Predestination Unknown

by Tanya Chris

  “Care to try it?” Ezekiel asked. He held the reins over in my direction and I took them. Daffy just kept on trucking. She didn’t care who had hold of the reins, not as long as I didn’t move them much, which I fast figured out was the best course of action. Even when another horse came towards us—woot! traffic!—it didn’t rattle her, so I just held the reins steady while she and the other horse trotted past each other.

  Ezekiel doffed his hat and called out “Good morning.” I’d rather have had a hat than a wig, but I’d put the silly thing back on, since it seemed to be what Ezekiel expected me to do. Wigs had probably been expensive back before they were made of plastic, and I had to admit the wig was warmer than going bare-headed.

  Eventually we started passing buildings more often than once an acre, and Ezekiel took the reins back from me.

  Well, now I’d driven a wagon. If I ever got back to the real world, there were two things I could say I’d done: ridden on a horse and driven a wagon. And traveled through time. Three things.

  We came to a veritable clump of buildings—several of them on each side of the road—and Ezekiel hopped down and tied Daffy off to a hitching post in front of a water trough on the side of a blocky, white-washed building.

  “Where do you think your friends might be?” he asked.

  “Is this …” I was afraid to know. “Is this Salem?”

  “This is it.”

  It wasn’t like I’d been expecting a Tourist Office or a tardis, but this? I’d never known you could put up six buildings and call it a town.

  “This is the meeting house,” he said. “I’m expected inside.”

  “Oh, yeah. Of course. You should go in. I’ll, uh, look around.” I started to pull off the cloak the Cheevers had lent me, but he stopped me.

  “Whether you find your friends or no, ’twill be cold.”

  No kidding. I felt bad about keeping the cloak though. The Cheevers had so few things. Meanwhile my closets back home were stuffed with enough clothes and coats and miscellany that I could have outfitted the whole family and not missed what I gave them. But I didn’t know if I’d ever make it back to those closets and Ezekiel was right: it was cold.

  I held out my hand and he took it. We faced each other with me wishing there was some way, in a few short sentences, to convey what being gay meant and that it was OK for him to be it. I had no idea what he was thinking, but it made his eyes sad.

  With one last squeeze, our hands parted. Ezekiel headed for the front of the building, but he turned back to me before disappearing around the corner.

  “I meant what I said last night. If you can’t figure out how to get home, then shall you call my home yours until you do.”

  It didn’t take me long after he left to realize I had nothing. No clue, no plan—just a borrowed cloak and an ostentatious wig and a cell phone that didn’t work.

  Futilely, I fished the phone out of my pocket, then realized I couldn’t be caught with the thing in my hand and ducked around to the back of the building. I wedged myself between a couple of shrubs and sat down with my back against the courthouse and held the power button down until the Samsung logo came up.

  At least it still started up. I was in a place where the laws of physics worked, not Narnia or some shit, but when my phone had finished its boot-up process it displayed that NO symbol in the upper, right corner that indicated a complete lack of signal. Not just bad signal, not just poor signal. No signal.

  Ah, well. Who was I going to call anyway? 2017?

  It seemed like owning a device with more computational power than the entire town of Salem should benefit me in some way, but I couldn’t figure out how. I could Google time travel, except that would require a signal and would probably turn up a bunch of useless Dr. Who links. I could use the GPS to navigate somewhere, except there were no satellites out in space yet and I didn’t have anywhere to go anyway. I could take a picture of this crazy two-horse town. If I made it home someday, I could show the picture to my psychiatrist as proof that I hadn’t had a psychotic break with reality.

  I flipped over to the camera app and went around to the side of the building and snapped a picture of Daffy, just for the fun of it, then remembered it was foolish to be doing that where anyone could see me right outside a building where people were being accused of being witches.

  I powered the phone down and tucked it back in my pocket. The day had warmed a little now that the sun had risen further. I wandered out to the street where there were signs of life. Most of the activity centered around the meeting house. Spectators going in to rubberneck, I figured.

