I turned my gaze to the sixty-foot charred tree that was just a little black stump in my day.
“Pa says a big wind storm any time now will bring a bunch of it down. For now it’s holdin’ up. Anyhow, it was still hot to the touch that day and I had to keep Joey away from it.
“Next, Joey found this here little spring. We’d been here maybe a hundred times and there weren’t never a spring here before. Pa told me later that lightnin’ strikes have been known to hit the ground in such a way as to unearth a buried spring. It’s been flowin’ ever since.” Charley picked up a stick and stuck it in the water. “Joey played in it some and scooped out a shallow basin so the deer and critters could drink. He got hisself all muddy and I knowed Ma would get her feathers up when we got home and maybe take her broom to him. Then she’d mostly blame me for not stoppin’ him and dress me down good for it like I was still a little kid or somethin’.”
He grinned at the memory that never happened and shook his head in amusement.
“I distracted Joey by boostin’ him up where he could crawl up on one of these black boulders. We got to playin’ on the boulders and Joey was whinin’ about how I wasn’t playin’ fair. We was playin’ King of the Hill and I was bigger is all. I called him a baby for whinin’ and turned my back on him.”
Such a look of anguish crossed Charley’s features that he couldn’t talk for a minute. If he’d been younger I think he would have cried, but sixteen-year-old boys learn to hold it in. When he’d composed himself, he went on.
“That’s why I didn’t see him fall. I heard him cry out, though. When I looked over the edge of that boulder, there he was at the bottom, face-down and not movin’.
“Joey’s been known to do stuff to get attention or to make someone feel sorry for him. I wasted precious time yellin’ things down to him. Tellin’ him not to be such a baby, tellin’ him I knowed he was fakin’ and to get up. At first I was surprised he didn’t. Then I got scared and jumped down off my rock and ran to him.”
In spite of his struggle for control, a tear leaked out of the corner of his eye and slid slowly down his cheek.
“He musta knocked hisself out. Trouble was, when he fell face down, his face was lyin’ in that scooped out place he’d made for the deer to drink. By the time I got to him, he’d already drowned.”
A cold shiver slithered down my spine. Charley and I had something in common. In six years, would I still be mourning my parents? Still crying in the dark sometimes, afraid someone might hear?
Charley snapped the stick and hurled the pieces at the volcanic rocks. “I sure as killed him!” he cried. “If I hadn’t wasted time callin’ him names, maybe I could’ve pulled him out of that water in time to save him.”
I said nothing while he pulled himself together again. It wouldn’t do a bit of good to tell him Joey had probably drowned seconds after he fell. Nobody could have scrambled off the rock in time to save him. Seeing the pain and guilt Charley had shouldered for six years broke my heart. Knowing his folks had suffered the heart-wrenching loss of four of their seven children brought tears shimmering in front of my eyes.
“Sorry for ruinin’ your day with all that,” Charley said, dragging an arm across his nose. “It ain’t your load to tote.”
“Don’t feel sorry. You know what they say. ‘Joy shared is doubled, sorrow shared is cut in half.’”
“Yeah? I never heard that. I just hear things like it was God’s will or God moves in mysterious ways. That don’t make me feel no better. It was my fault, not God’s.”
Charley studied me closer. “That’s a right pretty dress you’re wearin’, Miss Ross. You’re right pretty too.” He blushed. “Can’t believe we’ve been neighbors all this time and I ain’t never seen you. Not even in church.”
Oops. That might be hard to explain. “I’ve been back East at a girls’ finishing school for a few years. Even when I’m home, it’s hard for me to sneak away from the house. Pa doesn’t like me talking with boys either. I’m sixteen, plenty old enough to meet some gentlemen. At the rate I’m going, I’ll be an old maid before Pa lets me out of the house.”
Charley laughed. “You? An old maid? Not a tinker’s chance. You’re much too pretty, Miss Ross. I sure would be obliged if I could come callin’ on you. ’Course, on account of your pa bein’ rich and my family bein’ poor, he’d probably shut the door in my face.”
I smoothed down my “pretty” dress and faked a smile. I had no business getting a boy involved with me when the slippage of time would keep us apart. He’d go screaming into the forest like a maniac if I told him I was visiting from far in the future. Still, I had to play along as though I belonged here.
I winked at him. “No sense in poking the hornets’ nest I guess. But what my pa doesn’t know won’t hurt him. If we should happen to secretly meet here in the forest on occasion, he wouldn’t get his panties in a wad over it.”
Charley’s eyes widened like a spooked horse. He stared at me as if I’d just grown a set of horns. “What does ‘gettin’ your panties in a wad’ mean, exactly?”
Crud. I needed to be more careful how I worded things for these ancient times. I’d never pass myself off as Solomon’s daughter otherwise. “Oh, nothing. Just a phrase I picked up back East.” Surprising how easily the lies came flowing off my tongue. I’d never even lied to my parents back home. Of course, they had never threatened to send me to a nunnery like Penelope had either.
Charley stood up and stepped across the spring, sitting down next to me. “I’d be plumb happy to run into you here in our secret spot, Miss Ross,” he said so sincerely it touched my heart. “When next will you come?”
