by Alex Myers
“That’s OK. I can’t say I’d be a whole lot of use, but I’d be glad to help out where I can. Give me five minutes to drop off my stuff and I’ll meet you back here in front of the store.”
As Jack was walking away she said, “I insist that you stay for dinner, then. It’s the least I could do.”
CHAPTER 16
March 1856
Something She Needs to Give Him
Climbing into the buckboard, Mattie handed the reins over to Jack. As he’d seen men do a thousand times before in movies, he gently slapped the leather on the back of the horse and they began their trip north out of town.
The three sat on the raised front seat, Jack and Robbie on the outsides and Mattie in the middle. The two steel springs that raised the seating platform did nothing to cushion the ride on the rutted rock-hard road. The wagon was a giant open box ten feet by four feet and in the back the supplies were getting bounced around more than they were.
Jack thought it was a strange seating arrangement, but he wasn’t sure of the custom. It was hard for Jack not to notice that on every bump and sway of the wagon Mattie would press up against him—he swore she was leaning against him harder than the knobby, jerky road warranted. He could feel the warmth of her body as she lingered next to him for just a second more than she should have.
She talked nonstop, asking him about where exactly he was from, his family, even his religion. Her voice had the annoying habit of rising a little on the last word, making all her statements into overly polite half-questions. It was almost as if she was sizing him up as a potential husband. He answered her questions as best he could, lying when he had to, otherwise giving her an edited version of the truth. Then the talk took and unexpected turn when it turned political.
“There’s just no getting around the economic and social differences between the North and the South.”
Jack looked at this smoking hot woman next to him and couldn’t believe what was coming out of her mouth. With the exception of Frances, everyone he’d encountered seemed a little backwards or childlike. It was a trap to think that just because someone was naïve to technology and the commonly accepted facts of the twenty-first century that they were dumb. Mattie Turner was no dummy; quite the contrary and he would have to watch himself.
She continued to talk politics, and Jack reevaluated Pete Snider’s opinion and then his own. This woman was looking for more than a hand fixing her plow.
He couldn’t stop thinking of the ‘journey’ that Frances had spoken of a few days before. His whole life he’d gone with the flow, not knowing where the ride was going to take him. He’d never had a purpose and he’d always had a hole in his soul because of it. He decided right there, driving Mattie Turner’s wagon, in 1856, with the sunshine and breeze of a warm March day, to make it his goal. He would do everything he could to stop the war. Greater men had far lesser goals, but it was something that grabbed ahold of his soul; he could feel it like a physical presence. Maybe that was why he was here; maybe everything up to this point was just preparation for this.
There was also the matter of Frances. When she said that he didn’t have to do it alone, he believed her. He knew he could never be around a person like her and compromise. Frances meant never having to settle, or go with the flow. He could steer his own journey.
Mattie talked herself out and they rode in silence, still with the occasional jostles and too-long lingerings, but Jack’s mind was free to think. He took warm breeze and azure sky and felt a peace that allowed him to take in deep fresh breaths. Frances was special. This was all new territory for Jack. He’d burned through women without regard for their feelings, without ever feeling anything more than lust. Sure, he lusted for Mattie, he practically lusted after every woman, but Frances hit him in a place that thus far had never been touched. He had spent his whole life moving from place to place, from person to person. Everything had been transient in his life; nothing was ever constant except his need for change. He could never imagine telling Mattie his little time travel story, but with Frances, it was the easiest thing he had ever done, once he’d gotten started.
“There it is!” Robbie said, standing and pointing to a dot on the horizon.
“Sit down, Robbie!” Mattie said harshly and then turning seductively toward Jack. “That’s my place. I have something in the house I need to give you.”
CHAPTER 17
March 1856
Robbie, Hercules, and Someone Else
Jack noticed she didn’t say ‘our house.’ He could see many tree stumps that had been cut but not yet uprooted and cleared, their trunks still cluttering the land they had once shaded. The land was a peninsula north of Lambert’s Point at the mouth of the Lafayette River, isolated and far away from the closest neighbors. But in 2013 dollars, Jack figured the land might be worth tens of millions. There looked to be about forty acres and five or more of that waterfront. The fields were littered with debris, wheat, oak shoots, plants, and high grasses.
The wood on the small house and the huge barn was unpainted and in many places called out for repair. Both were bleached a light gray from the Virginia sun and the salt air that pounded them relentlessly until every last bit of color was gone.
While the house and barn might have been in questionable repair, the three hundred-foot dock looked to be brand new. It was not only long, extending way out into deep water, but it was so wide and sturdy it looked like it could accommodate an ocean-going ship. Why in the world would she need a dock like that?
As bad as the road had been leading up to Mattie’s house, it was nonexistent beyond that. Whatever traffic came this way came for Mattie’s house, and it seemed to Jack as though there must have been considerable traffic, for even if Mattie made the trip to town twice a day, the road was far more worn than that. Jack hadn’t been paying close attention but he had noticed three or four distinct paths that had joined the main path, each coming from a different direction. Something about it didn’t sit right with him.
Robbie was down and off the buckboard before it stopped moving. He was on Jack’s side waiting for him to climb down.
