Anne blew her nose loudly.
“It’s not ‘I’ll make it a day like no day has been or will be again.’”
“Well what is it then.” She gave a false smile and said with a sarcastic sweetness.
“It’s ‘I’ll make it a day like no day has been, a day without end.’”
“It is nooot.”
“Sure it is and if you’ll get up, I’ll show you. Anne will be the judge.”
Beth stood up, moved away from the piano and said “She doesn’t know the difference. It’s not fair to ask her to judge.”
Sonny ignored her. He said “Jack.” and indicated for him to pick up the violin.
“No fair! No violin! You could sing ‘Barnacle Bill the Sailor’ and it would sound better with a violin!
Don’t you pick up that violin, Jack.”
Both boys went to the piano. Sonny sat down and Jack picked up the violin. Sonny began to play.
All Beth could do was seethe.
She was right. It did sound better with the violin.
When Sonny had finished he looked at Anne and said “Well?”
She was blowing her nose again. She laughed and said “Beth’s right. How am I to know?”
Sonny started to say something but Beth cut him short, “I know what you’re going to say. Don’t you give me any of that photographic memory crap. You’re just doing this to piss me off.
Well,” she smiled and continued in a soft voice, “it didn’t work. I know I’m right and that is that.”
Jack looked at Sonny and said “She hasn’t changed in the last five years. She’s so easy.”
Beth walked over to her brother who was sitting on the piano bench and kissed him on the cheek. She then kissed and hugged Jack and said “You’re right but I always get you two in the end.”
Jack touched his nose and said “Yeah, I know that only too well.”
Anne said “Let’s go for a walk. It’s too beautiful out for us to be inside.”
As Sonny stood up he said “We have said this many times before. Life is good and every time we think it can’t get any better, it does.”
He put his arm around his sister’s waist and kissed her cheek.
On clear beautiful days they would sometimes rent horses and picnic in the countryside. For these trips the girls would wear pants riding outfits that they thought were quite stylish.
On one such day, they were seated on a blanket on a hill overlooking San Francisco and the bay. The sky was blue and the clouds puffy and white.
They had just finished their meal. Jack was lying on his side, propped up on an elbow. It was a wonderful, glorious day and he was taking it all in. He said, “You know, the last three years have been great. No more than great, they have been fantastic.
We have been mining gold, wintering with the Cheyenne, hunting buffalo and making a fortune to boot. It doesn’t get any better than this. But,” he paused and reached across the blanket and took Anne’s hand, “The best thing of all is, we met you.” He leaned over kissed her hand and looked into her eyes and continued, “Without you, we would have had fun and had a great time but we would have been missing something, something we wouldn’t have even known we were missing. Fortunately for us, that didn’t have to happen. You came into our lives and filled a void that we didn’t even know we had. You made us complete.”
Jack’s speech not only caught the rest by surprise, it surprised him as well. When he finished it, his eyes were filled with tears. Beth made a loud sniffing sound and searched for her handkerchief.
Tears streamed down Anne’s face as she scooted on her knees over to Jack and hugged and kissed him on the cheek. She then went to Beth and did the same. When she got to Sonny she threw her arms around him and hugged and kissed him fiercely.
She tried to speak but couldn’t. When she could speak she said between crying and blowing her nose loudly, “This sounds so inadequate but I feel the same about you three. These last three years have been the happiest of my life.”
She now started to blubber and said through her blubbering, “I just don’t know how to repay you for your kindness and love. And I love you all so much.”
She now repeated her rounds of hugging and kissing. When she ended up in Sonny’s arms, she was sobbing uncontrollably and said through her loud sobs, “I am so happy.”
They rode back to town in a great mood. They laughed and joked all the way. They tethered the horses outside the hotel and walked into the lobby laughing. All eyes were on Jack who was telling a funny story. He was talking and using his hands. Beth glanced up and stopped cold. She couldn’t believe her eyes. It took the others a few seconds to notice that Beth had stopped. They turned and looked at her when Beth let out a shriek “Garcia!” and ran towards a short, heavy set Latin looking man. The man was standing a few feet from the front desk.
Beth was running and jumping as she ran and shrieking in a shrill excited voice, “Garcia! Garcia! Garcia!”
She hit the surprised man at a full run. She wrapped her arms around him. They both fell to the ground. Beth was planting big wet kisses all over the poor man’s face.
The maître d' had just left the dining room and was about to cross the lobby to the manager’s office, when to his shock and horror he saw Beth shrieking, running and then tackling one of the guests. He thought, “Oh God, not again.” He then spun around and headed back into the dining room.
Because Beth was completely covering the man, Jack, Sonny and Anne couldn’t see who Beth had pinned to the floor. When Jack arrived to help them both up, he was surprised. It was indeed Garcia.
Beth was jabbering at Garcia in rapid Spanish. Garcia couldn’t get a word in edgewise.
When Jack saw it was Garcia he threw his arms around him in a bear hug. He stepped back to get another look at him and then started pumping his hand in a handshake.
Sonny brushed past Jack and gave Garcia a hug. Jack had a stupid grin on his face and was still shaking Garcia’s hand.
