by D. L. Koontz
She’d moved with an agility that belied her age.
He suspected he might make her uncomfortable if he kept staring, perhaps even sad if she realized how little he remembered, so he ambled to the rocker beside her and folded himself into it. He sat erect, keeping his chair still. She pointed to another cup on the small table between them. She knew he would be joining her?
He wanted to say it was good to be home, but he wasn’t sure about that. And why wasn’t she acting delighted? They must have shared a homecoming earlier that he did not remember. She was already used to him being there.
Instead of asking what dwelled on his mind, he picked up the cup and sipped—tea, doctored with whiskey—and said, “The music. It came from that box?”
She chuckled and looked back at him. “Good morning.” She took another drag on the cigar, offered it to him, then pulled it back to rest her arm on her rocker again when he declined. “A Victor Talking Machine.”
He understood her words, but the sound of them was odd, wrapped in a faint accent and a slow delivery, as though she was either in no hurry or was searching hard to say the words correctly.
He repeated the words in a whisper. “Victor Talking Machine.”
She grinned and nodded, looking back at the scenery, never breaking her rhythmic movement.
Nathan waited for her to say more, and when she didn’t he said the first thing that came to mind. “So many unfamiliar things. This cabin....so fancy.”
“Only to you.” She made a rebuffing gesture with her free hand as she added, “To others, a shanty.” Her rocking, her distant gaze, continued.
Shanty. He whispered that word also. “These clothes,” he looked down at his shirt and tugged at its front. “They are mine? I don’t remember owning anything so nice.”
“Yours now.”
He brushed back locks of shoulder-length hair that were hanging around his face so he could study the shirt more closely. He pondered the stitching, the angles where the fabric came together, the sturdiness of the garment. Such fine work. “You made them?”
“Bought them.” Her expression did not change, betraying neither pride or embarrassment.
Nathan raised a brow. “Are we...rich then?”
The woman took another puff of the cigar, her gaze still locked on the distance, her chair still swaying back and forth. “Made in a factory. Assembly line.”
He cataloged those words, too.
“You can read,” she said.
How did she know? He didn’t ask.
She pushed up from her chair, her joints creaking at the effort. But when she walked, she moved with a sturdiness and sure-footedness that startled him, again confirming her dexterity contradicted her looks. She grasped a book from a table several yards to her right, and returned, handing it to him. “Read when the sun sleeps.” She sat back in her chair. “Work when it works.”
He read the cover. “The Complete History of America, through 1900.” Anxiety spread through his body like a poison. He’d thought the year was somewhere in the 1700s.
A chilled air whispered against the back of his neck. He took a fortifying swallow of the whiskey. “What year is this?”
“The year of our Lord nineteen hundred and seventeen.” The woman puffed from the cigar again before adding, “Autumn. Time for harvest.”
He took another sip, letting her answer settle in, feeling the enormity of it burn through him, just like the whiskey.
She sat her cigar on a tin tray between them, and returned her gaze to the distance. “What year did you take the water?”
Nathan gripped the cup tighter. Before she’d asked about it, he hadn’t even remembered any water. “Seventeen sixty-nine.” Both his answer and the ease with which he pulled it forth, bewildered him.
She nodded, but said nothing, and that calmed him. She wasn’t shocked. Or curious. Or concerned about his answer or state of mind.
It struck him that time, and this woman, would be his keys to survival now.
He couldn’t think about the year. It was too overwhelming. So he thought about the season. Harvest, she’d said. That meant much labor ahead. Good, he could focus on that. He understood harvest. “Should we be working?”
“Not today.”
His brows drew down in confusion.
“It’s Sunday. The Almighty’s day. Today, we rest.”
He continued to rock four, maybe five times, before saying, “You are my mother.” It was a statement, not a question. If she wasn’t his mother, she would set him straight.
He saw only her profile, but he watched something flicker in her expression. “I am now.” She looked at him as she rocked, and gave a nod as though to reassure him.
Silence fell.
Another memory surfaced. “I had a father.”
“We all had a father.” She chuckled a short, breathy sound. “It’s just us now.”
The woman’s answers were brief, yet they packed such a punch.
“What do I call you?” He expected her to say Mother or Ma or some such derivative.
Several rocking motions went by before she said, “Ista.”
His gaze intensified at her answer. Ista. The Mohawk name for mother. Yes, that’s right, he could speak the Iroquoian language. He knew Mohawk.
She asked, “What should I call you now?”
He frowned. Had he changed so much that she believed he had a new identity? He taxed his memory but could not think of his name. Finally, he said, “Yen’a.” Mohawk, for son.
She studied him, a peaceful look on her face before turning away. “It will come back. Slowly.” Her tone didn’t impart coddling, but rather certainty, wisdom. “Best if it does not, but it will.”
He shot her a look of confusion.
Without taking her gaze off the distance, she added, “Some moments should stay where they occurred. It’s not good they become memories.”
He nodded, but said nothing more. He leaned back and nudged his rocker into motion, moving evenly with Ista. From the corner of his eye, he saw the edge of her mouth curve up, hiding a smile.
