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JOHNNY BLACK: A STORY IN THE STYLE OF 'SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE"

Johnny Black remembered the first time he shifted.  It wasn't anything special, no traumatic experience brought on his time change, he was watching a movie at the Palladium when he was eight years old.  He was watching a movie with John Wayne, where the Duke was an old man dying of cancer.  He was eating popcorn while his father was outside smoking a clove cigarette, as the Duke was onscreen telling Ronny Howard how bad it was to be a killer. And so it goes. 1

Then Johnny Black was thirty-eight and was sitting at dinner, with his lovely wife June and their daughter Anastasia.  "More roast beef, dear?" asked June, holding the porcelain plate up, rich beef juices swirling around beneath the meat.  Johnny looked at it for a long moment, considering his answer carefully.  Anastasia, who they had named after the Russian princess killed in a peasant revolution poked at her food in boredom, black hair streaked with green.
"Yes." Johnny said with finality, and tore off a fibrous glob.  He munched quietly, thinking about John Wayne.  He ate mechanically, though the food was good.
His wife June did not notice his apathy, and instead turned her attention on Antasia's hair streaked with green.2 "I honestly can't see why you would wear your hair like that. Black's not even your natural color."  She turned to Johnny Black. "She has such lovely blond hair, wouldn't you say?"
"Mom! I told you not to complain about my hair!  I like how it looks!" She was fifteen and wore black, a Marilyn Manson t-shirt and faded black jeans.  Johnny looked idly at himself, and was mildly surprised to see how pudgy he'd become.  He thought he should do more situps.  He had been a thin boy, and this older Johnny was the product of working behind a desk all day and eating June's rich cooking.
"Talk some sense into her, would you please?" Johnny Black looked up to see his lovely wife June looking to him pleadingly.  She was still attractive, but had loved Johnny Black for his singing as teenagers.
Johnny considered his words carefully before he spoke. "I think you should at least wash the green streaks from your hair.  I like the black, at least."
Anastasia looked triumphant, and nodded to her father. "See? At least he thinks it's good!"
June glared at her husband, but said nothing, stabbing her mashed potatoes angrily.  Johnny returned to his food, staring at the juices swirling around. And so it goes.

Johnny was back in the John Wayne movie, his father sitting next to him and reeking of clove cigarettes.  They were still rare in his life, though Johnny Black knew they would gain popularity as the years went on. He did not mention this to his father, though, since his dad did not even want his son knowing that he smoked.  Johnny Black had never seen his father smoke, only knew that he did.  His father told him that the sweet smoke was incense, but Johnny Black knew this was a lie, since he always smelled stronger after coming back from 'stepping outside to get some fresh air', and once Johnny had found a pack in his father's bedroom while looking for his father's guns.  He knew his father kept an old colt .45 revolver in his sock drawer, and Johnny Black wanted to play at being John Wayne.  He knew the Duke liked colts, though not like the model his father had, but he still wanted to be like the Duke.  Johnny Black had found a pack of cigarettes on his father's dresser, and sniffed at them, not having seen black cigarettes before.  He stole one, and a friend at school had told him it was a clove, then smoked it with Johnny Black behind the gymnasium. They both got sick. And so it goes.
John Wayne was talking with Jimmy Stewart now about something called laudanum, but Johnny Black would not know what that was for many years to come.  He had asked his father about it at the beginning of the movie, but his father had shrugged and said it was some sort of frontier medicine.  Johnny Black had filed it away with things he did not understand about grown ups, like Elvis Presley and sex.

Johnny Black time shifted again, and was gathered with his father next to his father's electronics store in Los Angeles, in the middle of the Rodney King Riots. He was twenty two years old, and was wrapped around a Mossberg pump action shotgun, while his father was beside him on the floor, holding the old Colt .45 revolver. He was smoking a clove cigarette.  Outside, past the barred windows and broken glass, a wave of people moved through the streets, chanting, "No Justice for Rodney!" Johnny Black felt uncomfortable, his legs cramped from sitting for so long.  From time to time someone would bash at the iron bars, trying to get in, and then move on to easier targets, like Mr. Chong's convenience store down the street. It didn't have barred windows.
"How're you holding up?" His father looked at Johnny Black, noticing him moving a bit.  His father wore blue jeans and a t-shirt, and Johnny Black thought his father looked nothing like John Wayne right then.  He looked tired, worn out, not ready to take on the world like John Wayne nearly always did.
"I'm okay, I guess. Just scared." Johnny Black was scared.  In the last two days his world had been turned upside down by a jury of people who watched a black man beaten to a pulp by cops and then turned those cops free.  And so it goes.  It didn't make sense to him, and Johnny Black had come home from the university to help his father after the riots had started.
"So am I, son."  His father had never called him Johnny Black, always 'son' or 'sport' or 'kiddo.' His father looked over the window sill, then ducked back down. "Glad I put these bars in.  Cops aren't doin' a damn thing to stop this shit."  He tapped out his smoldering cigarette, and then lipped a fresh one. He offered the pack to Johnny Black. "Here, might make you feel better."
Johnny Black had not smoked his father's clove cigarettes since he was in back of the gymnasium, but he took the offered smoke and put it between his dry lips.

