“I sometimes lose track of time,” I said, not untruthfully. “I was hoping it was February by now.”
And that’s the way it began, Diary. We spent almost two hours talking about our likes and dislikes, what books we’d read (he didn’t recognize the names of any of mine), and our dreams for the future. I don’t think either of us realized the passage of time until my stomach began to feel queasy.
I couldn’t possibly let him know I had come here from 83 years in the future, nor could I chance disappearing right in front of his eyes as the effects of the water wore off and catapulted me forward in time. The second I felt my stomach sicken, I was up and running for the shelter of the forest yelling, “Nice to meet you, Q!” behind me as I entered the sanctuary of the trees.
After that it didn’t matter. I hid in a thick copse of trees until the dizziness passed and I was back in 1969. The thrill of having a young man actually talk to me for that length of time was exhilarating. It felt completely normal, quite natural, and I became aware that indeed God had at last delivered my Christmas present. Just my luck the gift stayed in 1886. Perhaps I’d get lucky when I went back to the spring next time and would run into Q again. I hoped for that with all my heart.
I didn’t notice my tears until I closed the diary. Charlotte had finally found someone to be her friend, even if that friend lived in 1886. Could she not get back to see Q again? Is that why she hung herself out in the barn? Maybe he was not to be her only friend after all. What if she met someone in 1969? Someone who got her pregnant and abandoned her. Maybe someone who had raped her and threatened her life if she ever told the police. Maybe after she got pregnant she was too ashamed to go back in time and be with Q. Or maybe Q refused to be with her when he discovered she was pregnant by another man. What if Q had been killed in an accident? With nobody to call friend and the whole town on her case about the scandal of her pregnancy and out-of-wedlock baby, not to mention the Troll haranguing her night and day, maybe Charlotte just couldn’t take it any longer, baby or not. Obviously there was more to the story since there were many more pages in the book written in Charlotte’s neat hand. Unfortunately it was nearly dinner time now, and I needed to hide the diary in its crawlspace.
Was I going back to 1886 too? Would I meet Q? Or meet anyone? Would it be possible for me to meet my own grandmother if we happened to be there at the same time? Pretty freaky stuff. We’d be the same age yet two whole generations apart. Would that somehow mess with the fabric of time so much that one or both of us could never get back to our own time? Meeting my grandmother was hardly likely if it was always winter for her and summer for me. I was terrified of the damage Charlotte and I might do traveling into the past. At the same time, I couldn’t wait to get back to the spring.
Chapter 11
I reached inside the Douglas fir log at our meeting place and felt something hard, the size of a bread loaf. With more care than necessary, I withdrew a handcrafted oak box, sanded smooth as a creek pebble and stained a golden oak sheen. I opened the tiny brass hook, raised the lid, and removed a folded piece of blue paper.
“My dearest Emma,” it began. “There are so many things I don’t seem able to tell you when we’re together. Little stuff, like I love the way you don’t care what kind of ride I have or what my father does for a living. I love how cute you look when you wrinkle your nose if you don’t understand something. I love that you don’t seem to care about money or status or any of that phony stuff. That means more to me than I can tell you.
“That’s all Melinda cared about. That and her looks. She would admire her reflection in store windows we passed, and any time she had to use a restroom I knew it would be a long wait before she returned. She would re-do her hair and makeup until it was perfect just to keep up her beauty-queen image.
“You aren’t like that. I love that you’re naturally beautiful without all that primping and that you never spend time when we’re together trying to flirt with other guys just to make me jealous. I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to figure out a guy doesn’t have to put up with that, and so long to find a girl like you. You’re the first thing I think about when I open my eyes in the morning and the last thing on my mind before I fall asleep. You’re on my mind all the time, even when I should be concentrating on something else. That never happened while I dated Melinda. I thought I loved her. Turns out, I didn’t even know what love was until I met you. Sorry for getting you in trouble yesterday. I agree we have to be more careful from now on.
“I miss you every second we’re apart, darlin’. I worry about you living with your weird old great-grandma. She isn’t eccentric, Emma. She’s three ticks this side of mentally ill. That makes her dangerous. One day, I promise we’ll find a way to get you out of there.