This was wrong, toying with the heart of someone who lived far in the past. We could never be more than casual friends. Besides, my heart belonged to Brad. I’d read somewhere that most girls in this century were married at fifteen or sixteen. Having the sort of casual relationship common in my day between guys and girls our age was not the same as in 1886. If this was 1886.
“Charley, do you know what today’s date is?” I asked toying with a bug in the grass with a twig.
He frowned and squinted his eyes for a moment. “Well, let’s see. Ma’s birthday is two days past and that was on the twenty-fifth. That would make today July 27th.”
My heart tripped over a beat. Today was July 27th in my time too. The spring water did take us back to the same date, only decades into the past. “The year, Charley. What’s the year?”
He looked incredulous. “You don’t know the year, Miss Ross?”
“I just want to set the exact date in my mind of when we met.” Would he buy that or decide I was about the stupidest girl he’d ever met?
He smiled shyly. He’d bought it all right. I felt another pang of guilt.
“It’s the year of our Lord 1882,” he said softly.
Damn. Charlotte and I weren’t going back to the same year after all. I couldn’t guess why I’d go back even further in time than she had when I lived in her future. Well, that accounted for the burned pine tree in this clearing being in better shape for me than it had been for her. She’d seen it four years from now. With great disappointment I realized I would not be running into my grandmother after drinking from the spring. Not ever.
Charley, would you please call me Emma?”
He glanced down and grinned at the grass. “Don’t know as how that’d be proper, Miss Ross. We only just met, after all, and callin’ you by your Christian name would be too forward. We ain’t even been properly introduced. Wouldn’t be fittin’.”
“Then maybe I should call you Mr. Perkins?”
“Oh, no. I like that you call me Charley.”
“I would like it in the same way if you’d call me Emma.”
He glanced up at me through his eyelashes, a slow blush climbing up into the brown hair f
lopping over his forehead. “All right, Miss Emma. If that’s truly what you want.”
“Charley?”
“Yes, Miss Emma?”
“Do you know anyone in these parts who goes by the name of Quentin or Quincy or Quinn?”
He thought for a moment. “No. My pa does know a man by the name of Lionel Quade. He lives clear up in Portland.”
I hadn’t thought of Q being the start of a last name.
“My turn,” he said. “You never answered my question.”
“What question was that?”
“When next will you come here?”
I could see the eagerness in his eyes. “I don’t know exactly. It’s hard to know when I’ll be able to leave the house long enough. We don’t want to take a chance of my pa getting wind of me coming here to meet you, do we?”
Charley grinned. “Reckon not. Besides, I’d best be gettin’ on home myself afore my pa comes lookin’ for me. He won’t take kindly to me wastin’ good daylight doin’ nothin’. Would you care to walk with me for a piece?”
I stood up and brushed the bits of dirt and pine needles off my skirt. “I would like that very much,” I said with undisguised enthusiasm.
Charley Perkins led me east, walking uphill through the forest without benefit of a trail.
The possibility I’d get lost on my own nagged at me. Simon had warned me against going into the woods alone for that reason. “You’d be s’prised how easy it is to get yerself all turned ‘round, Miss Emma,” he’d said. “Every tree starts to look like ever’ other tree and afore you knows it, you’s plumb lost.”
Charley acted the perfect gentleman, bending bushes aside so they couldn’t trip me up, taking me by the arm to help steady me as I picked up my skirts and climbed over logs, asking me if I was tired and didn’t I want to rest?
After forty minutes I could see a clearing up ahead with a log cabin and several outbuildings. At about the same time, my stomach began to get a little queasy. I was running out of time.
“Come meet my ma,” Charley said eagerly. “And my sisters, if you can abide them.”
“Maybe another time, Charley. I’d better start for home myself before my pa misses me. Thank you for your company. It’s been a real pleasure meeting you.”
He grinned and blushed. “I’ll be looking for you at the spring,” he assured me. “Come back soon as you can.”
I could feel that strange popping sensation starting in my head, and my stomach clenching up. In seconds I’d be stopped in my tracks when the dizziness hit. “Bye, Charley.” I walked off toward the south as quickly as the forest floor litter and my long skirt allowed.
In a few minutes I’d left Charley behind and found myself passing a small family graveyard surrounded by a simple wrought iron fence. Four headstones guarded the grave mounds. I stopped, and though the dizziness made me stumble a little, I let myself inside to read the inscriptions. The last and freshest grave said; “Joseph A. Perkins. March 12, 1870—August 17th, 1876. Rest with the Angels.”
That was the last thing my eyes saw before the dizziness overwhelmed me and I tumbled to the ground. I struggled to keep my eyes open. The violent trembling and turbulent convulsions of my surroundings only added to the notion of being tossed without mercy on a stormy ocean. I closed my eyes, held my stomach, and rode out the storm.
When at last my head cleared, I opened my eyes to a still and peaceful forest. The graveyard had not survived to 2016. Hemlocks, cedars and firs towered above me. They appeared more slender, less substantial than the forest I’d just left. More sunlight penetrated to the forest floor. A daddy longlegs spider ambled across the bark and needles in front of my nose. I got to my feet, fearing I was already lost in an unfamiliar section of the forest.