  The building across the street had a little bustle too. It was fronted by a large sign reading Ingersoll’s Ordinary, whoever Ingersoll was and whatever made him so ordinary. When I got closer, I saw it was a tavern or maybe an inn. I mentally marked it as a place to get lunch, then was struck by the fact that I didn’t have money for lunch. I didn’t have money for anything.

  Yes, I had something like sixty dollars in my wallet, which if U.S. money existed in 1692 would make me a gazillionaire, but it would be a century or two before I could hope to pass one of those bills off on someone. In the meantime, I had no money, no home, no job, and no clue how to proceed.

  On top of that, I was getting mystified looks from passersby because a Black man in a massively curly wig roaming freely around town was maybe not their norm. I decided to get myself out of the public eye before someone challenged me for my papers again.

  Daffy waited where we’d left her. At least she was a familiar face. I rubbed her nose, wishing I had a carrot for her, though if I did I’d be smart to save it for myself. I must have missed the episode of Dr. Who where he starved to death because he didn’t have any local money.

  Voices from the front of the building had me shying back, using Daffy as a shield. The men who were speaking to each other didn’t come around the corner though. They hovered right on the edge of it, their conversation drifting over to me.

  Politics. Funny. I might as well have been paging through Facebook in 2017. Seemed some council had ruled that Salem could become an independent township if they took over caring for their own poor, and the two guys around the corner didn’t think much of that ruling. They didn’t think much of the poor either, though the words “Christian charity” were tossed around in a sneery way.

  Same song, different day.

  I did my best to ignore their conversation. Local politics weren’t my concern. Daffy was warm and I pressed into her side the way I’d pressed into Ezekiel the night before, though without the ulterior motive.

  “Nothing personal,” I whispered into her ear. “I just prefer men.”

  She tossed her head as if to say “girl, please,” but really it was probably to get me away from her ear. I rubbed her nose again. I had a friend. Well, two friends counting the man in the meeting house who’d promised to take me back if I didn’t have anywhere else to go. I didn’t want to impose on the Cheevers again—Mr. Cheever sure didn’t want me there—but I couldn’t see a way around it. I was going to have to figure out some things about 1692, like how to earn a living. If I couldn’t get back home, I’d have to learn how to live here.

  The voices around the corner faded and I relaxed. I didn’t want to bother Ezekiel, but I was afraid wandering around would lead to my arrest, so I spent the morning sitting on the ground in the longest stretch of forced inactivity I’d ever endured. There were some games on my phone, but I was saving the battery for—

  I didn’t know what I was saving it for, but the charge I had now was the only charge I was ever going to get unless I found Ben Franklin and hooked my phone up to his kite.

  After a while, my stomach started grumbling.

  “Are you hungry too?” I asked Daffy. I didn’t know if horses ate lunch or not.

  Right on cue, Ezekiel appeared. He spotted me on the ground and his face brightened, like he was actually glad I hadn’t disappeared, but then he gave me a sympathetic frown.

>   “You’ve not found what you were looking for?”

  “I don’t even know where to start,” I admitted. “My friends won’t be … here.” I waved at our general surroundings. “I was mistaken about where I was.”

  “Then you’ll come home with me tonight as were agreed.”

  “I have no money, nothing I can give you. I’ll be no less of a burden tomorrow than I am today.” I was hardly a prize, regardless of how glad he’d been to see me. Tears welled up, furthering my humiliation. I wasn’t just begging for help; I was crying while I did it.

  “Hush now. You’re not a burden.” He sat next to me and put a tentative hand on my knee. “I wish for your sake that you would be home, but I cannot be sorry you’ll stay.”

  “What will I do, though? I can’t stay with you forever.”

  “Have you no skills?”

  I inventoried my skills. Video games. Basketball. Large data statistical analysis. No, I had no skills that would earn me money in 1692. I wiped my sleeve across my eyes and shook my head.

