Minutes later, I am stumbling in the dark, tripping over roots and trying to avoid prickly pear with spines as long and sharp as porcupine quills. The slope becomes too steep, and I slide part way down on my butt, ripping my pants, and scraping my hands. Near the bottom, I stop and listen for the sound of horses or the shouts of angry men.
But what I hear is a wail. A cry of pain.
“Broke my damn ankle, Woody. Can’t put an ounce of weight on it.”
“Hang in there Cal.”
I peek around a stand of organ pipe cactus. Two horses, but only one man. Woody is bent over the edge of a cliff, his hands yanking at his lariat, which is stretched taut. “Damn rope’s fouled in the rocks.”
“Git it loose, Woody. Hurry! Jesus, ankle’s swole up and hurts like hell.”
Calvin’s voice, raw with pain, coming from over the side. The vigilantes must have stopped here and gotten off the horses. The big man never saw the cliff. Now he was over the side.
It is more than I could have hoped for. A perfect distraction. I can work my way around them in the darkness. I can get away.
Then I hear Woody moan. “Damn, it hurts like a sumbitch. I might pass out, Cal.”
“Hang with me, man!”
“Gonna die out here.” Woody starts to sob. Great, wracking sobs that seem to echo off the rocks and boulders.
I am not sure why I don’t just sneak past them. But sometimes we do things without ever knowing exactly why.
“You can’t get the rope free that way,” I say to Calvin as I come up behind him.
Startled, he wheels around. “Ain’t your business, chico. Git out of here.”
“I can rope down the cliff.”
“What the hell you talking about?”
“Rappelling. Rock climbing. I’ve done it back home.” I look over the side of the cliff. Woody sits on a ledge about 20 feet below us. The rope is stuck in a crevice maybe 15 feet from him. “I’ll work the rope out, walk it along the cliff face till I reach your friend.”
Calvin looks at me as if he thinks I might steal his wallet. “Why would you help?”
“Because somebody has to.”
He seems to think about this a moment.
“After you pull him up, drop the rope back to me,” I tell the man.
“You trust me to do that, kid?”
“Why wouldn’t you?”
“Okay, then,” he says, just as an orange streak of the sun appears over the mountains to the east.
I rappel down the face of the cliff. Seconds later, I am working the rope out of a slot between two rocks. Once it is free, I wrap the rope around my waist, hold on with both hands, and bounce-walk along the face of the cliff until I reach the ledge.
***
“Thanks. You’re a good kid.” Woody winces in pain as I hand him the rope. Up close, he looks older and not as fierce as he did from so far away. His face is slick with sweat. His puffy cheeks have a gray stubble and his breath smells of tobacco and beer.
He is able to put weight on one leg and use it against the cliff face. Huffing, puffing, and cursing, Calvin pulls him up. A few moments later, I reach the surface just as Woody painfully struggles to get back on his horse.
Calvin looks down at the ground, kicks at the dust. Seems like he wants to say something. Sorry, maybe. But he can’t quite get it out.
“You’re not a drug mule, are you kid?” he says, finally.
I shake my head. “I just didn’t want you to...”
“We never would have hurt that gal. Just meant to scare her into going back home, tell her friends to stay put.”
“Where you headed?” Woody asks.
“Ocotillo. My aunt lives there.”
“We got a truck two miles over if you want a lift. Ocotillo’s on our way to the hospital.” He says it softly. Sounding a little embarrassed, wishing he had more to offer.
“My Aunt Luisa’s a nurse. She can take a look at that ankle.”
Woody doesn’t take me up on the offer.
“Mi tia can make us all breakfast,” I say, trying again. “She’s a great cook.”
The sun is an orange fireball, fully above the distant mountains now.
The two men don’t look like vigilantes any more. Ordinary guys with creased, tired faces. They exchange bashful looks.
“Do you like huevos rancheros?” I ask.
“Love it,” Calvin says.
“No better breakfast on either side of the border,” Woody agrees.
“So?” I ask.
