The back door opened and Virgil came in. “Gettin’ right nippy out there again. Sun’s gone behind the mountain and the temperature’s dropping fast. Gonna be a cold night.”
He took off his coat and hung it up, unfastened the sleeves of his worn, white shirt and rolled them past his elbows, revealing gray-flecked underwear. He poured water into the chipped enamel basin and scoured his hands with the bar of yellow soap, then dried them.
“Now Zelda, I’ll make a stab at the supper, seein’ as how it’s my turn. You take Tom and Jackson in the front room and show them some of your photographs, why don’t you? She takes good pictures, does our Zel.”
“Holler if you need help, Da” she instructed, smiling at the older man and giving him a pat on his weather-beaten cheek.
“How about I stick around here and give you a hand, Virgil?” Jackson was already showing up the sleeves of his sweatshirt and scrubbing his hands in the basin the way Virgil had done. “I like to cook. Worked in lots of greasy spoons in my time doing short order.”
“Much obliged, son. You start on these spuds and I’ll get the pan heatin’ for the sausage,” Virgil agreed with enthusiasm.
“The water’s on for tea, Dad. Give us a call when it’s ready.”
Zelda obviously had no qualms at leaving Jackson to help in the kitchen. She led Tom way down a narrow hall where a staircase rose steeply to the second floor. She opened the door to a small room which held an assortment of framed photographs, an immense camera on a tripod, and another, smaller box camera on a cluttered table. Several screens rested against the wall, the scenes painted on them, one of a sunny garden, the other a bubbling stream under oak trees. There was an ornate sofa, an overstuffed armchair, and an outer door with a bell to warn of customers.
“This is my photographic studio, Mr. Chapman,” she said, sounding both shy and proud. “I have a developing room in the cellar.”
“Why not call me Tom?” he smiled down at her. She came just past his shoulder.
She gave him a long, level look and then nodded. “If you like. I’m Zelda, as you know.”
“Zelda’s a beautiful name. Same as F. Scot Fitzgerald’s wife, right?”
She gave him a puzzled look. “I’ve never heard of her. Who is she?”
Like a thunderbolt, the realization again came to Tom that it was only 1902. Fitzgerald hadn’t even begun to write his fictional masterpieces yet. The world wars hadn’t been fought; there were no computers, no cell phones, and the clumsy cameras in this room were vivid proof that even photography was in its infancy.
There’d been so many urgent and immediate concerns during the past hours that the full import of this time period and place hadn’t fully dawned on him until this moment. His stomach lurched. It was almost impossible to believe what had happened.
“Tom? This other Zelda?” She was looking at him with a puzzled expression on her face.
“Oh, she was just a sad woman I read about once,” he managed.
“My name is actually Griselda,” she confessed, blushing again and wrinkling her freckled nose. “Awful, isn’t it? It was my mother’s grandmother’s name. Thank goodness Dad didn’t care for it, either. He shortened it to Zelda.” She reached for a silver-framed photo on a small desk and handed it to him. “This was Mother, holding me. She died when I was thirteen, when Eli was a baby.”
Tom recognized the picture as a daguerreotype. It depicted a lovely young woman cradling a fat, smiling baby.
“I see where you got your beautiful eyes.” Tom was far too aware of her nearness and uncomfortable with all this talk about families and mothers. He set the photo back on the desk quickly and moved away to study the framed photos that covered the walls.
Almost without exception, they were scenery and wildlife studies of mountains and woods, deer, a raccoon holding a piece of bread, even one dramatic enlargement of a black bear, standing on his hind paws and looking into the camera as if posing.
“You’re very good at what you do.” Tom was both surprised and impressed by the clarity of detail and the content of the photos. They were black and white, of course, but except for the lack of color, they could have been done by a photographer from his own time. “You must have a good business going here.”
“Thank you,” she said. “I do believe I’m a good photographer,” she added without a trace of vanity. She paused, then remarked, “As for my business, it’s unfortunate, but the majority of the town’s residents patronize Beaseley, I’m afraid.”
Tom frowned. “I don’t see how they could fail to recognize how talented you are, Zelda.”
