Bronwyn nodded and said, “I wish now I had asked the right questions. You know, I read his books now and there is just so much in them—both and the fiction and the non-fiction. I wish I could ask him about things I’ve read.”
“Well, you know, I used to think that when I read your books. Now I’m here and,” he laughed, “I can’t remember the questions.”
Under a beautiful orange sky, Garison and Bat finished off the last of the brisket while Jason took a nap in his chaise lounge and the ladies discussed babies, having babies, and having grandbabies. It was a quiet evening with the only sounds outside that of the ladies conversation being the chirp of the crickets, the distant sounds of the highway, and the bug zapper.
Suddenly, Bat surprised everyone (and woke up Jason), when he practically exclaimed, "I figured it out!"
Chapter Twenty
"Hmmm?" Garison mumbled through a mouth full of cornbread, already annoyed even though he didn't know what Bat was talking about.
"I figured out how Jason and Bronwyn could have gone to the future and come back to a changed past. It's so simple!" As he now had the undivided attention of everyone in the Kerrigan's backyard, he smiled and said, "Time is temporal!"
"Oh, that's brilliant," Garison said in as sarcastic a tone as he could manage, then quickly made sure he was not within Heather's striking range.
Bat looked from one person to the next and was met with stares of either confusion or outright disdain. Except for Bronwyn. She seemed to be looking at him encouragingly. It was all he needed.
He jumped to his feet and said excitedly as he paced the grass, "Time is temporal. Don't you get it? Even time itself is bound by time." He looked at Garison and asked, "How long have we been here?"
"Sitting in these spots or in Florence?"
"Exactly!" Bat smiled ecstatically. "See, we can't get away from time. We don't even know how to think in terms of no time. What is it we've been saying about Bronwyn and Jason and the other Garison? We keep saying they traveled through time. But they didn't."
Jason objected, "Now, I know—"
"Wait! Hear me out." Bat suddenly sat down on one of the edge of one of the lawn chairs, but it was obvious he was extremely antsy. "Remember what's always been said about Eddie? It removes height, width and depth in favor of pure movement giving the appearance of instantaneous travel. I'm submitting that that's exactly right. It's only the APPEARANCE of instantaneous travel. If we could somehow time it, it would take up time. Even one-one-millionth of a second is still time, right? What you were really removing were the constraints of gravity and wind and all that—almost like traveling through outer space, where the least little propulsion can shoot you across the heavens like a comet."
He jumped to his feet again and started walking across the yard, saying, "See, I'm moving through time. Through it. Even when Jason and Bronwyn take Eddie for one of their long trips, they are moving through time. Quicker than the human mind can comprehend, but through time nonetheless."
He came back and sat down. "But think about the one thing that Garison's first two trips through time and the Kerrigan's trips have in common."
He looked around and everyone sat silent, assuming it was a rhetorical question. Finally, Jody offered hesitantly, "More power?"
"Yes! Now, I don't claim to be a scientist so I can't tell you how this happened, but I think I can tell you what happened. The extra power accelerated the process until the fifth dimension was removed. Time was removed. What happens when you take away time?" He looked around with a smile and no one had the nerve to answer—even if any of them had had an answer. "Nothing!" he exploded. "I mean, something may happen, but we can't know it.
"Time is temporal," he said again. "And so are we. It's not just that we can't think about an absence of time, we cannot exist without time. Every fiber of our being is tied to the temporal world." He suddenly stopped and asked Garison, "How come we can't see God?"
Garison hesitated for a moment, then replied, "Because to see him would kill us?"
"Right! You said yourself that God set up specific scientific laws that he obeys himself, right? Well, think about it: God is outside time. He can see into time, he can interact in time and within time. But it's a one-way street right now. John said that 'we shall see him for we shall be like he is.'" Bat said it as if it ought to explain everything he was saying, but the looks on his audience's faces showed him they were about a mile behind him—if they were even on the same road.
