The Sun, the Moon, and Maybe the Trains

by Rodney Jones

  Play twenty-first century? “You think I’m playing?”

  “It was fun; don’t get me wrong. You’re fun. But really, who are you? John Bartley? That’s not really your name, is it? And where do you live? Oh, yeah, Hooterville… just down the road from Jed and Elly May Clampett. And those coins… your clothes… it’s all a little weird, but I don’t mind weird now and then. I mean, fun weird. So tell me.”

  If someone showed up at my uncle’s house, saying he was from a hundred years ago, who in their right mind would believe them? I had no proof, whereas Tess had all those… those things everywhere. I had the coins, but they really didn’t prove anything. “Tess, I’m not playing with you. I’m not lying. And I’m darn sure not crazy. I’m telling you, something happened up there on that mountain yesterday. Something…”

  From the look on her face, I couldn’t be sure she understood a word I said. “Tess?”

  “What?”

  “I’m not playing with you.”

  “You don’t really believe you’re from 1875.”

  “I’m dead certain I am.”

  “Oh, come on. Give me a break.”

  “It’s the year it was yesterday morning when I rose from my bed.”

  “Okay.”

  I waited for her to say more, but then realized she wasn’t going to. “Tess, you have my word on it.”

  “Oh. Your word.” Her eyes seemed tired. “Tell me something about Greendale. Like, just exactly where is this place?”

  I pointed toward the mountain behind her. “I’d say it’s about—”

  “No, wait. I’ll be right back.” She got up and disappeared into the house, then returned a few moments later, thumbing through the pages of a large book. She pushed my glass of Coke drink to the side of the table, and laid down an atlas opened to a map of Vermont.

  I moved in closer and immediately spotted Rutland and then Weston. The roads luckily bore some resemblance to those I knew. “Where are the names?”

  “The names?”

  “I don’t see the names of the roads here.”

  Tess leaned in and pointed. “There’s Route 7. See? And 140. What are you looking for?”

  “County Road.”

  “Does it have a number?”

  “I don’t believe so.”

  “Well, where on the map would it be?”

  “Right here, going north and south through Weston. Is this maybe it?”

  “Uh, we need a better map. This just has the major roads. Come on. We’ll look it up online.”

  She led me to a room filled with some of the most unusual contraptions I had ever seen. I watched as Tess bent down and touched a white box sitting on the floor below a desk. She rolled a chair alongside the one already at the desk. I heard a little toot, some very faint clicks and churnings, then another toot. Tiny green, blue, and yellow lights started blinking and flickering everywhere. After a faint snap, words appeared on a panel the size of a checkerboard standing upright on the desk.

  She nudged a chair toward me. “Have a seat.”

  “What is that?”

  “That, my dear Neanderthal, is a figuring-things-out machine.”

  The panel glowed blue, a musical chime sounded, and then the word Welcome appeared.

  “Figuring things out.” I looked around. Cables of different colors and sizes ran from one machine to the next.

  “Yes. I’m going to see if I can figure you out. Sit.”

  I sat in the chair next to her and stared at the glowing panel as it changed from one thing to another, on and on, until Tess took hold of a small egg-shaped device and began moving it about, tapping it with her index finger. The panel turned bright white, and then Google appeared toward the top, each letter a different color. Tess placed both her hands on a tray with rows of tiny black tiles—letters, numbers, and odd symbols covering the entire surface of it.

  “Greendale… Vermont.” She rapidly tapped the tiles like someone at a miniature piano. Greendale and then VT appeared on the panel in a little box. She moved the egg and tapped on it. “Greendale… there we go, Greendale Road, Greendale Camping, Greendale Brook, Weston, Vermont. So Greendale… huh. Where is it?”

  “All that’s in there?” I pointed at the glowing panel.

  “MapQuest.”

  As she moved the egg, I noticed the little white arrow moving across the panel. Her hands went to the tiled box, her fingers tapped at the letters.

  “There’s a tile for each letter of the alphabet?”

  She stopped and turned toward me. “What?”

