Bat caught up with Garison just as Garison caught up with the ladies, who had stopped to turn and see what the commotion was behind them. Heather held out a hand to keep Garrison from careening into her and asked, "What's wrong, Garison? You look like you've seen a ghost."
Garison thought about leading her to somewhere private, but realized no one else could have any idea what he was talking about, anyway. Still, he leaned close as he blurted out, "Bat remembers meeting me back when I was a coach at Sul Ross and he was trying out for a baseball scholarship. Back when I was going by the name Burt Cottage."
"Well, of course he'd reme—" her hands shot to her mouth and she dropped the packages she was carrying, which Garison deftly caught without even thinking about the action. "Oh my gosh! How can he remember that?"
"Will you two stop saying that!" Bat demanded.
"What's going on? What is everyone talking about?" Jody finally asked.
Bat Garrett shrugged with the usual sort of disgust he displayed when talking about Garison Fitch and told his wife, "I have no idea. Remember me telling you about the time I ran into Garison back in college? Apparently he was in disguise or something and I wasn't supposed to remember it."
"I wasn't in disguise," Garison finally replied. "That wasn't even me."
"But you introduced yourself."
Garison was about to say something, but Heather stayed him and said, "I think we need to tell him the truth. It's the only possible way to figure out what he knows and how he knows it."
"Heather," Bat asked, a little hurt, "What do you mean 'what he knows and how he knows it'? This is something you've both been hiding from me—us?"
Heather took Bat by the arm and began to lead him toward a nearby restaurant that was a favorite of both the Garretts and the Fitchs. "Come on, Bat. There's something we have to tell you."
Jody looked angrily at Garison, who shrugged, then the pair began to follow their spouses.
"So what is it you're going to tell me?"
"First," Heather began, "I want to assure you that we never meant to hide anything from you about this, Bat. It's just that, well, we never knew about it until this spring."
Looking at Garison, Bat asked, "You didn't know until this past spring that you had met me ten years ago? You want to explain that?"
"Not really," Garison grumbled, only to get an elbow in the ribs from Heather. He took a deep breath, then a sip of his drink, then said, "I'm going to tell you a story that's going to sound ludicrous but stick with me because it explains what happened to you ten years ago. Please, save your questions until the end." He looked at Heather and said, "You want to tell it or me? You're the better story teller."
Heather shrugged, "But it's about you—sort of. Why don't you tell it?"
"One of you," Jody injected, "Tell it." The smallest person in the quartet, Jody had a way of speaking that made people listen—and obey.
Heather and Garison shared a look, an odd number of raised eyebrows, then finally Heather shrugged and said, "Here goes. There was another Garison Fitch. He was born the same day as Garison, to almost the same parents, in almost the same town . . . "
"Then last spring I stopped working on the machine all of a sudden one morning without knowing why I had stopped working on the machine. I was just sitting there with a screw driver in my hand and I had no idea why I was taking it all apart."
"Until the manuscript arrived later that day," Heather interrupted.
"What manuscript?" a skeptical Jody asked. She and Bat had sat in dubious silence so far, both with interest (and frequently rolled eyes), as Heather and Garison had tag-teamed on the telling of the story.
Garison smiled, excited in the telling of the story—as he had been ever since he and Heather had really gotten rolling. While neither realized it at the time, they were excited partly because this was their first chance to tell the story to anyone and had been about to burst with it for three months. "The other Garison had written everything down—journal entries, narrative, you name it—"
"I helped write it, remember," Heather interjected. "The other me, anyway."
Garison nodded, then continued, "He had written the whole thing down, with Sarah and Heather's help, boxed it up, sealed the box in oil cloth, then left the whole thing with the Anglican church there in Mount Vernon with the instructions that they would ship it to me on March 13, 2005, so that it would get here on the afternoon of the 15!"
Finally speaking, Bat asked, "And that's how you know this whole story? Because of some manuscript someone wrote, claiming it was true?" It was obvious he didn't put a lot of (if any) credence in the story.
"We can show it to you," Heather quickly replied. "We kept it and the box and everything. In fact, they're in a safety deposit box right here in town. We could go there from here."
Bat looked at Jody and asked, "What do you think?"
Jody thought a moment before replying, "I share your skepticism. Still, when have we ever known Heather—or Garison, for that matter—to lie to us?"
Bat leaned forward on his elbows and, looking more at Garison than Heather, said, "Ruling out some sort of shared delusion, we're left with two possibilities: either you're telling the truth, or you've made up a really impressive lie to cover up something that happened a decade ago in Alpine, Texas. If you were me, which one would you be inclined to believe?"
Garison nodded in acquiescence, then offered, "Call Sul Ross. Talk to that baseball coach. See if I—or someone named Burt Cottage—was ever on staff there. Call the vicar in Mount Vernon like I did and ask about the manuscript. They'll swear they've been holding that manuscript for over two hundred years."
Before Bat could say anything, Heather offered, "Read the manuscript. Both of you. We'll go over to the bank right now and pick it up and you two can read it."
"You're really serious about this?" Bat asked, dubiously.
Jody injected, "I'd love to read it." Glancing at Bat, she shrugged, "What have we got to lose?"
