It was then that offers began to role in for Garison to move to Alexandria or even Boston and join other, wealthy, lawyers. He declined, preferring to try only small cases and devote most of his time to his wife and his carpentry shop. It struck him that such a sedentary existence would have been anathema to him at one point in his life, but he reveled in it now. He had once worked wood as a means of allowing himself to think about "bigger" things: particle physics, interdimensional travel, classic debate. Now, he found himself working wood and thinking about Sarah.
They had just gotten ready for bed and climbed under the thick down comforter on a surprisingly chilly night in May when Sarah kissed him and whispered, "Do you remember what we talked about on our wedding night?"
Laughing playfully, he replied, "We talked? I don't remember that."
She slapped him lightly and asked, "Is your mind ever anywhere else?"
"Not often." Garison chuckled. He reached out to stroke her blonde locks and said, "Not when we're in bed and your hair is down and—"
Purposefully ignoring the soft touch of his hand—and it was a struggle, for she often felt herself melting at his touch—she told him, "We talked about La Plata Canyon and about going there some day."
"I remember that," he said, leaning forward to kiss her lightly on the lips.
She returned the kiss briefly, then pulled back with a look of slight exasperation on her face and said, "Garison, I'm trying to tell you something and—and it's very hard when you're trying so hard to distract me."
"Sorry," he replied, though he really wasn't. He tried to look apologetic as he took his hand from her hair and asked, "What did you want to say?"
She took a deep breath, then asked, "Do you remember when we said that—if we couldn't make it there ourselves—maybe one of our grandchildren would discover La Plata Canyon?"
"Yeah?" he replied, a little confused.
She smiled sheepishly and said, "It may happen."
He looked at her, completely bewildered, "Huh?"
She rolled her eyes, then told him, "I mean, we may have a grandchild who can discover La Plata Canyon."
He looked at her, still deeply confused for a moment, then his eyes grew as big as two-bit pieces and he asked, "Grandchildren? You mean, now?"
"No, silly. Before you have grandchildren you have to have..." she motioned for him to finish the statement.
"Children?" he completed. She nodded and he asked excitedly, "We're going to have children? I mean, a child?" She nodded more emphatically.
He took her into his arms and hugged her tightly, then quickly let go and asked, "Can I still do that?"
"Yes, for as long as you like. The baby is well protected."
"The baby?" he said in awe. Looking from her face to her abdomen and back again, he asked, "When?"
She shrugged, but said, "I'm not sure, but I think I am about three months along. So that would make it, when? November?"
"Three months? And you haven't said anything?"
"I wasn't sure. I've been a little sick to my stomach a couple times, but not, well, heaving like I hear so many women do. But it's been about three months since I had my—my regular time. I thought you might notice but now that I think of it I haven't had my time but twice since we've been married so I'm not surprised that you haven't kept track—"
"This is wonderful!" he said as he hugged her again. The hug turned into a kiss and later, after much discussion about babies and pregnancy, the kiss turned into something more. Garison wished he could somehow know when the conception had actually occurred, but he knew that one night in May and the first night after the wedding were the two he would always remember most vividly of making love to the only woman he had ever made love to.
Even Garison's once-consuming memories of La Plata Canyon began to fade when Sarah gave birth to Justin Fitch. Justin came early (or Sarah's figuring had been off), October 18, and was a sort of anniversary present commemorating Garison and Sarah's first date. He was followed from the womb by Henry Fitch fifteen months later. Both were dark-headed like their father, but Justin got his father's blue eyes and Henry got his mother's green eyes. As to other features, both were a good mixture of both parents.
As soon as Justin was able to stand, Garison began teaching him football. With Henry sitting nearby, and Sarah often watching as well, Garison kicked an India rubber ball back and forth with Justin. Garison had tried to work with a leatherworker in Alexandria to design a football like he remembered from the twentieth century, but they hadn't been able to achieve a suitable bladder. So Garison continued to purchase the largest India Rubber balls he could find and remind himself not to hit them with his head. Justin was far too young to understand all that Garison tried to teach him, but he did enjoy kicking things. The really tough part was when he became excited and Garison tried to teach him to only kick the ball and not his little brother.
