by Rodney Jones
Tess watched me eat for a few minutes before speaking again. “Have you told me anything real?”
I choked down a mouthful then managed to say, “I’m sorry. It’s not my usual, lying like that. It’s just that there’s not much I can tell you that you’d likely believe. The truth? I’d give you that, but I’m afraid you’ll think I’m crazy.”
“Maybe I do anyway.” She smiled. “The trick to a good lie is keeping it boring, like reality.”
“How is it you know so much about lying?”
Her smile widened into a grin. “I’m observant. But really, seriously, what brings you to the far end of West View Road? You can tell me. I won’t tell anyone.”
“You want the truth or something boring like reality?”
chapter three
Tess
It seemed I had just met my first certifiable nut job, which naturally brought up a few concerns. I didn’t want to believe he was dangerous, but I wasn’t sure I could trust my instincts. I’d read and seen enough to know they kept people like him locked up for a reason. What puzzled me most was the fact that he’d picked me. I’ve never been picked for anything and assumed I never would be.
I could only guess that John had spotted me somewhere, and for whatever reason, he had become infatuated with me, snooped around, and dug up my name. Maybe he’d been stalking me for days… or even weeks. And as if that wasn’t enough, he told me about his wacked-out fantasy of traveling through time, from 1875, as though he was in some cheesy romance novel.
I kept a straight face right up until he got to a part where I supposedly went back in time to warn him of a fire and a hurricane. I couldn’t hold my tongue any longer. “A hurricane? In Vermont? Wow.”
There was something likable about him, though. He had a sweet naïveté, a curious innocence, and an earthy, unaffected intelligence. His clever explanation for my inability to remember our shared adventure had actually impressed me, though he’d lost me in the confusing chronology.
I kept an eye on the time because Mom was due home from work soon. I warned John that his being there on our front porch could give her the wrong idea, which was just maybe a bit of an understatement.
“I don’t want to cause you any trouble.” He got to his feet and brushed some breadcrumbs from his shirt.
I stood up, too. “So where’re you off to next? Eighteenth-century Scotland?” Once the words were out, I could’ve slapped myself. I would sometimes spew snarky crap without even realizing it, as if I had some weird form of Tourette’s or something.
“I’m not really sure yet.” He nodded toward the mountain. “Up there for the time being, I reckon. I need to get things sorted out.”
“What’re you gonna do for food and water?”
“There’s a creek up Rutland Road, a half mile or so. I might camp along there.”
“Oh, no. Don’t drink that water. Wait here. I’ll be right back.” I dashed into the house and grabbed a liter of water from the pantry.
I searched the shelves of canned beans and soups and boxes of pasta, cake, and brownie mixes, looking for something he could eat later without cooking. I grabbed a packet of Pop Tarts—strawberry with white frosting—and a bag of tortilla chips, then I went to the fridge and spotted a wedge of leftover pizza wrapped in aluminum foil. I popped that into a baggy, along with a couple of hot dogs, then placed the food and water in a plastic grocery bag and dashed back out the door.
“If you had come on a Monday, you would’ve gotten more of the good stuff,” I said, handing him the bag.
He held the bag out, examining the store logo, then opened it and peered inside. “Tess.” He put on the most convincing look of wonder. “You’re giving me all this?”
“It’s nothing. Just take it.”
“You’re being awfully generous.”
“It’s part of my Save the Squirrel campaign.”
He tilted his head to the side and frowned.
I giggled. “Never mind.”
“Oh, so you think everything I say is a story because I fibbed about the squirrel?” There may’ve been the smallest hint of a smile in his eyes, but I wasn’t sure.
“No, I didn’t mean—”
“How about a bear story? About a gal who nearly ran over a bear with her motor car? The only bear she’d ever seen in the wild, and she nearly ran it over.”
My jaw dropped. I’d told a number of people about the incident, my mom and a few close friends, but no one recently. None of them would have shared it with some stranger. Unless… “Liz.” I grinned.
“Pardon?”
“Liz Wise.” I paid close attention to his eyes. I thought I saw a nervous twitch, but I wasn’t sure.
“Oh.”
“You know who I’m talking about, don’t you?”
“Jim’s sister? The fellow in Rutland?”
“Ha! I thought so.”
“The tall gal with the silver ball on her nose,” he added.
“So that’s what this is.” I laughed. “That freakazoid.”
He squinted. “I miss something?”
I smiled. “No offense, John Bartley, but you need to get your butt out of here. My mom could be coming up the road this very moment. And keep the weenies and chips. There’s enough there for you and Liz both.”
He stood there, looking clueless.
I pointed toward the road. “I’m serious. Go.”
“Well, I’d like a chance to repay you for your kindness.” He held up the grocery bag.
“Yeah, okay. Another time. Please, go.”
He hesitated then turned and walked away, glancing back over his shoulder two or three times as he marched off toward the east. He hit the edge of the yard then kept going. There was nothing up that way but trees and rocks. I had expected he’d go the other way, down the road, to where logic told me he’d left his car. He hiked about a hundred feet into the woods and stopped. His shoulders dropped, then he turned and started back. A familiar hum and rattle came from down the road.
