After and Again (12 page)

  Lisa Mccarron was the first to recognize anyone and took off at a run spotting her daughter Rebecca’s flame red hair, which was so much like her own. With a word of encouragement from Tal Miller, Rebecca kicked the horse she was riding up to a run and met her mother out on the dirt road leading up to the ranch. Before Rebecca could even completely stop the horse, her mother was pulling her from the saddle and taking her into her arms. “Oh honey! My sweet, sweet darling,” she said, holding the girl tightly as if she felt loosening her hold just a little would cause her daughter to fly away like a feather caught in an afternoon breeze.

  The rest of the group made it to the fence before the dooryard and tied the horses there. Before Zack could dismount Lisa Mccarron walked up holding Rebecca’s hand. “I just wanted to thank you for saving Rebecca’s life, Zack. The whole time you were gone I tried my best not to hope, but that hope wouldn’t leave, it just tugged at the back of my mind every day. I don’t have anything to offer you; my husband is gone, my home and everything in it is gone, but if there is anything I can ever do for you, just ask.”

  Zack was touched by the woman’s sincerity and found that there was something. “My mom hasn’t said a word since I found them; they did things to her. I know that you and her were sorta friends and maybe you could help me try and wake her back up.”

  “I will do everything I can to help your mama, Zack,” she said, taking Zack’s hand in her free one for a moment and then letting it go. ‘We’ll nurse her back, you’ll see.”

  For the next couple of hours the Martin house was busy; water was heated for baths, wounds were tended to with proper medicinal herbs, more meat was taken from the smokehouse and spring greens were harvested from the garden. Miranda Martin had taken Zack aside and praised his courage, as did Heath Martin and Molly Renfew. All of the attention embarrassed him and he took the opportunity to slip out to the barn and help Tal and Jonus with the horses while Lisa Mccarron bathed his mother.

  “This is a fine horse Toby gave ya, Zack,” Tal said when Zack entered the barn.

  “She is that,” Zack said, walking up and stroking Grace’s neck.

  “Get tired of all of the hero talk in there and decide to hide out for a bit?” Jonus asked holding a whiskey bottle out to Zack.

  “No thanks,” Zack said, shaking his head, “Yea a little, I mean I appreciate it but….” he trailed off. 

  “I could see where it might get a little heavy to carry,” Jonus said. “But it
was
pretty darn remarkable,” he added smiling, and then took a pull from the whiskey bottle.

   Toby Martin walked into the barn, “There you are, Zack, Kendra Goodman was looking for you to re-dress that wound now that all of the women are tended to and bathed. Miranda is drawing a bath for you as well, and I dug out some more of Heath’s old clothes for you to change into.”

  “We’ll take care of Grace, you go ahead,” Tal said.

  “Okay, well, thanks.” Zack said, nodding at the three men and then walking out of the barn.

  “Quite a kid,” Jonus said quietly after Zack had left.

  “Quite a young man,” Toby corrected.

  “It’s strange how things work out,” Tal Miller said, leading Grace to a stall. “His daddy was a fine woodsman, but not worth a tinker’s damn otherwise.”

  “Yes, well, Liz McQueen made up for that rascal’s short-comings and then some,” said Toby, “I just hope for Zack’s sake that she comes around.”

  After supper the children, including Rebecca Mccarron and Eileen Deveroux were sent off with Marion Lanhope, to be read to by the schoolteacher from one of the books in the Martin’s not inconsiderable collection. These, like so many other things in the Martin’s possession were passed down from before the catastrophe. A Martin had continuously lived in the house since the day that it was built in 1887 from locally quarried stone.

  Everyone else except for Liz McQueen who had fallen quickly asleep after her bath was gathered in the great room; some with wine some with whiskey and others with coffee. Zack and Emily sat together and both chose the coffee. It was one of Zack’s favorite things, he had even tried to grow some once a couple of years before, but the plants had sprouted and then died not long after. A man, his name was Alberto, brought the coffee up to Brodie’s Trade once a year from down south. He gave Zack the seeds but warned him that they probably wouldn’t grow well in Payne’s Station. Too many weather changes and too dry in the summer he had said. He looked over at Emily and thought about how he would like to be kissing her again when she said; “Penny for your thoughts?” 

