by J. L. Abramo
“You keep a notebook like this for every year?”
“I do,” Henry said. “At least for the last several, I have.”
In his book under the current date he’d written, “Found a passing stranger, and I think he’ll do fine as a ‘New Friend.’”
I asked Henry why ‘New Friend’ was in quotes and capitalized, and he said, “You never know how things’ll turn out.”
“Just a WAG,” I said.
“A what?” Henry asked.
“A WAG...a Wild-Ass-Guess,” I said.
Henry thought that was funny. He laughed and laughed.
“A WAG!” He said. “That’s exactly what it is!”
I reckon I should get to the crime.
That’s the reason I’m in here, and that’s why there’s all the construction going on outside.
After I helped him do his work in the mornings, feeding and watering the horses and hauling hay, Henry took me around town and showed me Jessup, Texas in 1884. He took me to the L.G. Swinney General Merchandise store, and to the Overton’s Quality Goods shop. We had a small steak with an egg and coffee at Menlo’s Fine Hotel, and Henry took me to see where the telegraph office would be installing a telephone switchboard “soon enough,” Henry said.
Then he took me to the Prescott and Vance Transport Office. We didn’t go in, we just looked at it from across the dirt road.
“That’s a right peculiar place,” Henry said.
“What’s peculiar about it?” I asked.
“Well, most towns...the folk keep their gold in the bank. But in Jessup, the bank is clean as a whistle.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because people rob banks, you numbskull.”
“So where do they keep the gold?” I asked. I shouldn’t have, but I asked.
“Right there,” Henry said, pointing with his ever-present toothpick splinter. “You see, strangers and out-of-towners, they don’t rush in and rob the Transport Office. It’s pretty clever. Unless you know the gold is here.”
“And how’d you come to know this information, Henry?”
“Just a WAG,” Henry said and laughed.
I looked at him sideways until he smiled.
“I do my best to keep my ear to the ground, New Friend.”
Maybe you have enough smarts to have already figured out how things went down, but I sure didn’t. Not beforehand. You know what they say about hindsight. I was having a good time, and as far as I was concerned I was just along for the ride. Henry and I went back to work, and by the third day I actually started to think about staying in 1884. Things are cheap in Jessup, 1884. I had steak and eggs with coffee every day. No one pressuring me or demanding much. So long as we did our job right we got enough silver to jingle in our pockets as we walked around town looking at the sights.
We got our picture taken one afternoon. “Developed and framed in one day,” Henry said, as he hung the picture on the wall of the Livery stable. We looked like outlaws from those old Time/Life western book series. We laughed and laughed at that picture.
We bought candy one morning from Swinney’s—something that Henry indicated was an exceedingly rare treat—and I bought a new hat and a vest with only one day’s earnings in silver. Henry bought a harmonica and at night he’d play slow, mournful songs that fit the ambiance just right under the hiss and yellow-orange light of the gas lamps.
After playing for a while, Henry would put his harmonica into a box with his private stuff (he never let me see what was in the box. I could see the notebook, but never the contents of the box), then he’d snuff the gas lights and we’d fall to sleep in the loft, just right as rain until morning.
Nobody talked to us too much except to tell us what they wanted done with their horses or saddles, and other than that we might as well have been invisible in town. Most people lived out of town anyway and only came into Jessup to do business. I suppose if I just zapped out of town again through the time-travel cylinder, no one in Jessup would have ever missed me except for Henry.
I thought life was pretty good, and I was enjoying being along for the ride.
So I was surprised when I woke up one morning to find Henry gone. His private box was gone too. I found his notebook, though. He’d dropped it near the big sliding door of the Livery. I loosened the hemp string, opened it and turned to the current day. Today’s the day, it read in Henry’s script writing, I feel sorry for my New Friend, but only a little.
I walked all over town and I saw him a few blocks away from the Prescott and Vance Transport Office. He turned when I saw him, almost as if he’d seen me first, and he walked directly into the building.
Curiosity overwhelmed me, and I couldn’t imagine what Henry meant by what he wrote in the notebook, so I followed him in.
He smiled when he saw me.
“Howdy, New Friend,” he said.
I nodded.
“You dropped your notebook in the Livery,” I said. “I hope you don’t mind, but I read it.”
“I figured you would,” Henry said, pulling the toothpick splinter from his mouth as he took the notebook from my hand.
“What—”
I started to ask Henry about the notebook, but his hand came up faster than I could have ever imagined, and in his gloved hand was a revolver. The kind you’re imagining right now, I suppose, and it was frightfully scary to behold.
Just then, a young girl came out from behind a counter. She couldn’t have been more than thirteen, and she obviously did not see the gun in Henry’s hand.
“My name is Laura Vance,” she said rather loudly. “My father and his partner are out of the office for the next full hour.” She looked down at herself as she walked. Self-important at the moment. I noticed that she spoke authoritatively, with clipped words that emphasized that she knew what was what, and we’d just have to listen to her...even if we were grownups.
She was swinging keys in her hand, and when she finally looked up and saw the pistol, she dropped them to the floor.