  Ezekiel pressed a handkerchief into my hand. That was another thing this Three Musketeer costume hadn’t come with. Back in the days before tissues and antiseptic wipes, people carried handkerchiefs. I blew my nose, feeling sorry about that too. A clean handkerchief was another thing I owed him now.

  “You’ll work on the farm with me for starters,” he said. “I’ll be thankful for another set of hands. Rooting out these witches may take a fair amount of time.”

  “What have you got to do with the witches?” I asked. I sure hoped he wasn’t the town executioner.

  “They have me to take the notes. My father were court stenographer when needed, but he be too busy with school of late, so they call on his son. I’ve not the time either, but I won’t say them no. ’Tis a foul thing, this business with the witches.”

  Yeah, about that. Should I try to intervene? Could history be changed even if I did try?

  “My mother sent a lunch.” Ezekiel rose and went to the wagon.

  First he took a bay of hale from the back and ripped it open in front of Daffy who put her head down eagerly, so yes to the horse-lunch thing. Then he pulled out a metal bucket and unpacked a variety of foods from it—cheese, meat, some apples that looked like they’d been sitting for a few months, not been shipped fresh from South America the day before. He went around to the front of the building and came back with a tin mug full of water.

  “We must share the mug,” he said as he offered it to me. “I should have thought to bring two.”

  I took everything he gave me gratefully. I was hungry and thirsty and crying had only made me more so. Mrs. Cheever hadn’t packed enough food for two young men, so I tried to eat as little as I could get away with, but he kept pressing the food on me.

  We ate side by side on the ground, Daffy munching on her hay in front of us. He was warm against my side and the sun shone on my face. He babbled happily about the farm and everything I could do to help him with it, though I was pretty sure he was making up chores as he went. I had no reason to feel optimistic, but with food in my stomach and Ezekiel by my side, I sure felt better.

  Chapter 6

  “Come inside then,” Ezekiel said when we’d taken turns relieving ourselves in the bushes. “There is yet one accused to examine this afternoon.”

  I followed him into the meeting house, curiosity and cold getting the better of me. Inside I found a single large room furnished in high-backed benches like church pews. The pews were filled with people—lots and lots of people. This was their television, their spectacle, their Saturday afternoon.

  Ezekiel plowed straight through the crowds to the front of the room with me tagging close behind him. This many strangers made me nervous. White strangers. All of them white. A sea of white people in funny clothes whose eyes followed as I passed.

  At the front of the room, two dudes in frock coats and wigs conferred with each other. I touched my own wig, ensuring it was on straight. None of the men in the gallery wore wigs—only those guys up front. Ergo, important dudes wore wigs and since I had the most ridiculous wig in the house, I must be the most important one there. I straightened, returning curious glances with haughty ones.

  Ezekiel parked a second chair next to a small desk that held a stack of paper which was hardly a step up from papyrus and an honest-to-God inkwell with a quill jutting from it. The stage was set for a witch trial re-enactment with women in frilly caps, men in frock coats, and a row of girls in the front pew wearing pinafores.

  Those three pale girls up front weren’t throwing fits at the moment, but I could guess they were the accusers. They sat with their heads down and their hands clasped and if I discounted their outfits, they could be three little girls anywhere. Nothing about them suggested they were about kill a bunch of innocent people.

  There was a rustle of movement in the crowd and then quiet descended as a scraggly man came down the center aisle dragging a woman of color by the arm. Her skin tone was lighter than mine and her features suggested Native American rather than African American, but I felt an instant kinship with the only other non-white person in the room.

  But as soon as those girls in the front row caught sight of her, they started twitching and wailing. With the benefit of hindsight and the knowledge that there was no such thing as witches—not that there was any such thing as time travel, either, but I was ignoring the hell out of that fact—I wasn’t taken in by their act, but the crowd certainly was.

  A man in a wig nearly as large as mine rose to confront the light-brown woman over the wails of the three girls.

  “Tituba,” his voice rang out, “what evil spirit have you familiarity with?”