She waved her hand disparagingly at her photographs. “Pure frivolity. No one in Frank is interested in purchasing scenery and wildlife photographs. I do them to please only myself. The way a photographer in a mining town like this makes a living is by doing portraits, pictures of weddings, funerals, christenings.”
Tom recalled the sign outside the house and the conspicuous absence of any portraits in this room. “You’re saying your business isn’t doing too hot?”
“Too hot? That’s an unusual way of phrasing it, but I think it’s very descriptive all the same.” She smiled, a mischievous smile but rueful as well. “Mr. Beaseley is the photographer of choice in Frank. Even the North West Mounted hires him to take pictures of their criminals. Why, if Dad hadn’t rescued us today, all three of us might have had to pose for him.” She shuddered.
“Couldn’t you advertise?” Business problems intrigued Tom. God knows, he and Jackson had gone through enough of them.
She shook her head. “I tried running an advertisement in The Sentinel, but it was throwing good money after bad. Business here relies on word of mouth, and being arrested isn’t the best thing for a spinster’s reputation, even when she’s known to be a hopeless eccentric.”
“You’re not a spinster, Zelda. You’re not exactly over the hill. How old did you say you were? Twenty-eight? Hell, in my time, most women are just getting established in their careers at that age.”
She frowned at him, looking as though she suspected he was making fun of her. “What do you mean, in your time?”
There it was again, the whole unbelievable time-travel thing. He kept coming up against it, like a wall he’d have to scale sooner or later.
“Zelda, you in the studio?’ a young male voice bellowed from the hallway. Then a half-grown boy appeared in the doorway, precariously balancing a tray with a teapot, two sturdy mugs, a jar of cream, and a pot of sugar.
He had Zelda’s fiery hair, but his was straight, not riotously curly. Instead of just a sprinkling of freckles like she had, his face was matted with them. His eyes were the same blue as Virgil’s, and his clothing didn’t quite seem to fit. His wrists hung out of his shirt cuffs, and his pants were a little too short, as if he’d gown while wearing them.
He shot a curious look at Tom and grinned. Even his teeth had grown too quickly for the rest of him. “Dad said to bring in this tea.”
“Thanks , Eli. Set it down there on the table before you spill it. Eli, this is Mr. Chapman. Tom, my little brother, Eli.”
“I wish you’d stop calling me little, Zel.” Eli’s voice was exasperated, and it was in the process of changing. It squeaked into the upper registers and fell again to a deep bass. “I’m nearly as tall as you are.”
“Hi, Eli.” Tom smiled at the boy and held out his hand.
After a moment’s hesitation, Eli shook it, and Tom was touched at the boy’s effort to produce a strong, manly handshake.
“How’d’ya do, Mr. Chapman?” His wide-eyed gaze took in Tom’s green sweatshirt and close-fitting jeans, and then lingered wide-eyed on his watch.
“I’d rather you just called me Tom.”
Eli shot a questioning glance at Zelda, and after a second she nodded. “If Mr. Chapman finds it acceptable for you to call him by his first name, then you may,” she agreed. “Now go and wash up and then set the table.”
“There’s a ball game after su
pper. Can I go play, Zel? Please?”
Tom watched as Zelda fell naturally into a motherly role with her brother.
“Don’t you have lessons to study?”
He shook his head, making his red hair fly. “No, ma’am. I finished everything in school today.”
“Even your grammar?”
“All of it. Every paragraph. You can check if you want.”
“Very well then. But not later than nine-thirty, remember.”
With a last look at Tom and a shy nod in his direction, Eli was gone in an awkward flurry of elbows and knees, bumping against the doorframe and sliding on a small scatter rug in the hall.
“He’s so clumsy since he’s begun growing taller,” she said fondly. “And he’s far too apt to skimp on his lessons in order to play ball.” It was obvious that Zelda adored her brother.
“Let’s take this into the sitting room,” she suggested.
Tom brought the tray, and they crossed the hall into a cramped, homey little room with a potbellied heater giving off welcome warmth, a horsehair sofa, and two comfortably worn chairs, as well as several small tables and wooden stands holding numerous plants. There was also a small bookcase with an assortment of well-worn volumes. Tom knelt to inspect these before he took a seat in one of the armchairs.
