Time & Chance

Excerpt

Prologue

Jack Carr, News Director for Nashville's CBS affiliate TV 12 (WBFN-TV), since he could remember, concluded there are two kinds of time--his and real. Then there was chance. He determined, like time, there are two kinds of chance--good and bad, adding, "If God is involved in any of this we all have a problem."

Jack, just turned forty--black hair flecked with gray, tarnished green eyes, nose slightly off center, flat stomach, five foot ten--people remarked that he resembled somebody they had seen somewhere.

At times of crisis, or times in general, Jack would say:

"Time and chance is mixed up with a fickle free will thing and the exclusive consequences are stuck on the smell of humanity forever.

"Is a minute a minute on a distant star? Is it the same in Xanadu? Did Kubla Khan know?

"On Saturn, spring is nine years long.

"A woman once told me, one plus one is not always two.

"Truth is not pi r squared.

"Hickory dickory dock, the mouse ran up the clock etcetera etcetera etcetera.

"Time smells different to death-row inmates.

"A fork is a fork.

"Turned south, down around the southern tip of Peru.

"When we begin weaving a beginning, the end gets further away, and when we hold on it disappears, and sometimes an end can be better than a beginning.

"Who started this time thing anyhow?

"Take David and Goliath. If Goliath kills David, no story."

Two other things Jack said, on occasion, when disillusioned with the human condition, "You know how many wives Solomon had?" And when things human really got bad, "If I'm wrong, fuck right."