***
The house looked pleasant: brick with brown shutters and a wide door at the front, nestled between two evergreens. I knocked on the door and let myself inside. Calling out to let them know I was there was met with silence. Sweat popped up on my forehead as I made my way through the kitchen and family room. I hope this is the right place.
I saw them sitting out on the porch, laughing. Laughing. I slid the door aside and joined them.
An older man reclined on a long chair.
“Hi Mom, hi Dad,” I said.
“Well, don’t leave out your namesake,” said the man. I blinked.
“Grandfather. Hello.”
My mother stood up, stretching her arms out for a hug. She was warm and smelled like coffee grounds and perfume.
“How are you, Mom?”
“Oh, fine,” she said. Seeing my shock, she tousled my hair. “I’m going to get dinner started.” My father headed to a charcoal grill on the other side of the porch, fiddling with the coals.
“Come sit with me,” said Jackson. He shouldn’t be alive. I took the chair next to him.
“Well, hello,” I said.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” he said, smiling.
“It’s good to see you. And the last time I left . . . well, Mom is happy. I can’t remember ever seeing her happy and …”
“Lucid?”
“Yes,” I said, stopping because I was choking up. He put his hand on mine and patted me.
“Imagine my surprise when my daughter had a baby boy.”
“Oh, right. About that—”
“It doesn’t matter, Jack. I am so grateful I’ve had all this time.”
I considered him. His ears looked floppier than when he was in his youth; he was less tan, the skin under his chin not very attached to his head. Maybe he’d spent less time in the sun. He’d kept all of his hair, which had gone white. The staring got to him.
“What?” he demanded.
“Has anyone told you that you look like Nick Lowe?”
“You’re the first. This isn’t what we should be talking about.”
“You’re right, grandpa,” I said, marveling at the word. I’d never used it before. “It’s good to see you. Again.”
“I’m really glad to see you, though you know, I’ve watched you grow up.”
I nodded. “Have we discussed our past before?”
“This is the first time you’ve brought it up,” he said. “I’ve been waiting. I’m a Guardian now, so I felt you come through.”
I thought it through. Had my time jumps from 1980 and 1983 changed time enough that Jackson Hartle realized he needed to live his life differently? Had they changed my own childhood? My mother certainly seemed to be living in a different existence. I still had so much left to do, but I wanted a few minutes with him.
“Well, let’s talk then. How’s Pie?”
He laughed a little. “She lived a good, long life. As have I, with the benefit of knowing which habits weren’t good for me.”
“I take it you didn’t go work for a white bread company?”
“Ha, no, and I don’t eat that shit, either.” I noticed he sounded just like my mother did when she found something funny, all bobbly and musical. “Back in the 20s they marketed it as “White bread for the White Race. Stuff and nonsense. I refused to smoke cigarettes, too. And here I am, as old as a stump. So thank you for that.”
“I just got back,” I said. “Like you noticed. I’m still adjusting.”
“Well, Jack, I hate to say it, but I think you need to go back again.”
“I know I do. I can’t leave things like this. And I love Lucas.”
He nodded a little bit, tapped me on my knee.
“I know you do.”
“I have an idea about how to make it all right, but I’m not sure. And I don’t know who my Guardian is in this time. Is it you?”
“No, it’s not me,” he said, and he grinned.
“I’m your Guardian,” said my mother, sitting down on a blue lawn chair. She rested her hands on her lap. “I suppose you have questions for me.”
I just stared at her. My own mother, my Guardian? My neck felt hot all of a sudden.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
She looked into her lap, twisting a dish towel.
“I was afraid.”
“I was in danger! How could you say nothing? You must have known every time I jumped.”
She nodded, dabbing her eyes with the towel.
“I’d heard so much about how Travelers were persecuted when they were discovered, and then I felt the time shifts, just tiny ones, once you were a toddler. Usually Guardians and Travelers are at most distantly related, like cousins or across one or more generations. I almost didn’t believe it when I felt you moving through time. Travelers don’t have real abilities until they’re teenagers. I was scared for you. And then I needed to change my medication, and I was in such a fog and I couldn’t help you, and you didn’t tell me anything was wrong.”
I stood up, feeling dizzy for the first time in ages.
“Because I thought I was crazy, Mom! Hopping around time, it’s not normal.”
“I’m sorry, honey. I should have prepared you better. I made the wrong decision.”
“I thought I was losing my mind.”
“I know, I’m sorry. I was trying to protect you. It was a mistake.”
Now it was my turn to look down. I needed to think. My Guardian was with me all along and I never knew it. I reached out and took my mother’s hand. I couldn’t tell if I was angry or sad or what.
“It’s okay, Mom.” Mostly. Even with all this time travel I never feel like I have any rest.
“I’m so proud of you, my dear. You’re such a wonderful young man.”
“Or woman,” said Jackson, grinning on half of his face.
“That too,” she said. I sighed.
“I have been stacking up the questions for my Guardian.”
“Like?” she asked.
