“Hey,” he said aloud. “I’m not getting in cold water.”
Bo laughed again. “That will be your call Jessie, the water might be too hot.”
“Too hot?” Jessie walked over to the tub and put his hand under the running water. He pulled it back quickly. It wasn’t too hot or cold. How was this possible? Then he thought this had to be a dream, a strange dream, but never the less a dream.
“I’m going to go now,” Bo said. “Here are your towels and soap is on the tub. There are razors in the cabinet, just throw one away when you are finished with it. There are also some clothes in the closet.” Bo walked out of the room but turned at the door. “See you at the house later for dinner. It was nice to meet you Jessie James McCoy,” he raised his hand and smiled as he turned once more. Jessie heard the outside door close behind the other man. He decided he was going to like Bo even if this was a dream.
He turned back to the tub. Bo had cut off the water flow by turning the metal things on each side of the spout. He slipped out of his clothes and stepped into the warm water. He sat there for a long time thinking about what had happened to him but it only confused him. After his bath, he wrapped a towel around his waist and stood in front of a small looking glass mounted on the wall. He picked up a small bottle that seemed empty. He shook it. He tried to pop the cork, but it wouldn’t budge then suddenly a round ball of snow like stuff came from the bottle. He looked at it reading it slowly. “Shaving cream.” What was shaving cream? It must be like soap for shaving. Maybe if he could find a razor he would shave. He looked at himself in the looking glass. His hair was long and unkempt. His beard was thick and long. He hadn’t shaved in a long time for he had lost his straight razor. Suddenly the looking glass came open. Jessie jumped. “What was this?” There was a shelf behind the looking glass. He picked up the small thing with the short handle. While he was looking at it he cut his finger a little. “Oh,” he said. He hadn’t cut himself deep enough to bring the blood but he figured this must be a strange new razor of some kind.
He applied shaving cream to his face and tried shaving with the strange new razor. It took him a long time. He found a pair of shears and cut some of the beard off with them. Once he came close to his skin, he cut himself several times. He wondered how these men shaved with these strange razors. Once he was clean shaven, he walked through the doorway to the other room. Now where did Bo say there were clothes? He looked around the room and spotted a door and opened it. Inside he saw the clothes Bo was talking about. He found some britches and a shirt. The cloth they were made of felt different than any he had felt. He looked for some long johns and opened a drawer to find a pair of what he thought were long johns or at least had been at one time. They were short britches made from thin cloth.
“I’ll have to wear them I guess,” he said aloud. He slipped into the under britches and a long pair of blue britches. There was no shirt for him to wear under his shirt so he put on one of the shirts he found. Someone had cut the sleeves off of it also. Going back into the other room, he looked at himself in the looking glass. He looked different. These strange clothes had a bit to do with it. There was a knock at the door and Jessie heard Bo’s voice.
“Hey Jessie, I came to ask if maybe you would like me to cut your hair? It would be a lot cooler in this heat. May I come in?”
Jessie opened the door. Bo came in with something in his hand. It was about four inches long and had some kind of long cord.
“I cut hair too,” he said smiling.
“What’s that,” Jessie asked, backing up a little.
Jessie sat down in the chair, and watched as Bo put two little things on the end of the black cord into a hole in the wall. He did something on the black thing in his hand and it made a noise causing Jessie to jump up and back away.
“Hey, Jessie, it’s okay man. You’re not from around here are you,” Bo asked.
“This is my land, my ranch, at least it was up until an hour or so ago.”
“Okay, calm down. Lori’s family has owned and lived on this land for the last one hundred years.” Bo looked closely at the young man in front of him. “You said this is your land yet you seem lost and scared, and that pistol you have, I haven’t seen one of them except in the museum from back in the 1800’s.”
“Yes, this is 1888,” Jessie told him.
“Look, I’ll make a deal with you. Do you think you can trust me,” Bo asked him.
Jessie looked at the older man and slowly nodded. “I trust you.”