There is no more meanness in the men’s faces. “What are we waiting for?” Calvin says. “I’m hungry as hell.”
I do something I haven’t done since crossing the border. I smile.
Also by Paul Levine:
THE JAKE LASSITER SERIES
To Speak for the Dead
Night Vision
False Dawn
Mortal Sin
Riptide
Fool Me Twice
Flesh & Bones
Lassiter (Fall 2011)
STAND-ALONE THRILLERS
Illegal
Impact
Ballistic
THE SOLOMON vs. LORD SERIES
Solomon vs. Lord
Kill All the Lawyers
The Deep Blue Alibi
Trial & Error
http://www.paul-levine.com
Peter R. Leavell
Peter R. Leavell graduated from Boise State University with a degree in history in 2007. He has researched—and almost completed—a massive historical novel about the American Civil War. He has attended or spoken at nearly a dozen writers' conferences and won several awards for his short stories. Nothing tickles his fancy—in the academic world, anyway— more than reading, writing, and teaching history and research. He is currently a member of Idahope, a local writer's group in Boise, Idaho.
Christmas Time
“MARTHA, MARTHA, COME QUICKLY!” I pulled my watch from a vest pocket and checked the time.
Footsteps echoed up the stairs, along the landing, then danced into my room. “Yes, sir?”
I stepped out of the closet, an evening jacket slung over each arm. “I need a suit, old, turn of the century.” A mothball dropped to the hardwood floor, and I kicked it onto the center rug and under the bed.
“Turn of the century, sir? Clothes haven’t changed much in twenty years.”
I dropped the jackets on the bed and hurried back into the closet, pushing further in, toward the oldest trends. “There must be something suitable.”
“Sir, you’re looking for something, well, out of fashion?” Her voice sounded amused.
“Martha, you could help,” I said.
“Yes, sir.”
I dropped to a knee, studied a pair of shoes, and wiped a thick layer of dust from the brown leather. A warm, soft touch brushed my cheek. “Martha, not now. I’ve no time for kisses.”
She leaned back, her lips curled into a frown. “I’m helping.”
I closed my eyes and tried to calm my racing heart. Patience. “Martha, stop sulking.” I opened them again. Her chocolate eyes, wide, unforgiving, bore past the frustration and miserable façade of my existence and forced me to pause. She always steadied me with a glance. I touched her young, ebony face, then smiled. “Oh Martha, I don’t need most of these clothes, just an old suit, really. Let’s dispose of some, shall we?”
After a curt nod, she held up one set after the next, glanced it over, then flung it out of the closet.
“What will Peggy say?” I asked. “If she finds us in the closet together.”
“Oh, don’t worry, she’d never tell. Besides, she went home.”
“Went home?”
Martha lifted a scarf that dropped to the floor. “It’s Christmas Eve, sir. She went home early, something I’d like to do, except you’re spring cleaning. Sir, where did you get this scarf? It’s beautiful.”
I glanced her direction, then pulled a suit from a brass hanger. “I don’t recall, just put it in the
pile.” I held up the light brown flannel jacket. “What do you think of this?”
“Old,” she said.
“It will do.”
I threw the suit on the bed, then piled the garments into Martha’s outstretched arms. “Charity,” I said, about to close the bedroom door.
“Ah, sir, one last thing.”
“Quickly, Martha,” I said.
“I would just like…” she took a deep breath. “Sir, would you like to come for Christmas Eve? It will be my parents, sister, brothers, and-”
“Martha, no. We’ve talked of this before, and I’m not meeting your parents, not in a social function. There’s no need to discuss this any further.” I pulled out my watch and glanced at the time.
“Sir, are we no longer…”
“Martha, don’t misunderstand me. I care for you, deeply, but think of the social implications.” I waved my hand. “I can’t come to your party.”
She stared at the floor, bit her lower lip, then nodded and turned.
A stab of guilt punctured my heart. “Martha, wait.” I laid my hand on her shoulder and turned her, leaned down and gently kissed her. “I love you, Martha,” I said, surprising myself.
