Smith's Monthly #19

by Smith, Dean Wesley

  As Craig opened the door she said, “Seems we’re not going to get away from work after all.”

  “Yeah, I’m afraid we were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  Bonnie moved inside and Craig let the door close behind them, locking the safely bolt. Then he turned and she put her arms around his neck, kissing him lightly. “I thought it was fun out there on that fairway. Didn’t you?”

  Craig pulled her close and kissed her hard. Then he pulled back and smiled. “Lots of fun.”

  “Worth all these problems?”

  He pretended to be serious. “Sex with you is never a problem and always worth it.”

  “Ahh, the right thing for a husband to say,” she said, kissing him again. “The exact right thing.”

  To be continued…

  Sometimes you must go back to find the future.

  Buckey the Space Pirate travels back in time with his friend Fred, the talking oak tree, to learn why Fred refuses to recite his new limerick, the last limerick in Fred’s first poetry book.

  Over a hundred years in the past, in a forest of oak trees, Buckey finds more than just the reason for the rhyme.

  LONG DEAD NEW LOVE

  A Buckey the Space Pirate Story

  ONE

  When my best friend is a talking oak tree named Fred who likes limericks, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised at anything that happens. I just never expected to meet the woman of my dreams, the woman I hope to marry, through Fred.

  But there was only one major problem with this woman of my dreams: She has been dead for over a hundred years.

  It made a relationship and a marriage just a little difficult.

  Not impossible, just difficult.

  It started because I needed help on a history paper due in three days and was stuck cold on what to write about. Fred could remember every detail from all his oak-tree ancestors over centuries and centuries. And oak trees could and did grow just about everywhere on the planet, so it sort of made sense to ask him for help with history.

  But it still felt like a last resort as I headed for my mother’s house where Fred was planted in a nice suburb of Portland, Oregon. I should have been able to come up with something myself and research it like a normal student instead of having to ask a talking oak tree. But I just couldn’t think of anything to write about.

  I grabbed a cookie from my mother’s kitchen counter. Peanut butter, my favorite. She was upstairs watching her afternoon soaps and wouldn’t see me go out back to talk to Fred.

  Luckily, the afternoon May rains had stopped. It was going to be a sticky afternoon by the time the day was done, but at least in Portland, the summer heat hadn’t kicked in yet.

  Actually, asking Fred for help should have been my first resort, but over the last year Fred had become even more focused on limericks of all sorts and kept asking me to write them down and at some point publish them for him.

  He said he wanted to be the first oak tree in history to ever write a book.

  Since he was the first talking oak tree in history, being the first one to write a book wouldn’t be much of a stretch. But getting his help with my history paper was going to mean some trade-offs, of that I was sure.

  I slid open the patio door and stepped through, letting the damp air smother me. I had on a Star Trek tee-shirt, Levis, and my old tennis shoes that would be soaked by the grass in the back yard before I even got out to the twenty-foot-tall oak tree.

  I had only planted Fred in my mother’s back yard four years ago, as a seed. He should never have been this tall, but he told me because of special skills and the great soil, he could grow far faster than he normally would have. I was kind of glad he got so big so fast. It saved me looking like a fool sitting in a lawn chair trying to get shade from a sapling.

  And besides, Fred hated to be called a sapling. He hated it so much he didn’t even make up limericks using the word. For Fred, that was some hate.

  “Well, if it isn’t Buckey the Space Pirate,” Fred said as I headed out toward him, as normal his deep voice sort of coming from everywhere in the air around me.

  The first time we had met, I had had on my Buckey the Space Pirate costume, plumed wide hat, dark tights, black cape, and long sword. I wore the costume regularly still to science fiction conventions and Halloween parties.

  Fred never called me anything else and I honestly didn’t mind. He had been a huge old oak tree down in the park, about to be cut down. He made up a rude limerick about my girlfriend’s private parts as I tried to get lucky, which had the result of me getting far from anything lucky or her body parts. In fact, after that night she wouldn’t talk to me again since she thought I was the one who had made the crude joke about her private areas.

  It hadn’t been me. It had been Fred, the oak tree we were under at the time.

  I didn’t believe it either at first. In fact, I thought it was a joke. But he convinced me to doctor one of his acorns and plant it and I did and the next day he had been cut down to make way for a new road.

  I planted the acorn in my mother’s backyard and it sprouted and by the middle of the next summer, Fred was back and talking and spouting limericks once again.

  It was kind of sad that a talking oak tree was my best friend. Third year of college, no girlfriends, no real close other friends. I was a typical nerd, only I talked to a tree.

  Luckily the tree talked back, or I would have been in big trouble.

  “Hey, Fred,” I said, pulling up the lawn chair and knocking the last drops of rain off it before sitting down just under his newly sprouted leaves. I had my chair turned so that if Mom looked out, she wouldn’t see me talking. She didn’t know about Fred. She just thought I used her backyard to study.

  I had always been a weird kid, so this behavior didn’t seem odd to her at all. Luckily Dad wasn’t alive. He would have been asking a lot of questions.