"'We shall not all sleep but we shall all be changed!'" he said, by way of explanation.
Finally, Jody said, "We have no idea what you mean, Bat."
"On that great day when we finally depart this mortal coil, what's going to be so different—besides no more war or sin or hate—is that we won't be bound by time any more.'
Bronwyn said, "I understand—and believe—that, but what does it have to do with us?"
"I'm saying," Bat said, turned toward her, "That you and Jason—and the other Garison—didn't travel through time. I'm saying you left time. And it didn't register on your mind or your body because it couldn't. It was, literally, no time at all." He put his hands to his head for a moment, as if he were having an aneurysm, then looked up and said, "We are so tied to time and place that I can't accurately say what I'm thinking, but here goes. Even though you made your trip in 1947 and Garison made his trip in 2005, when you left this temporal plane, you were in the same place. 'Place' isn't a good word, but do you see what I mean? It's like if your mind could have seen what you were doing, you would have seen Garison. You would have seen him going backwards as you went forwards. Even that's not right because there's no forward and backwards."
"I've got it!" Bronwyn suddenly declared. "I think he's right!"
"I don't even think he's coherent," Garison said, though without his usual conviction.
Bat pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and borrowed the pen from Jason’s pocket. He drew a line on the paper and said, “This is the time line, OK? Here’s 1739, and here’s 1947, and here’s today. I’m saying that, when Garison and the Kerrigans made their trips, they were . . . here,” he held the pen about six inches above the paper. “But see, we are bound to the paper. Our minds cannot conceive of anything that’s not on the paper. So when they left the paper—call it sensory overload, but maybe it was more like sensory underload. There was nothing in that . . . sphere which their minds could latch onto. Absolutely nothing. If there are colors or smells or anything there, they are not things which our minds understand at any level.”
"But it still doesn't explain the other Garison’s memory or your memory," Bronwyn pointed out.
"Not exactly, now. But maybe it was just a gift from God."
Garison objected, "I hate to say this, but isn't that the simplistic answer? I mean, I would like to believe that, too, but . . . well . . . "
"The other Garison’s and my memory were saved by God for this moment—for this day."
"Why?" Garison asked. "Why this day? Why you?"
Bat sat down and began to fiddle with the grass at his feet. After a moment, he looked up with a smile and said, "San Augustine. Must be a trick keeping it alive in this climate." At a nod from Bronwyn, he said, "If Garison had never changed the world, these two people would have returned to the world they left. But that's not the way it happened. The world got changed through no fault of theirs. So all I'm saying is that God sent Garison back in time with his memory in tact so he could write it all down and tell you and Heather what had happened. God let me keep my memory of that day in Sul Ross so that two days ago I could tell you about Bronwyn Kerrigan's book and today we could all sit here and sort all this out.
"The manuscript you received wasn't just so you'd know why you stopped with your experiment—though that's probably why the other Garison thought he was sending it. The manuscript was written and sent so two people who experienced something man is not ready to experience could know what had happened to them."
; Bronwyn added, "Everyone who disappeared when Garison changed time had no idea what had happened to them. In March of 2005, they died, for all intents and purposes. The Apostle Paul said that to die is gain. So maybe the manuscript is God's way of letting Garison apologize for the fact that we didn't die like everyone else."
"You don't regret living, do you?" Heather asked.
"Not now. But there were times when I wondered why a whole world disappeared and I somehow was saved. Now I know."
Jason chuckled and said, "Then maybe you can explain it to me because the last half hour just went completely over my head."
Chapter Twenty-One
“So, do you believe it all?” Jody asked.
“Do you?” Bat replied.
They were watching the sun set over central Texas, a squadron of helicopters heading south out of Fort Hood looking like large dragon flies against the orange glow. Jody thought a while, irritated that he had turned it on her, but finally answered, “I don’t know. Really, I’m the least connected of everyone here. Garison and Heather have the machine and the manuscript, the Kerrigans have their memories and their machine, and you have your memories. All I’ve got is the word of—well, of people I trust.”