There were several volumes of poetry, a collection of Shakespeare, a dictionary, Jane Eyre, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, several books by Robert Louis Stevenson, and a stack of magazines.
Zelda moved to the stove and, as she’d done in the kitchen, automatically shoveled in a scoop of coal from a bucket before she, too, sat. Then she poured them each a cup of tea, adding cream and sugar. For a time, they sipped the strong brew in silence as a peculiar and uncomfortable awareness grew and intensified between them.
Zelda felt the silence stretch like a good pastry dough - the kind she could never quite manage to achieve. She struggled and failed to find something to say that would dissipate the tension that had suddenly crept into the cozy room.
Zelda, you surely aren’t fool enough to begin entertaining notions of any sort of flirtation with this man, she cautioned herself sternly. Don’t allow yourself to become one of those silly, vapid spinsters who embarrass themselves and everyone else with their giddy fluttering whenever they find themselves alone with an attractive member of the opposite sex.
Acknowledge the fact, if you must, that Mr. Tom Chapman is most engaging with his thick, black curls, and midnight-blue eyes, and that lean, raw-boned face. Admit, if you have to, that you find his lopsided grin endearing, that in spite of his occasional strange usage of the language, he appeals to you because he is intelligent and educated, very obviously not a miner, and a good bit taller than you are. And face up to the fact, she reminded herself, that under normal circumstances a man like him would never look twice at a skinny, freckled redhead fast approaching thirty years of age.
“Do you–” he began.
“What do you–” she said.
They each stopped speaking, met each other’s eyes, and laughed.
“Ma’am?” He made a courtly gesture with his hand.
“I was just going to ask what you like to read. I noticed you looking at our books.”
As she’d hoped it might, the tension dissipated and he relaxed. “Oh, almost anything,” he replied. “Everything,” he amended. His eyes sparkled and his face became animated. “I read a lot of history, because of my job, and I enjoy historical fiction, too, James Clavell, Larry McMurtry.”
How could she have been so self-centered? She’d talked about her photography and hadn’t even asked him what he did for a living.
“And I love to read action-adventure tales, like James Bond–” He stopped abruptly and the confused look she’d seen before came over his rugged features. “But then, I guess you’ve never heard of James Bond.”
“Actually, I’m not acquainted with any of the writers you’ve mentioned, but they sound fascinating,” she said in a polite tone. “Personally, I enjoy a writer call Jules Verne. He wrote a wonderful tale called Journey to the Center of the Earth. I liked it so much I read it aloud to Dad and Eli last winter. Are you familiar with it, Tom?”
He shook his head. “I know of Jules Verne, but I’ve never read his books. It’s sort of science fiction stuff, isn’t it?”
“Science fiction?” There it was again, his peculiar use of the language. “What is science fiction?”
“Damn.” He tipped his head back on the sofa, closed his eyes, and grimaced. “This is tough. There’s so much that hasn’t happened yet.”
The feeling came over her that she’d experienced earlier, when she first saw him at the barracks today. It was as if she were encountering a foreigner, someone from a very strange land she’d never heard of, much less visited.
It was disquieting. He’d admitted he wasn’t Canadian, but neither were most of the people in Frank. This was a very new community, barely two years old. Zelda and her father and Eli had only moved here themselves the year before. But Zelda had met a number of American settlers and found their ways comfortably similar to those of Canadians.
Tom was different in some way she couldn’t define. His clothing was strange, and his haircut. His jacket was peculiar, and he wore that strange timepiece on his arm.
Of course she remembered his outrageous tale about being from some unimaginable time in the distant future, and she wondered again why he’d related it to Corporal Allan.
At first, she’d been amused; she thought Tom was poking subtle fun at the corporal, which was no more than the stiff-necked lawman deserved. But then she’d become uncertain when the business of the five-dollar bill began. Where had the strange money come from? It had been obvious that neither Tom nor Jackson had currency that was usable, and yet she’d seen that Tom’s billfold contained what looked like a large amount of money.