“Robbie Turner, I need you to run down by the crick and fetch me some wild rosemary for our chicken today.”
“Mom, I want to stay here with Mister Jack.”
“You get your hind end moving boy or I’ll get the switch after you.” She disappeared into the house.
Jack walked to the back of the wagon, opened the back latch, grabbed the flour sack, and took it into the house that opened to an empty kitchen.
“Hello? Where do you want me to put this stuff?” Jack called.
“Just anywhere. I’ll be out in a second,” she said.
Jack unloaded the flour, then bacon, coffee, baking soda, corn meal, dried beans, dried beef, molasses, vinegar, pepper, eggs, salt, sugar, rice and tea, taking them into the kitchen and piling them onto the table. He was working up a sweat as the wagon was unloaded. Robbie, who had ignored his mother and been under Jack’s feet since they arrived, was eager to show Jack his book collection.
Jack knew the sexual dance that Mattie was orchestrating and he was usually happy to play along, but something was askew.
He went to the back of the wagon to get the final items—a tin of dried fruit and a large wax-wrapped package of something that looked like an oversized cracker biscuit. Jack asked Robbie what it was.
“Hardtack. Mommy says I need to eat one everyday, to keep me regular.”
Jack tapped the package on the side of the wagon and it sounded like wood hitting wood. “Is your mom a good cook?”
“Naw, she doesn’t cook that much. That’s why I like when mommy has visitors. Then we eat good.”
Jack’s had always had a sixth sense when it came to women and trouble. It was what had kept him from being caught by scores of angry boyfriends and husbands. He was the king of short-term romances, the person to have an affair with as you stepped out on your significant other.
He questioned the bo
y further. “So does your mom have visitors often?”
“Sometimes. Mostly at night when I should be sleeping.”
“Different people?”
“Sometimes, sometimes same . . . sometimes bad.” He was playing on the wheel of the wagon as he spoke.
“Are these men and women?”
“Only men.”
“What makes them bad?”
The boy stopped playing and looked straight at Jack. “Almost always they don’t talk to me, but sometimes they yell and hit me and make me sleep in the barn.”
Jack knew from his time as a teacher that kids would make up stories for attention, but he believed the little guy. He also thought about the groceries. Even with the incredibly low prices, Mattie must have spent twenty or thirty dollars on supplies. He looked around the farm, which clearly hadn’t had a cash crop in years. He wondered where she got her money. And why have a rundown house and barn but a spiffy new dock?
He didn’t know what he was dealing with. Was she some sort of rural, nautical prostitute? Did that explain her overtly sexual demeanor? That seemed like the easy answer, but it didn’t seem right. As much as he wanted to have her, as much as he needed to conquer her, he would keep his lust zipped away—at least for the time being.
There was one form of birth control that was foolproof and that was keeping Robbie close. The boy seemed to swell with pride and delight when he told him he wanted to see his book collection. Jack followed the giggling boy into the house.
“What the hell are you doing here, boy?” Mattie screamed. She glanced sharply at her son, her eyes brimming with genuine hatred. She was standing in the kitchen naked, except for a spiral-laced corset. She backhanded the little boy across the face and knocked him completely off his feet.
The boy held his face where he’d been hit and looked at his mother with what seemed like red-faced embarrassment to Jack. He started to wail.
“Don’t just sit there, get out of here!” Mattie said, her pretty face ugly with contempt.
The boy cowered under the table and Mattie reached for a broom.
“Mommy, no, please!”
She grabbed the broom like a sword and was going to start poking at the boy when Jack grabbed her arm.
“This boy has got to learn to obey me.”
“No, it was my fault,” Jack said. “I asked him to show me his book collection.”
Robbie saw his chance and dashed out of the house. Jack felt horrible, looked at Mattie, looked again at how she was dressed, and then ran after the boy. By the time Jack got outside, Robbie was gone. Jack walked around the house and then around the barn looking for the boy without any luck. Mattie came outside wearing a silk robe that looked out of place.
“Why don’t you come back inside?” Mattie said, stepping forward and running her index finger from the empty hollow behind his ear to the indentation at the base of his neck. The shear material of her robe left nothing to the imagination as his gaze dropped from her eyes, to her shoulders, to her swollen breasts.
She was putting up a passionate throwdown that he wasn’t used to resisting. She didn’t know he loved the chase; she was making it too easy. Without the challenge, he found the strength to step away. “I’m sorry, I can’t. Not yet.”
Her dark eyes showed the tortured dullness of disbelief. You could tell in her demeanor that she was someone used to getting her way sexually and otherwise. “Don’t do this to me, don’t you dare.”
“What about Robbie?”
“Fuck Robbie.”
Jack swallowed hard—wow. “I just mean, I wonder if he’s OK.”
“Kid needs to toughen up. What am I raising—a ballerina?”
There was a part of Jack that was glad that she was talking like this; it made his decision to step away easier. But there was a part too that felt intensely sorry for the little boy. This woman scared him a little.
“As long as we’re out here, do you want to show me the broken plow?”