Sonny stepped back. Beth had never stopped talking and Sonny started to speak to Garcia in Spanish.
Garcia held up his free hand palm out signaling them to stop talking. Both Beth and Sonny stopped at once. The whole lobby was silent. Everyone in the lobby was looking at them.
Garcia looked at Jack who was still pumping Garcia’s hand and said, “Por favor, senor Jack.”
Jack snapped out of it and said, “Oh, oh, of course.” and stopped shaking Garcia’s hand.
Garcia looked at the three of them.
He took Beth’s hands in his and said in perfect English, “Ay senorita Beth, how you have grown. You look so beautiful.” A tear rolled down his cheek.
He looked at the boys with smiling admiration. He said, “Who would have thought that little pendejos like you would have grown up to be such, such men!?”
He was overcome with emotion and stepped forward and gave each boy a hug.
“It is so good to see. We have looked so long for you.”
Beth was about to ask, “We?” when the elevator door opened and Frank stepped out.
It all started again. Beth whooped and threw herself into Frank’s arms.
There was another round of enthusiastic hugging and handshaking. Beth, Sonny and Jack were talking at once, asking questions.
Frank held up both hands palms outward, shushing them and said, “Let’s go someplace where we can talk.”
They went to their music room. In the elevator Sonny introduced Anne to Frank and Garcia. Frank was polite but perfunctory. Garcia was gracious.
They had brought a serving cart of beer with them. As Jack poured beer from one of the pitchers, Beth put her arm around Anne’s shoulder. Frank sat down on loveseat. She looked at Frank and said with determination, “Anne is one of us. She knows everything. Where we go she goes. This is nonnegotiable and not up for discussion.
Frank took a glass of beer from Jack. His face was expressionless. He set his glass down on the coffee table in front of him. He lea
ned back in the loveseat and then quickly stood up. He sat back down. It was clear that he was disturbed and uneasy.
The kids exchanged glances. Frank’s behavior was making them nervous.
Frank said, “There is no easy way to say this. You have to go back or more accurately forward. Now the bad part, Anne won’t be able to go with us.” He looked at Anne and said, “Sorry, you can’t come.”
Beth took a step towards Frank and was about to speak. He held up his hand cutting her short. “Like you said Beth, this is nonnegotiable and not up for discussion. She can’t come.”
“Then we don’t go,” said Jack. “Who in the hell do you think you are to come waltzing in here and telling us what to do? We’ve survived these last five years pretty well without you and we’ve done pretty damned good for ourselves, to boot!”
Frank stood up, held his hands up in front of him, bowed his head and said, “Calm down and hear me out. It’s not as bad as it sounds.”
Jack started to say something but Beth touched his arm and said, “Give him a chance, Jack. Let’s hear him.
Ok, Frank, you’ve got the floor.”
She picked up a glass of beer and sat down on the divan. She patted the cushion beside her for Jack to sit with her. He poured himself a beer and joined her. Sonny pulled over to overstuffed chairs for him and Anne to sit on. Garcia sat down on the loveseat vacated by Frank.
“First, let me say that what happened back at the cave was an accident. One day I had planned to show you the cave and introduce you to Huiste Kum Pac. Huiste was the very large gentleman that you saw that night in Diablo behind Jack’s house and then later on the next day in the cave.
He is the keeper of the Cave of the Lost Souls. He is the last of a once powerful tribe of priests. I have no idea how old he is and” Frank blew air out through his lips, “neither does he.
His name means ‘One Who Travels’ or simply ‘The Traveler’.”
Frank shook his head and said, “Let me get back on track. I’ll tell you about Huiste later.”
Frank looked at Beth and smiled, “In a way this is all your fault Beth.”
“My fault! How is it my fault!”
Frank chuckled and said, “You have always beguiled Garcia. Remember, when he drove the bus, how he always had a gift for you?
Well when you smiled at him and told him not to tell me you were on the bus, the worthless bastard didn’t say a word to me.” Frank threw Garcia a withering look.
Garcia shrugged and said “The guy holds a grudge. We’ve been looking for you for eight years and he still hasn’t gotten over it.”
“You speak English. How come you never told us you spoke English?” said Beth.
“You never asked.”
“Fair enough.” Beth said with a shrug.
“The point of all this is,” Frank broke in “you followed me to the cave and through a series of semi disastrous events ended up in this time frame.
Now we have to get you back to your original time. If we don’t, you will begin to experience flash forwards. For example, you are crossing a street here in San Francisco and all you have to worry about is horse traffic. Well, you flash forward into the 1970s San Francisco and are hit by a bus. You then flash back to your original point and there you are lying in the 1870s San Francisco street looking like you have been hit by a wrecking ball, dead.
These flash forwards could begin as soon as tomorrow or as late as a year from now. Once they start, they become more frequent. They may start and then a month later you have another, then a week apart and so on, until they are seconds apart. Your body can’t take the rapid shifts and you die.
As near as I can figure it, you have to return to you own time period to be temporally stabilized. Maybe it realigns your molecules. I really don’t know but I do know that whatever it does it works.
As Garcia said, we have been looking for you for eight years. Huiste knew approximately where you had gone but not exactly what time or place. The best he could figure was the last half of the nineteenth century and somewhere in the Americas.
