Bystander in Time

by Richard Stockford

  As if agreeing with Davis' assessment, the White Shark groaned and lurched suddenly, twisting down and to the right, her stern lifting as battered timbers gave way and water rushed into her forward hold.

  Captain Campbell shook himself. “Aye, you're right, but I’ll not strike. Get 'em off, Alan. Helmsman, head her for the shallows and into the water with you. Dex, stay with Mister Davis.”

  “Come on,” Dex said reaching for Campbell's arm. “We'll help you.”

  “Nay,” Captain Campbell grinned limping to one of the great twenty-four pound cannons at the port rail. “I’ll have one more shot at that bastard behind us.”

  Shaking his head to still Dex's outburst, Davis gripped his arm and pulled him toward the port rail.

  Suddenly remembering his treasure, Dex broke away and jumped down from the quarterdeck and scrambled down the companionway. He felt his way to his cabin, blinded by the heavy smoke and ran to his bunk and turned back the mattress, only to find the space empty. Feverishly, he pulled the mattress from the bunk, but the bag of coins with the ring and his medallion were gone! Hurriedly, Dex tore the mattresses off the other bunks and dropped down to examine the cabin deck, but the leather bag was nowhere to be found.

  Dex staggered as the White Shark canted further to the right, timbers groaning and snapping with the rumbling sound of thunder. He ran, coughing in the billowing smoke, now shot through with flame, and pulled himself back up the companionway, emerging onto a nearly empty deck. Captain Campbell, fresh blood staining his bandaged leg, stood alone on the sharply canted quarterdeck struggling to turn his cannon toward the enemy, and Dex climbed the ladder and sprinted to the rail to help.

  Aboard the weather deck of the HMS Battersly, ordinary seaman Oscar Trampy hauled himself groggily to his feet. The shot that had shattered his gun-port station, unseated the cannon and killed the rest of his crew had left him unconscious and bleeding on the deck for long minutes while the battle raged and now he reeled on his feet, gaping at the destruction around him. As the third son of a middle class London dentist, fifteen year-old Oscar had been sent off to sea in hopes that he might make something of himself, but thus far his career with the Royal Navy had been somewhat less than stellar. Basically inept, incurably lazy and slow enough to be the butt of most forecastle jokes, he was sullen and generally unhappy with his life at sea. Normally relegated to the meanest of tasks, now he staggered to the shattered rail and grinned vacuously as he spied the still unfired cannon lock atop the canted thirty-two pound cannon he served. Daring to aspire to the elevated position of gun captain, he stepped up behind the cannon, grabbed the cannon lock lanyard and gave it a vigorous tug. As the cannon fired, its recoil heaved it back off its shattered carriage crushing Oscar to the deck and killing him instantly. Had he but known, his father might have been proud that Oscar had fired the final shot to hit the White Shark.

  Seeing Jacob’s intent, Dex forgot about escape and rushed to his Captain’s side. He grabbed a broken length of broken spar from the deck and shoved it under the cannon's barrel to help leaver it around toward the British warship. Back wedged against the rail, straining to move the heavy cannon, he vaguely registered a faint whistle in the air before the world blinked away but he never felt the concussion that blew him over the side or the enormous explosion that obliterated the White Shark a second later.

  Chapter 19

  When Dex opened his eyes, he found himself draped over a tangle of rigging and a short length of shattered timber, sputtering and retching as small waves lapped over his head. The screams of injured men and other sounds of battle had gone strangely silent. He tried to raise himself out of the water to get a look around, but the spar rolled under him and he slumped back tiredly. All he had managed to see was empty ocean. Shivering in the cold water and hurting all over, he knew he should not let himself sleep, but he couldn't keep his eyes from closing and he gradually relaxed, numbly mourning the loss of his friends.

  “Careful, now, he might still be alive.” His body jostled, Dex swam slowly back to consciousness, the odd words echoing in his mind. Why would he not be alive? Then his eyes snapped open as he remembered. He struggled away from gripping hands, mouth agape as he took in the fiberglass deck and metal lobster traps around him. A small part of his mind registered the throb and smell of a diesel engine in the background, confirming his sudden understanding that the White Shark and the American Revolution were somewhere far behind him.”