It was like time just struggled to move forward. It stretched out before me and it was like I was stuck in that maple syrup cylinder. I could only watch.
There was the gunshot. It wasn’t as loud as I thought a gunshot might be in that situation. It was muffled, almost like there was gunpowder going off over a longer period of time than just the BANG of the guns I’d shot before. And there was smoke too, that billowed outward like the announcement of death itself.
The girl hit the floor. Lifeless. For a split-second it was like every movie death I’d seen in all my years. But...then it started, and it was unlike every movie death I’d ever seen. The convulsions, and gyrations. She was dead enough, but her body twitched and flopped as her legs churned in an attempt to run. There was a death rattle that escaped her mouth. Blood soaked the floor and I could not...could not...take my eyes off of her.
She was the last thing I saw because the lights went out on me. I went from stunned paralysis to being instantly enveloped in black, Stygian darkness like a cloak. Then, I woke up in this cell.
The rest I’ve pieced together since then.
That was three days ago. The trial was yesterday. The hanging is today.
Apparently, everyone had seen me with Henry Carroll. Simply everyone testified. And I do mean everyone. People I’d never even seen before talked about Henry and I eating steak and eggs at Menlo’s, and buying candy, and “casing” the Transport Office like proper, diabolical, practiced burglars.
They said, “I always did think those boys were the bad sort. Evil, you know?”
And, “You could tell they were up to no good.”
They had the picture of Henry and me, smiling into the camera like we shared a secret. It was the perfect set-up. Framed for sure.
Henry got away clean as can be, but not me. The prosecutor said that “a disagreement between the miscreants after the robbery and murder left us this guilty one to stand for the crime. But this one we’ll hang for the both of them.”
&
nbsp; A disagreement, he said.
I...I was just along for the ride.
So maybe you beat me to this conclusion too. I always was a little slow. Nowhere near as smart as my dad. But from what I can see if I stand on my bunk and push my head as close to the bars as I can get and look through the leaves on the trees...well...it looks like they built the gallows over X-marks-the-spot. That’s just a WAG though. I can only hope.
The only thing that’ll convince me that God Himself had this all planned out perfectly all along, is if they pull that lever at exactly 12:01 today.
It’s been a week since I got here.
They bind my hands behind me, and a priest comes in to see if I want help. I wave him away. I’m religious, but I never was a papist, and there’s nothing he can do for me now anyway. All that matters for me is time and distance. It’s just science from here on out.
The time looks like it might work out right. Five minutes until 12:01. One minute to get there. They have to fix the rope and all that. A tremor goes through me as I realize what a long shot this is. Then they have to read the charges and the sentence. That’ll take a few minutes. It’ll be close.
I look up and at first it seems like the gallows are way too big. Then I see...
...They’re made for two. There’ll be two hangings today.
That’s when I hear Bobby Wayne Atkins shuffling behind me.
I turn and his dead eyes embrace me like we’re kin.
Oh, Jesus.
I look around to see if I can find any sign of the X-marks-the-spot, but I can’t. It’s covered by the monstrosity of the gallows.
Twelve steps up, about the height of the ladder, and my hearing goes away. It flashes back, but the sound is like if I was deep in a tunnel. Under water, maybe. My head spins, and I stumble. A deputy catches me and pushes me until I’m standing over the trap door.
The deputy...the executioner...offers me a hood, but I refuse it because I want...I need...to look down at that moment of freefall and see that X-marks-the-spot right under me.
The charges are read, first against me, along with the sentence, then those against Bobby Wayne Atkins. What a monster he is. He deserves what he’s getting, and maybe I do too.
And then I think...what if he’s over the cylinder? What if the trap door opens and Bobby Wayne Atkins drops into my own time?
I take a deep breath and it feels like time dilates. It’s my imagination, but I feel myself in the cylinder, my vision gets cloudy and I look down.
I look down.
I couldn’t tell you what all I felt. I didn’t feel much at all. Just the feeling of dropping, then the ground blurred and I heard a snap.
Back to TOC
BLOOD RED AND GOIN’ DOWN
Tommy Hancock
He filled the doorway of the bar room, if it could be called such. It had been the second building erected in what was supposed to be a town on the road midway between Atlanta and Augusta, Georgia. A town decided on by one of the landowners who thought he’d take advantage of the growing traffic along the trail cut out of the red clay. It became less town, and more roadside stop than anything, over time. But, now, the man whose broad shoulders occluded the setting Georgia sun from peeking into the door didn’t care much about any of that. He only wanted to find out where someone was.
He stood nearly six feet tall, a black leather duster hiding a body made muscular by forcing life to grow out of unwilling Kentucky soil. The wide brimmed brown hat that shadowed the man’s face had been faded by too many days in the sun and stained with sweat. He was unshaven, not too many days shy of a razor, but enough that the rough look added to a somber, almost angry air about him.
The four men in the single room draught house had all looked up from their distractions as the poorly hung door squeaked open. The barkeep, a sickly thin man with skin the color of dried corn silk, stood behind the bar, two planks sitting on empty wooden barrels stacked atop one another. The other three men sat around a table, only one of four between the canvas walls, supported by a rickety skeleton of roughened wood posts and a solid back wall. Each had an empty mug in front of him.