“Alright, sit down here and let me cut you hair and tomorrow I will take you to the museum. Deal?” Bo was waving his hand toward the chair.
Jessie sat down in the chair and even though he was afraid of the thing, Bo cut his hair. Jessie sat still and allowed Bo to finish. After about ten minutes, Bo stood back and said,
“Done. Jessie, go look in the mirror.”
Jessie touched his hair. “It’ll be okay,” he said not wanting Bo to know he didn’t understand what a mirror was.
“Okay, let’s go to dinner. You hungry?”
“Yes I am.”
“Let’s go then. Let me warn you, there will probably be more than thirty people there. You know, half of the crew,” Bo said as he opened the door and Jessie felt the heat from the sun and suddenly realized there had been no heat in his room. “Why had it been so cool? How did they keep the heat out?” This whole dream wasn’t making sense.
The two men stepped out into the sunlight and began to walk toward the big white house.
“We’ll go ‘round to the back door and to the dining room,” Bo said as he pointed to a path of some hard white stuff.
As Jessie walked, he realized the house was a lot larger than he thought. As he and Bo came closer, they met other men who were also going into the house to eat. Bo opened the door and allowed Jessie to walk in first. As they entered the house, Jessie noticed right away that once again they had left the heat outside. How was this possible? There was no way to leave the heat outside the house.
As he followed Bo through yet another door, he could see the longest table he had ever seen. How many people worked here anyway? Had to be a lot if this was only half.
“Sit here beside me,” Bo told him. Jessie sat down beside the older man and watched as each chair filled up with people. Some were men and some were women. Each one of them had on strange clothes. Most of the men and women had on the same kind of cut off britches as he had seen Lori in earlier. “Had the Indians been here and cut everyone’s britches off?”
Five or six people came from a room off the side and set food on the table and before long the table was full of food and the chairs were full of people. Lori sat at the end of the long table. Smiling she said,
“Everyone, we have a new man at the table this evening. Jessie, this is part of my ranch hands minus the kitchen help and the ones who will eat later. As of right now Jessie, I have sixty eight employees.”
Everyone welcomed Jessie James McCoy. Everyone at the table either held up their hand or said, “Nice to meet you Jessie.”
Jessie smiled. He felt a warm welcome and soon was talking to some of the men sitting next to him. He was careful not to say anything to make them think he was strange. If someone said something he didn’t understand, he would only smile and agree. Sometimes Bo would help him out a little.
After dinner, Lori stopped Jessie and Bo as they were leaving.
“You look better. A lot different. Feel better?”
“Yes, thanks,” Jessie smiled at her. Now she had on a long pair of britches and a man’s shirt that fit her a little tightly.
“I’m going to the museum tomorrow and I thought I would take Jessie with me. He has a pistol which may belong in the 1800’s. Besides, I think it might do him good to see some of the things out there,” Bo told Lori.
“That’s fine. See if you can find out how old the pistol really is. Just get someone to watch everything while you are gone,” Lori said.
“I’ll talk to Ad
am later,” Bo told her.
Several of the men walked back to the bunk house with Bo and Jessie. They were all friendly to him. Bo stopped at Jessie’s door and said,
“Good evening Jessie. I’ll see you later. You are probably tired.”
Jessie looked at the older man he had trusted to cut his hair with the strange noisy thing. “Can you come in and talk?”
Jessie held the door open letting Bo enter the room in front of him. He closed the door behind them once again feeling the heat leave the room. Bo sat down at the table in front of the window. Jessie sat across from him on the edge of the bed.
“Well son, what’s on your mind? What do you want to talk about?”
Jessie sighed. “I don’t know where to start. I’m afraid you will think I am crazy but there is something I need to talk about and I think I can trust you to keep it between us.”
Bo nodded. “Whatever it is will be between only us. Well, and Lori, she knows everything I know. Look, I already know you are from somewhere else. Somewhere primitive, or maybe overseas.”
