by Rodney Jones
Creeping up to the back corner of the house, I peeked over at the barn. I couldn’t see the entrance, so I dashed for the tall weeds growing along the stone foundation. Just as I reached the barn, the music stopped. A ruckus of hoots rose then fell to a mix of murmurs and laughter. There were probably thirty or forty people in there.
I hoped to slip in without drawing attention, so I slipped around to the back corner of the barn. From there, I could see a back entrance midway along the foundation wall. Unfortunately, I would have to cross an expansive puddle of manure to get there. I had no way of judging how deep it was. The odor, however, suggested that any amount qualified as too deep, and the black void beyond the entrance left me with no doubt that the place was infested with spiders and bats and giant millipedes and who knew what else.
I abandoned that idea and crept back up to the front corner of the barn. I eased my head out past the corner, trying to get a peek at the entrance. I heard the clip-clop of horse’s hooves and the rattle of a buggy. I crouched down in the weeds.
Another song started in the barn. The buggy pulled off to the side of the drive, stopping just twenty feet from where I hid. A man and two women climbed out, chattering and gesturing, and headed toward the barn. As they moved past the corner, I hopped up and stepped in behind them, walking close to appear as though I were with them. When they hesitated at the entrance, I slipped by them into the barn.
Two lofts stacked high with loose hay ran the length of the building on the side walls. Six kerosene lamps were suspended from roof beams over the dance floor. Most of the people were dancing, and the rest were watching, talking, laughing, clapping, stomping, or a combination of any of those. No one seemed to take notice of me.
I slipped into the shadow of the loft on the right. From there, I could see a group of musicians near the back of the barn. An odor like cow-poop stew rose through the raw oak floorboards to blend with traces of lavender, rose, vanilla, tobacco smoke, and human and horse sweat.
I searched the crowd for the man I had seen in the picture at the museum. Though his and his wife’s faces were still fresh in my mind, the photo had been taken in 1888, thirteen years after the barn dance. I went up and down the line, checking off men one by one until I was left with only two possible candidates. I had my eye on a guy promenading toward the foot of the line. He wore pinstriped pants and a long-sleeved white shirt with sweat stains in the armpits. I only caught glimpses of his face, so I couldn’t be positive it was the same guy.
I gave some attention to the dancing itself, watching the various figures and noting the differences between those and what I had been recently taught. Though some of the steps were new to me, I was confident I could do it. I just needed to be certain of my target first. By the time the song ended, my eyes had adjusted to the dark, so I slunk even farther back.
“Ladies and gentlemen!” the caller shouted. “May I have your attention, please?” When the clamor of talk and laughter dwindled to a murmur, he continued. “Pastor Stewart has an announcement to make.”
A thin-lipped man with white hair, long bushy sideburns, and wild eyebrows stepped up and turned toward the crowd. His lopsided smile resembled a sneer, and his intense eyes seemed to protrude from his skull—the same bulging eyes I’d seen in the photograph of his son.
“Good evening, my fine neighbors. You’ve all likely heard that this little celebration tonight, being hosted by the most upstanding and generous family in Weston—”
“Amen to that!” someone shouted.
“The most upstanding and generous—”
“Amen!”
“Yes, the Blisses.” He nodded. “Tonight’s festivities, though, I’ll have to take some credit for. I mean, for having them on such an unlikely day of the week. I know you’re wondering what the reason for this is, but that is between me and our good Lord. However, the inspiration for this celebration is standing right here before me. My faithful son, Hugh”—he gestured at the guy with the pinstriped pants that I’d picked out earlier—“and Miss Zella Shaw, his bride-to-be.”
Cheers, whistles, and hoots broke out. When the noise calmed, he went on. “And because this union has already been ordained by Jesus, we feel there is no purpose to be served in a lengthy courtship. Come the twenty-fifth of this bountiful month, they are to be joined in holy wedlock.”
Hugh stepped forward, tugging the hand of a blond-haired girl wearing a red dress covered in a pattern of what looked like dime-sized snowflakes. “Please, I want everyone there. Two o’clock, Saturday, the twenty-fifth. What’s that? Twelve days?”
“Eleven,” Zella said blandly.
“That’s right. Eleven,” someone shouted. “You oughta keep that straight, Hugh.”
Half the crowd cracked up laughing—the masculine half, it seemed. Hugh and Zella disappeared back into the crowd.
The man who’d been calling the dances glanced over his shoulder at the four musicians: two leaning against the railing around a rectangular black hole in the floor and the other two seated on an upturned bucket and a small barrel, their instruments waiting in their laps. “You fellows ready to give ’er another go? How about ‘The Derry Reel’?”
The band members nodded and lifted their instruments.
“All right, now, let’s line up a set!” the caller shouted. “Ladies right, gents left.”
I slipped into the crowd and counted down from the head of the ladies’ line, looking for an even number. I didn’t think people typically paid attention to their position in line until it became necessary to know whether they were in an active or an inactive position. Hugh was third in the guys’ line—inactive—so I stepped into the tenth position. I glanced across the alley to the guy who would be my partner. He was a homely dude with greasy brown hair parted down the middle. His ears protruded like teacup handles. He stared at me with a puzzled look, probably wondering who I was.