  “So what do I owe this unexpected surprise?” Fred asked, not starting into a limerick as I had expected him to do.

  “History paper,” I said. “I don’t even have a topic yet.”

  “The learning of history is a noble enterprise for any human,” Fred said, his voice booming like he was a college professor trying to wake up a sleeping student in the back row of a large classroom theater.

  “You feeling all right today?” I asked, glancing up at the fresh green of the leaves over me. Everything looked healthy enough.

  “I am in the top of spirits,” Fred said. “Spring rain, fresh sunshine, a wonderful summer of growth ahead of me. Add in your fine company, what is not to enjoy?”

  Suddenly it dawned on me why he was so happy. “You finished the last limerick, didn’t you?”

  “I most certainly did,” he said, his voice sounding so full of pride, it was lucky his bark didn’t burst from his trunk from the pressure.

  “Are you going to share it with me?” I said, dreading the coming recital.

  “No,” he said.

  I damn near fell off my lawn chair. The day Fred didn’t force limericks on me was a day I really should be worried about his health.

  “No?”

  “No,” he repeated. “Not until you see the moment in history and the person from which I took inspiration for the final limerick. Only then will you understand.”

  “Can I write about that period of history?”

  “You most certainly may,” Fred said. “It is only just over one hundred years in the past, a short hop.”

  I stood and moved over to touch the rough bark of the oak tree.

  Fred had the ability to take me back to any point in time along what he called “his family tree.” His family tree, as far as I could tell, included every oak tree on the planet.

  At first I wasn’t sure if he actually physically took me or not, but once he had been worried about my safety while we were in another time, so that led me to believe I actually vanished from the present and traveled somehow to the past.

  He eventually told me I did.

&
nbsp; I glanced around at Mom’s house. No sign of her watching.

  “Ready,” I said, holding onto the trunk of the oak tree tightly. Sometimes on the other end I found myself high in the air.

  A moment later I was leaning in darkness in a light rain against the trunk of a huge oak tree. Going from the bright light of a May afternoon to darkness was going to take some time for my eyes to adjust.

  Plus it was cold here and the light rain felt like it might turn to snow at any moment. My Star Trek tee-shirt just wasn’t suited for this kind of weather.

  “Fred?”

  “I am here,” he said.

  I glanced around. It was clear I was near a log cabin that sat nestled in a grove of oak trees. I could hear what sounded like a small river nearby and nothing else. Flickering yellow light came from the open window and a wonderful smell of bread baking.

  “What time is it?” I asked. “And where are we?”

  “It’s only a little after five in the morning on October 21st,” Fred said. “We are on the edge of the town called Boise in the new state of Idaho. The year is 1871. Take a look in the window.”

  “How can I do that?” I asked, staring at the open window with the light beyond. I honestly wasn’t sure I wanted to go peeking in windows on someone dead more than a hundred years. There seemed to be something doubly perverted about doing that.

  “You can go anywhere under the leaves of this tree or over the roots of the tree or any oak tree in this grove,” Fred said. “And the roots of this tree alone extend a long distance under the house to the latrine on the other side. A wonderful source of nourishment.”

  “Too much information,” I said, shaking my head at the idea that Fred ate from latrines. Of course he did. He was an oak tree. I just didn’t have to think about it.

  “Go take a look,” Fred said. “See the reason, the very inspiration for the last limerick in my first book.”

  “First book?” I asked.

  “Of course,” he said.

  All I could do was moan.

  I glanced at the window in the side of the cabin. The drapes on the inside were pulled aside and the rough windowpane of glass was pushed open. Every so often I could see a shadow of someone moving inside.

  And the wonderful smell of baking bread just kept getting stronger and stronger. I really should have grabbed more to eat before seeing Fred than just a cookie. The smell was making me hungry.

  “What happens if I happen to get beyond the branches or roots of the tree?” I asked.

  “You will simply return to the backyard in your current time,” Fred said, clearly starting to get annoyed.

  An annoyed oak tree was not something I wanted to experience, so I stepped away from the trunk of the large tree and hesitantly moved toward the window.

  It was darned cold out and I was already starting to shiver as I crouched near the window.

  “You know this is illegal in all fifty states,” I said. “And more than likely in most countries as well. I would hate to be arrested in 1871 for being a pervert.”

  “You will not startle her and there is no need to hide,” Fred said. “I told her you were coming.”

  I stopped, stood up straight, and looked back at the large old oak tree sitting beside the log cabin. “You talked to her? I thought you couldn’t talk until you were born in Portland.”

  “Have you noticed when and where you are at and that you are talking to me right now?” Fred asked, going into the mode where he treated me like I was as dumb as a first grader. I hated that mode.

  He went on. “When I gained the ability to speak to humans, I also gained the ability to speak to humans at any point in time along my roots. I have struck up a number of friendships over the centuries.”

  “Oh,” was all I could say. I actually felt a little disappointed because for some reason I thought I was the only one who talked with Fred.

