Below is the first chapter from Saving Grace. I hope you enjoy it.


Saving Grace

CHAPTER ONE

    I didn’t really know how long the angel had been sitting next to me. It may have been for hours or only a few minutes. I wasn’t frightened or anything; I simply felt safer and more content than I ever had in my life. It seemed like this was something that I did often, which I most certainly did not!

     The day had started off normally enough. Everything had been so ordinary. Nothing had occurred that would suggest I would be spending part of the afternoon with a heavenly being.

     My wife, Emily, and I had been spending a week’s vacation back in our old hometown of Pacifica, California. It had been about eight years since we had moved away to Chicago, and except for holidays and some other scattered family gatherings, we hadn’t spent much time back, and this was our second-to-last day. Emily had gone shopping in San Francisco with her mother and our two kids, while I had decided to spend the day fishing the surf at my favorite old spot.     

     It was a typical Bay Area summer day: windy, cold and overcast. I had parked the rented van and carried my lunch and gear down the steep path in the cliff to the beach. After some hours of fishing, I set my pole up in a stand, and sat down to have a sandwich and beer. That was when the angel appeared, sitting next to me on the sand.  

     She didn’t have wings like in the movies or anything, but she did wear a robe of the most dazzling white that I had ever seen. Her hair was long and was a color that I had never seen before and couldn’t compare to any other color that I had previously experienced. Her face, although beautiful, was also the kindest face that anyone could imagine. For a long while, we just sat there, looking out at the sea.

    Jake Brodie and the angel.

     “You have returned home,” said the angel, at length, in a very song-like voice, which had elements of both an Irish lilt and a Scottish brogue, but was also neither.

     “It’s been a long time,“ I replied, just like I would answer anyone else.

     “You need to stay here a time longer,” she said.

      “How much longer?” I asked, much as a child would ask a parent.

      “For a time,” she replied, her voice soothing. “There is a task that you need to complete.”

     “What is the task?”

     She gently shook her head. “I cannot tell you. You will know when the time is right.” She smiled slightly. “Be assured that you will know what to do.” 

     “When do I start?” I asked simply, not seeking more detail.

    She reached out and touched my forehead with her index finger, “At this very moment.” 

    I awoke with a start. At first, I didn’t know where I was. It was night, and I was damp. Slowly, my conversation with the angel began to seep back into my memory.
The angel was gone. I continued to sit there thinking of what had just happened to me. I glanced at my watch. It was flashing three fifteen. With the darkness, I could only assume that it was 3:15 a.m. My wife was probably worried sick about where I was. I was going to have some explaining to do, and I didn’t think she was going to buy the angel story. As a matter of fact, I was beginning to think that the whole angel thing had been just a dream anyway.

    I got to my feet and looked for my gear. It was gone. Someone must have come along and stolen it while I was asleep. “Just great!” I yelled, kicking at a small sand dune. My fishing pole had been given to me when I was a boy by my great-grandfather, and it had been his from the time that he was a young man until he gave it to me.

      My eyes were becoming accustomed to the dark, and I started to make my way back to the van. When I reached the sea wall, I couldn’t find the path that led back up to the frontage road. This is weird, I thought to myself. How can I lose an entire paved pathway? This was Mori Point—I could see its shape clearly in the moonlight, so where in the heck was the path? “Screw it,” I snarled to myself as I started to climb. “I don’t have time for this crap!”
 As I climbed the sea wall, I heard a car drive by on the road overhead. 

    When I finally reached the top, I wasn’t prepared for what I saw. My rental car was gone, and the two-lane frontage road was also gone. Actually, most of the whole damn town was gone!

    What in the heck was going on around here? In place of the two-lane road was a single- lane blacktop road. All of the shops and restaurants that made up the beach district were also gone. Where there had once been hundreds of houses, there were now crops and fields. Yet this was still Pacifica! Off to my right I could make out the golf course, and up on the hill to my left, I could see the old castle. Very rarely do you find towns in California with replicas of Scottish castles, so I was reasonably sure that this was still Pacifica. But something was terribly, terribly wrong.

    The only sign of people that I could see was the car that had driven by while I was climbing up the cliff. It was now about a mile away, out on the tip of the point. I paused and watched as the car stopped. It seemed to be an older car, but since it was a dark color, it was hard to tell from this distance in the dark.  