“Great.” I waved John away. “No. Go. That’s my mom coming.” I pointed just as my red Civic appeared from behind the pines at the corner of the lawn.
Ignoring me, he headed straight for my approaching mother. “I forgot my box!”
The garage door began to rise. Mom pulled into the driveway, stuck her head through the open window, and stared back at John. “Who is that?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know.”
John, who was standing across the street, ducked behind a tree then reappeared carrying a small wooden box in one hand. The bag of food and water I’d just given him dangled from the other.
Mom’s eyes stayed glued to him. “What is he doing? Did he just find that box lying there?”
My mom had the face of a chronically miserable person. I’d come to notice more and more the creases around her mouth and her eyes. Most people, as they aged, developed laugh lines—crow’s feet or whatever. My mom, however, had gained frown lines. She would put on makeup in the mornings to hide her misery, but by the end of the day, her face seemed to say, “Life sucks, then you find a cigarette butt in your beer.”
John stepped out onto the road.
Just go, I prayed. Go.
Mom pushed open the car door and stepped out. “What is this clown up to?” She started toward the road. Her long, frizzy blond hair was strapped into a wild ponytail that hung down the back of her faded navy-blue T-shirt.
“Mom, please, leave him alone. He’s probably some homeless guy just passing by.” Standing behind my mom, I gestured toward the mountain, wagging my index finger, silently mouthing, “Go,” at John.
“Hey!” Mom hollered.
John smiled as he approached her. “Howdy do, ma’am.”
Oh. Just friggin’ great.
“What are you doing?” Mom stopped at the edge
of the lawn and jabbed a finger toward the box in his hand. “What is that? Did you just find that there?”
“My box, ma’am. I nearly went off and left it.” He nodded toward the tree to his left then threw a glance my way.
I gave my head a subtle shake.
“What? Right there in front of our house?”
“Yes, ma’am, at the base of that maple.” He set the bag down at his feet and extended a hand. “John Bartley. A pleasure to meet you.”
My mom ignored the offer. “And what exactly were you doing out here?”
“Mom…” I closed my eyes and sighed.
“Just passing through. Stopped for a rest, is all.”
“See? That’s what I thought. Just passing through,” I said.
“Well, if I catch you just passing through again, I’ll just call the cops.” She shook her finger at him, emphasizing each syllable. “Do you understand?”
He blinked. “Yes, ma’am, I believe I do. I’ll consider taking the long way next time.” He bent and picked up the plastic bag. “Sorry to be a bother.”
“You weren’t a bother,” I said. I could feel my mom’s eyes drilling into me, but I refused to acknowledge her.
A smile appeared on John’s lips—a quick, polite smile. “A good day, ma’am.” He turned and walked off down the road.
I checked on his progress more than once as Mom and I headed back up the driveway toward the house.
“Just passing through, is all,” Mom mocked. “What’d he say his name was? Huckleberry Finn?”
“Mom, some people talk like that.”
“No, his accent’s way overdone.”
I peered toward the woods and spotted John in the distance. When I turned back, Mom was about to climb back into my car to park it in the garage. “Mom, leave it. I’m going over to Liz’s for a while.”
“Did you get all your chores done?”
“Yeah.”
“I see you did a wonderful job weeding the flowers.”
“I’ll do it tomorrow.”
“Right.”
“It’ll get done.”
She sighed. “Don’t be out late.”
Normally, I’d call first to make sure Liz was home. She lived at the far end of Wallingford, about a mile from my house, so I didn’t like to risk a wasted trip. But I just went over there without calling because I wanted to catch her off guard.
Her thirteen-year-old brother, Jeff—a wispy, dark-haired, dark-eyed kid with an abundance of zits orbiting his nose—answered the door. When he saw me, he spun around and yelled, “Elizabeth, it’s Tess!” He disappeared into the living room, leaving the door open behind him.
Liz’s muffled voice came from the depths of the house. “Tell her to come in. I’m in my room.”
I walked in. Jeff had plopped onto the couch, next to his friend. Their eyes were glued to the wide-screen TV, thumbs rapidly working game controllers, while the sounds of bombs and guns filled the room. I continued to Liz’s room.
Her bedding was shoved into a mountainous heap at the foot of the bed, and as usual, there were clothes, books, magazines, and CD cases scattered everywhere. The walls were adorned with a mix of self-made art—lots of red and black angry-looking slashes, superheroes, a zombie eye staring out here and there—and photos and posters of every size, nearly every one featuring Jack White of the White Stripes duo.
Liz sat toward the head of her bed, a copy of Billboard magazine spread open before her. “What is wrong with this thing?” She frowned at her cell phone as she fiddled with it.
I moved closer. “What’s it doing?”
“Nothing. Your call didn’t come through.” She looked up at me from under the perfect straight bangs of her pixie haircut. She liked to keep her hair dyed the blackest of blacks, probably to accentuate her ghostly complexion.
“I didn’t call.”
“Oh? Something wrong with your phone?”
“John Bartley.” I gave her a few innocent blinks.
