Katherine's Kingdom Ch. 02

Being a connoisseur of old school culture and the sixties in particular, Mike was very familiar with music from the era. Acid rock, hippie folk, and British invasion genres were all well and good, but when it came to favorites, there was a reason why they called Elvis Presley the King. Mike's mother had been spinning 78 records since he was old enough to remember, and America's rock'n'roll pioneer was her crooner of choice. It's Now Or Never stuck out in Mike's mind for some reason. The smooth mandolin opening gave it a classic Old Italy vibe, then a steady cha-cha rhythm was followed by Elvis' unmistakable baritone:

It's now or never, come hold me tight

Kiss me my darling, be mine tonight

Tomorrow will be too late

It's now or never, my love won't wait...

The ex-quarterback could still see her swinging about the living room, never the most graceful but definitely in all her glory. Caroline Montgomery had always been the type of person to live in the moment, like each and every second might be her last. She didn't care what people thought about her kooky, often eccentric ways. If something felt good, it was worth doing to the fullest extent of your being.

The moment was crystal clear. He could hear the lyrics so clear now that they might as well have been coming from the next room:

When I first saw you with your smile so tender

My heart was captured and soul surrendered

I'd spend a lifetime waiting for the right time

Now that you're near the time is here at last...

With the chorus under way again, Mike began to mumble the song word for word. He could even make out a voice, maybe his mother's, matching his. She was a much better singer, though. The ex-quarterback would weigh her down if they ever tried becoming a duo.

A squeal as she missed a high note caused Mike's eyes to suddenly open. That was most definitely not Caroline Montgomery. Come to think of it, this was most definitely not his house. It sort of looked like his dad's utility room they had remade out of the basement's walk-in closet, but different. The cement walls were painted a faded, almost mint green, unlike Charles Montgomery's more manly dark blue. A black, oval-shaped throw rug rested beneath a metal rod with the prim, proper skirts and dresses of somebody's grandmother. There was also a large wooden hope chest inlaid with frilly pink and white swirls. It looked like something straight out of the 1950s.

Mike still thought he was in a dream, or maybe a dream within a dream. This one felt so solid, so real, though. He wrapped his knuckle against the wall, felt its cold, unyielding surface, and marveled at how this doozy would probably feel upon awakening.

A new tune made him sit up and take notice. This one featured a jackhammer piano along with young male voices going bah bah bah bah to the beat. Mike had to dig a little deeper in his memory bank for this one, but recognized At the Hop by Danny and the Juniors after a second. He bopped his head with some of the lyrics:

Well you can rock it you can roll it

You can stop and you stroll it at the hop

When the record starts spinning

You chalypso when you chicken at the hop

Do the dance sensation that is sweeping the nation at the hop...

He felt someone stirring beside him. What's Jessica doing in my dream? "What is going on? Where are we, Mike?" she asked, thick with drowsiness.

How should he respond to such a question? He didn't even know where was, or even when was, for that matter. "That depends. Am I in your dream, or are you in my dream?" he asked with a half-smile.

Instead, she kept up with the same disorienting comments. "What is that ancient music that's playing? Sounds like something my grandparents listen to."

Mike cocked an ear briefly. Now Danny and the Juniors were on their second go-around with the chorus:

Ah, let's go to the hop

Let's go to the hop (oh baby)

Let's go to the hop (oh baby)

Let's go to the hop

Come on, let's go to the hop.

It was literally music to his ears. The ex-quarterback moved and grooved his upper body without even realizing it. "So, what's wrong with that? I always thought these were the golden oldies," he said.

"More like the moldy oldies," Jessica said back.

"Hey, I resemble that remark." Mike cracked a full smile this time.

"Honey, do you know what time it is? I feel like I've slept for a million years." She yawned, stretching languidly.

Mike reached for his waist, where he kept his grandfather's gold-plated pocketwatch. Instead, the ex-quarterback only hooked lint and one measly coin. He fished out a Kennedy half-dollar. A casual glance, though, quickly morphed into wide-eyed wonderment.

"What the hell?" he asked, hand shaking uncontrollably.

Its 2020 mint date brought back a flood of memories. Suddenly, Mike recounted North Korea's nuclear attack and all the destruction that had happened what seemed like only moments ago. If that was still canon to this existence, where were they? Was this some sort of purgatory to heaven, or maybe even heaven itself? If so, God has a lot of explaining to do!

