by David Potter
The general sees us waving our arms, hears us calling his name. He holds up his gloved right hand and pulls on the reins of his great white horse, and the company stops in the snow.
The horses snort. Steam pours from their muzzles.
“Children,” says General Washington. He is five feet away, upon his steed, looking down. “Why have you hailed us?”
I am too awestruck to speak. First of all, this is George Washington, for crying out loud.
And second, he is alive.
So long as he lives, so lives the revolution.
“Children,” he says again, this time impatiently. “What is it?” I see that he glances at my clothes and my Nikes but makes no remark.
I haven’t thought of what to say, and the first thing that comes to my mind—Hello there, General, I’m from the twenty-first century and I’m here to make sure you do not die today—just won’t do. I have to think of an alternative, and I have to be quick about it, but the thing is? He’s a giant up there on his great white horse. And he doesn’t seem pleased in the slightest.
Mr. Kramm intercedes. “Mein general,” he says in his thick German accent. “Ve have not much time. The stable is not far.” And then Mr. Kramm glares at me like he not only knows me from before, but knows exactly what I’m up to now.
It’s eerie. Like, weird, even. This Mr. Kramm dude is totally staring me down. Then I notice, strapped to his shoulder, a leather satchel. On its side are big black letters: T.G.W., INC. Which is the same company that brought me the iTime app.
“Uh,” I say. My first word to our first president—brilliant, no? “Um,” I continue. “Mr. Presi—I mean General Washington?”
“Yes, boy?”
“Do you think we could have a word with you? In private? My friends here are Daniel and Elizabeth. Their father owns this farm. We think we have some information that you need to know. Privately.” My eyes, in case he didn’t get my drift, shift from him to the two German “farmers” to his right.
“Absolutely not!” says Mr. Kramm. “General, time is, as you told us yourself, of the essence. There is no time for—for—frivolous—children!”
The general silences Mr. Kramm with a withering glance. Then, to Daniel and Elizabeth: “ ’Tis true?” he says. “Your parents own this farm?”
“They do, sir,” Daniel says. “They have leased it to Mr. Kramm. Most recently.”
“Recently, you say? How recent?”
“Two weeks ago, sir. And from what we understand, Father was paid quite handsomely for the privilege.”
General Washington glances at his aide-de-camp, silently sending him a communication. “Interesting,” he says. Then: “Very well. You wish to discuss something with me in private. Gentlemen, if you would excuse us. Captain Powell,” he says to his aide-de-camp. “Remain here with our friends.” He then gives a tug on the reins of his white horse and moves twenty yards away.
The general brings his horse to a stop, crossways in the middle of the road. We go to the far side of the horse, which protects us from German “farmers” and any overeager ears. I don’t get the feeling that General Washington is merely indulging some kids for his amusement, or that he makes a practice of being hailed along the side of the road. I sense he is suspicious of something, and not necessarily of us.
“Go on,” he says. His eyes shift, to make sure Kramm and his cohort haven’t come any closer. “What is it you wish to tell me?”
“General Washington,” I say. “If you’ve come for horses, there are none. The men you are with are not farmers, they are Hessian soldiers—worse than that, they are Hessian agents. Their mission is to kill you, which they are planning to do as soon as they get you in the horse stable. With your death, they believe, so will die the revolution.”
“Do you two believe as he?” he asks Daniel and Elizabeth.
“It is a tale most incredulous,” says Daniel. “But at our farmhouse, there are remaining Hessians. They have not a pretense, for farming or anything else. They are dressed in full Hessian uniform. My sister and I conferred, and thought it better to warn you than to not.”
“I have,” the general said, “such a desire for horses.… Captain Powell, who accompanies me, did give a fair warning—but a dozen horses! At fair prices! I’m afraid I was lured. Have you proof of your charges? Though I already have suspicion enough that what you say is true. Threats upon my person are nothing new, and I have disregarded them all—to the dismay of my aides, no doubt. The one gentleman—Mr. Kramm, he calls himself—has more than a passing interest in things military. Indeed, he said he has been at this farm for nearly a year. Not a mere two weeks, as you attest. Both of you cannot be correct in the facts. And I believe the facts themselves shall be enough to allow us to settle the case.