“Didn’t think you’d ever have to trust someone on a story like this, did you?” He loved the way her hair looked in light like this. She always claimed to disbelieve him, but he had tried to convince her that he really did think she was prettier than Heather. But it wasn’t just pretty, he thought to himself. Jody was perfect. Perfect for him, anyway. It wasn’t often that a guy got to marry the woman of his dreams and he thanked God daily that he was one of those few.
“No,” she finally answered, so late that even he had trouble remembering the question.
“Well, it seems to me,” he said, “That for me to believe the story I should be able to remember both memories, you know? I remember meeting Garison that day at Sul Ross. If that’s the alternate memory—or even a false one—how come I don’t remember the alternative—or correct memory? I know I didn’t go to Sul Ross, but the only reason I can remember is because I met Garison and he told me I didn't have a shot at the third baseman’s job and I knew I couldn’t play shortstop well enough to beat out that other guy.”
“Are you really upset that he lied to you?”
Bat chuckled wryly and replied, “Not really. The truth is, I was probably only good enough to barely beat out the guy. A shot at minor league ball was probably a really long shot. And now . . . I think that if I had gone to Sul Ross I probably wouldn’t have met you. Wouldn’t have Junior on the way there,” he added, putting his hand on her abdomen.
She held his hand there, thinking that she liked it when he touched her there. She liked that he was the father of her baby. And despite the breakups early in their dating lives, she had somehow always known that he would be the father of her children and she liked the thought. “Heather and Garison wouldn’t be together, either, most likely.”
“I don’t care about them,” he responded with a chuckle. At a nudge from her, he told her, “I do, sort of. But you know: they might have met anyway. She was working with his uncle at that law firm, after all. So what Garison really did by keeping me out of baseball was keep us together.”
“So do you believe it?”
“I don’t know. I think I believed more of it than ever before when I saw that machine do it’s disappearing act this afternoon. And, like I said, I have never known Heather or Garison to lie to me—unless you count the baseball thing but if that’s true it was a different Garison.”
“What about the Kerrigans?”
“They don’t seem like liars. And I saw that picture of the two Bronwyns. Looked like someone had taken a picture of Bronwyn by a mirror. Call me Thomas, but I think I’ve got to see the scar in the hands and touch the one in the side before I’ll believe.”
“So you really want to go through with a travel by Eddie to Ruidosa tomorrow?”
“Only if you’re going with me,” he replied quickly. Then, he added, “But yeah, I do want to go.”
“I guess I do, too.”
“Scared?”
“Not of what you think.”
“What do you mean?” he asked, taking her hand.
“I guess part of me’s scared that if we really can make the jump tomorrow to Ruidosa, then maybe all the rest of this is true, too. For all our talk about it, well, suddenly I’ll be an actual insider and I don’t know if I’m prepared for that.”
“We don’t have to do it, Jody. We can just wait for Heather and Garison to come back.”
“No. I want to do it.” Forcing what was supposed to be a light-hearted smile, she told him, “It can’t be worse than being shot—twice.”
He winced at the memory. It had been more than five years, but he could still see her laying there in the snow, himself being held helplessly as an assassin with a high-powered rifled fired into her. “I’m sorry,” she quickly apologized. “I always forget that that memory’s harder on you than me. I don’t remember it, after all. All I remember is waking up in the hospital.”
She patted her tummy and chuckled, “You know, the craziest thing to me about getting pregnant is that I was volunteering to go to the hospital. Granted, I was going to have nine months to get used to the idea.”
He stood up and, offering his hand, said, “We ought to be heading for bed. Got a long trip ahead of us tomorrow.”
“That’s supposed to be instantaneous.”
“Still,” he chuckled, then held her hand as they walked into the silent house. The Kerrigan’s were already in bed and the Fitchs were in their room.