  For Dex, the shock of his homecoming almost outweighed enormity of his adventure. The lobstermen, solicitous but unbelieving, took him to the dock in Southwest Harbor, where he huddled under a blanket in the Coast Guard station infirmary until his frantic parents arrived an hour later. His mother hugged him and sobbed quietly, and his father repeatedly asked all who would listen how he could have managed to survive a week in the frigid waters off the Maine coast. Instinctively reluctant to tell a story he knew would never be believed, Dex pleaded amnesia, saying that his last memory before waking up on the lobster boat was of falling off the Harbor Rose. His parents finally took him back to Bangor, insisting he go to the emergency room for a check-up despite his weary assertions that he felt fine. In point of fact, the doctor found he had suffered no ill effects from his time in the water, and even went so far as to remark on his robust constitution.

  Dex had no explanation for the irrefutable evidence of the calendar. It was only a week after his fishing date with Uncle Walter, and every time Dex tried to wrap his mind around the disparity between the date and his memories of an entire summer aboard the White Shark, his concentration slipped sideways until finally even the urge to resolve the mystery slipped away as well.

  In the months that followed, Dex continued to maintain that he had no memory of the time he was missing and little by little it became more truth than fiction. The fabric of time was healing itself and by the end of the year Dex's adventure had become nothing more than a half remembered dream.

  End Book One

  BYSTANDER IN TIME

  Book Two

  Chapter 20

  Dexter Stockford Jr. - D.J. to all who knew him - balanced precariously on the six-inch granite ledge. Arms spread and leaning back against a wall of gritty rock, he was frozen with his toes hanging out in space thirty feet above the ominous still waters of Dead Man's quarry.

  “Well, you gonna jump or what, chicken?” The derisive taunt rose above raucous laughter from the small group of boys standing above Dexter on the lip of the deep pit. Dead Man's quarry was a ragged rectangular hole gouged in the solid granite of Mount Waldo, twenty miles south of D.J.'s home in Bangor, Maine. In the mid to late 1800's, Mount Waldo granite was prized in building construction all over the eastern United States and for many years the quarry bustled with a small army of miners, stone cutters and laborers. Finally abandoned in the mid 1960's, the deep pit gradually filled with ground water and nature reclaimed the roads and paths that were once used to haul the stone blocks down to the cutting house on the Penobscot and on to waiting ships. Now, although liberally posted with 'Keep Out' and 'No Trespassing' signs, the quarry had become a semi-secret swimming hole for adventuresome teens. It was reputed, in hushed whispers among the ranks of those teens who had named it Dead Man's Quarry, to be the final resting place of no less than ten people ranging from runaway kids to famous missing gangsters. Fifteen year-old year old Dexter had swum in the pit's cold waters several times in the past, but always from the shallow rocky beach at the south end; he had never attempted the terrifying leap from the north cliff that had become a rite of passage among some of the older boys. With the eighth grade behind him and high school on the horizon, Dex was determined to pass this test and establish his place in the small school hierarchy. Urged on the older boys, Dexter had clambered down from the rim and made his precarious way out onto the ledge, slowly crabbing along sideways until he reached the point where the water below was known, or at least thought, to be free of obstructions.

  Dex was stari
ng down at the foreboding water below, but what he was really seeing was a slideshow of images in his mind. He imagined implacable rocks and jagged, rusty machinery waiting for him just below the surface. He saw his father, calm and sensible, warning him of the danger and accepting his promise that he would stay away from the quarry. He tasted the loss of this mother and, for a moment, savored the loss of purpose and responsibility in his life that accompanied her death. He pondered the despair that her death had stamped on his father's once exuberant spirit, and looked for a moment into the dark void of utter hopelessness. Finally, Dexter seemed to stand outside himself. He could see the trim youth with wide shoulders and shaggy brown hair over a pleasant face clinging to the rock face. His chest was heaving with deep, gasping breaths and, despite the coolness of the pit, a thin sheen of sweat gleamed on his face and arms. D.J. saw fear, perhaps desperation, but he also saw unwavering determination and a calm acceptance of whatever was to come.