  Tituba? I knew that name. She was the scapegoat, the one whose practice of a ritual from her native culture had supposedly started the whole scare. I’d always been taught she was Black. This woman wasn’t Black.

  Tituba refuted any association with evil spirits, but her words only sent the girls into greater paroxysms of supposed pain. The more she denied hurting them, the louder they screamed until Tituba, with a shrewd glance at her questioner, made a one-eighty.

  “The devil came to me and bid me serve him.”

  The crowd gasped, then hushed. Even the squalling children piped down. Everyone wanted to hear this.

  With plenty of prompting from the guy running the show, Tituba detailed the multiple forms she’d seen the Devil take. She spun tales of him offering her rewards and threatening her with torments. She even worked in a ride on a broomstick.

  The questioning grew less harsh, more approving as Tituba shifted the narrative. She was one of the victims now—a woman who’d valiantly fought the Devil and lost. Yes, she’d “pinched” the children, but only because the evil spirits made her do it.

  “Last night they tell me I must kill somebody with the knife,” she said. There was another audible gasp from the gallery. Pinching was one thing, killing was another.

  “Who were they that told you so?” the questioner asked.

  “Sarah Good and Sarah Osborn.”

  Sarah Good and Sarah Osborn were the other two women Salem already had in jail, the ones who’d testified that morning, so Tituba hadn’t exactly come up with those names herself, but the questioner was pleased at hearing them nonetheless. He turned to Ezekiel gravely, checking to make sure he hadn’t missed them for the record.

  If I’d been a lawyer for the other side, I’d have objected a few times during the testimony that followed. The questioner was totally leading the witness, lobbing questions that presumed the answer like “Did you not see Sarah Good hurt Elizabeth Hubbard last Saturday?” (Tituba did.) And “Did you not hurt Mr. Currin’s child?” (Not her, no. That was Sarah Good and Sarah Osborn.)

  Whatever prompt the questioner fed Tituba, she fed back the right answer. The three accusers would signify their approval by moaning on cue, and the spell-bound crowd would whisper to each other and wrap their shawls closer around their bodies or clasp their h
ands in prayer.

  Occasionally, to change things up, one of the girls pointed with a bony finger at the air over her head and called out a name. Then all three would duck and screech like they were being dive-bombed as the spectators’ heads swiveled, trying to catch a glimpse of the tormenting spirit. The mayhem would continue until a portly, bewigged man up front thumped the floor with his cane as a call to order.

  It was quite a scene altogether. It would make excellent reality TV. I could imagine exactly how it would play out. At the end of each episode, the accusers would cry out a new witch. Then the following week they could try her and let the audience vote on whether or not she should hang.

  The three women selected as witches thus far—the two Sarahs and Tituba—were definitely on the low end of the popularity scale, the kind of contestants who always got voted off first. Tituba, making a bid for the crowd-favorite, second-chance reprieve, gave the audience what they wanted. She validated Salem’s version of witchcraft, right down to the broomsticks, and incriminated herself just enough to sound like an insider, while doubling down on the evils perpetrated by the other two contestants.

  Ezekiel’s notes, a quick scrawl designating the questioner as ‘H’ and Tituba as ‘T,’ recorded her performance like a DVR.

  H: But did you not hurt them?

  T: Yes, but I will hurt them no more.

  H: Are you not sorry you did hurt them?

  T: Yes.

  If only H & T had left it there, maybe the town of Salem could’ve slapped Tituba on the wrist, hanged the other two witches, and called it a day, but Tituba, high on approval and eager to satisfy the crowd’s cries for more, went a little further.

  H: Who have you seen?

  T: Four women. There is four women and one man and they do hurt the children.

  Five witches. And so a witch hunt was born.

  After a particularly good case of hysterics from the afflicted, for which the absent and oblivious Sarah Good was blamed, Tituba slumped against her chair and declared herself blinded to the spirt world. The questioner (or host, as I was coming to think of him, both because of Ezekiel’s H and the association with reality TV) had the good stage-sense to wrap the scene up quickly from there.