Jason Kerrigan appeared with Eddie as if from no where. He held out a pine cone to Heather and said, “From my son’s back yard in Ruidosa, New Mexico.”
Heather took the pine cone, then passed it to Garison.
“And there’s no disorientation?” Bat asked.
“Not a bit. There sometimes is the first time you do it, but I honestly think that’s all mental. I’m sure the first time people rode an elevator they were a little disoriented to find themselves on a floor they hadn’t started out on.”
“And you’re sure it can take all of us?” Jody asked, to assure herself even though this topic had been covered before.
“We’ve taken more people than this at one time when we were getting together for Christmas,” Bronwyn told her.
“So why doesn’t it take the whole building with it?” Garison asked as he took hold of the strap Jason was offering him. “Why does the effect stop at the end of these tethers?”
“Rubber soles,” Jason replied. “As crazy as it sounds, rubber somehow stops the effect. If you and I were to wear a rubber glove on one hand, with me holding onto Eddie with one hand and you with the other, gloved hand, it would take me and not you. Rubber has a grounding effect just as it does with electricity. That’s why I told you all to wear tennis shoes.”
“Is everyone ready?” Bronwyn queried. With a smile, she said, “We’ll be in Ruidosa, in about, well, instantly after we leave.”
Everyone took hold of the tethers, which were in turn connected to the cart (with its rubber wheels). After all saying they were ready, some in stronger voices than others, Bronwyn began the countdown. “Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Go.”
“Oh wow!” Jody was the first to exclaim. She was only a millisecond ahead of Garison and Heather in expressing their excitement and amazement. Only Bat remained strangely (and uncharacteristically) silent.
Jody, loosening her tight grip on the tether, turned to her husband and was about to ask him what he thought when she noticed his appearance. She gasped and her hand shot out to catch him for he looked like he might faint. But that wasn’t why she gasped.
His hair was long, hanging down on his shoulders. His shirt was worn and of some odd, coarsely woven, material. His pants looked to be of buckskin and he wore shoes that looked like moccasins. Not store-bought moccasins, but rough, hand-made shoes.
Bat looked at Jody with eyes that were at first filled with more terror than she had ever seen in anyone’s eyes. Then, as if finally recognizing her, he mumbled with a disbelieving excitement, “Jody?” Blinking, a smile came over his face and he asked again, this time his voice back to full strength, “Jody?” As he was pulling her into his arms and beginning to cry, he looked around for the first time and asked in awe, “Heather? Garison?” He swallowed hard and continued, still filled with what seemed like giddy awe, “The Kerrigans?”
Looking down at Jody’s expanded tummy, pressed against his own thin frame, he asked excitedly, “You’re still pregnant?”
“Still—?” Jody tried to ask, though she wasn’t sure where to begin.
“It’s that day, isn’t it?” He looked around, beyond the people he had traveled with, and saw the Kerrigan’s son and daughter-in-law, and their garage. He could see the pine trees beyond the window and asked, “This is Ruidosa, isn’t it? This is the day we were all going to Ruidosa, isn’t it? Praise God,” he whispered with heartfelt thanks. Still holding onto Jody like a man holding onto a dock piling in strange and stormy seas, he said, “I made it back. I really made it back. Thank you, Jesus. I made it back. I really made it back.”
“What?” several voices asked at once.
“Back from where?” Jody asked, realizing she was holding him up—and that she shortly wouldn’t be able to for he was heavy and going limp.
Regaining a little of his strength and standing on his own, Bat pulled her even closer and kissed her like he had never kissed her before, and to caress her back and her expanding belly. As she started to object, since they were in front of six other people—including two strangers—he pulled away far enough to see her face and looked at her like he hadn’t seen her in a very long time. Like he had looked at her when he had thought her dead for over a year, it occurred to her. With that look, she was holding as tightly to him as he was to her, even though she didn’t exactly know why.
The Legend of Garison Fitch (Book 3): Lost Time Page 31