by Eric Bower
The answers to my questions came quickly as I sat up in bed and looked around. I sighed in relief. According to my calendar, it was Saturday, January 30th, the day of Rose and Buddy’s wedding. Everyone in town would be coming to the wedding, and it was going to be quite a party. You see, my father had recently built a huge addition to the Baron Estate, which he’d paid for with some of the money he’d received for winning an international genius award. The addition to the house was roughly five thousand square feet large, and while he and M typically used that huge space for testing some of their larger and more dangerous inventions, we’d recently discovered that it substituted for a grand ballroom in a pinch. M had used some of the money she’d been awarded for one of her chemistry discoveries (her method for growing fertile gardens in the desert, which was now being used all over the world) to rent several tables, chairs, streamers, and chandeliers to decorate the ballroom, and the best restaurant in Pitchfork had been hired to cater the affair.
I slowly rolled out of bed. My entire body ached like it’d been dragged through the desert by wild horses, but I still grinned when I smelled the heavenly odor of fresh sweets being baked downstairs.
After slipping on my bathrobe, I limped downstairs, where I bumped into Rose Blackwood and my father in the living room. They were putting the final touches on her wedding dress, and though it makes me feel uncomfortable admitting it, I have to say that Rose looked absolutely beautiful. After finishing her veil, P had pulled a small rose from his pocket and pinned it to the front of her dress.
Rose’s eyes welled up with tears as she hugged my father, thanking him for everything he’d done for her. My father’s eyes welled up with tears as he hugged her back, telling her that he was so happy that she had become a part of our family. And because I was still feeling a bit sleepy and sore, I suppose my eyes might have welled up a bit too. As the three of us stood there with our welly eyes, the kitchen door flung open, and Benedict Blackwood stuck his head out.
“I’m almost done with your wedding cake, sis!” he grunted in his deep and rough voice. “The first two tiers are vanilla, but then the next three are chocolate, strawberry, and butterscotch on top. I hope that’s okay?”
“That’s perfect, Benedict,” Rose said, as she crossed the kitchen and gave her brother a kiss on his stubbly and sunburned cheek. “I knew that I could count on you.”
Benedict blushed as he grumbled into his fist, before shuffling back into the kitchen, his wrist and ankle shackles clattering loudly.
I wore my new suit to the wedding, which I had purchased with my own money. It was a pretty fancy suit: green and blue and checkered, with a long tie and a cape, and a large hat that had an even larger feather poking out from the band. My family had moaned and groaned when they first saw me in the suit, telling me that I looked like a clown. But I didn’t care. I liked it, and since they weren’t the ones who’d paid for it, they couldn’t force me to get rid of it.
They also couldn’t force me to get rid of any of the other fancy items I’d bought recently, like my new leather boots, my golden pocket watch, my penny-farthing bicycle, my marble chess set, my new personal library, and the miniature oven and ice box that I’d had installed in my bedroom for late night snacks.
Another explanation is in order, but don’t worry. It’ll be one of the last.
You see, while I was rewriting our lives (making only the tiniest of changes), I decided to also rewrite the Baron books that Werbert had created, and I credited myself as the author. Our characters were no longer stupid, inept, and unlikable fools—we were now adventurers, inventors, explorers, and crime fighters; people who would do amazing things like travel to the moon and to the center of the earth, battling selfish villains, and saving the country on a biweekly basis. Yes, we still made the occasional mistake (the character of W. B. was notorious for his bumbles), but we always captured the villain at the end, and we always recognized the importance of friends and family. My books had even managed to outsell the Sheriff Hoyt Graham adventure books, which they’d stopped writing as a result.
The real Sheriff Hoyt Graham had recently asked if I would start including him in the Baron books as well— he missed being a hero, and without his books, he said he once again felt like an ordinary nobody.
I told him there was room for everyone in the Baron family adventures.
“W. B.! Over here!” Shorty called, waving to me from the front row.