“All my love,
“Brad”
How could Brad ever manage to spring me from the bony grip of Penelope’s fist? I was her prisoner and slave, doomed to serve out my sentence until I turned eighteen. My biggest dream was to live with a normal family where I could be myself and wasn’t made to feel like a failure and a burden. It did worry me that if I didn’t live with The Evil Witch of Ross Ranch, I’d be stuck in some crowded foster home where my only value to the family would be the money they were paid by the state for taking me in.
I read Brad’s note twice before folding it carefully, raising my pioneer girl skirt and sticking it down one woolen stocking. How could Brad think I would burn such a thing in the wood stove? I’d hide it in the crawlspace with the diary and no one would ever find it.
I turned for home, taking my own sweet time, picking a bouquet of buttercups, purple asters, and Queen Anne’s lace along the way. Time spent away from the house was precious and peaceful. I stretched it out as long as I dared.
A hundred yards from home I heard Simon yelling my name. I broke into a run and caught sight of him hurrying toward the barn.
“Simon? Simon, what’s wrong?” I panted, catching up.
Without slackening his pace, he said, “Tashunka. She’s off her feed and runnin’ a fever. Gotta learn you how to doctor a sick horse.”
I dropped my flowers outside the barn and stepped into the cool shadows inside. In a back corner of her stall, Tashunka stood on three legs with her head drooping almost to her knees. My heart sank. The mare was precious to me. I’d be devastated if she died.
“What’s wrong with her?” I asked.
Simon opened a trunk resting against the outside of her stall and rummaged through it.
“Won’t probably never know,” he mumbled. “Miss Ross don’t hold with callin’ no vets out for a sick horse. Too expensive an’ all. If’n a horse is off her feed an’ don’t have no gut sounds, an’ maybe is bitin’ at her flanks or rollin’, then it’s likely colic. Tashunka ain’t doin’ none of that. She’s depressed an’ has her a fever an’ a snotty nose, so I’m guessin’ it’s some kind of infection. Only thing I know to do is give her Combiotic an’ hope it works.”
He drew out a syringe in a plastic wrapper, a needle in a plastic case, and from a small refrigerator in the tack room, brought out a bottle the size of a jumbo aspirin bottle with a short neck and a rubber seal over the mouth. Thick white liquid filled the bottle.
“Go slip a halter on her. ‘Course, the way she’s actin’ we shouldn’t have no problem with her. I’m fixin’ to show you how to give a horse a shot.”
We entered the mare’s stall where I slipped her halter on. She didn’t nicker or brush her whiskers against my arm in greeting as she usually did. She seemed to take no notice I was there at all. Sometimes when I’m sick, I don’t want to talk to anyone either.
Simon rubbed a spot high on her rump with an alcohol-drenched cloth. “Listen up, Missy,” he said, motioning me back to his side. “Important part is to fill the syringe right.” He wiped the bottle’s rubber seal with alcohol and opened the p
lastic cover on the syringe. “This here is sterile so don’t be touchin’ the end of it where the needle goes. Next you attach the needle which is also sterile.” He took the plastic cap over the needle and pulled it off with his teeth, fitting the needle’s base onto the neck of the syringe.
“That’s a pretty huge needle,” I said.
“Has to be. For one thing, it’s got to penetrate a horse’s hide which is a dang sight thicker’n yers. For another, Combiotic is thick and takes a fatter needle.”
I watched closely as he pulled back the plunger on the empty syringe to suck air into it, then tipped the bottle of Combiotic upside down and stuck the needle into its rubber seal.
“You push all that air up into the bottle of Combiotic,” he said, pushing in the plunger, “an’ that makes it easier to fill the tube part.” He pulled back slowly on the plunger so the needle sucked the white liquid inside the syringe. “There. Just a tad over ten cc should do it.”
With the syringe filled, Simon withdrew the needle from the bottle and held the hypodermic needle-up. “What you don’t want is no air bubbles inside the tube part,” he instructed, flicking the bottom of the syringe with a fingernail a few times to loosen any air lurking inside.