As Justin became more steady on his feet, Garison began taking him for walks in the woods. Borrowing an idea from the twentieth century, Garison even turned his old knapsack into a carrier in which Henry could come along for the ride. When not at the wood shop, Garison could most likely be found out in the woods with his family for Sarah enjoyed coming along as well. Garison had taught himself a bit of the skill of tracking back in La Plata Canyon—aided sometimes by Charlie and Johnny Begay—and he passed on what he knew to the boys.
Henry began to walk even sooner than Justin had—some people said it was because he just couldn't wait any longer. Soon, there were three Fitch men kicking around the ball. Sarah often held up her skirts and joined in, not caring that some women said such actions weren't "lady-like". Sarah's interest was in her family, not the wagging tongues of people without lives of their own.
Garison was doing less and less legal work by the time Henry was toddling around but, when he was persuaded by Reginald Timpkins to serve as barrister in a property dispute, Garison was reminded how much he loved to argue before a jury even if he hated the paperwork side of the business. Timpkins convinced Garison to aid him on another case shortly thereafter, and the air of the courtroom was again in Garison's blood (though he could not get used to the powdered wigs). The offers came in again to move his practice to a larger town and take on more clients, but Garison still treated the law as a hobby and was determined to keep it in that perspective. Thus, he stayed in Mount Vernon in the face of lucrative offers from elsewhere, which further endeared him to the town.
Despite only occasionally practicing law, Garison Fitch became known as one of the Virginia colony's brightest young lawyers. While part of the fame was owed to his brilliant mind and more than passable oratory skills, Garison admitted to Sarah that much of his success came from the fact that—in his time—the cases being argued had already been dealt with. [Perhaps not identical cases, but cases with remarkably similar details.] So, it was of no difficulty to successfully argue a case that, according to Garison's memory, already had a well-established precedent. Even if he could not remember the specific case, he often remembered similar cases and their established precedent.
Three and a half years after the marriage of the Fitchs, Sarah gave birth to Helen Fitch. With an abundance of blonde hair—even at birth—she was hailed as the heir apparent to her mother's beauty. By this time, the town had long since forgiven their animosity to the one who had for so long been "that bastard." In fact, Sarah had become one of the most respected young women in town and was often sought out by other women for advice. It was also apparent to many that Sarah was her husband's intellectual equal, an idea that Garison was the first to acknowledge. It was rare, but there were even occasions when men would ask Sarah's opinion on politics or law, knowing that she had as good a grasp of the subject as her husband. Many said it was only because she had been instructed by her husband, but grudgingly admitted that—if that were so—she had an amazing retention of what he had taught her.
In some people, such treatment would have rankled almost inconsolably. For, under
lying it all, was the thought that Sarah's existence was substantiated by her husband. Her years of being an outcast, however, had taught her to not really care what other people thought about her. She sought respect from God, her husband, and her children (in that order), and cared not a wit for the gossip around and about her, a truly remarkable woman.
Late one night, Sarah and Garison lay in bed. They were talking softly, for the children were asleep and the walls of their house were sturdy but not very soundproof. It had taken Garison some months to get used to the bed clothes of the eighteenth century, but he had finally learned that it was possible to sleep in them without feeling as if he were in imminent danger of strangling. He had even come to find Sarah's completely unrevealing nightgown to be attractive. But then, he reasoned, everything she did or wore he found attractive.
"Garison," she asked softly, "Do you ever think of what it used to be like? When you lived in the twentieth-first century?"
He shrugged and replied, "On occasion. I recall an old friend like Charlie and think to myself, 'I should call him this evening.' I then remember that, not only has the telephone not been invented, the friend has not been born. I guess maybe I could write him a letter and leave it in a box marked, 'Do not open until 1988' or something. Of course, if I'm here and he's there, he might not even know who the letter is from."
