Heaven On Earth

by Constance O'Day-Flannery

  "Come," Rosalinda urged, and led her through a small grove of bushes to the back wall of the property. When they were outside the gate, the girl grabbed Casey's hand and giggled. "We are successful! This is as much fun as I had with Marguerita. You are a good companion, Señorita Casey."

  Casey's heart was still beating furiously and she could barely smile while gasping for breath. Kids! She was too old for this stuff! Nodding her head, she finally managed to say, "Thank you very much. Gracias, Rosalinda. Now I need to find the police. Can you lead me to them?"

  The girl held tightly to her hand and pulled her down an alley. "Hurry, we must be back before we are missed." Rosalinda turned at the corner and stopped, tightening the dark mantilla around her face. "From here I can go no further."

  Casey sighed. "Why?"

  "La policía is just down this way"—she pointed—"and to the left at the end." She shook her head firmly. "I cannot go with you, as it would be reported to my father immediately." The girl took Casey's hand and hurried her toward her destination. "Please be quick, Señorita Casey. We must get back to the house rapidamente."

  Casey wondered if it could get any more bizarre as she made her way down the narrow dirt street alone. Here she was, feeling—and probably looking—very much like Greta Garbo in some black-and-white spy movie, with a teenager who believed she was a heroine because she'd left the convent to seek some romantic adventure.

  Right. Some romantic adventure this was, she thought as she passed a grungy-looking cowboy with half the teeth missing from his leering grin.

  Okay, so it could get more bizarre.

  Five

  Stepping onto the wooden sidewalk from the earthen road, she hesitated for a moment and turned back to contemplate where she had just been. Horses, tied to the wooden railings of the overhang on the adobe building, were fully saddled with blankets and leather bags; even a canteen was slung over one saddle's horn. Her eyes darted back out to the road, in a last attempt to witness anything that looked remotely modern. She could see many people walking around, looking into shop windows and talking in the street. There were women with shawls, much like the one she wore, some with thin blankets over their heads shading them from the intense morning sun. Across the street an elegantly clad gentleman in a very old-fashioned suit stepped out of a horse-drawn black carriage. She watched as he held out his hand and assisted a woman from the coach. A lace parasol popped open, and the woman swung it over her shoulder as she glanced toward Casey.

  She refused to be drawn into this historical seduction, as she had better things to attend to at the moment. Like finding someone sane… not someone trying to re-create the past by wearing a Victorian-styled, high-collar costume dress of deep maroon velvet and lace. Jeez, the guy with the woman had even donned a silk top hat. It was a quiet and very peaceful scene. Everyone seemed content to be where they were. Everyone except her.

  Suddenly a sense of outrage rushed through her whole body. She stamped the cold, hard wood with her foot. This just wasn't happening. Casey O'Reilly isn't buying this whole scene, she reassured herself. "I'm gonna get some answers right now!" she blurted aloud.

  Just then, she noticed an elderly Hispanic man with a colorful poncho, and she watched him prod a heavily laden burro with a gnarled stick. Even with her limited Spanish, Casey could tell he was cursing at the poor creature's refusal to move.

  Leaving them to their struggle, she turned away and glanced up at the words painted above the door facing her. Santa Fe Jail House. Perfect. She pulled up on the rusty latch of the iron-barred door.

  The place was dark and dingy and had such an overpowering musky odor to it that Casey wanted to draw the shawl over her nose to block it. Instead, she took a deep breath through her mouth as she noticed a heavyset man sitting with his boots up on a badly scarred wooden desk, reviewing some papers. When he saw her, he immediately slipped his feet off the desk and stood up. That was when she saw he had also been eating something.

  "What's yer problem señorita?" he asked in a gruff voice as his hands came to rest on his hips. He, too, was dressed in old-fashioned clothes. "One of them cowboys botherin' ya?" he demanded, carelessly tossing the papers down onto the desk, inches from a smelly burrito.

