Mr. Time - A Short Story

This story was inspired by a song I heard back in the 1970's

Us kids thought the old man was a just bum, homeless and dressed mostly in rags that he rescued from the dump. We used to see him all the time, but we never talked to him and he never talked to us, but to shoo us away. We knew he lived quite poorly in an old shack by the edge of the rail yards.

He was tall and thin like an old scarecrow, dressed in a long coat that had seen much better days. He always looked dirty. I don't think he ever bathed and if you were downwind from him you could smell him and it wasn't pleasant.

Often we would see him at the dump, digging around in the garbage as if he were looking for something important, on a mission of sorts. Most of the time he would be dragging a bunch of what looked like old pieces of electrical equipment and cables back to his shack.
We constantly gave him a bad time, yelling insults at him. Get a job, stinky! Take a bath!
Kids can be so cruel.

I remember we used to sneak up to his shack and bang on the door and run away. He would come out shaking his fist at us yelling, "Go away, get out of here, leave me alone."
We would just laugh at him and heap more insults and misery at him. Sometimes we would throw old rotten apples at him that we picked up in the orchards.

I asked my parents about him at supper one night. They said he had been living in that shack for many years. They didn't know much about him but they had heard stories. Some said he used to be married and had a family and that he had an important job at a university, but there was an accident and his wife and children had died. They said he lost his mind, his job, his home and that he was never the same again.
I felt a twinge of regret for having treated him so badly and decided I should do something for him to atone for my cruel behavior.
The next day I made some sandwiches and along with a jug of apple juice I went to his shack. I could tell he was there as there was a lot of banging and muttering going on. I was nervous and a bit afraid. I put the bag of food near the door, knocked loudly and ran a short distance away.
He opened the door, looked at the bag, picked it up and looked inside. He then looked at me and I could see an intelligence in his eyes that I never expected. With the briefest of nods he turned and went back inside, slamming the door after him.
Days went by and I was constantly thinking about this man and who he was.
Sometimes I would sneak up to his shack when I knew he wasn't there and peek inside the window. It was pretty sparse inside but I did notice the thing he was working on. There was some kind of machine in the corner.

I thought, at first, it must be some kind of a still for making alcohol. Little did I know its real purpose and I would not have guessed what it was in a thousand years.

But I was to find out a week or so later. I was skulking around his shack late one night and snuck up to the window and peeked inside. The old man was hooking up some power cables to the machine. He picked up a notebook and stood inside of the machine. He glanced up and saw me looking in the window and ......smiled. He threw a switch and there was a blinding blue flash, a swooshing sound and suddenly the old man and the machine disappeared.

It was then I understood what the old man was working on.

The future was all Mr. Times

All images are free to use and share.