fill the water closet each morning with the hand pump in the shed, the ache in my shoulder from doing it daily.
And I knew, somehow, that her name was Clara.
Though I’d never met her, I knew what she was like beneath the sheets. How she smelled. How her skin felt in the crook of my arm. I hadn’t lived it—but some part of me had. Maybe that’s why it was tempting. Because I had both experienced and not experienced her. And the part that remembered didn’t want to let go.
I came inside because I felt ungrounded. I needed to touch something real. Someone real. That someone was my wife.
I didn’t tell her, of course. It would’ve been like describing a dream about another woman—pointless and cruel. And it wasn’t real. Not in the way that mattered.
It was enough to carry the guilt quietly, and let it soften me.
Later, I talked to my daughter.
“Did you ever go anywhere strange in your mind when playing with the keys?”
“Yes, Daddy. I’ve been to all kinds of places.”
“Tell me.”
“I was in a lighthouse where the waves talked to me,” she said. “And a floating house on a lake, where the moon swam like a fish. I went to a house with Timothy to play Legos, and a magic forest, and a library that smelled like cinnamon and thunder.”
“You were at your cousin’s house?”
“Yeah. We played Legos and had macaroni and cheese and hot dogs.”
We were only two miles from my sister’s place. It wasn’t like she’d time-traveled. Just vivid, unfiltered imagination.
I experimented with the key, trying to get back to Clara, Anna, Henry, Elliott, Chase. I did everything the same: gloves, tools, the apple trees. I removed a glove, touched the key, waited for the world to go black.
Nothing happened.
I stood there in the yard, wind rattling the apple branches, feeling foolish.
I began to wonder if I’d lost my mind. If it had been a break—grief, exhaustion, madness. A hallucination so complete it left me aching for a life I’d never lived.
A week later, I decided to toss the keys for good.
An hour after that, my daughter rescued them—again.
This time, she kept them. I didn’t even know.
Over a year passed before the next hallucination.
It was a summer evening, just after the Fourth of July. I opened the upright freezer, looking for my Tillamook Oregon Strawberry ice cream.
Gone.
Undaunted, I grabbed my keys and poked my head into the living room.
“I’m going to the store. Anyone want anything?”
“What are you getting?” my wife asked.
“Ice cream.”
“Sorry,” she said, smiling. Culprit identified. “Would you get me some Swedish Fish?”
I nodded, grabbed my wallet.
“There’s a twenty in your jacket pocket,” she said.
“My jacket?”
“It was raining when I got the mail yesterday, so I grabbed it.”
“That doesn’t explain the twenty.”
“Well, after the mail, I needed a coffee, but it felt too early for vodka, so I went to Starbucks instead.”
“So you got the twenty at Starbucks? I didn’t know they gave cash back on cards.”
“They probably don’t. But then I wanted chocolate, so I went to the grocery store.”
“Where you got the cash?”
“No. Your mom called, wanted coffee. I told her I’d just had one. She asked if I’d go get another. I did—but still didn’t get cash.”
“Where did it come from?”
“She gave me a fifty. A late birthday present.”
“She gave you a fifty, and you got a twenty in change?”
“No. I went to Sephora for foundation, used my debit card.”
“So… not the fifty?”
“Right. Then I remembered movie night, so I went to Proper Popcorn.”
“Ah.”
“I got the twenty there. Tucked it in your pocket. But the Cadbury bar I bought melted, so I stuck it in the freezer.”
“And spotted my Oregon Strawberry.”
“Now you’re getting it.”
I shook my head. “I’ll be right back.”
When I reached into the jacket pocket, I found a lone key.
And blacked out.
When I came to, the woman beside me was screaming. Two reasons: first, she was in labor. Second, I had nearly swerved off the road in a green 1941 Packard 120 I’d never seen before, in a town that looked decidedly different—but was still the same town.
I kept driving straight, trying to take it in.
The Packard had a wide bench seat, upholstered in dark leatherette. Chrome accented the symmetrical dashboard, and the oversized steering wheel—rimmed with a horn ring—gleamed in the late sun. Art deco knobs framed the controls, and an AM radio sat in the center of the dash, its six buttons aligned like teeth. The first one was pressed. AM 1400 crackled faintly, broadcasting grim news from the war in Europe.
I had hallucinated into a second visit to the past—this time thirty years later. And having been through it once already, I tried to act cool.
“Where are we going again?” I asked smoothly.
“Are you serious right now?” she asked, grimacing.
That’s when I realized she was in labor.
I stared at her. The town didn’t have a hospital. I knew that because my father was the first employee hired there in 1963. From the radio and the car, I could tell it was the early ‘40s. The hospital hadn’t even been built yet. So where could we be going? A doctor? A midwife? Her mother’s?
Thankfully, she saved me. Kind of.
“Mom will be waiting. We’re down to every three or four minutes now.”
So, Mom’s. If it was 1941 or 1942, I wondered why we didn’t just have the baby at home. Wasn’t that common?
She answered my thoughts again.
“The midwife is going to beat us there at this rate,” she said, looking over at me in near panic.
“I’m going. I’m going!”
I paused.
“Where is mom’s?”
“Are you out of your mind? I’m the one in labor! Did you wake up this morning thinking, ‘If Anna goes into labor today, I’m going to joke around with her while she’s in transition. That’ll be great fun for everyone.’”
She paused to breathe, panting slightly as she worked through a contraction.
“It isn’t funny. And this is your fault!”
