Out of Time

by Deborah Truscott

  “Hit your right turn indicator—”

  “Which is that?”

  “The lever on the left side of the steering wheel. Flip it up—”

  “Oh yes. Quite right. Now what?”

  “Look for a place to pull over,” I said. “No, forget that. I’ll look for a place to pull over,” and I began talking him through the complicated maneuver of slowing down (gradually), applying brakes (smoothly), and — since NC 12 has few paved shoulders along its length — slipping neatly into a pull-over spot along the dunes.

  “Now shift into park and set the emergency brake,” I said.

  “Yes, of course,” Robert said, hauling up on the brake lever. That done, he turned to me and announced happily: “I did that quite well, don’t you think? Really, I doubt anyone would guess this was my first time out, so to speak.”

  I restrained myself from strangling him, which was probably fortunate, because at that moment a stern and expressionless face appeared at Robert’s window. To my unspeakable relief, it was not a face I recognized from the night before.

  “Your driver’s license and registration, please,” the officer requested with a practiced mixture of courtesy and command.

  Instantly Robert began reaching for his hip pocket (a nice twenty-first century touch, I thought), twisting slightly as if to retrieve his wallet. “Damn,” he said softly, and then began patting himself down, groping in his other pockets and in general putting on a wonderful imitation of a man searching for his driver’s license.

  The officer looked bored. “Registration?” he prompted, ignoring Robert’s contortions.

  I opened the glove box, rifled the contents, and handed the registration to Robert, who ceased his fumblings long enough to hand it to the patrolman.

  “You’re Kathleen Finlay?” the officer asked, peering at the registration.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “May I see your driver’s license?”

  “Of course,” I agreed, and produced it from my purse. Robert, meanwhile, was leaning across me, sifting through the glove box as if any moment now he’d stumble on his license.

  “Robert, would you be so kind as to hand my license to the officer?”

  “Oh, yes. Quite.” He took my license and passed it out the window to the patrolman.

  “And yours, sir?”

  “Of course. It’s here somewhere. Kathleen, do you remember—”

  But the policeman’s attention had shifted from our little performance back to the highway. I followed his gaze and saw it too: an arrest-me-red Ford Mustang going far too fast and straying ominously back and forth across the center lane.

  Suddenly the cop dropped my license and the registration into Robert’s lap. “Sir, this is your lucky day,” he announced abruptly. “But until you find your operator’s license, I advise you to let the lady drive.” And then he bolted for his cruiser and tore off in a spray of gravel to pursue the Mustang, lights flashing and sirens wailing.

  “Most impressive,” Robert said admiringly.

  I smacked him on the shoulder. “Get out,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Get out, I’m driving. You heard the man.”

  “Yes, I suppose that might be wise,” he conceded, and opened the car door. Meanwhile I slid across the seat and gripped the steering wheel with shaking hands. A minute later Robert settled himself comfortably into the passenger seat beside me.

  “Well, that was interesting,” he announced. “I’m beginning to see the enormous importance your century places on papers and such. What do you suppose would happen if—”

  “They would detain you. They’d run all sorts of computer searches on you, looking for your identity, profiling you for every unsolved crime. They’d take your fingerprints—”

  “Fingerprints?”

  “—and when they couldn’t match you up with anything, they’d call the INS and the immigration guys would query England, and all this would take tons of time and you would undoubtedly spend every minute of it in jail. And when they discover you have no identity, they’d detain you indefinitely.” I paused, then added for good measure: “You might never get home again.”

  By “home” I meant his native century. I glanced over to see how he was taking all this, and saw that he was staring at the pads of his fingers.

  “Tell me about the significance of fingerprints,” he said.

  Chapter 29

  No matter how completely I tried to cover our bases, I was always forgetting details, like fast foods and fingerprinting. And then it occurred to me that a mere thirty or forty miles up the road was the Wright Brothers Memorial. Speaking of icons.

