The Legend of Garison Fitch (Book 2): Saving Time

by Samuel Ben White

  Then he saw a strange sight. A small white person—maybe two years old or less—walked into the room. She had a cute round face and silky blonde hair. He had never seen hair so blonde, though one of the Jesuits had been somewhat fair skinned. Sun Chaser found himself smiling at the little cherub. He watched as she crawled into the lap of the man and he hugged her. Sun Chaser realized it was not unlike the relationship between himself and his own daughters.

  The man stood up, his daughter still in his arms, and carried her to a set of indoor steps. The man ascended the steps and was soon out of Sun Chaser's sight. Momentarily, though, a light came on above Sun Chaser. He stepped back and saw that another shaft of light had shot out from an opening in the wall above him. Sun Chaser could just make out the sight of the man laying the girl in what Sun Chaser guessed was a bed. It was much like the nightly ritual of putting his own daughter to sleep, Sun Chaser thought.

  Sun Chaser watched the vision for a long time. It was both powerful and innocuous. It did not seem to him to be a vision of war, but perhaps it was a vision of change. Was this how the whites were at home? Did they love their children just as his people did?

  If the whites were such as this, maybe peace was possible. He had heard rumors that many whites were coming. That they would one day cover the plains and the mountains. If they were such as these, perhaps treaties could be struck. Perhaps learning and knowledge could be shared between the whites and the natives. He had wished to learn more from the Jesuits, but they had gone away. Sun Chaser knew he could learn to get along with a people who valued their children, who enjoyed quiet moments alone, who read the Bible.

  He began to walk away from the house and an odd thing began to happen. The sun had just begun to go down, but now it began to rise again. The first rays of the morning began to peak over the eastern rim of the canyon and they showed Sun Chaser a wintery scene. The snow was piled on the ground and in the trees. New snow was even falling.

  He turned quickly to see that the house was still there—yet it was fading. It was as if he were waking from a dream, while still having it. Truly, this was the most powerful of all dreams. Certainly of all the dreams he had ever had.

  Sun Chaser wasn't sure why, but he felt he must give something to the dream. There was no time to prepare or select a proper gift, for the dream was quickly disappearing. He whipped an arrow from his quiver and nocked it to the deergut of his bow. Taking aim at the door of the house, he loosed the arrow. It sped into the mist and disappeared, along with the house and the summer night. Sun Chaser dropped to his knees and thanked both gods (or the one God) for the powerful vision—and asked for the wisdom to interpret it.

  Chapter Five

  After Heather had checked out the new quilting books, and they had gotten back to their log home in La Plata Canyon, Heather took a shower while Garison fired up the outdoor grill. By the time he had finished a shower of his own, the grill was ready for the steaks. Garison put them on then sat out on their deck with a Dr Pepper in hand.

  "This is going to sound weird," Heather had called to him from the shower, "But this afternoon was kind of fun."

  "What part?" he asked. She had seemed to him to be extremely nervous, not like someone having fun.

  She came out of the restroom wrapped in a towel, drying her hair. She said, "Growing up in Highland Park, as the daughter of one of Dallas's most prominent and respected lawyers, I would never have been allowed to go to town in dirt covered blue jeans."

  Garison looked at her strangely, as if trying to discern if she were joking. She nodded and said, "I'm serious. My mother would have been mortified to think of me going into town like that. It was kind of liberating." At another skeptical look from her husband, she added, "Kind of like getting away with something. Like wearing your tennis shoes to grade school."

  When he looked at her with added confusion, she laughed and said, "Oh, that's right. You never went to private school, did you?"

  He shook his head so she went back inside and finished drying off, then dressed casually for a bar-b-q and evening on the deck.

  When Heather had finished chopping the tomatoes and lettuce for the salad, she came outside and joined him. Putting a hand softly on his shoulder, she looked out at the forest and sipped her own drink. After a moment, she commented, "When we first built this house, I thought we should have put the deck on the side with the view. But now, I like it this way. It's kind of quiet and secluded back here."