After a while, she looked at him and they exchanged nods, speaking an understanding that words couldn’t touch.
He would read this book Ista gave him. Memorize it, if he had to. And, he’d read all the others in the house. He would observe. Listen. Learn. He didn’t need a book or a memory to confirm what had already crystalized in his mind when she had voiced the date; that his life had irrevocably changed.
He had no choice but to think about the future. Logic had no place here. He could only hope for divine guidance.
Why should he waste time trying to wrestle back to life a person he wasn’t certain he wanted back anyway? There was only the future, and he thought of the Good Book, of the apostle Paul’s advice in Philippians to be persistent and keep pressing on.
Chapter Fourteen
1917
For a month Ista and Nathan toiled side by side harvesting the crops, preserving food, and watching autumn bring changes daily to their front-porch view. At night he read, asked questions, read some more.
It wasn’t until month two when Ista walked with him the mile into the small town of Bedford that he finally accepted what he’d read and what she’d described weren’t malarkey, dreams, or magic: revolution from Britain, a war between the states, outhouses inside the house, motorcars, tractors, paved roads, flying machines, radios, telephones, bathtubs, stock markets, forty-eight states in the union. So much to learn.
The night after his first trip to town, Nathan excused himself after supper, withdrew to a dark corner of his room, and sat on the floor sobbing like a baby.
The next day he walked back to town alone, and sat for hours, observing.
That began a routine of walking to town once each week. He memorized faces, clothing, modes of transportation, streets, products, business names.
On his fourth trek, he overheard three men talking about a war that involved America. Overseas! Duty hastened him to the
only place he could think of to go: the sheriff’s office.
“It’s not my decision, but I doubt they’ll take you,” said the sheriff, a tall, agile man of about fifty-five, with intense eyes that Nathan suspected helped him secure confessions from even the most hardened criminals. Like him, the sheriff’s face sported signs of an altercation or two, and his nose bent in such a way that suggested it had once been broken. “You’ll just be disappointed if you try.”
Nathan didn’t understand. Why wouldn’t he try? He was young, willing to fight. His reflection in the looking glass that morning showed good coloring to his skin and a strong body on a capable man.
When Nathan made no response, the sheriff circled to the front of his desk, leaned back against it, and folded his arms. “First, you look like you’re at least thirty. Males between 21 and 30 were required to register for military service. Did you do that?”
No, he hadn’t. Nathan stood firm, but cast his eyes to the floor as he processed this. He didn’t want to say the wrong thing.
“Second, you have no proof to verify who you are. How do I know you’re not some foreigner hoping to infiltrate our military network? Third, you’ve got too many scars. Looks like you might not keep your wits about you. I doubt they’ll agree with putting somebody like that in our army.”
Nathan remained quiet. Frustration roared through him, particularly since the sheriff bore his own marks of controversial run-ins. Yet, he also felt gratitude to hear these insights from this modern 1917’s man.
The sheriff asked, “You got a wife? Kids?”
Nathan shook his head.
“Well, that would make you an ideal candidate. No one back here to mourn you...yes, well, never mind.” The sheriff grimaced and drummed his fingertips in a single staccato rhythm on the desk, then turned to pull a pencil and paper close. “Can you read and write? I’ll give you the address of where you sign up.”
The sheriff had been right. The office wanted identification. Verification. Proof. Nathan returned home.
The Great War ended less than a year later, 1918. By then, Nathan had recovered enough of his memory to know he had already sacrificed greatly, had already done his part to foster the development and freedoms of his country.
In that year, Nathan also established a routine with Ista. They worked together during the day tending crops or animals, but often separated in the evenings to do other things. She chose to smoke and listen to her music. He read, hunted in the surrounding mountains, and began tinkering with tools Ista pulled from a shed behind the house.
When she’d given him the tools, she’d said, “Folks without a purpose die. You will learn to use these tools.” Her statement brooked no argument.
By then, he’d learned her word “shanty” didn’t mean the best of dwellings. So, he practiced with the tools and began to refurbish the house to look more like the ones he saw in town. He discovered a new passion in woodworking.
Early in 1918 Nathan remembered his age (twenty-eight), full name, family, and some acquaintances, but didn’t tell Ista. He’d come to care for the old woman. Other aspects of his life remained elusive.
With his name foremost on his mind, he began to take long walks for miles in all directions from the town, first visiting the site of where Fort Bedford once stood, then looking for cemeteries. After two months of searching, he found crude headstones for his parents on the land that once belonged to his family. Although weathered and beaten by the elements, they were legible. Three weeks after that, he found a marker closer to Bedford that evoked more memories. This one read, “Richard Wallace – British officer, son, beloved husband.” According to the stone, Wallace died three months after Nathan left, baffling since Wallace had been a healthy, robust young man. Was it battle? Disease?