The music started. “Let’s sweeten ’er a mite.” The caller stomped his foot, indicating the tempo he wanted, then turned to the crowd. “Evens down the outside and back.”
I stepped back, pivoted, and followed the other evens up and back around to the head of the line.
“Down the center, turn, come back, and cast off.”
As my partner came around the other side, I looped my arm through his. He kept me shielded from Hugh’s eyes as we moved down the alley and brushed past his partner, Zella—the pattern on her dress was fleabane, not snowflakes.
“Wilbur Ash,” my partner said.
I gave him a glance but kept my mouth shut.
“Evens turn contra corners!” the caller yelled.
I faced a different man. He too seemed unsure, perhaps dumbfounded. He stumbled while staring at me. It may have been my imagination, but I felt other eyes on me, as well.
“Neighbors balance and swing. Ladies chain across…”
Keeping my attention ahead of me as much as possible, I did my best to brush away the sensation as paranoia. But it was impossible to ignore the spectators, whose heads swiveled as I shuffled past them.
“Half hey, ladies pass right shoulders to start.”
The arrangement was repeated, then again, each time pairing me with a new guy. With every loop around, the audience seemed less and less interested in the dancing and more and more in me.
A group of young women, their mouths hanging open, took a step back as my partner and I paraded by. I glanced toward the door, searching for an open path through the crowd. Another round began, and suddenly, I stood face to face with Hugh Stewart. His initial grin morphed into a confused expression.
I swallowed, took a breath, and shouted, “Remember me?”
His feet stopped moving, and his eyes bugged out. He gaped at me.
“Partners balance and swing!” the caller shouted.
I rubbed my arms, faking a shiver. “Is this the barn you promised to warm me
up in?”
He stumbled backward, tripped over his feet, and tumbled to the floor. The music slowed, soured, and as a murmur rose in the crowd, fizzled out completely. I stepped back and bumped into someone. I spun around. Zella stood there, gaping at me. She took a step away from me, her eyes wide with alarm.
I turned, spotted the door—it seemed to be a mile away—and began working my way through the crowd—people turning, twisting, stepping clear of me, gawking—the commotion expanding, rippling toward me as I hiked my dress up and sprinted for the exit. I didn’t know if anyone followed—I refused to look back. I ran outside, quickly freed Victoria’s reins, and scrambled up into the saddle.
“Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!” I slapped the reins. We tore off down the road at a gallop.
chapter thirty-two
John
Friday evening, Aunt Lil brought in a supper of fried walleye, green beans, and corn pudding—my uncle’s favorites. I suspected the meal had been planned in the belief that it might be his last. But first thing that morning, I’d noticed a change in him. He was weak but able to sit up and eat.
Mrs. McNeil remarked that she saw “a spark of life in his eyes.” By midafternoon, it was clear that he was on the mend.
Word of his recovery made it to Dr. White, who paid us a visit later that evening. My uncle was alert and sitting with his back to the wall when the doctor arrived. The doctor shoved a thermometer in his mouth, checked his eyes, his throat, his pulse, then placed a stethoscope to his chest.
“Remarkable,” Dr. White said. “A man of your years.” He scratched his head. “Mary Anne tells me you’ve been taking pills of some sort?”
Uncle Ed nodded. “A couple, I reckon.”
I handed the doctor one of the pills. “Have you ever seen these?”
He studied it in the palm of his hand, flipping it over with his finger. “What is it?”
“Well, sir, I was hoping you’d tell me.”
He turned to my uncle. “You feel any nausea?”
“No.”
“Dizziness?”
“Not so much.”
“How many of these have you taken?”
My uncle shrugged. “Two or three?”
“Three,” I said. “I gave him the first one yesterday morning. I was about to give him another.”
“Where’d they come from?”
I showed the doctor the letter and envelope it arrived in.
He looked it over. “You have no idea who sent them?”
“No, sir.”
He shook his head. “I’ve never seen the like before. There were twelve?”
I nodded.
“I could send a few to the Medical College in New York. They’d likely sort out what they are.”
I shook my head. “I’m sorry, sir, but it clearly states in the letter that he needs to take all twelve. It says it’s important that he does.”
“But if he takes them all, we’ll never know.”
“Well, whoever made them knows, right?”
By the next morning, Uncle Ed was behaving like his old self: complaining about all the things he’d lacked the energy to complain about before. Mrs. McNeil came, accompanied by her husband. He opened the cell door, and she picked up our privy pail without a word and lugged it down the hall. The sheriff locked our cell door and turned to leave.
“It baffles me how a fellow can arrive at your age without seeing what a sorry man he is.” Uncle Ed paused. “A weakling, always trying to prove otherwise.”
The sheriff slowly pivoted to face us. There was a thin smile on his lips but fire in his eyes. “My only weakness is the ladies, Mr. Paulson. I’m too soft. I let my old lady play nurse with y’all. Just like her to give our table scraps to stray dogs. I reckon if I’d kept a tighter rein on her, you’d be dead ’bout now, as I believe you should be.”