  She noticed he didn't smile. In fact, he appeared highly annoyed that she had interrupted his meal. Casey decided to smile first. After all, she needed this man. He was an authority, though as she glanced around the place, her heart skipped a beat. This didn't look like a modern police station at all. In fact, it looked like it could be a western movie set, with rifles openly displayed on the wall next to a large map of the New Mexico Territory and three empty, though grimy, jail cells with actual iron bars that were rusting.

  "Hey!" the man nearly yelled. "You speak English, don'tcha?"

  Startled, Casey jerked her attention back to the man and smiled even more nervously. "Yes, I'm sorry, sir. I… I need your help. You see, I'm sort of lost and I need to find my sister."

  "Lost, huh?" the man repeated, as he walked over to a broom in the corner and broke off a piece of straw.

  She couldn't believe it as he actually used the thing to pick at his teeth!

  "Ah, yes," she answered, trying not to watch him, yet she couldn't stop the shudder as the man seemed to dislodge some food and suck it further into his mouth. "My car had a flat yesterday and I got a ride into Santa Fe, but now I have to find my sister and I'm wondering if anyone filed a missing-person report," she hurried to explain before she backed away from the man. "Her name is Amy Maddigan and—"

  "Whose name?" the man demanded as he flicked the straw onto the filthy floor.

  Wincing, Casey took another deep breath to steady her nerves. "That's my sister. Like I said, I had a flat yesterday and—"

  "Flat what?"

  She blinked. "A flat tire… on my car."

  It was his turn to blink at her. "Whatcha talkin' about, little lady? Car? Railcar?"

  "What?"

  "You tell me."

  She shook her head in dismay. "Look, I need to contract the proper authorities and locate my sister. I mean, this place is quaint and everything, and I know this must sound crazy to you, but I want to get back to modern civilization. May I use your phone to call her? I know she'll come and get me."

  "Phone?" The man scratched his oily hair. "What d'ya mean?"

  Once more she looked around the place. There were wanted posters tacked to the walls, with drawings of faces and amounts of money in bold print. She couldn't find a phone or anything else that would indicate modern communication. Quickly bringing her attention back to the man in front of her, she felt her heart begin slamming into her rib cage with fear. "You wouldn't happen to have a fax or…"

  Her words ceased as the man closed the short distance between them and stared into her eyes. He sniffed her suspiciously before saying, "You been drinking with them cowboys? What they been fillin' yer head with, huh?"

  He smelled of sweat and onions and something else that she wasn't about to distinguish. She squared her shoulders and glared at the man, even though she could never remember being this scared in her life! Why, wasn't there anything modern, anywhere? "I have not been drinking," she insisted, insulted by the question. She was not drunk and she was not crazy! "I happen to know this is the year 2000 and I am simply trying to find my sister."

  He pulled the upper part of his body away from her, as though she'd shocked him. "Maybe you need to sleep it off, little lady, until you come to your senses. This ain't no year 2000," he added with a laugh as he walked to one of the jail cells and opened a door as though in invitation.

  She listened to the squeak of metal and it was like nails running over a blackboard. Shivers raced down her back and she tightened the shawl around her. "No, thank you," she muttered, trying to disguise the fear that threatened to overwhelm her as she backed up to the door. A few more feet and she would be outside. It couldn't be possible! No one was normal here! No one!

  Seconds later, she was stunned
as she escaped the tiny building. She tried to make her mind work, to think with some semblance of clarity, yet only one thought twirled around in her head…

  She had traveled back in time!

  There could be no other answer. Either that or every person around her was completely crazy. Maybe it was her. Maybe when she was hit by lightning something happened to her brain. In any case, there was no modern-day police station with telephones and computers… there were no missing-person reports, only wanted: dead or alive posters like the ones hanging on the marshal's dingy office walls. She didn't want to believe she could be dreaming all of it so vividly. Maybe the electrical shock had caused her to have some sort of delusional breakdown and she was just seeing things… things that couldn't be explained… like every single person acting and dressing as though they lived over a hundred years ago, insisting she was in the year 1878!

  How can this be? Where am I? Am I still me? Where is my sister? Does Amy exist now? Where is now? Her head began to pound as the thoughts flew around her mind like a raging twister and she thought it might actually explode from the pressure.