  “That thing there”—I pointed—“a tile for each letter of the alphabet?”

  “You just don’t give up, do you?”

  “How do they get from there to there like that?”

  “Is this a test?” The panel suddenly changed again. “Okay, there’s a Greendale Brook, Vermont, but it can’t find a Greendale town or village.”

  She tapped the egg, and the panel changed again. The picture that came up resembled a map with a tiny red star in the middle. I leaned in close. I could see the word Weston just below the star, and Londonderry and South Londonderry below that. It resembled a road map without the rivers and mountains.

  Tess pointed to the star. “Is that Greendale?”

  “That is… incredible.”

  “Yeah, but is it Greendale?”

  I studied the map for a few moments and realized the star was about two miles from where Greendale should be, but there was no mark of any kind at its correct location. “No, it ain’t right.”

  “Is it anywhere on this map?”

  I put my fingertip on the panel. “It should be right about there.”

  She tapped the egg thing, and the place I pointed at moved to the center of the panel. The map changed again. I wasn’t sure what it was doing. I looked more closely. A squiggly set of lines had Greendale Road on them, with a fork at the end, but neither road going anywhere.

  She put her hand back on the egg thing. “I’ll zoom out a little.”

  The same fork was displayed on a smaller scale. I could see where Greendale should be, but it wasn’t there. I pointed. “That’s where it is, right there.”

  “Missington,” she said.

  “What?”

  “That’s what it should be called—Missington.”

  “It doesn’t say Greendale because it’s wrong. I can assure you, it’s wrong. That’s where I live, right there. There’s a river that comes down the mountain along here, but I don’t see that either. And I don’t see the West River.”

  “Well, I know the West River. This program doesn’t include geographical information, just roads for finding directions to places.”

  “Program?”

  “Eighteen seventy-five, huh? Okay, John, tell me, who was president in 1875?”

  “Ulysses Grant is.”

  “Ha! I got you. He was just after Lincoln. I got you there!” Her hazel eyes danced.

  “Johnson was after Lincoln,” I said.

  “Oh, right. Right. We’ll see about that.” She fiddled with the egg again, then tapped the tiles until the words “U.S. presidents” were in the box below the colorful Google. The panel changed to printed words, some in blue, some black, and some green. “Wait a minute. I don’t want you to see this. This may have your test answers all over it. Move your chair over there, and face the wall.”

  In the interest of possibly convincing her, I did as told.

  “Okay. Just a second. Here we are. Hmm. You are… a hundred percent… correct. Huh. So, let’s see. Who was before Grant?”

  I turned, but didn’t say anything.

  “Andrew Johnson.” She twisted her face in such a way that made me snort. “Yeah, smart ass, all right. Get this one right, and I’ll be a believer. Who was the vice president in 1875?”

  My eyes were on hers. I’d never in my life met anyone like her—so pretty, yet so ill-mannered.

  “Turn around. No looking.”

  I gazed toward a blank white
wall. “Henry Wilson is, but it was Schuyler Colfax during Grant’s first term.”

  She was quiet for several moments. I wasn’t sure what she was doing. Then, “Oh, my… how…? Are you looking?” I could hear her chair squeaking as she turned my way.

  “I’ve had my eyes on this wall from the moment you said I should. I ain’t ever cheated on a test.” A tiny white lie.

  Tess got up from her chair, came over to where I was sitting, and looked toward the panel.

  “Damn, John, there’s no way. How do you…? Did you memorize this stuff before you came?”

  I turned and looked up at her. I couldn’t think of anything to say that I hadn’t already.

  She had a twisted frown on her face. “You couldn’t have known I’d ask you that. But wait. Wait. One more. I’ve got one more for you. I’ll ask and then look it up. The governor of Vermont in 1875.”

  “Uh, what is his name? Uh… um… I can’t recall his first name. It’s an odd name, starts with an A, but Peck—that’s his surname, Peck. And Julius Converse before him, both Republicans. I shook Mr. Converse’s hand one time, as a matter of fact. I was, maybe, thirteen. He and his wife. If I recall right, her name is Jane. They came to our church in Weston one time. It was mid-spring, after the big flood. All of Weston and South Londonderry were flooded real bad. Snowmelt and rain. The West River, you know? My brother was with us then, and we all spent several days down in Weston helping clean up the mess.”