“I ain’t about to die, McNeil, not while you’re still breathing.”
chapter thirty-three
Tess
A short distance down the road from the Bliss farm, I steered Victoria into a cluster of trees and bushes. I brought her to a stop then leaned forward in the saddle to rub her neck. “You did good, girl.” I planted a kiss beside her mane then dismounted.
I wiggled out of the dress and shoved it into a saddlebag then peeked out to check the road, but it didn’t look as though anyone had followed.
I climbed back on Victoria, rode back to County Road, and headed toward Greendale. To keep myself pumped, I pulled up the image of Hugh’s terrified face staring up at me from the floor of the barn. I wondered if he would take the bait. I could see him questioning everyone at the dance. Was it a ghost, or was it really her? Where’d she come from? Did anyone see her arrive? Did anyone speak to her? I hoped he’d be unwilling and perhaps incapable of letting it go, and I couldn’t imagine he’d get any sleep that night or the next. I figured it might take him a while to get up the nerve, but it seemed reasonable to assume he’d eventually go to my grave, looking for answers.
But I had to be in Woodstock before the trial began—only two days away. If he didn’t show that night, I would simply have to go on and do whatever I could to save John.
About an hour later, I arrived at the ridge near the mountaintop. I found the two sentinel boulders and stepped off to the right, across the creek. Except for the murmuring of the brook, it was dead quiet up there, as though the world were holding its breath. Being so close to my grave still creeped me out, even though it was nothing more than a pile of rocks.
I dismounted and began making preparations. First, I set up the MP3 player Liz had given me. I’d played with it a little before leaving 2009. I learned how to record messages, select them by number, then use the remote to play them back from a distance. I sat down and recorded four different messages. And, trying to anticipate how Hugh might react, I made a fifth and a sixth message: “no” and “duh.” Then, after recording a seventh message—in case he was too chicken to show up alone—I searched for a place to conceal the device. I settled on a tree limb about eight feet above my grave.
I climbed up onto Victoria’s back, led her beneath the limb, and laid the player—hardly bigger than a Kit Kat bar—on a fork in the branch. I got down, walked about ten paces away, and tried out the remote.
“Oh, Hugh, you bad, bad boy.”
I raised the volume a little.
“What will Zella think of you chasing after dead girls?”
The speaker gave my voice a distant quality but close at the same time, impossible to pinpoint. I looked around for a place to hide—close enough so the remote wouldn’t fail but far enough that I could escape if necessary. I found a large boulder about twenty feet away then tried the remote again from there. It worked like a charm.
My next problem was Victoria. I couldn’t risk her giving me away. So I led her farther up the road and back into the woods to a small grassy opening at the edge of an open pasture. “You’ll be okay here,” I assured her, securing her reins to a tree limb. I patted her on the shoulder. “I’ll be back soon.”
Back at my hiding place, I began preparing for the possibility of a long night. Among the items I’d brought from the future was my favorite fleece pullover. I slipped it over my shirt, zipped it up, then settled in, my back to the boulder. Narrow shafts of moonlight streamed through the trees, like spotlights searching for nocturnal creatures on the forest floor. The perfect night to be a ghost.
An hour passed. I’d hear an occasional rustling of leaves and point my flashlight in search of its source, but I never caught anything in its beam. A while later, I pulled my hat down over my eyes and lay there thinking about the life I’d left behind, trying to imagine what I might have eventually become had my life continued in a normal manner. I was not one of the lucky few like Liz, who never doubted that she would someday be a successful comic book illustrator.
I had one more year of high school and no idea what would come after that. More school, I guessed. I feared that the longer it took to discover my passion, the more elusive it would become. Sitting in those 1875 woods, I felt as though I’d escaped that imaginary deadline. Weird. My new life in the nineteenth century was clearly more uncertain and definitely more perilous than the old, but regardless of the risks, I felt more alive than I ever had.
I heard a noise. I held my breath and listened. It sounded like the murmur of a voice coming from somewhere to my right. There was another mumble, a response, and then the dull clopping of horses’ hooves drifted to me.
I flipped over onto my belly and peered through the trees and brush toward the road. The fog of my breath floated inches from my face. Over the time I’d waited, the temperature had dropped even more, and the moon had swept westward until it was directly overhead.
I concentrated on the sounds. There was more than one horse, and two men were talking, though I couldn’t make out the first syllable of what was said. Then a horse stepped into a wide patch of moonlight on the road to my left. Another horse appeared seconds later.
“I think this is it,” Hugh Stewart said.
The other guy snorted. “Hell, this makes the third time you thought it was it. I could kick myself for not bringing that damned lamp.”
“This is the place.” Hugh pointed. “I remember the rock over there.”
“Oh, like you can tell one rock from another out here in the dark.”
“Well, it was a level spot like this. Remember?” Hugh gestured in my direction. “I think it’s over there.”
“It’s up a ways yet. I’m sure.”
Hugh huffed. “Maybe you were right. We should’ve waited till morning.”
“But you didn’t want to give her time to crawl back into her grave, right?”