  "Peaceful," Garison agreed. When he had built the house by himself, in another time entirely, it hadn't had a deck at all. He was glad he had put one on this time. Just another instance of Heather's positive influence, he thought to himself.

  "And a bit chilly," Heather added. "It still amazes me how much the temperature changes up here in the mountain when you enter a shadow. Growing up in Texas, we could have clouds dark enough to make the street lights come on and it would still be a hundred degrees."

  "And a hundred percent humidity," Garison nodded.

  "Houston's even worse. You've never been there during the summer, have you?"

  "Long time ago. Back in, well, the other time." He smiled and patted her hand, "I still start sweating every time I even remember that trip. Houston in August. What possesses anyone to stay there during that time of year?"

  "Doesn't take you long to realize why the Astros were the first team to move indoors, does it?"

  Garison chuckled and got up to the flip the steaks. He liked his medium well, as did Heather, but he hated well done steaks. He had tried timing the steaks, putting them on different spots on the grill, adjusting the gas on the flame, but nothing was certain. He always wound up checking and re checking the steaks with a frequency that annoyed even himself. He always said one day he was going to ask a real chef how it was done. They probably checked and rechecked, he thought.

  Heather finally sat down and cuddled up next to Garison, watching the flames kiss the steaks. After a few moments, she said, "It's so quiet and peaceful with just the two of us. This is really wonderful."

  He nodded, "But you're missing Sarah so much you can hardly stand it, right?"

  "Exactly."

  "Me, too. I know we told Mom and Dad we'd probably sleep in then fly up at our leisure, but I'm relatively certain I'm not going to be able to sleep tonight—not after today."

  "Me, either," Heather agreed. "Even if I do finally fall asleep, I'm going to be so anxious to see my baby I'll probably wake up every few hours."

  "Well, let's try not to leave before six, but after that—"

  "We're gone." Heather kissed him warmly then cuddled back up against his chest. "And if I dream, I'm afraid I'll dream of that funeral today."

  They sat silently for quite a while, just enjoying the moment and smelling the wonderful odor of the steaks. When Garison was convinced they were just about ready, Heather went and got the things to set their patio table. By the time she had things ready, Garison was putting their steaks on the table and going for drink refills.

  They ate in silence and Garison could tell Heather was thinking about something. It seemed to be a pleasant thought, so he wasn't worried. Finally, though, his curiosity got the better of him and he asked, "Are you thinking about Sarah?"

  She shrugged, but replied, "In a way."

  When she didn't seem forthcoming with elaboration, he prompted, "What?"

  "Oh," Heather shrugged again, "I was just thinking of before. Before the time trip, you know? I was remembering how, ah, how rough our marriage was."

  "And that made you smile?"

  She quickly shook her head, "No. Not really. But I was thinking about how one of the frequent points of contention was children. We both wanted children, but you didn't want them then. I used to get the feeling that you would probably never want children and then I'd get upset. I had convinced myself you were cheating me out of a right, or something.

  "Then, you came back and everything changed. Our marriage got better. We had Sarah. That made me smile
."

  "Did having Sarah save the marriage?"

  "No, marrying you saved the marriage." She laughed and said, "That's sounds weird, huh? But you know what I mean."

  He nodded and started to ask a question, then took another bite of food again. He started to broach something, then took another bite. After about the third attempt, Heather demanded, "What is it? You look like you've got something to say now."

  "Oh, just a tacky thought. Or a weird one, anyway."

  "Shoot."

  "I better not."

  "Out with it," she demanded.

  He took a deep breath, then queried, "What about marrying me?"

  "What about it?"

  "The only reservation I had about marrying you when I did, was that I felt as if I were being unfaithful to Sarah's memory—my wife Sarah. It seemed a little soon, you know. I don't really know when wouldn't have seemed too soon. I mean, I know we were already married, but . . . How did you feel? Did you ever feel like you were, um, taking on a second husband?"

