The Legend of Garison Fitch (Book 1): First Time

by Samuel Ben White

  "Consider this," he said, "What if there is another Garison Fitch out there? Possibly, he belongs to this time line and I belong to another. But maybe he cannot return to this time line until I have left it."

  "And if that's true?" she asked. "Where would you go then?"

  He looked out the front window for a long time, then replied, "Back in time, I suppose. Perhaps I could go back and find Sarah. It is all I have been able to think of since returning to this century."

  It was Heather's turn to think long and hard before making a reply. Finally, she said, "I don't think you can. Or, rather, I don't think you had better go back. Not with things as they stand now."

  "What do you mean?"

  She explained, "What if you were to attempt to find her, yet overshot her time? You have proved that you have little or no control over where the machine goes. What if you were to, say, land in the seventeenth century instead of the eighteenth?"

  "I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at," he said, trying hard to comprehend. His mind was so full of images these last few hours—some of them completely foreign—that he had a harder time than normal concentrating on a single thing. He thought it might be some residual effect of time travel, but since he hadn't gone through it on the trip backwards through time it had him worried. What might it lead to? The old question of the knock on the head resurfaced.

  "An effort to go back in time might succeed in doing what you have done here. What if you went back to the year 1697, for instance? There, you stop only to ask a man the year, or the time. But, your asking him delays him from making some appointment on the time line. By asking him what time it is—in essence—you might destroy everything, including Sarah."

  "The great conundrum of all time travel scenarios. You have the voice of wisdom," he nodded. "I have been so intent on finding a way to return to Sarah that I have not considered how that attempt could destroy her. And here, I appear to be living proof of what time travel can do—to everything." He sat and looked at his hands for a moment, then asked, "But what of your Garison Fitch? What if I stay here? I don't wish to destroy your life by, essentially, murdering your husband. I pray I have not already done that."

  She looked at him with a smile that bespoke of some inner happiness that really surprised him under the circumstances. She asked him, "Did you have the term, 'womens' intuition' in your day?"

  "I'm not sure, but allow me to guess at its meaning," he responded. "Women seem to have an innate sense for guessing things that men cannot fathom with their overtly logical minds—or so we like to think of them. Maybe it comes from women anticipating the actions of men and the world better than men do. Perhaps because women study variables such as human nature while men deal more with cause and effect—or concrete ideas—is that what you mean?."

  "That's it," she nodded. With a laugh, she added, "Although, my 'non-logical mind' probably wouldn't have put it so clinically."

  "Well, what does your woman's intuition tell you?" he asked with sincere interest. Many was the time that it took the observations of Sarah for him to see the problem clearly and, especially, its solution. And, more often than not, the answer had been right in front of his eyes the entire time. Could it be, he wondered, that Heather had the same ability? He found it hard to believe it was something that all women just innately had.

  "I'm not completely sure why, but I think you are my Garison Fitch. Your story you have told me may be true, but so is my memory. I can see almost every day since we met at the airport that day with Bat and Jody. Somehow, that machine we created has melded the two into one. The great unanswered question that all lawyers deal with is this: how can two contradictory stories both be true? Logic says they can't, but time spent observing life tells us they can."

  "And that is your intuitive assessment?" Garison asked, a slight smile creeping over his face.

  "Yes," she replied, enjoying the seeing of that smile again. Again? she asked herself. Yes, it was the same smile. She could tell, somehow. "I see him in you. Not just your appearance, but your mannerisms. The way you're holding your hands together right now. Other things you have done and the inflection you put on certain words. There leaves the one big problem to solve, however—if this is true."

  Heather almost gasped as she realized how quickly her mind had gone from total rejection of the time travel idea to acceptance. Was she being ludicrous? Then, something in her memory reminded her of her courtship with Garison. Love had seemed to come suddenly, as if one moment it wasn't there, then the next it was. That didn't make this true, she told herself, but it did prove to her that sudden reversals of thought had not always been foreign to her—or bad.

  "What is that?"

  "How do we reconcile the two Garison Fitchs? If there are two of you in there, how do we bring both of you to the fore without destroying one or both of you?"

  He raised an eyebrow, something he never remembered doing, but Heather had seen him do many times. It caught him off guard for a moment as he realized what he had done. When he had thought about it a moment and come to the conclusion he had no idea where the ability had suddenly come from, he shrugged and said, "I seem to have caused myself mountains of trouble with that machine. Some would say it is the wrath of God upon me for delving where I did not belong. Perhaps they're right and my punishment is that I must live my life with two conflicting memories of my life as it was before today—or yesterday. Day before. Whenever. They all start to run together when you don't sleep."

  He smiled again and said, "But, there is one memory I am very clear on that I must question you about."

  "What's that?" she asked, wary of the gleam in his eye that used to signal mischief. Certainly, an action like that was genuinely her Garison.

  "What do you mean, 'the machine we built'?"

  "Well..." she replied meekly, caught in her words, "I did pick out the color for the upholstery."