"What's the matter, Mike?" Jessica's voice echoed her boyfriend's worry.

"I'm not sure just yet," he said, closing his eyes to gather his bearings. "First I have to figure out how the hell we got to where we are. This looks about the size of my dad's makeshift workshop, but it's completely different."

Jessica did a double take, then a triple take, when she finally noticed their environs. "What's with all these old-fashioned clothes? Did somebody have a field day at the flea market or something?"

Mike answered her question with another question. "Listen, you do remember the nuclear attack, right, or am I just going senile?"

"Do I remember it? How could I forget it?" She looked at him as if he had two heads. "That was just a few minutes ago."

"Well, if that was just a few minutes ago, how did we end up here?"

Jessica's eyes narrowed. "Good question. Just where is here, anyway?"

"That's what I'm trying to figure out," Mike said. "What's your last recollection before waking up just now?"

She scratched her strawberry locks. "Plaster from the ceiling was falling down on us. We barely made it into the closet and under that workbench. Then we recited the Lord's Prayer together," his girlfriend said after a pause.

The oldies but goodies beyond their cubicle suddenly ceased. Mike and Jessica fell silent. He held his breath and a single finger to his lips. They could feel their hearts thumping as a few precious seconds ticked away. Following what seemed like forever, the simple rhythm guitar and double drumline of the Everly Brothers' All I Have To Do Is Dream filled the airwaves.

"There's somebody out there playing music," he said.

"What a way to state the obvious," his girlfriend said. "Who, though, and how did we end up inside their house?"

"I don't know quite yet," Mike said, scratching his head. "Maybe they found and rescued us during the attack, then just brought us back here to recoup because the hospitals were all destroyed?"

"If that was the case, why dump us in a cramped closet like this instead of beds? Besides, we don't have so much as a cut or scratch from that ordeal. There's got to be a better explanation."

Mike looked in the dimness towards the door, where a thin crack of light lay along the carpeting. "Well, whatever it is, we'll probably find it out there," he said.

"Are you crazy?" Jessica said, practically hissing as she grabbed his shoulder. "You don't know what we could possibly be stumbling upon. What if this is some stranger's house and they have us arrested for trespassing?"

"That's a chance I'm willing to take. We can't stay in here forever." So said, the ex-quarterback stood on sea legs and stumbled for the exit. The Everly Brothers were finished with their dream. Now Conway Twitty was singing that it was only Make Believe. Do I sense a pattern developing here? Mike shook his head at the thought while his hand paused on the knob.

He took a chance and pried the door open a bit. It creaked softly, but nothing more. When nobody on the other side screamed bloody murder, he felt safe widening the shaft of light between himself and the outside world. Conway's voice came clear as a bell now from around the corner, so close now that they might as well have been in the same room. He couldn't see much from this vantage point, so tiptoed the short stub of hallway and tried to spy on whoever might be around the corner.

The ex-quarterback found a scene so out of place and so out of date it might've come from an alien planet. The furniture, in what was obviously a bedroom, was covered in some type of gaudy green fabric and supported by wooden pins for feet. Tan carpeting seemed immaculately neat and sensible. Light came from a series of bulbs hanging from the ceiling with odd eggshell-shaped shades behind them. Wallpaper, such as it was, featured girly-girl flowers in garish colors of light blue and dark orange. A four-poster bed with an intricately carved wooden headboard sat against the far wall, and sure enough, a turntable was spinning records beside it. However, there was nobody in the vicinity.

"Well, what do you see?" Jessica asked in whisper. He turned slightly to find her at his right shoulder.

"Seeing is believing." The ex-quarterback swept his hand towards the corner.

The redhead's jaw almost hit the ground as a hand clasped over her mouth. "We're definitely not in Kansas anymore," she said.

"You can say that again."

"What exactly have we stumbled upon, a vintage set from Home and Garden? All that stuff out there looks like it came from a garage sale."

"I know. I can't quite figure things out yet. I need to see more to know for sure." Bravely, Mike came out and ventured deeper into the room. Its size was roughly of length and width to his basement back in Winterset, oddly enough. Other than what he had already observed, though, the rest of his new surroundings were relatively spartan in nature. A parchment-style wall hanging depicted a scene of samurais with curved swords and some Japanese characters above, and an oil painting of a mountainous nature scene completed the display.

