I was born on 16th Ruby Street, New York City, on February 23rd, 1920. Right in time for the Roaring Twenties. Not that I took in much of it, of course.

My father's name was Lewis Johnston. We weren't close. I'm told he was a bit of a live wire when he was young, but something—either the middle aisle or the turn of the century—made him into the man I remember; frequenter of speakeasies, brooding, volcanic, and generally smelling of liquor.

He got in with a rough crowd, which ended him without a job and quite a bit of debt, with dangerous people tailing him. Part of me would like to believe that he left to save my mother and I's throats, but it always bothered me that he never came to see her. Or me, I guess, not that I cared. Even after I came back from the War.

Well, I looked him up a long while later. Turns out he died in '33. They didn't press charges on the suspect—guess you can't convict the bottle. Anyway, I'm the sort of person who can look in the mirror and ignore the fact I'm the spitting image of him.

My mother's name was Tillie Johnston, or Tillie Austin, at birth. She, on the other hand, wasn't an angel, but she was a good egg. She had a job at a local motel cleaning and ironing and making it look presentable. Like most of her generation, she was a hard-worker. Most of my childhood memories of her involve her in a checker-blue dress with an spotless white apron, her pale hair piled in a neat bun behind her head. While I was gone, she built air planes, and joked in her letters that I might see some of her handy-work fly overhead. I probably did.

When I came back from Europe, she'd gotten out of the motel and set up her own cleaning business. Which is swell, of course. I'm glad she got a chance to do something on her own, for once in her life.

I myself was twenty-six then, and pretty good with my hands, like she was, so I got a job at an automobile repair place a few miles from Ruby Street, and worked there for about six years. It felt good to have tools in my hands that weren't instrumental in war. I reckon that everyone arriving back from Europe and the Pacific should have repaired cars for a few months; it does you a world of good.

The spring of 1952 found me on my way to work, a newspaper and my lunch tucked underneath my arm. It was pretty early; the sky was a pale, rosy color and the air still had that bite to it reminiscent of winter. Several people's washing was fluttering on the lines that crisscrossed the street. The trees cast dappled green shadows on the dirty sidewalks.

It wasn't a really rough part of town, but I wasn't too big as guys go, so I generally kept my head down and just nodded and smiled hello to people. I could throw a good punch or two, but I didn't want anyone pulling a knife on me because they were curious if I had any money in the bag. Which I didn't.

That spring morning I was in an okay mood; I was saving up enough money to go to college and I'd just gotten a pay raise.

I almost didn't see the four burly guys come out of the alleyway, but as soon as I did, they saw me.

I stared at the four of them, not wilting under their beady gaze, and by some luck, they just shrugged and brushed roughly past me. I waited until they were a fair distance down the block before I looked back, and they'd stopped by a breezer under one of the big oaks near the corner, surrounding these other three guys lounging in it in an ominous way.

"You got the dough, Nick?" I heard the leader of the four that had passed me say to the driver, leaning on the shiny metal of the convertible.

"Sure," the driver said, one elbow resting on the wheel. He was heavy-lidded, had a cigar sticking out of his mouth, and a fairly horrible comb-over.

"No hard feelings then?" the leader flicked his hat up with his thumb.

The driver gave this sort of half-smile out of the other corner of his mouth. "None at all, Joe," he said. "Pleasure doing business with you." Then he looked sideways at the two guys in the back, and in a smooth, quick movement they both drew Smith and Wessons. There was a loud popping noise and the leader fell dead.

Stunned, I stumbled back as three guys in the breezer swung out of the car and ducked behind the doors, and the other two pulled out their own firearms and opened fire. Bullets ricocheted off of the metal and the sidewalk, burying themselves in the wood of the tree and flying all over.

A few other early morning pedestrians scrambled for cover, and I felt someone's hand close around my arm and pull me into the same alley I'd seen the four come out of earlier. I whirled around and yanked myself out of their grip, ready for a fight, but on eye-level with me was a man I hadn't thought about for seven years, since he'd saved my life in France and my friend had been killed.

Just then, a volley of retaliating bullets made a terrific collection of holes in the concrete and brick where I'd just been standing.

It was the same pattern, over and over again.

I turned to demand who or what he was, but he was already halfway down the alleyway, the old-raincoat traded for a dusty suit-jacket.

"Stop!" I yelled.

The man paused, just at the opening to Arbor Street. He didn't say anything, or turn. Neither of us moved.

"Who or what are you?" I said sharply. "Why do I keep seeing you? It's enough to drive a man crazy, some ghost or angel popping up every few years, pulling you out of harm's way, and then vanishing without an explanation. Do I know you?"

The Time Traveler, or whatever he was, might have smiled. I couldn't clearly see his face—it was dim, and his back was turned—but it was very clearly the same man. He hadn't changed at all. "No," he said. He had a quiet voice.

"Well, why was that man looking for you, in '29?"

He turned slightly, and then started to walk away.

"Wait!" I said. "At least tell me, which are you? A ghost, or an angel?"

I could just see his silhouette, faint in the gray light seeping between the empty bakery and law firm across the street.

"Sir," he said softly. "I haven't the slightest clue."

And then, I blinked, and he was gone.

I never had a chance to thank him.