  Excerpt from A Fitch Family History by Maureen Fitch Carnes

  Julius Fitch was married in 1802 or 3 to a Consuella Ramirez, whom he seems to have met in Santa Fe. They lived In Santa Fe for five years and had four children, two boys and two girls. Not much is known about the marriage but it appears to have been relatively happy until cholera swept through the community, killing Consuella and the youngest of the girls. Heartbroken, Julius returned to Cherry Creek where he could help his father run the store and his mother could help raise the children. He remarried in 1817, to a woman named Annella Roules, but they had no children together.

  Julius's surviving daughter, Margurithe, married a Daniel Johnson and moved east, reportedly to St. Louis but no records can be found to either confirm or deny that supposition. Julius's oldest son, Henry Ramone, left for Texas in 1829 and died shortly thereafter at the Alamo, manning the short wall with Davy Crockett and his Tennessee mountain boys. He had gone to Texas seeking adventure and, like 187 other white men and a few Mexicans who fought for independence, he found the short end of it and was buried in the communal grave. (It is my theory that his story has been confused with that of Darius’s son Garison, for there was only one Fitch at the Alamo.)

  Julius's second son was Augustus William, "Billy", and he seems to have never left Cherry Creek. He ran the store when his father and grandfather—and later, father alone—went off exploring in the mountains. He married the daughter of a trapper and died, like his grandfather, behind the counter at Cherry Creek. He seems to have found entertainment only in producing offspring for he and his wife produced fifteen that lived, eight girls and seven boys.

  Chapter Nineteen

  They landed at the Centennial airport and Garison was fascinated by the experience. Airports in the Soviet Americas had been like most government edifices under the communist rule: adequate and utilitarian. He marveled at the attractive (if older and poorly cared-for) buildings and was told by Heather that he ought to see the bigger Denver airport.

  "Why didn't we land there?" Garison asked.

  "Because it's not located in
Colorado," Heather laughed. At Garison's questioning glance, she explained, "It's way out from town. And it's for commercial travel, anyway."

  ""Commercial travel'?"

  "Airlines. You know, you buy a ticket to somewhere in the world and they take you there."

  He asked Heather, "Anybody can just walk into one of these...places, and book passage to anywhere? No questions asked?"

  "Pretty much. If you've got the money, they'll take you where you want to go and send your luggage somewhere else." She chuckled at her own joke, realized she'd probably have to explain it, then noticed that Garison was no longer beside her. He was stopped, looking at a little souvenir shop with over-priced momentos of Denver and their sports teams.

  When she had returned to his side, Garison asked in a disbelieving voice, "Anyone can just walk in there and buy whatever they want?"

  Heather smiled in reply, "Only if you want to spend a lot of money for something you could get for half the price at a dozen places within a mile of here."

  "Then why buy it here?"

  "You've hit on one of the big philosophical questions of our time."

  As they walked through the relatively small building, Heather finally had to take his hand and pull him to keep him from dawdling over each new sight. As she did so, it briefly crossed his mind that holding her hand was something he had missed. Then he realized what he was thinking and suddenly jerked his hand away.

  She looked at him with great puzzlement, then realized what she had done. She told him, "Sorry. It's just that, at this rate, you're parents will have gone to bed before we ever even get out of here."

  At the mention of his parents, he quickened his pace and they made their way to a car rental counter. When they had been dropped off at their assigned car, he marveled that it was so attractive, as opposed to the grey boxes he had been so used to in the Soviet Americas. It had been surprising enough to learn that he and Heather owned two cars themselves—including an oddly shaped vehicle called a pick-up truck—but to be able to rent such an attractive vehicle with only one of those plastic cards with the embossed numbers and an identification card with one's picture on it!

  As he sat down and closed the door, a mechanical strap moved into position to hold him to the seat. He started to fight against it with an exclamation of, "Hey! Wait a minute! What is this?"

  Heather reached over with a calming hand and touched him gently on the leg. Somehow, he remembered her touch and was instantly distracted from the strap wondering why or how he could remember such a thing, having never experienced it before. She explained, "It's an automatic safety belt. It's for your protection. See, I've got one, too."

  "Oh," he sighed, trying to be casual. The touch on his leg left him with feelings that were decidedly not casual and it both embarrassed and angered him.

  As they drove through Denver, Garison marveled at the sights. It was such a pretty city, compared to the Cherry Creek he remembered. The strictly utilitarian buildings were gone in favor of attractively designed sky-scrapers. The houses were charming and individual, rather than concrete blocks thrown together in a shape roughly like a rectangle. Most surprising of all, there were horse ranches right in the middle of urban areas. "Do all cities have ranches like this? Right in the middle?"

  She laughed and replied, "No, Denver's unique that way."

  "It's so beautiful," he mumbled, "And the mountains!"

  Misunderstanding his second statement, Heather nodded, "Yeah, it's a shame you can't see the mountains any better than you can. I hate the smog."

  "Smog?" Garison asked in wonder. There was a feint brown tint to the air, but not like he remembered. In the Cherry Creek he remembered you couldn't see the mountains from downtown because of the pollution. This was almost pristine.

  They began to discuss the architecture and Heather marveled at how much seemed to have changed from top to bottom just because a little boy had been pushed out of the way of a wagon. She also found it enchanting, the things Garison was struck by that she had so long ago taken for granted.