  I pulled back out onto Highway 12 and continued north, until I found a McDonald’s. It was the first time, actually, that Robert had had burgers and fries, and for some reason it inspired him to spend the next 10 minutes telling me, as we sat feasting in the hot car, about the shortcomings of twenty-first century vegetables which he claimed had all the taste of papier mache. He reminded me of my grandmother, who often said the same about store-bought tomatoes.

  While Robert nattered on, my attention wandered until the car next to us pulled out of its parking space, revealing a battered Toyota (or maybe it was a Honda) parked three spaces away. The windows were rolled up and inside a man was intent on his newspaper. Now that was an idea. I rolled up the windows of the Accord, started up the engine and turned on the AC.

  Beside me, Robert cleared his throat. “I suppose I should apologize for the car episode.”

  I had not expected that. “Yes, I suppose you should.”

  “It was rather impulsive. We had been cooped up in the schoolroom too many days, I suppose. I’m easily made restless.”

  I shot him a look. “Like the morning you rode out of Philadelphia?”

  “Yes, like the morning I—” he broke off suddenly, and I knew at once he had remembered something. “Only it wasn’t Philadelphia,” he continued slowly. “We were bivouacked at Germantown. Had been for the past three weeks.” He looked at me, surprised at his recollections. “Since the battle.”

  Today Germantown is part of the city, but during the Revolution it was a separate village, closer to Skippack Pike, actually, than Philadelphia was.

  “Everyone was so restless,” he went on. “Peter particularly so. He had been back and forth to headquarters begging assignments. When none came, he led a group of us in a scouting party — unofficially, of course — out the Germantown road to Bethlehem Pike, where we slid around some rebel squads. There were rebels everywhere, it seemed.”

  “Yes, there would be. Because Washington wasn’t yet at Valley Forget.”

  “I’m not familiar with Valley Forge,” he said. “When was he there?”

  “The winter of 1777. But I’m pretty sure he was still lurking around Philadelphia during the autumn.”

  “He was quite lurking, as you put it. I was there. We may have repulsed him at Germantown, but he didn’t go very far, and when we found ourselves at the tavern, we paid some boys to keep a look out for his men. By then, you see, we were pretty deep into enemy territory, although the locals were friendly enough.”

  I considered this. Regardless of what they teach you in school, support for the Revolution really didn’t run very deep in the Colonies. Perhaps only a third of the Colonists were truly Revolutionaries. Another third were active Tories and the rest didn’t care either way. In the countryside around Philadelphia, if you had strong anti-Tory sentiments (and a gun to shoot with) you probably joined Washington’s army, forming one of the many patrols Robert had evaded, rather than hanging out a dormer window taking pot shots at Redcoats. Which may account for his safe passage out Skippack Pike that day.

  “You know, Kitty,” Robert mused, “Peter was high spirits that day, almost feverishly so. We were as far out as we had any right to go, and it was past time to turn back. All those rebels we observed made me think there was some movement afoot, or soon would be, and I was anxious to report it. But
Peter wouldn’t leave the tavern.”

  “So you left to scout around, hoping that when you returned he’d be ready to go”

  “Only I never did return.” He smiled at me.

  “What you said about the rebel presence is interesting,” I went on. “Somewhere I’ve read that the armies had a stand-off. I can’t remember where it was.”

  “Perhaps at Whitemarsh,” Robert offered. He finished the last of his burger and carefully wiped his fingers. “It was there that we remarked a rebel presence—”

  Recollection came to me. “Yes. And soon after there was a true encampment. And in December the British rode out, saw the enemy, and rode back to town.”

  Robert looked at me with interest. “God preserve me from university-bred women,” he said. Then: “So there was no engagement at all?”

  “None. Washington retreated safely to Valley Forge for the winter while Howe settled down in at Philadelphia.”

  “Doubtless for a season of balls and tea while his army shifted tediously from one foot to the other,” Robert remarked. “Happily for Sir William, Philadelphia was a loyalist city, quite unlike Boston with its vulgar mobs of so-called patriots. Although it has — had — its share of thieving rebels.”

  “I never knew that.”