Jessie didn’t say anything for a minute. “I was born in 1866 in Tennessee. I moved here to Texas two and a half years ago with my wife. We bought a farm, built us a house and barn. We named it The Lazy Cross Ranch because we found an old branding iron someone had left behind of a cross and it was bent. I tried to straighten it out but gave up. Missy, my wife, said it looked like a lazy cross. Missy died in childbirth. I miss her every day. I woke up this morning and went off to check my traps. The Indians were after me when it came a sudden storm and the next thing I knew, I was down by the creek where Lori found me. This morning it was snowing and about twenty degrees outside, but here it is eighty. What happened? Where is my home?”
Bo could hear the fright in the young voice.
“Wow, what a strange story. Okay. Lori’s family has had this ranch for about one hundred years. I think three generations: her grandfather, father, and herself. She hasn’t had it long, about a year I guess. I worked for her father as well and he was a great man. When he died, he left the ranch to his only child, Lori. She grew up here on the ranch and already knew how everything worked. She does a good job and is getting better all the time.”
“All this does not explain how I got here and why everything is different.”
“We’ll figure this out, don’t worry. I think going to the museum will help you a lot.”
“Do you believe me Bo,” Jessie asked the older man.
“Yes I do,” Bo stood up. “I know you don’t understand but I’m going to show you how to use the television. Please don’t be afraid.” Bo picked up the television remote and clicked a button.
“Now what is this?” Jessie backed up against the wall putting his hands over his face. The picture he saw was a huge bird like thing falling into a river.
Bo came over to him. “It’s okay. This is only a picture on a screen. It cannot hurt you.”
Jessie pulled his hands away from his face. The bird was still sitting on the water.
“This is only a picture on a box, see,” Bo walked over to the television and touched it. “See, it won’t hurt you. Come touch it.”
Jessie came over and touched the screen, pulling his hand back as quickly as he had touched it. He touched it again and realizing it wasn’t going to hurt him, he ran his hands over the screen following Bo’s hands.
Bo handed him the little black box and Jessie looked at it. It was about four inches long with raised bumps on it. It had numbers and words on the raised bumps.
“It’s a remote for the television. It changes the channel to something else. Go sit down and push this button. Don’t be afraid. It’s only a picture, okay?”
Jessie nodded. His hands were shaking as he sat in the chair and pushed the thing Bo told him to. At once the picture changed to a horseless coach on a road. He touched it again and saw someone he didn’t know riding a horse. His hands stopped shaking as he looked at the picture.
“Remember Jessie, this isn’t real. Don’t forget that. This is the western channel. You’ll probably like it. These things will be familiar to you. To turn it off, hit this button here. Will you be okay if I go to my room?”
Jessie nodded. “I’m tired and I need to think about all this.”
“Listen, I’ll be by in the morning and we’ll go up to the house for breakfast. You can take a shower tomorrow if you want. Just push the button on the big part down, but be sure to pull the curtain round the tub or the whole room will be wet, understand?”
“Here you bath every day,” Jessie asked.
Bo laughed. “Yes, sometimes more if we’ve had a hard day.”
“Isn’t it wasting water?”
“We have plenty of water now. No one fights over water or land here. We also have a pool for swimming.”
A pool. Lori had mentioned something about a pool. Jessie repeated. “A pool.”
“Yes, it’s a large thing filled with water and in the summer sometimes we can get time to swim in it. I’ll show you one day.”
“Like when we make a place for the animals to drink?”
“Something like that, only this is for us to swim in and you can’t drink the water in it.”
“Oh,” Jessie still didn’t understand.
“Maybe you need to sleep on all this and I’ll see you in the morning.”
Jessie smiled at the older man. “Maybe. Thanks Bo.”
Bo raised his hand and opened the door.
“See ya in the morning.” He closed the door behind him.