“And if what you say proves true? Then I should think all of us would find ourselves in a fair bit of danger. Indeed, imminent danger would seem to be a distinct possibility. I shall have to play this careful …”
Unfortunately, there’ll be no more time for care. Behind us, Mr. Kramm calmly takes his Luger from his coat, turns, and shoots the general’s aide-de-camp, Captain Powell.
FORTY-FIVE
CAPTAIN POWELL FALLS OFF his horse, the other horses neigh and jump, and General Washington, in that critical moment, calculates that his army now consists of two boys and one girl.
So he does what any other sane man would do.
He bolts. He whacks his great white horse on its flank, and it takes off.
Kramm and his partner whack their horses and take off after him.
No one—I mean no one—pays the slightest bit of attention to Daniel, to Elizabeth, or to me.
This all happens, by the way, in about five, maybe six seconds. From the shot to the whacks.
“My Lord,” says Elizabeth. We rush over to Captain Powell, who’s been shot in the shoulder. Blood—a lot of it—is pouring down his chest, but he’s able to sit up.
“Go!” he says. “Leave me! Help the general! There’s a pistol in my pocket!”
“What about you?” I ask Captain Powell.
“I’ll be fine, blast it!” He winces. “Now go! Take my horse and help him!”
Daniel pats around and pulls out of the Captain’s coat a long black pistol. “One shot,” Daniel says. “It’s all we’ll have.”
“Let’s make it count,” I say, and then we catch Captain Powell’s loose horse and all of us climb on. It takes some doing, and I’m by far the most inept, but all three of us manage to get aboard. Daniel has the reins, then Elizabeth, then me, and off we go.
The road inclines upward, and it takes us ninety seconds of hard slogging through snow to reach the apex. From here we can see the farmhouse below, the stable, and three or four other smaller buildings. What we can’t see is General Washington, or any of his pursuers.
“What’ll he do?” Daniel asks. “Has he a weapon?”
“I’m betting he doesn’t,” I say. “He’s the general of an army, on a little side trip to purchase some horses. I don’t think he would have bothered arming himself. I didn’t see that he even had a sword.”
“Then what?” says Elizabeth. “He can’t just ride around through the snow. They’ll hunt him down, like they would a fox.”
“Could he try to get help?” I ask.
“From where?”
“How about your uncle?”
“Our uncle? How do you know about our uncle?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I must have heard.”
“Unless General Washington brought gold, he’ll find no help from our uncle, I can assure you. It’s going to be up to us, I’m afraid.”
A few minutes later we see that the tracks diverge.
“They separated,” Daniel says. “Like any hunter would in going after their prey. They’ll try to find him and flush him out.”
“And the general?” I say. “What would be his best strategy?”
“He needs to double back upon his own trail, if he can
. Go in one direction, come back, go another. Try to confuse them, if he can. If he can’t, they will just follow the track and come at him from different directions. Two against one. If they have experience, it should be simplicity itself.”
“Should he get off his horse? Proceed on foot?”
“To what end? His feet still leave tracks. His only chance is to stay upon his horse, and hope for divine intervention.”
“Or us,” says Elizabeth. “We need to improve his odds.”
“There’s two of them, sister,” says Daniel. “Likely armed.”
“There are three of us,” she says. “We have arms as well, plus wits, plus knowledge. Surely we can do something.”
Then we see to our right, riding at full gallop across naked farmland, Mr. Kramm.
“Swat him!” yells Daniel. “Upon his back flank—hard as you can!”
It takes me a beat to realize what he means. Then I do, and with my right hand I slap our horse, and yell, “Giddyup!”