  When the car stopped in front of a nice-looking, red brick, two story house, Garison asked, "Is this it?" rather nervously.

  "Sure is."

  As he showed no inclination of getting out of the car and was just sitting there as if memorizing every brick and shrub, Heather prompted, "Aren't you planning on going in?"

  "Huh?" He shook his head, as if to clear cob-webs, and replied, "Sure."

  He got out cautiously, trying to keep from being strangled by the seat-belt, and stood up. He looked as if he might stand forever on the side-walk, but Heather came up behind him and gave him a little shove. He hesitated still, but then went slowly up the walk. When they were on the stoop, he asked, "Do I knock or just go on in, or what?"

  "You're parents have always said that you and your siblings were just supposed to walk right on in as if you still lived at home." Heather thought to herself that, after all, all they ever do is watch TV, anyway. Not like you're going to interrupt something important. It was such a contrast from her own father, who had demanded his children knock and wait for the door to be answered ever since they had moved out on their own.

  "Why did they move to Denver? Dad—at least the one I remember—loved Durango."

  "I think his job moved him. Then, when they retired, they decided they liked it here. They have a of friends here—and your mother likes the shopping."

  "That sounds like her—" Garison was about to reach for the knob when he asked, "Siblings?"

  Heather nodded, "A brother and two sisters. Tommy, Janie, and Susie. Weird joke, huh?"

  Not knowing what she meant, he remarked, "But Mother couldn't have any more children. They almost couldn't have me."

  Heather struggled to find a response, then shrugged, "I guess that's just one more thing that changed, Garison."

  "But how could my saving George Washington change my mother's reproductive abilities? That doesn't make any sense!"

  "None of this makes any sense, Garison." Heather reached for the knob and said, "You want to debate this now or do you want to see your parents?"

  Garison nodded, took a deep breath, and walked inside, calling, "Mother? Father? It's me, Garison!"

  A couple in their mid-sixties got up from in front of the television and smiled. The man, Bobby Fitch, laughed, "'Mother'? 'Father'? What's with the formalities, Garison?"

  For his part, Garison was about to hyperventilate. They were fifteen years older than when he had last seen them, they had both put on weight, and his father's hair was now almost completely white, but they were his parents. Garison rushed to them and embraced them, breaking into tears of joy.

  Loraine Fitch looked over her son's shoulder to her daughter-in-law, wondering why her son was acting as if he hadn't seen her in twenty years when it had only been two weeks, and mouthed, "What's going on?"

  Heather smiled affably and replied, "This may take a bit of explaining, Loraine."

  March 17, 2005

  The weirdest phenomena has begun to overtake me as time goes on in the twenty-first century. Memories from "the other Garison Fitch"—Heather's Garison, you might say—have begun to permeate my mind. But it is not as if they are driving my memories out of my head. My memories are staying in tact.

  I had never been a believer in penance, but I was beginning to think that this double life I was doomed to comprehend was my penance for destroying the world. Suddenly, though, I was not living a double life but remembering a double life. Living one might have been more comforting. And this is all happening so fast that, two days later it seems as if it’s been going on for years and I cannot even think of it in the present tense.

  To someone who has never experienced it, and I can't imagine that anyone else has, it's hard to explain. In my mind, I have started to have two complete sets of memories. I can remember everything I did back in the Soviet Americas and in the eighteenth century, but I am also starting to remember everything the other Garison Fitch did while gro
wing up in the United States. But I'm not remembering them as if I were remembering someone else' deeds, I am remembering them as if they were my own memories. It is as if I, a thirty to thirty-five year old man, have sixty-five years worth of memories.

  For instance, I can remember both of my twelfth birthday parties. I can even remember specific details of both days. I can remember other days of conflict, but birthdays are the easiest to remember exactly when they happened. I can remember my first birthday after my parents' death, because I was sixteen. But I can also remember a sixteenth birthday when I got to drive a car for the first time.

  One of the more interesting memories I am discovering is of the sports I—Heather's Garison—have apparently played. I was, apparently, somewhat of a star at a sport the Americans call football. I was an outstanding linebacker (whatever that is) they tell me. It is not really anything like the football I grew up with and is named incorrectly. Rarely does one ever touch the ball with one's foot, and—even then—there are only two designated men on each team who kick the ball. If anyone else touches the ball with their foot, they are penalized for an illegal move. It is a game that is confused in its intent, I believe. The object is to hurt and maim your opponent, but the teams are required to wear protective gear designed to prevent this. And, thousands of people seem to think this is all great sport. I find it somewhat embarrassing now that I was a standout at such a brutal (and, if you ask me, useless) sport.

  The other sport I apparently participated in (and was quite good at, if my "memory" serves me correctly) is called baseball. It is an odd sport in that it pits two teams together, but not in what would seem a fair fashion. One team sends one representative out onto the field to battle nine representatives of the other team. Through skill and cunning, it is this man's goal to hit an unbelievably small sphere with a wooden stick, then race around a fraction of the field while his nine opponents are trying to touch him with the sphere—or catch it in the air. It is easily the most complicated game I have ever been associated with.