Smith's Monthly #21

by Smith, Dean Wesley

  And it was a beautiful ride. Snow still filled most of the areas under the trees and in many places the trail went through deep mud and over streams at full runoff levels. But the weather for all three days had been perfect, with temperatures in the low seventies during the day and cold at night, perfect for sleeping in a tent next to the man she loved.

  They had each led two packhorses on the trip, stocked with supplies and modern equipment. Bonnie and Duster had made an exception on the hard rule of taking modern equipment into the past. Talia and Ryan just flat needed it to record over decades the sounds of the pianos from Roosevelt. Especially after the town went under water.

  Talia wasn’t so sure about watching a town be destroyed and doing nothing about it. Bonnie and Dawn had both assured her that no one was killed or even injured. That helped, but she had no doubt it would be a tough spring that year.

  That night, in the same bed in the same room in the lodge they had stayed in 115 years in the future, she and Ryan again made love. Then, as they were both trying to catch their breaths, Ryan looked at her with that serious expression he often got. His handsome face seemed to become like a rock and his eyes got intense.

  “Sure you want to spend a lifetime with me in that valley below?”

  “I honestly can’t think of anything I want more,” she said, cuddling against him and letting his arm hold her. “Why? You getting cold feet?”

  “My feet are always cold,” he said, putting his very cold feet against her leg. “I just can’t believe someone as beautiful and smart as you are wants to spend decades with me in a cabin.”

  “And I can’t believe,” she said, pushing against him, “someone as handsome and smart as you are wants to spend the time with me.”

  “Well,” he said, “that sounds like a perfect basis for a long-term relationship. Complete disbelief.”

  She laughed. “Don’t forget the sex.”

  “Another area of disbelief for me,” he said, raising up and looking into her eyes. “I can’t believe how great the sex is.”

  “And just think,” she said. “We have lots of time to practice.”

  With that, she kissed him and they started into the second practice session of the night.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  July 20th, 2020

  Boise, Idaho

  STOUT LOCKED THE front door of the Garden Lounge with a loud click and turned up the lights slightly so that it didn’t feel like a normal time in the bar. Then he turned back to the six friends sitting on the bar stools, drinking and laughing, with their backs to him.

  This was going to be very, very hard to tell them.

  Outside, the July sun was beating down on the afternoon streets, sending the temperatures to almost a hundred. But inside the Garden, he kept the temperature at a cool seventy-two. But even with that, he was sweating and worried about what he was going to say.

  The old jukebox that had changed so many things for so many sat in the corner, dark as always, sort of tucked away behind a planter full of natural-looking fake plants.

  He seldom plugged the jukebox in and turned it on for anything but the special Christmas Eve gathering. The background music in the bar came from an old stereo system tucked under one end of the bar.

  The last thing he wanted was to have customers playing songs that took them to memories that they changed and then not come back to be customers. He didn’t have enough customers as it was.

  But today he needed to turn it on one more time, just for himself.

  So as he walked toward the bar, he moved around the planter and plugged in the jukebox.

  All six regulars turned as one, all stunned.

  “Stout?” Big Carl said, frowning. “What are you doing?”

  Carl was a giant of a man and as gentle as they come. He worked as a contractor and had skin as tanned and leathery as shoe leather.

  Dave sat next to Carl on Carl’s left. Dave was still in his airline pilot’s uniform and he looked suddenly very worried. He had managed to get here by changing flight assignments this afternoon. It was the only time Stout had ever asked him to do something like that, so he already had a hint about how serious this was.

  Sandy sat to the left of him. Beside her, Fred stared at Stout as well.

  Next to Fred on that end was Billy, a rough-looking man with even a rougher past. Billy had moved into Fred’s hotel about six months ago, and the two had become like a couple, always seen together and bickering half the time.

  Closest to Stout and the jukebox on Big Carl’s right was Richard Cone, a manager of a local factory and the only one of the group besides Stout who didn’t drink. Richard also ran the bar when Stout couldn’t make it or was out of town for some reason. He was the only help Stout had, and he only worked when Stout wasn’t around.

  Stout’s six closest friends.

  All very different people.

  And all but Richard had experienced the effects of the jukebox. Richard just kept declining to go back to a memory, stating his life had turned out just fine and he was happy with where he was. But he loved to watch others disappear back into their memories from a song and then come back with stories.

  “So what’s happening, Stout?” Richard asked, as Stout moved around behind the bar.

  “Just a little announcement is all,” Stout said. “But before I do it, I need to take a little ride back in time.”

  “Not to change anything I hope,” Sandy said, clearly almost panicked.

  Stout laughed. Sandy existed because Dave had gone back through the jukebox and saved his wife. Without the jukebox, Sandy would have never been born, and no way was Stout going to take a chance on changing that.

  “Nope,” Stout said. “Not changing a thing. Just need to go have a look at someone one more time. Then I’ll tell you all what this is all about.”

  “Jenny?” Dave asked.

