Now & Then

by Jacqueline Sheehan

  Glenis gazed off to the right, as if she was picturing all her family and friends.

  “Well, let’s see,” pondered Glenis. “With the exception of a few of our very old ones—Mr. Healy in particular, who said he had religious reasons for not smuggling—then yes, everyone you’ve met runs this or that through Tom and me. We take the goods first to my cousin, and then he splits the lot up, figuring where his best market is, then he does the rest.”

  “What would happen if the British discovered this lively enterprise?”

  Glenis reached for Anna’s hand and held it between her hot and urgent palms. “If they found us out, first it would be prison for both of us. They’d take the house and all we own. They’d burn it down as a way to stick a spike into our souls. Then, if they found the crime heinous, they’d hang us. Michael is twelve, so they might take him as well, leaving the two little ones to fend for themselves.”

  If Anna could have picked a sister, she would have picked Glenis. And if she could pick a friend, it would also be this sweet-faced smuggler, braving everything to take a risk with Anna.

  “You’re the first outsider who is not vested by blood, and you’ve caused a fair amount of consternation. We’ve taken a great chance with you. You could turn us in; half of County Cork is praying that you won’t.”

  They walked on, holding hands like schoolgirls, until they found a suitably flat stone wall to sit on. Glenis glanced back at the horse, who seemed to be resting on three legs while he held one hoof to the ground like a ballerina on point. Anna opened her top buttons a bit and faced the sun.

  “But why would the British put any worth in what I had to say? They are none too fond of Americans. We bested them in our revolution, against all odds, and countries have long memories,” said Anna.

  Glenis sighed. “You’re as dense as a stone about some things. I didn’t say I thought you’d turn us in. I said some frightful nervous ones said so. I know you won’t. I’ve seen you teaching our wee bairns, better than any of the teachers at the hedge schools. They’ll be bloody scientists by the time you’re done with them.”

  Glenis stood up and kicked the heel of her boot against a rock to chip off some turf. “It’s the smuggling, don’t you see? You could help us. We trade with American and French ships, but we’ve recently lost our best American trader; he said it’s too awful dangerous. You could help us find a new market in America, I know you could. When you go home, that is. I have a feeling about you that you could make the right connections. You said yourself that you work with lawyers.”

  Anna had explained to Glenis that she was a secretary of sorts to lawyers; she’d hoped it had been plausible. Now Anna wanted to laugh. Going home. Just how was she supposed to do that? She didn’t understand how she’d gotten here, how she had spiraled through a watery conduit of time. The sudden mention of home turned her mouth sour with longing and choked off any laughter.

  “Oh, Glennie, I would help you in a heartbeat, I swear I would, but I can’t.” Anna turned her palms up and shrugged her shoulders in a pitiful gesture not befitting the moment.

  Glenis looked like she had been struck hard, then quickly brushed at the seat of her skirt.

  “Aye, of course. I should not have asked. Yeah, well, let’s be going on. The road to my cousin’s house is a far way still.”

  What had it cost her to ask Anna for help? Anna pictured her standing toe to toe with Tom, convincing him that the American could be trusted, that she’d help them. Glenis had risked her standing with friends and family only to be turned down by the woman she had nursed back from the brink of death. Glenis walked off with a stiff gait. Anna jumped off the stone wall and rushed to catch up with her. She grabbed Glenis’s arm.

  “It’s not just that I’m from America…,” started Anna.

  “No, but that’s why I asked you, because you’re from there.”

  Glenis was red in the face, her lips tight, her brow brewing dark.

  “Listen, it’s not that at all. I’m going to tell you something that you’ll probably not believe, but you mustn’t tell anyone else. Will you promise?”

  Glenis nodded.

  “I want you to swear on something. Swear on your children, your husband, all that you hold dear,” said Anna.

  “Right. I swear that what you are about to tell me shall remain with me. I swear on my three sweet wee ones and all those to come.”