  “Penny’s weren’t worth much in the old days, and are worth nothing now,” he said with a smile. “In fact Theo Olsen said they weren’t even worth melting for the copper because there was only a little on the outside, and the inside was something else, I can’t remember what,” he said, sounding proud of his bit of knowledge about the old days.

  She gave him a pained “you know what I mean” look, and he laughed a little.

  “Just thinking about how much I love coffee,” he said.

  Once the story of the capture, Zack’s heroic rescue, and the rest, was shared with the others, Zack decided to tell of how he had found the cave, the crates inside it, and of the voice on the recording machine. The rest of the group listened raptly to his story until he got to the part about the tube-light, which he produced, turned the crank, and passed it around the room to the amazement of the others. Toby Martin asked Zack if he would pause for a moment, and excused himself. Miranda took the opportunity to fetch a tray of cakes from the kitchen.

   When Toby returned a short time later he had two objects in his hand that were nearly identical to Zack’s tube-light. “These don’t have a crank on them but they held
batteries
that somehow powered them with electricity.” He gave one to Zack, and the other to Tal Miller.

  “Eveready Flashlights,” Zack read from the side of the object.

  Toby said, “It’s too bad we don’t have another flashlight like the one that you have, Zack. If we could somehow take it apart, we might figure out how it works….”

  “You can have it if you want to try,” Zack said, holding the
flashlight
out toward Toby.

  “Ha ha, no, I couldn’t; if Theo Olsen were here though, that would be a different story altogether. Theo was the handiest man that I have ever known, and I would wager a five year old stud that he could have that thing apart and back together in an hour, and have the electric lights in this place working by days end tomorrow.”

  Something broke in Emily at hearing Theo Olsen’s name in the past tense, and she sprang up, spilling her now cold coffee on the floor, and ran from the room. Zack, unsure of what to do, just stood there looking after her for a moment. “Better go to her,” Holly Sanderson said softly, meeting the eyes of the thoughtful but inexperienced young man. Zack handed both of the flashlights to Toby Martin and followed Emily.

  She stood crying, her arms wrapped around one of the massive support posts of the Martin’s front porch. Zack came up behind her, “Emily, I—” he began.

  “My mom and dad are dead, Zack, both of them!” she wailed, turning to him, “I should have been with them but
I
wanted to sleep late, and little Emily always gets what she wants, special little Emily whose parents own the Trade!  Where is my mom, Zack? Why didn’t they take her? Then she would have been with us and you would have rescued her too.” She threw her arms around him heedless of his wounded shoulder and sobbed helplessly against his chest.

   “I saw what happened to your ma….your pa too.” The voice, a woman’s came from behind them. “I was hiding between the trade and the jail and saw a chance to run and I took it.” Molly Renfew stepped out of the shadows and into the light cast by the porch lantern. Zack thought the gaunt women looked a hundred years old just then, although she couldn’t be much more than forty. “They musta parked the wagon that they carried you all in outside of town, maybe so’s not to panic anyone when they first rode up. I don’t know, hard to say what’s in those kind of men’s heads. But I seen ‘em carry out the Whitehall women on horseback moving north out of town…”

  “That’s just what they did with me after they took me from my house, they threw me over a horse and rode out to where the…the cage was, I was the first one in there besides the Goodmans,” Emily said through her sobs.

  “Yes, well there were a bunch of ‘em at your pa and Burt Sanderson there in front of the trade. They overpowered your pa and Burt and started dragging ‘em down toward the church, that’s when your ma come out; I think she was hiding by the school, and she started at those men like a mountain cat or something, scratchin, and clawing at ‘em…. actually looked like she was gettin the better of a couple of ‘em, that’s when that big man, that giant like Zack tells it, came out of the church and shot all three of ‘em with a big pistol. Well that’s when I run up behind the ‘smiths and into the hills. I came across Tal and the others a little while later.”