Though the ballroom was grandly decorated, and everyone was dressed formally, there was no assigned seating at the wedding. Buddy and Rose had insisted that everyone should be able to sit wherever they liked, and with whomever they liked. They eventually had to change that rule a little bit when Mr. Bessie, the crazy old grocer, chose to sit right in the middle of the aisle, but otherwise, everyone was free to be wherever they liked.
My father and mother sat in the front row, looking quite dashing and dapper in their formal clothes: P wore a military jacket he’d been gifted by the King of Sweden, as well as a formal kilt, and a hat that might or might not have belonged to one of his horses. M looked quite beautiful dressed in a gown that’d been given to her by Queen Victoria, and she was also wearing a bejeweled pair of spectacles that P had made for her for their latest anniversary.
My old friend Shorty was seated next to her mother, who wore a formal dress, and on the other side of her was her father, who wore a formal mustache. Shorty was dressed in her typical cowgirl hat, though she had traded in her muddy work shirt and vest for a proper dress. Part of me wanted to mock her for her outfit (don’t feel too bad for her; she’d called me by a rather unflattering nickname when we’d first met), but I had to admit that she looked pretty nice. I sat down beside her and mumbled something about her looking pleasant, and I could feel myself blushing beneath my large, feathered cap.
Shorty laughed as she punched me lightly on the knee, causing it to go numb in an instant.
“You’re looking redder than a sunburned lobster’s behind, W. B.! I have some great news to share with you! My pa and ma recently decided to build themselves their very own tavern right here in Pitchfork! It turns out they enjoyed their stay so much the last time they were here that they want us to move here permanently!”
That was great news indeed! With all the wonderful success that my family had experienced lately, the one thing that continued to stand out as a misery was my utter failure to make friends. But with Shorty moving to Pitchfork, I’d now have a wonderful friend in town, someone who I knew would always stand up for me. In fact, Shorty proved what a good and valuable friend she was just a few seconds later. There was a kid sitting behind her who I knew from school, and when he spotted me, he made an awful face before reaching out and flicking my ear as hard as he could.
“Hah! Nice suit, Waldo Weirdo!” the boy jeered, chuckling at his witty joke.
Shorty turned to the boy and laughed loudly as well.
“Waldo Weirdo!” she brayed, slapping the boy on the shoulder. “That’s pretty darn funny! Hah! That’s much funnier than what I call W. B., because of course, it’s only okay to call people funny nicknames when they’re your friends, and you know you aren’t hurting their feelings. Otherwise, it’s just mean, and you wouldn’t want to be mean, would you? Because I don’t particularly like people who are mean.”
The boy tried to respond, but he was currently lying on the ground, gasping for breath, trying desperately to recover from one of Shorty’s gentle pats.
I smiled at Shorty. She smiled back at me.
The wedding was a wonderful success.
As soon as Miss Katherine and Mr. Dadant began to play the wedding march on their nose harp and washtub, a lovely and veiled Rose Blackwood slowly made her way down the aisle. M, P, Sheriff Graham, and Benedict Blackwood immediately began to cry. Benedict bawled so hard that several of the deputies standing beside him had to reach up and dab away his tears with a handkerchief, since his wrists were still shackled.
&nbs
p; Aunt Dorcas wailed and blubbered and boo-hooed until I seriously began to wonder how much water she could store in her eggy body—it was like she was part camel or something. She cried rivers and lakes and oceans onto the jacket of her new friend, a rather unusual looking man by the name of Egbert Florentine. Mr. Florentine was a very nice person, who was always sharply dressed in a top hat and spats—as though he expected to be invited to a fancy ball at any moment. His head was completely bald and slightly peaked at the top, and his body was as round as a medicine ball, which caused him to wibble and wobble as he walked. My family had taken a liking to him right away. Egbert Florentine was absolutely perfect for my Aunt Dorcas in every imaginable way: he was smart and polite, he was clean and well-manicured, he had a good job and a pleasant family, and perhaps most importantly, he was completely deaf.
