by Rodney Jones
“You have a good imagination,” I said. “You’re smart and a good storyteller. I never really thought you expected me to believe anything. I think you’re interesting, but I also feel that you sometimes take your stories too seriously, and then it gets a little weird.”
“I’d like to show you something.”
“What?”
“The town I come from.”
“Oh? You mean time travel back with you?”
“No, no, I don’t know that I want to go back, and I’m dang sure I don’t want you going. I want to show you what it’s become, what it is now.”
The next morning, I got into a big argument with Mom. She accused me of unnecessarily damaging the front door.
“I went to bed a little early. All you’d have to have done was ring the doorbell or tap on my bedroom window.”
Blah, blah, blah… I was glad to get out and happy to have my car back. Mom had finally gotten hers back from the repair shop.
A little ways down from my house, I pulled to the side of the road. John was waiting back in the trees, appearing a bit more refined in his new clothes—or less eccentric, anyway. He got in, and I drove into Wallingford then over toward Weston. We mostly talked about the dance, while avoiding last night’s craziness.
“You’ll see a big yellow house on the left, just over the rise,” he said. “A little past that, to the right, is Greendale Road. Take that up as far as you can, about three miles.”
I steered carefully down a narrow, bumpy gravel road to a turn-around. He directed me to pull off to the edge and park, then we got out and walked, following a creek up into the woods. There didn’t seem to be anything there, just trees. The last house I had seen was about a mile down the road. But then we came to what may possibly have been, at one time, a small village—six rectangular-shaped, sunken areas with collapsing sections of stone foundations marking their perimeters.
John showed me the spot where his uncle’s mill had once stood, then he pointed out a square-ish depression with a few small trees sprouting from it, which he claimed was where his house had been. He was in one of his weird, serious moods.
“We came here once before,” he said. “You found a chunk of a woodstove buried over there.” He gestured to the south. “And that was it. You believed me after that.”
“Oh?” I really wasn’t in the mood for his games, but I played along anyway. “And how would that have made a believer out of me?”
He was quiet for a moment, looking off toward his imaginary house. “You would’ve had to have been there.”
I couldn’t help but smile at that.
“Lightning doesn’t strike the same spot twice,” he said.
“What?”
“An old saying. Doesn’t mean much of anything.”
I scanned the area for clues, something that would support John’s claim that we were standing in a nineteenth-century village, or something that would prove otherwise and maybe shake him back to reality. All I saw were trees and a creek. “Where’s the cemetery?”
“There wasn’t one.”
“Don’t all towns have cemeteries?”
“In the time I was here, there was just the one death.” John rubbed his chin. “Old Mrs. Cabot. She was buried in Weston.” He turned back toward the rectangular depression behind us. “My aunt and uncle, they’re probably buried there, too.”
“Wanna have a look?”
I thought he’d say no, but he surprised me by agreeing. So we climbed back into the car. As I drove, John went on about his aunt, telling me clever little anecdotes about her—sweet and old-timey. He quieted as we neared the village.
I turned up Chester Mountain Road, pulled off at the entrance to the cemetery, and shut off the engine. We sat there for a while, staring out over the hood of my car at a bunch of old grave stones under the shade of twisted cedars and maples.
“There wasn’t but maybe thirty graves here the last time I was up this way,” he said.
“Did you know any of them?”
“Well, Mrs. Cabot… and Mr. Pease. He used to bring his wheat and oats to the mill—a funny old fellow, made me laugh.” John gazed out over the dashboard. “I may know several of these folks here, now, though.”
“You wanna have a look around?”
He sighed. “I don’t know, Tess. Give me a minute.”
John’s demeanor was so convincingly solemn that I had to respect it. I quietly waited.
But not even a minute later, he said, “It’s too soon.”
“Too soon?”
“I can’t. I can’t stand over their graves. Not now. Not yet.”
“Okay.” I bit back my exasperation and started the car.
I backed out onto the road then stopped at the bottom of the hill to wait for a couple cars to pass. I had my right signal on, but I really didn’t want to go home. I didn’t want to deal with Mom. I turned left instead and, with no clear destination in mind, drove into Weston. I thought maybe we’d browse the Country Store or just drive around for a while and go nowhere.
When we approached the edge of the village, John perked up. We drove by a big old house squeezed between the road and the river.
“That’s where the inn used to be. And over there’s Mr. Mansur’s old place.” He pointed to a large white colonial, off to our right.
I noticed a sign hanging at the corner of the house—Farrar-Mansur House 1795. The word Museum was painted in tall black letters above the front door. A woman in a pink T-shirt and blue jeans was struggling to get a bulky cardboard box through the front door.
I looked at John. “You ever been in there?”
“Yeah. My uncle did business with Mr. Mansur. He owned the sawmill next door.”
“It’s a museum.”
“It wasn’t then.”
“You want to check it out?”
John looked from me to the house and back. His brow was furrowed as if he were confused.
“I like museums,” I said. I turned and parked in the lot at the side of the house, next to the only other vehicle there.
