by David Potter
“Well, General,” I start to explain. “Let me put it like this. We are friends of yours. The kind of friends you may not be used to, but maybe the very best friends you could ever have. We kind of know stuff that nobody else has a way of knowing. Which is why we stopped you in the road. And if we hadn’t? It’s quite possible that they would have shot you dead, right here in one of the stalls. And the implications of that, sir, are quite enormous. The word would spread like wildfire. And without you, the Continental Army might become nothing more than a savage band of pillagers looting their way through the countryside.”
“Oh man,” says Brandon. “Don’t be such a downer, dude! It’s only playacting!”
“I demand to know,” says General Washington, drawing himself up to his full height, “what exactly is going on at this moment. Do you take me for a fool, lad? You bring me to this stable and then you conjure up”—he gestures dismissively at Bev and Brandon—“these—these—court jesters? Dressed in—these costumes, and each of them holding—what is it they are holding? And you as well? What is that infernal contraption in your hands? I demand answers!”
FORTY-NINE
IT WOULD BE NICE to explain everything to both sides—the eighteenth-century people and the twenty-first-century people—and have them understand, accept, agree, move forward—but A) that’s not happening anytime soon, and B) remember the German dudes—Kramm, and the two Hessian soldiers back at the farmhouse? Funny thing is, they haven’t forgotten about us. Or rather, they haven’t forgotten about General Washington. And now they’ve got him right where they want him, which is in the horse stable, where they intended to kill him in the first place.
They’ve taken up positions. One soldier is at each end of the stable, ready to shoot any of us who try to get out.
And Kramm is holding, high above his head, a flaming torch.
Bev and Brandon still think this is some kind of reenactment.
Daniel and Elizabeth are properly horrified, but General Washington?
He’s mad.
As mad as I’ve ever seen a man. Madder than I’ve ever seen my father get, and that’s saying something, because Dad’s got that volcanic, shouting temper thing, which I truly hate. His face contorts, turns red, his lips twist into a growling grimace, and out it flies.
The general’s anger takes a different form. His face is stone-cold set. I don’t think you could pry his lips apart if you had a crowbar. And his eyes are black with fury.
And you know who he’s mad at? He’s mad at us. For leading him here. Which, he soon tells us, is completely indefensible.
“I shall shoot myself, should they not,” General Washington says, “for allowing myself to be led by a bunch of children into this position. My second great mistake in one day!”
Mr. Kramm touches the torch to the roof on the right side.
Then he torches the bottom of the wall on the left side.
Now it’s just a matter of you know what.
Time.
FIFTY
“WHY,” SAYS BRANDON, “are those reenactor dudes, like, torching the place? What’s up with that?”
“Boys,” says Bev. “I think we need to think of something. Now would be a very good time.”
“Silence!” commands General Washington. “I must think. Your constant babbling is of no help!”
The general is the kind of guy you pay attention to, so we shut up. Under his hat his hair is turning gray, but it isn’t as white as you might think. I know he never wore a wig. Around this time he’s in his forties, if I’m not mistaken, though his hat and his uniform make him appear, at a distance, a lot older, like in his late fifties or even early sixties.
But he is younger. You can tell by his face: relatively wrinkle-free. The wrinkles he will have in the future are being created as we speak.
And I know what you’re thinking: what’s the deal with the dude’s teeth?
Well, let me tell you: they are not, contrary to popular belief, made of wood.
Not to say they appear completely natural. They’re kind of oversized, maybe, sort of like a pair of too-big dentures, but they are definitely not made from wood. Maybe some other more toothlike substance—mother-of-pearl, or whalebone—but for sure not wood, or real teeth.
At the moment, he doesn’t seem overly self-conscious about his teeth, real or unreal. At the moment, he seems more rightly concerned about the fact that the roof of the stable is aflame, as is the wall at the left corner. Both fires are on a flight path to meet in the middle, and the whole dang thing is going to come tumbling down.
So I get the basic idea: burn down the stable, make us run out, shoot us dead.
The thing is? It doesn’t happen exactly instantly.
Fire’s funny, like it has a mind of its own. The stable is completely made of wood, and there’s hay everywhere, but it takes a while for the fire to decide to get really going. Which gives us time to contemplate our situation.
It’s not good. And every time we try to think of something together, General Washington tells us to be silent.
Which doesn’t sit so well with Bev.
“Listen, mister,” Bev says, and puts her hands on her hips. “Have you noticed that it’s getting a little warm in here? You want us to just stand around until you think of something to do?”
“Bev,” I say. “This is General Washington, remember.”
“Yeah?” she says. “So what’s your point?”
“Be silent!” General Washington says, with a little less conviction than before. I think the problem is that he doesn’t know what to do any more than we do.
“Well, I for one am not just going to stand here. Who are those people, for one thing? And two, what do they want? Mel? Is this totally crazy or what?”
We start to argue. Which isn’t cool, you know, to be arguing among ourselves right in front of George Washington, but this fire thing is really starting to pick up.
And whatever time we might have had to devise a plan is, uh, up in smoke.
