by Rodney Jones
“That sounds like fun.”
“It was a hoot.”
“Do you have a girlfriend?”
That put my mind in a stutter. “A girlfriend?”
She threw a hand over her mouth. Her eyes widened. “Am I being disrespectful again?”
“No. It’s… well… I’m not…” I heaved a sigh. I figured I might as well cut her some slack. “Do you mean girl friend like a friend or girlfriend as in courting?” Zella Shaw came to mind, though I couldn’t honestly claim her as anything. But would I if I could?
“That’s so romantic, courting.” She snickered. “Hey, don’t they have judges in courts?”
“What?”
“Oh.” She again clapped a hand over her mouth. “I just… I don’t mean to do that, be insensitive.” She gave me sheepish eyes. “I’m sorry.”
I shrugged.
“Courting. I meant, do you have a girlfriend like in courting?”
“No.”
In the brief silence that followed, I tried to think of anything more I could say about it, but then Tess asked, “How was that done? I mean, how do you go about meeting a girl and then courting her? Is it like you see a girl in church one day, and you just go up to her and say, ‘Hey, let’s court’? Do girls have any say in it?”
“I don’t rightly know, Tess. I’ve never done it.”
“Really?”
“Well, I’ve danced with gals, and there was this one…” I realized I was being drawn into a conversation I wasn’t entirely comfortable in having. “No, I ain’t ever courted a gal. You don’t court unless you’re planning on getting married.”
“But there was this one?”
“For crying out loud, Tess!”
She winked. “Just asking.”
We came to a level stretch followed by a slight decline. I knew the place. We were maybe a quarter mile from the spot where I’d found the ribbon.
“How’s it done these days?” I asked.
“What?”
“Courting.”
“Hmm. Good question. For starters, we don’t call it courting. I guess it’s called dating now, but people don’t… well, younger people don’t use that word so much. My friends don’t, anyway. I think it’s more like, you see someone you think is cute, and if you have the balls… the nerve, if you have the nerve, you ask them to go do something with you, like a movie or something, and then you wait and see if they call you… on the phone, you know? Which usually means they like you, so maybe you go do something else and so on until they don’t like you anymore.”
“You don’t get married?”
“Well, not until you’re all done with school and college and you fall in love with someone.”
“Ah, just up ahead”—I pointed—“past those rocks, on the left.”
“We’re here?”
“Yup, this is it.”
We walked up to the rocks. I took the sack from my back and leaned it against a boulder. About forty feet ahead was where I’d left the wagon nearly four days prior. Tess seemed nervous, or maybe it was me. I was nervous.
“So, what do we do?” she asked.
“Hmm. I’m not exactly sure.” Nervous and something else.
“Where’d it happen?”
I pointed. “Thereabouts.”
“So now what?”
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the last of the coins I had with me—a quarter dollar and a half. “I want you to take this.” I took her hand and dropped the coins into it.
She looked down at her hand and then up at me. “John, this is very nice of you. But you’re going to need this, aren’t you? More than me. I can’t.” She pushed her hand toward me. “But thank you.”
“It’s really not all that much. And you’ve done so much for me. Just take it, please.”
She stepped up and threw her arms around me. “Thank you, John.” She stepped back, smiling. “I should’ve let you use my shower this morning.”
“I just had one a few days back.”
“And you ain’t been a-courtin’ yet, have you?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“John, find yourself a nice girl who doesn’t have a sense of smell.”
“I ain’t gonna lose sleep over it, and you ain’t gonna smell me anyhow, a hundred and forty years away.” I gave her a grin. “We shouldn’t dally here too long. You’ve got a walk ahead of you.”
“I’ve got to see this, you know.”
“I’m just hopin’ there’s something to see. But stay well away, just in case.” I started marching off in the direction I thought was correct.
Tess gave me a thirty-foot lead, then followed. “Let me know if you see anything, or feel something, like you feel funny or anything, okay?”
“Well, of course I feel funny, being followed around the woods by a gal.”
“Oh, right. I bet you get this all the time.”
“I’ve never noticed.”
“How far are you going?”
“I don’t know, Tess. I think this is it, right here.” I stopped and turned, trying to remember the trees.
Tess stopped when I did and watched me. I looked to my right and saw a maple sapling with a broken branch about twenty feet from me, that piece of orange ribbon still tied in it. I stepped over to it, reached up and took hold of a branch, then looked off to the south.
“Anything?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
I walked toward where I thought that old oak tree should be. Once there, I turned back around. Tess was still there, thirty feet from me. I shook my head.
She made a shooing motion. “Keep looking.”
I walked back to the maple sapling, shuffled around its base, stepped to the west of it and then the north, then did a couple loops around it at varying distances. I stood there awhile, studying my surroundings. Nothing.
Tess had taken a seat on the trunk of a fallen tree. I walked over and joined her.
“You sure this is the place?”
“Yeah.” I pointed. “There’s the orange ribbon I was telling you about.”
“That’s surveyor’s ribbon. There’s probably more around here.”
“Oh?”
“They use it to mark boundaries.” Twisting her head around, she said, “There’s another over there and… there.”
