by Keta Diablo
"Lizzie, I cried. I cried long and hard, you can’t imagine."
She ignored that statement.
"Parents? You said I was raised on the next ranch over."
"Sold up when you died, and I later heard they had both passed. My own parents have moved up with my married sister in Montana. You were an only child."
"How long were we married?"
"Just two years."
"Bummer."
"Sorry?"
She let out a long breath of exasperation. "It’s just an expression, Colby. It means, that was tough."
"I see."
Silence filled the room like a prairie wind. Uncomfortable in her open-crotch bloomers, Lizzie squirmed on her chair.
"I don’t suppose your wife has something...maybe a bit more modest in the undergarment department?"
He gave her a quizzical look. "I think she has some pantaloons you might borrow. Shall I look?"
"Ugh. No difference really." She rested her head in her hands.
He smirked a bit. "What do women in your time wear?"
"Panties! For heaven’s sake. Or even thongs. Boy shorts. All sorts of things."
"Seems like a lot of choice, whatever those are."
"Yes, there is choice. We’re liberated. Like I told you."
"And do you like that?"
Lizzie held her chin in her hand and thought about being smacked about by Jason. Was she liberated? "Oh, I don’t know. Yes. I guess."
"You don’t seem certain."
"It’s complicated, Colby. There is good and there is bad. Maybe I’d like a man to look after me, and on the other hand, maybe I like being independent." She stopped. "What was I like?"
"You were...a good wife." At her groan, he laughed. "You were playful, loving, responsible. You helped me a lot, you did your chores...you were...Elizabeth. My Elizabeth."
"Ha! So how long until you remarried?"
Colby got up from the table and slowly made his way back to the whiskey near the sink. He held the bottle up for a moment before refilling his glass, holding up the golden liquid to the lantern light and swirling it a bit. "I...It was two years, nearly three, Elizabeth, but it wasn’t something...something I wanted. I got tricked into it really. And I’m ashamed."
Lizzie didn’t know what she felt at this bit of news. He didn’t strike her as someone who would let himself get tricked, and a kind of jealousy enveloped her, almost as if he was meant to be hers and someone had stolen him away. "Well," she said, trying to mitigate the confusion. "I guess we all get tricked at one time or other. I thought Jason was the bees’ knees until he started knocking me about."
Colby swirled to face her. "He beats you?"
"Well, he did. And each time he said he was sorry and would never do that again, and I believed him. I guess...I don’t know. Stupid really."
"It’s horrific to think someone beat you."
"Well, you shot me apparently!" She laughed at this. "So are you going to tell me what happened? Why you shot me?"
He covered his mouth before taking another swig of his whiskey, then sauntered back to his chair opposite her. "There were outlaws," he started.
"Ah! A real western!"
"What?"
"A story of the Old West."
"I’m not sure what you mean, and this is no ‘story.’ It really happened."
"Okay. Sorry. Go on."
"We’d had rustlers, outlaws, on the property, and apparently they had hidden a large amount of gold they’d stolen in a bank robbery over in the Dakotas somewhere."
"Jeez. This really is a western—a...a story like Zane Grey or Louis L’Amour!"
Colby sighed. "I don’t know those people, Lizzie, but this is what happened."
"Okay, sorry. Continue, please. Please."
"Apparently there was a dispute among the group and some, a couple of them maybe, got shot and the others came for the gold. Only it was no longer where they thought they had hidden it."
"Wow! Exciting. I should write this as a book or something."
Colby stared at her, frustration etched on his brow. He knocked back another swig. "Look. I’m telling you what happened."
"Yes, yes. Go on please. My apologies. It’s just so exciting."
"The remaining men thought I had found the gold and they came for us. I couldn’t tell them where their gold was, obviously, as I hadn’t taken it. Nor had you, I presume."
"Definitely not!" Lizzie couldn’t help herself from finding this whole story amazing, funny, unreal. "Sorry again. Continue. Please."