“Now’s the part hardest for beginners,” Simon said. “You gotta put some force behind the stick or it won’t go in deep enough. If you fiddle-faddle ‘round tryin’ to slowly push it in deeper, you’re like to get kicked standin’ back here. Do it medium hard and fast going straight down in an’ the horse won’t hardly feel it.”
He pointed to the spot he’d chosen, and quick as a striking snake, jabbed the needle into Tashunka’s rump up to the hilt. Slowly, he pushed the plunger down until the syringe had emptied, then smoothly withdrew it. The horse never moved a muscle.
I gasped. “You expect me to do that?”
“I do, Miss Emma. Tonight we’ll give her a second dose in the neck. Thems are the two places best for us to give shots. The third dose tomorrow you’ll do by yourself.”
I winced.
“Now let’s leave Miss Tashunka be so’s she can rest.” Simon held open the stall door for me. “Tell me, how’s your great-grandma gettin’ along?”
“Three days in bed, doctor’s orders, and she’s crabbier than a fish in a net.” I rolled my eyes. “I try my best to steer clear of her and I feel sorry for poor Cook being shut up in the house with the Troll all day. Last night she said, to me, ‘I’m wore to a frazzle, Miss Emma.’ So the wicked Queen has improved, but the doctor says she’s trying to do too much and needs to nap twice a day and to take her pills every day, not just when she feels puny.”
“That woman would fair put the Devil himself to shame for pure stubbornness,” Simon mused, shaking his white head.
~ ~ ~
Two days later Simon drove Penelope into town to see the dentist. It wasn’t like the woman owned any teeth of her own. She claimed her plate didn’t fit just right and caused her pain. They planned to pick up the mail afterward, do some grocery shopping, and get more pills from the pharmacy.
I’d given Tashunka her shot this morning and she’d nibbled some hay which was a good sign. I wasn’t as squeamish about injecting her now, and the mare had not even tried to kick once. Simon had taken her temperature and said it was almost normal.
Before breakfast I’d delivered my second note to the mailbox. Nothing more from Brad yet. Now I had the rest of the morning free and the Troll was headed for town. I took off for the spring at a jog, reveling in the prospect of traveling back into the past.
I’d go looking for Q today, I decided on the way. I catalogued the things I knew about him. Twenty years old, brown hair, a mustache and sideburns, carries a gun, and rides a sorrel horse. Oh, and blue eyes. Lots of men had brown hair and blue eyes. How would I tell one from another? Perhaps Q stood for Quincy, or Quentin, or Quinn. That had to be it. I would inquire about those names if I ran into somebody other than the mill workers. Those men I’d just as soon avoid. How many Quentins, Quincys, or Quinns could there be? Or Quasimodo? I’d seen that old movie, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, before we’d gone up to Lake Tahoe. Maybe Charlotte’s mystery man was named Quasimodo. And if I found him, I’d know Charlotte and I had both gone back to 1886.
The sawmill loomed through the trees, the same silent ruin in the undergrowth I’d seen last time. I skirted it to save a little time and headed north, clutching my long skirt away from the grasp of downed logs and brush. Two miles to the north I hiked into the meadow, scaring two crows who had stopped for a drink. Wow. Did birds go back in time too? Or deer and elk, raccoons, black bears, cougars and badgers? It wouldn’t make much difference to them one way or the other. They’re all pretty much the same in every century. I stopped by the spring and glanced about. Except for the crows that had flapped their way into the forest, the meadow was quiet and deserted.
I sat by the spring in the shade of the volcanic boulders and drank two swallows of water before lying back. One arm I flung over my eyes to block out the sun while I waited for the stomach cramps and dizzy headache to begin. Today’s siege of sickness felt worse than before, maybe because I’d swallowed more water. Would I ever get used to this?
When the dips and swells of dizziness had subsided and my stomach settled, I heard a shout from above me.
“Hey! What the blazes are you doin’ here?”
I opened my eyes and stared up at the volcanic rocks. A lanky shirtless boy in ragged pants lay sprawled out on one of the boulders. Suspenders kept his pants up. He sat up, looking . . . angry, I think. And a bit bewildered.