  "Señorita!"

  She heard the urgent cry and turned to see Rosalinda huddled against the side of the building. Blinking, she stared at the teenager. What was real?

  "Señorita Casey… come! We must hurry back now or we shall be discovered missing!" The girl's expression showed her worry.

  She couldn't move. Her feet refused to follow her command. She was frozen in fear. How had such a thing happened, and why to her? She needed to make sense out of it, to apply some kind of reason to her situation. Does this happen to people and no one talks about it? Luke said he time-traveled and he wasn't even upset by it.

  "Señorita Casey!"

  The girl darted out from the side of the building and grabbed Casey's hand. Rosalinda pulled her along and she followed meekly, not having the strength to resist any longer.

  "We must hurry now. If we are discovered, I shall be punished… and I want nothing to ruin my quinceñera… Por favor, Señorita Casey. Please!"

  Casey could only stare in awe at the outdated scenes taking place around her. She had just been informed her reality didn't exist. Rosalinda tugged on her hand, as though to shake her awake, but Casey only nodded in a feeble attempt to regain some focus. To believe everything around you, no matter how much you deny it, is actually happening… real… something you have been told all your life just couldn't be possible… Her mind felt like it might short-circuit with all she had lost. She blindly followed the teenager back through the old western town that appeared to be so real! What was happening to her? Was this crossing over into insanity?

  But it was real and it was happening now!

  "Come…" Rosalinda urged. "It's not much farther."

  When they crossed several more streets and turned down the alley where they had entered the town, the girl stopped and held Casey's shoulders, as though she were the adult.

  "What has happened to you, Señorita? Why are you like this? You must come back to yourself or you may never wear a beautiful ball gown at my quinceñera, and perhaps neither will I." Rosalinda pleaded further, "Por favor, Casey… if my father finds out what has happened, ay, Dios mío," she whispered with a gasp, "he will have us both punished!"

  That seemed to wake her a bit more. Beyond the incessant feeling of pending madness was the primal defensive instinct that no one was going to punish her or push her around… without good reason anyway. Not even a policeman who implied she was inebriated. She almost said it aloud, her mind recalling the sarcastic marshal. And then he'd had the audacity to threaten to lock her up until she sobered!

  Now a fourteen-year-old may be leading her around by the hand, but somewhere within her was an adult who knew she didn't have to give in to this fear… not the fear of whatever had happened to her or the fear of someone, anyone, thinking he had the right to punish her or push her around. It was to that emancipated feeling she gave her attention.

  She pulled her hand away from Rosalinda's and took a deep breath. Licking her lips, she then tried to smile with some reassurance. "It's okay, Rosalinda." she muttered. "I'm sorry. I'm… I'm just shocked."

  "At what?" the girl asked, tightening the shawl around her face.

  "At the world," Casey said, surprised at the words as they escaped her lips, yet it was the truth. Her world had tilted and she was fighting like crazy to find some equilibrium.

  Rosalinda stared at her for a few seconds and then gushed, "Oh, because of being in the convent… yes, I understand. The world must seem very different to you."

  She wanted to blurt out that she hadn't been in any convent, shut away from the world, and her world, the modern world, was so different that if she tried for a hundred years, she couldn't make this child understand where she had come from.

  She was stunned for a moment as she remembered Luke's words to her last night in the wagon about not being able to explain time travel to her. Oh, she couldn't go there. Not now, not when her mind was hanging precariously by a thread. "Let's get back," she said in what she hoped passed for a normal voice.

  Rosalinda nodded and again took her hand as they hurried toward her backyard. Casey looked down to their clasped hands and mentally shrugged. Right now this kid seemed more steady than she. She had to trust someone… until she could again trust herself.

  Just to prove she might be certifiable, that damn line from the Jackson Browne song raced through her head. The next voice you hear will be your own.