  I turned and moved toward the open window on the cabin. The wonderful fresh bread smell just kept getting stronger and stronger. And I could sense a little bit of frying bacon smell as well.

  I moved up to the window sill that hit me just above my belt as Fred said, “Mary, we are here.”

  “Wonderful,” a woman said. She turned from the stove to face me across the kitchen area of the cabin.

  I suddenly just couldn’t breathe and I am sure my mouth was doing the old guppy move of opening and closing.

  The woman in the cabin was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. She had bright red hair pulled back into a long ponytail, a bright smile that seemed to fill her face, and huge brown eyes. She wiped her hands off on a white towel over her shoulder as she started toward me.

  She had on a thin plaid cotton dress in a white and red pattern that framed a thin, but wonderful body. The dress was protected by a long, white apron like you might see in a cooking magazine.

  She seemed to be my age of around twenty-three, but that was a guess. She might be younger.

  “Mary Elizabeth Smith,” Fred said, his booming voice filling the area around the cabin. “I would like you to meet Buckey the Space Pirate.”

  She reached out her hand and I took it through the window, never letting my gaze drop from those deep brown eyes.

  “Wonderful to meet any friend of Fred’s,” she said, her voice pulling me in even more.

  “The pleasure is all mine,” I somehow managed to say, even though my entire focus was on the wonderful feel of her hand and those huge brown eyes.

  “Can you come in and share breakfast with me?” she asked, still not letting go of my hand.

  I never wanted her to let go, to be honest.

  Finally I said to the air, “Fred, is that possible?”

  “Of course it is,” he said. “But you will need to climb in the window or go in the back door. There are no roots under, or branches over, the cabin front door.”

  I smiled at her and indicated I would just climb in the window. “Do you mind?”

  She laughed and let go of my hand and stepped back. “You may crawl in my window any time you would like.”

  At that moment I thought my heart would beat out of my chest. Somehow, with Fred giving advice, I managed to climb in the window without falling on my face. Pure luck since I could barely keep my eyes off her and didn’t really pay a lot of attention to what I was doing.

  TWO

  Over the next two hours we had a wonderful breakfast of fresh-baked bread, bacon and eggs, and tea. I helped her with the dishes and we laughed a lot.

  The conversation with her and Fred was just wonderful, even with Fred sometimes becoming like a college professor and going into a lecture on some topic or another.

  During that breakfast and conversation I completely fell in love, especially when I learned she had moved from Kansas to Boise with her brother who had gotten married a year ago and she had lived alone ever since.

  “What do you do for money?” I asked and she told me about how her parents, when they died, had left her and her brother a sizable inheritance.

  Finally, I realized that hours had passed in the wonderful conversation.

  “Fred, is there a problem with me being gone? Is the same amount of time passing in 2011?”

  I did have an assignment to get finished and classes to attend. I didn’t want to, but I needed to.

  “Time is always passing,” he said. “But I can return you within a few seconds of when we left if that is what concerns you,” he said.

  “That would be helpful,” I said.

  “Wonderful,” Mary said, clapping her hands together. “Then you can spend as much time as you would like with me here.”

  Then she realized what she had said and blushed. “If you want, of course.”

  “I can think of nothing I would want more,” I said. “Fred, is that possible?”

  “I see nothing at all impossible about it,” he said. “I will leave you two alone. Please call me when you are ready to return.”

  “Thank you, Fred,” I said.
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  There was no response. He was gone.

  “He is a wonderful friend, isn’t he?” I asked and reached across the wood table and gently squeezed Mary’s hand.

  “He is at that,” she said as she put her other hand on mine and looked into my eyes.

  I knew right at that moment that I had found a woman of my dreams, even though she had been dead for a long time before I was born.

  After a long moment of silence, with only the sounds of the river running from the window, we went back to talking and laughing and later I helped her cook us both a wonderful dinner of venison and potatoes.

  She let me wear a sweater she had knitted for her brother and promised to knit me one just like it. It had to be the softest thing I had ever put on.

  And she forced me at one point to try to explain Star Trek, which got many laughs from her.

  That night I slept on the couch, but for a time she sat with me in front of the crackling fire and we kissed and I never wanted to stop.

  Finally she pushed me gently away and said, “We have all the time in the world.”

  “Thanks to our friend Fred,” I said.

  THREE

  The next morning she cooked us both a wonderful breakfast and then I suggested that I needed to go home to get some clothes and run a few errands.

  She made me promise to come back quickly and I did.

  We also have one thing we need to do for our friend,” I said as we finished up drying the morning dishes.

  She smiled. “Hear his limerick?”

  “You got it in one,” I said, surprised Fred had recited limericks to a woman of her caliber in 1871.

  “Fred, please come back.”

  A moment later he said, “I am here.”

  I didn’t want to ask how he did that. I had a hunch that Fred and I would be having a lot of conversations about time travel in the near future.

  “I need to return to my time for some errands and such. But before I go, we were both hoping that you’d give us a recital of the last limerick in your first book. The limerick that brought us together.”