“Sir, you… love me?” Her breath quickened.
I nodded. “Now, go.”
“And Christmas, you want me to come around, check on you?”
“Please don’t worry, I have plans.”
Martha paused, stared into my eyes, then left, a smile on her face and a skip in her step. I closed the door and changed, leaving my clothes strewn on the bed. I stuffed my wallet in the jacket pocket, then reached for my watch, let the gold chain slip through my fingers, and touched the warm gold casing. The long black secondhand ticked with perfect precision, as it had for the last twenty-three years. I held the smooth crystal face against my cheek and felt the soft vibration as every second passed. On the back, etched in the gold plating, was my name, Singletary Cuthbert.
Perhaps the watch kindled my interest in time. It was a gift from my father, given to me on the last Christmas both my parents were alive, and I never parted with it, even for a moment. Orphaned at age nine, I went to live with my grandmother, who died several years ago, leaving me a vast estate and large investments to manage, and enough money to tinker with an invention. For upstairs, through a secret passageway, waited a machine to take me through time.
I was resolved to relive the moment my father had given me the gift, past the horrors of the Great War, headlong toward the turn of the century, then back two more years to the perfect Christmas, before money’s cruel intentions gripped my every moment.
A decorative mound on the mantle gave way as I pressed it, and weights inside the wall dropped and pulleys spun. A panel slid across and revealed a dark passageway. With a lamp clutched in my hand, I entered the long hallway, walked up a spiral staircase, and entered a secret room.
High above, a window allowed a single beam of moonlight to cast a bright silver glow through floating bits of dust. The light fell on a long, gray cylinder that lay in the center of the room. I touched the cool sides, as if touching Martha’s face. This Christmas I would spend with my parents.
The theories were simple, and tested. The cylinder’s exterior spun around the center, either with or in opposition to the turn of the earth. The interior, remaining stationary, would travel through time while the shell’s oscillation created a time change inside.
Electricity, wired in the mansion decades before, was easy to find. A hole knocked in the panel had exposed wires for me to run power for the machine. I flipped a switch on the end, and light bulbs warmed, then lit. I blew out the flame in the lamp, then slipped inside the cylinder and reclined, much like a bed. Or a coffin.
To my right lay a lever to change time, forward to the future, backward to the past. I pulled on the lever, and a hum filled my ears. A dial above my face rolled, minus one hour, then two. Impatient, I sped my journey, and the numbers turned to a blur. The hum turned to a roar, and I gripped the sides as my body shook and my head rattled. I shouted in fear, but waited until the year approached before I slowed the machine. It shuttered to a stop, Christmas Eve, 1898.
With care, I opened the hatch and slid into a dark room. I wanted no one to hear me. The missing lamp waited in the future, and the lights attached to the cylinder apparently burned out. I stumbled to a back passageway. I reached forward in the dark and felt my way, listening to every footfall. The house creaked and moaned. I tried not to think about my grandmother and her servants, alone in the house, and that in two days my parents would be killed in a train wreck. If the thought to tell them of the future entered my mind, I quickly dismissed it. Changing events was, if not morally wrong, impossible.
London, England, in 1921 felt unseasonably warm, but Christmas Eve in 1898 delivered a white Christmas. Under a kerosene lamp near my grandmother’s mansion, I studied my watch. Ten minutes since my initial departure.
Snow fell around me, and grateful for the thick jacket, I wrapped it close around me. I trudged through the snow, past long rows of tall townhomes, bound close together, as if huddled for warmth. Iron fences lined with garland stretched along the street, where groups of people chatted and laughed in the lamp light. A chorus of twelve sang carols across the way in the soft winter glow. The perfect Christmas.
Memories change over time. My childhood home, comfortable, happy, proved to be a small shack in disrepair that sat alone by the Thames. No smoke, light, or movement came from my side of the house, so I crept to the other. Through my parents’ window, two forms huddled near a candle flame. I drew closer and peered into the window.