"There was a fight, I got wounded and knocked out, and they kidnapped you. They flung you onto a horse. You were screaming. Crying. I came to, but was badly injured, shot, and there wasn’t much I could do...."
The look in his eyes, so faraway, so hurt, pained, traumatized even, told her that he was reliving it all. She sat up and kept her mouth shut.
"Well, eventually I struggled out the door just as they were riding off. And I made a bad decision. A very bad decision."
"You tried to shoot one of the men and instead shot me."
He angled his head, questioning. "Do you remember any of it?"
"No. But I’ve seen it a dozen times in films and television. Or something like it."
"I...."
"You have no idea what I’m talking about. Sorry. Continue Colby, please?"
"Well, that was it. I was wounded, had the gun, tried to shoot the man who held you prisoner on his horse—I’m generally a damn good shot—but at the last moment something, I don’t know, you moved, I lost control of my aim, something. The bullet hit you instead. He tossed you off the horse as if you were...garbage. You can’t understand what this did to me. I wanted to blow my own brains out, wanted to die." He stopped and she let this sink in. "The men were all out at round-up. The new neighbor, Higgins, rode in and found us—said he’d been out mending fences and heard the shots, but it was too late. The doc patched me up, we buried you, and the outlaws never came back. But you did, it seems."
Lizzie sat back and looked at him, smiling to herself that this gorgeous hunk of man had once been her husband. He certainly was the epitome of ‘cowboy’ and all that implied. The chiseled jaw, strong even features, beautiful waiting mouth, deep, clear eyes—why couldn’t she find a man like that in her real life? If she ever got back to it.... She smiled.
"A penny for your thoughts?" he said setting his glass back down.
"Oh, nothing. Guess I’m rather tired. It’s strange being a ghost, ya know?"
"So, now what?"
"I don’t know, Colby. You tell me. I have no idea why I’ve time-traveled, why I’m here. You haven’t told me yet what you meant by saying you were tricked into marrying your present wife."
"She...well...." He played with the glass in his hand, twirled it around, looking into it as if the answer would be there.
"Let me guess!" Lizzie’s hand smacked the table and she leaned back in her chair on its two rear legs before coming crashing forward, laughing. "You had pre-marital sexual intercourse, you sly dog, and she told you she was pregnant. It turned out to be a false alarm, though, I’m guessing."
Colby studied his late wife long and hard, his gaze roaming over her features as if he would memorize them one last time. His lips parted to reply, but then he banged the glass down on the table.
"Look," she went on in a more mollifying voice. "Lots of men fall for that, good men like yourself, decent men who believe what they’re told. It doesn’t mark you as a sucker."
"A what?"
"Geesh, you really are short on good words in this century. A sucker—someone who’s been made a fool of."
He stared at her. "No. I mean, yes, it does. I felt like an idiot. The whole town was amazed. She had come from nowhere, no one knew her and her brother—"
"And she seduced you. She saw this great looking hunk of man with a ranch to his name and thought, hey, I’ll have that."
She met Colby’s searching gaze and then laughed with
him at what she had said. His laugh came from deep inside him, like rolling thunder from distant hills.
Lizzie smiled. "What now?"
"It’s as if you’re speaking a foreign language. Really. Two-thousand-sixteen must be a strange...what...time to live in?"
"Maybe yes, maybe no. I guess I find all this...." She swept her hand to show the kitchen, with its hand pump sink, its wood burning cook stove with utensils hanging from its chimney, the shelves with canned goods, and the crockery cabinet. So basic to her experience. "All this is strange to me."
"I guess. Look, I’m married now and I have to make the best of the situation. The main thing is, we have to deal with you being here, and you being a ghost, and why this has happened to you."
"Right. I must be here for a reason, but what? By the way, do I have a grave?"
"Of course you do."
"Would you mind if I cut the legs off a pair of your jeans and hoisted them on with a belt perhaps?"
"Elizabeth, they’re still going to be huge on you."
"Colby," she said getting up from the table. "Huge is going to be so comfortable after that corset, I’ll be positively delighted. Let’s go see my grave."