  Heather laughed and replied, "To tell you the honest truth: it never crossed my mind. I've been married to one man for five years." She reached out and took his hand, "You are the only man I've ever been with, you're the only man I ever will be with."

  "But I'm not the man you married. I mean, I am. But I'm not."

  "Yes, you are, Garison. You're the man I married—and more. I can't explain it, but that's the way it is." After a bit she added, "Maybe it's not that hard to explain. What about a woman whose husband becomes a Christian or gives up drinking some years into their marriage? That's bound to be a severe change—but he's still the same guy. To me, that's all that happened. You just changed."

  He returned her smile and was reminded all over again just how much he loved Heather Dawson Fitch. After a few moments, he let go of her hand, took a swig of his DP, and reminded, "I know we've been over this before, but how are we going to explain this to Sarah?"

  "And any other Fitchs we may have?"

  "'And any other Fitchs we may have'," he confirmed. He looked up suddenly and asked, "You're not—"

  "No. But some day I would like to have another one."

  "Me, too. But, um, how do we explain to them that their father grew up in some place called the Soviet Americas, invented a time machine, and destroyed the world? How do we explain that I'm my own ancestor? Or that they had a step brother who died in the Revolutionary War?" He laughed and asked, "And what about the day Sarah comes home after learning about George Washington? How do we tell her that her Daddy saved George's life and that the first president of this country was a pall bearer at the funeral of Daddy's first wife?"

  Heather laughed with him and pointed out, "You know, one of the biggest worries of most parents is how they're going to explain sex to their kids. Sex is going to be like explaining addition and subtraction compared to explaining all this."

  "Make you a deal," Garison offered, "You tell our children about time travel and I'll explain to them about sex."

  "I don't think so. Besides, Sarah needs to hear about sex from a woman, so I get that one. You're the one who traveled through time, so you can tell her about that."

  He objected, "But that means if we have a boy one of these days I get stuck trying to tell him about both."

  "Sounds good," Heather agreed.

  They laughed on for a bit, then began to clean off the table and gather everything to take inside. Garison double checked that the grill was off and followed her in. "My turn to do the dishes," he called.

  "I'll dry."

  "You were supposed to argue about whose turn it is."

  As they were finishing the dishes and Heather was putting away the plates, she asked, "What happened today, Garison?"

  It took him a minute to realize what she was talking about. He wasn't sure whether it was purposeful or accidental, but he had put it all out of his mind. He finally replied, "I've been trying to figure that out of and on all day. There can only be one of three explanations, though."

  Heather sighed and nodded, "Either we went backward in time, or they came forward in time, or something in the middle happened. I don't know if you've realized it, Garison, but that doesn't really answer anything."

  Garison nodded. He had wrestled with the same disgust all day. He was a scientist and an athlete and he enjoyed things to either be logical or by a certain set of rules. This seemed to be neither. It seemed to him that such dilemmas happened frequently to him.

  "I feel like I'm weaseling out when I say this," Heather told him, "But I get the feeling that the answer is the 'Somewhere In Between' door."

  "Why's that?"

  "Stuart Jameson said he had a man who was supposed to come fill in the hole, right? What happened to him?"

  Garison nodded, "Why didn't he come through time, too, huh?"

  "Here's an interesting scenario," Heather proposed, "Let's say Stuart and that creep Harris came forward in time—along with the grave and the hearse somehow. So, when the guy who's supposed to fill in the grave gets there, what does he find?"

  "What do you mean?" Both of Garison's wives had had keen intellects, but Heather's sometimes amazed even Garison. She had an incredible ability to see the backside of a problem, so to speak.

  "Let's further say the hired man shows up at the correct spot—that he didn't get lost like Mister Jameson thought. He comes up the fence road to the clearing right at three o'clock like he was supposed to. What does he find? Remember, even the grave was in the future. Does the hired man find an empty grave, a filled grave, a piece of land that's never had a grave, a forty year old grave—you see where I'm going with this?"