  While I’d been jabbering, Tess was in her chair tapping tiles. “Mind if I have a look?” I asked.

  “Oh, sorry. Move over here.” She motioned to the spot beside her.

  I rolled the chair alongside hers and peered at the screen.

  “Okay, Asahel… Peck. Jesus.” She read some more. “Jesus Christ, John! How the hell? Converse… married Jane Elvira Martin. Uh…” She turned my way. At first, her eyes couldn’t seem to settle anywhere. “How the…?” She squinted, twisted her face, then wiped a hand down it. “Really?” She stared at me as if the answers she was looking for were maybe there in my eyes. “How are you doing this?”

  “You cuss an awful lot for a gal.”

  “Cuss?” She smiled and shook her head. “Let’s go see if your clothes are dry.”

  chapter six

  HER MA WAS EXPECTED HOME within the hour, so Tess suggested I wait in the woods at the bottom of the lane. Out there, it no longer seemed like one time or another. I could easily imagine myself in the woods up behind the mill, the same moss-covered rocks and boulders scattered among the trees, the same layer of dead leaves and pine needles rotting beneath a canopy of fiddle ferns. Right there at my foot was an acorn that was likely no different from one a thousand years older.

  We had a plan; Tess did, anyhow. She was going to give me a ride to Greendale in her car. That was as far as her plan went. I wasn’t sure why, exactly, but I wasn’t all that excited about it. I had this picture in my head—the two of us driving into Greendale in a slick futuristic machine and parking it outside my uncle’s house. I knew the idea was crazy. It wasn’t like I’d have to explain myself, a hundred and thirty-four years after the fact. No one would be there saying, “How in the heck do you lose a wagon and team?” Yet, there I was sitting on that boulder, waiting, nervous as a hen in a fox den.

  Could it be the car was what had me all jittery? Why should it? I told myself that people in Tess’s time did it every day. Tess had assured me of that. It couldn’t be all that different from driving a wagon. I pictured Tess bouncing along behind the controls of a large machine, pulling levers and turning cranks, struggling to keep the thing on the road. I took a good-sized breath.

  It then came to me how little I knew about her. I’d spent a good part of a day with her, asked about this machine and that thing, and such, and she’d asked about me, but I’d asked nothing about her, really, or her family. I knew her ma had a job somewhere, though I couldn’t begin to imagine why or what. Where was her pa? What’d he do? Her sisters and brothers, where were they?

  And another thing I’d thought about while sitting there was that it seemed she had all that free time to do whatever she pleased—no garden or animals, no chores of any kind. Whatever she did required minimal time and effort. If she wanted light, she flipped a switch. If she wanted water, she turned a tap. If she wanted milk, she went to the icebox, which even made its own ice.

  If I were to tell someone I knew what the future would be, they’d have me run out on a rail or, more likely, locked away in the Brattleboro Asylum. And I might’ve agreed with such an assessment had I continued dwelling on the fact of the matter. Well, a lot of the time, I was dwelling on Tess. Perhaps that was providential. I didn’t realize it while sitting with her, but I’d have been quite lost without the distraction she provided.

  I heard a car coming, so I got up and approached the lane, ready to drop from sight if Tess wasn’t the driver. There was a fluttering inside my belly, and my knees didn’t seem thrilled about going anywhere.

  The car slowed to a stop. I stooped a little to see her leaning my way, waving. I looked for a handle, a latch, or any such mechanism. My eye kept returning to the small silver bar just below the window. I slid my fingers up under it and gave it a tug. It pivoted upward, emitting a dull click. The side panel came loose. I pulled it open, then stood there, peering inside the car.

  “You getting in?”

  I sucked in a good amount of air, then put my left foot in as if I were climbing into a barrel about to roll down a mountainside.

  “You okay, John?”

  “How do you do this?”