    It was unusually still for a coastal evening, and the tide was high. Usually, a stiff breeze would be blowing inland. I watched as the driver got out of the car and opened the trunk. I was pretty sure I knew what he was up to. The sea was deep at the tip of the point, and for as long as I could remember, people were always throwing junk off the cliff and into the sea. Sure enough, I saw the driver remove a bundle from the trunk and toss it over the cliff. He stood there for a moment to make sure that whatever it was had sunk, then he got back in the car and started back down the way he had come.

    I had decided that if the car came back along the frontage road, I would wave it down and try to find out what was happening. As I watched, I could see that indeed, the car was going to come back the same way. For some unknown reason, the closer the car got to me, the more uneasy I began to feel. When it was about a hundred yards away, my uneasiness turned into a terrible fear. Something in my mind was telling me to get off the road right away. I climbed back down the cliff a short distance and waited for the car to pass. 

    As the vehicle approached, it started to slow down. Since it was a clear night, I couldn’t be sure that the driver had not seen me. The closer the car got, the more terrified I became. I had no doubt that whoever was driving that car was a threat to me. As it got closer to the spot where I was hiding, I started to instinctively hold my breath. Time seemed to stop, and the wait was taking an eternity.

    Finally, to my great relief, the car began to speed up again and was soon some distance away. I exhaled and stayed where I was, feeling somewhat foolish. After a short time, I began to calm down and climbed back up to the road. It was now very important for me to get away from this spot. I quickly crossed the road and began to walk inland through a field of artichokes.  

    As I walked through the field, I could see the steeple of the Little Brown Church about a mile away off to my right. It had been about twenty years or so since the city had purchased the building and converted it into the police station, keeping the outside of the building looking exactly the same, including the brown paint. Once I got there, I figured that the cops could help me out with exactly what was going on.

    When I reached the road at the other end of the artichoke field, nothing was as it should have been. The freeway wasn’t where it was supposed to be; there were more fields instead of houses; and the church apparently was not the police station. Everything was wrong, and yet the topography of the area told me everything was right. I was quite disoriented. 

    Because I had absolutely no idea about what to do next, I just headed up the gravel driveway to the church. I looked at my watch. Nothing. The digital display was dead. I walked up the steps of the sanctuary and tried the door. It was locked. I began to feel very alone in a place that was both familiar and alien at the same time. I just wanted to find myself in bed, next to my wife, and have this all just be a really bad dream. 

    Not knowing what else to do, I sat down on the front steps of the church and buried my face in my hands. This apparently was Pacifica. It just wasn’t my Pacifica. I was sitting on the steps of the church that I had been baptized in, but seemingly long before I was born. Could it be that the dream I had about the angel really wasn’t a dream? Had it been real after all? She had said that I had to perform a task and that I would need to stay here for a time. She also had said that I would know what the task was, and so far I had absolutely no clue about anything except that I was alone, cold, and confused. I sat there for a while and then drifted off to sleep.  

    A rooster crowing awakened me. That was something that had never happened to me before. The sky was beginning to brighten, but the sun had not yet risen. I stood and stretched. I had probably only slept a couple of hours, yet I felt rested. I walked back down to the road and began heading north, to where I remembered there were some stores and restaurants that were at least as old as the church. If the church was here, I reasoned, they must be here, too. 

    The road is paved and wide. It doesn’t take me long to realize that it is the Old County Road. Ahead, I could see that I was right and there were some buildings. One should be the Old County Store, and next to it should be Al Sole’s Cafe. 

    There was already some traffic on the road, and several pickup trucks and cars passed me. They were all thirties-model vehicles, like from a movie. That was fitting because this appeared to be 1930s Pacifica. I don’t even think it was called Pacifica back in the thirties.
The Old County Store looked exactly the same from the outside as it did when I was a little kid. Even the green paint was faded just as I remembered it in the 1960s. Then, the cafe next door was called Al Sole’s, but now the sign on the roof said it was Dick Plate’s Cafe, but the green paint was faded just like the store.

    I had found the places that I was looking for; now what was I going to do? I couldn’t just walk up to somebody and ask them what day and year it was. I tried thinking of all the time- travel movies I had ever seen and found that they weren’t of much use to me right now. Also, the bacon and sausage smells coming from Dick Plate’s made me aware that I was very hungry. 