“Whatever.” She looked like she hadn’t figured out what she was going to do with him. She led the way to the barn. Mattie opened the swinging door and stepped into the barn. An old black man was inside feeding chickens.
“Afternoon, Miss Mattie. I’ve ‘bout done all the chores,” he said. He smiled and his bright white teeth lit up his craggy face. “Will this gentleman be staying the night?”
Jack staggered backwards. It was an older, unkempt version of the man who had been driving the UPS truck that he’d crashed into with Ashley. The image of the man had been burned into Jack’s brain and here he was, standing before him. The man was as unaffected by Jack’s presence as he seemed to be about the way Mattie was dressed. He took in Mattie’s outfit and quickly looked away.
“No, only dinner,” Mattie said, “and don’t you go wagging your tongue so much or I’ll get a knife and cut it out of your face.”
Awkward. As Jack perused the man, he didn’t seem as old as he’d first appeared. He was smallish—about five-three or -four and he probably weighed in at one twenty-five, one-thirty. He wore loose-fitting baggy gray pants gathered at the waist by a length of rope and had a white beard and hair. He was rail-thin, barefoot, and seemed to have a pleasant demeanor. Even if Jack hadn’t recognized him from the accident, he felt as if he knew the man. There was some common bond between them.
“Now you go and find where Robbie has run off to and you and the boy gather some wood for the stove. Now git!”
The man hurried off, limping as he walked, looking back once over his shoulder in Jack’s direction. It was almost as if the old man was begging for Jack to use his 21st century sensibilities and help him out of this situation. There was something old and knowing in the man’s eyes, something that struck Jack in the heart.
“Who’s that?”
“Oh, just ole nigger Hercules. Bought him two weeks ago and he ain’t worth a plugged nickel. He’s too old and lame to do any real work and too stupid to do anything else.”
Jack thought how inappropriate the name “Hercules“ was for the diminutive man.
With a gesture of her hand she said, “This is it, my broken plow.”
Half of the barn was closed off. There was an enormous padlock on an oversized door, another mystery Jack filed away.
Off to the side of the open barn was the plow. Jack hadn’t known what to expect, but somehow he thought it was going to be a little more elaborate than a wedged piece of metal attached to a hunk of wood. He couldn’t tell what was broken and what wasn't.
“The metal piece came off the wood,” she said, bending over to show him.
He bent over to look with her and realized their faces were inches apart. If she noticed, she didn’t seem the least bit sorry about it.
“I think what you need is a whole new piece of wood,” Jack said eyeing the split near where the metal plow had been attached. “It looks like you drop it right in from the top….”
“So why aren’t you married yet, or are you the kind of man who can’t figure out what he wants?” she said, pressing her finger to her chin and showing him her dimples.
Jack was confused. Was she a desperate housewife looking for a father for her kid, or was she a hooker, or something even more nefarious than that? He played along with her.
“Just lucky, I guess. And how about you, Mattie? Have you thought about getting remarried?”
“Oh, I’ve thought about it—just haven’t found the right man yet I suppose….” She was almost standing on his feet. “Or maybe I have,” she said closing her eyes and looking ready for a kiss.
Jack took a step back and stumbled over the plow. Catching his balance, he noticed the silhouette of a tall man where the sun shone through the loosely fitted boards of the barn.
CHAPTER 18
March 1856
Kaz the Gunsmith
“Hello? Is somebody there?” he yelled.
Mattie opened her eyes with a start and turned in the direction Jack was looking.
“Somebody’
s out there,” he whispered. “Hello?” he yelled again. The figure stood dead still and didn’t answer.
“Kaz, is that you?” she said. Her nostrils flared with fury.
“Yes, Mrs. Turner, it’s me, Kazmer,” a voice said with a deep, foreign accent.
“ Kaz, what are you doing lurking around out there?”
“I made your plow and I brought it with me.” Jack heard humbleness in his voice.
“Kaz, come inside. I don’t like talking through walls.” Turning to Jack she said, “Kaz is a nice man, Romanian I think. Anyway, he’s the gunsmith in town, and he makes things—bicycles, whatever, as if people have time for such foolishness. He’s sweet on me.” She said it as if everyone was.
“Am I getting in the middle of something?” Jack saw a lot of people walking around with guns and he wasn’t sure how jealous this guy who made guns might be.
“Oh, he’s harmless. And besides, he’s sweet on me, not the other way around,” she said, taking a step closer to Jack.
A long, gangly man appeared in the doorway; he was about six-foot-four with dress pants and shoes, white shirt, vest, and necktie. His hair had totally receded, but he hadn’t done a comb-over. He had his hat in his hands and was shuffling his feet, looking nervous. Despite Kaz’s severely thinning hair and glasses, he was a good-looking man, Jack thought.
“Mrs. Turner, I made you a new plow. I have it hooked up now to my horse. I try it out. It works good,” Kaz said in his broken English. He stepped through the door, just barely though. He stole glances at Jack and went cold when he saw what Mattie was wearing. He stared with an open mouth.
“You better get yourself a good look, because this will be the only time you see me wearing my unmentionables.” Mattie stepped forward and placed her hand familiarly on Jack’s back. Kaz’s face flushed with humiliation.
