A Captive in Time

by Sarah Dreher

  Still, there were times when he wasn’t comfortable with it. Like now.

  Cullum squinted against the sun, trying to catch a glimpse of a town, a cabin, any place he could walk around for a while, chat with the folks, ask a few questions

  The girl he was after was a runaway. At least that’s what he’d been told. Some kind of argument over the girl’s work. Cullum spat in the dust. Over the father’s drinking, more likely. More than an argument, too, from the looks of it. It’d been a long time since he’d seen a goose egg the size that buckeroo was sporting on his head. Bottle injury. Or maybe a frying pan.

  The fellow hadn’t been one of Cullum’s favorite people, either. Hostile sort. Kind that was accustomed to getting his way. Wife looked like a starved, kicked hound. He was tempted to tell the fellow to go do his own dirty work.

  But, hell’s bells and gingerbread, family business was family business and none of his own. Besides, it looked like the daughter could handle herself.

  Johnson chuckled to himself. He was looking forward to meeting this gal, but he’d best keep alert.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  “Durn it,” Billy grumbled as she tugged a slab of rough-cut wood into position. “Why’d you get us into this?”

  Stoner brushed her hair off her forehead and ended up with a speck of sawdust in her eye. She blinked rapidly. “I’m not sure. I just had a hunch.”

  Billy heaved the wood onto the wagon bed. “Well, next time you have a hunch, leave me out of it.”

  “I’m sorry.” She dug at the corner of her eye with the tip of her little finger. It seemed to push the sawdust deeper. “It seemed like a nice thing to do, and it wouldn’t hurt you to store up good deeds.”

  “Huh,” Billy grunted, and heaved another board onto the wagon.

  Stoner pulled her upper eyelid down over her lower eyelid the way Aunt Hermione was always telling her to.

  Billy kicked at the pile of lumber and sent it clattering to the ground. “We were having a perfectly nice time, weren’t we?” She pulled a long board from the scattered heap. “Weren’t we?”

  “Yes,” Stoner said, “but…”

  “So what’d you want to go and ruin it for?”

  The sawdust felt like a chunk of jagged metal in her eye. “I didn’t mean to ruin it. It seemed…”

  “Now we’re stuck with this stupid job ” Billy rammed her fists onto her hip bones and glared at Stoner. “Are you planning on helping me with this, or do you just want to watch?”

  Stoner felt a wave of warm tingles rise from her feet to her face, the way she sometimes felt when Gwen yelled at her—not in an angry way, but...well, taking command. She swallowed. “I do plan to help. But there’s something...”

  “Jeez.” Billy left the pile of boards and trotted over to her. “I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

  “I’m not crying. I got something in my eye.”

  “Let me see.” Billy thumbed back her eyelid and peered into her eye. “Look down.”

  She did.

  “There it is, the little devil.” Billy pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and made a sharp corner in the cloth. She took Stoner’s chin in her hand. “Don’t move, now. I don’t want to blind you.”

  “Billy,” Stoner said, standing very still and feeling as if she were melting into the ground. “Did Mary tell you anything about… well, about why I’m here?”

  “Some.” She drew back. “Got it.” She held out the handkerchief for Stoner to see.

  “I believe you.” Her eye still felt irritated. She rubbed at it.

  “Stop that,” Billy said, and shoved her hand away from her face. “Honest to God.” She dampened her handkerchief with water from their picnic and bathed the hurt from Stoner’s eye.

  The melting feeling became more compelling. Quickly, she bent to pick up an end of the long board. “What did Mary tell you?”

  “Some cock-and-bull story about time traveling.” She hefted the other end. Together they tossed it into the wagon and bent for the next.

  “Did it make any sense to you?”

  “Sure.” Billy lifted a smaller board by herself and slammed it onto the pile. ”Damn convenient, if you ask me.”

  It was obvious that Billy was angry.

  “Convenient?”

  Billy grabbed a handful of wood blocks and launched them at the buckboard. The mule shifted anxiously.

