Time Tangle

Brad Williams is a young Auto Mechanics teacher at a Vo Tech in Oklahoma City. Older but attractive Oklahoma History teacher, Jewel Nicholson, annoys him with her giggling and unwanted attentions. After an unknown girl thumbs a ride, he’s on his front walk when a large hailstone hits him above the temple. He’s only partially conscious, when Ozod, an invisible, bumbling, interstitial entity, offers to save him from the deadly hail by sending him back in time to get him under a roof.
Lightning strikes nearby, and Brad finds himself in the 1989 land run on the claim of John Benson. The Promised roof is a scrub oak tree. Brad is angry, and Ozod irritates him further with mixed up logic and repetitive speech, often including the phrase, “Oh my goodness, yes.”
Brad meets Benson’s family. And the nine year-old daughter, Ellen, looks familiar. She flirts with him, and he thinks she is the prettiest child he has ever seen. He is scared and demands that Ozod send him back to 2012 immediately. Ozod argues with him and makes mistake after mistake, using lightning strikes to transport him to many eras, ranging from one hundred, fifty million years in the past to 2155.
Ellen is frequently on Brad’s mind, and he is in mortal danger much of the time. In 1899 he sees Ellen again. She’s married and has a seven year-old son, Jimmy, and a dog, Shep. But her husband, who has started up a carriage factory in the barn, has left her. Brad is in love with her, but she is disillusioned by his story of time-travel. It turns her off, and she thinks he is a con man or is insane. She threatens to shoot him if he doesn’t leave.
Jim and Shep like Brad and help him win Ellen’s affection as he makes a success of the carriage factory and builds a car, which he names Watkins. Ozod tries to send them all (Brad, Ellen, Jim and Shep) to 2012, but they go to 1933 and then to 1945. Ellen’s teacher, Mary, who, looks like the English teacher at the Vo Tech, takes them in, and June, Mary’s daughter reminds Brad of Jewel.
WWII is raging and Brad is conscripted. He distinguishes himself in battle. After, the war, Ellen sadly accepts the fact that Jim wants to stay in 1945 with Mary and June. And Ozod trys to send Brad and Ellen to 2012, but they get only to 1977.
Mary’s house has been enlarged and given a brick veneer and an ornamental iron fence. Jim is gone, having died of a throat infection in 1959, and Ellen is distraught. Without Brad knowing, she gets Ozod to arrange a split-jump, sending her back to be with Jim simultaneously with jumping Brad successfully to 2012.
In the hospital, without Ellen, Brad thinks his head injury caused him to dream about traveling through time. Then, as he begins to find evidence, he realizes the unknown girl who thumbed a ride was Ellen, who had made a time jump to protect him in the hailstorm.
Mary’s old house is for sale and Jewel proposes that she and Brad pool resources to buy it together. But he searches for money to buy it by himself. The agent arranges for him to meet a representative of the owner in the garage. When he goes to the meeting, Jewel is there in the hallway to the garage. She tells him she and her new boyfriend, Frankie, have already signed a contract to buy the house.
Before the terrible disappointment sinks in, Brad hears Ozod’s voice. “Here it comes, Ellen.” Lightning strikes the iron fence and Ellen appears in the garage, seated in the Watkins. Brad proposes and she accepts. The report of Jimmy’s death was false. He is seventy-four and is to fly from Texas to be with them the following day with his new puppy, Shep."