Giddyup we do, though not nearly as fast as Mr. Kramm. But fast enough to throw the least experienced of us—that would be me—off the horse.
I fall with a thud. If it weren’t for the snow, I might have broken something, like my tailbone.
Daniel and Elizabeth press on.
A minute passes.
Then another.
I can’t hear or see. I don’t know where anyone is or what is happening.
Until I hear something in the not-so-far distance: the unmistakable sound of a gunshot. It goes like this: crack. And the sound splits the sky.
Followed, nearly instantaneously, by a cry of pain. A gut-wrenching, hair-raising, blood-curdling scream, if you want a more precise description.
A man’s scream, I’m certain, not a kid’s. Which means not Daniel, and not Elizabeth.
Either one of the two Germans. Or the commander-in-chief of the Continental Army.
FORTY-SIX
I RUN ABOUT A HUNDRED yards through the snow, catch my bearings, and then run another hundred and turn left, where land ends and trees begin. General Washington, I’m thinking, unless he was just hit, would have headed for the woods. He probably figured his chances would be better there than in the open.
But he hasn’t been hit. Down by the trees, I see Kramm’s partner in the snow, holding his shoulder, and his horse bolting away.
And next to the man, in the white snow, a red pool of blood.
So he must have been shot in the same place Captain Powell was shot, which is only fair.
I keep running. Forward. Into harm’s way.
“Mel!” I hear Daniel shout. “Get down!”
I get down. A shot, from my left, whizzes over my head.
I land in the snow, face first. I turn and see Kramm, on his big black horse, charging toward me. I am one dead duck.
He’s coming at me with speed. I can almost feel the iron horseshoes—all four of them—trampling me.
Then, from the woods, I see a white flash.
General Washington’s magnificent steed comes flying my way. Either he’s going to intercept Kramm’s horse, or he’s going to run me over himself.
Both horses are maybe three feet away. Something so bad is about to happen to me I can’t watch. I close my eyes and count: three.
Two.
One.
FORTY-SEVEN
THREE, TWO, ONE, BAM.
So this is it, I think. This is what it’s like. The pearly gates.
I feel myself lifted up. White all around me. A special kind of white. Snow white.
Snow white? Lifted up?
The white I see is snow, and the lifting up is by the powerful left hand of General George Washington, who has plucked me off the ground a fraction of a second before I was going to be trampled to death by Kramm’s angry black stallion.
As soon as Kramm sees Washington, he tries to get a shot off, but his Luger misfires. He tries again, and he misfires again. He yells something in German and rides off.
Then General Washington drops me, without ceremony, in another patch of snow twenty yards away. I’m pretty sure rescuing a kid wasn’t on his to-do list today, and I try to thank him, but he waves me off.
Daniel and Elizabeth rush over to see if I’m all right, leading their horse behind them.
“My Lord!” she says. “Are you all right? Are you hurt?”
I’m not hurt, and I am all right. She helps me get to my feet, and then Daniel sees something.
“He’s going back to the farmhouse!” Daniel says. “He’ll get reinforcements!”
We watch Kramm gallop across the field. General Washington pulls up beside us. “That man”—he nods over his shoulder—“is hit. Who shot him?”
“I shot him, sir,” Daniel says. “With Captain Powell’s pistol.”
“Captain Powell,” General Washington says. “He’s alive?”
“He is. He was shot in the shoulder, same as that one. If neither loses too much blood, I suspect both will live.”
“We will make sure of Captain Powell, at least. He did warn me. And Kramm?” General Washington asks, nodding toward the farmhouse. “Where to for him?”
“To the farmhouse,” Daniel says. “There are two, at least, uniformed men there. They have weapons”
“Have they horses?”
“Just the ones they rode in on, sir.”
“We have two,” the general says. “He has one. Where’s the other? Scattered?”
“I believe so, sir,” says Daniel.
“Can it be called?”
“By the Hessians? I do not know. It will likely return to the stable, however.”