  “You’re scaring the mule,” Stoner said.

  “If you ask me,” Billy went on, turning her back and gathering up slivers of wood from the ground, “it’s real handy if you don’t like the way things are going. ‘Excuse me, it’s been swell knowing you, but I have to go back to my own time.’ ” She tossed the slivers onto the pile.

  Stoner hoisted some short boards and added them to the stack. “I know it sounds crazy. It sounds crazy to me, too. But it’s the truth...at least as far as I can understand it.”

  “Good,” Billy said. “Your understanding surpasses mine.”

  Stoner stopped working. “Billy, have I offended you in some way?”

  The woman glanced at her, then away. “Course not.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  Billy shrugged. “Don’t believe me, then.” She lifted an armload of boards and tossed them into the wagon.

  “Please,” Stoner said. “Talk to me.”

  The woman turned her back. Stoner went to her. “Billy...”

  Billy was crying.

  “Hey,” Stoner said, and turned her and took her in her arms. “I have hurt you. I didn’t mean to.”

  Billy wrapped her arms around Stoner’s waist and held on tight. “It’s nothing,” she said, the anger gone from her voice. “I’m just being silly.”

  “I doubt that.” Stoner kissed her temple gently. She didn’t care if they were standing out in broad daylight, behind the church, visible for miles around.

  “It’s not fair,” Billy said after a moment.

  “What’s not fair?”

  “For this to feel so good.”

  Stoner smiled, aware of the woman’s firm, soft body against hers, aware of her every breath. She tried to still her own breathing. Feelings of power surged through her. She could destroy the world, she thought, with the sheer strength of her will. “I know,” she said.

  “I love you,” Billy said.

  Stoner took a deep breath. “I think I love you, too.” She started to laugh, knowing it was inappropriate but unable to help herself because she was nervous, and happy, all at the same time. “Back home they write songs about situations like this.”

  “Out here,” Billy said, “they mostly write songs about cows.” She backed away and slipped her hands into her pockets and frowned. Suddenly the cloud of puzzlement lifted from her face. “You have someone. Back home.”

  “Yes. But back home isn’t back home in the usual sense. I mean, if I went back to Boston now, she wouldn’t be there. Yet.” She shook her head. “I can’t make any sense of this.”

  Billy picked up one end of a board and motioned for Stoner to pick up the other. “Know what your trouble is?” she asked as they heaved it into the wagon. “You think too much.”

  “You’re absolutely right,” Stoner said.

  “I don’t want to come between you and…?”

  “Gwen.”

  Billy shoved the planks around a little. “You mentioned her, when you were in the fever.”

  “I thought you were her.”

  “Pretty name.”

  “It’s Welsh,” Stoner said irrelevantly.

  “Bet she’s a pretty girl.”

  “Woman.”

  “Pretty woman.”

  “She is to me,” Stoner said.

  “I wish I were pretty.”

  Stoner looked at her. “Billy, you’re beautiful.”

  “Sure.” She pulled a rope from under the driver’s seat and began tying down the boards.

  Stoner watched her. “You’re upset,” she said at last.

  “A little. I
never told anyone I loved them before.”

  “I’m sorry. Not that you told me, but that things are...well, the way they are.”

  Billy made a vicious knot and yanked it tight. “I know.”

  “Billy…”

  The woman swung up onto the seat and lifted the reins. “I don’t want to discuss it, okay? Let’s just get this job done.”

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  It was the Anti-Christ, all right. And the Bastard was part of it.

  He peeked out from his hiding place below ground.

  The Bastard and the Stranger, embracing.

  It was no more or less than he would expect.

  And pretending to do favors for the Preacher. No one in town would suspect them once word got around they did favors for the Preacher.

  No one except him.

  They’d been out to the burned place. Must have been. There was nothing else to see out that way.

  He was willing to bet they’d found the knife.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  Stoner watched as Billy hobbled the mule and set about untying the ropes that held the lumber on the wagon. There was such grace and sureness to her movements. The way she concentrated on each knot, patiently working it out. The way she tossed the rope over the load, then pulled it through the bottom and wound it into a skein and fastened it with a loop of rope around the sheaf and tossed it again. No wasted motion, taking her time. It was mesmerizing.