  “You have it. Turn and sit, and then lift your other foot in. Watch your head.”

  I banged my head on the roof, rubbed it, pulled my right foot in, and then pulled the side panel shut. The seat was low, deep, and cushy, cradling my body like a big gunnysack of wheat. I noticed a vibration corresponding to the low hum of the engine coming up through the floor. I could barely hear it over my heartbeat, though.

  “John, your door’s not shut tight.”

  I looked to my side. “Looks shut to me.”

  “It’s not completely shut.” She pointed to something in front of her. “The warning light is on.”

  “Well, how would it know?”

  “John, it knows. Open the damned door and shut it again.”

  We had a mutual stare going, as if each was expecting something more from the other. At my end was the notion that gals didn’t cuss. I’d never known any who did. I’d assumed they just didn’t have it in them, that they were inherently more pure than we fellows. A few moments later, her lips turned up just a little at the corners. But then, the smile I thought was coming petered out.

  “You’re not going to shut your door?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, I will, but it ain’t cause for cussing, is it?” It took me a moment to locate a handle to pull on, but all I could manage was a slight jiggle.

  “Cussing?” She cocked her head a little to the side and, her lips parted slightly, gave me a couple of innocent blinks. “Oh, I said damn, didn’t I? That bothers you?”

  I pushed, but the door wouldn’t give.

  “You’ll need to open it, and then pull it shut again.”

  I pushed again. “It won’t budge.”

  She leaned across me, placing a hand on my leg to keep from falling into my lap, and then pulled a lever near the middle of the door. Tess didn’t seem to have a shy bone in her, didn’t flinch at what was necessary, even if it was unladylike. She pushed the door out a little ways and pulled it shut with a firm tug. Thump! I caught a whiff of her and, without even thinking about it, drew in a breath as she returned to her seat.

  “It’s just another word to me, like darn or stupid or blasted… whatever. Just a word.”

  I’d been near gals before—a number of them at dances and such—and never paid all that much attention to how they smelled, but I did Tess. It was maybe queer, smelling her like that, but I found myself wanting to hold on to th
e scent.

  I noticed her staring at me. “What?”

  “What? I cuss.”

  “You smell nice, though.”

  She gave me the funny eye. The smile that had eluded me before was working its way back—a little, at first, but it came and quickly spread to her eyes. She snickered, then laughed and kept on laughing—laughing herself nearly to tears. I knew she was laughing at me, but I couldn’t help but break into a grin.

  “I’m sorry. It’s just…” She looked as though she was about to bust out another laugh, but then pulled herself together. “Thank you.” She wiped her hand down her face as though trying to wipe away a residue of funniness. She sat for a solid moment, getting herself squared, then cleared her throat and glanced my way. “Seatbelts.”

  She demonstrated how they worked. I wondered why I needed to be strapped in, as there didn’t appear to be any way to fall out of the machine. I wasn’t about to argue, though. I did as I was told, but then turned my attention to her side of the car and was immediately alarmed by the complexity of the gadgetry surrounding her. She pulled a lever, then grabbed hold of the large hoop extending from the dashboard. The car began moving. A few moments later, it stopped.

  “John, you’re… very nervous.” Her eyes were on my knees.

  My hands were clamped tight just above them. I loosened my grip. “I suppose I am a bit.”

  She looked into my eyes. I thought she was going to say something, but she didn’t.

  “You can stop this thing anytime you want?”

  “I’m a good driver.” She glanced my way. “I’ve been at it a year now.”

  I supposed she was waiting for my agreement, but I just looked at her.

  She grinned. “So far, so good.”

  “How do you make it stop?”

  She folded her hands under her chin and squinted. “Well, I just think, ‘Please, dear God, make it stop.’” She smiled and gave me a quick glance. “Sorry, I shouldn’t be playing with you like that.” She pointed at her feet. “The go pedal, the stop pedal, and the steering wheel.” She twisted the hoop—the wheel—around and back. “That’s basically all there is to it.”

  I pointed at the panel of lights and dials. “Well, what’s all that?”