"Before we what?"
"I don't know." He pulled back on the stick and banked toward the north.
"Where are we going?"
"To the place I know best." As he leveled off he proclaimed, "Haskell, here we come."
Chapter Twelve
"There, that looks good," Kerrigan said, pointing to a field at one o'clock. He banked the plane slightly and lined up for a landing.
"Don't you think you should make a pass over it first? See what it looks like up close?" Bronwyn asked nervously.
"I don't want to draw any more attention to us than is absolutely necessary. That old barn looks like I remember it looking so I'm hoping this field is still abandoned. If we can put down quickly, then taxi into that barn, we can keep the plane out of sight until we find a more permanent place to hide it—and fuel enough to get it there. We're almost on fumes now."
Once on the ground, Jason opened the barn doors—was glad to find that it looked as abandoned as he remembered it—and Bronwyn taxied the Comal 42 inside. Once she had the motor off and was standing up to get out of the cockpit, she asked, "How did you know this old place would be abandoned?"
"I remembered the story from when I was little. This is the old Abewell place. Man named Abewell died in a hunting accident and left this farm. But nobody could claim it or buy it or anything because he had a son who had run off years before. The thing was in the courts for years because Abewell wasn't behind on his taxes—and had enough money in his bank account to keep them up to date for years—and no one knew where the son was so the land couldn't be sold. Unless proof could be found that the son was dead—or had sold the property—the place was going to stay empty forever."
"That's weird," Bronwyn commented as Kerrigan helped her off the wing.
"Happens all the time."
"No. I mean, it's weird that this barn would be empty and the land would be empty but Kirby Research Facility would be gone. If the world's upside down enough to get rid of a whole military base, why doesn't this barn belong to someone else?"
"I was thinking about that," Kerrigan said as he opened the smaller door within the barn door and they walked out into the bright sunshine. "What if we came back but we didn't come back to 1947? What if this is 1957 and the war's over and they turned Kirby Military Base into a lake as part of some peace program? I remember reading once about some place where they planted a victory garden on the site of a really bloody battle."
"If that's true, then we better be careful. If we've been gone for ten years or so—and people would probably assume we had been dead that whole time—and we suddenly come walking up looking like we did when we left—"
Jason nodded, "Might make people jump, huh?"
"So I guess the first thing we need to do is find out when we are, since it seems like we know where we are."
"Right." He thought a moment, then said, "I say we slip into town after dark and see if we can scare up some clothes. We can't keep running around in these flight suits, after all. Then maybe we can find a newspaper or something that'll give us the date."
Bronwyn suddenly put her hand on his arm and asked, "What if it we find out that it is ten years later but that the Japanese won the war? We could be fugitives. Maybe that's why the military base isn't there. Maybe the Japs tore it down."
"Or the Germans," Jason nodded. "That's just one more reason to be real careful. So let's just lay low here until nightfall and pray no one saw us land the airplane out here."
"This seems like quiet countryside. Even if no one saw us, someone might have heard the plane and come investigating."
"Hiding out in a barn with a pretty girl," he smiled. "I used to dream about this kind of thing."
She returned the smile but said, "Don't try anything mister. I've still got my sidearm handy."
They were still exhausted—as much from the tension as anything—so they had quickly fallen asleep on the old, comfortable hay in the loft. As dusk was falling, Kerrigan looked at his watch and said, "Seems like it's still early summer. By my watch, the sun's setting at just the right time." He asked her, "Does that tell us anything important?"
"Not that I can think of. Maybe just that we're in the right millennium." She stood up and brushed the hay off her flightsuit. "Ready to head into town?"
"Yeah. We're closer to Paint Creek—by a little—but there's not much there. We'd be less likely to be spotted in Haskell."
He had landed the airplane a little less than halfway between Haskell and Paint Creek, so it was fully dark by the time they got into town. As they slipped into the town—which appeared to have already rolled up the sidewalks—Bronwyn asked, "Where do you propose we get these clothes?"
"We'll keep an eye out and see if anyone left their laundry on the line. We can always bring them back after we've made some money and bought clothes of our own. As a last resort, we can try to break into one of the stores downtown, but there's a lot of risk in that plan. Hassens would be our best bet for clothes, but Old Man Hassen used to sleep over the top of the store some nights. Pick the wrong night and he'd hear us for sure."
"And as if being arrested weren't bad enough, we might be caught wearing uniforms of a deposed government and that would be really hard to explain."
"Right. If we even got a chance to explain. Might just shoot first and ask questions later, as they used to say."
They found a house over on G Street where clothes had been left out on the line. Thankfully no dogs were in the yard, so Garison hopped the fence and fetched a dress, a man's shirt, and some dungarees. When he brought them back to Bronwyn, she looked at the dress in the faint moon light and asked, "How big is this lady?"
"Beggars can't be choosers." He started to walk off to find a place to change into the new threads.
"We're not even beggars, we're thieves," Bronwyn pointed out. "Wait a minute. I'm going to need shoes. If I show up in public wearing a dress and flight boots, I'm going to attract more attention than if I showed up in this flight suit."
