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

by Samuel Ben White

  "We wouldn't know it if it did," she said, trying to sound conciliatory, though the thought made her cringe, too.

  "That's even worse." He put down his project and, taking her hand, said, "What I hate most is the thought of losing you. You're everything to me. That other Garison may have been exactly like me, but I can't imagine ever loving anyone but you. And I can see how much it must have hurt him to give you up. I'm not sure if I could have."

  She put her arms around him and thanked him with her words and her actions.

  He added, "It's stupid, but it sure makes me jealous to think of another man being married to you."

  "I don't like the idea of you with another woman—even if it was another you, and another me."

  After a time, she motioned to the project that was strewn across their deck, making it look like a tornado had hit, showering the canyon with sawdust. "Is it working?"

  "Is what working?"

  "Are you able to think better while making a mess of my porch? Have you figured it all out?"

  His arms still around her, enjoying the feel of her body next to his, he replied, "Sort of. I've had some ideas. Maybe not all of them—or even the right ones—but ideas. I shoot some of them down myself, but I hold on to the occasional good one."

  "Like what? Give me a good one—one of the best," she smiled.

  "Maybe the reason the other Garison found himself young again—back in the eighteenth century—was because he had never come forward."

  "Huh?" Heather was as bewildered as she usually was when he started explaining his thoughts.

  "Well, I got to thinking. See, maybe I did go back in time—thirty two years ago or however you want to look at it. Either I didn't stay there long or something, but when I came back, I somehow brought the other Garison with me. He changed time by saving Washington and I changed it by bringing him back when he should have stayed. All that was on the other timeline. Then, yesterday, when I didn't go back in time, it changed all that. Because of my actions, not only was the hole in time not made, but he didn't have to come back to the nineties."

  "But how come he can remember all that happened in those twenty plus years and we can't? Did they not happen because of you? Well, if that's true, it doesn't seem like he should remember them either."

  "I don't know. Maybe he remembered those things the same way he remembered all that about the Soviet Americas. It doesn't seem like he should have remembered that, either. It all happened to him, but to no one else. His reality was actually different from ours."

  Heather nodded, although parts were still fuzzy. "I wish we could know all he knew. I mean, you're as smart as he is—you've invented some of the same things, like that nuclear plant—but he saw so much that none of the rest of us will ever see. It's kind of sad that all that knowledge is lost. The Soviet Americas, the Revolutionary War. I must have been amazing to have lived what he lived."

  "The new wave music era twice."

  "Oh, I hadn't thought of that. How awful."

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Garison lay in bed with his arms around his lovely wife Sarah. After twenty two years of absence, he was reacquainting himself with everything about her. From the few freckles across her nose, to the way her hips curved beneath her nightgown. He had been overjoyed to see his children—and was going to take several days off work to get to know them all over again—but it was Sarah he most wanted to be with.

  "I forgot to tell you," Sarah whispered, "The Washingtons want us to come over for dinner on Friday night. Something about you saving little George's life."

  Garison chuckled and shook his head, "That seems so long ago."

  "Garison," she asked hesitantly, "Have you really been away for twenty two years?"

  He reached out a hand and caressed her long blonde hair. It felt silky and smooth to his touch, just like he remembered. Funny that even the texture of her hair would be so different from that of Heather's. He stared at her smooth, pale skin, her deep blue eyes, the wonderful figure hidden beneath the eighteenth century bedclothes.

  Garison finally answered, "Yes, I was."

  "Then how come you didn't get any older?"

  "I did. I mean, this morning—what I remember as this morning, anyway—I was fifty seven years old. I had grey hair and wrinkles around my eyes and I even had an age spot on my right hand."

  "I don't understand."

  He shook his head, then smiled broadly, "Neither do I, but I don't care. All I care about is that I'm back here with you. For twenty two years I haven't even dared to think that was possible. But here I am. It's like heaven."

  "I love you, too, but I never thought of this as heaven," Sarah laughed.

  "You've never seen Sprayberry, Texas. That'd certainly make you think this was heaven."

  "Maybe you can take me there if we ever make that trip to La Plata Canyon like we always talk about."

  "I'd rather avoid that part of Texas, if at all possible. Besides, Sprayberry won't be around for a long time—and it won't be much when it is around. I spent two weeks working in the oil patch near there and that was about thirteen and a half days too many."

  "Tell me about the future. About the time you went back to."

  Garison took a deep breath, wondering where to begin. As if sensing his dilemma, Sarah offered, "Just start with when you sent your machine into the future and tell me all that happened until I saw you this morning outside the shed."

  "This could take a while."

  Sarah reached out and put her hand on his chest. Feeling the muscles through the shirt, she said, "Go ahead and start. If I fall asleep—or get other ideas," she injected with a lascivious wink— "You can tell me the rest tomorrow. We could even send the kids over to the Franklyns' for the morning."

  "Because of your ideas or so I can tell you the story."

  She thought a moment, then said, "Both."

  Garison told Sarah the story, and then he told it again. The second time, though, he was dictating the story as she wrote it down and over several days. It took them several days to transcribe it all, but they finally had it all down on paper.