  Stout nodded, took a quarter from the cash register, then passed out earplugs as he moved over to the very special Wurlitzer jukebox and dropped in the quarter.

  “Stay focused on the bar while I’m gone,” Stout said. “I don’t want any of you jumping by accident.”

  They all nodded. They all knew the drill.

  Stout didn’t dare let himself hesitate. It had been years since he had taken this ride, years since he had discovered the jukebox, and he didn’t dare hesitate now or he would never do it. But he had to know for sure if his feelings for Jenny were still there before he made his final decision.

  And the only way to discover that was go be with her for a few minutes.

  The length of the song.

  Stout punched A-1, the place on the jukebox where the special song had sat since he found the jukebox.

  “Have a good visit,” Richard said.

  All his friends looked very worried. The next two minutes were going to be a very long time for them, of that he had no doubt. He had done his share of waiting the length of a song while someone was gone, wondering if they would return.

  Those two or two-plus minutes could be an eternity.

  Behind him the jukebox clicked the 45 record into place. The first note of The Mindbenders song “A Groovy Kind of Love” started and the worried faces of his friends and the Garden Lounge vanished.

  And he was facing Jenny across the hard, polished-Formica top of the table at the university student union.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  About one hundred and thirteen years earlier…

  June 6th, 1905

  Roosevelt, Idaho

  FOR RYAN THE ride on horseback down the narrow trail and into the Monumental Creek valley had been far, far, far more frightening than the ride down to the valley floor the first time in Duster’s big Cadillac.

  The trail didn’t seem much wider than a horse and Ryan could almost reach out and touch the hillside on his left while on his right the slope dropped a good thousand feet almost straight down into rocks and pine trees.

  One slip and he was doomed. Of course, he would wake up back
in 2020 in theory, but he sure didn’t want to test the dying thing this soon on his first trip to another timeline.

  The four of them rode for almost an hour in silence until they reached the valley floor and Bonnie and Duster called a halt and a rest, moving them away from the trail about fifty paces and to a group of rocks.

  Ryan’s legs were shaking and he swore he had lost ten pounds in sweat under his shirt and long coat, even though the morning air still had a sharp bite to it. The four of them had started so early, right at first light from the lodge, so in the deep valley the sun was still hours from warming it up.

  Talia got off her horse and staggered for a moment, then knelt down and just kissed the ground, which sent both Bonnie and Duster into gales of laughter.

  “I would have done that as well,” Ryan said, “if I hadn’t been so frozen in fear and relief.”

  “That is a nasty stretch of trail,” Duster said, shaking his head and taking out his canteen. “Especially with a couple packhorses behind you. One horse slips and it’s all over.”

  Ryan knew that, which was why he had been so scared the last three hours, and hearing Duster say it just made it worse.

  “The other three trails any easier?” Ryan asked, hoping the answer would be yes.

  “About the same, actually,” Duster said and he worked on giving the horses water and checking each pack horse to make sure their supplies were still solidly in place.

  “And they don’t have that wonderful lodge to stop and rest at,” Bonnie said.

  “You get used to it after a few times up and down it,” Duster said.

  “Speak for yourself,” Bonnie said.

  Ryan got out his canteen and took a long drink, then stared back up at the trail slicking across the rocks above them. He could see two other horse trains working their way slowly along.

  This was a long, long ways from his classroom in Berkeley.

  “How far to Melody Ridge?” Talia asked.

  “Another three miles or so,” Duster said. “All easy flat trail.”

  “We’ll have lunch there,” Bonnie said. “Right after I take a shower.”

  “The cabin has a shower?” Talia asked.

  “Two, actually,” Duster said. “And a couple great tubs as well in the two bathrooms.”

  Ryan was shocked. “How do you manage that?”

  “Cold showers I assume,” Talia said.

  “Actually, no,” Duster said, smiling. “We cheat a little with some future help, well hidden. “We’ll show you.”

  “I think I’m going to like this cabin,” Ryan said.

  “We hope you do,” Bonnie said, “Considering how long you hope to stay in it and do research.”

  “Yeah, good point,” Ryan said, not really wanting to think about being in this valley for decades, but knowing that was what they faced.

  “We can always go up the hill to the lodge for dinner and drinks,” Talia said.

  Ryan glanced back up at that trail. “On special occasions.”

  “Very special,” Talia said, looking up at the trail as well. “Very special.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  May 13, 1992

  Boise, Idaho

  JENNY HAD BEEN the one true love of Stout’s life. She had long, brown hair, very straight, as was the normal fashion at that point in time. She wore jeans and a white blouse tucked in with a cloth belt.

  He and Jenny were sitting at their favorite table in the old university student union. She had just told Stout she was transferring to a university in Southern California and would have to leave in three weeks to get to a promised job and get settled before the fall semester started. It was the best school for her music degree, and was a great opportunity for her.

  The oldies Mindbenders’ song played softly over the student union sound system, which was why the jukebox brought him to this moment.

