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All the Butterflies in the World

Page 12

by Rodney Jones


  “Oh, yeah. We added the letters just this last month—all new. Do you like it?”

  “I mean, since last weekend. One of the letters and a newspaper clipping is changed. The letter from Lilly Paulson. It’s not the same as it was last time I was here.”

  “Lilly Paulson? Oh, the clipping about the Valentine murder? Yeah. What’s different about it?”

  “Last weekend, the clipping said that the miller was hanged for the murder. Now it says his nephew was.”

  She cocked her head to one side and frowned. “That’s bizarre. Um… could you have misread it?”

  “No, no, I didn’t. It’s been changed.”

  “Okay, um… I don’t know.” She gave her head a quick little shake. “Is there anything else I can help you with?”

  I sighed. “No.”

  As Liz and I walked back to the car, I said, “I didn’t misread it.”

  “You think she was lying?”

  “Uh, why would she lie? What difference could it possibly make to her who was hanged for some murder over a hundred years ago?”

  “It’s just a coincidence anyway. There’s probably been a hundred Tess McKinnons born in the last two centuries, don’t you think?”

  “What?” I threw my hands up. “I’m talking about the story being changed, and you’re talking about how common my name is?” I stopped by the car and dug in my pocket for my keys.

  “No, no… I was… well, maybe, but I only meant—”

  “I don’t get it,” I said. I did get it. I got the chill of it, like a chunk of ice bobbing about in my belly. I simply wasn’t ready to acknowledge it. I unlocked the car and climbed in behind the wheel.

  Liz got into the passenger seat and shut her door. “So now what?”

  I looked up at the windows of the ballroom. The mountains were visible beyond the corner of house. “Let’s go find your GPS.”

  I drove to the Ranger Station in Rutland to get a topographical map. I gave Ranger Dave a set of coordinates, claiming I’d gotten them from my dog’s tracking collar.

  A smile appeared on Dave’s whiskered face. “You weren’t hunting up there, were you?” Except for a pair of dark brown eyebrows, his entire head had been shaved, though his scalp was stubbly.

  “Oh, no. We don’t hunt,” I said. “We’re vegan.”

  “Except for bacon and shrimp,” Liz added.

  I rolled my eyes. “Seriously, we were just out walking.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “Near Wallingford,” I said.

  “What kind of dog?”

  “He’s um…”

  “A black lab,” Liz said. “About yea high.” She held her hand about three feet from the floor.

  “A big guy, huh?” Ranger Dave smiled again. “When’d you lose him?”

  “Today,” I said.

  “I had a dog do that once. Spent hours looking for him, then got home and there he was, waiting for me, probably worried that I’d gotten lost. But let’s see where he went off to.” He turned to the large wall map behind the counter. “Right about here.” He placed his finger on the map. “You were hiking the Greendale Trail?”

  I nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Where’d you start from?”

  I knew the area. John and I had walked the first couple of hundred yards of the trail, up to the old ruins. “Greendale Road.”

  “Did you know there’s a trailhead down here below Wallingford Pond?” He pointed at the map.

  I didn’t know that. Dave explained that the trail was at one time an old stagecoach road, connecting Weston to Wallingford. John had mentioned that, and he’d also said that was the road he’d followed into Wallingford the day he first came to the future.

  We thanked the man and went back to my car. While I drove to the end of Greendale road, Liz called her brother, Jeff, and talked him into bringing up the GPS program on her mom’s computer.

  The day was perfect—clear and sunny. We started our hike from the trailhead then stopped an hour later so Liz could call Jeff and tell him to turn on the SOS signal on the tracker. We listened but didn’t hear anything. Liz then had him turn it off to save on the tracker battery.

  We continued up the path, through patches of ferns, grasses, and spent trilliums—baby Christmas trees poked up here and there. I had seen a movie, years ago, in which a group of men were teleporting through time, and they somehow screwed up and materialized around solid objects. That stupid image was stuck in my head—a man screaming in agony with a tree sticking out of him.

