OverTime 1 - Searching (Time Travel)

by Jocks, Yvonne

  He was big-boned, but that was all the breadth he had... probably because he never slowed down long enough to build bulk. While I turned our turkey, he moved amongst the horses yet again, using a knife to pick at their feet, examining their teeth with a frown of concentration, running his big, bare hands over their sides, occasionally murmuring to them in that raspy voice I was coming to recognize.

  I turned the turkey.

  He led the horses to the creek, so that they could have another nice aperitif, and when they finished he led them back out and methodically tied each horse's front feet together with short lengths of something rope-like.

  I turned the turkey.

  He reclaimed his rifle and hiked up the embankment to examine... I don't know what, the orange and pink remains of the sunset? That took him a while, during which I, of course, turned the turkey.

  When he finally hiked back, he glanced at my not-really-hard work, nodded at my progress, and squatted down to clean his rifle. That took a long time. After that he sharpened his knife, an extended scraping process which made me really nervous.

  The corpse began to smell like cooked turkey at last, and my stomach began to cramp from hunger. I knew I'd fasted at least half a day on only water—in fact, this Garrison guy had said he'd found me this morning, which meant I'd gone all day foodless. Who knew how long before that point I'd had my last meal? I began to glance toward him, waiting for word to stop turning and start eating.

  When he finally spoke, it wasn't with a declaration but a question. "Ain't it done?"

  How the hell was I supposed to know? It wasn't like I had some gadget to measure how done the meat was! But I bit back my hunger-fueled annoyance and merely said, "I think so," and lifted the wooden skewer of turkey off the fire.

  He used his newly sharpened knife to slice a couple of slabs of meat off the steaming bird, onto a tin plate he'd dug out of his saddlebags, and he handed the plate to me. The next slab that he cut off, he just left on his knife to eat.

  We dined in silence, me because I was so ungodly hungry, him because he apparently preferred everything in silence. Hunger is the best spice? I'll admit, I wasn't about to send my dinner back to the kitchen. But it wasn't five-star cuisine, either. It had no seasoning, and I'd overcooked it in some areas and undercooked it in others. It seemed that we should have some accompanying food—stuffing, and vegetables, like at Thanksgiving. I tried to follow that snatch of memory, to visualize a single Thanksgiving dinner. At least that effort didn't make me throw up, but I might as well try to grab a handful of time. What bits of memory I had apparently weren't under my command.

  As soon as I'd taken the edge off my near-painful appetite, I began to remember what ol' Tom had looked like while I'd plucked him, bloodied and headless. My hunger abated, and I ended up handing Garrison the remains on my plate which, after an awkward pause and a muttered, "Thank you kindly," he wolfed.

  For lack of anything better to do, I went back to watching him. Better than thinking about myself, right? I watched how the orange firelight played off the harsh planes of his face before dancing into impossibly black shadows behind him, and how it sometimes caught his eyes in a benign glitter from beneath the hang of the hat he'd reclaimed. Crickets sang and something peeped from the creek-side trees—trees I couldn't even see anymore, just remembered were there. How could anyplace get so dark? Suddenly cold despite the mild night, I pulled my feet up beneath the coat I wore.

  Maybe Garrison, finishing his meal, noticed. In any case, he stood up and unrolled the blanket on the ground so that the saddle lay at the head of it, then shifted his weight.

  He cleared his throat, as if to make a speech. "You take the bedroll." And he turned away quickly, to go do something with the horses yet again.

  It occurred to me that we should also do something with the leftover turkey, but that "bedroll" beckoned with far more power than I and my defective brain had the strength to resist. So what if the sun hadn't fully set an hour ago? Unbearable darkness surrounded us now. My stomach felt full, and I was dizzy-tired. So I crawled onto the blanket and pulled it up around me, pillowing my head on the saddle and preparing to sleep like the dead.

  Instead, I lay there. I realized that I could make out the trees—silhouetted against the glitter of more stars than I thought existed—and occasionally, for no discernable reason, I shivered.

  I don't think I'd camped very much, before this.