  All the moisture in Anna’s mouth evaporated, and her tongue was dry and useless. She had longed to tell someone, and the one person she’d wanted to tell was standing directly in front of her. This moment would change everything, and Anna had no road map for how it would go. She popped a smooth stone into her mouth and sucked hard on it to get some saliva going.

  “I’m not from this time,” she began. “I’m from the future, so far into the future that you could not imagine. That’s why…that’s why I can’t help you. I don’t know one soul back in America as it is right now. I’d be as lost there as I am here. That’s why there has been no answer to my letter.”

  Glenis softened first in her eyes, followed by the spreading of her overtaxed brow. Her lips relaxed and gradually parted.

  “I never meant to tell you,” Anna continued. “I thought I could see my way out of this without having to tell you because I know how insane this sounds, how preposterous, and there’s no reason for you to believe me,” said Anna.

  Glenis still did not speak; she appeared to be held fast by the earth. Anna had the sensation that Glenis had turned into a hard drive from a massive computer, and her brain was spinning, searching back through every moment since Anna had washed ashore.

  “This is where you should say something. I won’t be able to stand it if you keep staring at me,” said Anna.

  Glenis shook her head a bit as if to clear off debris that had settled on her. “Well, you’ll need to give me a moment. I’m trying to fathom all that you’ve said, and I’m leaning in the direction of a very big blow to your head that we didn’t rightly account for in your troubles. The future? That’s a grave matter if it’s true and not one that I’ve ever run into. How far into the future do you reckon you’re from, and how do you know it’s the future? And can I have a look at your head please, because there could be a scabbie gash that we’ve long ignored.”

  What could Anna say that would make it clear that the problem was not a brain injury, a traumatically induced delusion about the future? And would Anna ever in a million years have believed someone from her own time who’d said they were from the future?

  “I don’t understand how this happened, how my nephew and I were ripped from one time and tossed into another. I’m missing too many pieces. Here’s what I do know: I know that my people come from Ireland, that they immigrated to America some time after the Famine. Scratch that, I shouldn’t tell you about the future, your future here in Ireland. Everything in me says that telling someone about the future is wrong.”

  “What now, you mean about there being a famine? We’ve had famines all along. Crops fail, that’s the way of it. We had a famine when I was a babe; my mother said it was the result of too much bitterness in the world, too much greed and so forth. She was a bit old-fashioned. Tom said it was because there was too much damp and cold at all the wrong times,” said Glenis.

  Anna had to be more careful about blabbing things about the future. She simply had nothing to show Glenis to prove her story, not even the scraps of fabric that she’d had on when she’d been found. The waistband and the scrap of T-shirt were odd, but they weren’t substantial enough to prove time travel. And telling Glenis about the disasters that were in store for Ireland would do nothing to help. Nor would explaining to her about airplanes, rockets, computers, or cell phones.

  Then Anna had an idea. She spit out the pebble. “I want you to look into my mouth and look at my teeth. Tell me what you see,” she instructed Glenis. She opened her mouth wide and bent down so that Glenis could take a proper look.

  “Like I’ve said bef
ore, you have abnormally straight teeth. As if someone straightened them for you. And most remarkably, you have all your teeth and not a bit of rot on any of them.”

  “Right. And I’m thirty-four years old. Do you know anyone else with all their teeth and not a black spot on any of them?”

  “Not a grown person, no. And for women, we lose a tooth for every child that we bear. I’ve lost two teeth already, so I’m due to lose another any moment. And you do have the most starlit teeth, not a stain on them, and all lined up like fence posts, straight fence posts. But none of that means you’re from the future, dearie.”

  Anna had to break her own rule, which, she imagined, was a universal rule for time travelers. It had to be. If she was going to make Glenis understand (and now she almost wished she had never started down the road of telling her about the future), then she would have to prove it. If she told Glenis most things about the future, Glenis would fall down laughing.