  Liz looked over at me. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah.” I reached down and pulled a prickly branch from my pant leg. “I’m a little nervous, I guess.”

  “You think John’s story is real?” Liz said. “Like we’re gonna find some kind of invisible space-bender or particle entangler or something?”

  “I don’t know.”

  We walked alongside a small creek—Greendale Brook, according to the map. At times, the path came within a foot or two of the shallow stream, but then it would meander away, and we’d lose sight of it. But I could always hear the splash and babble of its crystal-clear water squeezing between boulders and flowing over rocks.

  “Hold on, Liz.” I unrolled the map and pointed at a spot just east of the red X marking our destination. “Does this look like where we are?”

  She studied the map for a few seconds, turned and stared up the trail, then again looked at the map. “Maybe.” She called her brother. “Hit the button.”

  We stood there, listening hard. I heard the faint rumble of an airplane and the distant caw of a raven or crow, but that was all.

  “Let’s go a little ways farther and try again,” I said.

  She put the phone to her ear. “Jeff, don’t go away. I’ll call you back in a minute.”

  We marched on for a few hundred feet, up over a short rise, then followed the trail just past two waist-high boulders.

  “Try here,” I said.

  Liz again called her brother. I held my breath, concentrating on the sounds coming from the rocks and trees around us. A faint, nearly imperceptible beeping came from the woods to the south of us. We both turned.

  I cupped a hand to my ear. “Hear that?”

  “Over there.” Liz wagged a finger toward a cluster of small pines at our right. She brought the phone to her ear. “Jeff, leave the signal on. I think we found it.”

  As we walked toward the sound, I called, “John?” The beeping grew louder. “John?”

  We’d gone maybe fifty feet when Liz stopped and pointed. “Is that it?”

  Another thirty feet ahead, lying in a patch of trilliums, was my green daypack. I marched straight for it.

  “Stop,” Liz yelled. I froze. “Jesus, Tess. Wait. Just wait a second.”

  I studied the woods, looking for clues as to what may have happened, like odd disturbances in the light, tiny black holes, wormholes, quantum vortexes, body parts, anything unusual, but all I saw were trees. The ground was carpeted with dead leaves, patches of grass, wild flowers, and moss.

  Every three seconds, the pack emitted a beep. I scanned the area around it, but I didn’t see the shovel he’d taken with him. About ten feet to the right of the pack, the weeds were trampled in one spot. I pointed. “Look.”

  “Oh yeah,” she said.

  A young maple stood about eight feet to my right. A short length of orange surveyor’s tape was tied to one of its branches. I stepped forward.

  “What are you doing?”

  “That tape. John mentioned finding a piece of orange ribbon up here—tied to a branch in a maple sapling, just like this one.” I reached for the branch.

  “Don’t!”

  I pulled my hand back.

  “Tess, let’s just go. This place gives me the creeps. What if he really went through
a time warp?”

  Leaving the ribbon untouched, I again studied the area. Beep. Then three seconds later—beep.

  “John thought he’d travel to 1875, and I wouldn’t even notice he’d left,” I said. “He was convinced he’d return on the twenty-second of July.”

  “A year from now?”

  “No, a week ago.”

  “And you wouldn’t notice that?”

  “Well, no, because it’d be before he left, see?”

  “Uh, you can do that in time travel?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know what you can do.” An idea hit me. “Maybe the letter changed because his story changed.”

  “Like he traveled back in time and was hanged?”

  “Don’t say that.” I found a long branch lying on the ground. Beep. I picked it up and extended it slowly toward my backpack. I hooked it through one of the straps then dragged the pack toward me. Beep. I unzipped the side pocket, removed the GPS, and turned it off.

  “Okay,” Liz said, “let’s get the hell out of here.”

  chapter sixteen

  John

  Getting from Greendale to Woodstock by wagon took two days. The first third, going over the mountain into Ludlow, was the toughest stretch. The sheriff stopped near the mountaintop to roll a cigarette and give the horses a break.