Nathan searched another month but never found Anabelle’s headstone, so he moved his inquiry to the records chamber at the courthouse. He learned Anabelle died giving birth to an infant son six months after Wallace passed away. The child survived, but no further information was available. He abandoned the search and left the courthouse. On his walk home, he shed a tear. Anabelle had never made it to her tidewater town.
In early summer of 1921, Nathan caught Ista staring at him more often. Watching and studying him as though waiting to catch him crumble from inner demons or thoughts. Within weeks she returned home from a trip to town and announced she would be leaving in a couple months. She groused about having seen someone dangerous.
“Who is it?” he demanded. “I’ll protect you.”
She looked at him in that way he’d seen many mothers in town look at their children. Some sort of pride and satisfaction mixed together. “This is something I must do alone.”
It would do no good to argue. “Will you come back?”
She returned his gaze. “In time.”
Yes, of course, in time. Everything happened in some sort of time, didn’t it? He’d learned that full well.
Later, before taking the water, she shared a story with him, recounting a harrowing tale of a young woman and a young man, both harmed by another man...the same man who had harmed her, Ista. The story left him remembering more bits and pieces of his life, and fisting his hands, overcome with the desire to thrust them into a wall to relieve his anger at the man who had changed them all.
Ista shared other tales of having taken the water five times, traveling back and forth between the 1700s and present day, and detailed how she learned to make the transition easier on her body and her memory.
Before her second journey, she’d hidden coins and other valuables she expected would provide her with money to survive in the future. She told him other things as well—she was born to a Mohawk woman and a white father near a great and powerful lake (Nathan deduced it to be Lake Erie), that her husband and son had been killed by the British, that she had journeyed to the magical water alone after hearing stories about its power, and that a missionary introduced her to Christ, which prompted her to live outside the camp of her Indian brothers and sisters.
But most powerfully, she shared her wisdom, prompting a tiny tremble to grow in him. A tremble of determination, of hope.
“You’re frozen,” she said. “Like the lake in winter. More heavy burdens and you will shatter.”
When he said nothing, she added, in a softer voice, “Stop trying to wrestle back to life a man that is long since gone.”
He nodded.
She smiled. “Wait for her. Romans 8:25.”
He studied her face, sensing that she would offer no clarifiers even if he asked.
She reached for him where he sat beside her in their rocking chairs. He leaned in and she kissed him on the forehead, whispering a new name for him. After a brief explanation, they nodded in agreement.
Then, she leaned back, closed her eyes, and promised he would see her again.
When he awoke the next morning, the coffee was brewing, the animals had been fed, and Ista was gone.
While he mourned her departure that autumn, he thought about her words as he continued to refurbish the house, tackling every project she’d ever voiced.
On a cold winter day in March of 1922, the sheriff stopped by. By then, he and Nathan had come to respect one another, having gone hunting, playing checkers several times, and talking about everything from science to good literature.
The sheriff found him behind the house, knee-deep in muck, in a lean-to that provided shade for the goats.
“Those scars baffle me,” the sheriff said, resting his elbows on the chest-high stall divider. “I know you don’t want to talk about ’em. Maybe it was self-defense. Maybe not. I know what caused mine and it was always tied to trouble.” He paused. “But, I’ve seen you have a way with people. I’ve seen no malice, no deceit toward anyone. You’re controlled. Observant. Honest. A straight shooter. That’s commendable.”
What was the sheriff’s point? Nathan shoved his fork into a pile of manure and heaved it into the waiting wagon, then shoved again, with a smooth
economy of motion born of years of hard work.
“I’m not honest because it’s commendable,” he said, without breaking his shove-and-heave rhythm. “I’m honest because lies hurt more. Especially to the person who tells them. So, really, it’s selfish that I’m being honest.”
The sheriff was quiet a moment. “Son, how do you tackle trouble?”
Nathan stopped and stared at the sheriff, but saw no hint to the sheriff’s train of thought. He shrugged and returned to shoving and heaving. “I try to solve today’s problems before they become tomorrow’s trouble.”
That evening as Nathan sat on his rocker, a breeze freshened the air and he reflected on the exchange he’d had with the sheriff that afternoon. He’d had no idea it was a job interview.
He looked forward to reporting for his new job the next day.
Chapter Fifteen
1924
“What is that? Where did you get it?” The words escaped Nathan’s lips before he could restrain himself, his voice little more than a startled rasp. He had been working on updating paperwork with the department’s secretary, Jean, when his boss entered the small station carrying a three by four foot painting. Having caught sight of what the painting depicted, his breath caught. He abandoned the paperwork and skirted around his desk to secure a closer look.
The sheriff startled at Nathan’s tone, but continued into the building, closed the door behind him and walked to his desk. Propping the painting against the wall, he turned back to Nathan, his brows drawing down in concern. “Son, you okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“That painting,” Nathan said studying the faces of Anabelle and Richard Wallace. “Where did it come from?”
“Seen it before, have ya?”
Nathan took a calming breath and shrugged. He needed to hold his expression in check. Too much curiosity would raise too many questions. “Looks familiar. The woman, I mean. Not the painting.”