The fires meet in the middle, and we run out right before part of the roof falls on top of us. And I mean run. You might be surprised by how every single cell in your body screams at you with one simple instruction: run! Run now, as fast as you can!
So we run, even though I am fully expecting Kramm and his men to have their muskets loaded and ready, and to shoot to kill.
The thing is, I feel kind of responsible here. I shouldn’t just be worried about saving my own skin, should I?
What should I do about General Washington? About Daniel and Elizabeth? About Brandon and Bev?
Fire and flame; the colors orange and red, leaping from white snow; smells of smoke, burning planks, and horse manure; sounds of crackling timber, falling roof beams; the taste of charred wood upon our lips and tongues; and pure dumb, blind fear in the pits of our stomachs as we exit the stable and face another kind of fire.
I can’t see anyone else at first. Though I hear horses neighing.
I’ve lost everyone, and I don’t know how to find them. Then I hear the crack of musket fire—seven, eight, ten shots.
I throw myself into the snow to avoid musket balls and to put out whatever flames might have gotten me.
I look up.
Elizabeth and Brandon, who barely know each other, who met, like, what, two minutes ago, are holding on to each other like they’re long-lost lovers.
And while I’m trying to process that, I see before us a ring of soldiers on horseback, loading and firing their muskets, and then loading and firing them again.
Soldiers from the Continental Army of these United States.
Propped on one horse, with his shoulder in a makeshift bandage, is the general’s aide, Captain Powell, who seems to be in charge.
“The cavalry,” says Brandon, “has come to save us. Huzzah, right?”
Not right, I think, getting to my feet. Where’s General Washington?
Daniel?
Bev?
Nothing will be comp
letely right unless I find all of them alive and well.
FIFTY-ONE
I TURN, MAKE A MOVE to run back to the stable, but I’m restrained.
Physically.
By Continental soldiers.
“You’ll not be going there, lads and lassie,” says a guy who has grabbed me by the collar. “You’ll be in the crossfire. Let us conclude our business, and then we’ll sort things out.”
“My brother’s in there!” cries Elizabeth.
“Bev is in there!” cries Brandon.
“General Washington is in there!” I cry.
“And we’ll get them all out,” the soldier says. Then, to himself, perhaps more grimly than he intends: “One way or another.”
Elizabeth breaks free. Daniel has not yet emerged from the flames.
As she runs toward the burning barn, the soldier holding me by the collar loosens his grip, and I break free as well. I’m more worried about Elizabeth getting shot by one of the Continental soldiers on horseback than I am of her running into fire in search of Daniel.
She runs, I run, two soldiers behind us run after us. Brandon stays put. He’s still trying to figure things out. Maybe he thinks this is still part of some reenactment.
Before things get hairy, we are stopped. People, our people, are emerging from the smoking ruins.
“Elizabeth!” I hear Daniel say, before I can see him. “I am not harmed, nor is she!”
Bev emerges next, and she is not only peeved, she is monumentally peeved. Embers of burning wood have fallen on her spiffy jacket, her boots are dirty, and, worst of all, some junky stuff has gotten into her hair.
But none of that is what’s gotten Bev ticked off. “I’ve had it with that guy!” Bev says. “Who the heck does he think he is?
“That’s General Washington, Bev—is he all right?”
“Ask him yourself,” Bev says. “And tell him that the next time he tells me to be silent, I’m going to kick him in the shins!”
FIFTY-TWO
THERE’S MORE FIRE NOW in the stable, less smoke—the place is really going up. Then I see a fiery blur, from the far right side of the structure. General George Washington, hatless, hair charred, eyes blazing, emerges from the fire, and walks straight over to Bev and me. “I demand answers!” General Washington says. “Who are you people, in such costume? Have you conspired to kill me? Answer now, or I swear I shall have you hanged!”
I wish I could give him an easy answer. But talking to General Washington when he’s steaming mad and his hair is smoking and his eyes are blazing is positively scary. So I say: “Well, General, it’s a … um … ah … er …”
Bev, naturally, isn’t so easily cowed. “You see here,” she says. “You have no business talking to us like that!”
General Washington and Bev, I’m beginning to sense, are not going to be best pals anytime soon. General Washington literally grits his teeth—his fake teeth, that is—like he almost can’t stop himself from saying something really foul to Bev. But she’s just a kid, right? And a girl. So whatever he was thinking of saying, he doesn’t.
Instead he looks at our hands. At what we’re holding in our hands. And that sets him off on a brand-new topic.
“What,” he says, “are those … boxes? Why are you holding them thusly?”
Brandon walks up and says, “It’s a phone, dude. Whaddya think it is? And you better put your hair out, ’cause it’s going to, like, light up any minute now.”
This is not really the proper way to address General George Washington.
This does not go over well.
The general pats his hair down, to put out any fires, and then I think he’s just about ready to smite Brandon with the back of his hand when one of the Continental soldiers comes up to him. “Two dead, Excellency,” he says. “Two Hessian soldiers.”
“Only two?” I say. “What happened to the other one? The guy holding the torch?”
General Washington redirects his wrath from Brandon to me. “Silence!” he says. “You will not speak unless spoken to!” Then he turns to the soldier and says, “And what of the other? The one who held the torch?”