The rattling of what sounded like dishes above his head told Mike that whoever had just been in this bedroom was now in a kitchen, or possibly dining room. He didn't want to startle whoever it might be, but there was really no other way around the problem. Maybe a home intruder might seem a little less threatening sitting down. Going with this thought, he motioned to come out of hiding. More than a little timidly, she finally did. They sat on the pea-green sofa. Its vertical wooden armrests and flat cushions weren't exactly the most comfortable.

The seconds ticked by agonizingly slow. Mike was beginning to think nobody would come back down. However, just when Conway Twitty began another ditty, the outer door squeaked open to produce a girl in her middle teenage years. Her brown hair was tied high in a ponytail with a red ribbon and she wore one of the ankle-length dresses from the walk-in closet. A plain white plate with sandwich gripped in one hand. She saw Mike and Jessica in the same instant they saw her, almost dropping her cargo to the floor in the process.

"What is...is...going on here? Who are...you...you people, and how...how did you get into...my...my house?" the girl asked, backpedaling to the door. Her face was an ocean of genuine terror as she reached behind herself for the knob.

The ex-quarterback's hands immediately flew up, palms out, in what he hoped she'd interpret as a non-threatening gesture. "Please, we mean you no harm. We honestly don't know how we got here, much less what we're doing here. Far as who we are, my name is Mike Montgomery, and this is my girlfriend, Jessica Wilder."

The latter smiled warmly, standing and taking a few steps forward. She extended a hand as if to shake. "Pleased to meet you, young lady. Your name would be?"

Fortunately, the teenager was polite, which was a minor miracle, considering that Mike and Jessica might be murderers or rapists for all she knew. "Antonia Villapiano," she said, arching a skeptical eyebrow. "What do you mean that you don't know how you got here? Are you two dopers?"

Dopers? Mike hadn't heard that word in such a long time, and struggled for a few seconds to figure out what it meant. Once he got the gist, though, he answered. "Nope, never been into that and never will be. I think I could better answer your questions and put you at ease if you could just tell us where we are."

"Where you are? You don't know where you are? That's a hoot." The teenage girl's incredulous look was almost comical. "Why, you're in Winterset, Wisconsin, but you two pranksters probably knew that already."

Winterset? That meant they hadn't left town, at least. Mike glanced at Jessica briefly, then back at their host. "Come on, you can be honest with me," he said. "You and the other survivors found us in the rubble of my house's basement after the nuclear attack, then brought us back here to recuperate, didn't you?"

"Rescue you? Nuclear attack? What's this all about?" Now her humor was gone. "Somebody put you up to this prank, didn't they? Well, the joke's on you. I just finished my freshman year a few days ago, so technically I'm a sophomore now."

Something about Antonia's mannerisms were off. Mike couldn't quite put a finger on it. "Actually, we just graduated," he said. "We're not here to goof on you, either. We just need some information."

"What kind of information?" The sandwich plate now on a nearby dresser, she folded arms over her chest.

"Well, you claim that we're in Winterset. What address is it, though? There's just something familiar about this place, now that I think about it again." The ex-quarterback visually panned the room.

"Mister, I don't see how that could possibly be the case. I've lived here my entire life."

Mike pressed. "Just where is here, anyway?" He leaned forward, anxious to hear the response.

"905 Elmwood, if you must know so badly," she said, lips pursed.

Now it was his turn for jaw to hit the floor. "What? 905 Elmwood is my address! Maybe you're the one turning the tricks. If you are, it's not very funny."

"I have told you the truth, sir, and now that I have, I kindly suggest that both of you leave the way you came, otherwise I'll call the police!" She stamped one foot on the carpet and pointed stiffly towards the exit.

Mike opened his mouth to protest, but Jessica rested a hand on his shoulder. "Honey, forget about it. Let's just leave. You found that coin in your pocket, right? Did you happen to bring my cell phone back from upstairs? We could just use Google Maps to get our exact coordinates."

He patted his pockets. "Nope, they're empty," Mike said.

"Could it maybe be in the closet? Should we look?" His girlfriend started to head back from the way they'd come.