Johnny Black time shifted and was behind the gymnasium with his friend Earl, and they were both 11 years old.  Earl was tall for his age, nearly 5 feet.  Johnny Black had always been short, would always be short, he knew, and barely came up to Earl's chest. They had been friends for two years. They would be friends for eleven years, when Earl would be shot in the LA riots while trying to steal a television from Johnny Black's father.  Johnny Black already knew this, but did not say anything to his friend. He did not want to worry him.
"Clove cigarette, what is this shit?"  Earl always swore. He thought it made him sound older. But he was in puberty, and his voice was cracking. He squeaked whenever he said a cuss word.
Johnny Black shrugged and pulled out the lighter they had found on the road.  "My father smokes them all the time." He said, and gave the lighter to Earl.  Earl tried to look sophisticated as he took a puff, and immediately started coughing. His eyes watered, but he gasped. "It's…good." He handed the clove cigarette to Johnny Black.
Johnny Black did not know if he wanted the cigarette or not, but he would not back down in front of his friend. He took a hit, and his lungs scorched.  And so it goes.

"Are you alright, Johnny?" June looked at Johnny Black with worried eyes.  "The beef roast alright?"
"Yeah, it's fine. Just was dazed there for a moment."  Johnny Black had learned a long time ago not to tell his family about his time-shifting, because they never would understand.  Well, his wife at least. Anastasia might. She was into the metaphysical scene, and insisted on wearing an ankh nearly all the time. June was a christian.  She hated her daughter wearing the pagan symbol. Johnny Black did not care. He had never figured out why he time shifted, but he doubted it had anything to do with God or any other diety. And so it goes.

Johnny Black smoked his cigarette with his father, not coughing like he'd done a few moments, a few years ago.  He had smoked Winstons since high school, but the flavor of plain tobacco and the mixture of cloves and tobacco was much different.  His father was watching a mirror that showed out onto the street, tracking people who went past.  "Bang." He'd whisper. "Bang."
Johnny Black heard something quiet from the back store room, but thought nothing of it.  Probably a rat.

John Wayne was walking through town on the movie screen, moving to a horse drawn street car. His clothes were pressed, boots polished, guns oiled.  He looked tall and healthy, though his character was dying.  Johnny Black sat at eight years of age, watching the screen and eating popcorn. His father had returned, smelling of clove cigarettes, and Johnny Black thought how much his father was like a gunslinger, so tall and brave.

"I'm not hungry." Whispered Johnny Black, and his wife June and daughter Anatasia looked at him with surprise. They had been arguing about religion.
"Are you sure you're okay?" asked June, looking concerned."
Johnny Black nodded and waved away. "I'll be fine. Just think I'll have a drink outside." Johnny Black pushed back from the table and went into the kitchen to get himself a glass of scotch and a clove cigarette. He tapped out a cigarette from the pack, noted two were missing he hadn't smoked, and suspected Anastasia had stolen them. His wife hated smoking. He flicked his zippo as he stepped outside, firing up the tip.  The night was warm, still, stars like diamonds in the deep velvet sky.
Johnny Black glanced at his watch, he noticed the date.  It was exactly sixteen years since his father had been killed by Earl. And so it goes.

Johnny Black closed his eyes for a moment, and then opened them again in his father's store,3 looking down at the smoking shotgun he held in his hands. His friend Earl, looking much older but still recognizable, was on the floor, a gaping red hole in the center of his chest.  Beside him was a smashed television. In Earl's hand was a pistol, warm and smoking.  Behind Johnny Black was his father, dead, leaning up against the wall, with a clove cigarette dangling from his lips. It was still lit. His colt .45 revolver hung uselessly.  Johnny Black did not know how Earl had broken into the store, would learn later that he'd come up through the floor, but Earl had surprised Johnny Black and his father, and shot at them both.  He'd missed Johnny Black, but put a bullet right through Johnny Black's father's neck. Johnny Black didn't remember pulling the trigger of the shotgun.4

John Wayne slumped down against the western bar, his chest ruined, and nodded in affirmation to young Ronny Howard as the man tossed a gun away after shooting someone for the first time.  Johnny Black's father watched quietly, giving a sigh because the Duke was dead.  Johnny Black sighed and wished his father would have the chance to say goodbye like John Wayne did.  But he knew the Duke was to die right after making this film, and he knew his father would have no time to say goodbye to him when Earl shot him.  And so it goes.