The Unintentional Time Traveler (Time Guardians Book 1)

by Everett Maroon

  “She’s–she’s kind, very kind. She’s smart, and observant, and sometimes she gets sad.”

  I could tell he was scowling, even in the dark. “Kind? Sad? Does she keep a good house, child? Was she married when you were born? When were you born?” Cripes, talk about old fashioned! Jackson here was a real drag.

  “I told you what was important. She’s pretty. Yes, she got married and my parents are good together. We don’t have a lot of money–”

  “I knew it.”

  He capped the tank, then tossed the empty gas can onto the ground. I gasped.

  “You’re littering.”

  He glowered at me some more. “I’m what?”

  “Littering. You can’t just throw garbage onto the grass.”

  “Girl, of course I can. Now let’s get going before someone shoots off our asses.”

  I sighed again. I did that a lot when Jackson was around.

  “So, what do you know?” I plopped back in the driver’s seat.

  “What are you going on about now?”

  “You said, ‘I knew it.’” I took care to say it all nasally like he had. He looked like he almost enjoyed my mimicking.

  “I knew no offspring of mine would ever amount to anything.” He sat down next to me, his palms facing the night sky. I gripped the wheel tight.

  “My mother takes care the best she can, and she is a terrific person. And I miss her, and you should be grateful you get as much time with her as you will.”

  “And how much time is that?”

  Damn, I had said too much.

  “Is it ever enough?” I asked.

  “I suppose not,” he said, opting to turn silent again. I turned the engine over and the machine sputtered, then caught.

  “You just be nice to her, every day,” I said, “when you think you’re going to say something awful like that, just hug her, or something, instead. Try not to be so snippy with her. And you know, maybe don’t smoke so many cigarettes.”

  “I don’t smoke.”

  “You will.”

  “You sure have a lot of opinions,” he said.

  “Unfortunately, I take after you,” I said.

  ***

  We woke up after sleeping in the car for a few hours, and an itchy sensation on my arms reminded me of having an EEG session with Dr. Dorfman or what I would feel shortly before a seizure. I still hadn’t wrapped my mind around living epilepsy-free, never needing to watch a clock to take my next pill, but here I was.

  I had several mosquito bites, and so did Jackson. One landed on his neck, too greedy to leave him alone, and I slapped it away. In reflex Jackson grabbed my wrist, then woke up.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Killing a bug,” I said. “You can thank me anytime.”

  I wrenched my arm out of his clutch.

  He sat up, rubbed his eyes. “Let’s get some breakfast.” He looked himself over and frowned. “I should have brought a change of underclothes.”

  I cranked over the engine, which sounded rough, probably due to condensation from the morning dew or the new turbocharger. We really needed to install a fuel injection, but for now we were stuck with a carburetor, which at the moment was moist and inefficient. It would clear out soon.

  “Maybe they’ll have some at a diner,” I said.

  “A what?”

  “Okay, where do you want to get breakfast?” Apparently there weren’t any diners in 1926. Silly 1926.

  “Just drive to the next town and we’ll find a food counter,” he said. I nodded, since it seemed easier than arguing with him about words. You’re right, a food counter is completely different from a diner.

  “I know of a great breakfast counter,” I said.

  We drove to my mother’s house. I figured it would be okay because we were three months before the fire, and Traver’s cronies wouldn’t know I was back in town or alive, for that matter. As we drove past fields with bright green crops I worried this was the wrong thing to do, but I hoped that without having found the evidence of Traver’s crimes he wouldn’t feel the need to kill us quite yet. Clearly I could change history with my behavior, but at least I had a Guardian in training with me.

  By the time we pulled up I’d convinced myself this was the best move. Even so I felt my breath catch at seeing it again, standing proudly. I could still picture the fire licking out of the windows, charring the paint, making that rushing sound as it swept through the floors. I kept staring at it, telling myself, “it’s still here.”