We have been, for lack of a better term, time jumping all over North and South America from the 1850s into the twentieth century. We got lucky and found you.
You need to get your affairs in order. I have booked us passage to Panama on the California Star. She sails in a week.”
“Why can’t Anne come with us?” said Sonny.
“It’s simple,” said Frank, “We haven’t prepared, again for lack of a better term, the portal for more than the five of us. Huiste is awaiting the return of five people and no more. Also there is no way we can get in touch with him until we get back. Once we start the trip forward in time and if she gets caught up in the vortex, it would kill her.”
The four sat dumbstruck. The looks on their faces said it all. They had been prepared to live out their lives in the nineteenth century. They were not prepared for this.
Frank quickly continued, “It’s not all bad. Garcia and I found you. Once you have returned to the twentieth century you should be able to return in a matter of months. I won’t lie to you. Time travel is dangerous. You could be killed or the three of you could be separated and each of you could end up in different times and places.
I promise you that we will do all we can to get you back to this time and this place. That’s all I can do.
One fact that the three of you can’t get away from, if you stay here much longer, you will all die.”
Frank walked over to Anne, took both of her hands in his and said, “Young lady, I promise you that I will do all that I can to get them back to you safe and sound and as soon as possible.”
Anne said, “You said a matter of months?”
“Yes, they will have to stay in their own time a few months but they can return within two weeks in your time frame.”
Frank let go of Anne’s hands and stood where he could face all of them. “When you return to your time in Panama, you will occupy your twelve-year-old bodies. When you jump back here you will occupy the bodies that you are in now. Don’t ask me to explain it. It is just how it works.
It should take us ten days by steamer to get to Panama and no more than a day to get to the cave. Just to be safe, we’ll try and bring you back two weeks after the steamer sails. You can’t be in two places at once.”
When Frank had finished nobody said a word. After a couple of minutes Jack said, “We’re gonna hafta take some time and think about this. Could you and Garcia leave us alone for two or three days so we can sort this out?”
“Sure but no more than three days. If you can’t find me in my room, leave a message at the desk.”
Jack nodded his head and said “OK.”
Frank motioned to Garcia and they both left the room.
Jack, Sonny and Beth all had stunned looks on their faces. Anne looked at all three and said in a thick brogue, “I don’t know why you’re just sittin’ there with shitty looks on your faces. There is no choice here. As Sonny would say, this is a no brainer. You have to go back.
Besides, she said with a bravado she didn’t feel, “you’ll be back in two weeks.”
“Yeah,” said Sonny, “we’ll be back if we don’t get vaporized or whatever happens in this time travel mumbo jumbo.”
He turned to Anne and said, “I don’t want to ever leave you and the thought that something could go wrong and I might never see you, is unthinkable to me.”
Before anyone else could speak Beth said, “Anne’s right. We have no other choice so we have to do as Frank suggested, get our affairs in order and make plans.
We need to wire Peter and get him and a lawyer here right away. We need to insure that if anything happens to us that Anne can get her hands on the entire fortune with no problems.”
She looked at the other three and said, “Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s get cracking.”
The week was gone before they knew it. Time had never past so quickly for them. They cherished every precious minute of it and
they hated every minute that past.
Frank had the hotel hire a carriage to take them to the dock. The carriage carried six passengers on two plush seats that faced each other. Anne sat between Beth and Sonny in the forward facing seat and in the other seat Jack sat between Frank and Garcia. Beth held Anne’s left hand and Sonny was holding her right hand.
The mood was somber. Frank thought, “I’ve been to cheerier funerals than this. One would think that Sonny and Beth were escorting Anne to her execution.” On the other hand, he couldn’t help but sympathize with them. He understood that the four of them were their own support group and family. They needed no other friends or people. All they needed were each other. Circumstance and the isolation of their mining camp had formed a permanent interdependent bond between the four of them.
Frank wasn’t happy about it but there was nothing he could do. He knew if for some reason that Sonny, Beth and Jack couldn’t make it back and that this loss might well destroy them all. The loss would be worse than death because they would know that the others were somewhere out there across the expanse of time.
Frank didn’t know who would suffer the most. If the three never came back, Anne would never know their fate and the possibilities of their fate would haunt her till the day she died.
For the other three, they might be able to go to the California or Colorado archives and trace Anne’s life. They would only be able imagine what her life would had been like or what anguish she might have suffered and in being able to imagine her anguish, they would share it.
By the time the carriage had reached the dock, Frank was in as somber a mood as the teens. Frank said his goodbyes to Anne and said, “Remember my promise. If there is a way, I will return them to you.” Having said that, he waited for Garcia to give Anne a hug and the two of them turned and walked to the ship’s gangplank.
Jack found that he couldn’t speak. He bent down and hugged Anne tightly and kissed her on the cheek. Tears streamed down his cheeks.
Beth came next. She was dry eyed and for some inexplicable reason felt unnaturally calm and unemotional.
At first she took both of Anne’s hands and just looked at her. She said, “Be strong. You’re the strongest person I know. You’ve survived and come back from so much. You can be strong without us.”
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