  I took advantage of the pause in our being jostled and jarred to check on my uncle’s shoulder. The bandage was saturated with blood, mostly dried out at that point, close to the color of black cherries. “I think it’s stopped bleeding, sir.”

  Uncle Ed raised his head, trying to see the wound. “It ain’t gonna kill me then, huh?”

  “I don’t reckon,” I said, though it worried me. I wished I could change the bandage, but I had nothing to replace it.

  McNeil had climbed down from the wagon and was standing in the road with his back to us. His trousers were pushed down, and he was peeing.

  “I was told the glow was seen all the way to Londonderry,” Uncle Ed said.

  I looked down at him. “The fire?”

  He nodded. “Mr. Young, he’d gone out to milk his cows in the morning. Said it was like the sun rising on the wrong side of the world. He rounded up Dr. Woodman and six others, but by the time they got there, it was pretty much done.”

  “Did they get the slug out?”

  “I think that’s the problem. Mr. Woodman pulled my cork.” He stretched out and lay back, using one of his boots for a pillow. “In the poke”—he winced—“there’s some medicine.”

  The sheriff fastened his trousers then went and checked a hoof of one of Mr. Heming’s horses. I dug down inside the canvas bag Aunt Lil had given me, pulled out a bottle of laudanum, twisted out the stopper, and handed it to my uncle.

  He tipped the little bottle to his lips and took a nip. “I’d be smartin’ if not for this.”

  The sheriff climbed back up into the driver’s seat.

  I called up to him, “Sir, my uncle needs a doctor.”

  “Well, you see any doctors up here, you let me know, all right?”

  “There’s one in Ludlow, on the way.”

  The barrel of his revolver peeked up over the top of the backboard, pointing at me. “You givin’ out orders now, are ya?”

  “I’m just saying.”

  “Who’s the chief here, boy?”

  “Put the damned gun away, McNeil.” My uncle pushed himself up with his good arm.

  “I asked your boy here a question.” The sheriff gazed dull-eyed at me, like a cat bored with its mouse.

  “I heard it,” I said.

  “I don’t take a cotton to being ordered about by some whiny-ass papoose.”

  “You’re no chief,” my uncle said.

  He squeezed the trigger.

  Click.

  He snorted then lowered the gun. “Chief McNeil. I kinda like that. Just doing my job. If you were to live long enough, you might come to see the wisdom in what I did back yonder.” He nodded toward the road behind us. “Who knows? By then, maybe you’ll have learned some proper respect, too.” He closed his eyes and lowered his head. “Perhaps if you were to right now say, ‘Thank you, Chief McNeil, for ridding this world of an ill-bred, smart-mouthed squaw,’ I’d vouch for ya before the judge. Could be, he’d be forgiving.”

  “You’re nothin’, McNeil. A coward and a son of a bitch,” my uncle said.

  The sheriff chuckled. “A son of a bitch? Your boy here, stealing my gun as he did, made me a lucky son of a bitch, I’d reckon.” He turned around and snapped the reins. “Get up.”

  I could take him. I was sure of it. The back wheel of the wagon jumped. Bam! I gripped the sideboard. A wheel slipped into a rut then hopped back out over another rock. Bam!

  My uncle groaned. McNeil cursed and spit at the road. I kept an eye on him. It would be easy. I could throw an arm around his neck, clamp down, and squeeze. It would be over quickly. My uncle raised a hand to my shoulder, looked me in the eye, and shook his head.

  About an hour before dusk, we reached the bottom of the mountain, the far southwest corner of Ludlow. As the road finally smoothed out, I let go of a long, exhausted sigh and loosened my grip on the sideboard.

  We arrived at the T in the center of town—the blacksmith and stables on our left, Wilson’s General to the right, and the Black River directly ahead on the opposite side of Main Street. McNeil turned right on Main. It was late, and Woodstock was yet another day’s drive. The only jails in Windsor County were in the village of Windsor and the shire-town of Woodstock, so the sheriff parked out in front of Ludlow House, a large white inn with black shutters and a double porch, one atop the other.

