by Dana Roquet
I have seen a couple of photographs of Mr. Baitsell before, but he had been in a group shot of influential merchants taken for a biography about Mahaska County written in 1911. This was my first true look at the man who was of medium height, slim and well-dressed in a clean white linen dress shirt and a black broadcloth vest. He had a pleasant, non-descript ordinary face and a kind smile that lit his gray eyes. It was obvious to me that he enjoyed the little formality of bartering very much.
“What do you say, Miss Lucy? Do we have us a deal?” Mr. Baitsell asked in a businesslike manner while he took up a graphite pencil and touched the pencil tip to his tongue, then poised it over his receipt book waiting patiently for her decision.
I glanced over at Lucy to watch her as she seemed to be weighing her options in her mind. She turned and took a peek at the girls behind us before she looked up into Mr. Baitsell’s eyes with steely decision which was apparent by the straightening of her back and squaring of her slim shoulders.
“You have a deal, Mr. Baitsell. Thank you kindly,” Lucy said every bit as businesslike with an added curt nod, before she looked over at me and grinned, excitedly grabbing for my hand and squeezing it tight.
I absolutely love my grandaunt Lucy, especially at this pre-teen exuberant age. I have found that she had been very precocious from an early age, with a sunny disposition and full of the wonder of life, like a newborn puppy, finding joy in every moment of simply being alive.
She had been clever and gifted at playing music on the upright piano that had been kept in the front room of Alice and Henry’s house, she had been a good sister to her siblings, a help to Henry and Alice, a good friend. She did have a couple of dislikes, such as her naturally-curly brown hair that fell in ringlets down her back, and she didn’t like weeding the garden overly much and she didn’t like singing in the choir at church on Sunday because she didn’t think that she had a good enough singing voice. For the most part though, I always know that spending time with Lucy in a time travel means it is bound to be an adventure because she is just so much fun to spend time with, especially when I also get to be a child.
She held my hand tightly in hers now while Mr. Baitsell transferred the eggs from our basket to another one cushioned with linen and displayed on the end of the countertop and then he handed ours back to me which I slid up to hold dangling in the crook of my arm while Mr. Baitsell came around the counter and took up our bucket of butter walking across the room to a large floor scale.
“Seven pounds,” he announced and then took an empty bucket from a stack standing beside the scale, bringing it over and setting it at our feet, before returning to his place behind the counter.
“Now let me just tell you all right now that I plan to pay the same twelve cents per pound and two cents per egg again for the first batch to arrive next week. Anna and Betsy, I am afraid that you will get ten cents per pound and one cent per egg. Of course, you could see if the Fremont General Store will pay more,” he offered magnanimously.
“We’ll take the ten cents, Mr. Baitsell,” one of the girls said sullenly.
I noticed at that moment the young pre-teenaged boy sitting off to the side behind the counter with his arms folded across his chest, trying not to show his amusement at the situation playing out before him as a smile warred for control of his expressive, homely face. He was the store owner’s son, Johnnie Baitsell and I recognized him easily and had a lump in my throat as I goggled at him in amazement.
Johnnie Baitsell is buried in the Cedar Township Cemetery in Fremont and I’d had the single most exasperating time trying to locate his grave. I had known that he had to be buried there because I’d found his name on the list from the WPA grave registration survey. That survey had been conducted in the 1930’s when the government, in an effort to create jobs for citizens during the Great Depression, had hired people to, among other things, walk the cemeteries and record the headstone information for every person buried in Iowa. That information, by the way, has become an invaluable resource for genealogy buffs like me.
I had doggedly kept searching the cemetery for Johnnie every time that I had come to work on my research but always to no avail. Then one day on impulse I had squeezed around behind his parents headstone which is on the furthest east edge of the cemetery in the very last row of graves and up against the barbed wire fencing that butts up right against the woods, and low and behold there on the backside of his parent’s headstone was Johnnie’s information, along with that of his half-brother and baby sister who had also been on my list of graves that were MIA.
Johnnie died when he was fifteen-years-old, from consumption which is the name for the end stage of tuberculosis, far away from his home in Iowa, down in Texas, where his mother had taken him for the warmer climate in hopes of restoring his health. I have his obituary which describes how he and his mother had decided to come home to Iowa but his doctor had advised and persuaded them to remain in Texas for just one more week. They had agreed and only four days later Johnnie had died, cradled in his mother’s arms and he had never laid eyes on his home or his family again. His last words as his mother had held him close were, “Praise God.” His mother had returned by train a few days later bringing his coffined body home to his eternal rest at Cedar Township Cemetery. His story has always stayed with me because it was so very sad but also because of another strange twist and an amazing story in itself.
I know that the boy I am looking at right now is Johnnie Baitsell because I have his portrait and it came about in a very peculiar way. There was a man who lives out in California and at almost the exact same time that I was finally discovering Johnnie’s grave in Iowa, this man had been browsing for collectables at a flea market in San Francisco. At a booth selling old original tintypes, the image of a well-dressed homely boy with slightly too big ears had caught his eye and totally piqued his interest when he had turned the tintype over and had found scrawled across the back the words ‘Johnnie Baitsell, Mahaska County’. Thinking that he could perhaps do some investigating and discover the story behind it, he had purchased the tintype and in a short amount of time he had come upon my online memorial for Johnnie and had added the portrait.