  Using the lap top, Garison had even extracted many of his journal entries from over the past two and a half decades (of his life). He inserted them into the narrative of his story as needed. Much of the story was already stored in the computer, having been written by Heather. Hoping she wouldn't mind, Garison also used some of Heather's diary entries to supplement the narrative. Her password hadn't been that hard to break as it had been "iluvgarison".

  Over the next couple months, he transcribed the rest of his journals onto paper. He knew Darla's lap top could hold a charge far longer than any other machine, but he wanted to get all the information out if it he could before the batteries died or something else happened to it. Once that was done, he destroyed the lap top so it wouldn't be found by anyone. He hated destroying such a fine piece of technology, but he knew Darla would make more in a couple hundred years.

  "So," Sarah asked, "What are we going to do with this manuscript now that it's written? We certainly can't show it to anyone."

  Garison smiled and said, "Actually, you gave me the idea for what to do with it."

  "Me?"

  "Remember how you sent me that letter through the Anglican church? I'm going to do that and send this manuscript to the Garison Fitch of the future."

  "I didn't do that," Sarah laughed.

  "Yes you did. I mean, you will. Well, you won't have to now—now that I'm here. But it's what you would have done if I had gone back to the twenty-first century in the shed. Which I did—but, apparently, I didn't."

  Sarah motioned to the tall stack of parchment and commented, "As your other wife once said, 'This is so twisted.'"

  "I once said that we couldn't use this method again because so many good ideas only work once. I guess we can circumvent that rule on the basis that it's never been done before."

  At Garison's laugh, Sarah shook her head and remarked, "'Other wife'. I can'
t say I like the sound of that, Garison."

  "It is strange," he nodded. Sitting down beside her, he took her right hand and began to massage it, knowing it had to have been tired and cramped from all the writing. "Twenty years ago I was in love with Heather Dawson. Two days ago, I found myself outside her window, wishing I were still with her." He looked at Sarah with somewhat imploring eyes and said, "I had long since given up any hope of ever seeing you again. You'd been dead for two hundred years. Then, there—just a few feet away—was a woman I had been in love with eighteen years before. It was—it was-"

  "You don't have to explain." Clutching her skirt in her hands, the way another woman had clutched a sheet in her hands oh so long ago, Sarah told him, "Like you said, I read the manuscript. It hurt to think you'd marry someone else but I understand. As far as you knew, I was dead. Wait a moment, let me back up. My head understands, but my heart doesn't, yet. I think I will, eventually. I guess, what I'm wondering is, um, do you still love her, Garison?"

  He took a deep breath, exhaled it slowly, then said, "Yes. I always will."

  "Would you—" she hesitated, "—would you go back to her if you could?"

  He chuckled slightly as he told Sarah, "I know I told another woman something similar to this a long time ago, but, Heather's gone. Well, she's not so much gone as she isn't here, yet. And never will be—in my lifetime, anyway." He paused, trying to organize his twisted thoughts, and finally said, "I did love Heather, Sarah. I guess a part of me will always love Heather. But I never stopped loving you. You had been dead for over two hundred years when I met Heather. You said yourself I should find someone else."

  "In that letter I haven't yet written?" she demanded.

  "Well, yeah."

  Sarah suddenly burst out laughing and consoled, "It's all right, Garison. You're here with me, now. Whatever the future holds for us, we will find out together. And that past, it never happened. That's all that matters."

  Garison kissed her and told her happily, "I love you, Sarah. I really do. And you know something else?"

  "What?" she asked suspisicously.

  "The time machine's gone for good."

  "Praise God!"

  Garison's Journal

  April 21, 1744

  I don't know what happened and maybe I never will. If not for the fact that I somehow brought Darla's lap top computer with me, I might think it had all been a dream. The Lord works in mysterious ways.

  But here I am, firmly entrenched in the eighteenth century—and loving it. George Washington plays on my soccer team and it's a terrible temptation to treat him with deference. He will, after all, be the father of the greatest country on earth.

  I can't try too hard to not mess up the future, though. I have a life to lead and, somehow, I get the feeling I'm supposed to be leading it here. Call it divine providence, but a lot of it goes back to the lap top. So I'll do what I once resolved to do here: treat the future the same way everyone else does. I'll think about the future, I'll plan for the future, but I won't walk on eggshells. (I'll just avoid obvious things, like inventing the lightbulb, predicting the outcome of major wars, or teaching everyone baseball. I am, however, hoping golf shows up soon so I can start playing that again.)

  I love Sarah (and Justin and Henry and Helen), but there will always be a special place in my heart for Heather. She was (will be?) a wonderful, beautiful woman. Without her, I probably never would have repaired time and wound up back here. She's as responsible for saving the world as I am.

  So Heather, someday when you read this—if my plan to pass it along works as well as Sarah's letter did—I hope you realize just how much I loved you.

  Garison, if you read this some day, I hope you realize just what a great wife you have.

  Sarah Fitch gave birth to her fourth child (of six) on January 31, 1745. It was a beautiful little girl with jet black hair like her father. All of her preceding siblings had been born with blonde hair, like their mother, so the newest edition to the clan was quite distinctive.