And what he’d said about Turtle Mountain had sent icy shivers down her spine. Of course there were tales about the mountain. Everyone knew that the local Indians refused to come near it. They called it The Mountain That Moves. But Tom’s far-fetched tale about the whole top of the mountain falling down on the town was nothing short of absurd.
And what about Jackson’s subsequent claim that Tom wasn’t right in his head? It explained his delusions, but it didn’t seem to her that Tom was mentally unstable.
Mind you, Zelda mused, she’d never encountered any true lunatics, so how would she know? And Dad certainly didn’t seem to think anything was amiss with Tom. But then, Dad hadn’t heard the conversation about the money and the mountain.
Tom just had a good imagination, and he was mischievously duping the corporal, she concluded.
Still, there were other puzzling things about the two men. What, for instance, was the peculiar device that held both Tom and Jackson’s coats together in the front without the aid of buttons? She’d watched them fasten their coats in the wink of an eye. The edges seemed to knit together and stay that way.
And what vocabulary were they using that included so many terms she’d never heard before, like “science fiction” and “too hot”?
“Dad says come eat. Supper’s on the table.” Eli stuck his head around the corner of the door and was gone again.
Tom got to his feet quickly, as if he were relieved at the interruption, and Zelda smiled a bright smile and scolded herself for feeling intense disappointment at his eagerness to join the others.
She still hadn’t asked him what job he worked at, either.
Dinner was surprisingly tasty, Zelda concluded. For once, Dad hadn’t burned the sausages, and instead of being lumpy, the potatoes were mashed creamy smooth with milk and butter. The beans she’d cooked the day before were heated exactly right, and both Virgil and Jackson were inordinately proud of themselves as the others complimented them on the simple meal.
“Jackson’s a right dab hand with the gravy,” Virgil announced, and Zelda had to agree that it was better than either she or Virgil could
produce.
“But you make great biscuits, Virgil. I couldn’t turn out biscuits like these to save my soul,” Jackson objected, buttering one and popping half of it in his mouth.
“That’s Zelda’s doin’,” Virgil claimed, giving her a snappy salute with his hand. “She’s the one taught me to make biscuits.” His blue eyes twinkled with mischief. “Guess she kinda figgered seein’ as how she’d be in jail off and on, ‘twas best I learned how to cook lest Eli and I starve.”
“Hush, Dad.” Zelda frowned at him, indicating that Eli was present, but it was plain her brother already knew about her day’s experience.
“Dad says you got put behind bars today, Zel. What was it like in there? What did you do this time, anyhow? Was it over Mr. Vandusen getting drunk last night?”
“We’ll discuss it later, Eli. Eat your supper or you’ll be late for the game,” she admonished, frowning again.
They ate, and Zelda was relieved that the talk after was of everyday matters, the coalmine, the softball game Eli was eager to join after supper. While Zelda served bottled wild strawberries for dessert, Virgil launched into a short history of the town of Frank.
“This is a reg’lar boom town,” Virgil explained, spooning up a mouthful of the tart red berries Zelda had gathered and preserved the previous spring. “Barely two years old, already six hundred people hereabouts. Named after a countryman of yours, Tom, a gent called Henry Frank, from Butte, Montana. Him and this Sam Gebo feller formed the Canadian American Coal and Coke Company, opened the mine, built this town from scratch in a matter of months. Attracted miners the likes of me from all over the place. Fair wages, and this is said to be the world’s richest coal mine,” he boasted.
Tom asked, “Where did you come from, Virgil?”
“Carbonear, Newfoundland, was where I was born. My da, he was a fisherman, but I left home early, went to work in the mines in Springhill, Nova Scotia. Met my Hilda there, and after Zelda came along, we moved back to Newfoundland fer a while, wanted to be with family.” Virgil shook his head. “Times was bad and fishin’ just wasn’t up my alley. Moved around a fair bit, tried my hand at farming, but always went back to the mines. Like I always say, it’s in my blood. It’s what I know best, mining. Dirty work, clean money.”
Now and Forever: Time Travel Romance Superbundle Page 69