Though it took better than two hours, I managed to hike more or less downhill until I emerged from the forest into the mammoth pasture I knew stood to the north of the Ross house and barn. I waded kitty-cornered through its tall grass toward the southwest keeping an eye out for snakes until I spied the barn with Methuselah wandering around the back corral.
Inside the barn, I stopped to check on Tashunka. She was alert and nickered a soft greeting. Whatever had ailed her, the Combiotic had killed it. It became obvious as I petted her face that I was stalling here in the barn, putting off the inevitable chewing-out I’d get from the first adult I ran into. I’d been gone almost five hours and had missed lunch. I could look forward to being banished to my room until dinner.
Chapter 12
February 9, 1969
Dear Diary:
Things have been happening too quickly to write about. I ran into Q shortly after my last entry and spent nearly two hours with him. He’s funny and makes me laugh, and the way he looks at me makes my cheeks hot and gives me strange feelings in my stomach. It’s a soft intimate look coming out of his eyes I’ve never seen from anybody before and sometimes, though I like it, I have to look away. He wants to see me more often, every day if such a thing could be done, and we have made actual dates. Because the day and time I’m taken back to in 1886 is the same as the day and time here in 1969, it’s not hard to make plans to meet him, but sometimes it’s almost impossible to get out of the house. I’ve had a few awful fights with Mother about where I’ve been and who I’ve been seeing. I just tell her I’ve been taking walks for exercise since she won’t let me participate in P.E. at school. She thinks the little shorts and blouses we have to change into are indecent. It’s just one more reason the kids think of me as the school weirdo. I told Mother I won’t grow up strong and healthy if I don’t get any exercise, so she has backed off a little.
I have been able to go to the spring two and three times a week lately, and my friendship with Q has turned into something else. Something much deeper. Q has admitted he’s falling in love with me. Three days ago while we were out walking, he held my hand and kissed me. He apologized, saying he just gets carried away, that it’s hard to restrain himself when I’m around. (Not that I mind.)
Do you believe it, Diary? For the first time in my life I feel loved and protected and special. When I must leave to return to my own time, my sensational trips into 1886 seem like a dream. If it’s a dream, then I never want to wake up. Q is all I think about. I never imagined I’d have a boyfriend. Q insisted yesterday that I not see any other boys. As if that would be a problem.
The misery lies in leaving him when I feel the spring water wearing off. I am anxious to spend every last second I can with him and have nearly had an accident a couple of times when I didn’t leave fast enough. I can’t bear the idea of confessing that I come to him from the future. He’d leave me standing in a cloud of dust, never to return if I say a word about 1969. He’d think me a delusional mad woman who belongs in an asylum. I can’t even explain to him why he can’t call for me at my house in his parents’ buggy, or meet my parents, or take me to a barn dance, and he gets hurt when I suddenly tell him goodbye and run off into the forest. He said he followed me one time, but I was just gone.
I’m falling in love with him, too. Falling hard. I’ve never felt this alive, this excited, or this distracted. It’s difficult to concentrate on school or chores. Sometimes it’s even hard to fall asleep at night. Love tastes like sweet-and-sour pork, Diary. I’m truly joyful in Q’s arms and miserable when I have to leave him. I have never thought of myself as a selfish person before, but it appears I’m just that. Even though I know in my heart of hearts this can’t possibly work out, I can’t help myself. I just can’t give him up. Not now.
~ ~ ~
February 28, 1969
Dear Diary:
You’ll never guess what happened today. I met Q’s family. Well I met his folks, anyway. They acted very pleased to meet me as Q has told them all about me. They know he’s been spending a lot of unchaperoned time with me which I take to be highly
irregular in 1886. Maybe they thought I was a girl of ill repute and that’s why they were relieved once they met me. Q’s father was especially impressed that I could read, write and cipher and knew geography and history as well.
He wondered if my parents knew I was seeing his son. I’ve lied about a few things with Q. I couldn’t lie about this. I told Q’s father my parents didn’t know and would refuse to allow it if they did. I told them my feelings for Q grow deeper every day, which is the truth, and I couldn’t bear to stop seeing him. They asked if the social status of my family was the problem and I said yes, but it didn’t mean a thing to me. Think they liked that. At any rate, they approved of us in the end and were happy their son had found a girl like me. They said they haven’t seen their son this happy since his brother died. I haven’t asked Q about that. If he wants to talk about it, he will.
For sure I have never been this happy, Diary. I thank God every night for what He has given me.
I was stunned. Q also had a brother who died? The diary didn’t say if the brother was older or younger. I knew it was common in those days, when doctors knew very little, to lose siblings to illness or accidents. I once saw an old cemetery by an ancient Catholic church in the deserts of New Mexico. There was a grave of a woman who had died in 1891. Next to her were six small graves of her children, none of whom had lived longer than eight years. This was probably just a coincidence that Charlotte and I had both met young men who had each lost a brother. Except mine had lost two brothers and two sisters.
A Certain Twist in Time Page 11