  As Garison took the beautiful baby girl and laid her on Sarah's chest, he commented, "You know, we were so confident this baby was going to be a boy that we never even picked out any girl names. Any ideas?"

  Sarah looked lovingly at the new baby in her arms, then back up at Garison. With a smile, she said, "You know, Heather is a really pretty name."

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Heather laid down the last page of the manuscript with a sigh. It was her second time through the story—and Garison had made the trip as well. She looked for a moment at all the empty soda cans and the remains of two meals that rested before them on the coffee table. She finally asked, "Could it be true, Garison?"

  "You asked me that after the last time we read it."

  She shrugged, "I know. It's just that, we read a lot of it late at night that time. The next morning, even after you made those phone calls, I couldn't bring myself to believe it. I mean, it had to be a hoax, I thought."

  "I don't know how, but I somehow think it's true. It feels true."

  "But it's so fantastic! The whole thing is just so unbelievable!"

  "Something that morning convinced you and I that we had to take the machine apart and we didn't know what it was. Maybe we really did watch a video."

  "Where is it now?"

  He shrugged and said, "Who knows? I guess it never existed. Just like I don't remember having run into myself when I was eleven—but that is the year I got serious about church. I also have all my Ken Griffey Jr. cards for some reason. I can't tell you why I was holding on to them even before he got famous. I hate the Mariners. Shoot, I don't even like Ken Griffey, Jr."

  Heather put a hand to her stomach and said softly, but with something like awe, "I had a baby."

  "What?" Garison quickly asked.

  "I was just thinking out loud. I feel less violated and more in awe—as time goes by. And envious, I want a baby."

  Somewhat to Heather's surprise, Garison nodded and said, "I wish I could remember that tape, though. I would have liked to have seen what our little girl looked like."

  Heather offered meekly, "You know, we could have one of our own."

  "I like that idea."

  "Really?" she asked excitedly.

  Late that night, Heather whispered, "Garison?"

  "Yeah?"

  "If we really do have a little girl. What do you think of the name Sarah?"

  Epilogue

  As Heather and Jody flitted from one shop in Durango to another like charge happy butterflies, Garison and Bat found another bench to sit on. The shade over their last perch had moved, so they had gone in search of another bench like two old men. In fact, there were two old men nearby who were upset with the whippersnappers for encroaching on their turf.

  As they settled in, Bat asked, "Think we'll have any money left by the end of the day?"

  "Doubt it," Garison replied. Though they had spent the whole day together, he and Bat hadn't hardly talked at all. In spite of the fact that the other Garison seemed to have eventually come to like Bat, this Garison couldn't bring himself to more than tolerate the private eye. "And you know what it's like when Darla's along."

  "They can out spend the Pentagon! I'm really not too sad that she's not going to make it in until this evening. Something about working late at the Breckenridge office yesterday."

  "That's because Darla's got more money than the Pentagon."

  "You know," Bat mused, "Ordinarily, Jody is not a shopper. If we go to a store or even the mall, she goes in for whatever item we have come for, and turns around and leaves. She doesn't buy unnecessarily and sometimes I even have to tell her to buy something for herself. Even on things she really wants, she'll hesitate. But put her and Heather together . . . "

  Garison nodded and added, "I know what you mean. But when you think about it, they hardly ever come back with all that much stuff. Oh, it's more than they would bring back by themselves, but it's not like they fill up the pick up or anything."

>   "I go golfing with my friend Bill Fulton every now and then even though golf doesn't excite me much more in real life than it does on TV. Well, actually, I generally hate golf. But I'll go just to spend the afternoon with him. They're probably the same. It's the time spent together that they enjoy as much as anything."

  Garison smiled and nodded in agreement, "Especially now that they're both expecting."

  Bat faked a shudder and said, "I'm really glad I'm not around to hear those conversations."

  "Don't want to be a father?"

  "I can hardly wait to be a father," Bat beamed. "What I can't stand is all the talk that pregnant women seemed obligated to engage in. All the details about what's happening to specific internal organs and what not. I just don't care to hear some of that."

  "Oh, we would probably be the same if our bodies were going through phenomenal changes like that."

  "Yeah, but I like to think we wouldn't be so anatomically articulate about it." Bat laughed, "And another thing: if men had the babies I can guarantee you that no family would ever have more than one."

  Garison laughed and nodded in agreement. Thinking back to the manuscript he had read back in the spring, he asked, "Bat, why do you think you and I have never gotten along?"

  Bat shrugged, but didn't answer. He had an answer, but it didn't seem like it would be polite to say. He dodged the question by asking one of his own, "Why do you think we've never gotten along?"

  Garison easily replied, "Because you're weird."

  "Well ain't that the pot calling the kettle kitchenware," Bat responded.

  "See. It's stuff like that. You're a strange person, Bat."

  Bat turned and looked at Garison. He accused, "You're stranger than I am. Stranger than probably even Heather knows. I just don't feel like spoiling her good image of you. I still remember that first time we met."