  I parked on the side of the house, crushing a few rogue pansies that had bloomed between the concrete slabs of the walkway. The sky was barely blue in the early morning light, but it was enough that the rooster had noticed. I clomped up the porch steps and opened the front door, calling for her.

  She came out of the kitchen and gave me a long hug. No big drama like when you come back from the grave, I guess.

  “It’s been so long! I was going to leave you for dead. And who is this?” She quickly untied her apron and smoothed out her dress. “I’m not prepared for company, Jacqueline.”

  “Mother, this is a friend of mine, Jackson Hartle.”

  “Pleased to see you again,” she said, and I thought she might add a little curtsy, but she refrained. “I think it’s been since oh, two summers ago at the state fair?”

  “That sounds about right, ma’am.” He gave her a short smile. “Pleased to see you, Mrs. Bishop.”

  “Well, we were looking to have a little breakfast, if you can spare it,” I said. She and Jackson continued to look at each other, neither of them responding to me. “Okay, I’ll go see what’s in the kitchen while you two gawk at each other.”

  I headed off to the other room, but was still within earshot. She had four eggs, a third of a loaf of bread, and half a cup of milk at the bottom of the ice box. Not the level of hunger she’d reached the last time I was here, but not good, either.

  “I apologize for her manners,” said Mother.

  They joined me as I whipped eggs in a bowl. “I can’t use the stove,” I said.

  “You raised a lovely son here,” said Jackson, waving his thumb at me.

  “He’d rather you taught me to be completely dependent on men,” I said in response.

  “Do you enjoy each other’s company at all?” she asked, taking the bowl from me and lighting the wood under the burner with a long match. She handed me the bread and a knife and told me to cut slices.

  “Sure we do,” I said, fighting to make even cuts. Slicing bread was a lot harder than it looked, although not nearly as much as catching a chicken. “Jackson seems to think we’ll grow on each other.”

  “I see,” she said. She leaned into my left ear. “You keep your legs together and respect your family name, now.”

  “Mother!”

  But she didn’t have anything else to say, turning away from us to work at the stove. Jackson glowered at me and handed me a plate for the bread.

  “Well, I thank you for the breakfast, ma’am,” he said, and he stepped aside so she could place the bread in the oven for toasting.

  We ate quickly, mother and Jackson too uncomfortable to talk much, so I filled in the empty conversational space by blabbing about the beautiful morning and complaining about mosquitoes. Jackson asked where the outhouse was, and I pointed him to the backyard. He shuffled out before I was finished talking.

  I rose to clear the table.

  “What is going on?” she asked me.

  I let her in on what had been going on with Dr. Traver’s followers, the false accusations about illegal drinking and bathtub gin, and how the police for several towns over seemed to be part of his organization. She nodded and added her own information.

  “He just announced this week that he intends to run for mayor. I’m sure he’ll want something else after that. Men like him are never satisfied unless they’re grabbing for more power. He even pressured the banker to close my accounts.” She scrubbed the plate and handed it to me to dry it. It was
heavier than anything in my house in Ohio, with scalloped edges and flowers painted around the border, but there were a few chips around the edge.

  “Mother, I need to tell you something.”

  “You’re in love with him,” she said without turning around.

  “What? No. No, it’s nothing like that.”

  She faced me. “Don’t tell me anything that would be the death of me.” I pondered what that kind of list looked like. Probably long.

  “No, mother, this is about you.”

  “Well, that’s a relief. So, what about me?”

  “I think you should build a cellar where you could go in an emergency.”

  “I don’t have money for such frivolous and unnecessary things.”

  She snatched the cast iron skillet from the stovetop and began scrubbing it hard. I came up next to her and put my hand on her shoulder.

  “Mom, Dr. Traver will set his sights on you, and you need to be safe.” This got her to stop mauling the pan.

  “Jacqueline, I did not fall in on the last drop of rain. I’ll be on the lookout for him. All right?”

  I gave her a kiss on her cheek, and her hand fluttered to cover the spot as soon as I stood back.