“The sawmill…” John gazed out the window.
At the north end of the parking lot was a long, red barn-like building running lengthwise along the edge of the river. I almost expected him to launch into a story about the time he and his uncle had lumber cut there for his grandmother’s coffin. His stubborn adherence to that stupid time travel story was beginning to wear thin. I kept offering him easy outs, expressing my willingness to accept a less adventurous version of him and overlook the craziness, but he showed no sign that he would ever let it go. I began to wonder if maybe Liz was right and the guy was a flaming dweebazoid.
As we walked up to the front door, John repeatedly turned to stare back toward the buildings behind us, as though each held secrets that only he was aware of. Entering the museum was like stepping into a nineteenth-century hoarder’s house. Every piece of furniture appeared natural, though—ancient and authentic, as if it had always been there and belonged there. The walls from one room to the next were painted a variety of colors, which for the most part seemed familiar and modern, except for the decorative stenciling around the doors and windows and along the edges of the ceiling. The floors were wide pine planks so worn they made me wonder how many hundreds—or thousands—of feet had walked and run and skipped over them through the centuries.
Paintings depicting early American scenes—women wearing bonnets and tent-sized dresses, men in long-sleeved shirts, people on horseback, wagons and buggies—hung everywhere. Even the smell of the place was old, as if someone had just emptied a can of vintage air freshener—“dust and mildew scented.”
I coughed.
“Hello?” someone called from another room.
“Hello,” I said.
The woman we’d seen wrestling with the box appeared in an open doorw
ay to my right. She was a petite lady, about fifty, with long gray hair. “Oh, I left the door unlocked, didn’t I? The museum doesn’t open ’til one.” She glanced at the watch on her wrist. “But that’s okay. Go ahead. We get so few visitors.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” John said.
“Where are you visiting from?”
“Wallingford,” I said.
“Oh, a charming little village.” She nodded. “Please, have a look around. I’ll be back here if you have any questions.” She stepped out of sight through the doorway.
John and I passed through the spacious front room into a dining room, the kitchen, down a short hallway to a bedroom, then into a small room with a collection of painted tin toys. I thought the toys were really cool. John, however, appeared almost bored with everything. His eyes flicked around, taking no apparent interest in anything. I thought that a guy obsessed with the nineteenth century would’ve been fascinated by all this stuff. We went up a set of stairs then entered a large room running the length of the house.
“The ballroom,” he said. “I’ve danced up here a few times.” John glanced up along the edges of the ceiling. “Far as I know, it’s the only house in the county with its own ballroom.”
Four glass-topped display cases were lined up down the middle of the room. While John wandered the perimeter, studying the old portraits that hung between the sun-filled windows, I stepped up to the first case. A small placard placed at the lower left corner stated that the cases contained letters and news clippings from the nineteenth century. “These letters,” it read, “were all penned by residents of Windsor County, Vermont.”
The first case held some brittle-looking letters written between two brothers. One had gone off to fight in the south, while the other had stayed home to manage the farm. I skimmed over a few—“The sow dropped a litter of eight this past Monday morning”—before going on to the next case, which contained handmade valentines, poems, and love letters. They’d included photographs of the sour-faced couples responsible for a few of the examples—far more interesting than the brothers’ thrilling accounts of life on the farm—“earwigs gnawing on the sweetcorn”—and the war—“Buford Tate came home a foot shy of a pair.”
The third case held more letters with attached newspaper clippings—people sharing everything from births and wedding announcements, to tragic accounts of accidents, and obituaries with distant family members. One letter in particular caught my attention. It was addressed to someone simply referred to as J.W. and written by a woman grieving the loss of her husband, who she felt had been falsely accused of murder.
“Look at this,” John said.
I glanced over my shoulder. He was pointing at a family portrait. I turned and squinted at the old photograph. As was typical, everyone in it appeared pissed off or bored.
John pointed at the one and only man in the photo. “Now there’s a fellow I wouldn’t mind going back and paying a last visit to.”
“Who’s that?”
“A fellow I went to school with, Hugh Stewart. No friend of mine.”
I gave him a quick, indulgent smile and went back to reading the letters, wondering if my stupid e-mails to my friends would someday be on public display. One read, “I have still not heard a word from your brother John. It leaves me with the worst feeling. I have been up there six times now, searching that mountain, but have not come upon the first scrap of evidence he’d be found anywhere nearby. We both know your uncle did not kill that gal. He was right fond of Tess.”
What? I stared at the signature at the bottom of the letter: Lilly Paulson. I turned to the newspaper clipping pinned alongside the letter.
Murdering Miller Hanged
Edwin Paulson, the miller from Greendale, was hanged in Woodstock at 3:20 p.m. today, vindicating the murder of the mysterious vagrant known as Tess McKinnon.
I went over the name, letter by letter, thinking I’d maybe misread it. I had done that before—read something while thinking about something else, my mind blending the two. But no, I’d read it correctly. The girl in the clipping had my name. I continued reading.