  She had just looked at Stout and asked what he wanted to do. And what he wanted her to do.

  He had just stared at her and not said a word, and eventually in a day or so the decision became that she should go and take the job and get the degree and he would visit as often as he could.

  He just didn’t want to leave the job he had at the moment. She had married someone else six months later.

  Now he sat there in that student union once again, staring at her, his stomach twisting just as it had all those years before. His young-self and his old-self memories were all locked into the same brain.

  When he was young, he hadn’t been willing to give up a job to go with her, and he had lost her. Would he be able to give up the Garden Lounge and all his friends in Boise this time around?

  That was the reason he had taken the trip through the jukebox, to try to get an answer to that question.

  His young self loved Jenny more than anything. And it seemed his older self did as well. But not just the young girl sitting there, but the woman Jenny had become over all the years.

  As he had done when he was young, he just sat there silently and stared at her.

  Then the short song ended and he was back, standing in front of the jukebox and the worried looks of his friends.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  About eighty seven years earlier…

  June 6th, 1905

  Roosevelt, Idaho

  BONNIE AND DUSTER and Ryan and Talia reached Melody Ridge while the sun was still only about halfway down the mountains. The ride in, as they got closer and closer to Roosevelt, the sounds of the valley had gotten louder and louder. All kinds of construction sounds punctuated by shouting at times. And all the while the piano music filled the background, echoing off the sides of the steep slopes.

  They had come to study sound and it was clear they were going to have a lot of it to study.

  Talia could not believe the size of the cabin, as Bonnie and Duster called it, on Melody Ridge just up the valley from the booming mining town of Roosevelt, Idaho. Made completely of logs, it had four bedrooms, two bathrooms, a main stone fireplace in a huge living room, and a kitchen and dining table that seemed like they might fit in any modern home, except no fridge and no electrical stove.

  But the wood-burning stove looked pretty amazing.

  After walking around the place with Bonnie giving them a tour, Talia had no doubt she could be very comfortable in this cabin.

  A stable had been dug into the hillside behind the house big enough to hold all twelve horses they had brought with them. Dug in behind the stable Duster had shown them a deep storage cellar that stayed a set temperature and would be good for supplies. It was also well hidden.

  Then Duster had taken them into one of the bedrooms and opened up a hidden area that seemed to be the back wall.

  “Solar panels are hidden on the hillside above the stable,” Duster said, “up in the steep rocks where no one would ever see them, and they are colored as rocks. Even if someone spotted one of them, they wouldn’t know what they were.”

  “The metal flashing around the roof and along the roof line are also solar panels,” Bonnie said.

  “This is amazing,” Talia said. She was wondering how the small batteries in some of her equipment would last, and when she had asked, Duster had just said it would be taken care of.

  “And everything runs to large batteries,” Duster said, pointing downward, “dug into a storage area in the ground here and vented out the back.”

  “They have to make it through long stretches in the winter without sun,” Bonnie said.

  “And even in the summer on clear days,” Duster said, “the sun doesn’t spend much time on that hill, so caution on extended battery use.”

  Talia nodded, suddenly understanding something. “That’s why there is no sign of this cabin in 2020. You come in and remove everything at some point.”

  “Clearly we will,” Duster said, smiling. “But we haven’t yet because before now, this was just a regular cabin without all the hidden modern elements. We had no reason for them before you two joined the crew.”
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  “Who knows,” Bonnie said, “maybe when we get back the cabin will still be sitting here and maintained in 2020.”

  “Won’t happen because of the primitive area designation of this area, remember?”

  “Right,” Bonnie said, shaking her head. “Looks like we will tear it out at some point in the future.”

  “Oh,” was all Talia managed to say. Sometimes the reality of time travel into alternate timelines just twisted up her mind and this was one of those times.

  “So we got a lot of equipment and supplies to unload,” Duster said, closing the hidden area in one bedroom and turning for the back.

  “Then showers, lunch, and a tour of the town below,” Bonnie said.

  “We have some more members of the Institute down there we want you to meet.”

  “There will be other time travelers here in the valley with us?” Ryan asked a moment before Talia could.

  The idea of having others here after Bonnie and Duster left in a month or so pleased her.

  “There will be,” Duster said, “up to the point the town goes under. After that, you’ll be on your own.”

  For some reason, that scared Talia more than she wanted to think about right now. This valley was a long physical distance from anywhere with other people.

  And in time she was a long ways from home.

  Suddenly the reality of what she and Ryan had decided to do started to sink in.

  Really sink in.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  July 20th, 2020

  Boise, Idaho

  “YOU ALL RIGHT, Stout?” Dave asked.

  Stout nodded, then unplugged the jukebox and went around behind the bar.

  “Not really, huh?” Big Carl said.

  “Not really,” Stout said as he refreshed everyone’s drinks, then leaned back against the back bar with the orange juice on the rocks that he sipped during the summer.