After a few long minutes of silence, as Garison walked over the yard recreating what had happened, Heather finally asked, "Garison, what's going on?"
He turned and saw her shaking. He came over and put his good arm around her. She tucked herself in close and put her head on his chest. He could feel her trembling, almost in time with his own shaky fear. He finally managed, "I don't know, Heather. I just don't know."
Chapter Eleven
The La Plata Canyon again seemed to settle down for a few more days after the Indian attack. There were no old cars, dead morticians or Ute warriors to be seen. Even Garison's shoulder began to heal, but it was a long slow process that he knew would take weeks. He frequently held Sarah in his lap as he could no longer pick her up on his own. The difficulty made the time spent holding her that much sweeter.
Each day, Garison divided his time between building the wardrobe for Heather and studying the data from his trip through time. It just seemed to him to be too much of a coincidence to think that the current time anomalies were not related to his own trip through time.
The main problem with his study, though (after battling exhaustion the first couple weeks after the injury), was that he still had no idea why he had traveled through time to begin with. His experiment had been one of interdimensional travel, not time travel. He had even made a successful interdimensional foray before the time travel episode. It had only lasted for two minutes, but it had been successful.
So, he asked himself (as he had been asking for the past two years and more), "How did transdimensional travel become time travel?" He had no idea. And no real idea how to begin to find out without experimentation—and experimentation might have who knew what effect on time.
Without that basic framework, it was hard to make headway against the current problem. Why were "windows in time" appearing in his yard? Of course, he reasoned, it might be easier to answer that question if he knew whether the windows were confined to his yard or not. Were such things happening all over the world? Or was it a phenomena unique to La Plata Canyon? Then, though, the question became, "How to find out?" How could he ask people if similar things had been happening to them without them thinking he was some sort of a nut? On the other hand, he chuckled morosely, most people thought that, anyway.
After a couple days of fruitless study, he all but dropped the problem. He just could not see any way to find an answer when he didn't have even half the problem. He was trying to "solve for X", when all he had was "X". No "Y", no "W", no sum, no divisor, nothing. Just "X".
So he went back to concentrating on the wardrobe—what little he could do one handed—and occasionally thought about the problem while working. Mostly, though, he worked on the problem of building a wardrobe without using his right hand. He had pretty successfully relearned how to use all the tools, but it had been almost all with two hands. Not long after that, he reached the conclusion that he was going to have to wait the six weeks until his shoulder was healed before he could work on the wardrobe. He didn't like that thought because it would only give him two weeks to finish the project before Christmas. He could do it, but it was going to mean spending all day in the wood shop, which would definitely arouse Heather's suspicions. Oh well, just because she would know he was working on a present didn't mean she would know what the present was.
Time travel computations and wardrobe building aside, Garison began to spend his time playing with Sarah and reading. He loved both activities immensely, but hated being hampered from physical labor. It made him antsy and some days he felt as if he would burst if he didn't get out and DO something.
By a week after the Indian attack, Heather was afraid Garison was going to drive her and Sarah insane. He was becoming bored with sitting and reading for hours at a time, was tired of television, wasn't especially conversant, and was on the verge of being morose. Heather decided she was going to have to find something for him to do—or send him on a five week vacation to get him out of her hair. She had thought he could tinker in his shop, but he came away from those attempts more frustrated than before when he realized how little he could do left handed. He was a natural southpaw, but most things he did required the assistance of his right hand. Even working on his computer was frustratingly slow when done only with the left hand.
Garison was in his shop and Heather was enjoying the peace—though dreading his return. She knew of people, though, who had perfected doing things with one hand and hoped Garison would soon be one of them. He had always been such a quick learner in other things. She was about to settle down on the couch and enjoy a few minutes of peace (what with Sarah taking her afternoon nap), when she saw someone go by the front window. She was surprised as she hadn't heard a car pull up as, hick that she was becoming, she always looked up at every passing car.
The doorbell rang just as Heather was standing up and she went over to answer it. She opened it and found a woman she didn't recognize standing on the porch. The stranger was one of those women in their forties who think that, if they wear their clothes and hair in the same styles they wore as teen agers, they'll look like teen agers. This woman was decidedly not a teen ager—and the coiffure and clothes made her look even older than she probably was. Both were incredibly out of date.
Heather smiled and greeted, "Hello. Can I help you?" She was trying to be affable, but was painfully aware that the woman was looking her over. The woman was thinly disguising a look of disdain that Heather found most annoying. Who was this woman to cast aspersions on another person's appearance?
The woman regained her composure, sort of, and asked, "Is Melissa home?"
Heather shook her head and replied, "I'm afraid you must have the wrong house."
The woman seemed truly puzzled and looked around as if getting her bearings. She still looked a little confused, as if the house itself somehow disturbed her. She finally asked, with something like relief, "I thought this was the Combs' residence."
Heather nodded in recognition and smiled apologetically, "Oh. Well, we bought this place about four years ago from a man named Combs. I don't know if there was a Melissa living here at any time, but it had to have been a while. No one had lived on this property since the late sixties until we bought it."