The young lady’s identity was never verified, as no one has yet come forward to claim kinship to her. During Mr. Paulson’s trial, a witness from the nearby town of Weston testified to seeing Miss McKinnon hurriedly leave the mill in Greendale, and a short time later, the building was ablaze. It is believed that Mr. Paulson killed Miss McKinnon, and after realizing she and his nephew, John Bartley, were illicitly involved, took the life of his nephew, as well. The young man’s body was never found. Authorities think it may have been incinerated in the fire that nearly consumed the entire village.
I spun around. “John?”
John was leaning over the display of the Civil War brothers’ letters. He looked at me and cocked his head, his features shifting from curious to concerned. “You all right?”
I tapped on the glass above the clipping. “This… it’s a letter from…” I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
He came over and read the letter. “What?” He drew back, his features twisted in confusion. “What is this? Aunt Lil… it’s to my brother. But…” His brow bunched, and he read the letter again. “Oh, no. This is wrong. It’s wrong. He didn’t do it. No. He was fighting the fire.”
I rushed from the room. “Miss?” I hurried down the steps, through one room, then the next. “Hello?”
The woman appeared from down the dim hallway to my right. “Yes?”
“The letters,” I said. “Where’d they come from?”
“Letters?”
“The ballroom. The letters in the ballroom.”
The lady lowered her head slightly. “Is there a problem?”
“Well, yes… no. I’d just like to know where they came from.”
“Uh, they’re from people who used to live around here. Residents of Weston, mostly.”
“I mean, who put them there?” I pointed toward the ceiling. “How’d they end up here… on display?”
She glanced up. “I’m sorry. What exactly is the problem?”
“Our names… I… uh… one of the letters has my name on it. I’d like to know where it came from.”
“Most of that stuff came from our archives. If your name appears in one of the letters, it’s just a coincidence. Someone with the same name. Really, that’s all it can be.”
“Please, can I show you the one I’m talking about?”
She followed me up to the ballroom. John was still leaning over the display with the same stunned expression.
I stepped up next to him and tapped the glass. “This one. Do you know where it originated?”
She looked down at it. “It was in our collection. We should have a provenance on file. But I can assure you that your name appearing in it is merely coincidence. The same name. That’s all it is.”
“Okay. Yeah.” I nodded. “You’re right. Thank you.” I grabbed John’s arm and gave it a light tug. “Come on, John. Let’s go.”
Wagging a finger toward the letter in the display case, he said, “That’s my aunt, Tess. It’s no coincidence.”
“It is, John. Come on.” I pulled him toward the exit.
The museum lady moved away from the door as though to put distance between us. When we arrived at the top of the stairs, I stopped and turned. The lady took another step back.
“How long has this exhibit been here?” I asked.
“It’s new. We just put this together this week.”
“Thank you.”
John and I returned to the car. We just sat there—my hands shaking. He had a dazed, million-miles-away look on his face, as though he were just as confused as I was.
chapter eight
John
As I sat in Tess’s car, blowing on the embers of my resentment, a picture of Aunt Lil came to mind—up to her knees in water, dipping bu
cket after bucket, the glow of the fire on her panicked face, the fierce wind whipping her dress about. What had become of her? Her home had burnt to the ground, her husband had been killed, and I had disappeared, all because of that arrogant McNeil. I so wished I had killed him, sheriff or not. That self-righteous scrap of dung had managed to destroy everything dear to me and my family.
I looked at Tess. I wanted to take her hand and pretend that nothing had happened, but I couldn’t. I had to give her something, though. “Tess, remember me saying how you couldn’t get home?”
“John, that isn’t real. I did not go to 1875 with you. That’s just a ridiculous bunch of bullshit.”
“They hanged my uncle.”
She squinted at me. “But how could I have…?” She scowled. “You couldn’t have. It’s not possible, and you know it.” She shook her head. “Did you…?”
“Do you want to know why I came? Why I came to the future? Why I was at your door that day?”
“No. Not if it’s crazy. I’m done with your crazy crap!” She slapped her palms on the steering wheel and huffed like a train letting off steam.
“There’s nothing more I can tell you then,” I said.
I turned and gazed out the window to my right, thinking again of Aunt Lil’s letter and about the night I left. I recalled being awakened out in front of our burning house—my head still swimming from the blow I received from the sheriff, and my uncle’s face, the flames in his eyes, the wind whistling, people shouting, racing back and forth.
I was certain Uncle Ed would’ve informed my aunt of my intentions to go after Tess and see her safely home. But he also should have told her that I wasn’t coming back, that I had intended to stay in the future and marry Tess. But of course, with Tess’s body found lying in the woods where I’d left it, none of that would’ve made sense anymore.
“No,” Tess said.
“No?”
“It’s just a coincidence, like the woman said. A crazy coincidence. Crazier things than that happen all the time.” She looked off toward the old house. “I’m sorry, but that makes way more sense than your story.”