“That’s Kramm,” I say. “He must be found, General Washington! At all costs!”
“I said, silence!” General Washington explodes. “Another word and I’ll have your tongue! Find him,” he says to the soldier. “And bring him to me. He shall be questioned. And then he shall be hanged.”
FIFTY-THREE
BEV AND BRANDON, I see, are about to short-circuit.
I can’t blame them. The last fifteen minutes have been kind of on the hairy side. And before that, the only thing they had to worry about was getting through the Christmas dinner the school was going to have for us.
I grab both of them by the arm and tug them away. I figure all I need is a few minutes to explain things.
Bev’s angry, and Brandon’s confused. They start asking questions at the same time. They pipe down for a half second to give me a chance to answer, but then they start right in again. I put my hands up and out in protest. “Let me explain!” I say. “Will you all just shut up, please, so I can tell you what’s what?”
Finally they do. “All right,” says Bev. “You seem to know so much, Mel. What’s going on? You know how much trouble we’re in? I’m telling you, they might use this as an excuse to throw us out of school!”
“Let me explain,” I say. “Now, do you remember, back in the basement of the Taylorsville General Store? Brandon was fooling around with a MacBook?”
“Of course we remember,” Bev says. “That was, like, fifteen minutes ago.”
“Well, for you, maybe it was fifteen minutes ago, but not for me.”
“You’re losing me, dude,” says Brandon. “Fifteen minutes is fifteen minutes.”
“Sometimes it isn’t,” I say. “If you remember, Brandon was fooling around with this MacBook, and then our iPhones started going haywire. It was because we were all downloading a new app. It’s called iTime. And believe it or not, it zapped us back here. Which is not a reenactment. This is the real deal, guys. It actually is Christmas Day, 1776. And that guy you were just yelling at, Brandon? He’s no reenactor. He’s General George Washington himself. And one thing he has never seen in his life is an iPhone, which is why he was asking you about it.”
Brandon blinks.
So does Bev.
Then Brandon snaps his fingers. “I get it—we traveled back in time! Now it all fits! I was trying to talk to one of those soldier dudes and, like, he really smelled! I was thinking, Man, these reenactor dudes really put a lot of effort into, you know, making themselves seem realistic! But they’re not reenactors—they’re real Continental Army dudes! How cool is that?”
“Get out of here, Brandon,” says Bev. “There’s no such thing as time travel. This is a massive screwup. A Revolutionary War reenactment that went way, way wrong. There’s going to be lawsuits, Mel. When my mother finds out about this, watch out.”
“If my mother finds out,” Brandon says, “she’ll think it’s totally cool. She’ll think maybe I should stick around.”
“Boys,” says Bev. “Let’s think this through here. Mel—if what you say is true—and I’m not sure what’s true and what isn’t at this point—then the question is, how do we get out of here? Back to where we belong?”
“It’s simple,” I say. “It’s what I’ve been trying to tell you—I’ve figured it out. I was here before—the same time, really—but things happened differently. Washington was actually shot and killed. And you guys were taken prisoner by the Hessians. So I went to Philadelphia and with Dr. Franklin’s help recharged my iPhone and then we figured out this iTime app. All we have to do is reprogram it. And it will put us right back where we belong.”
“Dr. Franklin?” says Brandon. “Who’s Dr. Franklin?”
“Benjamin Franklin,” I say. “You know: the Benjamin Franklin. Now check your phone, and you’ll see the app I’m telling you about. iTime. It wasn’t there befor
e, but it’s there now.”
Sure enough, we all have the app called iTime. We press the icons, and we get the same messages as before.
Welcome to iTime.
Brought to You by T.G.W., Inc.
The Aim Is to Play.
To Mess About.
Who Says Things Have to Be This Way and Not Another?
Who Says Things Wouldn’t Be Better if a Different Road Had Been Taken?
Catch Us if You Can.
K.
We read this, and as we do the message fizzles away and disappears. A new screen appears. Five large boxes with a place to put the day, the month, the year, the time, and the place.
All this is just like last time. Except now I know exactly what to do. I’m about to have us all reprogram our phones to bring us home—to bring us to our time, that is—when a phalanx of Continental soldiers surrounds us.
“Arrest them!” yells General Washington, pointing an accusatory finger at us, then at Daniel and Elizabeth. “Arrest all of these infernal children! And confiscate those—those—those boxes they hold in their hands!”
FIFTY-FOUR
STRONG, ROUGH HANDS GRAB us by the neck and shoulders. The hand around my own neck is big. The guy could, if he wanted, choke me to death with just a smidgen more pressure.
Bev hisses and says, “Keep your hands off me,” to no avail.
Brandon says, “Yo, easy, dudes.”
Daniel and Elizabeth fare no better. They are grabbed separately and bound together; no one listens when they shout that they live on this farm and their parents are expecting them back right this minute.
And they have taken our iPhones. In my case, with one giant hand around my throat and one holding my upper left arm, there isn’t much I can do about it. Same with the others. The guys who grabbed our phones pass them along to the next guys, like a bucket drill, and they are then passed up the line, and finally given to a very short officer who stands next to General Washington.