  "Sadly, yes. And what becomes both a bright spot and simultaneously a source of irritation is the fact that we will probably never know. Grave diggers rarely ever write memoirs. Even drunken ex Navy grave diggers." He shuddered a bit and asked, "What makes someone go into that line of work?"

  "Grave digging?"

  "The whole mortuary bit: morticians, grave diggers, et. al." He looked at her with a slight grimace and asked, "Am I the only one who finds the whole line of work rather . . . ghoulish? I realize they perform a valuable and necessary service, but what possesses someone to go into it?"

  "How many other jobs can you think of with that kind of security? People are always dying and always will be and we'll always need someone we can pay to take away the body."

  "Profit alone can't be the motivating factor."

  Heather shrugged and answered, "Maybe not, but I'm sure it helps. Some of them probably go into it because it's a way to help other people at a time when they really need help."

  "You can't help them, they're dead!"

  She slapped him on the arm and retorted, "You know what I mean! They help the survivors through their time of grief." As the sink drained and she dried and put away the last of the dishes, she related, "Did I ever tell you I went to school with a guy who wanted to me a mortician?"

  "You're kidding. S.M.U.?"

  "No, back in high school in Highland Park. Nice guy. I sat next to him in drama class for a couple semesters."

  "I didn't know you took drama. I thought you hated acting."

  "I did. It was a useless credit. We sat in class for two semesters and heard war stories from a guy who spent the entirety of the Vietnam war stationed in Oklahoma."

  "He ever say why he wanted to go into morticianing—or whatever you'd call it? Your friend, I mean."

  "It's what his family did." Heather thought a moment, then added, "In fact, from what I know, it's often a family business."

  He nodded and told her, "Now that I think about it, that's the way it was when I was J.P. I don't think I've ever met a mortician whose parents weren't morticians."

  As they walked into the living room, Heather mused, "Maybe if you grow up around it like that you don't see it like we do. It's just another job. There are lots of jobs like that, you know. Jobs some of us can't fathom what would possess people to take them. Fortunately, some
one does. And those people probably can't figure out what we see in our jobs."

  "You're probably right. Except that we don't have jobs."

  "You're an inventor—and a wood worker. Some people would find both of those jobs incredibly boring. A lot of people can't figure out why I want to be a housewife."

  "I see what you mean."

  Heather laughed and added, "I'll tell you one thing, though. From all I've ever heard—both from Robert in high school and other people—morticians and funeral directors and the like, they're a partying bunch of people."

  "Really?"

  "Maybe not all of them, but Robert and his family sure were. He used to talk about how wild the morticians conventions got. Free flowing alcohol and what not."

  "They spend their days hanging out with bereaved people. I'd think you'd just about have to cut loose now and again to keep from going insane or, at the least, getting chronically morose."

  "Do you ever miss it," Garison asked, roughly out of the blue.

  "Miss what?"

  He shrugged, then replied, "You're a lawyer from a family of lawyers who has one of the top legal minds in the country. Yet you haven't picked up a law book since Sarah was born. Do you miss it?"

  Heather thought for a minute, then said, "Maybe, sometimes. Just little bits of it. But then, I look at Sarah, or think of the life I have now, and I don't really miss it anymore. I like my life now. It's a life that—back in college—I would have groaned at the very idea of. But you know, I'm even thinking now I'd like to homeschool Sarah—and any other little Fitches."

  "Really? I can't think of anyone more qualified."

  "Seriously? I've never brought it up before because I wasn't sure how you'd react."

  "I think it's a great idea. And I could teach her—them—science."

  As they sat down on the living room couch and cuddled up next to each other, Heather mumbled coyly, "Time traveling morticians, perfectly grilled steaks, and a house completely to ourselves. Who could ask for more?"

  They soon slipped upstairs to bed though neither was the least bit sleepy.