by Anthology
The bank manager was blunt. “I know there is oil down there but it is all shale oil. The oil is embedded in the rock. Good day, Mr. Nips. Thank you for your business.”
Both Jasons had sour looks on their faces as they left the bank.
“Well, that didn’t work out like we planned, did it, Cousin?”
“I didn’t know about the shale oil, son. But I’ll give you a hundred dollars in gold. You can bring in oil-drilling experts and see what they say. It’s getting late, and I bet you have a meeting with Annetta Falkensturm.”
“You are correct, Cousin,” young Jason said. “I bet you are going to have a meat pie for dinner tonight.”
“You could be right. Meet me tomorrow at Tuttle’s at noon. Be dressed in your good clothes. I’ll need some help carrying some things I’m going to buy. That won’t be a problem, will it?”
“Not at all, Cousin. I’m a landowner now, even if it’s dead property. I am squiring the best-looking gal in the state, and it’s all because of you. I’ll be there. Enjoy your night.”
“Oh, I will.”
The young Jason tried to pat the older one on the back, but the adult avoided the touch.
The older Jason’s thoughts turned toward the Widow Jenkins. Minutes later, he knocked on her door and was warmly welcomed inside.
Morning came too fast, and the ever ready widow was as fast at cooking as she was with other things. Jason left her with a smile, a tickle, and a promise to return after lunch.
He rode Thunder to Tuttles. He remembered just what he wanted to buy. The younger version of himself got there a few minutes later.
“Look at that, Cousin.”
The older Jason has set a large wooden box with six shotguns and a box and a half of shells on the counter.
“What do you want all of those shotguns for, Cousin? You gonna fight a war?”
“Never you mind, just take the other side of this box. We’re going to the stagecoach stop. Your brother Ben is going to be on that stage coming in at twelve thirty.”
“Really, how do you know that? I wasn’t expecting to see him for another month.”
“I know things.”
They carried the heavy box to the stage office on the other side of the street from the bank. Jason noted the six horses tied to the rail in front of the bank. He hoped the sheriff and deputy were coming this way, as he had asked them to do so over a late lunch the day before.
“Son, help me move some of these dry goods barrels to the edge of the sidewalk.”
“I can do that, Cousin, but I don’t think Getchil’s is going to like that.”
“Trust me.”
They moved the barrels, and the older Jason set up the six shotguns against them. The younger Jason looked on in wonder.
“The stage is coming! The stage is coming!” boys shouted from somewhere down the street.
The next several minutes were a blur.
Brother Ben got off the stage and was surprised to see a cleaned-up younger brother. He gave him a big hug.
The stage driver started unloading suitcases from the top of the stage.
Shots rang out from the other side of the street as the bank robbers came out onto the street, firing. The first bullet took the stagecoach driver in the head. He dropped the heavy suitcase on young Jason, and the boy went down like a sack of potatoes.
It was just as the older Jason had remembered things. But it would turn out different this time around.
The older Jason started cutting lose with doublebarreled blasts. He was only a passable shot, but he didn’t have to be an expert. The buckshot ripped the bank robbers’ arms and legs from their bodies.
“Stay down, Ben,” shouted the older Jason. “Protect the boy. I’ve got them covered and the sheriff’s coming.”
He continued to quickly pepper the other side of the street, going from gun to gun. Three bank robbers bled out on the street as the sheriff and his man ran up to add their gunfire to his. Jason quickly reloaded all the shotguns and began firing again.
There was only one robber left now, and he shot back at the sheriff. The older Jason rushed into the street to get a better angle, and his shotgun stitched the side of the robber. The robber turned and fired as he went down. One of the bullets took Jason in the knee.
In terrible pain, Jason fell on the Timeshares device in his back pocket, hitting the panic button and vanishing from the street and back into time where he belonged.
He woke up in a hospital bed. Drugs dripped into his arm, and he didn’t feel any pain. There was a loud beeping noise near his head.