  We were ordered out of the wagon then escorted up the front steps. Judging from my uncle’s pace, I assumed he was pretty much spent. It certainly would’ve done him good to see a doctor, but the sheriff was clearly invested in proving something.

  Inside, McNeil asked the proprietor—a man with a thin black mustache below a crooked nose and glossy black hair, akin to what you’d see painted on a puppet’s head—for two rooms: one for himself and the other, with a good lock and no windows, for his two prisoners.

  “I don’t have rooms with no windows,” the man said. “You’re welcome to close the shutters, if it’d please you.”

  “A big house such as this and not one windowless room?”

  “None with beds.”

  “Then you have a room with no windows.”

  The man looked from the sheriff to me then to my uncle. He folded his arms across his chest. “Sir, I’m sorry, but the closets and pantries are not for rent.”

  “Pardon me?” The sheriff leaned forward. “You do know who I am, don’t you?”

  The man gave the sheriff’s badge a glance. “I can read.” Then he shook his finger in the air. “But that don’t make this no jailhouse.”

  “God dang it! It’s my sworn duty to protect the likes of you and your good neighbors from murderin’ scoundrels such as I have here in my custody.”

  “Harmon, who is that you’re talking to out there?” A lady’s voice came from behind the door to our left.

  “Some folk looking for directions. They’ll be leaving shortly.”

  The sheriff smacked the counter. When he raised his hand, he left a three-dollar gold coin there. “I’ll need a receipt for that. Get a-movin’, you two. Let’s find ya a room.”

  The keeper dashed out from behind the counter, his hands up and his head shaking. “Hold up there. You can’t do that. This is my house.”

  “Directions to what?” the lady yelled.

  “Go back to your poems, Ellen,” the keeper called. “I’ll handle this.”

  “This way, fellows.” McNeil pointed at a door off to the right. “To the left and through the dining room.”

  “All right, all right.” The innkeep
er came up behind us. “Give me a second to—”

  “The basement,” McNeil said.

  “What?”

  “Ya have a lock on the door?”

  “There is, but it’s not suitable for—”

  “Show me.”

  The innkeeper’s shoulders slumped. He sighed then led the way to a narrow set of stairs in the kitchen. We wound up in a dusty, cobweb-infested cavern, about twelve by fifteen feet, with a dirt floor and rough flagstone walls lined with crude cabinets and shelves holding clay pots, jars, rusty tins, and a folded tarp. A thick, musty odor hung in the air. I stood there beside my uncle, stunned by the utter bleakness of our accommodations and gripping the handle of the privy pail we were given. The moment the door above us shut, the basement went black as pitch.

  I felt my way toward the shelf that had the tarp upon it. “Hold on. I’ll make us a bed.”

  I dragged the tarp off the shelf, fumbled around in the dark until I had it partially unfolded, then blindly spread it out over the dirt. I gave my uncle a chance to get settled, then I lay down beside him. We had enough canvas left over to fold over on top of us to keep out the mice and spiders and whatever other critters may have been crawling around down there.

  “What the devil’s going on, John? The whole world’s come unhinged.”

  I gave my uncle a full account of what had happened, starting with the night of the fire and ending with how Tess and I had found the news clipping and the letter Aunt Lil had written to J.W. “I thought I was doing the right thing, coming back to bury Tess’s body.”

  “I don’t know. Seems things just go from bad to worse, no matter what you do.”

  “Sir, I had to do something. I couldn’t rest after having read that letter.”

  He sighed. “Anyone with their heart in the right place would’ve done the same.”

  I lay there thinking about my situation, trying to come up with anything that could be used in my defense. Perhaps my neighbors might come forward and attest to my character—the Jacobsons would if I could ever get word to them. They could tell the court about the incident in Rutland a few days back, when the sheriff had thrown my uncle and me in jail, simply because he was proved wrong about Tess being a runaway. He’d made a fool of himself, blamed her for it, then took it out on us all. That had earned him a reprimand, which I suspected might be what pushed him to kill Tess. And then I had come back and played right into his hands.

 

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