I have to admit that my eyes grew a bit misty as well, but I didn’t cry. Instead, I found my mind beginning to drift toward the fabulous invention that I still had stowed away in my jacket pocket. It was the time eraser, Werbert’s steam powered pen capable of changing the world. I hadn’t told my parents that I still had it. When they’d asked how I’d defeated Werbert and restored everyone who’d been erased, I had been very vague with my answers. Exceptionally vague. I told them that I had been clumsy and bumbling, and that somehow, after a lot of falls and comedic errors, everything had somehow worked out in the end. They didn’t find that difficult to believe. It was sort of what always happened to me during our adventures.
I was purposely vague with my answers because I had already decided that I wasn’t going to share Werbert’s invention with them. I didn’t want them to know it still existed. It was just too dangerous. I knew my parents were good and kind people, but if they had a device like that in their possession, something that could literally rewrite time, then they would likely be hounded by hordes of people, evil and important people, who would want to use that device for their own selfish purposes. My father had been pleased to hear that his time machine had been smashed to bits, and he had already vowed not to build another one, reasoning that mankind simply wasn’t ready for the privilege of time travel yet.
Buddy Graham lifted Rose’s veil and looked deeply into her eyes. They smiled at each other warmly.
I had decided to destroy the time eraser, but not before taking it on one final adventure. And I had scheduled my adventure for right after Rose’s wedding ceremony, when everyone would be too distracted by the party to notice that I’d disappeared.
Buddy recited his vows to Rose while he slipped a ring onto her finger (P and M had actually made her wedding ring out of a unique metal they’d invented earlier that week, which was resistant to scratches and dents). Rose recited her vows to Buddy next, while she slipped a ring onto his finger as well. Parson Black, who was officiating the ceremony, then presented Buddy and Rose to everyone as man and wife for the first time, and he told Buddy to kiss the bride.
He did. Everyone cheered.
Miss Katherine and Mr. Dadant took up their twangy instruments and started to play as the newlyweds proudly marched back down the aisle, ducking the rice that everyone chucked in their direction. P pressed a button on an invention that he’d hidden in his jacket pocket, and a plethora of multicolored streamers burst from the ceiling, followed by dozens of fluttering doves, which caused everyone to cheer yet again. In the back row, a pair of shabbily dressed men, whom I recognized from one of my adventures, began to sing a rather inappropriate (though admittedly rather sweet) rendition of “Camptown Races.”
The party moved outside, where tables and refreshments had been set up throughout M’s fruit and vegetable gardens. As everyone took turns approaching the bride and groom to offer their good wishes and congratulations, I quietly slipped back into the Baron Estate. When I knew that I was alone, I pulled out Werbert’s pen, and wrote down a time and place and moment on the palm of my hand. It wasn’t very specific, but I was hoping that the power of the pen wouldn’t fail me.
The happiest moment in W. B.’s life. Wherever. Whenever.
After I’d finished writing on my palm, the world around me seemed to flutter like a sheet hanging in the wind, and before I knew it I had taken off, traveling into the future at a great speed.
“Oh shoot,” I muttered as I quickly flew from the present, “I forgot to take a piece of wedding cake first. What a dope . . .”
IT WAS BECAUSE OF SQUIRRELS
I was beginning to get better at passing through the winds of time. They no longer upset me or nauseated me, or at least, they didn’t bother me as much as they had before. It’s the sort of thing that takes time to get used to, like riding a bike or balancing on stilts or eating an entire loaf of bread in one sitting.
While it had made me terribly ill in the past, this time I maneuvered my way into the future with ease. Werbert’s brilliant invention continued to produce its billows of smoke as it carried me from time and place to time and place as though I was lighter than a feather. As I flew along my timeline, which I admit is sort of like peeking at your birthday presents before you’re supposed to, I was astonished by all of the remarkable adventures and wonderful people and breathtaking places that I had waiting for me in my future. It was simultaneously humbling and invigorating, seeing what an incredible life I still had ahead of me. But what was perhaps even more exciting was seeing the great lives that my loved ones had ahead of them as well.