He started to object, but then nodded that she was right. He suddenly snapped his fingers and said, "Follow me."
He lead her a couple streets over to where, in an alley, they came to a beat-up old storage shed. He opened the door to the shed as quietly as possible, then reached in and fished out a pair of gardening shoes. He proudly handed them to Bronwyn.
"How did you—?" was all she could get out.
"I used to mow this lady's yard. Name's Pritchart. While I would mow she would come out here and put on these old shoes and work with her flowers."
"So I guess she still lives here." He nodded and motioned for her to follow him, so she set off after him.
"We can't be too many years later, then. She was in her late seventies when I knew her ten years ago." He led her into the old creek bottom and over to the F street bridge. Motioning under the bridge, he asked, "You want to go first or shall I?"
"Go where?" she asked suspiciously.
"This is the only place I can think of where we can change clothes without being seen. Tell you what, I'll go first and make sure there aren't any snakes under there."
As he disappeared into the blackness, she called after him, softly but unconvincingly, "If you're trying to scare me, it's not working."
In a couple minutes, he came out and said, "Your turn. Just go in about five steps. There's a concrete ledge in there I don't remember about six steps in that I barked my shin on."
"This isn't going to work, Jason," she called from the darkness.
"What do you mean it's not going to work? Just put the clothes on. I want to go somewhere and find a rope or something I can use for a belt."
"This dress is going to take a whole lot more than a belt."
"It's probably not as bad as you think. Let me see."
She stepped out into the moonlight in a dress that looked like it was either made for someone a lot bigger, or for two people Bronwyn's size. What was probably not a particularly low-cut neck on its owner came almost to Bronwyn's navel
and she had to hold it closed with one hand. The sleeves were so large they made Bronwyn, who was not exactly skinny, look like a stick figure.
Once he had stopped laughing, Jason tried to help her wrap it around herself or do something to it that would make it look less like a tent with a twelve year old girl inside. All efforts were completely unsuccessful. He finally said, "I'm sorry, I don't know what to do."
"Well, if I go anywhere in this I'm going to attract all kinds of attention and someone's going to realize pretty quickly this isn't my dress. We've either got to search some more back yards or break into one of those downtown stores."
"Too bad we don't have those clothes you bought at Thorntons." He looked down and asked, "How do the shoes fit?"
"Fine. Maybe half a size too big, but I can walk in them. But I am not going around town in this. For one thing, if I let go with my left hand I'm going to get arrested for indecent exposure."
"And that's a bad thing?" he asked with a chuckle.
She slapped him on the arm with considerable force then disappeared into the darkness of the bridge and re-emerged a few minutes later in her flight suit again.
"Much better," Bronwyn said as she emerged from behind a garage on the east side of town.
She was dressed in a cotton print dress that was, Kerrigan thought, actually becoming on her. They had found it hanging on a line over on the far east side of town. The only problem had been that it had been the only dress on the line and was sure to be missed. But they had explored most of the town and were running out of options that didn't involve actual burglary.
As she turned around for him, Jason took a long admiring look at Bronwyn standing there in her "new" dress and white canvas shoes. He wasn't sure how the dress would look in the daylight, but in the moonlight it made him want to pull him into his arms and hug her. He had a hard enough time just with that thought and refused to acknowledge that he'd really like to do a little more than hug her.
It occurred to him that he had wanted to do that all day. When he had helped her off the airplane wing, for a brief moment her waist had been in his hands and he had wanted to keep her there. But then, like now in the moonlight, he hadn't because—he told himself—he didn't really feel that way about her.
Sure, she was attractive, and he had meant it when he told her she was the best friend he had, but he didn't feel that way about any woman. He didn't really want to feel that way about any woman. Ever. At least, that's what he kept telling himself. Somewhere in the back of his mind he wondered if he could tell himself that enough times to finally believe it.
"Now, what do we do?"
"First, we stash these flight clothes somewhere. Then, we see if we can find a newspaper. Once we get our bearings, we can decide what we'll be doing next."
He led her to the alley behind the drug store and over to the dumpster. Opening the lid as quietly as he could, he began to rummage around inside. He soon pulled out a newspaper—or most of one. He took it over to a light that shown down over the back door of the Western Auto. She peered over his shoulder as he read, "Haskell Free-Press June 12, 1947."
"That's the day we left," Bronwyn commented unnecessarily. "That newspaper doesn't look ten years old does it?"
"No, it doesn't," he mumbled.
"So if this is today's newspaper—and if we came back at almost the same time as we left—what happened to Kirby?" When he didn't say anything for a while, just continued flipping through the newspaper in the dim light, she finally asked, "So what does the newspaper tell us to do next? Or, what information have we gleaned from it that's going to show us the way out of this mess—or at least through it?"
"I don't know. But something tells me this is a lot more complicated than we ever imagined. I say we find some place to bed down for the night, then in the morning we try to get jobs."
"Jobs? Just how long are you planning on staying here?"