The stable … the stable … the stable … oh no.
“What time is it?” I ask.
No one has a watch, but the general states the obvious. “It is morning, young man,” he says. “Almost noon, I should say. Have you someplace else to go?”
“The stable!” I say. “I have to be there right now! It’s urgent!”
“Urgent?” asks General Washington. “What could be urgent in a stable?”
“I’ll tell you when we get there,” I say, and General Washington lifts me onto his mount. Daniel and Elizabeth climb aboard the other horse, and five minutes later we are at the stable. Along the way I sneak a peek at my iPhone: as we arrive, it’s ten-fifty-eight. Which gives me two whole minutes to explain absolutely everything to the Father of Our Country.
FORTY-EIGHT
I TRY MY BEST. “GENERAL Washington,” I say. “We’re about to see something, and all I have time to say about it is this: do you believe in miracles?”
“I am afraid, young man, that I do not.”
Elizabeth seems even more skeptical than General Washington—she’s acting like she expects me to show her a magic trick. Which probably isn’t far from the truth.
“Well,” I say, “hold on to your hats, folks. Because I think in about thirty seconds or so you’re going to see something you’re going to have a hard time believing.”
We’re in the stable. There are no horses inside, but there are the stacks of hay, the saddles hanging up on a wall, the bunches of rope, and the by now all-too-familiar god-awful stench.
The seconds tick down. My iPhone is on.
And it starts to buzz.
It starts to shake, rattle, and roll.
It starts to tweet and toot and whistle.
And then before us, as if emerging from a mist, come Bev and Brandon.
Brandon’s wearing sneakers, jeans, and his red hat. The one that has a picture of a snarling wolf—I mean a snarling lobo—on it. Bev has on her pink jacket, and she’s wearing her earmuffs. Both of them are clutching their iPhones, which are blinking and buzzing like crazy.
Bev and Brandon jump back as if electrified.
General Washington, Daniel, and Elizabeth jump back as if horsewhipped.
There’s a standoff. Between the eighteenth and twenty-first centuries.
I step into the breach.
“Gene
ral Washington,” I say. “May I present to you my esteemed classmates, who visit us from another land: Miss Beverly, and Master Brandon. Everybody, say hello.”
“What land is this?” says General Washington.
“New Jersey,” I say. “Just across the river.”
It’s Bev who has the most presence of mind. She takes note of me, Daniel, and Elizabeth, and then General George Washington. Bev smiles, like she gets the whole thing.
“Why, General Washington,” she says, and curtsies. “How very pleased we are to meet you.”
I did say curtsies. And a very well-executed one, I must say. I didn’t know she had it in her, but then again, no matter how hard she tries to hide it, Bev’s got more than a little of her mom’s actress gene in her blood. She extends her hand.
General Washington has no choice—being a gentleman, born and bred—but to step forward and take her hand. “As am I,” he says. “Though these circumstances are most peculiar. I should like to have a word with your parents.”
“My mother is in California,” says Bev. “In a play.”
“Dude,” says Brandon. “Like, my mom’s out west, but you’re one heck of a realistic reenactor. Man, this is one great show! And I thought I had hit the wrong button or something on my phone and was going to be in for it. It’s all part of the setup, isn’t it?” Then Brandon holds out his fist. “Pound me, brother!”
General Washington does not, alas, fist bump Brandon. He frowns instead, as if the impertinence is beyond the pale. “Why does your … your hat … have a picture upon it? Is it a wolf? What is the explanation for this?”
“It’s a lobo, man. It means ‘wolf.’ In Spanish. It brings us luck.”
“It brings who luck?”
“New Mexico.”
“What need does a distant territory have for luck?”
“He’s joking, right?” Brandon asks me.
“I don’t think he is,” I say, but by now it’s obvious the general is not pleased.
“How can it be,” he says, “that you all … appeared, if you will … out of nothing more than thin air? Is this some kind of parlor trick? At a time such as this?”