The Legend of Garison Fitch (Book 2): Saving Time

by Samuel Ben White

  "That's true." Lee nodded and thumbed through his files. He started to shake his head, then asked, "Any idea who buried him? If it was a funeral parlor, we might be in luck."

  Garison realized that, based on his earlier story of just stumbling across the grave, there was no way he should know which mortuary buried the body. He hoped Lee wouldn't think of that when he replied, "I think it was Holt & Jameson."

  Lee nodded and smiled, "Then you may be in luck. When they went out of business, the county kept a lot of their old office files. I think the idea was that we could eventually integrate their records into ours and fill in some of the holes."

  "Holes?"

  "You know. Even before the fire things weren't always ship shape around here. This is the Wild West. People didn't always report deaths until well after the event. Sometimes they didn't report them at all. Old miners would die in cabins and what not. Someone would come along later, find and bury the body, but might not see the need to report it. The mortuaries, on the other hand, keep pretty good records, though they're related to business, of course. Someday, maybe we'll find someone bored enough—or desperate enough for work—to integrate those files into ours. For now, they're just shoved over here in a drawer."

  Lee pulled looked in a drawer and asked, "What year you say he died?"

  "1944—buried in '47."

  "Here you go," Lee handed Garison a huge accordion file. "Like I say, these are business records. They're filed by years, not alphabetically. But you're welcome to look through that and see what you can find. Probably a lot more than you need, but not necessarily WHAT you need."

  Garison nodded and sat down at a table with the file. The file (and its contents) was very old and he was thankful he didn't have Heather's allergy to dust. Still, he sneezed a time or two as he hit especially large pockets of dust. Each space in the accordion seemed to have collected more than its natural share.

  The files contained very few details of the deceased, just a name, the date interred, and—of course—the expense to the bereaved (or the county). He noticed that they did charge the county a little bit more than they charged individuals. Garison wondered who was making the profit off that? Garison waded through name after name before finally seeing "Guy Robert Wilson" listed in the ledger.

  Garison sighed heavily and leaned back in the chair. He looked at the ledger again, as if it might have been another hallucination. But, there it was, a recording of Guy Wilson being interred in La Plata Canyon on August 17, 1947. The cost of the interment was listed, as well as a notation that the bill had been paid for with cash.

  Until seeing that little notation, scant though it was, Garison had held out hopes that he and Heather had somehow been duped. He remarked to himself that he almost wished they had somehow gotten involved in a drug operation. The alternative, that what they had witnessed—taken part in, even—was real, sent shivers down Garison's spine. After all, how else could they have witnessed such an event if not through time travel? So who had traveled?

  When she entered the library, octogenarian librarian Olivia Thompson smiled warmly at her. Olivia was a slim black woman who looked years younger than her actual age but was still the unofficial grandmother of most of the town. Having raised nine children of her own, she was the official grandmother of a good portion of the town. Except for four years of college and three more in Montrose, Olivia had lived her entire life in Durango.

  "How are you, Heather?" Olivia asked happily. She looked towards Heather's feet and chided, "Don't tell me you didn't bring my granddaughter Sarah with you! And I just got in practically a whole new shelf of children's books I've been dying to read to her."

  "Sorry," Heather replied sheepishly. "She's with Garison's parents in Denver." Heather had adopted Olivia (and vice versa) almost instantly five years before—as soon as she had moved to Durango, in fact—and Sarah loved the dear old woman as well. In fact, Heather had grown closer to Olivia than she had ever been to either of her real grandmothers. Heather took Olivia's proffered hands and moaned, "I've never been away from her for this long, Olivia. I don't know if I can wait until tomorrow."

  "I had nine children of my own, a husband, and half a dozen nieces and nephews sharing our house at any given time and I couldn't sleep if I knew any one of them wasn't to home. I've got a baby boy who's sixty five this year and runs his own business and I still worry about him." She squeezed Heather's hands tenderly and consoled, "She'll be back before you know it." With an added smile, "And you better bring her by to see me the next time you're in town."

  "Oh, I will," Heather assured.

  Olivia released Heather's hands and asked, "Now, what can I do for you? More books on quilting? We just got two new ones in this week and I've been holding them until you got here to take first crack at them."

  Heather bit her lip with anticipation, then remembered her actual mission. She shook her head and requested, "I'm looking for information on a funeral home I think used to be here in town. The name was Holt & Jameson."

  Olivia thought a moment, then nodded and said, "Yes, I remember that place, though I haven't thought of them in years. Welmsly Holt and Stuart Jameson started it back when I was just a girl. Holt passed away shortly after they started it but Jameson kept the name the same. You know, you just don't think about morticians dying."

  "Do you happen to have any pictures of Stuart Jameson around?"

  Olivia pondered for a moment, then nodded and led Heather over to the section marked "Local Interest". She pulled out a book entitled Post War Durango: The First Twenty Five Years 1948 1973 by Kelsy Harlingen.

  Heather glanced at the title and asked, "'Post War'? Didn't World War II end in 1945?"

  "Yes, but Kelsy Harlingen wasn't born until 1948."

  "So?"