  Then, with an impatient shake of his head, D.J. leaned out from the wall and launched himself into space.

  -----

  Dexter Stockford leaned against his pickup and surveyed the dilapidated building that was to be a new home for him and his son, fifteen year old D.J. Crouched amid a jungle of tangled hollyhock stalks, brambles and climbing vines, the two-story house seemed to stare back in abject misery through blank, multi-pane windows. Badly weathered gray clapboards hung precariously beneath sagging eaves and warped cedar shakes descended in uneven tiers from the roof's ridge-line sloping tiredly away from the massive brick center chimney. Although the day was warm and sunny, the old house seemed to gather chill shadows about itself as though to hide the shame of its disrepair in a cloak of twilight, and only the muted splashes of yellow from the hundreds of dandelion blossoms scattered around the yard gave any color to the scene.

  Two weeks before, buoyed with the reality of a new job and a new start, Dex had been charmed at the thought of living in an eighteenth century house, a building that embodied the very colonial history he had come to love. Dex had managed some time off, and with D.J. spending a few days with a friend in Bangor, he’d checked into the Bar Harbor Motor Inn in time for a supper meeting with the Southwest Harbor school superintendent. An hour later, he had accepted a teaching position at Mount Desert Island High School as well as the offer of low rent in exchange for a little maintenance and general stewardship of the venerable old house. He thought back to that conversation, “The place needs a little work and the local kids think it’s haunted,” the Superintendent had said, “but it’s livable and you might find the historical aspects interesting. We’ve been looking for a responsible caretaker with the historical knowledge to clean the place up and start the preservation process.” Located on a dirt road overlooking the harbor, the house had sat empty since its last occupant, the final descendant of its builder, had died and left the property to the local historical society. It was hoped that the historical society would eventually obtain historical register status for the house, which was one of the oldest on Mount Desert Island, and perhaps maintain it as a museum. Having little taste for the prospect of apartment-living in the small sea coast town, Dex had jumped at the offer. Now, in the sober light of day, he wondered if he had made the right decision.

  Dex leaned into the truck for the keys and a flashlight and then trudged through tangles of ankle deep grass and weeds around to the ell at the rear of the house. The cracked and heavily weathered wooden side door opened grudgingly, and then only after Dex lifted a sagging wooden screen door out of the way, into a large kitchen made smaller by the rough beams holding its board ceiling a scant seven feet off the worn linoleum floor. The ancient electric stove and refrigerator seemed somehow modern alongside the huge slate sink which, although there was also a tarnished faucet and porcelain-handled hot and cold water taps, sported a rusty cast-iron hand pump at one end. The musty smell of old grease and onions overlay an older, sharper odor that Dex recognized at once. It was the dusty smell of history; an accumulation of all the activities and events; all the triumphs and disasters; all the living that had occurred in this room over the last two hundred years. Suddenly at ease, he grinned and set out to explore his new home.

  The house was shaped in the form of a short ' T ' with the ell, containing the single story kitchen, pantry and a primitive bathroom, jutting out from the center towards the woods that lie beyond an overgrown lawn and garden. There was a door at the very back leading out to a decaying woodshed that slumped tiredly against the back of the ell. The main house was comprised of two large rooms on the first floor, a living room and a large parlor, separated by a thick fireplace wall with hearths in both rooms, and one large and two smaller bedrooms on the second floor. The ornate front door in the center of the front wall opened between the two rooms facing steep stairs leading to the second floor. Unlike the kitchen ell, this part of the house had finished plaster walls with fancy wood trim around large windows and doors. The fireplaces were surrounded by built-in bookcases that soared to the ten-foot ceilings and wooden panels made up of some of the widest pine boards Dex had ever seen, topped by massive mantelpieces of carved maple. Although the rooms were cluttered and grimy, the high ceilings and wide board floors gave them a spacious feel and Dex could imagine them as they must have looked long ago, suffused in the warm glow of candlelight and hearth flames and alive with the strength of family. He sank into a decrepit armchair and began to think about restoring this house and his life.