  "I need my wallet," Casey suddenly blurted. She heard the urgency in her own voice and wondered why she had to tell the girl that, but right now she felt she needed to hold on to something from her life. Inside that wallet was her identity, a Pennsylvania driver's license with her photograph and the year she was born. It was proof she was still who she was, proof of where she had come from and where she belonged. Even if she couldn't get back there, at least it was something that would help ground her through whatever madness was happening here. Rosalinda simply nodded her head in agreement, touching her fingers to her lips to indicate the need for quiet as they made their way closer to the house.

  Without speaking they entered the backyard through the creaky wooden gate, sneaking past the house servants who appeared to be preparing a feast under a large tree. Casey spied Marcella and stiffened with apprehension as the woman put her hand to her hip and looked briefly in their direction. They slipped quickly behind the potted-tree branches and Marcella turned away. They were still okay.

  When they entered the passageway, Casey drew in a huge breath and forced herself through the small opening. She kept telling herself to take shallow breaths, not to think of anything except getting back into the bedroom and collapsing onto the bed. There was just so much one woman could absorb!

  "I will leave you now," Rosalinda whispered so quietly Casey had to strain to hear her. "This is the back of my sister's wardrobe into your room. I must change into my gown. We are both expected to be formally introduced in a short time. Remember to act surprised." The girl squeezed her hand and disappeared around a corner. Casey pushed on the wood and it slid easily to the side. She stepped into the dark, large chest and slowly opened the door to a sight that almost stopped her heart.

  As if to test her endurance, it appeared that fate had decided she needed even more of a challenge to her sanity…

  Luke was seated on the chair, his crossed legs propped up on the side board of the bed. Twirling a thin cigar between his fingers, he made no eye contact with her as he watched the wisps of smoke ride the air. In his other hand he held the brush Rosalinda had brought to her earlier, the one she had dropped onto the bed.

  "I'm sure you realize your actions have endangered a child," he stated assertively.

  She clung to the edge of the wardrobe, willing her foot to step down to the tile. Fear again gripped her chest and she had to fight to control it. Then she remembered that surge of strength she'd found in the alley… the instinct that no o
ne was going to punish her or push her around, including this man… whoever he was!

  Her foot slipped onto the cool, firm tile beneath it and she smiled inwardly. She'd gotten this far, she could do this. Besides, that so-called child he had just referred to was more in touch with reality at this moment than she was.

  Before she could even respond to his assertion, he continued. "You went to la policía and they didn't believe it when you told them you were from the year 2000." He smacked the brush against his thigh. "I'll bet they even offered to let you sleep off your drunken state in one of their comfortable jail cells."

  Casey smirked at him as she closed the wardrobe door behind her and drew in a breath to speak in defense of her actions. "I had every right—"

  "Right?" Luke interrupted, and glared directly into her eyes. "You have no right to involve an innocent child, or anyone else for that matter, in your…" He began shaking his head as though frustrated and grasping for the words he wanted to use. "Your version of reality!"

  "Okay, that's it, buster," she blurted. "My 'version of reality' was just fine until you came along. Let's focus here on who is involved and who is innocent, like me! What the hell is going on anyway? You've got a lot of explaining to do, Luke d'Séraphin," she finished, crossing her arms defiantly.

  She watched as Luke's eyes became tender with compassion. "You are courageous, Casey O'Reilly. Don't cloud such bravery with foolishness." He continued calmly, "Should it be found that Rosalinda was out and about town without a proper duenna, she would be punished severely by her parents. You must respect the people with whom you find yourself now, señorita. You must also realize, in this time your actions may directly affect the future, even your future… everyone's future."

  "Is that what you do, Luke? When this craziness happens? You just simply fit right in?" She began waving her arms around in dispute. "You pop in and out of time, like it's all part of a normal day… you don't mind the loneliness, the lack of anything modern… even a bathroom! You just follow the damned pattern?" Her voice was raised, yet she couldn't seem to stop herself. Besides, it felt better to get it out of her, all this insanity. "What the hell are you? Should I check under your bed to see if there's a freakin' pod? Are you some alien or something? How the hell does this happen to someone?" Casey looked up to the ceiling as though she would hear the answers she wanted from some higher source. "Where is my life? How can I have time-traveled? This isn't possible!" She felt her face flush as tears began welling up in her eyes.