“I belong here,” I told him, trying to calm my ratcheting heart and to ignore the adrenaline streaking through my stomach. “I’m a Ross and this is Ross land. We have sixteen hundred and seventy-five acres, you know.”
“Really?” the boy replied. “Thought it was closer to twenty-five hundred acres. Where did you come from? I’ve been lying on this rock for fifteen minutes and there weren’t nobody nowheres in the meadow. Then all a sudden, poof. You appear out of thin air. How’d you sneak in without me seein’ you?”
This was not a problem I’d contemplated. “I can move like a ninja when I want to,” I replied.
The boy, who looked close to my age, frowned and cocked his head to one side. “What’s a ninja?”
How stupid could I be? Of course he’d never heard of a ninja. “It’s a secret sect of Indians,” I lied, “who are taught to move like ghosts and stay as invisible as the air. Surprises their enemies every time. Not that you’re my enemy.”
“Which Ross are you?” He still sounded kinda miffed.
“Emma.”
Oh. One of the sisters.”
Didn’t know which sisters he referred to. Guess that would do, though. “Yes.”
“Sorry,” he said. “I always think of this spring as my own private territory even though I know it ain’t. I’ll leave if you want me to, Miss Ross.”
“No. Don’t leave. Come down and tell me who you are.” Maybe I could get some information out of him.
He started to slide down, then hesitated. “You ain’t gonna tell your pa I was trespassin’ are you?”
I smiled. “You know my pa?”
“Well, yes, miss. Ever’one ‘round these parts knows Solomon Ross. You gonna tattle on me?”
“No. My pa will never know I saw you.”
He looked greatly relieved and slipped the rest of the way down, hopping to the opposite side of the spring where he hunched down on his bare heels, studying me. “My name’s Charley,” he said. “Charley Perkins. I live maybe a mile east of here up in the forest in a cabin with my folks and my two older sisters. One’s married and stayin’ with us ‘til her husband gets back from a cattle drive. That won’t come soon enough for me. The other’s gonna be married in a couple weeks and is drivin’ me
crazy. She can’t think about nothin’ else and can’t talk about nothin’ else, and she never stops talkin’. Wish she’d hurry up, tie the knot, and go live in the settlement with Percival, her fiancé, afore I wind up in some lunatic asylum.”
“Then you’ll be all alone?” Didn’t these pioneer types always have about a billion children in every family?
Charley’s smile faded, making me sorry I’d asked.
“Had me a big brother and two much older sisters who took the cholera years back and died. Didn’t never even know ‘em. Then I had me a little brother too.”
He looked so sad and forlorn that I didn’t want to ask about his little brother. But Charley seemed bent on telling me.
“Joey died right here at the spring ‘bout six years ago. It was my fault. My ma and pa says there weren’t nothin’ I coulda done. Their words couldn’t cut through my guilt, though. They weren’t here. They don’t know. He was only six and I was supposed to be lookin’ out for him.”
“I’m terribly sorry. How old were you?”
“Ten. I’m sixteen now. Been comin’ here for the past six years like, I dunno, like it’s a sacred place or somethin’. That’s what I meant when I said it felt like my own private place.”
Now I felt like an intruder. “Maybe I’m the one who ought to go.”
“Please. Don’t go,” Charley pleaded. “Maybe it’s on account I don’t know you that I can even talk about it. I’ve never told nobody about it afore, ‘ceptin my folks of course.”
I waited for him to continue, sort of dreading the details.
He ducked his head. “It was a freak accident they say. Me and Joey came out that morning in August soon as we finished our chores. Must have been ‘round nine o’clock. There had been a terrible thunderstorm the night before. One of the lightnin’ strikes cracked so close the thunder practically rattled Ma’s dishes right off the shelf. Me and Joey used to come out here a lot to play on these boulders. We’d pretend they were ships.” He grinned, embarrassed. “Kids’ stuff, y’know. That day the first thing we noticed was this here big ponderosa pine.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at it. “It was all burned and still smokin’ from bein’ lightnin’ struck.”
A Certain Twist in Time Page 10