  Garrison came back from the horses and wrapped the turkey up in some kind of cloth—not how I'd expected to preserve it, but my thoughts stayed vague on that front. Then he shook out the smaller saddle blanket—the one that had lived between sweaty horse and the saddle all day—and sat down on the ground, undersized blanket over his shoulders like a cape. I noticed the faint gleam of the rifle beside him before I closed my eyes for better sleep preparation, and wondered about myself.

  I am—

  My eyes opened wide, and my stomach rebelled. No.

  I shivered wearily. Tried again. Where did I normally sleep? Soft sheets? Comfortable temperature? Who am I?

  I sat up to the sound of a howl—Wolf? Coyote? Rottweiler? How close had it been?

  Garrison still sat there with his gun, smoking a cigarette and keeping watch. I tried to go to sleep again, torn between my fear of and my need for memories. Maybe if I stopped thinking about me, and tried third-person instead?

  A woman's feet. Pointy-toed, high-heeled shoes with red soles.

  Not mine, I quickly told rising fear in my stomach. I was almost relieved when my eyes snapped open again at an eerie, low call. I started to sit up, momentarily unsure where the hell I was. Then a movement caught my eye; Garrison glancing toward me. I sank back against the saddle/pillow, still wide-eyed.

  "Owl," he explained brusquely.

  Right. A dreaded, man-eating owl. "It's dark," I said, to explain.

  He said, "Nighttime."

  Right again, Captain Obvious.

  I wished I could fall asleep with the sound of my own teeth chattering, and I guess I must have, because I can remember barely waking up to the touch of a hand on my cheek, reclaiming me from my chaotic, here-and-gone dreams. Maybe I should have panicked at the touch, but I felt so exhausted and miserable that panic couldn't hope to place amongst my priorities. Besides, there was no threat in the matter-of-fact brush of callused fingers down my cheek to my neck. In fact, it felt nice. Warm.

  Real. Though I still didn't understand why in the world it shouldn't feel real.

  "'Tain't fever," muttered a vaguely familiar voice. Then a soft weight settled over me, protecting me. My shivering slowed, and sleep again won out.

  Sleep and strange, strange dreams.

  Chapter 3 – Nesters

  The woman enters her cubicle and glances nervously toward the large window of a wall, as if its presence signifies something of increasingly uncertain value. She turns her ergonomic chair away from it before sitting and takes a soothing sip of coffee to calm her nerves.

  Only nerves, of course. That's all. She's just not a morning person.

  She boots up her desktop computer by habit, sipping more coffee while skimming a list of addresses and subject lines. One, from her manager, makes her stomach lurch, and she clicks on it. "Possible solution to our latest difficulty... meet with us as soon as you get in..."

  She checks the slim gold watch on her wrist, feeling inexplicably guilty for arriving only an hour early instead of two. She glances at but dismisses the paperwork in a box marked IN; real work has become secondary to said "difficulty" around here. That feels wrong, on so many levels.

  She walks on impractical heels through a maze of carpeted hallways, carpeted walls, sliding doors and mirror-lined elevators, arriving finally at a large, dark-paneled conference room full of enemies....

  When I woke again, it was to the sound of horses walking and snorting. Ugh. Just because I felt a fleeting sense of relief didn't mean I wanted to be awake. As lingering tension seeped out of me, I felt increas
ingly warm and secure tucked in amongst my covers. I ducked my head deeper into the curve of the worn leather saddle beneath my cheek.

  I knew where I was—more or less. Kansas. I felt safe. And it was still dark out; I could tell that through my closed eyelids.

  Still, horse hooves clopped past, frighteningly near my head—apparently I'd rested enough to care again. Despite my efforts to stay snug, safe, and in deep denial, I opened my eyes.

  Yup, still dark out. Less dark on one side of the sky than the other, granted. I could see the shadowy trees themselves, now, and not just their absence against stars. But to say one side of the horizon was lighter might be overly optimistic. In the shadows I heard watery sounds and slowly recognized a jumble of huge beasts as our cluster—our remuda?—of horses, wading into the creek, gracefully drinking.

  Jacob Garrison stood with them, fully dressed except for his coat and his vest. Between the hat and the darkness, I couldn't see his face. But I suspected from the set of his shoulders that he was watching me—especially when he gave it away by quickly looking somewhere else.