“Those two boulders near the path, I’ve been up and down through here, passing them by a couple dozen times. I’d stopped just a short ways beyond them this last time.”
“What if we did this, then? Let’s go back to the rocks, see if you can establish where you left your wagon, and then try to retrace your footsteps from there.”
That was something I should’ve thought of to begin with. We walked over to the rocks and started off again from there.
I walked up the path to the place where I left the team. It seemed right. I looked to the south. That seemed right. I began walking south as I remembered doing that day. It was difficult to be certain, though, with the woods being so different. I stopped and turned. Tess was still behind me. I walked on, and there it was—the trees the way they were that day, exactly right. Ahead of me and a little to the right was that sapling, the orange ribbon tied to a branch about six feet from the ground, not the tree I’d just been circling. I looked back. Tess was watching from twenty feet away. I stepped over to the sapling and gave it a closer look. I noticed Tess bending down as though she was about to pick something up from the ground, and just like that, she was gone.
“John, look at this. John?”
But I could still hear her as if she was maybe a hundred feet off. I then realized the light had changed. I looked up. Blue sky. I turned. The old oak.
“John, where are you?”
“Tess? Can you hear me?”
“You’d better not be hiding.” Her voice was becoming even more distant.
“Tess, if you can hear me, say so!” I shouted.
“John…” She was slipping away.
“Can
you hear me?”
“John… John… where’d you…?”
I could barely hear her, and I didn’t think she’d heard me at all. I tried one more time. I hollered as loud as I could. “Tess!”
I heard a horse whinny to the north of me. I stood there for a moment, puzzled, disoriented, and incredulous. Another noise, like the clatter of wagon linkage. I started in that direction. As I neared the road, I couldn’t believe my eyes. The wagon was sitting there just as I’d left it, the grist still piled in sacks in the back. I rushed up to it and gave it all a good goin’ over. Yes, exactly as I left it. The horses. I went up and stroked their necks and shoulders, whispering their names. They didn’t strike me as being particularly hungry or thirsty, yet I’d been gone four days. I checked the brake. It wasn’t even set, and besides, someone should’ve noticed the wagon in that time and reported it. But there they were, the brown and the goose, and I was thrilled to see them, like all my prayers—the ones I’d forgotten to say—had been answered. I let out a couple whoops, dancing about like a loony on holiday.
chapter twelve
LIKE THOSE DREAMS THAT SEEM to go on and on for days, then waking to find only minutes passed, I returned after four days in the distant future to the very moment I had left. I climbed up onto the seat of the wagon and sat there, stunned by my good fortune. I had no explaining to do. Four days in a distant future, and yet, it was as if it had never happened. Whether it had or not, no one would hear of it. Who would believe me, anyway? I was fine with that, though. I didn’t need to be believed and didn’t need to tell anyone.
I glanced up at the blue sky, the sun behind me, warming my back. I picked up the reins, then looked off to my left one last time and nodded. “Well, Tess, I reckon I should be getting this load into Rutland.”
I gave the reins a little snap, and the team crept forward. “Get up!”
Another snap and we were rolling. I figured I’d keep my speed down, no more than three miles an hour, and enjoy the mosquitoes some. As the trees passed slowly by, the air offered nothing but the creak of wood and leather and the steady clopping of horse hooves. If I listened really hard, I could make out the babble and hush of water over rocks. Everything seemed right, more than right, ridiculously right. There was so much giddiness bubbling inside of me, holding it in was borderline painful.
Every now and then, I’d bust out a laugh. If anyone would’ve been watching me, they would’ve likely thought I was corned. But I just plain felt like laughing, and so I did. About three hours later, three of the most agreeable hours I’d ever spent in a wagon, on that last stretch of road before Wallingford, my euphoria began to wane.
I got to thinking about Tess, about where and how she was, walking along by herself on that uncertain trail, maybe still a bit confused. I had a picture in my mind of her picking her way down the mountainside, searching for signs of the trail she lost, and it came to me that my picture was wrong. She wasn’t coming down the mountain or anywhere. She wasn’t born and wouldn’t be for more than a century. It struck me how crazy it was that I’d be concerned about a gal getting home safely, a gal who didn’t even exist—not in my time or even my children’s. And yet, I’d existed for four days in hers.
A little while later, I was thinking about her again and started wondering if she was thinking about me. And then I’d catch myself. Every time I thought of her, I’d go around and around like that. I tried thinking of the things I’d normally think of, like watching the trains pass through Rutland, my friend Paul, or maybe buying a fancy pastry at the bakery. But the usual couldn’t compete with the incredible.
I arrived on Grove Street at candlelight and parked the wagon in the usual spot out front of Jacobson’s General. Mr. W. Jacobson, besides owning the store, was also the mayor of Rutland and had been for as long as I could recall. He usually closed up the store around seven— sometimes sooner, sometimes later, just depended—and that was how I found it: closed.
I hopped down, gave the team a half-bag of feed each, then walked around the corner and a short distance up Washington Street to the Jacobsons’ house. Theirs was a large, two-story red brick with a porch at the front where the whole family would often gather of an evening. On that particular evening, though, no one was out. The soft glow of lamplight on the curtains in the front window likely meant they were at the dinner table.