“Looking for someone,” the man said from the doorway. His voice was low, but not harsh. A hard man who didn’t have to sound hard to prove it. “Told he might have been this way.”
“Maybe,” said the keep, leaning on the makeshift bar before him. “More and more people come this way every day, most of ’em headin’ for Atlanta. Some still makin’ their way to work in Augusta though. Too many to ride herd on, really.”
The man in the doorway nodded, looked at the three men at the table. “Bet you three get out more than he does. Maybe you’ve seen who I’m looking for. Been around here a few days, hear tell.”
Two of the men at the table didn’t respond. The one closest to the bar, a big man in his own right, leaned back in his creaking chair. “You,” he said, his words leaking out through his nose, “ain’t new here yourself. Rode into town on the back of a Ford truck rattlin’ through here yesterday morning, didn’t you?”
The man in the hat and duster nodded and took two steps out of the doorway. “That’s right. Down from Atlanta. Been looking for this feller for a bit.”
“You,” said the nasal speaker, “and a kid got off the back of that truck. A little girl.”
As if on cue, a mass of dirty blonde hair set atop an unwashed face peeked out from behind the man. She was ten, just a couple of weeks shy of being eleven, and had green eyes that shimmered like stars. She looked around the room, wrinkled her nose up at the smell of dirty men and bad beer, but said nothing.
The three men at the table looked at each other, the one who’d been speaking nodding at the other two. The bartender started to make his way out from behind the bar, waving his spindle like arms in the air. “Now, waitaminnit...No kids allowed in here! This ain’t no place for—”
The large man slid his right hand along the lapel of his duster, pulling the coat open, trapping it behind his holster. The barkeep stopped short, his eyes falling on the black butt of the .45 Colt S.A.A. revolver nestled in the leather sheath. The three men at the table took notice as well, the man who spoke through his nose sitting upright again. All three of them lowered hands from the table to their own hips.
“She,” said the man, “stays with me. Never leave her alone anywhere. Don’t intend to be here long enough for it to matter.”
The bartender ran emaciated fingers through a mess of filthy black hair atop his head and snarled, “All right, then, but you ain’t gettin’ a drink here. Not with her.”
“Don’t want a drink. Just to know where a man is. Heard tell he called this place home, was from around here.”
The men at the table laughed raucously. “Ain’t nobody,” said the one on the right side of the table, a potbellied squat man in a dented bowler, “lived here long enough to be from here. Hell, town ain’t even got a name yet, mister. Only been here goin’ on a year.”
“Yeah,” said the man sitting opposite him, a gaunt fellow with a hawk nose. “Little places like this all over, dontcha know. Nothin’ but out of work farmers and criminals end up in places like this.” The three men all guffawed again, the bartender adding his hacking chuckle to theirs. “This dude you’re after, he either one of those?”
“A rainmaker,” the man said. “Travels town to town in a beaten up 1902 Model A Ford, words painted on the side. Claims he can fire a cannon, bang a drum, and make it rain.” He moved forward again, the little girl following behind him, clinging to his duster. “In a painted up Model A like the one what’s behind your little beer house here.”
“Well,” said the bartender, his laughter fading into a nervous twitter, “ain’t no business of mine who parks their autos or whatnot around here. No law hereabouts, along with everything else.”
“Don’t need law,” the man wearing the Colt said. “Just want to know where he is. And the woman riding with him.”
“Woman?” the man in the bowler cocked
a thin eyebrow. “Blonde, green eyed like the waif there behind you? A woman like that?”
The man nodded once.
“Nope,” chortled the fat man, “Not seen her. Him neither.”
The man in the duster crossed the tiny bar room in two great strides, leaving the little blonde girl by the door. Raising his right leg, he kicked the chair the man in the bowler sat in, hitting as much flabby skin as he did the chair with his dust covered black boot. The chair groaned and crumbled into kindling, the fat man trumpeting like a bawling calf as he dropped to the dirt floor.
As he kicked, the man in the duster drew his gun and jammed it into the hooked nose of the man now standing to his left. His almond eyes bore down hard on the third man, also wary of the barkeep frozen in place behind him. The thin man cursed as blood spurted from his broken beak nose, pulling one hand up to staunch the flow, the other going to his own gun on his hip. But only going near it, not gripping the butt. Not staring down the barrel of an angry man’s hogleg.
“No law, you said,” the man with the Colt restated. “That’s good with me. I need to know where the man that claims to make rain and the woman he’s with is. I figure you know.”
“Yeah?” questioned the man on the ground, floundering around to climb off of his ass onto his knees. “What if we do? Who are you to come up in here—”
The man’s foot lashed out again, catching the fat man in the temple, knocking the bowler from his head. As he collapsed back to the ground with a moan, the man in the duster said, “My name is Titus Malone. That’s all you need to know.” He watched the man who talked through his nose, looked at his gray eyes as they widened for a second, then settled back on top of a sniveling smile crossing his lips. “Unless,” finished Malone, “you already knew that.”