"But do you ever miss it? You left your home and everything."
He stared at the dancing lights the coal-oil lamp made on the ceiling, then replied, "No. I can't say that I do. I was never at home then, I don't think. Someone once said that 'home is where the heart is'. While my heart might have been somewhat attached to La Plata Canyon, my heart never belonged to anyone. And, as much as one can enjoy a place, you can't really love it. Love has to be returned to be fulfilled—like what you and I have."
"Do you never miss your life there, though?"
"There was such a push to do and be great things that I never really got to be Garison Fitch. I didn't have a life there that I could miss now. I was the New Soviet Man, everyone's ideal, but never my own ideal. Never the man next door. I kind of began taking my life back when I moved out to the canyon, but it wasn't much of a life. So secluded and all. A life needs good friends and shared purposes.
"And I never really had a childhood or the things that come with that period in one's life. I didn't play sports on the vacant lot with the other kids because I had calculus homework to do. I didn't meet girls because all the girls I went to school with were so much older than me. So were the boys, for that matter. I didn't really develop friends with them either, really. Some kind of sucked up to me so I would help them with their schoolwork, but it was never really a friendship. We never minded leaving each other behind.
"I was never really allowed to speak out as to how I felt, either. Certainly, the Puritans stifle us in some ways now, but not so much as they did in my day—and then it was the government. I mean, the Puritans have a religious base for what they believe, but our government was operated by, and out of, fear. Two very strict systems can be vastly different if one is based on a sound foundation of faith and the other is not. It's hard to explain unless you've seen both. I can respect the Puritans, but... " he let it trail off with a shake of the head.
He brightened as he said, "I like what I do now. I like taking a piece of wood and shaping it into the runner for a rocking chair, or a leg for someone's table. In my day, that was only a hobby for me. I like the fact that I'm better at it now, using hand tools, than I was when I used power tools. I like arguing a case before a real jury, not a state-picked one whose verdict is already decided." He turned to her and said, "But most of all, I enjoy being with you. I never had a friend like you back there. And I certainly never had a wife."
"I worried about that," Sarah confessed. "I used to think one day you would tell me about some woman back home. Some woman you wished to return to. I was sure you weren't married, or you wouldn't have married me, but I wondered if you had left someone behind." She smiled mischievously, "You sailors are supposed to have a girl in every port, you know."
"No, not this one. There were no women back there. I never had the time—or the nerve. That's another thing we have here that I did not have then: time. We had so many inventions that were supposed to create time for us, but we spent all our time locked to those machines. We were always repairing them, maintaining them, or selling them to buy new ones. And you had to work all day to gain the money to pay for all these machines. Even our so-called leisure time was filled with machines. Televisions and stereos and automobiles and even weight machines for exercise instead of just going for a walk or building something like I do now.
"I love Sundays here. One day a week the whole town just shuts down and we worship together and play together and almost forget how hard life sometimes can be. I think that's what God meant Sundays for."
She looked at him and asked, "Did people really say in your time that there was no God?"
"They tried to," he nodded. "Tried to wipe out Christianity, too, but it had survived in Texas, and even Argentina had a form of Christianity—as did a few other smaller countries. I wonder how Argentina justified a treaty with the comparatively pagan Japan? Expediency, I guess. Covering their own skins. But anyway, all thinking men know there is a God—just as they all knew the world was round long before Columbus ever sailed the seas. That was the same then as it is now. Some try to deny it, or live as if it were not true, but they know. Deep down in their hearts they know they know there is a God. After all, to those who always fought so hard to say there was no God, I always wondered why they spent so much time fighting something they said didn't exist. Seemed rather wasteful and, well, stupid."
She asked, nervousness slipping into her voice, "Do you ever go over to the machine anymore?"