  “All right, Mother. I just don’t want anything bad to happen to you.”

  “I appreciate that, my dear. I can’t imagine how I ever have taken care of myself all these many years absent your counsel. But you are a sweet girl.”

  The sound of hard foot falls indicated Jackson had returned to the house. He stood in the doorway.

  “Well, kiddo, I think we need to keep to our schedule,” he said.

  Mother raised her eyebrows, but didn’t remark. Jackson wasn’t much older than me.

  “Well, next time give me a longer visit, and don’t take as much time between them,” she said. I hurried up and hugged her, whispering in her ear: “Just keep your guard up and be safe.”

  “Hmph,” she said as she stood back, still holding my hands, “It’s not I who is off gallivanting all over God’s creation.”

  Jackson gave a little bow and thanks and we were off to the Rushman farm in the valley. We made it about halfway there when six cars rolled up and surrounded us. The drivers got out of their vehicles and pointed shotguns at our heads.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  I WATCHED A CAR DOOR OPEN, and out stepped Dr. Traver, who took his time walking over to us. Nobody made a sound except a couple of crows who apparently hadn’t gotten the memo.

  He put one dirty boot on the running board on my side of the car. “I thought you’d run off, or met a terrible fate somewhere, what with all of your sinning,” he said to me. In his hand he held a toothpick, which he twirled through his fingers.

  “Let us pass.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so, Miss Bishop. You and your hooligan friend here aren’t going anywhere.”

  “For a religious man, you sure have a lot of guns,” said Jackson.

  “Don’t make this worse,” I said to Jackson.

  “No, don’t make it worse, Jackson. You let a woman talk to you that way?” He leaned on the car door, popped his toothpick in his mouth. Dr. Traver smelled of a high perfumed soap, but underneath there was another odor, something sour that turned my stomach. Now his hands were braced on my door, and I could see dirt under his nails and caught up in his knuckles.

  Jackson glowered, but was silent, and he’d curled his two hands into fists.

  “Miss Bishop, kindly turn off your engine,” demanded Dr. Traver.

  “Why should I do that?” I wasn’t sure what stalling would get me, but I delayed anyway.

  “Because I asked you to,” he said. Spit had started to form at the corners of his mouth. “And I’m not going to ask twice.”

  “Well, you have no authority to demand I do anything,” I said, worrying instantly about the words as they popped out of my head.

  “To the contrary, I have been deputized by the chief,” he said, now smiling. The spaces between his teeth were burnt umber. I imagined little odor lines coming out from his mouth, like I’d seen in comic books for things like rotting meat and onions.

  “Don’t do it,” said Jackson in my ear. Around us we heard the clicks of the men cocking their guns. I laid my finger on the shutoff button, which was one inch away from a covered switch that I knew would get us out of this ambush, but I would need to lift the cover first. I had a decision to make.

  “What you fail to understand is the power of the Lord God to repudiate all evil. Sin is not the way to everlasting life, it is death.”

  Oh boy.

  “Hate the sin, love the sinner,” said Jackson. “Jacqueline, get us out of here.”

  He didn’t mean it, I figured, since we’d have been blown to bits before I could press the gas pedal. But just in case I was inclined to split, he had another card to play.

  “I already have Lucas and his father. So whatever uprising you and your group were planning, is over.”

  I shut off the car, and the engine quit with a long shudder. That couldn’t be true, unless history had shifted from something I’d done in Edgar’s body when he was a boy. So now I had to find out what was really going on.

  “What are you doing, girl?” asked Jackson.

  “It will be all right,” I told him. “He’s got us, right?”

  “You better know what you’re doing,” he whispered. I gave him as large a nod as I could under the circumstances. We raised our hands in surrender, and Traver’s men were upon us, leading us away from the car in the middle of the street as the sun descended from its highest angle of the day. Back in Ohio I never gave a shit about the sun, but here it was like one of the few timepieces I could count on.

  “You gave them the car,” Jackson said to me in the back of a wagon, where we sat with our hands shackled.