  “Oh lord, Kitty, theft is a fact of war. Certainly, any war of occupation. Even in Philadelphia, the rebels stole us blind.”

  “They broke into your barracks?”

  “You mean billets, tents. We had not been there long enough to build barracks. But, no, that’s not the sort of theft I meant. There were rumors that supplies and materiel would arrive in port only to be diverted from the docks. In fact,” Robert went on thoughtfully, “Peter mentioned something to me. It was in confidence, not that it matters now, and I’m not sure what made me recall it. Oh, yes … thieves.”

  “He told you something about thieves?”

  “A group of them. Not footpads. Something quite unusual — gentlemen.”

  “Gentlemen thieves,” I clarified (patiently).

  “Yes. But only suspected. Howe’s staff was keeping watch on them. They were colonists, socially well placed, and thefts — some of them sizeable — seemed to occur whenever they were about.” He shook his head. “Some piece of gossip Peter picked up on his back-and-forth to headquarters, I suppose. But the point is, Kitty, the rebels were as much interested in theft as skirmish — even on Skippack Pike.

  “You were lucky you didn’t get a bullet in your back,” I told him sharply.

  “Perhaps I fell into your garden shed before I came into a sniper’s sights.”

  I didn’t want to think about that.

  “You know, Kitty, I keep wondering about Peter,” Robert went on. “His behavior was so puzzling that day, and I recall that I was troubled by it even at the time. I wonder now if he had an agenda, a reason for that ride he didn’t share with us.”

  “You said he had been begging assignments from headquarters,” I reminded him. “Maybe they gave him one.”

  “But if so, why not tell us, then? Nay, Kitty—”

  He broke off suddenly, staring at some invisible spot in the distance. I followed his gaze but all I saw was a crab shack, three small shabby cottages and one seedy motel.

  “Nay-Kitty-what?” I nudged him.

  “I’m not sure,” he went on slowly. “But … looking back on it … I wonder now if we really found that tavern just by chance, or if Peter somehow led us there, without any of us realizing that he was.” He looked at me thoughtfully. “I don’t know why I think that, Kitty, but I do.”

  *****

  I almost turned around and went home after our burger expedition. But on the other hand, we were already halfway to Kitty Hawk and the Wright Brothers Memorial. I checked my watch and saw that it was not quite four o’clock. And then I remembered that just behind the Memorial was an airstrip and next to it was an outfit offering air tours of Nags Head and Kill Devil Hills.

  Suddenly, I had an idea. I released the emergency brake and slid into gear.

  “Where are we headed?” Robert asked.

  “To see another icon,” I told him, moving into the busy pulse of traffic. June was high season for tourists, most of them, like me, sporting Virginia license tags, and half of them driving like some exotic breed of road terrorist. One impatient driver in a baseball hat and a pair of General MacArthur sunglasses virtually tailgated me on the north side of Bonner Bridge for several miles. Eventually he was replaced in the thickening traffic near Jockey’s Ridge by some young guys in a red Ford truck, their stereo thudding behind me like some freakish pulse. (This, as Lila would point out, is why we live in the relative backwater of Avon.) Along the way, to distract us both from traffic, I told Robert about our delinquent dog and his encounter with the tourist. Finally I saw a sign for the Wright Brothers National Memorial and blew out a sigh of relief. We turned in and parked the car.

  I knew right away that coming here was one of my more inspired ideas. At the flight museum Robert stood spellbound and speechless before the displays, absorbed by photographs, tools and models. Finally he found his voice. “The defining moment of the modern world,” he intoned, staring at a life-sized model of the plane that flew at Kitty Hawk almost precisely a century ago. “The greatest marvel of the age.”

  He meant the act of flight, not necessarily the Wright brothers’ wood and canvas machine. Even so, he probably would have stood there forever, pondering and pontificating, if I hadn’t herded him out the door and over to the airfield where, sure enough, the booking kiosk was still open, manned by a kid in his late teens. A tiny 4-passenger Piper something-or-other stood empty on the tarmac.