"Other than the amount of time it takes to read the manuscript?" Bat shrugged, "Oh, why not? I haven't read any good science fiction in a while."
"I made some calls," Bat said softly as he walked into the bedroom he and Jody were sharing at the Fitch house in La Plata Canyon. Bat Garrett was a thirty year old private investigator who had grown up in Abilene, Texas, and now made his living in Flagstaff, Arizona, taking a few cases and running an almost successful baseball card and stamp store on the side. Neither occupation was necessary to his financial well-being because he had made an investment in the ground floor of Darston Industries—a computer hardware, and now software, giant that had survived the instability of the turn of the century—that kept him sufficiently in funds. He was almost as tall as Garison's six-foot two and had sandy blonde hair that he wore a little long. A natural athlete, he had played college baseball and almost turned pro before slipping into the world of private investigation in Dallas. He had once been employed as an operative for a government body known as "The Home," but it was unclear—even to Bat—whether he were still on the roll there. He hated to ask because it might lead to an answer of "yes" so he never did.
Jody Garrett was a former elementary school speech therapist who, also, was a former employee of "The Home." For her, there was no doubt that her employment was past tense. In her short tenure with the group, she had been shot twice, left for dead once, and pronounced dead on another occasion. Jody was just over five-three, had auburn-brown hair, and when not six months pregnant (as now) had quite a figure. She was sitting—uncomfortable, as usual of late—in the antique rocking chair by the big window with part of the ancient manuscript on her lap and the part she had already read carefully stacked on a night table beside her.
"Hmm?" she asked, looking up. It was obvious she had been enrapt in the manuscript and had hadn't heard him walk in—let alone understood the statement.
"I talked to Sul Ross University. They've never had anyone on staff named Burt Cottage. Even talked to the
baseball coach. He remembered my name as a prospect once upon a time but said the only Burt Cottage he'd ever heard of was the cartoon character. According to their records, I never even tried out."
Sitting down on the bed, Bat continued, "I talked to the vicar at that Anglican church in Alexandria. Told the story just as Heather and Garison told it to us. Over two hundred years ago a well-known man in the town of Mount Vernon walked into the church with a package and asked them to deliver it in the year 2005. Gave them the correct address and everything. Garison wasn't kidding. The man even told them to use UPS."
"How could that be?"
Pointing at the manuscript, Bat said, "I was hoping you could tell me. You're the speed reader in the family."
Jody looked down at the manuscript, then back up at Bat and said, "So far it just corroborates what they said. I mean, what they told us at lunch is pretty much just what this says. This just has it in much more detail—and more of a novel format."
"The thing is," Bat pointed out, "If it were just a novel, it begs the question of how someone wrote it two hundred years ago. Could someone really write a science fiction story about the future and be as accurate as they say this is?"
"It would be amazing. I mean, whoever wrote it knew exactly what Garison and Heather would look like and that they'd live in a log home in a place no one back then even knew existed. And there're other details about cars and planes and wars that someone back then couldn't have known," Jody nodded. She handed Bat the stack of papers from the table and said, "Better get started."
Bat took the papers and said, "Right. This is specific, though, huh? Not like that nonsense Nostradamus wrote that people claim speaks of the future?"
"Extremely accurate and explicit."
“I love it when you talk like that,” he quipped. Settling back against the pillows, he began to read.
It was the next day and Garison, Heather and Jody were sitting in the living room of the Fitch house when Bat came downstairs rubbing his eyes. Trying to avoid the subject that was on everyone's mind until Bat could be there to talk about it, they had been talking about the impending births both families were facing but not with the usual amount of enthusiasm. While Jody had been lamenting the loss of her figure, at only three months along Heather had been trying to convince them that she was, indeed, showing. Garison believed he could see a slight pudge in Heather's stomach if he looked at her from the right angle, but Jody could only see Heather's slimness and, in the spirit of best friends, told her she hated her for it.
"Well?" all three people in the living room asked at once.
Bat shrugged and said, "It's a real good story." Sitting down on the couch next to Jody, he threw a pillow at Garison.
"What was that for?" Garison asked as he caught the pillow.
"According to that manuscript, I might could have gotten on the team at Sul Ross and maybe even made the minor leagues if it hadn't been for you."
"That wasn't me," Garison replied. "Remember? That Garison did that because he liked you. Does that sound like me?" No one was quite sure whether Garison were jesting or not, but Heather gave him a poke in the ribs for good measure anyway.
"No," Bat replied, "You—or the other Garison, if we're to believe the manuscript—did it because he wanted me to be a private eye so you would get introduced to Heather." He looked at Jody and said, “At least he got that art about the two of us belonging together right.”
"So, do you two believe it or not?" Heather asked quickly, before things could degenerate further.
Bat and Jody exchanged a look and Bat signaled that Jody should speak first. She cleared her throat softly, then looked at Heather and asked, "Do you believe it? You're my best friend—aside from Bat—and if you tell me you believe it, then I will, too."