  "So Kelsy was always an odd duck. Took good pictures, though. Very good writer and researcher as well. Won a Pulitzer once, I think."

  "Whatever happened to him?"

  Olivia thought for a moment, then answered, "Last I heard, he took off for Australia to write a book about crocodiles. But that was close to twenty years ago. Wonder if he ever wrote it? Can't remember hearing anything of him in years."

  Olivia shrugged as if to clear her mind of the subject and began flipping through the book. She stopped on a page full of old pictures of the Durango Town Council over the years. She ran her finger over them, saying, "If I remember right, Stuart served on the Town Council for a couple years in the early fifties. Yes, here he is." She pointed at a picture towards the bottom of the page, "He's the tall man on the left end. The tall one with the white hair. You can't really tell it here, but he had the most enormous hands. It seemed to me that the man could shake your hand and touch your elbow at the same time. That's what I remember about him most."

  At a gasp from Heather and a loud gulp, Olivia turned quickly to her young friend and asked, "What is it, Honey? You look like you've seen a ghost."

  "I think I have."

  "Find what you need?" Lee asked when Garison came out of the room.

  "Yeah. Looks like that tombstone we found was for real. Guy Wilson was buried in La Plata Canyon in August of 1947. Funny, I never knew about that tombstone until today. I guess it's been there for fifty years, though."

  "There's people buried all through these mountains we don't know about. No telling how many people were buried in cave ins just between here and Silverton alone. Even if some of the graves were marked, unless it was with granite we'd never know now. Wood don't last long up at the high elevations, you know."

  Garison nodded, though he wasn't really listening. He was thinking about what he had discovered, and it worried him. Had he traveled backward in time, or had the funeral people (and the grave) traveled forward in time? Or, was the answer not even that simple?

  "Thanks. See you later, Lee," Garison called as he headed out the door. His mind was back in the canyon as he went over to the library to pick up Heather.

  "When did he die?" Heather asked. "Stuart
Jameson, I mean?"

  Olivia started to shrug, then said, "This book may say. Let me see." She checked the index, then flipped to another section of the book. She read silently for a moment, then told Heather, "'Stuart Jameson, 1898 to 1959.' I always thought he was older than that when he passed away. I guess it was that white hair. You know, it seemed like his hair lost its color just all of a sudden after his wife died. That must have been in '45. She wasn't all that old, either."

  "What happened to the mortuary?"

  "Let me see now . . . " Olivia mumbled, lightly tapping her front teeth with a fingernail as she thought. She closed her eyes for just a second, then answered, "If I remember right, it was located on Main Street where that new pizza place just opened up. Wouldn't the people eating there be surprised."

  "What about between being a funeral parlor and being a pizza parlor? Was it anything else?"

  "Many things, if I remember. Seems to me Jameson sold out a year or so before he died. He had two daughters and a son, but none of them wanted to go into the business. Moved away, like a lot of our young people. It stayed a mortuary for twenty more years—Simpkins Funeral Home, if I remember right. They moved to Fifth Street—where they are now—and a church met in the old mortuary for a while. I think they tore down the mortuary in the early eighties and it became a parking lot for quite a while. Then the pizza people put in their place.

  "Why all this interest in a forty year old funeral home?"

  Heather shrugged, "We just ran across something about it today and got curious. Garison didn't remember that name from when he was a J.P. and wanted me to check it out."

  "Where is that handsome husband of yours, anyway?"

  "County Records building, I believe. He just dropped me off and went to look something up himself." Before Olivia could pursue it any further, Heather asked, "Could I see that book?"

  Olivia handed it over just as the front door opened. She smiled and called, "There's that handsome fellow now. How are you doing, Garison?"

  "Fine, Olivia. And you?" They exchanged chit chat for a few more minutes before Olivia went off to help another library patron. He asked Heather, "Find anything?"

  "Check out the picture of this man who died in 1959." She held the book out and pointed to Jameson in the town council picture.

  "Geez, that's him, isn't it?"

  Heather nodded and, with a fearful look on her face, asked, "Garison, how did we help a man who's been dead for forty eight years bury a soldier who died sixty-three years ago?"

  "I hope that's a rhetorical question because I have no idea how to answer it."

  Chapter Four

  February 5, 1778

  Among his own people, he had been given the name Sun Chaser. From early childhood, it seemed that he looked beyond. He saw visions, he had ideas no one else had. He had proven himself a great thinker—and a more than capable hunter and warrior.

  When it became evident that The Frog was dying and would not be able to lead the tribe much longer, they called on Sun Chaser. Given only a knife, some winter skins, and a few meager rations, Sun Chaser had been sent into the mountains on a vision quest.

  He had, of course, already been on the vision quest that made him a man. But the tribe believed, and Sun Chaser agreed, that he must make a special journey—one of much prayer and thought—before he could assume the leadership of the tribe. He was, after all, still a young man and not fully proven.

  It had been many moons and many miles away that they had sent him on his sojourn. He had crossed the great mountains in the dead of winter—something unheard of—but had so far survived. When the earliest signs of spring became to show—or maybe even before—he would recross the mountains. He would return to lead his people through the troubling times he somehow knew were ahead.