Jessie sat down in the chair and hit the thing Bo said to that would turn off the television. With the black box on the wall off, Jessie went back over the day in his head. None of this made any sense at all from the minute he awoke this morning to the Indians being on his land to all of this. He still didn’t know how he got here. This was a strange place but at least the people he had met were nice. He wondered if he should have even told Bo about this morning but he had really trusted the older man. Maybe if he went to sleep, he would wake up in his own cabin, and everything would be alright again. He looked at the bed and suddenly shivered as he pulled back the covering and pulled off his boots and climbed into bed closing his eyes.
CHAPTER 4
Lori watched as Bo and Jessie walked off toward the bunkhouse and shook her head. This had been a weird day. This man she had found out on the ranch had said this ranch was his and she was trespassing. He had seemed too scared of everything and what was this thing about him not bathing? She had never met anyone who smelled so bad. He had looked different after he had bathed and shaved. He was probably younger than she was.
She came back to the present when she heard someone coming up the sidewalk and she smiled as she saw Bo.
“Hey,” she said.
“What are you doing out here, Miss Lori?”
“Just trying to take it all in, Bo. How is Jessie? He seemed so scared. Did he tell you anything?”
“Let’s go inside. I could use a cup of coffee.” Bo held the door open for her and she stepped inside leading the way into the kitchen. All the house help had finished their work and had gone to their rooms or off the ranch. Lori and Bo were all alone. Lori took the coffee pot and sat down at the table with Bo.
“To answer your question Miss Lori, yes, he did talk to me.” Bo repeated the story Jessie had told him. “He really believes he is from the 1800’s. He knows nothing about baths, television, razors. He is afraid of everything. That is why I want to take him to the museum tomorrow to look at the western things.”
“Good idea Bo but if his story is true, how would it happen?”
Lori stood up to pour two cups of coffee and sat back down.
“He says there was a thunder storm right out of the blue and the next thing he knew he was here today. I don’t know where he came from but wherever it was, it is primitive because he was so scared. He was shaking he was so afraid.”
“When I first met him out by the creek, he said somethin
g about my needing clothes on. Do you think there is a place where people live in the old days? There’s the Amish people, but none around here though that I know of. I think there are more religions also. You know, the women always wear long dresses and don’t believe in showing their skin- only their face and hands. It could be one of them,” said Lori.
“Could be,” Bo said taking a sip of the hot coffee. “I can probably tell you more after tomorrow.”
“You’re going to show him the western things,” Lori asked.
“Yes, to try to make him understand it’s not 1888. Maybe he came from one of the mental hospitals in the city,” Bo said.
“Yeah, I hadn’t thought of that. Let’s go on-line and see if anyone is missing. I have a friend who works at the one in Dallas.” Lori stood. “I’ll be back in a minute.” She disappeared into the other room and reappeared a few minutes later. She sat down beside Bo and looked through her phone book until she found the number she was looking for. Once she dialed the number, she spoke for a few minutes. She hung up saying, “Thanks, Sue. I owe you one.” She laid down the phone and said to Bo, “Well he wasn’t there. I don’t know. Maybe he’s telling the truth. But I still don’t know how someone from the past could get into the future. You really think he’s honest and telling the truth.”
“Yes I do. You should have seen him when I turned on his television. He jumped back a foot and was shaking all over. He’s not pretending. The fact is, I don’t think anyone could fake the way he was acting. When I spend time with him tomorrow, maybe we will know more,” Bo said. “I’ll check in on him on my way to my room.”
“Okay, I’ll see you tomorrow Bo.”
Bo stood and kissed her cheek. “Good night.”
Lori smiled. “Good night Bo.” She watched as he walked out of the room and she walked into the living room and turned on the television. Not being able to get into anything, she finally turned off the television and sat there thinking about Jessie. What if he had somehow been transported through time and this had been his ranch back then. It would explain where the little cabin had come from. She had loved playing in it as a child. She shook her head, this was crazy. It made no sense. How could someone be in one time and then in an instant be in another. What would cause it? It couldn’t just happen, could it? Jessie had acted so strange and been afraid of everything. She got up and went to bed. Maybe things would look better in the morning.
Portals of Time Page 6