My heart leapt to see their faces. My father, unshaven and ragged clothes, brushed back his long hair and leaned back in his chair. I recalled the smell, the soft, sweet breath I later learned was alcohol. My mother’s hands churned, knitting something in the dark. I strained to see, but the dim light revealed nothing but shaking fingers that barely controlled wooden needles.
I crouched under the window to hear their conversation through the thin walls. “You’ve gotten him no gift yet?” my mother asked. “Sometimes I wonder if you truly love him.”
“Ain’t found nothing good enough for him,” my father said.
“Sam, it’s Christmas Eve, and in the morning Terry will wake and find nothing from you.” The name Terry fell on my ears like Christmas bells, a name only used by my mother. Most called me Singletary, or Mr. Cuthbert, and Martha used sir.
“I’ll make it up to him,” my father muttered.
“The boy adores you, all you need is a rock from the street and he’d be delighted, just as long as it came from you.”
“I’ll find something.”
“Like you find work?”
I cringed at the sound of a slap. “I’ll find a gift that’ll make your scarf nothing to him!” The front door slammed, and I ducked into the shadows as he wandered into the snow and darkness.
Inside, my mother hunched near the candle, weeping, her face in her hands. The temptation to comfort her overwhelmed me. Her sacrifice, so invisible before, now shone as a lone beacon of love, the care, the tender devotion and patience pointed my love away from my father and toward her like the star over Bethlehem. I pulled out my watch and held it from the chain, letting it dangle, as if a snake.
But then I saw what she knitted. It lay on the table, next to the candle. I put the watch in my pocket and took a closer look through the window. A scarf, a colorful scarf, almost finished, wound around the small table. It was the same one I’d given to Martha, twenty-three years in the future. And I told her to dispose of it. A sob caught in my throat. What had I done?
I hurried across the small yard and hurdled over the short fence, then raced along the street. The scarf’s image held in my mind. Down London’s streets, past tiny shacks, then tall apartments and mansions I ran. I dodged pedestrians, their arms filled with food and packages. I barely heard their laughter, the light din of horses and bells in the snow. I
pressed forward, off the busy streets where my grandmother lived.
My father stood on the sidewalk in front of the house. I remember many times when he’d asked her for money and was denied, and I knew the same scenario had happened, but I moved too fast to stop. I passed him, sliding in the snow, and his arm shot out and knocked me down. I struggled to my feet. His fist slammed across my face, and I staggered back. A foot kept me down. He balled a fist, knelt down, and hit me again. The kerosene lamps above my head dimmed, and all turned dark.
I dreamed of butterflies. They flittered across the thick green grass under the bright sun. One drifted above my face and dropped on my nose. I tried to brush it away, but another landed on my eye. I came to my senses. Dawn approached, the gray sky filled with dark clouds. I lay, tangled in thick bushes, and snowflakes gently caressed my face. I rubbed my sore jaw and reached for my watch. It was gone.
I struggled to my feet and tried to clear the fog. I staggered along, back to the shack I’d once called home. On the way I noticed my wallet missing. The betrayal had been complete, the final adjustments of love twisting in my heart and stomach.
Through the front window, a small boy, me, readied himself for Christmas. He looked like me, but he was not me, for this young boy’s perception of the world felt shallow, mistaken. He eagerly jumped on the sofa, then ran around the kitchen table and his dismissed porridge.
My mother appeared, a smile on her face and a sore on her lip. She always said the sores came from the cold. From her hand the boy took a brown paper package and ripped it apart. A scarf tumbled to the floor. He picked it up and danced around the room, the long scarf trailing behind. In return, he gave her five safety pins he’d collected.
The room filled with a bright light, the sun pouring through a gap in the clouds. My father stepped in front of the boy, and flashed a bit of gold. In the sunlight, it shined like a drop of honey. The boy reached out. His hand shook. The scarf dropped to the ground.
The boy opened the watch, then closed it, opened it again, then turned it over. “You’ve put my name on it,” the boy cried.
Intrigue (Stories of Suspense) Page 13