  Before opening his eyes after the night of dreamless sleep (not a good sign), Sun Chaser said a prayer to the Christian God. Some missionaries, calling themselves Jesuits, had come to the tribe when Sun Chaser was a boy and spoke of the Christian God. They said the Great Spirit and the Christian God were one, that only the perception was different.

  As a young and obviously bright boy, the Jesuits had taught Sun Chaser to read and he had read the book they called the Holy Bible. A book was a foreign thing to the tribe, and some said they were only for the medicine men, the shamans. Sun Chaser had been fascinated by the idea that so much could be told within a book, so he had gladly read the Bible. It's teachings were foreign, but many of them made much sense to the young man. The Jesuits had moved on—rumor said they were killed not long after by the Sioux—but Sun Chaser had remembered what they taught. He also still read in the Bible they had left with his tribe. He had even taught some others to read, but many of his tribe were still fearful of the written word. He had tried to tell them it was no different from the paintings they made on their tepees, but some were not convinced.

  So he prayed to the Christian God, though he saved a few words for the Great Spirit. Perhaps they were one, but if not, he did not want to offend a god. He asked the Christian God for protection and wisdom, and to the Great Spirit he petitioned for a dream. He spoke of this to the Christian God as well. Hadn't He given dreams to Jacob, and Peter, and Paul? Such things made Sun Chaser think there was just the one God. Even so, didn't he himself have two names? One known to everyone, another known only to himself and his closest family? Perhaps the same was true of the Christian God. In which case, He might like being called both names.

  Sun Chaser had been in the mountains for almost two full moons, yet no dream of significance had been given him. Soon, he must return to the tribe and let them know that he must not be the one set aside to lead. If only he could see a vision. But like many things in life, visions seemed least likely to come when one tried to force them.

  Sun Chaser opened his eyes and was surprised to find the sky light. He had expected to awaken before the dawn and was surprised that he had overslept. Could it be that he had had a dream, but could not yet remember it? Or was he so unfit for the task of leadership that he was becoming one of those dolts who sleep all day and accomplish nothing? Either thought was greatly disturbing.

  But when he stood up to gather the few belongings of the night's camp, he realized something was wrong. It was not the sunshine of morning he was seeing, it was the sunshine of evening. Dusk was falling on the land. Had he really slept a whole day away? Never before had he done such a thing. He was momentarily convinced that he must have slept so long because of a vision that had come to him, but he could not remember the vision.

  Then he looked around again at his campsite. When he had gone to sleep, it had been winter in the canyon. Snow had been piled high all around and he had had trouble making for himself a camp that was anything like warm. As on other nights of this trip, he had almost shivered himself to sleep. Now, though, the ground was completely free of snow. Late summer flowers were in bloom, though closing for the night. No where was there any sign of winter. Sun Chaser knew it was not possible for him to have slept THAT long.

  So this is the vision I have sought, he thought to himself. Yet, it didn't feel like a vision. There was no hint of the "unrealness" of a dream or vision. The ground was tangible, the smells were real. It was as if the things around him were not a dream, but reality.

  "Surely," he muttered aloud in his own tongue, "This is a most powerful dream." Even his own voice was different. It sounded normal, not as one's voice usually sounds in a dream. He crossed himself, as the priests had taught him, and stood up.

  He slung his bow across his back, along with a quiver of arrows. In his hand he took his tomahawk and began to slowly walk away from his camp. He made his path an ever widening spiral, not knowing what direction he should take away from the camp. He walked warily and soundlessly, attuned to all the sounds of the forest.

  It sounded just like a forest should at summertime dusk. The day birds were quieting down and the night birds were tuning up. Frogs in a nearby pond were starting to croak
their hellos to the moon, and the faint rustle of night creatures coming out to forage could be heard. Sun Chaser continued to remark to himself that it was the most realistic dream he had ever had. It was wondrous, and he felt as if he should experience every sound, every leaf, every tree. Yet he also felt like he must keep moving. There was something specific for him to see.

  He came suddenly to a clearing where, the day before, there had been nothing. Now, he became convinced he was having a most powerful dream, indeed.

  There, across the clearing, rose some sort of structure. Built of logs, it was somewhat like the great structures he heard the white men built far to the east. He thought they called them houses, but he wasn't sure of the word.

  There were lights on in the house, shining through openings in the walls like glowing eyes. Sun Chaser could see through the openings and into belly of the great structure. As he crept closer, he realized he could see beings moving about within the structure.

  With trembling limbs, he got close to the house and looked through the windows. He could see a dark haired man and a dark haired woman within the building. They were sitting on an odd looking, elongated chair, padded with some sort of woven cloth. They held books and were reading them. Sun Chaser thought that maybe the reason he had been taught to read was in preparation for this moment. Had he never met the Jesuits, he would not have known what the white people were doing.

  They WERE white people, he acknowledged. They were unlike the few Sun Chaser had known, though. Unlike the filthy trappers he had met, these two he was seeing in his vision were clean and oddly dressed. He was not sure how he knew, but it seemed to him that they were not of the coarse variety—like the previous whites he had known. They seemed refined, he thought, though he wasn't sure why.