"The late sixties?" the woman asked in confusion. Whereas she had looked at Heather earlier as if seeing something distasteful, now she looked at Heather as if seeing someone insane. She looked anxious to get away and Heather thought to herself that she wouldn't be sorry to see the woman go.
Heather eyed the woman with a like stare, then, something caught her eye. Heather looked at the car the woman had parked in their driveway and a sigh escaped her lips. She mumbled, "1960 Ford. Oh, good grief."
The strange woman took the moment of Heather's distraction to force a smile and say, "I better get going. Sorry to have bothered you." She turned around and headed for her car as if in a hurry to get shut of the Fitch place. She had an odd, twittering, manner about her that reminded Heather briefly of a mother hen. An anachronistically dressed mother hen.
Heather watched the woman drive away in awe. She finally shook herself out of the reverie and walked quickly over to the intercom. Pushing the button, she said, "Garison? Come in here for a minute."
"You're sure she was from the past?" Garison asked after Heather completed the tale.
"Sure. It fits. The clothes, the hair, the car. She probably came out here looking for Melissa Combs. I didn't know who she meant at first but then I remembered the old man we bought this place from. No telling how long ago someone by that name lived here."
"We can find out," Garison told her. He picked up the phone book and flipped through it. Finding the number he wanted, he dialed it and asked, "Leonard Combs? This is Garison Fitch. I bought your land, remember? Fine, thanks. How are you doing?" After what was, apparently, a long diatribe in answer to Garison's question, Garison got to ask, "I was just wondering something, Mister Combs. A woman came by here today looking for Melissa Combs and I wondered if
you knew her?"
Garison waited through another lengthy answer then finally thanked the man and hung up. He turned to Heather and related, "Melissa Combs was his wife. They divorced back in 1963 and she lives in Denver now. He has no idea why someone would look out here for his wife since she hasn't lived out here since 1963. Moved out of the Durango area in '76, in fact. I guess you're right about that lady being from the past."
Heather looked up at Garison to see an odd look on his face, as if he were pondering something. Curious, she asked, "What are you thinking?"
"Just something Mister Combs told me. He said the reason his wife left him is because some friend of hers came out here to the house one day in the early sixties and found a young woman staying here."
"So?"
"So, the friend described the woman to Melissa as young, tall, dark haired, beautiful, and dressed in shameless clothes."
Heather looked at him curiously and shrugged, "So?" Her eyes suddenly widened and she cast a look toward the door where she had met the strange woman. She looked back at Garison and asked, "Me? You think that woman saw me the day she came out here? But I'm not dressed shamelessly."
"To a frumpy old bitty in the early nineteen sixties, your clothes might indeed be a bit of a shock."
"I broke up a marriage?"
"Only accidentally. The dangers of time travel," he mumbled, then his voice trailed off as he looked helplessly around the room.
Heather sat back on the couch with a tired look on her face—indeed, on her whole body. She said, "This makes, what? three definite instances of time travel and two probables? If we count the scream and the arrow, I mean."
He nodded, "And we still don't know why."
She sat up and asked intently, "You're sure there's nothing on that video tape of your time trip that would shed any light on this?"
"Positive. I've watched that thing so many times I see it in my sleep."
"Maybe you know it so well you're missing something, though."
He pointed out, "You've seen it almost as many times as I have."
"Yeah, but I stopped paying attention months ago," she quipped, trying to insert a little levity. Grasping at straws, and knowing she was, she mused, "Maybe there's something we both missed. Let's watch it again."
He sighed, but figured it would be worth a try. He pulled the tape out of its drawer under the TV and popped it into the VCR. Turning on both machines, he cued the tape and they sat back to watch. He wished he had a dollar for every time he had watched the tape.
They watched as Garison, looking a few years younger, explained to the camera that he was about to make a trip into another dimension. Heather and Garison both lip synced the words with him, having seen the tape almost as many times as they'd watched "It's a Wonderful Life". Garison thought to himself that at least Jimmy Stewart had Clarence to help him.
On the tape, Garison finally got into the time machine. When he powered up and turned it on, there was a brief flash of light. When the light dissipated, the machine and Garison were gone. A split second later, the flash returned, along with Garison and the machine. Other than the fact that Garison had changed clothes, grown his hair long, and gotten five years older, nothing seemed to have changed. The lab and everything else was the same.
Garison pointed to the TV and said, "See, just like the last time we watched it."
Heather shook her head and remarked, "But we never have figured out what caused those flashes of light. Remember? There was just a flicker—like a sparkle—when you made your first experimental trip. Why the flash?"
"More power," Garison replied. "I was only using battery power on that first trip."
"Oh yeah," she nodded. "Run the flashes by again."
Garison did, then she had him do it a couple more times. When he finally asked her why, she shrugged, "I'm not sure. It's just that those flashes are the only part of this whole deal we haven't been able to fully explain. I wish we could slow them down."
"I don't see what difference that would make, but we don't have the technology to do it, anyway."
