Saluki Marooned. Robert Rickman

a bemused expression, Harry settled on a medium setting for his lamp, lit his pipe, went back to work, and apparently didn’t notice the shiny new coat of wax on the floor.

      I had a clear idea of the history of the future until 2009, but the farther I went back, the hazier world events became. Within my reach was the maroon mechanical pencil the soldier had given to me on the train. I picked it up; it seemed to fit my hand perfectly. Without thinking, I wrote in neat cursive script, something I had not done for decades.

      1. Nixon resigns in August of 1974 because of his role in the cover-up of the Watergate breakin.

      2. Gerald Ford becomes president. He’s followed by Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush the Elder, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush the Younger, and Barack Obama.

      3. Inflation will go to double digits in the ‘70s.

      4. In 1975, One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest wins Best Picture.

      5. The space shuttle Challenger will blow up shortly after launch in 1984. (I think)

      6. The PC will be invented in the ‘70s and will be used on a massive scale, as will the Internet, by the ‘90s.

      7. The Cold War will end in 1991.

      8. 9/11

      8. The White Sox will win the World Series in 2005, for the first time in 88 years.

      10. The “Great Recession” will start in 2007.

      11. Barack Obama, the first black president, will be elected in 2008.

      12. In May 2009, an inland hurricane will sweep through Southern Illinois, creating widespread destruction.

      13. In October 2009, Peter Federson will be yanked back in time to 1971.

      I found a red magic marker in my desk and printed over the top of this list:

      WHAT I KNOW.

      And I taped the paper to my wall next to my desk.

      Soon, Harry closed his book and placed it on the shelf, and got up to leave.

      “Going to lunch, Federson?”

      “Naw, I got some things to do.” I wasn’t hungry, anyway.

      Clouds filled the sky, the air smelled of rain, and the gremlins, who thrived on gloomy weather, were standing by to pluck a nerve. I knew what was coming.

      Don’t think… function!

      I slid open the blond wood accordion door to the closet, and felt that I was intruding on someone else’s privacy: my own, thirty-eight years removed. Some clothes were on hangers and the rest were piled on the dresser, which was built into the closet.

      What a garish assortment: bright red plaid bell bottoms with cuffs, shirts with huge collar points, wide paisley neckties in brutally clashing colors…clothing designs that in any other period of recorded history would be considered absurd. I found a tin of aspirin in the pile—probably handy for headaches caused by the sight of that gaudy stack of fabric.

      The clothes in the dresser looked as if they had been dumped out of the same bag that had been emptied out onto my desk before I had cleaned it up. Grayish underwear, a couple of turtleneck shirts, two pairs of new jeans that were as stiff as corpses, a hopelessly wrinkled maroon sweatshirt with SIU in a white circle on the front. But on top was a well-organized sock drawer, the socks neatly rolled into themselves.

      “Well, some things never change,” I murmured, remembering that the sock drawer in my trailer was organized the same way.

      And there, hanging in the closet, was the project of the day: twenty pounds of laundry stuffed into a ten-pound bag.

      In the laundry room, in the basement of the dorm, I stuffed my clothes in the washers, which only cost 10 cents for a load, got them going, and went back upstairs. A half hour later, I bounced back down the stairs and found a stopped dryer full of somebody else’s dry clothes. I laid them neatly on the laundry table and put my clothes in the drier. Thirty minutes later, while whistling a Chopin Etude, I trotted downstairs again to pick up my clean laundry, but it wasn’t in the dryer…it was on the floor.

      As I was angrily picking it up, I heard behind me: “Listen, asshole, don’t mess with my shit. Do you hear me?”

      I turned around and saw a six-foot-tall kid staring at me with squint-eyed fury. Muscles bulged under his cutoff T-shirt.

      “They seemed dry to me,” I said as the gremlins banged my nerves.

      “Bullshit!” The kid looked like he was going to leap at me. I backed warily away from him with my dripping clothes in my arms and darted up the stairs. This was the incident that I had been harboring in my mind for nearly 40 years, and it hit me with a psychological body blow. With shaking hands and mounting anger, I flipped through the Von Reichmann Book.

      “The nervous person must understand that other people are entitled to have opinions that differ from yours,” I read out loud.

      Horseshit!

      “When aggravated by someone, you must decide whether you will let yourself be annoyed.”

      …Yes I will!

      “Laughter and anger go together like gasoline and water.”

      That’s it!

      I needed to start laughing immediately, or I would be carrying this nightmare around for four more decades.

      “Functioning towards a realizable goal nearly always reduces nervousness,” I read.

      When I stepped down into the basement again, that hulking cartoon character, a walking advertisement for SIU’s open enrollment policy, was leaning on a dryer.

      “You’re absolutely right,” I said as I breezed past him.

      The malevolent kid was smoking a cigarette. He looked up with a quizzical expression and then ground the butt under his heel. “What the fuck do you mean?” he said, and spat a speck of tobacco out of his mouth.

      “I mean, I mean…with this humidity it takes a long time for the clothes to dry.”

      “Is that so?” said the kid with a leer.

      “Yup, here…” I gave him two dimes. “…make sure they’re good and dry. I mean, I did take some of your dryer time, and I forgot that it’s awfully humid outside.”

      I wiped my brow. The kid took the dimes in his big paw and inserted them into the dryer, and as I had hoped, he increased the heat setting to ‘high.’ He sat down again without a word, pulled out another cigarette from his pocket, and sullenly lit it up.

      An hour later I had my feet on my desk as I watched that savage walk slowly along Point Drive with his new friend: the gremlin that had been tormenting me for years. The kid was glowering—slung over his shoulders were shirts and trousers that looked like crumpled notebook paper that someone had tried to straighten out. As long as I remembered that image whenever I did my laundry, that particular gremlin would never pluck my nerves again.

      My technique of reducing nervous symptoms might not have met with the approval of Dr. Von Reichmann, but it did work, and I took a deep, heebie-jeebie-free breath of nice, damp air. That’s when I noticed a faded 3x5 note card attached to the radiator with old yellow tape rippling in the breeze. On the card, some time ago, I had written:

      The future is no more uncertain than the present.

      Walt Whitman

      I pulled out a piece of paper and my mechanical pencil. Maybe when I woke up the next morning, I’d be in 2009 again. Or some other year. Or maybe I’d have to relive most of my life all over again. I looked up at the oak tree outside the window; it would still be there in 2009, and so would I, one way or the other.

      Now, what do I want from the future?

      Honestly? I didn’t want to be poor anymore, yet I didn’t have the nerve resistance