  "You woke me up," I protested groggily, and huddled into the warmth of my blankets. I was about to close my eyes again, to rectify the situation, when he spoke.

  "Time to git."

  My eyes opened. What a jokester this guy was... except, of course, that he wasn't joking. "Now?" It was morning only by technicality!

  His hat dipped a slight nod in my direction.

  "What time is it?" I asked.

  He turned his face toward the slice of sky that was slate gray instead of black, and I could make out the line of his profile and a touch of brightness in his eyes. Oh dear God. A morning person.

  "Near 'bout dawn," he drawled.

  I untucked my left hand enough to look at my wrist, which was of course empty—why wouldn't it be? Naked, remember? I looked back at him. "You don't have a watch either?"

  With a shrug, he dug into his hip pocket and pulled something out, held it away from him and angled it toward the not-so-dark side of the sky. "Twelve minutes past five o'clock," he read—a bit sulkily, I thought—and snapped the watch shut. "If'n you mean to wash, best get to it."

  Wash, huh. "I don't suppose you've got a tub of hot water hidden somewhere out here, do you?"

  He snorted.

  "I guess not." And, with a surge of self-discipline, I made myself sit up. Well, started to. Pain shot through my whole body. "Oh God," I gasped, stopping in self-preservation. Stiff! Had I ever felt this stiff and sore in my life? Of course, I had no way of knowing the answer to that. But it actually felt like I might break, if I wasn't careful. "It hurts to sit up!"

  The figure by the creek—the one who wasn't a horse—stared at me for a long moment. Then he said softly, but not softly enough to keep me from hearing, "If'n you ain't the complaining-est gal."

  What a spiffy time for him to go talkative on me.

  "Yeah, well I thought the horse did all the work," I defended, rolling with great effort to my side so I could prop myself against the saddle/pillow. The weight of my blankets slid to my waist, and I noticed, fully, that I had two covers—the bedroll, and the saddle blanket. He'd given me his blanket. That was why I'd stopped shivering. What a... well, the word sweet didn't exactly fit the taciturn cowboy, but suddenly I wasn't as annoyed with him either. He was taking care of me, wasn't he? When I glanced up to thank him, he was moving around the horses, making clucking noises with his tongue, single-handedly herding them out of the meager water.

  Okay, so it could wait. But more than his criticism, that small kindness added new resolve for me to stop being the complaining-est gal. If he could go all night without his bedroll, or saddle blanket, or even his coat—which was still my sole piece of clothing? Well, I could get up with the... well, with whatever's crazy enough to get up this early in the morning. Horses, obviously. Unless he'd wrenched them out of a cozy night's sleep too.

  But I had to do it verrry slowly, hugging the oversized coat tighter around me so that no body parts fell off. Though my ankle wasn't as bad as yesterday, I could barely hobble to the creek's edge. Damn, but I hurt! I stared dazedly at the shallow, muddy water where the horses had churned it up, then looked up at Garrison.

  He shook his head sadly and nodded to my right, so I limped stiffly in that direction. The water was clearer upstream from the horses. Duh. There were even some bushes and scrubby trees to put between him and me. The best privacy I'd gotten since... well, since....

  In around 24 hours, anyway.

  The water wasn't particularly cold. I unbuttoned the coat I wore and hung it on a bush before wading in. Then I had a make-do bath in the little creek, a quick one both because I was so sore and because I didn't want to try my keeper's patience or get caught naked. I dried myself off on the borrowed bandana, which was hardly up to the job but less dirty than the outside of the coat.

  I did not attempt washing my hair.

  Miserable an experience though it was, I did feel better—if no less stiff—as I shrugged back into the too-large, calf-length coat. On instinct I swung my arms around. It both hurt and helped. Twisting at the waist, I repeated the motion a few times. That felt natural and seemed to loosen me up. Without letting myself think, I began moving into some kind of step pattern, lifting my knees high—ouch!—and reaching over my head—whimper—and kicking. Like a strange dance, or a choreographed fight. I could almost hear music, a driving beat, and I started to feel dizzy....