A pretty red-haired nurse rushed into his room and pressed a button to stop the beeping. “I’ve sent for the doctor. Don’t you worry about a thing. You’re going to be fine now that you are back where you belong. Your brother has paid for the very best care for you.”
Jason was unable to say a thing. He felt so fuzzy.
A tall man in surgery scrubs walked into the room with a datapad in his hand. He scanned Jason’s body and was all smiles.
“I was a bit worried about the bio-replacement of the knee. I’m certain now that you will have one hundred percent freedom of movement. It’s a good thing we could get you in the regeneration lab so quickly. Your brother saw to that. You are going to be fine and up and moving in a few days. I’m going to let your wife and brother in to see you.”
Jason smiled at the thought of his newfound wife and brother. He had succeeded in the past. Everything would be great now.
A much older looking brother Ben and a fat woman came into the room.
“Jason, brother, you promised me when I paid for that vacation ticket that you wouldn’t get into trouble. What happened back there?”
Jason struggled to remember.
No!
The fat woman seemed to find something funny and laughed like a pig.
Annetta. His younger self had married her, and he suddenly recalled a lifetime of that horrid laugh.
He also remembered a life with Annetta. It hadn’t been a good life.
Jason gasped as the replaced memories surged forward. His brother Ben had bought the land contract for a thousand dollars ten years after its first purchase as a kindness to Jason and Annetta.
Ben got richer and richer, and Jason failed time after time in money making schemes. He had eventually invested a great deal in the Refresh Company, but once again Ben’s money bailed him out, and Ben was three-quarters owner of the corporation.
Jason turned his head away from the pair. He knew he’d made the mistake of his life, and there wouldn’t be a second chance to set things back in order.
JOHN BARTINE’S WATCH
Ambrose Bierce
“The exact time? Good God! my friend, why do you insist? One would think—but what does it matter; it is easily bedtime—isn’t that near enough? But, here, if you must set your watch, take mine and see for yourself.”
With that he detached his watch—a tremendously heavy, old-fashioned one—from the chain, and handed it to me; then turned away, and walking across the room to a shelf of books, began an examination of their backs. His agitation and evident distress surprised me; they appeared reasonless. Having set my watch by his, I stepped over to where he stood and said, “Thank you.”
As he took his timepiece and reattached it to the guard I observed that his hands were unsteady. With a tact upon which I greatly prided myself, I sauntered carelessly to the sideboard and took some brandy and water; then, begging his pardon for my thoughtlessness, asked him to have some and went back to my seat by the fire, leaving him to help himself, as was our custom. He did so and presently joined me at the hearth, as tranquil as ever.
This odd little incident occurred in my apartment, where John Bartine was passing an evening. We had dined together at the club, had come home in a cab and—in short, everything had been done in the most prosaic way; and why John Bartine should break in upon the natural and established order of things to make himself spectacular with a display of
emotion, apparently for his own entertainment, I could nowise understand. The more I thought of it, while his brilliant conversational gifts were commending themselves to my inattention, the more curious I grew, and of course had no difficulty in persuading myself that my curiosity was friendly solicitude. That is the disguise that curiosity usually assumes to evade resentment. So I ruined one of the finest sentences of his disregarded monologue by cutting it short without ceremony.
“John Bartine,” I said, “you must try to forgive me if I am wrong, but with the light that I have at present I cannot concede your right to go all to pieces when asked the time o’ night. I cannot admit that it is proper to experience a mysterious reluctance to look your own watch in the face and to cherish in my presence, without explanation, painful emotions which are denied to me, and which are none of my business.” To this ridiculous speech Bartine made no immediate reply, but sat looking gravely into the fire. Fearing that I had offended I was about to apologize and beg him to think no more about the matter, when looking me calmly in the eyes he said:
“My dear fellow, the levity of your manner does not at all disguise the hideous impudence of your demand; but happily I had already decided to tell you what you wish to know, and no manifestation of your unworthiness to hear it shall alter my decision. Be good enough to give me your attention and you shall hear all about the matter.