Without hesitation, Heather replied, "I believe it. We've been to Mount Vernon and seen the cemetery and read the county records and all that. We traced every step in that book—even to finding that farming couple Garison stayed with on his way west. Every bit of the story checks out. They didn't remember him, by the way. The farmers, I mean." She reached out and squeezed Jody's hand in thanks.
Bat pointed out, "Except you being pregnant on March 15th."
Heather shrugged and said, "That part didn't work out the same, but who knows why? Garison and I never really talked about having kids until that manuscript showed up. Not seriously, anyway. Then it got me to thinking about it, and Garison started thinking about it, then we heard ya'll were expecting and, well, it seemed like a good idea."
"I really hate to think I had anything to do with you two producing a child," Bat lamented, to receive a poke in his ribs from his wife. Pointing to Garison, Bat said, “I may start sitting next to him just because I know he won’t do that!”
“As much as I ate to say you’ve got a good idea, Bat—“ Garison managed to say before getting another poke from Heather.
Heather looked at Jody and said, "I'm glad you believe us."
Bat told her, "I never said I didn't believe you. But I ask the same question as before: would you believe me if I told this story?" He shot a quick glance at Garison and instructed, "No comments from the peanut gallery."
Heather looked imploringly at Bat and said, "I knew it was true the moment I read what it said—um—what it said about me and my uncle. The only two people in the whole world who could know about that are me and my uncle. I've never mentioned it to a soul and I know he wouldn't, either. He's got too much to lose. It’s not even in my diary."
Bat hesitated for a moment, then said, "I'll grant you that the whole thing's fantastic. I mean, there's a lot in that book that someone from two hundred years ago just couldn't know. Or, even if it were just some incredibly clever forgery and the vicar was paid off, how could they have found out about some of that stuff—like you and your uncle?" he added uncomfortably. "Plus, I have my own memories of that day back in Alpine and, unless you've bribed all those people down there—and that vicar—there's something to this whole story. Maybe just something extremely weird, but something."
"So tell me," Garison asked, "What's holding you back from believing?"
"You mean other than the basic concept of time travel?" Bat quipped. As he seemed to be the only person laughing, he said, "I just can't get past the idea that the whole thing is a hoax. Especially since part of it's obviously plagiarized."
Everyone looked at him oddly as Jody asked what the rest were thinking, "Plagiarized?"
Bat nodded. "Yeah. You know, stolen." At everyone's puzzled expressions, Bat explained, "That whole part about the Republic of Texas? That was stolen. Maybe not plagiarized word for word or anything like that, but definitely stolen. It rang a bell when the manuscript first mentioned it, but then when it said that about Abraham Lincoln coming to Texas and being the president and dying of old age. That's definitely stolen."
Garison leaned forward and asked, "Stolen? From what? Where?"
Bat looked around and said, "You two must not read science fiction, huh? I know Jody doesn't. Anyway, there was this series of books by a lady author—from down around Austin, I think—about this alternate world where the Republic of Texas had never fallen and Lincoln had been a president there and there was a war with Japan and all that. The only difference was that she had Germany taking over Britain and the Americas instead of Russia. Same story, though. This whole manuscript seems like it took another character and put them into those stories—kind of like those history rewritten books Newt Gingrich wrote. You know, where he rewrote history—how things might've been if one event had gone another way?"
"You're serious?" Garison asked. "You're not making this up just to get at me?"
"No. What was that lady's name? They used to call her 'the Agatha Christie of science fiction'." Bat closed his eyes. "I remember we read her stuff in high school back in Abilene. Surprised you didn't have to, Heather. It was part of Texas history month for every kid in the Abilene school system. Just another reminder of how much better o
ff Texas would have been if it hadn’t joined the Union." After a moment he snapped his fingers and said, "Bronwyn Kerrigan. That was her name. We all had to read this one book called 'Lost Time', but she wrote several other books all set in the same alternate world. I read most of them—maybe all of them. Wrote some other good stuff, too, later on, that dealt with different themes. I think she still writes but I don't read any science fiction anymore. Every time I see her stuff in the store or library, though, I think about going back and rereading those books. They were fun."
Garison asked excitedly, "You're saying she still writes?"
"Maybe. I don't remember hearing about her dying or anything. Seems like it would have made the news—her being as popular as she is—at least in Texas. I think in sci-fi circles she's still really popular."
Garison looked at Heather and said, "If this lady's still alive, I've got to talk to her!"
Bat shrugged, "Then I'd say the best place to start would be with that book store I saw in town. Is there a library here, too?"
"A good one," Heather nodded. "Olivia Thompson—from the book—runs it."
"I say we start there, then," Bat said as he stood up. At everyone's questioning looks, he said, "You know me. I love a good mystery."
Chapter Eighteen
"Here ya go," Bat said as he tossed a brand new copy of "Lost Time" to a surprised Garison.
Garison caught the paperback book—with it's picture of the Texas flag melting into the Texas capitol on the cover—with ease and opened it to the little "About the Author" section in the back. Heather picked up a copy of the book, mumbling, "You were telling the truth."
"Of course I was." Bat gestured at the science fiction section of the small store and said, "Look, how many books do you see here that they have more than one copy of?”
The Legend of Garison Fitch (Book 3): Lost Time Page 27