"It’s dark out, in case you hadn’t noticed."
"Right! Tomorrow, then." She glanced at him, a finger of discomfort creeping up her spine. "Well, I’m just gonna settle down there on your sofa—"
"We’ve always slept together."
"Colby. I don’t think you want to make love to a ghost."
Chapter Four
Colby watched as Lizzie made her way ahead of him through the long grass up to the family graveyard. Every few steps she would try to re-hoist the jeans they had cut down, held on by a belt into which he had stabbed another hole. But the belt wasn’t doing a great job at keeping up the bunched fabric of his pants, and Lizzie looked like some ragamuffin or street urchin. If anyone rode in or saw them, she would certainly make a strange sight. Then again, that was the least of his worries.
Coming up to the little cemetery at the top of a hill, he swung open a gate on wrought iron fencing enclosing the area. A few scattered headstones were mostly well- kept, though he noted he could be doing better. The wind picked up and blew her hair across her face, and he reached out and pushed it back behind her ear.
"You know, you haven’t changed," he said. "You’re as beautiful as ever."
Lizzie’s mouth turned up into the merest smile. "Look, pal, you’re a married man and I’m a ghost apparently, so don’t go getting romantic on me."
"No. But I do miss you. Terribly. I think...the only reason I went with her that time—"
Lizzie faced him, and tilted her head. "Colby, honest, you don’t owe me any explanations or excuses. I can’t remember any of it, first of all, and secondly, you know, people get on with their lives, people get lonely, and I expect that’s what happened to you. In addition to which, in my day—in my day! Boy, does that make me sound old! But really, in my day, people sleep with each other, make love, all the time; it’s considered the norm, a part of getting to know one another. Me, I wouldn’t like to marry someone I hadn’t slept with. What if it was a disaster and he didn’t...you know...if we didn’t please each other?"
"Did you sleep with this Jason? The man who hit you?"
"Yes, of course. I know it’s difficult for you to comprehend; I know in your time—now—that isn’t the done thing, but in my time, it is." She turned toward the graves, then pivoted back to him. "Did we make love before we married?"
Memories floated through his mind then, through his heart, images, pictures of Lizzie undressed, her slim form on the blanket offering herself to him. He could almost taste her now, feel the silken skin next to his own.
"Did we?"
"Yes, Lizzie. We did. But we knew we were to marry. Our parents had given us their blessing. As I said, it was meant from the start, from school."
Lizzie sighed. "Oh, you Victorians. All prim and proper up front and seething passion behind closed doors."
"Well, we don’t call ourselves ‘Victorians’—that’s to do with the British queen, isn’t it?—but maybe you’re right." He bent and pulled some weeds from one of the nearby graves, then stood and guided her to another headstone at the end of the line. "My grandparents are here—they came out west after my parents were settled in—and a couple of children my mother lost in childbirth. And I’ll be here with you one day. Next to you."
"I think I rather like that idea. Not that I wish you dead, or anything, but we can then be ghosts together right through eternity. Or maybe you’ll come into my century, and we can...uh...."
"Marry again?"
Her smile was radiant as she looked up at him. "Well, I guess it’s okay for me to say that since we’ve been married once before."
Colby nodded. "I like the idea of being with you. Right into eternity. Forever."
* * *
How the hell can I, as a ghost, or weirdo time traveler, be falling in love with this guy in another century? Lizzie’s mind simply could not fathom what was going on. For a moment, she wondered if she had been drugged on acid or LSD, and this was one giant trip. But there was her grave, right in front of her.
"‘For now we see in a mirror dimly...Elizabeth Adams Gates, beloved wife and daughter, 1869 to 1892, Rest in Eternal Peace’. Wow, I guess I even had the same maiden name I have now!"
"Your name is Elizabeth Adams?"
"Yup. So what’s this ‘mirror dimly’ business?"
"Book of Ruth. I chose it because you so loved that dang mirror."