“This watch,” he said, “had been in my family for three generations before it fell to me. Its original owner, for whom it was made, was my great-grandfather, Bramwell Olcott Bartine, a wealthy planter of Colonial Virginia, and as stanch a Tory as ever lay awake nights contriving new kinds of maledictions for the head of Mr. Washington, and new methods of aiding and abetting good King George. One day this worthy gentleman had the deep misfortune to perform for his cause a service of capital importance which was not recognized as legitimate by those who suffered its disadvantages. It does not matter what it was, but among its minor consequences was my excellent ancestor’s arrest one night in his own house by a party of Mr. Washington’s rebels. He was permitted to say farewell to his weeping family, and was then marched away into the darkness which swallowed him up forever. Not the slenderest clew to his fate was ever found. After the war the most diligent inquiry and the offer of large rewards failed to turn up any of his captors or any fact concerning his disappearance. He had disappeared, and that was all.”
Something in Bartine’s manner that was not in his words—I hardly knew what it was—prompted me to ask:
“What is your view of the matter—of the justice of it?
“My view of it,” lie flamed out, bringing his clenched hand down upon the table as if he had been in a public house dicing with blackguards—“my view of it is that it was a characteristically dastardly assassination by that damned traitor, Washington, and his ragamuffin rebels!
For some minutes nothing was said: Bartine was recovering his temper, and I waited. Then I said:
“Was that all?”
“No—there was something else. A few weeks after my greatgrandfather’s arrest his watch was found lying on the porch at the front door of his dwelling. It was wrapped in a sheet of letter paper bearing the name of Rupert Bartine, his only son, my grandfather. I am wearing that watch.”
Bartine paused. His usually restless black eyes were staring fixedly into the grate, a point of red light in each, reflected from the glowing coals. He seemed to have forgotten me. A sudden threshing of the branches of a tree outside one of the windows, and almost at the same instant a rattle of rain against the glass, recalled him to a sense of his surroundings. A storm had risen, heralded by a single gust of wind, and in a few moments the steady plash of the water on the pavement was distinctly heard. I hardly know why I relate this incident; it seemed somehow to have a certain significance and relevancy which I am unable now to discern. It at least added an element of seriousness, almost solemnity. Bartine resumed:
“I have a singular feeling toward this watch—a kind of affection for it; I like to have it about me, though partly from its weight, and partly for a reason I shall now explain, I seldom carry it. The reason is this: Every evening when I have it with me I feel an unaccountable desire to open and consult it, even if I can think of no reason for wishing to know the time. But if I yield to it, the moment my eyes rest upon the dial I am filled with a mysterious apprehension—a sense of imminent calamity. And this is the more insupportable the nearer it is to eleven o’clock—by this watch, no matter what the actual hour may be. After the hands have registered eleven the desire to look is gone; I am entirely indifferent. Then I can consult the thing as often as I like, with no more emotion than you feel in looking at your own. Naturally I have trained myself not to look at that watch in the evening before eleven; nothing could induce me. Your insistence this evening upset me a trifle. I felt very much as I suppose an opium-eater might feel if his yearning for his special and particular kind of hell were re-enforced by opportunity and advice.
“Now that is my story, and I have told it in the interest of your trumpery science; but if on any evening hereafter you observe me wearing this damnable watch, and you have the thoughtfulness to ask me the hour, I shall beg leave to put you to the inconvenience of being knocked down.”
His humor did not amuse me. I could see that in relating his delusion he was again somewhat disturbed. His concluding smile was positively ghastly, and his eyes had resumed something more than their old restlessness; they shifted hither and thither about the room with apparent aimlessness and I fancied had taken on a wild expression, such as is sometimes observed in cases of dementia. Perhaps this was my own imagination, but at any rate I was now persuaded that my friend was afflicted with a most singular and interesting monomania. Without, I trust, any abatement of my affectionate solicitude for him as a friend, I began to regard him as a patient, rich in possibilities of profitable study. Why not? Had he not described his delusion in the interest of science? Ah, poor fellow, he was doing more for science than he knew: not only his story but himself was in evidence. I should cure him if I could, of course, but first I should make a little experiment in psychology—nay, the experiment itself might be a step in his restoration.