  She thought of what it felt like, being touched by those hands, stroked by those fingers, held by those arms. She imagined resting her head against Billy’s shoulder, feeling safe and loved, telling her...

  Billy turned toward her. “Is something wrong?”

  “No.” Stoner shook her head. “I was just thinking.”

  “Want to talk?”

  She tilted her head toward the house, where Caroline (Mrs. the Reverend Henry) Parnell stood peeking at them through the curtains. “Not here.”

  She lifted one end of an eight foot four by six. Billy lifted the other. They carried it to the cleared ground beside the ashes of a burned outbuilding where Billy had laid out three short pieces of lumber to form a low platform that would keep the clean, new wood off the ground.

  “I’ve never seen lumber this thick,” Stoner said as they went back for another board. “What do you think he’s building?”

  Billy ran a glance over the wood. “Pig house, I’d guess.”

  “A pig house?”

  “From the thickness of the wood. Pigs can knock down just about anything. Hefty devils.”

  “Stronger than horses?”

  “More determined. Probably smarter. ” Billy lifted an end of board and signaled for Stoner to lift the other. “You don’t want to mess with pigs.”

  “Absolutely not,” Stoner said. “Messing with pigs isn’t one of my favorite pastimes.” They tossed the board on the pile with an earsplitting clatter. “Did you live on a farm?”

  “Not really. We kept pigs, though. For eating.”

  Right. No running out at one am to your local Super Stop and Shop for a pound of sugar-cured, preservative-loaded, nitrite-infested bacon. Not in this century. “Do you miss your home?”

  “Some.” Billy paused and leaned against the wagon to pull a splinter out of her hand. “I miss my animals. And my couple of friends.” She looked out over the unbroken horizon. “And I surely do miss trees.”

  “I know what you mean.” Stoner shoved the sleeves of her sweat shirt up to her elbows. “What about your mother? Do you miss her?”

  Billy thought hard about that. “Sometimes I get lonely for her. But when I think about it, it’s not her I’m lonely for. She’s all right, but she couldn’t be much of a mother, always worrying about what he might do next.”

  Stoner wanted to put an arm around her but held back. Caroline Parnell was still watching.

  “So I guess what I really get lonely for,” Billy went on, “is someone to love me. Take care of me. Not all the time, but every now and then.”

  “Yeah,” Stoner said.

  “My mother needed me to take care of her.” Billy scuffed at the dust with her foot. “You know, there are times I’m glad I’m on the run, so I don’t have to do that.” She glanced up. “Do you think I’m terrible to feel that way?”

  “Not at all. As Dr. Kesselbaum says, ‘Emotions are information and therefore outside moral consideration.’ ” She grinned. “Dr. Kesselbaum is a gold mine of profundity. Some of the things she says even make sense.”

  Billy laughed and went to pick up another board. “Who’s Dr. Kesselbaum?”

  “My partner Marylou’s mother.” She hefted her end of the board. “She used to be my therapist.”

  “Your what?”

  “Psychotherapist.”

  “What’s that?”

  Stoner pondered how to explain that to a pre-Freudian mind. “A psychotherapist is someone you tell your problems to and they help you understand them and figure out what to do.”

  “That’s good,” Billy said. “It’s nice to have close friends like that.”

  “Well, a therapist isn’t exactly a close friend. Sometimes you don’t even know the person when you start.” Sometimes you don’t know the person when you finish, either, she thought, but decided that was too complicated.

  Billy raised one eyebrow. “You tell your problems to someone you don’t know? Funny custom.”

  “I’ll bet all kinds of people tell Dot their problems.”

  “Sure. But they’re drunk.” She smiled like sunshine. “On the other hand, I’ve been telling you my innermost thoughts, and I don’t really know you.”

  “True,” Stoner said, returning her smile. “But I came highly recommended.”