  “In my time, in America, most children go to special physicians, called dentists, and if their teeth are naturally crooked, the teeth are straightened with metal bands that force the teeth into line. Not all children, you must have something called health insurance. Well, let’s skip that part. And all children brush their teeth several times a day and almost none of the kids get cavities and almost everyone gets to keep all their teeth. This is all greatly simplified, but you asked me to tell you one thing about the future. Your knowing that one thing probably won’t turn the universe inside out.”

  Glenis said, “Let me look inside your mouth again.”

  This time, Anna sat down on the ground, crossed her legs, and opened her mouth. Glenis got on one knee and looked and looked while Anna patiently kept her mouth wide open, turning this way and that as Glenis requested. When Glenis was fully satisfied, she sat back on her haunches.

  “Tis a grand sight in there,” she said.

  Anna rubbed her stiff jaws. “Can you consider the possibility that I am from some other time, a time other than this one?” asked Anna.

  “And you’re telling me this confabulation to explain why you can’t help us smuggle our goods to American ships?”

  “No, I mean yes, partly yes. I can’t help you find markets for your goods because I’m not from the America of right now. Don’t you see? I’m from a time so much after this and I’m telling you because I trust you and I need your help. There must be someone who understands how this has happened, someone who can help me. Once I find Joseph, we have to go back, or forward. I’m like anyone else, Glennie. I want to go home.”

  “Whether you’re from today or tomorrow, we can’t sit in the dirt all day debating it. We’ve got to find a safe house on this side of Clonakilty before dark. I expect they know we’re coming. And it’s another day to Skibbereen, where we can unload.”

  The two women dusted off their skirts and returned to the wagon filled with thatch, as well as goods to be smuggled off the Beara Peninsula. O’Connell the horse started up the moment Glenis released the brake handle.

  “God, he is like Daniel O’Connell, like the uncrowned king of Ireland,” said Glenis. As if to prove her point, the horse tossed his head and stepped smartly.

  Glenis gave the reins a smart snap and the horse strained against his harness to set a good pace. Then Tom’s perfectly hammered, spoked, and balanced wheels began to roll and O’Connell the horse settled into a steady pace.

  Anna turned to look back at the bound thatch that overflowed from the back of the wagon.

  “Should I ask what we carry in the thatch?”

  “It’s nothing so bad that you can’t know,” said Glenis. “We’re not running guns, if that’s what you mean. We’re trying to survive, that’s the way of it. But if you don’t know, you’ll never be able to tell the English if they capture you and threaten to imprison you or hang you or worse. So I leave it to you. Do you want to know or not?”

  “Not,” said Anna, turning to look forward again, her left leg pressed against the right thigh of this young woman, wife, mother, smuggler.

  But she was unable to stop herself from knowing; the lawyer in her spoke up.

  “What is it that you trade for with the French and the Americans? I want to know.”

  “Often what we receive is whiskey, I’m sorry to say, and the market for whiskey is without ending. Besides, with the thumb of England on us in all ways imaginable, whiskey is one thing that the men crave. In all their fiery animal anger that cannot be set loose, there is always whiskey.”

  That night, Glenis and Anna rode through Clonakilty aware that O’Connell the horse badly needed food, rest, and water, although he’d given no sign.

  “We’ve many places along the way where we’re welcome,” said Glenis.

  They stopped at the western edge of the village, turning up a hill to a stone cottage that had a vigilant vantage point. Anna’s exhaustion from riding a full day in a wagon hit her hard, pulling the shade down on her brain. Glenis pulled the wagon behind the cottage and under the protection of a three-sided barn. She unhitched the horse.

  “Go inside, Anna. They’ll put food down for you and show you where to bed. I can see you’re done clear through to the bone.”

  Anna wanted dearly not to speak, not to explain. Not even her constant hunger could motivate her to join in with the family of children and grannies and parents who stood expectantly by the hearth as she entered.