  “It’s okay.”

  “Pray tell, why is it okay?” He fumbled with the metal clasps, but they wouldn’t spring.

  I got close so I could whisper. “I looked under the hood back at your house. We took off with a loose manifold. If they prop the car up to tow it, it’ll disconnect and then the engine won’t start.”

  “You’re brighter than you look,” he said.

  “I guess I figured my mechanical knowledge might come in handy at some point.”

  “Lord help us all.” And with that, Jackson looked to the ceiling of the wagon, as if he could still see the sky.

  ***

  Instead of heading to the sheriff’s office our caravan went out of town, east, by the look of it. Our wagon had only one small, barred window at the rear, about half a foot wide, in the middle of the door. I peered through it to identify where we were headed by looking at where we’d been. Jackson, who had never been this far east before, didn’t recognize any of the landscape.

  “Well, they’re not taking us to jail, because we passed it at least an hour ago,” I said. I held onto the bars of the window with a few fingers, but as we hit big bumps or potholes in the road, I had trouble keeping my balance.

  “Terrific. So that means where we’re going is worse. What’s the plan?”

  I sat down next to him.

  “Meet up with the others, see what they know and go from there.”

  “Jacqueline, that is not a plan.” We bounced on the hard bench as the wagon careened along. The roadway was getting rougher. Is it too much to ask that a prison vehicle come with decent shocks?

  “The plan is to see what we’re dealing with and find a way to escape,” I said, in defiance. “Your negativity isn’t helping. Anyway, you’re the almost Guardian.”

  “I’m a realist,” he said. “We can’t escape without a key to these things. Unless you’re going to tell me that somehow you’re also Houdini.”

  I burst into a smile. “Or a pick.”

  “A what?”

  “A pick. Something that can act like a key when you don’t have the key.”

  “We don’t have anything like that.”

  “Oh,
yes we do,” I said.

  “You have it?”

  “Nope.”

  “Jacqueline, you are making me insane. Maybe this Guardian thing isn’t for me.”

  “Oh, like Darling will let you out of it?”

  He nodded; I was right on that score.

  “Lucas will have it,” I said.

  “Lucas will have what?”

  “A pick.”

  “And you know this, how?”

  “Because I know Lucas.” This was total bullshit, but whatever, I was going with it.

  “You fancy him, don’t do?”

  We came to screeching halt, and it was all I could do to not go flying across the interior of the wagon. One of Traver’s henchmen, who I recognized from his revival at the house that night after I’d run away, opened the door and waved for us to get out.

  “I really, really do,” I said, and I climbed out, squinting even though the afternoon light had lost its punch from earlier.

  We were at some kind of mill, or what had once been a factory of some sort. The gray, flat building stood right at the edge of a broad river; rust from metal siding ran down the wall. From there it stained the ground, and trickled off into the water, ugly orange grooves in the dirt. The air smelled terrible, like rotten eggs or old meat. It got stuck in my nose. This is what Traver smells like. Two thugs pulled Jackson along, and though he fought at first, they were prepared for him. I had been assigned the squat man who’d opened up the wagon door to us. I considered kneeing him in the crotch, but I wanted to meet up with the others.

  If it stunk outside, it was ten thousand times worse indoors, where there was no good air circulation. Jackson and I coughed. My breakfast tried to make a second appearance in my mouth.

  “Over here,” said one of the men, shoving Jackson and me toward a flight of metal stairs.

  “What is this place?” I asked, not expecting an answer.

  “Used to be the tannery,” he said, and Jackson stumbled into the wall at the landing between flights. A guard lifted him by his shirt.

  “Some soldier you are,” he told Jackson.

  “Seaman,” Jackson corrected. The guard responded by punching him in the face, and Jackson fell down again. He spit out a tooth, and it bounced down the stairs like a tiny Slinky. “See, now you’ll just have to pick me up again.” Grinning, the guard cocked his hand back for another blow, but Jackson held his arms up.