  Billy laughed. “You mean Blue Mary? She didn’t know you, either.”

  “Maybe she did and maybe she didn’t,” Stoner said. “It’s hard to tell.”

  They dumped their board and went back for another.

  “What do you mean?” Billy asked.

  “Sometimes I get the funniest feeling she’s my Aunt Hermione.”

  “Jeez,” Billy said. “Seems to me you ought to know if a person’s a relative or not.”

  “It would seem that way, wouldn’t it?” Stoner hesitated. “Billy, do you believe in reincarnation?”

  “I dunno,” Billy said. “We had some Spiritualists back in Tennessee that used to talk about it.” She shrugged. “Shoot, I have enough trouble with this life right in front of me. I don’t need to go worrying backward and forward. Do you believe in it?”

  “I’m beginning to.”

  “Well, I hope you enjoy it.”

  She heard a window bang open behind them.

  “Billy Devon!” Caroline (Mrs. the Reverend Henry) Parnell’s voice came at them like a crowing rooster. “Stop that lolly-gagging and finish your work!”

  The window banged shut.

  “Lovely individual,” Stoner said as she gathered up an arm load of carry-able wood. “Is that your name? Devon?”

  “Not my real name. I’d be crazy to use my real name out here.” Billy picked up a load of wood twice the size of Stoner’s. “But, yeah, it’s what I go by.”

  “Would you tell me?”

  Billy hesitated. “It kind of scares me, not knowing you all that well. I mean, I think you’re okay, but what if you turn out to be a bounty hunter or something.”

  “That’s all right,” Stoner said quickly. “I understand.”

  The woman looked at her in a worried way. “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  Billy laughed. “First I tell you I love you, then I won’t tell you my real name. You must think I’m some kind of a crazy person.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Sure, you do.”

  “People even fall in love with people they don’t really trust. It happens all the time.”

  “I guess it does.”

  “Billy, I wish I were free to…”

  “Oh, for the love of
Heaven,” Billy said with gentle irritation, “Will you stop feeling guilty?”

  Stoner blushed and grinned and felt a huge burst of warmth toward her. She scraped up the last of the wood and tossed it on the pile. “I had a lover once—the first time I met her the woman scared me to death. I reacted like a dog, hair on the back of the neck rising, found myself backing into a corner, stuff like that. Then, as I got to know her, I kind of fell in love, and I told myself not to trust that other feeling I had at first.”

  “So what happened?” Billy inspected the pile, made a few adjustments.

  “Well, to make a long story short, I should have trusted my first impressions.”

  “Oh.” Billy made a large skein of the rope, winding it between her elbow and hand. “This woman you have back home, is that the same kind of thing?”

  “Not at all. I always trusted Gwen, even when she was straight.”

  The woman glanced up. “Straight?”

  “Uh...heterosexual...married...you know.”

  “Yeah.” Billy grinned. “ ‘Straight.’ That’s a heck of a word. What does that make you, crooked?”

  “Technically,” Stoner said, “I think the opposite of straight is not-uptight.”

  “Uptight. Sounds like something that happens to men when their pants don’t fit.” She hitched her pants up and stood on tip- toes, her face screwed up in a grimace of pain. “UP TIGHT!”

  Stoner giggled.

  Billy tossed the rope into the wagon and bent to release the mule. “What’s it like for you,” she asked, patting the animal’s velvet nose, “being this way? I mean, how do folks treat you?”

  “Some are okay,” Stoner said. She climbed up onto the wagon. “Some aren’t. Sometimes you can tell who’s going to treat you all right, and sometimes you can’t.” She shrugged. “Life’s full of surprises.”

  “Certainly is.” Billy swung up beside her. She picked up the reins.

  Stoner stopped her. “Billy, I really am sorry about… you know. I wouldn’t hurt you for the world.”

  “I know that.”

  “If things were different…”

  “Well, they aren’t,” Billy said, and gave the mule a slap.

  As they passed the house, Stoner caught motion at the edge of her vision and looked up.