  Emily’s tears had intensified when Molly told of the shooting, her body trembled against Zack’s and her pain hurt him so deeply that he began to cry too, as did Molly Renfew.

  After a moment Molly continued, “I know I haven’t been the most well liked women in town. I was never very friendly simply because I have never felt too comfortable around folks. I like my cat’s—and heaven knows where they might be—and my garden….anyway, I like to think I know right from wrong and I didn’t think it right me knowin what happened and you sufferin with questions.”

   She stepped forward and awkwardly put a hand on Emily’s shoulder. So’s I thought you should know, and I am really sorry about your ma and pa.” she added, then dropped her hand and turned to go.

Emily said, “Miz Renfew?”

  “Yes child?”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re quite welcome,” she said, and walked back into the house.

  After several minutes of silence Emily pulled away from Zack. “We should go in so you can finish your story, Zack.”

  “Are you okay?” he asked, cursing himself for not having the right words to comfort her.

  “As long as I’m with you I will be,” she said.

  They walked back in the house hand in hand and rejoined the others. Brent Sturgess and Heath Martin were marveling over Zack’s flashlight and debating about how exactly it worked. Zack had unclipped the recorder from his pack and sat back down next to Emily. Without a word Miranda Martin walked over and refilled Zack’s coffee cup and a new one for Emily. “I apologize for spilling coffee on your rug Mrs. Martin,” Emily said, clearly embarrassed.

  “Call me Miranda dear, please, and that rug has had more spills on it than I could ever count. Don’t you worry about it one bit,” she said smiling. Miranda Martin was one of the most loved women in town. She had an air of grace and beauty about her even at sixty with her tall, slim figure, and perpetual single braid in her long gray hair; people just gravitated to her. She was kind, slow to anger, and always had a helping hand for those in need. Zack’s mom had once told him that Miranda Martin was the most caring soul that she had ever known.

  Everyone sat in silence after Zack played the recording. No one knew exactly what had happened to turn the world from what is was in the old days to what it was currently. There were speculations; stories from travelers and tales passed down in families, but no one alive really knew. A war with weapons of unimaginable power or some horrible natural occurrence was certainly the most accepted scenario, with a few hand-of-god believers scattered here and there. Now, if the voice on the recorder was telling the truth, it was certain; the great catastrophe had been a war of some kind.

  The knowledge of what had happened was one thing but the implication of the time-rip was another thing entirely, and had not gotten passed most of the people in the room.

  “Can we believe any of this?” Dalia Martin; asking the question that was on many of their minds.

  “Why would anyone make anything like that up?” Heath replied, “I mean, this isn’t some traveler telling stories, this is a marvelous piece of equipment from the old days,” he said gesturing toward the device on the table. “Hidden away in a cave and left, just on the possibility that someday someone would come along and find it. I believe every word he said.”

  “I do too,” Jonus said, “why would he lie?”

  “The whole thing gives me the creeps,” Loren Sturgess said, moving closer to her husband.

  “Then we could walk through this time-rip and go back to before all of this happened, couldn’t we?” Holly Sanderson spoke up, asking the obvious question.

  “Now hold on there, Holly, just wait a minute.” Tal said, visibly agitated, “you heard the man talking about going mad an all that, and look at what else he said. He said that he was gonna go back and make this war not happen or some such. Well if that had worked, then I’d be here drinkin whiskey under ‘lectric lights an drivin one of them automoboobles around, an I wouldn’t be looking at that recordin thing like it was some sort of magic box neither, cause it wouldn’t be no different to me then anything else I see everyday!
Or,
maybe I would’ve never been born at all, none of us.”

   Toby said, “Tal, you can’t blame Holly for thinking about that time-rip the man was talking about, and I’ll wager that she wasn’t the only one.”