  “Is there a place to sleep?” she said. She sounded abrupt and rude, so unlike the Irish.

  “Oh, yes,” said the woman of the house. “Himself and I will sleep outside with your wagonload, and you and Glenis will take our bed, such as it is. That’s the way it shall go. We’ll keep a good eye on the horse as well. Now sit down; I can see you think you’re too beyond to eat, but that’s all the more reason to fill up. You’ve a far way to go tomorrow.”

  Anna obeyed and sat down in front of a bowl of potatoes and buttermilk. To her surprise, she devoured it, tilting the bowl up to her lips to gain the last of it. When she placed the bowl back on the table and wiped her mouth with her sleeve, she paused with wrist in midair as she looked up to the astonished faces of the family. The woman stirred to action, breaking the spell.

  “There’s never such a fine compliment of a woman’s cooking,” she said and graciously ladled more into Anna’s bowl.

  Anna was so grateful for the bed, the memory of her own mattress at home now only a hazy image, a fable from another time that even she found difficult to embrace. She took off her boots and her outer skirt and blouse, down to a light shift. She heard Glenis’s voice in the main room of the house, the murmur of it, the sureness of Glenis, Anna’s constant companion since slipping through time. And now, everything depended on Glenis. Whether Glenis believed her or not, thought her insane or not, she was the one person Anna had trusted enough to tell. Glenis the smuggler, Anna the time traveler.

  But more people than not were smugglers, links on the perilous black market under England’s iron fist. A worm of fear started low in Anna’s belly, wrapped itself around her spine, laid eggs along her heart and throat. What if Glenis discarded her, tossed her out, what if she was worth nothing to Glenis in the brutal black market trade? Was she worth anything at all to Glenis and Tom now? Her head smoked and sputtered, giving off electrical charges of panic.

  Glenis opened the creaky door and stepped into the dark room. The ever-present scent of peat smoke followed her. She let her dress fall to the floor with a hiss and climbed into the small bed with careful movements.

  “I’m awake,” said Anna. She rolled onto her side to face Glenis.

  They looked at each other, nose to nose, eyes glowing in the dark. Had Anna ever dared look this far into someone, let them see into her?

  “It’s all right now,” said Glenis, using her hand to wipe a gush of tears that had filled the pocket of Anna’s eye and run along the edge of her nose. “We’ll reckon our way through this. It’s a fantastic story, truly it is, what you’ve told me today. I can
see you’re thinking I’ll toss you back into the ocean with the fish guts. We’re survivors here, we survive anything. Give me a few days of thinking. You’re all right, Anna. Go to sleep now.”

  Chapter 22

  They had one more night before they reached Skibbereen and their weary wagonload could be delivered. They misjudged, however, so that by dark, they were nowhere near a village.

  “I’ve traveled this road so many times that it’s a wonder I need to keep my eyes open. Yet I’ve left us without a safe haven for sleeping. You’re shattered from this journey; I can see it, sister,” said Glenis. She stopped the horse and stood up in the wagon. It was the dark of the moon, and Anna could see nothing at all. She couldn’t imagine that Glenis could see beyond O’Connell.

  “We can’t leave the cart, that’s the main thing. But I promise you if we go on a bit longer there’s a lane that will take us up the hill to an abandoned place. We can pull behind it and not be seen,” she said.

  She was right. Glenis and the horse worked as one, each responding to the path beneath them. Glenis’s touch was light on the reins as she nickered to O’Connell, letting him take the lead.

  “Carry on, O’Connell. You’ve been this way before, that’s it. I know you’re far wearier than we are. Take us in, you great beast.”

  And O’Connell did. Anna saw the stuttered black outline of a ruined building, massive hunks of stone revealing a door, then a window, and small section of roof. When they stopped, she heard the light trill of water, and her own thirst awakened with a lurch. After they unhitched the horse and let him graze with a long tether, both women sank their faces into the spring that bubbled beyond the ruins.