I saw that P would one day be recognized as the greatest inventor of both the nineteenth and twentieth century, surpassing the towering accomplishments of his heroes, Leonardo da Vinci, Archimedes, Isaac Newton, and even Pierre Fauchard. His name and picture would live on forever in science textbooks, which would have been a dream come true for him. He was usually depicted wearing a spiffy hat, while seated on a horse, which was also wearing a spiffy hat. P’s horseless carriage, his Air, Oh! Plane, his submarine, and his rocket ship designs would be used as the basis for many of the great inventions of the future— that giant white flying machine that almost crushed me and Werbert in 1965 wouldn’t have been possible without my father. Which was good, I guess, though a part of me was still slightly annoyed with him about that.
My mother would one day reach unbelievable levels of success as well, as a chemist, mathematician, and humanitarian. Once her goofy and exhausting son had grown up and left the house, M began to use her talents and generosity to help children all around the world, feeding them with her chemically grown food, finding quick and simple ways to clean their water sources, sending them inflatable shelters, showing them peaceful methods for fending off dangerous animals, and encouraging them to pursue their educations in any way they could. It isn’t physically possible to count all of the lives that she had saved with her brilliance and ingenuity. I tried, but I lost count somewhere in the hundred thousands.
I felt like an utter fool for spending the first eleven years of my life searching for heroes in cowboy books, when two of the greatest heroes the world had ever known had been living under the same roof as me all along.
Rose and Buddy Graham would go on to live a long and healthy life together as well. After they were married, they moved into a large home in the middle of Downtown Pitchfork. As expected, when Sheriff Graham retired, Buddy took over as the lawman of Pitchfork. Rose eventually agreed to work with her husband in law enforcement—but not as his deputy. Instead, Rose Blackwood became the first female sheriff in Arizona Territory, a job she performed with pride for over thirty years. She was a tough sheriff but fair, and she had a rather sneaky habit of using clever inventions to solve some of her more difficult and confusing crimes.
After seeing how wonderfully successful and happy my family would become in the future, part of me was tempted to turn back. I had requested that Werbert’s invention transport me to my happiest moment of all time, and in a way, it already had. I now knew that my loved ones would all have their wildest dreams come true, which made me happier than I can express through words a
lone. But before I could change the writing of the pen so I could return to the present and enjoy the rest of Rose’s wedding, I suddenly came to a stop.
I couldn’t tell what year it was, but judging by all the large buildings and horseless carriages loudly zooming down the street, I assumed I was pretty far into the future, and in the middle of an exceptionally large city.
It was a busy neighborhood that was lined with sky-scrapingly tall buildings, and there was one building in particular that stuck out to me. It was longer and wider than the others, resembling a school of sorts, but it had been brightly painted, like something out of a fair. When I looked up at the sign at the top of the building, it read:
THE MAGNIFICENT BARON FAMILY’S
CLOWN COLLEGE
I stared at the sign, the realization of what it meant striking me like a bolt of lightning, and then I turned my head and found myself looking over at a grownup version of myself. I was wearing a suit and a hat, though I was disappointed to find that the hat didn’t have any kind of fancy feathers in the band. I must have developed bad taste as an adult.
Standing next to the grownup version of me was the woman who I immediately identified as my wife: Iris “Shorty” Baron. Shorty had grown a few inches since I’d last seen her, both in height, and also in the swell of her belly; she was carrying a baby in her arms, and there was clearly another one on the way. I carefully snuck a few steps closer to the pair so I could listen to their conversation.
It doesn’t count as eavesdropping if you’re listening in on your own conversation.
“We finally did it, W. B.,” grownup Shorty said, giving grownup W. B.’s shoulder a squeeze (which made him wince). “Our very own clown college. Now I can teach clowns roping and riding tricks, while you can teach them all how to fall and entertain kids. Hah, did you just hear that? Our daughter, Rosemary Sharon, sounds pretty excited for us as well!”