"I think this is going to take a while to sort out. In the meantime, we have to eat and change clothes and—preferably—sleep inside. So let's see if we can get some work in the morning and kind of get the lay of the land for a few days. Could be we're going to need to move to Abilene or somewhere like that to get the whole picture, but we've got to start somewhere. At the very least, I'm going to want to go to Abilene and check out that lake and see if I can figure out what happened to Kirby."
"Whatever you say. So where do you say we bed down? All the way back at the plane?"
"No, we don't want anyone seeing us going out there or coming back. I think we'd be best to stay away from the plane for a few days. That barn looked abandoned and it's best if it stays looking that way. I say we just sleep under a bridge or something."
"Well, I know just the one." She started to walk away but he caught her arm. "What?"
"Just to allay suspicion, I think we ought to pose as, um, husband and wife—to anyone who asks, I mean."
He thought she might object but she just turned and said, "OK," then kept on walking.
Laying there under the bridge, Bronwyn was surprised how quickly she heard his breath even out in sleep. She wasn't anywhere near sleep and didn't think it was because of the nap she'd had that afternoon. At least not entirely.
As thoughts raced through her head, she told herself that what she ought to be thinking about most was the fact that her world was now upside down. A whole military base was gone and—just hours before—she had been centuries in the future.
But that wasn't what she was thinking about.
She was thinking about Jason. She was thinking about posing as his wife and how the idea wasn't the least bit objectionable. She was thinking about her "women first" friends from college who claimed that men and love just got in the way of one's potential and how disappointed they would be with how smitten she was. She was thinking about his cracks about how she looked in the big dress and how—she thought—they stemmed from the fact that he actually found her attractive.
She had known guys that she thought were just absolutely gorgeous. She had swooned at movie stars and upper classmen and—with other girls—talked about muscles or hair or kissable mouths. She had been out with a couple of those Adonis's, even kissed one or two of them.
But, she realized, she wasn't thinking that way about Jason. Yes, she wanted to kiss him. She wanted him to take her in his arms and finally return a kiss with all the passion she had tried to put into that one she had planted on him back at the depot in Marathon. The kind of kiss, she chuckled to herself, that would untie her shoes and take the curl out of her hair.
Those were just ancillary thoughts, though. When she thought about Jason she just—she hated to even think the thought because it seemed like giving specific voice to it might jinx it like a child's birthday wish spoken aloud—she just wanted to spend her whole life with him. She wanted to find out everything about him. And tell him everything about her.
What was perhaps most troubling to her was the military training that kept coming to mind. She was an officer, suddenly downed in a possibly hostile situation. She should be doing exactly what Jason had been doing: taking stock, formulating plans, and trying to return to her base. But all she could think of was that she was with him, and wherever they were, it was just the two of them and she liked that idea in spite of herself.
They awoke at the crack of dawn when some sort of vehicle rumbled across the bridge over their heads. They cached their flight gear in a place where the water had washed under one of the abutments and filled in the space with dirt and rocks and tried to make it look natural. When they were as satisfied as they could be under the circumstances, they came out from under the bridge.
Once they were sure no one had seen them, they climbed up onto the road. Jason started to walk west, away from the center of town, but Bronwyn grabbed his hand and asked, "Wouldn't work be back this way?"
"There used to be a fillin' station out here on the edge of town owned by a man named Jameston. I worked for him some in high school. I was the only one
who ever got along with him. Maybe he'll give me a job again."
"You think it's a good idea to go to someone we know—I mean, who knows you?"
"Everybody in Haskell knows me. I figure we're going to find out in about an hour whether they remember me. As crotchety as he can be, Jameston's still the likeliest person to give me work just out of the blue. Come fall, with my degree, I might could get a job at the high school. If we're still here, of course."
"Maybe we should have gone somewhere else—some other town."
"Well, we're here now. And wherever we had gone, we would still have to get the lay of the land. At least here, I've kind of got a primer course under my belt."
She pulled him to a stop again and, holding out his hand with her own, put something in it. He looked down to see her grandfather's badge. At his questioning look, she told him, "I don't have any pockets." As he took the badge, she stood on her tiptoes and kissed him lightly. Like at the depot, he neither returned the kiss or pushed her away. But maybe, when it was over, he didn't look quite so confused.
The gas station at the edge of town was right where Jason remembered it, but it looked different. Whereas before it had dispensed a brand of gasoline called Blanco, now it had a sign saying "Shell Gas." As they got closer, Jason noticed that little things about it were different. It had thee bays instead of two, and the two pump islands were in a line rather than parallel.
"I have a weird sensation about this," Jason said as they got closer.
They stepped off the sidewalk just as the "Closed" sign was flipped to the "Open" side and a tall, skinny man Jason recognized rolled a rack of oil out the door. "You know him?" Bronwyn whispered.
"Yeah, but that's not Jameston. That's Ernie Pike. Used to be a mechanic but I never knew him to work for Jameston. Thought Jameston was a crook. I remember them getting into a real knock-down drag-out fight in front of the roadhouse on the highway to Munday because Ernie claimed Jameston had gypped him on a fan belt."
The Legend of Garison Fitch (Book 3): Lost Time Page 19