  No, don't remember! A blast of fear chased the energizing rhythm from my mind. I staggered to a stop, and all I could hear were groggy birds.

  But I still felt better, all the way through an unappetizing breakfast of tepid turkey and packing up the camp beneath a cotton-candy sunrise. Trying to get my foot to the saddle's stirrup however, when time came to head out, was not going to happen, not even using two hands to do it—and not because today's horse was any taller than yesterday's. Without a word, Garrison bent and offered me a hand. I stepped, he lifted, and in a minute I was straddling my make-shift leather pillow, with a horse underneath.

  Garrison vaulted gracefully, bareback, onto a gray horse. While he gathered his rope-o-animals I discreetly adjusted the vest beneath me and looked forward to reaching civilization. But instead of moving out, he asked, "Can you rein?"

  Was this a trick question? "Maybe?"

  Shaking his head, he rode closer—and I realized that this morning my horse was free roaming. When it stepped away from his approach, I squeaked and grabbed the saddle horn with both hands. Garrison did a lot more good by snagging the bridle with one. Then he pried my left hand free through sheer force and pressed both reins into it. Leaning precariously off his own horse, as easily as if he were attached, he then showed me how the reins would steer mine. It was a fairly simple process really, once I realized it wasn't about pulling. It involved the horse's ability to sense the reins against one side of its neck or the other. In fact, it was so simple I was able to also notice the calluses on Cowboy Garrison's strong hands, and the warm, coiled bulk of him leaning near to me.

  I remembered the gentle touch on my cheek last night—and those oh-so-tender words: "'Tain't fever." My blank memory was probably just confusing things. Jacob Garrison was too old for me, wasn't he? Maybe? And I'd only known him a day. But since I didn't know anyone else, that made him my oldest and closest friend. That I knew of. I could be happily married, with children, as far as that went.

  The problem wasn't going away. Who was I?

  He released my hands and sat back on his horse, assessing my grip on the reins. Then he extended a booted foot and nudged my stirrup—and my own bare foot with it—into my horse's side. The horse took several steps. Startled, I quickly drew back the reins and, ears back, my mount obediently stopped.

  Okay, okay; I didn't have to glance in the direction of my driving instructor to sense his disapproval. That annoyed me—this was obviously a new skill on my part!—but it also motivated me. On my own, I nudged the horse'
s sides. It started to walk again. I made it go left, then curved around right, then reined proudly to a stop right beside Garrison. Hey! Whoever I was, I could now steer a horse!

  He nodded, made a clucking noise, and headed our little remuda out. Glowing praise it was not. But hell, the man was chintzy even with nods. At least I was riding, instead of being led. That fact alone kept me happy for the first hour or so of our ride.

  But silence gave me too much time to notice how sore my rubbing thighs were, how hot it was getting, how I still couldn't remember jack and how that couldn't possibly be a good thing. And that, FYI, flies love horses. By the time the sun was high and we hadn't yet reached civilization, boredom and insect-filled silence became my enemy yet again. "Does this horse have a name?" I asked finally, just to break the monotony of the not-so-scenic open grassland.

  Garrison gave a barely perceptible shake of the head.

  "Can I name it?"

  Apathetic nod.

  Now here was an intriguing experiment—what does a person with no memory call upon to find names? My horse was a golden-brown, though not as brown as yesterday's. I probably wouldn't have noticed the difference if this one's mane and tail hadn't been wheat-colored instead of black. It made a pretty contrast, but if this horse were human I'd be sure she bleached her hair.

  Valley Girl.

  I didn't know where the name, or even the concept, came from, but I said it anyway before it could vanish like a soap bubble. "Valley Girl."

  Garrison snorted.

  "Well okay," I defended. "So we aren't in a valley. But it seems to fit somehow."

  He shook his head. "'Tain't a girl."

  Oh. My embarrassment battled with curiosity at the strange gurgle in his voice, and I urged Valley G— Valley Boy jerkily forward with my heels until I could see my companion's face.

  He was smiling! It lit his shadowed eyes and softened his Neanderthal features, beautiful in its unexpectedness. And here I'd started to think he was incapable!