"Still do, cowboy." She gave him a little punch with her tiny fist. "I have to tell you it’s really weird seeing my own grave. Rather like Scrooge in A Christmas Carol."
"Now that, I do recognize. Dickens."
She breathed in for a moment. "Twenty-three? I was just twenty-three?"
"Yeah. We should have married earlier but your parents asked us to wait. I think they loved you being at home. Friends married so much earlier, but they made us wait, and I respected their request. We really should have eloped."
"No wonder we did it before we married. I thought everyone in your time—this time—got married at, like, sixteen or something."
"‘Did it?’ Oh, you mean, uh...."
"Yes, that’s what I mean."
"Your parents wanted me to be a bit more settled, show I could support you. They didn’t know my dad had intentions of handing over the ranch to me and I’d been, well, something of a wild boy."
"No kidding!" Lizzie looked at her widower in a new light. "A bit of a bad boy, huh?"
"A bit." He bent to start clearing weeds from the grave and she tried to help, but the bulging fabric and belt made it difficult.
"So what’s next?" he asked straightening up.
"We have to figure out why I’m here."
"To be with me?"
"Well, nice as that seems, I don’t think that’s the answer—but I do think I may know of someone who will."
"Who’s that? A priest? A minister?"
"Nope. Let’s head back to the house. Even ghosts feel this Wyoming wind."
They started down the slope, the tall grass again reaching for her, pulling at her.
"Back in St. Louis, in 2016, my antique shop—the shop where I work—is on a street in what they call the historic district. In other words, the buildings, or most of them, were built around now."
"So? We’re in Wyoming."
"Let me finish, Colby!"
He laughed. "Do you know, that was one of your most common phrases? You used to say that all the time."
"Well, I guess you kept interrupting me all the time."
"So, go on."
"One of the buildings nearby has offices, and one of those offices was already in existence in the eighteen hundreds—like now—an agency that specialized in ghost hunting and so on. Paranormal stuff."
"Para-who?"
"Oh, for heaven’s sake. Really, I wish I had a dictionary with me. Anyway—
they were ghost hunters. Psychics. Do you know what they are? Clairvoyants, that sort of thing."
"I think I get the picture."
"So. How do you communicate these days long distance? No telephone you said."
"Not here. But we do have telegraph in town."
"How perfectly modern of you. Well, it’s called something like the Tremayne Agency—no, wait, that was the guy who apparently ran it or owned it or something; his name is still listed on the plaque as proprietor. It’s called Psychic Specters Investigations, and it was—still is—on Tenth St. between Pine and Chestnut. How much of an exact address do you need?"
"No idea. We’ll have to talk to the telegrapher and see if he can help. Probably, he can wire the St. Louis telegrapher and he’ll perhaps know the address, or at least be able to find it."
Lizzie stopped and looked down on the sprawl of ranch buildings beneath the hill. In the distance, she saw a few men working cattle, but outside the house was another man helping a woman out of a buggy, or what she took to be a ‘buggy.’ "Looks like you’ve got a visitor," she offered.
Colby’s gaze fell on the ranch below them and he took a sharp intake of breath.
"My wife," he said. "Damn. She’s back earlier than expected. My wife."
Chapter Five
Colby took off his Stetson for a moment, the breeze ruffling his hair. He scratched the back of his neck before setting the hat back on, and glanced from the scene below them to Lizzie and back again. "Now how the hell are we going to explain you?"
"Your distant cousin?"
"I don’t think so. What about your attire?"
"My attire? I don’t know. Say I got soaked in a rainstorm and had no change of clothes. The airline lost my baggage." Realizing what she had said, she laughed so hard, she ended up sitting on the grass.
Colby towered over her, hands on hips. "Look. This may be outrageously funny to you, whatever the joke was, but we have to come up with something."
"I’m sorry, it’s just—never mind. Here, help me up." She extended her hand, which he clasped and pulled her to her feet. But he didn’t let go.
A long sigh of desire escaped his lips as he squeezed her hand. "You know, if I didn’t have the ranch and responsibilities, I’d say—"