"I get a feeling like there's something there. Almost . . . subliminal." She smiled at him, as with a sudden idea, and said, "I bet Aaron would have the technology."
"Aaron Minton?"
"Yeah. He works at a TV station, anyway. I bet he'd have something that could slow this down a little bit."
"I guess. But what for?"
"Humor me." Heather handed him the phone and said, "Give him a call. He usually works the night shift. I bet he could run this for us tonight."
"Well—"
"Call him," she reiterated.
Garison took the phone and called Aaron Minton, a friend of theirs who was the night news manager for a television station in Farmington. When Garison called, he had just woke up. He said he didn't know how much he could help, but he'd be willing to try if they came by the station that evening around nine. Garison didn't really want to make the hour's drive to Farmington that late, but Heather was insistent. He had learned to trust to her intuition and figured it was worth a shot this time as well. Nothing else had provided any clues.
That afternoon, an unseasonably warm one for early November, they sat out in the front yard. They were watching Sarah play and occasionally taking part in the games with her. She was a good child, who enjoyed making her own fun, and didn't necessarily need them to keep her entertained. She was currently involved in kicking a ball all around the yard, causing Garison to already start making plans for her future in soccer. He was certain she had inherited his legs. Heather always countered that suggestion by saying that, not only did her legs look better than Garison's, she had been an athlete as well. The truth was, Sarah probably had athleticism in the genes coming from all directions.
She kicked the ball to the edge of the yard, where the forest began to encroach on the meadow where Amos Stillwell had once prospected. The ball came to a rest in the tall grass and Sarah chuckled as she raced to catch up with it.
Her attention was momentarily diverted by a small sapling growing near the ball. Sarah walked around the tree a couple times, touching it playfully and smiling. She seemed to recognize that this was a tree that was her size and liked the idea. Whether she truly recognized it as being a small version of the giants around her was debatable, but Heather liked to credit her daughter with marked intelligence.
Her attention soon shifted back to the ball and Heather watched as Sarah began kicking it again. Garison, ignoring the fact that he wasn't supposed to jump around any for at least two more weeks (and not lift anything heavy for a whole month), got up to kick the ball with her. Garison played goalie and Sarah was the lead forward for the opposing team. Heather wasn't sure that her little girl understood the game as well as Garison thought, but it was obvious Sarah enjoyed playing it. She giggled and giggled as she kicked the ball to her daddy and he kicked it back. On the rare occasion that she got one past her father, her little arms would shoot into the air and she would proclaim, "Goal!"
A kick from Garison got past little Sarah and she chased it into the tall grass. Once there, she began looking through the grass. Heather pointed out, "There's the ball, Honey," but Sarah paid her no mind.
After a moment, Garison said, "I don't think she's looking for the ball, Heather. I think she's looking for something else. Or maybe she saw something in the grass."
At that, Heather jumped up as if sitting on a spring and ran over to her daughter. Looking in the tall grass, Heather asked Garison, "You don't think she saw a snake, do you?"
"Not as cold as it's been for the last month," Garison replied. Hoping to cut to the chase, he asked, "Sarah, what are you looking for?"
"Twee," she replied succinctly.
"What?" he asked.
"Twee!" she repeated, obviously being frustrated in her search for whatever a "twee" was."
Heather suddenly understood and said, "Tree. She's looking for that little tree she found while ago." Proudly, Heather pointed out, "She knew
the right spot to come to to look for it."
"Oh," Garison nodded.
"That's funny," Heather said, looking around. "I don't see it either. This is the right spot, isn't it?"
"I think so," Garison replied, taking his own bearings. "It was right about—" he paused and his voice took on a rather grave tone as he announced, "Found it."
Heather turned and asked, "Where?" She was looking at the ground and didn't see the little tree.
Garison told her, "You're looking too low. THIS is the tree Sarah was playing with." He put his hand on a towering pine.
"No," Heather told him with disdain. "That was just a sapling Sarah was playing with. This one's a hundred years old if it's a day!"
Garison nodded and said, "One hundred years ago this tree would have been a sapling."
Recognition dawned instantly on Heather and she pulled Sarah up and into her arms. Hugging her squirming little girl tightly, she looked up into the tall tree and mumbled, "Another window in time?"
At Garison's nod, Heather asked fearfully, "What if Sarah had been standing there when the window closed? Like the hoofprints that should have been in our yard—or the arrow that got left in our door . . . " She was so scared she couldn't complete the question. Sarah somehow sensed her mother's fear and returned the tight clinch, though she didn't know why.
Garison finally told her, "Yeah. I thought of that, too."
Chapter Twelve
Aaron Minton was the nighttime news director for KNVJ in Farmington, N.M. He attended the First Christian Church of Farmington and had met Garison at a "Fifth Sunday Rally" at the Christian Church in Aztec. They had gotten started talking about golf and had wound up being good friends. They golfed once or twice a month during the warm weather, and skied during the cold.
The Legend of Garison Fitch (Book 2): Saving Time Page 10