TIME TRAVEL

I wrote the following story in first person, present tense, even though it happened nearly fifty years ago.  It’s supposed to give readers a more immediate perspective, as if they are actually right there.  Time travel, anyone?    

A FREE FOR ALL

The sleet is slanting at me out of the black night like white arrows.  The arrows explode on my windshield as I drive the curves of Old Yale Road at the base of Sumas Mountain, east of Abbotsford.  Allan, my date, holds his hand over his bleeding nose as I cautiously maneuver my ‘65 Nova through the slick slush that tries to slide me off the side of the road into the unknown bush or a hidden ravine.

“Take the driveway on the right after the next bend,” he mumbles, before he snorts up more blood.

“Yeah, next driveway,” snort three more drunks in the back seat.  Two of them are Villeneuve twins, the other is another friend of Allan’s.  And Allan is a Zomar twin.  Zomars and Villeneuves.  Double trouble doubled.  They are twenty, and I am eighteen.  It is January,1970 and we are leaving the scene before the cops arrive.

The next driveway angles up at forty-five degrees, but since it is gravel my snow tires find traction and at the top of the drive there is lots of room to park.  The guys spill out of the car, clutching their illicit bottles of booze.  We are all underage.

The Villeneuve house is an old wood farmhouse perched on the side of Sumas Mountain.  Big kitchen, big table, lots of wooden chairs.  Full of relatives jabbering in French.  I don’t understand a word.  The raucous clamour mostly ignores me.  The guys wash up at a utility sink by the back door, wiping blood from face and hands.  The mother shakes her head and waggles a finger at them, then pours herself a drink and makes popcorn for everybody.  Smiles and laughter from faces turning black and blue with eyes swelling shut.

It is 2:00 a.m., and I feel the need to return home, but am scared because I don’t know where I am in this countryside.  I am new to the Valley, raised in Surrey suburbs until last summer.  My family moved out here right after I graduated and Allan is the first friend I’ve met in a long and lonely winter far from all my city friends.  He likes to dance as much as I do, and he knows how to lead in a waltz or a polka.

I whisper to Allan that I have to go home, that I have a curfew, even though I don’t, and never have.  He finishes his rum and coke and we don our jackets to leave.  Nobody sees us out.  They are too inebriated to notice.  But the sleet has now changed to fat and fluffy snow, and blankets everything softly.  I shiver in my miniskirt and heels.  We brush the windows of the car clear.  Allan says he’ll drive, but I say no, it’s my car and I haven’t been drinking.  He argues, but I hold my ground, even though I don’t know him very well.  He isn’t any taller than I am, so I am not afraid.  I am determined on female equality.  He gives in.  Slowly I turn the car around and head back down the drive.  With Allan directing, I take the roads very carefully back to the Zomar home, almost downtown Abbotsford. 

His mother, Peggy, and his dad, Big Mike, are still up, just back from a dance at the Legion.  And Allan’s sister Sandy is there with her boyfriend, Dave.  She is the same age as I am.

Peggy wants to know how Allan got his black eye and swollen nose.

“We went to the dance up at Straighten Hall, and I had to back up the Villeneuves when a fight started,” he laughs.

It sounds so innocuous as he tells it, while I remember angry words inside the Quonset hut, benches pushed back from tables, fists starting to swing, glasses breaking and the melee spilling out the door into a gravel parking lot under a farm light.  And then the mad scramble to get into cars and leave when someone in the band yells that the cops have been called.  

“Is that where the sirens were headed, then?” his mother asks, seemingly unconcerned.  My mother’s response would be so much harsher.

“Probably, but we got out of there before they arrived.  The hall was pretty empty by then anyhow,” he tells her.

“Can I see your car keys?” Big Mike suddenly booms at me.

Unknowingly, I hand him my keys and he pockets them.  I’m shocked, but before I can object he says, “You’re not driving out to Mt. Lehman tonight.  The roads are slick.  You and Sandy can sleep upstairs.”

I am dwarfed by this man who looms over me with his barrel chest and deep voice.  But there is kindness in his smile, and I do not argue.

Sandy and I each use the bathroom and then head up the stairs to unheated rooms in the attic of this very old house.  As we climb the stairs, we hear the click of a lock on the door behind us.  “What’s happening?” I ask of Sandra.

“Dad’s locked us in,” she says, “So the boys can’t get to us and we won’t get pregnant.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” I whisper in horror.

“No.  He always does that when there are boyfriends and girlfriends overnight.  My oldest brother had to get married when he got his girlfriend pregnant, so now Dad says not under his roof with five more kids to raise!”

Shivering, I snuggle under an old quilt on a lumpy bed, feeling oddly safe in spite of the night’s events.  But I do wonder how I’m going to explain any of this tomorrow, as I watch the snow feather down outside the window, until my eyelids finally droop.

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By Lisa A. Hatton