“What happens when I’m in someone else’s body? Am I losing time or do I just have really bad aim? Can I die or can I jump forever?”
Mom smiled, a real smile, without a medication haze or a cover for something bad. A real, genuine smile.
“There are answers to all of these questions, Jack.”
“Good, because I have a lot more.”
“Okay. We’re here to help.”
“And another thing—I have no real idea how to stop Dr. Traver.”
Grandpa sat up and he held my gaze, and played with the chain on his old pocket watch.
“I do,” he said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
THE TRACKS STRETCHED SO FAR toward the horizon that the individual rails seemed to merge into one point, and then they disappeared, becoming lost to the wilderness. I followed the railroad ties, using a scrap of paper I’d received a couple of hours earlier. Edgar camped out where the tracks took on a look of modern sculpture, the result of a terrible derailing several years ago. Not that modern art was anything anyone had heard of yet. The old conductor told me I couldn’t miss it.
I’d been tracing his steps for a week, and I was running out of time. I crunched through a stream of broken glass and pottery. Moonshine bottles, brown beer glass, and growler jugs, or so I guessed. I was getting close. If the story was right then he hadn’t started to spiral down yet, but this was the last week for his fragile sobriety.
The tracks rose up from the ground, twisting and climbing like an iron vine. Scraps from trains lay half-buried in the weeds and wildflowers, glinting from my lantern light. I’d come all the way out to Montana to find him, and now the sun was setting. I called out his name. His new name.
A crackling sound off to my right and I saw the lean-to, a few bums feeding a small fire in front of their shelter. I walked over to them and asked if anyone knew where Melvyn was.
“Who wants to know?” asked a scrawny young man. Those green eyes. The self-proclaimed Dr
. Traver.
“I need to speak with you, please,” I said. He seemed to doubt my sincerity. “It’s of the utmost importance.”
“It must be if you ventured to this hellacious place,” he said, and he stepped forward, closer to the light of the fire and my lantern. His sunken cheeks and brittle appearance surprised me. He’d never looked particularly healthy in any of our previous encounters, but I hadn’t seen him malnourished before, either. Melvyn stepped toward me with care, as if checking that the ground underneath would hold his light frame. “Pray tell,” he said once he was in front of me, “who are you and why have you come here?”
He wore wool knickers that by my research, were a good decade out of style, a prickly cotton shirt that seemed about two sizes too large for him, a beat-up brown leather jacket, not made for the cold temperatures, and a wool cap that stunk more than it covered his head. These were runaway clothes, assembled on the road, or stolen from his abusive half-brother or father. He put his hands in his pockets, waiting for my response.
“My name is Brock Tillman,” I said, hoping I’d remembered that correctly. “I’m here on behalf of your family.”
“I don’t have a family,” he said, stiffening up. This wasn’t going well.
“Sir, you do, and I need to explain a few things.”
He sighed. “Explain then.”
“You’re working at a lumber yard, yes? The M. J. Dwight Company?”
“You work for them? You have me exasperated, Mr. Tillman.”
“My sincere apologies,” I said. “You’re going to sleep very little tonight, and rush to your job tomorrow, and make a mistake on the saw that will cost a man his life.”
“You’re a crackpot,” he said, and began walking away.
“Wait!”
He continued to pace away from me, aiming to take cover with the older men at the fire.
“Edgar, please!” This stopped him in his tracks, and he hurried back over to where I stood.
“Who are you?”
“I am a time-traveler, as impossible as that seems.”
“You are not well, whoever you are.” His anger was so familiar. He had the same sneer on his face that I saw when he and his men surrounded us, years later.
“I promise, Melvyn, I understand more than you know. How awful your brother was to you, why you ran away—”
“Stop. It is of no consequence anymore. I am now my own man.” He puffed out his chest. Which was not saying much.
“I know you are. That is why I’ve come to speak with you.”
“It is a strange audience you request, Mr. Tillman.” He paused, thinking. “Accidents happen at mills all the time, and this cold ground is no place for a decent night’s sleep, so you’ve said nothing that isn’t obvious. I’ve heard of you psychics and soothsayers. You are all charlatans.” He waved his hand in the air like I was a bad smell. He was really pissing me off. But I couldn’t hate him for crimes he hadn’t yet committed.
“Tomorrow, before noon, you will kill the yard owner’s son by accident, unless you seek to avoid it. Come find me on the corner outside the general store at three o’clock tomorrow. You’ll believe me by then.” I fished in my knapsack. He continued to frown at me, but he’d quit yelling.
“I feel sorry for you, sir,” he said, holding his ground. “You ought to thank your lucky stars you’re not in a sanitarium.”
“Maybe I should,” I said, handing him a small wrapped sandwich.
“What is this?” he asked. He sniffed the brown paper.
“Supper. Made just like Mrs. Ellison prepared them for you in Detroit. You haven’t eaten in two days, after all.”
“You’re the devil,” he told me, as I walked away, back along the tracks and into the tiny town in the mountains.
Call me what you want, I thought, but I gave you the opportunity to prevent a death tomorrow. And all of the deaths after that.