"Every now and then. Maybe once or twice a month on the way back from the shop, I'll stop in and make sure it's still OK. Or, I might write something in the journal program on the computer. Why do you ask?"
She looked around, as if embarrassed to reply, and said, "I am sometimes afraid you will go to the machine and ride it back home."
"I am home," he told her seriously. "I go over there sometimes to see it because it's all I have left. I know I will never go back there, and I don't even want to go back there, but I feel like I need to get in touch with it from time to time. I would be like a man who ignores his roots if I were to forget the machine. Like your past, my past is what made me what I am. That machine and my leather jacket and that Bowie knife are about all that's left of my past."
She shrugged and told him, "I just don't like having it there. Deep down, I know you will not leave me until death; but I worry. What if someone were to see it? You know these people. They might say it was an instrument of Satan or a device for witchcraft. This isn't Salem, but we still deal with people."
"You are saying I should get rid of it?" he asked.
She thought a long moment, then replied, "Yes. Maybe you could save a small part for a reminder. Something you could carry around with you, or put in a box that you could look at when you need to. But I do wish you would get rid of it. It makes me uncomfortable. And I just feel that keeping it around is tempting some terrible fate."
He smiled and, placing a hand to her cheek, said, "I'll be rid of it. I would do anything for you, Sarah."
With the sort of smile people of those days saved for those moments behind closed doors, Sarah asked, "Is that so?"
He moved closer to her on the bed and began to untie the strings that held her nightgown. "Careful," she whispered, "We don't want to wake the children."
Excerpt from A Fitch Family History by Maureen Fitch Carnes
Darius and White Fawn—who he had begun to refer to by this time as, simply, "Fawn"—arrived at the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains in October of 1780. He writes that he was in favor of continuing westward, but then mentions in a sort of off-hand way that Fawn is pregnant. They decided to stop and built a shelter of
some sort near what appears to be present-day Canôn City. Darius's decision to stop was quickly proven wise as a snow-storm of some magnitude swept through the area. He writes:
"As I look up towards the mountains that surround our little valley, knowing they are but the foothills of giants beyond, I now thank the Lord that we chose to remain here rather than pressing on. I will explore these mountains when spring comes, but I do not know enough of their ways to tackle them now. Nor would it be good for Fawn to travel in her condition."
Fawn gave birth to a boy, Halberd Bear Fitch, in January of 1781. One can only imagine now what it must have been like to be all alone, snowed in in a strange land, with only your husband to help deliver. Darius was able to support the family by hunting for meat and trading with the Utes who wintered nearby, but one wonders how they provided sufficient nourishment for the young child. Still, the natives of the area had done it for years and may have assisted or taught the Fitchs. Of course, Fawn was no stranger to living in the wilderness and it's likely she taught Darius much of what he learned about surviving on the frontier.
When spring came, Darius had apparently had enough of the mountains and reneged on his vow to explore them at the first sign of thaw. When the streams began flowing to the east, Darius—family in tow—went with them. He seems to have gone south to Raton Pass, then over to the Spanish settlements in Tejas. Apparently deciding to forego his exploration of the west for a while—it having been two years since he saw General Washington, the mission may have lost its imperative—Darius and family lived in Tejas for four years before Darius got itchy feet.
Packing up his family, which now included Garison White Eagle, Helen Snowbird, and Julius Mountain, Darius set out for the west. For the first time, Darius mentions in his journal—now written on paper purchased from a Spaniard, the original journals long since full—that his grandmother Sarah had given him a map of a place called La Plata Canyon, which was thought to be on the western edge of the mountain range the Spanish called the Sangre de Cristos. How Sarah came to be in possession of the map was a mystery even to Darius, but he indicates that he thinks Sarah's husband (and progenitor of this line) Garison had given it to her. How he came to possess it is even more in question, but much about Garison Fitch is. Even though Darius never met his grandfather, he named his second son after him.
The Legend of Garison Fitch (Book 1): First Time Page 15