She looked confused. “Uh huh?”
“Your time-traveling friend. Where’d you find that guy?”
“I have a boyfriend I’m not aware of?”
I stepped over a pair of jeans and a bra and sat at the edge of her bed. Attempting a Virginia accent, I said, “I reckon you cain’t recall cuz that was a different time warp y’all met in, huh?”
She leaned toward me and sniffed. “Is that your mom’s Seagram’s Seven I smell?”
“Seriously, Liz, the grungy-looking dude… from 1875?”
She gave me her dull, ain’t-nobody-home gaze.
I gave her my baffled, Scooby-Doo look. “You really don’t know who I’m talking about?”
She shook her head. “No.”
I stared unblinking into her eyes.
“I swear.” Her mouth hung open, her eyes wide with innocence. “I don’t know what the freak you’re talking about.”
“Maybe John Bartley’s not his real name.”
“Well… okay, so what were you and my boyfriend doing behind my back?”
“Really. This guy shows up at my house… you’ve seen that old TV show, The Waltons?”
“John Boy!”
“Yeah, he looked a little like him, talked like him, and come to think of it, he even dressed a bit like him, too. 1875, he said. This is his second time here in the future.” I rolled my eyes. “Supposedly, we were like a thing or something the first time around.”
“What made you think I had anything to do with it?”
“He knew my name. He knew I was about to take the bus to Rutland, and he claimed he’d met you. He even described you.”
She grinned and preened a little. “Did he make me sound pretty?”
I feigned disbelief. “Duh.”
“And he told you I put him up to this?”
“Well… no.” I told Liz about him returning for the wooden box and his curious reaction to my mom’s rudeness. “He’s such an enigma,” I added.
“A what?”
“E-nig-ma. Mysterious.”
“I meant his reaction. Like how?”
“Like skipping merrily around, teasing a snarling bear.”
“Oh, man, I wish I could’ve been there,” Liz said.
I didn’t say so, but I regretted that John and I hadn’t exchanged any kind of contact information.
The next day, I took the mid-morning bus into Rutland to hang with my friend Nicole, as I’d planned to do the day before. Nicole was a folksy, Old Navy, city-cowgirl with a touch of OCD. She was nearly the polar opposite of Liz, a borderline Goth and cerebral nonconformist who valued uniqueness over social acceptance. I fell somewhere between the two, so it worked out.
I met Nicole at Java News for coffee and pastries. I loved the smell of that place—like snorting fresh-ground coffee and powdered sugar. We sat at a small, wobbly, two-person table at the back, away from the other customers’ ears. A poster of Van Gogh’s Café Terrace at Night was thumbtacked to the purplish brown wall at the right of our table. A moody Radiohead tune came from a pair of tiny speakers mounted above the shelves behind the counter. Occasionally, the music would get lost within the gurgling and sputtering of the milk steamer.
Nicole’s outfit—button-down shirt, jeans, and boots—was a color-coordinated, fussy-ass rodeo. Her long, straight, blond hair added the finishing touch to her Swedish cowgirl look—if there was such a thing.
Between sips of coffee and nibbles from my sticky pastry, I told her the story of my strange encounter of the day before, ending with John Bartley disappearing into the forest. “I wonder what he had in that little box.”
Nicole’s eyes widened. “Maybe the hand of his last victim.” She performed a barely recognizable interpretation of The X-Files theme song. “Maybe your mom was right to scare him off. The guy’s clearly m-mi
s-misfiring.” She blinked and twitched.
“He’s harmless.”
“You don’t watch enough horror flicks, Tess. That’s what they all say, just before they’re hacked to pieces by their seducers. I’m serious. I saw on the news the other day where this guy was going around pretending to be a strip-o-gram-er. Women would let him into their apartments, and he’d expose himself then leave before they realized he wasn’t for real.”
“And what? They’d die of shock or something?”
“Well, no, but it just goes to show ya.”
“Right.” I nodded. “Evil can strike from anywhere and take the most unsuspected forms.”
“You got anything going Sunday evening?” She raised her napkin and wiped chocolate icing from her lips, using a long stroke because she had a wide mouth. Above her button nose was a pair of blue-gray eyes, one of them slightly too far to the left.
An image of me at one end of the couch, my mom at the other, watching another episode of Dexter, came to mind. “Uh, not much.”
“Okay, I know this might sound lame, but me and a few of my friends… our friends, I guess…” She shrugged. “You know Ron Chapman?”
“Not really.”
“Well, he and Holly and Kyle and me… went to this thing at the Franklin Center. Contra dancing. There’s another one this Sunday at the college in Middlebury.”
“Contra dancing?”
“Like in the old movies, ya know.” She pivoted her shoulders in time to the music. “Like square dancing, only ya dance with everyone… constantly changing partners.”
“I don’t know how to square dance, though.”
“They teach ya. Free lessons before the dance. It’s easy.”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Lots of cute guys at these things. Think about it.”
I took the 5:20 bus back to Wallingford. As I headed for my room, Mom stepped out of the kitchen, cutting me off at the entrance to the hallway, her hands on her hips.