Now Antonia Villapiano became a curious cat. "What is a cell phone? Furthermore, what is this Google and its maps? Why have I never heard of these things?"

"You're kidding, right?" Mike couldn't help but laugh out loud. "This must be some kind of elaborate set-up. Did my boys Adam Diggs and Matt Crockett put you up to this? If so, they did a great job getting all these vintage pieces. This sofa, for instance, looks like it could have been purchased at that secondhand antique store up on Claremont Street!"

"Vintage? Antique? I'll have you know that my mother and father bought that just for me at Mason Furniture Store on the corner of Grand and Second Streets, not an old fogey store on Claremont. There's nothing on Claremont but the Buggy Wheel juke joint, Tim's Meat Market butcher shop, and if I remember correctly, a Cities Service gas station," Antonia said, bristling indignantly. "Furthermore, who are these Adam Diggs and Matt Crockett fellows? I've never heard of them before."

Mike stopped dead in his tracks. If his buddies on the football team were yanking his chain, they had gone to great lengths researching Winterset's history. The businesses this girl let so casually roll off her tongue had met their maker way back when Richard Nixon was resigning as President over Watergate and making way for Gerald Ford. He liked to think his knowledge of sixties culture was at least semi-capable, so decided to test young Antonia (if that was even her real name) and see just how much Diggs and Crockett had brought her up to speed.

He gave her an underhanded slow pitch for starters. "Who is President of the United States?" the ex-quarterback asked.

"Do you think I have stupid written on my forehead? John F Kennedy, of course. I should know. Both my parents, being Catholic, voted for him," she said, returning serve.

"Who is Vice-President? What about secretary general?"

Antonia rolled her eyes and sighed impatiently. "Lyndon Johnson is our Vice-President, and JFK's brother Robert is secretary general. Everybody knows this. They are things we learn in civics class."

She was right. It was time to see just what Miss Smarty-Pants was made of. "Who is governor of Wisconsin?" Mike asked.

"That's easy," she said with bullet-like precision. "Gaylord Nelson."

"What about mayor of Winterset?"

"Frank Witherspoon, who succeeded Bertram Wallace."

Damn, this girl is good, he began thinking. Now, for some entertainment questions. Diggs and Crockett surely wouldn't have prepped her much in that department. Their idea of entertainment was watching cheerleaders make out in a hot tub at a weekend party. "What's your favorite television show?"

Antonia giggled with schoolgirl effect. "My Three Sons on ABC, of course. All my friends just love Don Grady, who plays Robbie Douglas. He's the bee's knees."

Sweat began to form on Mike's forehead. He was becoming obsessed with stumping her. "Okay, pop quiz, hot shot. February 3, 1959 is typically known as The Day The Music Died. Can you tell me..."

"Can I tell you who died on the airplane that crashed in a cornfield near Clear Lake, Iowa? Hmm...let me guess. Would the answer to the $64,000 question be Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, the Big Bopper, and their pilot Roger Peterson? Would that be a bingo?" She stared determinedly at Mike, who was at a loss for words. Antonia nodded, final-like. "Good, tell the lady what's she's won, Don Pardo!"

Finally, he discovered his tongue. "I don't get it. How could you possibly know all that?" It was as much a question to himself as it was to her.

"How do I know all of that? It's common knowledge. Anybody can pick up a TV Guide or Tiger Beat and learn all they need to know."

Mike dry-swallowed a lump the size of a bowling ball in his throat. Her scope of intellect on pop culture was beginning to freak him out. Then, inspiration suddenly struck. "What day did you say it was?" he asked, smile returning.

"I never did, but it's Monday." Her dark brown eyes narrowed.

"What is the month and year?"

"You're positively cuckoo! It's the twenty-first of May in the year of our good Lord 1962."

"Okay, one last bonus round. If you get this, you're in like Flynn. There was a movie that won an Academy Award for best drama this past March. Who starred, and what was the feature's title?"

Antonia licked her lips and stared off into space. Mike could feel himself snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. There was no way Diggs and Crockett's limited IQs stretched this far. Then, after a few moments, she replied matter-of-factly. "Are you talking about American Dreams with Katherine Kennedy? What a far out flick! I even hear it's been optioned into a boob tube series for this fall."