***
I sat on the porch of the general store, nursing a not-sweet-enough iced tea that the young daughter of the owner had made for anyone willing to pay two cents. Light brown dust covered everything out here, and was slowly crawling up the length of my boots. I pulled my wide-brimmed hat down a little lower on my face, and wished that someone had invented sunglasses before now. I will never complain again about how much it sucks in the suburbs.
At the end of the row of stores, two men pushed at a Ford Model T that was stuck in thick mud. It lurched forward, finding traction for only a second before getting stuck again. This unexpected motion caused the man leaning against the left rear fender to fall face-down onto the ground. He let out a stream of curses and I stifled a laugh, not wanting to bring any attention to myself. His friend got the bright idea to hitch two horses to the vehicle.
As they worked, Melvyn walked up to me. I checked the clock in the tower of the bank across the street, and saw that it was only 2:00 pm.
“Fancy meeting you here,” I said, still covered by my hat.
Melvyn leaned against the railing at the boundary of the porch. “It is an evil man who would sabotage equipment he knows working men require to use.”
“I didn’t sabotage anything,” I said with confidence. I pushed back the brim of my hat and sat forward, looking at him. “I’ve been here all day. Ask the shop owner.”
“Have you no concern of the poor soul who could have been killed today?”
“I take it he’s still alive, then.”
“No thanks to you.” He scowled at me, made all the more intense by the fact that the sun had turned his eyes into small darts.
“Actually, it is entirely thanks to me. Were it not for my warning to you yesterday you would not have left your sad state of a bed early to examine the mill’s workings as is part of your job, but which you almost never do. So hooray, you then realized that two bolts had fallen off of the steam engine. Were it not for me, in fact, you would not have sought to call this to the attention of the mill foreman in time before the start of the morning shift. And now the foreman knows your name and is considering promoting you.”
By the end of this stream of explanation, the fight had left him. His fists unclenched, his jaw relaxed, and he stood in the dust of the street, expressionless.
“What do you want of me?” he asked, almost as an exhale.
“A woman once told me, a long time from now, that every person has everything inside of them—curiosity and apathy, triumph and defeat, goodness and wickedness.”
“I have attended Bible study, I assure you,” said Melvyn.
“Well, at some point, you forgot what it said. You stopped asking where your own actions were leading you.”
“You are the most confounding person I can remember encountering.”
“Thank you. I try.”
Melvyn’s cheek twitched. He was one nervous cat.
“Let me ask you this. Why are you here in this godforsaken place? Why have you run all the way from Michigan to the wilds of the West? Because you are attempting to distance yourself from the truth.” At this his head nodded, almost without his consent, but he stood silent. “And yet with all the miles you’ve put between here and there, still you are haunted.”
“What you say is true,” said Melvyn, digging his toe in the brown dust. “But you have no solution for me.”
I stood up, brushing off my trousers and setting down my drink.
“I do, in fact, have ideas for you, Edgar. But you have given up on self-determination, and I suggest you give it a second chance. Come with me.”
Walking away, I didn’t look back, because I knew even though he needed to consider my request, he would follow me. After a few moments, he trotted to catch up to me. We made crunching sounds on the rough surface.
I headed toward the bank, in the middle of the line of shops. The teller nodded at me as we entered and the bank vice president stood up to greet us. Melvyn leaned in to my ear.
“I have no business with these people.”
“Oh, yes you do.” I handed
the banker a key, and he walked into the vault, bringing back a box to us. He set it on a heavy mahogany table next to where we stood, and walked away. “Open it,” I told Melvyn.
He gave me a look but then pulled back the cover of the metal container on its hinge, and gasped as he inspected the contents.
“I thought you were a devil or a carpet bagger.”
I shook my head. “Maybe I have my moments,” I said.
Melvyn read and re-read the birth certificate with both of his parents’ names typed in as amended. He rubbed at his eyes, which made me reach out to pat him on his shoulder. I handed him a short stack of money. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to give him a start as something other than a runaway servant’s child. It had taken me two weeks of popping in and out of time to arrange, but I knew my trouble would pay off.
“What do I take from this?” he asked. I guessed he was talking about the bills that came in denominations he’d likely never seen before.
“That forgiveness beats anger,” I said. “Never pretend to be someone else.” I jumped away before he could respond, before he even had a chance to look up and see I had disappeared.
***
I saw her from a block away, her hair cut short, spiky on top. Jeannine spotted me and waved, shutting her car door and trotting across the intersection.
“You should be careful, look both ways.”
“Okay, Grandma, I’ll try to remember,” she said, laughing at me. I sat on a chilly metal chair out on the sidewalk. If it was supposed to be a fancy café, it wasn’t. I didn’t give a flip, I was just here to see Jeannine.
I stood up and hugged her and then she told me enough already. I waited for her while she went inside and came back with a fancy espresso thing.
“Since when did you start drinking lattes?”
The Unintentional Time Traveler (Time Guardians Book 1) Page 26