The Traveler

Time is on my watch. It’s the one thing I watch. I kept thinking things would be different if I could alter the clock. That the altering of events would bring my restless mind peace. It kept bringing up questions. In retrospect, would I want to? I’m waiting for something to happen, again. That’s what I asked Evan as he showed up at the end of my shift.

Evan is the meek-mannered guard, who talks with me for a few minutes just before I get off. He always brings the same silver lunch pale, and I rouse my eyes, sit up straight in my chair waiting on his little chevy to come down the road. We talk about the strangest things — just to pass the time. Today, he’s a couple of minutes early. He pulls up next to me, and I roll down my window.

“Hey Chad, what’s up?”

I yawn, it’s been a boring shift, and I’m ready to go to bed. I rotate my wrist and check the time again.

“Same as always, and it’s good to see you, Evan.”

Evan turns off his car, and I anticipate his next move, a mug of coffee to his lips.

“Evan, if you could change anything about your life right now, what would it be?”

“I’d probably have gone with Hazelnut. Why you ask?”

I scratch my leg, knowing the conversation may deepen as my pant leg comes up slightly.

“You don’t have anything you’d rather do with your life? Something you’d rather have done?”

“Nope.” He says with a loud slurp. “At least I don’t think so.” He shuts his engine off. “You?”

“Well,” I chuckle, “I thought you’d never ask. Last night was a bit of a shift.”

He looks at me peculiarly.

“Like what, job choices?”

“You ever wonder what the world would be like if JFK survived, or if the Titanic hadn’t sunk, or if there hadn’t been a fire in Chicago or Roswell?”

“You were thinking about Titanic?”

“I know what’s going to happen. The ship is going to veer into an iceberg. Do you ever wonder what would’ve happened if they’d missed that iceberg?”

“A ferry boat. Why?”

“You ever wonder how sea travel would’ve been different. I do sometimes, but that’s a conversation for another day.”

“I got plenty of shift left.”

“Think about it. We might still be using that thing. We’d be guarding a mountain of coal.”

“Or, it could have just hit another iceberg three weeks later.”

” What made you think of it at the end of your shift?”

“Our conversations, of course.”

We both chuckled, arriving at that thought about the same time.

I glanced at my watch again. A few minutes had passed, and I was thinking about the drive home, in a few hours.

“How much time you got?”

“What if the Carpathian had arrived sooner? Or if the life rafts had been partitioned better."

"The world may never know."

"Would you have sailed if you knew it was going to sink? Would you have tried to beat the odds?"

"Probably, I mean it looked like a pretty steady venture. And it was a novelty for the time. A couple of days on a luxury liner." Evan said flipping through his phone.

"You're not going to find it on the gram," I said.

"How'd you know I was on Instagram?"

"A guess."

I turned the ignition in my car. Preparing to leave, I sat back fastening my seatbelt.

"You headed out man?"

"Yep, "I said, " I have a little drive to relax."

"Well, I'm going to sit here watching tumbleweeds."

As I pulled out of the sand, my tires spun. I never liked dirt roads. They're bumpy and disturb the tread. I sat down in my recliner and put my head back, about thirty minutes later, still thinking about that conversation. I probably wouldn't change a thing.