  “I can take you up now,” the kid offered. “My six o’clock just cancelled.”

  “You’re the pilot?” I asked suspiciously.

  “Yep. I’m Kevin. I fly the 4-seaters.”

  I looked at Robert.

  “Are you sure you’d like to do this?” Robert queried me solicitously. I realized we were role-playing, and I figured I was cast as the aircraft novice.

  “Well, I don’t know,” I said, deciding to appear indecisive. “I’m not crazy about big planes, and I’ve never even been in a small one before.”

  “It’s quite safe,” Robert assured me, parroting something I had told him a little earlier. I waited for his “marvel of marvels” speech, but instead he looked at Kevin. “I assume you’ve, ah, never lost a plane or any such tedious thing.”

  “An occasional passenger, maybe, but, like, never a plane.”

  Robert and I stared.

  “A joke,” Kevin assured us. He laughed a little weakly.

  Yeah, right, I thought. Real funny. Suddenly I wondered how much experience this guy had, and wondered how to frame the question without appearing excessively rude.

  Meanwhile, Robert cleared his throat. “Oh yes. I see. Tiresome tourists and so on. I assume you make them walk the plank.”

  “Yeah, just open the door and shove them out.”

  Robert laughed. For some reason, he and Kevin-the-pilot actually seemed to be enjoying this conversation. I glanced back and forth between the two of them, my confidence rapidly evaporating.

  “Well, then, shall we do it?” Robert asked me brightly.

  I tried to smile. “Sure,” I said, fishing out my Visa card and handing it to Kevin. A minute later he escorted us to the tiny Piper on the tarmac, and opened the passenger door.

  “Who wants to sit in front?” he asked.

  Robert and I hesitated, trying to read each other’s minds. Even in this century, people find first-time flight nerve-wracking. For an eighteenth century refugee I figured it could very well be mind boggling, if not actually terrifying, and perhaps best experienced in private.

  Evidently, Robert came to the same conclusion that I did. “Why don’t you sit in front with our pilot, Kathleen, since you’ve never been up in a small craft before. I imagine the, um, instrument panel will be, ah, most interesting. And the
view less, um, obstructed.”

  I nodded. Death, too, was more assured in the nose of a plane than in the tail. If our boy pilot took us down, at least I wouldn’t have to live with crippling injuries. “All right,” I said, and watched as Robert climbed into the back seat. I climbed in beside Kevin and listened as he instructed us about seat belts, which we were to secure, and the noisy radio, which was not to alarm us. Then he went on to tell us about the plane’s weight capacity (not much), air speed (ditto), flight path (down to Bodie Island Light House and back, about 30 miles round trip), and altitude (around a thousand feet). I’ve been up in small planes about three or four times, but nothing as small as this miniature Piper, whose interior made an old VW Beetle seem spacious and luxurious by comparison. I glanced at Robert in the back seat that was supposed to accommodate two people, and wondered how an extra passenger could possibly fit.

  Kevin turned the ignition and started the engine, which, I was relieved to see, needed no coaxing. Then he picked up the radio mike and exchanged several pilot-like remarks with the “tower” (which I figured was some guy back at the kiosk), after which he turned the plane around so that (he explained to us) it was heading into the wind.

  And suddenly we were screaming down the runway, the entire plane vibrating with the effort, until, almost unexpectedly, the little Piper jumped into the air, like a kite catching a sudden breeze.

  I waited a few white-knuckled moments while the plane buffeted its way through a couple of air pockets, and then I slipped my hand back between the seats until I felt Robert squeeze my fingers. When he released them, I slide my gaze to Kevin, who gave every appearance of knowing what he was doing.

  “How long have you been flying?” I asked at last, pitching my voice above the whine of the engine.

  “You mean professionally?”

  Yeah, I thought. And I mean airplanes, too. “That’s right,” I said aloud. “How long have you been a pilot?”

  “Four months,” Kevin said.

  My heart thumped.

  “Before that I was a surfer in South Florida.”