    I was now faced with two major problems. One was money. I had about eighty dollars in my wallet and a bunch of change in my pocket, but it was all from the time that I left. Did money basically look the same in the thirties as it did in the nineties? I also had a problem with my clothes. I had seen a few men come in and out of the cafe. Two wore stylish fedoras, pinstriped suits, and brightly colored silk ties, just as I had seen in the old movies. Unlike the old movies, however, where the colors were black and white, viewers my age didn’t appreciate the vibrant colors of the day. One of the men wore a brown suit with yellow pinstripes, with a brilliant yellow tie.  The other  wore a dark blue suit with powder blue pinstripes, and a blue and red tie. This was hardly the black-and-white world that I had seen in movies. This place was every bit as real and alive to the people living here as my time was to me  Other men wore denim overalls or jeans with flannel shirts. Given the differences in wardrobe, it was easy to see where the terms white collar and blue collar came from. Professionals and laborers were easy to differentiate. In contrast, I was wearing a blue Gore-Tex jacket, denim 501’s, a Notre Dame sweatshirt with a Nike tee shirt underneath, white Nike cross-trainers, and a San Francisco Giants baseball cap. I knew I looked out of place, but it could have been worse. Even though it was a bit chilly, I took my jacket off, as it was the most unusual item I was wearing, turned it inside out so that the fleece lining showed, and carried it under my arm. 

    I decided to see if I could pass off some of my coins in exchange for breakfast. I was pretty sure that my bills wouldn’t pass, but I thought that the coins in my pocket might if they were not inspected too closely. Before entering the cafe, I pulled the change from my pocket and counted out the quarters. I had three dollars. 

    I walked into the cafe and picked a seat at the counter. Looking around, I noticed a sign over the door. Apparently, only lunch and breakfast were served. After three o’clock, the place became a tavern, open only as a bar. For all the years that I lived in this town, I had never been in this building before. In my own time, it had never been a restaurant, just a bar.

    The menu was written on a blackboard on the wall. It was pretty basic breakfast fare. A waitress came over. 

    “Didn’t your mother ever tell you to take your hat off inside?” she asked, a little testily. “Sorry, I forgot,” I replied sheepishly.

    “What’ll you have?” she asked, as she looked me up and down. 

    “Bacon, eggs, toast, and coffee.” I said, trying not to act too nervous.

    “You can pay, right?” she asked.

    “Oh, yes, ma’am,” I said as I pulled a handful of change out of my pocket.

    “Sorry, I have to ask sometimes. Every now and then we get some in here with no money, and I haven’t ever seen you before,” she explained, while still scrutinizing me.

    “I just got into town last night,” I truthfully stated. “You wouldn’t have a newspaper around here, would you?”

    “I’ll check,” she answered as she went back to the kitchen.

    It scared me to think about what I must look like. Terminal hat hair and needing a shave and shower. No wonder she thought that I might not have any money.
    
    In a few minutes the waitress came back with a cup of coffee and a paper. “The paper’s from last night. This morning’s isn’t here yet.”

    “Thank you.” I said as I immediately unfolded the front page to look at the date.

    It was the San Francisco Examiner edition for Sunday, May 15, 1938. Even though I had already pretty much guessed when I was, it was really disturbing to see it in print. If that was yesterday’s paper, then this was May sixteenth, and it was my eleventh wedding anniversary, sixty years from now! 

    If this indeed was May 16, 1938, then that meant that my father was just three months old! It also meant that my great-grandparents were still alive and living here in this town. Why was I here? What task was I to perform? Would the angel show up again and tell me what to do? Probably not, I thought. She said that I would know what to do when the time came.

    The waitress brought my breakfast, and I read the paper while I ate. The front page was filled with stories about Hitler and events in Europe. Neville Chamberlain had given a speech recognizing the Nazi-led government in Austria, Édouard Daladier was the new Prime Minister of France, Italy occupied Ethiopia, and Japan was in control of Manchuria. There were also quite a few stories about Roosevelt and the economy. 

    The sports pages were dominated by baseball and boxing.  The San Francisco Seals were in sixth place in the Pacific Coast League, but were only five games out. Saturday had been a double header against the Oakland Oaks. It was also “Lefty” O’Doul day, and kids under fourteen got miniature bats and free peanuts. “Lefty” himself, born Francis Joseph O’Doul, had tossed balls to kids in the stands between games. 