I could recall a time or two at my uncle’s house when we’d all be seated to supper and then have a visitor show up out of the blue. The visitor would, of course, be warmly welcomed to the table and never a contrary word spoken once they’d left. But if my aunt were to catch wind of me interrupting another family’s supper, I’d catch the devil for it. I took a seat on the porch, but just as soon as I did, a ruckus broke out. I’d all but forgotten about the dogs. They were both at the front door having a fit.
Supper was interrupted, and there wasn’t a thing I could do to change that. So I went to the door and gave it a firm, though unnecessary, rap. I could hear Mr. Jacobson barking at his dogs.
The door was opened by Abigail, the oldest of Paul’s three sisters. “Well, this is a surprise. You just get into town?”
“Evening, Abigail. Yes, I did. I would’ve been sooner, but I had a bit of a delay up the mountain.”
I heard her ma call from inside.
“It’s John Bartley, Ma. I am, Ma. You want to come in, John?”
“I’m fine out here if I’m interrupting supper or anything. Sorry about the dogs.”
“Pshaw! Get in here. I know you ain’t had any supper.” She looked back over her shoulder. “Yes, Ma, I did. He’s coming!” She turned back to me and grinned. “Seems you don’t have much of a choice in this.” She held the door wide for me.
Abigail was two years older than I was, a tall gal nearly my height and large of frame like her father and her brother, Paul. She wore her dark hair in a bun behind her head. I followed her down a wide hall to the dining room, where the rest of the family was seated around a meal of pork, corn, potatoes, tomatoes, and buttered rolls.
I’d eaten the supper my aunt had sent along with me back before Wallingford. I had been too hungry to wait. I could’ve done without more food, but saying as much seemed ruder than accepting what was offered.
“Find this gentleman a chair, Paul. And you girls make room over there. Emily, go get another plate and some silver for our guest.”
There was a bustle, chairs scooting and clinking dishes and silverware. Paul set a chair near the corner of the table next to Emily. Mr. Jacobson was to my right at the head of the table. Directly across from me sat Paul; to his right was his little brother, Robert; then Abigail, their big sister. Paul’s youngest sibling, Mary Lou, sat to the other side of Emily, and Mrs. Jacobson at the end opposite her husband.
I scooted in. Everyone settled down. Platters of food were passed my way. It seemed there was plenty, so I helped myself to a healthy portion of everything.
“How’s your aunt and uncle doing?” Mr. Jacobson asked.
“They’re fine as usual, sir.”
“You bring a wagonload?”
“Yes, sir, I did, a little of everything.”
“Well, good. Eat up. Paul can help you unload after supper.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“And, John,” Mrs. Jacobson said, “there’s no need for you to be sleepin’ the night in the back of that dusty old wagon. You can have Robert’s bed tonight.”
I glanced at Robert. He looked at me, then his ma, and back to the plate in front of him.
“I’m fine, ma’am. I’ve slept fine in that wagon many a time.”
“Pshaw! Robert will share a bed with Paul tonight. You don’t mind that at all, do you, Robert?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Then, it’s settled.”
“Thank you, ma’am… and Robert. That’s real kind of you. And this is a real fine supper, ma’am. I appreciate it.”
“Think nothing of it.”
I nodded, sawed off a b
ite of pork, and shoved it into my mouth.
Paul and I finished up what little food remained on the table and then headed for the front door to manage the wagon. As we were leaving, the gals were all bustling about, clearing the table.
We walked down along Washington Street, just dirt and dried horse dung. The cicadas in the trees and a couple dogs yapping in the distance pretty much accounted for what noise came our way. There was no traffic, no one other than the two of us on the street, and no street lights; a half-moon provided enough light. There were, however, gas lamps on Grove Street and around the train depot up ahead—the only part of town lit in that manner. Their glow reflected off the nearby trees and buildings, though it barely competed with the moonlight.
“So, what’s new your way?” Paul asked.
New? A boodle of images paraded through my head. I brushed the picture of a sleek, cherry-red automobile from my mind and told him of Zach Heming’s plans to get married. We turned the corner onto Grove where, just two nights prior, I had raced along in Tess’s car—bright lights everywhere, more cars than people, and the noise, the signs, the smells…
“You all right, John?”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re awfully quiet.”
“How old is Abigail?”
“That’s what the quiet is all about? You got your eye on my sister?”
I laughed. “No, I ain’t got my eye on any sister of yours.”
“Something wrong with my sisters?”
I glanced at Paul, walking along at my left. He tried, but couldn’t keep the humor from his eyes. “Could be,” I said, “but then, how would I know?”
Paul slapped me on the shoulder and chuckled.
We took my uncle’s wagon around to the back of the store and unloaded it, then gave the team some water and headed back up to the house.
“She’s too old for you.”
It took me a moment to figure out who he was talking about, but then I smiled and nodded. “All right,” I said.
He gave me a slap on the back. I gave him a bit more of one in return.
“You ever hear of that blacksmith over in Forestdale,” I asked, “the man who made that electric machine?”