  Two years ago, at age thirty-six, Dex had been at a low point in his life and seriously discouraged about his future. As a child, his only family had been his parents and his Uncle Walter, and he had spent his entire life near them living and working close to home as a teacher in the Bangor School system. Two years before, the loss of his uncle Walter to cancer had been bearable because it followed a long illness and was expected, but the death of Dex's wife and parents in an automobile accident six months later had been devastating. Overwhelmed with grief, Dex lost interest in his work and social life. Only his responsibility to Dex Junior kept him going. He became fiercely, oppressively, protective of his son and tried hard to shut out the rest of the world. His instinct was to retreat into his love of history but lethargy and ennui turned trips to the research library into random drives and reading at home into unsatisfying naps in his chair. Feeling more and more like a spectator in his own life, Dex was just going through the motions at home and in the classroom when Ed Collins, the school principle and long-time friend knocked on his door one night in May.

  “Dex, either you need to make a change or I do,” Collins had said. “I know you've had a tough time, but it's been more than a year and you've got to snap out of it. You're not pulling your weight at school and your depression's pulling everyone else, staff and students, down. We've talked about counseling before but now I'm afraid I've got to make it a condition of your continued employment. Get some help and I'll make whatever accommodations it takes to get you back up to speed.”

  Dex had listened unemotionally. “Ed,” he'd said, “I appreciate your concern and you're probably right, but I think it's time we moved on anyway. I've been thinking about it and I guess D.J. and I need a complete change of scenery. I'll finish out the year, but then I need to get out of Bangor, do something different.”

  With the decision made, some of Dex's depression had lifted and for the first time in many months he began considering where he was going in life. An ad for high school history teacher Mount Desert Island on the K-12 job spot website caught his eye, and three weeks later he had accepted the job.

  Determined to make a complete change, Dex had put the home he'd inherited from his parents up for sale along with his own small house and sold off all but his most basic possessions, keeping only his clothes, laptop and books, truck and a few boxes of family history. Now, a week before the end of the school year, he was peering into a new future in Southwest Harbor, about to take up residence in a house that had been built when George Washin
gton was President.

  The sun was beginning to settle in the afternoon sky when Dex finally roused himself to go in search of something to eat. He paused at the head of the driveway for a moment, looking across the dirt road, and down at the harbor spread out almost at his feet. Absorbed with the view, it wasn't until he was reaching for the door that he noticed the folded slip of paper under the windshield wiper. He grabbed the paper, looking around for the messenger, but the country lane was deserted. Unfolded, the note bore a single line of text. 'Beware, you are in danger here.' it read in flowing cursive.

  Chapter 21

  The next morning found Dex deep into the overhaul of his new living quarters. He'd dismissed the note, assuming one of his new co-workers or whoever lived in the one other house at the end of his dead end road would turn out to be a practical joker, and he was looking forward to the first night in his new home.

  Dex had started his renovations by making a short list of the antique furnishings he wanted to use and banished the rest of it, broken, battered and worn, to a small, gloomy building sitting back from the end of the driveway that he thought had probably started life as a carriage house. The building’s large main room and the two smaller rooms at the rear were already cluttered with cast-off furniture and several old trunks and boxes, but Dex managed to find room for everything. That was followed by several hours of scrubbing, scouring, sweeping and trash removal and, finally an inspection that produced a list of the most urgent carpentry, plumbing and electrical repairs that needed to be done. Dex figured he could handle the leaky faucets and dead electrical outlets, but knew he'd need help with most of the carpentry. It was two o'clock by the time he broke for a trip into Bar Harbor for some lunch and stops at a couple of hardware and used furniture stores.