The coincidences of me finding Johnnie’s grave and the man finding his photograph in California almost simultaneously more than a century after he had passed away and now this; seeing him here alive before my very eyes, gave me a rush of goose flesh up my arms and the hairs prickled at the nape of my neck. This is a meeting that I will forever treasure and an amazing alignment of the fates.
Johnnie’s father motioned to him now, and he jumped nimbly down from the stool he had been perched upon and came around the counter to collect the other bucket of butter and eggs from the girls. He counted the eggs as he carefully placed them into the display at the end of the counter.
“Eight,” he announced, handing the basket back to one of the girls. He then took up their bucket of butter, setting in on the scale.
“Six pounds,” Johnnie reported in the strong soprano voice of a young boy, having not yet begun to change. He brought an empty metal bucket to the girls and then carrying both of the buckets of butter, walked off and disappeared through a door that was likely the entrance to a store room.
I was hoping that he would return so that I could perhaps speak with him but in the meantime I wanted to try and pin down the exact date of this experience. I calculated that by his appearance and voice, Johnnie was at least a few years away from his being fifteen, but I couldn’t remember the year that he died, even though I could clearly see the black granite headstone in my mind’s eye. All that I knew for sure was that he had definitely died after 1900.
I strolled over to the stack of newspapers that Mr. Baitsell had on his countertop and looked upside down at the date on the front page of the Fremont Gazette which was likely still a weekly edition newspaper at this point in history, rather than daily. The date at the far right read May 7, 1903. I tucked this bit of information away, knowing that I’d ne
ed to figure this all out once I got back home but for now though, I held the basket and bucket while Lucy accepted the money for our barter.
I looked longingly around one last time for Johnnie as we prepared to go but he never reappeared and as we turned around to face the other girls, I felt a twinge of pity as I looked at their down-heartened expressions and I smiled at them kindly.
“Maybe next time,” I said encouragingly as Lucy and I walked past them and through the door and out to the street.
When we came out of the general store, I saw that Great-Grandfather Henry Mills was waiting just down the street in a small open buggy with a two-horse team and my heart soared upon seeing him. We climbed up into the buggy beside him and it was a nice cool morning for a pleasant little drive back to Fremont. Grandpa Henry was very proud of us for getting the best price for our produce and he assured us that Alice would be very proud of us as well. I know that it sounds silly, but his nurturing appreciation for Lucy and me gave me such a warm feeling and swelled my self-esteem and I know, intellectually, that it was my sensing Cousin Rose’s emotions that I was feeling as her uncle praised her but it always feels like what I am experiencing in my travels, the emotions that are soul deep within those I inhabit are somehow mine also, to enjoy, to keep and to cherish. Grandpa Henry had been a very loving and nurturing man and I never heard anything but the highest praise from him, for all of the children in his life.
Chapter 19
Wearily, I lifted the remote control, pointed it at the television, and clicked the set off. As my hand fell back into my lap as if suddenly too heavy to even lift, I glanced up at the mantel clock above the fireplace and sighed deeply and audibly. Already 3:00 p.m. and I haven’t even dressed for the day and I still need to get my lazy butt off of this couch and in to Oskaloosa. I perused the impressive stack of DVDs assembled upon my coffee table and had the thought occur to me that if this ridiculousness wasn’t a very serious attempt on my part to find some desperately needed answers, it would almost be funny—almost.
I’d spent this entire day on the couch watching the first Harry Potter movie, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Butterfly Effect, Ghost (starring Patrick Swayze), and an entire season of The Ghost Whisperer. This is the level of foolishness that I’ve resorted to, as I try to figure out why I’m being haunted every night in my dreams and how on earth I am ever going to make it stop or at least get some kind of control over it!
Actually, the minuscule amount of thought provoking information leached from these paranormal shows is better than anything else I’ve found while spending endless wasted hours surfing the Internet. Maybe it is like The Ghost Whisperer and all about spirits trying to get me to help them in some way, which I am more than willing to do, but unfortunately nobody is telling me what he or she wants from me. Then again, maybe it’s simply spirits trying to scare me the hell out of Fremont never to return, except that no one is scaring or threatening me from the great beyond, on the contrary, with each experience, those from the past endear themselves to me all the more completely.
“Well, alrighty then, Torie, old girl, on to the second phase of your all-day crazy-a-thon!” I said out loud to myself sarcastically. “What an absolutely perfect way to while away a late July afternoon.”
The second phase of my plan is going to be a little more scientific and a little less science fiction. That being, to try and find a concrete means of documenting the time warps and to measure the effect that the travels are having on me physically. I am already well aware of the most uncomfortable of these effects which can vary depending on the length of the travel but usually include ravenous hunger and thirst bordering on dehydration or conversely a near bursting bladder if I’d had too many fluids before going to bed. And once I’d even gotten my period in the night ruining my clothes and not even that had broken through this trance or whatever the hell it is that I’m stuck in every night.