“That is very frank and friendly of you. Bartine,” I said cordially, “and I’m rather proud of your confidence. It is all very odd, certainly. Do you mind showing me the watch.”
He detached it from his waistcoat, chain and all, and passed it to me without a word. The case was of gold, very thick and strong, and singularly engraved. After closely examining the dial and observing that it was nearly twelve o’clock, I opened it at the back and was interested to observe an inner case of ivory, upon which was painted a miniature portrait in that exquisite and delicate manner which was in vogue during the eighteenth century.
“Why, bless my soul!” I exclaimed, feeling a sharp artistic delight—“how under the sun did you get that done? I thought miniature painting on ivory was a lost art.”
“That,” he replied, gravely smiling, “is not I: it is my excellent greatgrandfather, the late Bramwell Olcott Bartine, Esquire, of Virginia. He was younger then than later—about my age, in fact. It is said to resemble me; do you think so?”
“Resemble you? I should say so! Barring the costume, which I supposed you to have assumed out of compliment to the art—or for vraisemblance, so to say—and the no mustache, that portrait is you in every feature, line, and expression.”
No more was said at that time. Bartine took a book from the table and began reading. I heard outside the incessant plash of the rain in the street. There were occasional hurried footfalls on the sidewalks; and once a slower, heavier tread seemed to cease at my door—a policeman, I thought, seeking shelter in the doorway. The boughs of the trees tapped significantly on the window panes, as if asking for admittance. I remember it all through these years and years of a wiser, graver life.
Seeing myself unobserved, I took the old-fashioned key that dangled from the chain and quickly turned
back the hands of the watch a full hour; then, closing the case, I handed Bartine his property and saw him replace it on his person.
“I think you said,” I began, with assumed carelessness, “that after eleven the sight of the dial no longer affects you. As it is now nearly twelve”—looking at my own timepiece—“perhaps, if you don’t resent my pursuit of proof, you will look at it now.”
He smiled good-humoredly, pulled out the watch again, opened it, and instantly sprang to his feet with a cry that Heaven has not had the mercy to permit me to forget! His eyes, their blackness strikingly intensified by the pallor of his face, were fixed upon the watch, which he clutched in both hands. For some time he remained in that attitude without uttering another sound; then, in a voice that I should not have recognized as his, he said:
“Damn you! It is two minutes to eleven!”
I was not unprepared for some such outbreak, and without rising replied, calmly enough:
“I beg your pardon; I must have misread your watch in setting my own by it.”
He shut the case with a sharp snap and put the watch in his pocket. He looked at me and made an attempt to smile, but his lower lip quivered and he seemed unable to close his mouth. His hands, also, were shaking, and he thrust them, clenched, into the pockets of his sack-coat. The courageous spirit was manifestly endeavoring to subdue the coward body. The effort was too great; he began to sway from side to side, as from vertigo, and before I could spring from my chair to support him his knees gave way and he pitched awkwardly forward and fell upon his face. I sprang to assist him to rise; but when John Bartine rises we shall all rise.
The post-mortem examination disclosed nothing; every organ was normal and sound. But when the body had been prepared for burial a faint dark circle was seen to have developed around the neck; at least I was so assured by several persons who said they saw it, but of my own knowledge I cannot say if that was true.
Nor can I set limitations to the law of heredity. I do not know that in the spiritual world a sentiment or emotion may not survive the heart that held it, and seek expression in a kindred life, ages removed. Surely, if I were to guess at the fate of Bramwell Olcott Bartine, I should guess that he was hanged at eleven o’clock in the evening, and that he had been allowed several hours in which to prepare for the change.