    Lefty O’Doul had been a native San Franciscan who had also played for both the Yankees and Red Sox, as well as several other Major League teams. He was most famous, however, as a San Francisco Seal, where he had been manager from the ’30s to the ’50s. He had been my dad’s favorite player as a kid, and I always loved hearing about O’Doul. Even though the team changed its name and moved to Phoenix in 1957, when the Giants came west from New York, I had always been fascinated by them, and loved reading about them. It was always a big treat for me, even as an adult, to go to his restaurant at San Francisco’s Union Square. The place retained the feel of old San Francisco and had so many old pictures on the walls, it felt like a Hall of Fame–type shrine. 

    Another big sports story was the upcoming rematch between Joe Louis and Max Schmeling. The story had plenty to do with Hitler touting the superiority of the Aryan race, Schmeling’s twelfth-round knockout of Louis in 1936, and how Louis would not let himself be called champ until he had avenged his previous loss to the German. I was hazy on the chronology of events, but I was pretty sure that Louis had defeated the German handily in the rematch. 

    I continued to scan the paper and eat. The breakfast was great. It’s not like I had ordered anything exotic, and the basic taste was what I was used to but somehow different. I attributed the difference to the lack of the chemicals and preservatives that I was accustomed to in 1998. At the same time, being a pharmaceutical executive, I knew that additives and preservatives existed for a reason, and wondered if I was setting my system up for some type of weird parasite or food poisoning. I quickly dismissed the notion, deciding that I had to eat something and that an angel would not have brought me back sixty years in time to die of salmonella.
 
    I continued to scan the paper. A new four-door, sport sedan cost $817 at Zimerman Chevrolet. A grocery ad for Berutto’s Market in San Francisco showed catsup on sale three bottles for 25 cents, rib eye steaks were 22 cents a pound, California cheese was 14 cents a pound, toilet tissue was 3 rolls for 12 cents, and to my amusement, paper towels were 3 rolls for 23 cents. I didn’t know why, but in my mind, paper towels were a technological marvel of my childhood. In 1938, how absorbent could they have been? 

    I also saw that Nugent’s Department Store, again in San Francisco, was having a dollar-day sale. Boys’ corduroy pants in either cream or castor, sizes 6 through 16, were 1 dollar, and women’s fast color-wash dresses were three for a dollar. I wondered for a second what a fast color-wash dress was. Also offered were women’s heavy-weight panne satin, bias-cut lace or tailored-style satin slips, up to size 44, for one dollar. Considering that according to the blackboard menu at Dick Plate’s, my breakfast was going to be about 45 cents, all of those buys in the ads just had to be cheap, even in 1938. 

    Just as I was thinking that, the waitress asked if she could get me anything else. I smiled and told her no, everything had been great, and that I was very full. She smiled back and said, “Great. That’ll be fifty cents.”

    With a lot of trepidation, I reached into my pocket and sorted out three quarters. I had to leave a tip. If I stiffed her, I might make her suspicious. I dropped the coins into her hand and started for the door. Prepared to run at the first sound of alarm, I relaxed when I heard the register drawer open, the coins drop into the tray, and the drawer close again. 

    “Thanks.” she said as I walked out the door.

    I felt a huge rush of relief when I was outside. I didn’t think that I could do something like that again. What would I have said if she had noticed and they had run me down? It didn’t matter now. By the end of the day, nobody would know where the weird coins had come from. Besides, I didn’t have a ton of change, and I knew that I would never be able to pass off a bill. That meant that I was flat-broke in a town where I was a stranger.

    I started back down the Old County Road, the way that I had come. I had an urge to see my great-grandparents’ place, and since I didn’t know where else to go, I headed there. As I walked, I passed the Little Brown Church again. On the steps, near where I had slept, was a tall, thin man. He was dressed in a black suit, walking to the church from the parsonage in back. His name was Reverend Harold Hershey. Everyone who was a Pacifica local, back when I was a kid, knew Reverend Hershey. I had always been very fond of him, and I looked forward to the times he would “just come visiting.” His visits would always come precisely when dinner was about to be served. For forty years, Harold Hershey, who had never married, had been the pastor of Pacifica’s oldest church. He had baptized hundreds of children, including me, and when he died in 1979 at the age of eighty-three, the whole town mourned his passing.

    As I walked, I tried to come up with some sort of plan about what I should do for food and shelter while I was here. Out of necessity, I tried as hard as I could not to think of my wife and kids. Until I either completed the task that the angel had sent me here to do or found a way to get back to my own time, thinking of them would just make me crazy with loneliness. Besides, I knew where they were and knew that they at least were safe. Which was more than I could say for myself.