All of these were rather insignificant problems when compared with the other frightening thoughts that had occurred to me recently, regarding what could happen while I’m trapped in the past. Such as, what if a burglar or murderer breaks into the place or what if a fire breaks out? I am totally gone every night and envisioning horrors such as me lying in my bed while my house goes up in flames around me or a raging tornado bears down on the place while I’m totally comatose—were causing me to experience an ever increasing phobia. Even if I were to have a minor medical condition such as the stomach flu, I could totally choke to death on my own vomit while in my helpless time warp state. These fearful thoughts were scaring the hell out of me and if anything was going to chase me out of Fremont and my beloved home, it was going to be my paranoid imaginings of all of the ‘what ifs.’
While doing some reading up on the physiological aspects of the problem, I’d found that the bottom line is—what I am experiencing is not the way that the brain and the body are supposed to interact. The brain is supposed to always be working even when you’re asleep, playing overnight sentry and always on guard and monitoring internal and external information and stimuli, assessing the importance of the information and allowing those things to get through and wake you up when the brain determines that something needs to be taken care of. But ever since I’ve started warping, as I’d proved with my blaring stereo experiments, nothing is getting through to me—absolutely nothing.
I thought that it might be helpful for me to be able to see exactly what is going on with my body while I’m asleep, to see if there are any signs or changes that happen when a travel begins, any indicator that signals that a warp is imminent so that perhaps I can isolate those triggers and maybe stop myself from going. Highly unlikely I know, but at the very least I’ll be able to see exactly what my body is doing while I’m gone.
I roused myself slowly from the couch and shuffled on upstairs to get cleaned up and to dress. I chose a bright-multi-colored tee shirt and hot-pink short shorts to offset my heavy doldrums and with stalwart determination, I hurried back downstairs, picked up my armful of Redbox returns, threw on my flip-flops and headed out to make a run to the Walmart store in Oskaloosa to buy a top of the line camcorder with night vision and with at least a ten-hour memory capacity and a tripod.
***
I had made my way to the checkout line, following after an extremely knowledgeable salesclerk who’d helped me to find everything that I needed and who was required to walk the expensive items up to the front check out for me, and I’d just gotten into line when I felt a light touch on my shoulder and turned around.
“What are you doing here?” I asked in surprise.
“Hey, boss,” Dave said with a warm smile. “Long time no see.”
I nearly dropped my purse in my excitement at seeing him and had to grab for it before it spilled its contents at his feet and then I laughed self-consciously and impulsively reached out to give him a quick hug, which he returned easily.
“Mr. Cameron, where have you been keeping yourself lately?” I asked while trying to regain my composure.
“I’m working on a restoration over in Ottumwa. Where have you been keeping yourself?” he asked in response. “I haven’t seen you since that night at the diner.”
I turned away briefly to place the rest of my items for purchase on the checkout counter and when I returned my attention to him I saw that his eyes were scanning my body but lifted to mine at once and he grinned without discomposure and shrugged an eyebrow at me in acknowledgement of his being caught in the act of checking out my ass, but we both left it at that.
“I keep meaning to ask you but never seem to remember; how’s that closet I made for you working out?” he asked, still grinning.
“I know that you thought that I was crazy for that and it was going to be a wall safe and then it became an experiment of sorts,” I could have bit my tongue for so foolishly blurting that out. What the hell was I doing?
“I’m intrigued. What kind of experiment?” he asked with more interest.
“Oh, nothing,”
I said quickly, dismissing the subject with a flap of my hand as if flicking away a pesky fly.
“We should get together soon,” I said in order to change the subject.
In spite of my idiotic awkward remark I smiled up at him and realized that I really had missed seeing him over the last couple of weeks. With the exception of an annual gynecological exam and a dental checkup in Des Moines, I hadn’t been much of anywhere or seen anyone since Mindy’s visit, oh—except for the UPS man bringing me items that I’d bid on and won on eBay, as I’ve continued to gather the makings of my macabre world inside Grandma Rose’s house. During my warps I might see perhaps a piece of furniture, a book, a utensil and then research them, locating many of the exact antique items online for purchase.
“Hey, you know the state fair is coming up in August. What do ya say? Could I possibly interest you in a night at the fair? Or a daytime trip if you prefer,” Dave asked.
I swiped my credit card through the machine and signed for my purchase as I answered.
“That sounds perfect—I love the fair. How about we make it the first weekend, Saturday in the late afternoon and right on through the evening?” I asked as the cashier thanked me and I took up my bags of camcorder and accessories.
“That’s the absolute best time of day,” Dave nodded in agreement.
I waited for him while he paid for his box of finish nails and a pack of spearmint gum, and then we walked out of the store together and out into the parking lot.
“Why don’t you give me a call before then so that we can confirm?” I said, stopping in the parking lot in the middle ground between our two vehicles that were parked several rows away from each other. “You still have my number?”
“Of course, you’re on speed dial,” he said and held up his cell phone as if to prove it and gave me a dazzling wide, dimpled grin.