I didn’t deny it. How could I deny it? I barely even knew what was going on. But she’d given me her name: Anna. I looked at her, and she looked back at me, her face almost pleading. And then I knew.
It was Anna.
The last time I saw her was in 1912, at the Thanksgiving dinner. It had been her turn for the wishbone.
Her mother would be Clara.
In the house where I now lived.
And now I was with Anna. A quick glance in the rearview mirror confirmed I was not the man I’d been before, not Clara’s husband from that Thanksgiving long ago. I was someone new. Presumably Anna’s husband.
I stared at my house, but not my house, as I pulled into the driveway, happy to see the weathervane in better shape, sitting atop the cupola, the house freshly painted white, new shingles on the roof.
I parked the car, ran around the front, slowed to admire the pristine chrome grill, and helped Anna out. She took two steps, and I knew it was time to carry her, so I cradled her in my arms and walked to the house.
The door opened before I got there, the screen door held wide by Clara.
She had aged, too. She must now be in her mid-sixties. Time had robbed her of some of her beauty. The hair now more salt than pepper. Wrinkles now lined her face, but she had the same eyes, except they were now hidden behind wire-rimmed glasses.
“Bring her right in. Right to the front room,” she said.
I figured she meant the south side of the double parlor, the one facing the road. I carried Anna there and laid her carefully on a daybed that didn’t belong in my house. I stood up and watched Clara move around the room, prepping things. Blankets and towels. Wash cloths, rags. Jugs of water. A wash basin.
She was more frail now, not moving quite the same way she had the last time I saw her.
“What are you gawking at?” she asked.
At first, I was shocked that she didn’t recognize me.
“Nothing,” I said, looking back at Anna.
“Boys with Gerty?” she asked.
I shrugged.
She stared at me.
“Yes, Mumma,” Anna said.
“This is the last one, right? Even you’re getting old for this. Forty-one.”
“I just wanted to try one more time,” she said.
“I know ya did, dear,” she said, taking her daughter’s hand, comforting her. “We’ll know soon enough.”
I tried to help as best I could, but it didn’t take long for the three women to make it quite clear I was more of a nuisance than a help. I didn’t take the hints until Clara was point-blank with me.
“Go out in the living room and sit down, or better yet, the porch. We’ve got this. Women have been doing this since the beginning of time. Go on, then. You’re not doing her any good breathing down her neck. Go wait on the porch. I’ll call you if she bites through the headboard.”
I backed out of the parlor and then closed the doors, moving through my house. The grandfather clock stood, mocking me, its steady pace trying to calm my racing heart.
I didn’t even understand the feeling. It wasn’t my kid about to be born, yet somehow I felt connected to the events. I took a step and then stopped, looking at the mantel.
The rifle sat there. Older now. A few dings in places. It had been handled. Wear marks in the wood, the barrel and the steel buttplate were visible. It was like a diary in firearm form.
Below that, sat an urn.
I did a double-take. I knew, instinctively, it contained the ashes of the man I had been before.
I found my way to the porch, stunned, disconnected, yet there, living it.
I sat in a wicker rocker and tried to take in the day. Cool, overcast. The lilacs were in bloom, even though twenty minutes ago they had already gone by for the summer, and the day had been hot and humid.
I shifted, trying to get comfortable. Something was in my pocket.
I reached in and pulled out a pack of Lucky Strikes and a book of matches.
I stared at them.
I’d smoked for nearly ten years—but I quit four years ago.
Quitting’s easy. I’ve done it plenty of times. Quitting for good is the hard part.
The first few days are withdrawal. The next ten years are habit. At first, you can’t trust yourself to walk into a store—you’ll buy them. So you sit in the car, wait it out. Later, you make it inside but have to resist at the register. Eventually, you just glance at them on the shelf and feel… something. But it fades.
Still, even now, I sometimes dreamt about smoking.
Would it count if I smoked in a hallucination? Like a dream, right? And if I really was in someone else’s life—someone else’s body—was it even mine to poison?
I smoked six cigarettes in that rocking chair before the baby was born ninety minutes later.
Clara found me on the porch, a big smile on her face.
“So?”
“Come see,” she said.
I followed her inside to see Anna, holding a precious bundle.
I cried when I saw the pink hat.
Anna had gotten her wish. Somehow I knew this.
I stayed in the hallucination longer this time. We spent four nights with Clara. On the second day, I got to see Elliott and Chase. Henry didn’t make it in until the fourth day, having come from Boston. It was good to see the boys, all in their thirties now. I could see their father in them. A man that wasn’t me, and yet I was still proud of them.
I have been through the act of putting a baby in a car seat for the first time. I have almost been arrested for driving too slowly. That happens when you have the world’s most precious cargo in your car, and I refuse to apologize to the people behind me. But there was no car seat, just pretty Anna holding the baby and smiling at me. A little girl named Rachel, after her great-grandmother.
I loaded them up, sat down in the Packard, and smiled.
I put the key in the car. It felt warm in my hand.
And then I was back in my time.
In tears.
I missed them instantly.
I got out of my truck and walked back inside.
“You couldn’t have made it to the store and back already,” my wife said.
“I changed my mind.”
I sat on the couch beside her and took her hand.
She looked over, sensing something in my eyes.
“Changed your mind,” she said, “or want me to ride with you?”
“Yeah,” I said quietly. “Would you mind?”
She didn’t answer right away.
“Let’s go,” she said.
Stephen B. Anthony is the author of Transmigrant, an epic science fiction thriller, available on both Amazon and Audible. The first seven chapters are available on this website for free.