The Last Timekeepers and the Noble Slave

Royal Blood

“Stupid smokers!” Drake seethed. He picked up another cigarette butt lying near his mother’s grave and threw it as far as he could.

“Now, don’t you get all flustered.” Grammie stroked the back of his neck. “You got to learn to have compassion. Many times people are deyr own worst enemies.”

“Compassion? Why?” His brown eyes glistened. “People know the dangers of smoking. It’s written right on the cigarette package in bold type, complete with a picture of a diseased body part!”

Grammie’s cheeks sunk deep into her dark brown face. “Your mama died of lung cancer.” She twisted her thin lips. “I think a smart boy like you, above all people, would have an understanding about da challenges of addiction.”

His thoughts shifted to April of two years ago. A dark hospice room. Stark, white walls. Sterile alcohol wipes. Spiraling intravenous tubes. Shuffling nurse’s feet. Morphine drip. Mottled red skin. Cold to the touch. Organ failure. Gone. Empty cigarette pack in the bedside drawer.

He curled his toes. “Smoking kills. Mom should have known. Tell me something I don’t know.”

“What you don’t know, young man, is what is in da minds of other people. You don’t know how dey think, or what dey done. Everybody is meant to walk a different path. Including your mama.”

The sound of his grandmother’s rich, Jamaican accent soothed him. Drake wiped his eyes, and stared at his mother’s gravestone. Grammie added white, orange, and yellow lily bouquets in between the two small cedar bushes his father planted last April. The pink granite glistened around the short epitaph, LUCILLE A. BAILEY, TOO WELL LOVED TO EVER BE FORGOTTEN.

A lot had happened since her death. Even in the past month, his father, Zachery Bailey, an Air Force Captain, had left to go on his third tour in the Middle East, and Grammie had come to take care of Drake while he was away. Sighing, Drake focused on the headstone, and cut through the granite to view the past year with laser-like precision. Last June. Grade eight. Food fight. Four classmates. Detention. Melody’s Garden. Discovery. The Arch of Atlantis. Timekeepers. Drake blinked himself back, knowing his life would never be the same after that summer, and wondered how his idol, Albert Einstein, would theorize about time travel now.

He heard a rustling noise and turned his head toward the oldest part of White Pines Cemetery. A gray-haired old man briskly raked around several deteriorated gravestones, then dropped the dead grass into a garbage bag. Catching Drake’s eye, he leaned against his rake, wiped his broad forehead, and waved. Drake smiled and waved back.

“Grammie, that old guy’s waving at me. Do you know him?”

Grammie glanced behind her, and smiled. “Good morning, Mr. Taylor. You’ve got some clear skies to clean around your relations’ graves.”

Mr. Taylor rubbed his bristly chin. “Yes, Ma’am. My family went through hell and back, and I try to make sure they rest easy now. See you in church next Sunday, Ms. Lizzie.” He nodded and went back to raking.

Drake stared at the cluster of crumbling headstones. Weathered. Sunken. Unreadable. He raised a brow. “Hell and back? I wonder what he means by that.”

Grammie chewed her bottom lip. “Some of dose grave stones are over a hundred and some odd years. Mr. Taylor’s ancestors were slaves who escaped from da south using da Underground Railway. They made a home here in White Pines.”