Fire, The (4 page)

Kevin walked to the south side of the bedroom and opened a window. He stuck his head through the opening, looked up, and saw a nearly full moon loom in a cloudless sky. Then he looked down, toward the far edge of the property and saw a structure he had seen a hundred times but never given a second thought: a storage shed made of local river rock.

He laughed and shook his head. It couldn't be that close or that simple, but it probably was. The building in back was more than a shed. It was the chamber of stones.

CHAPTER 5: KEVIN

Friday, June 21, 2013

Kevin stared at his coffee and pancakes with bleary eyes as the obnoxious device above his head did its obnoxious thing several times. No wonder people in pictures from a hundred years ago all looked a little crazy. They had to listen to nutty devices like his grandparents' cuckoo clock twenty-four hours a day.

He couldn't blame the clock for a mostly sleepless night though. That was entirely his doing. For several hours, Kevin had obsessed over his discovery and, more importantly, what to do about it. Sometime between four and five in the morning, he had decided that he would keep the knowledge to himself, at least for now, and give Asa Johnson's time machine a spin.

"Are you sure you don't want to come with us, honey," Shelly Johnson said as she walked into the large kitchen. "It might be your only chance to hit the stores while we're here."

"I'm sure. You guys have fun."

Kevin knew they would. They would spend all day at the shopping malls in Spokane, ninety minutes to the west, and engage in their signature rituals. Dad would check out the latest in consumer electronics, Mom would get her nails done, and Irene, or Rena as Kevin had called her since grade school, would buy more shoes than Imelda Marcos.

The three would then go out to a nice restaurant, watch a summer stock theater performance, stay at a four-star motel far from the noise of Interstate 90, and return to Wallace happy and refreshed by noon Saturday. Kevin didn't know everything, but he did know his family.

Brian Johnson carried a small suitcase to the front door, dropped it to the floor, and grabbed a windbreaker off a coat hook. He opened the door and glanced at his son.

"If you need anything, Kevin, just call," he said. "I may need a break from your mother and sister if they spend too much time in shoe shops and lingerie stores."

Kevin laughed.

"I'll be fine, Dad. Buy me a tie-dye shirt, if you get bored."

Brian smiled.

"I'll do that."

"I know what
I'm
going to get him," Irene said as she pranced down a flight of stairs.

She glanced at her father by the door and mother in the kitchen before turning her attention to her brother. She flashed a mischievous grin that had grown on Kevin over the years.

"If we go to the Oktoberfest steakhouse, I'm going to get you one of those busty waitresses. Inga or Greta will get your mind off Lori."

Kevin chuckled. His sister was one of a kind.

"Her name is Lisa," Kevin said.

He didn't know why he felt the need to correct the record. He was in no hurry to hear that name again, just as he was in no hurry to ever hear about extreme sports or edgy guys or people in love. The last thing he wanted or needed was a reminder that he had failed, once again, to hold onto a girl he really liked. But he appreciated his sister's attempt to lift his spirits.

"As for the waitress, pick me a winner, Rena. I'll take a blonde this time, with big blue eyes"
and a smile that reminds me of Joel Smith's wife
.

Irene smiled.

"A blue-eyed blonde it is. See you, Kevin."

Irene followed her father out the door to the driveway, where a 2013 Lincoln Navigator and a 2009 Volkswagen Beetle stood next to each other. The Johnsons had purchased the shiny black Bug, with its cream leatherette interior, for Kevin as a high school graduation present.

Shelly Johnson had wanted her son to have the same kind of car she had owned and enjoyed as a high school senior in 1979 and 1980. It was the year a mysterious woman named Michelle Jennings had come out of nowhere, possibly the future, and changed the lives of Brian Johnson, Shelly Preston, and many others in Unionville, Oregon, forever.

Kevin stared into space and thought again of his parents' alleged time-traveler encounter when his mother kissed him on the head and brought him back to the here and now.

"I pulled a couple of steaks from the freezer and put them in the fridge to thaw," she said. "There's also some milk and fruit in there. I'll make lasagna tomorrow night."

"I'll try to keep from starving, Mom. Run along or you'll miss a shoe sale."

Shelly shook her head and smiled at her son.

"Don't just watch TV, Kevin. Do something different. Have an adventure. Do something you wouldn't do with your boring old family around. I mean it."

"I'll think of something. I promise. Now go."

Kevin watched his mother walk out of the kitchen and out of the house. A moment later, he heard the SUV pull out of the driveway and zoom away. He finally had the place to himself.

He got up from the kitchen table, poured his remaining coffee in the sink, and glanced at the nutty clock on the wall. The hands indicated seven fifteen. Cuckoo had gone into hiding.

Kevin walked into the nearby bathroom, threw some water on his face, and stared into a brightly lit mirror. A brown-haired man with deep blue eyes, his mother's eyes, stared back.

It was still not too late to choose another course, he told the man in the mirror. He could check out one of those mysterious mines or give the Hiawatha another spin. He hoped to ride the fifteen-mile trail of tunnels and trestles at least one more time before he left for home.

Kevin knew he could also join his family in Spokane. An eighty-mile drive was nothing, particularly on a freeway where a speed limit of seventy-five miles per hour was not just allowed but encouraged. He could ride his bike for a few hours and still meet the others for dinner.

But he knew the minute he pulled his light cotton jacket from a nearby closet that he had no intention of leaving Wallace, at least not today. He had a curious mind to satisfy and another agenda to fulfill. He would do something different and perhaps have an adventure, though probably not the kind his mother had in mind.

Kevin put on his jacket, grabbed Asa Johnson's diary, exited through the front door, and walked around the residence to the large yard in back. He considered turning on the sprinkler, but quickly decided against it. If he were gone more than a few hours, he might have some explaining to do when the others returned.

He turned his head and put a hand above his eyes. A warm, bright sun – the solstice sun – rose above the mountains to the east. It was yet another sign that he had something better to do than shop for clothes or see a show.

Kevin zipped his jacket and walked the remaining fifteen yards to the south edge of the property, where ferns, tall grass, and weeds marked the division between civilization and nature. When he reached his destination, he pulled out the leather journal and flipped to a dog-eared page. Anxiety quickly replaced confidence as the primary tenant of his mind.

Kevin arranged more than twenty of Asa's double eagles neatly on the ground, said a quick prayer, and opened a weathered wooden door. He entered his great-great-grandfather's house of rocks and stepped into the year of the fire.

CHAPTER 6: KEVIN

Friday, July 22, 1910

Kevin needed no more than a few seconds to realize that he had traveled to another time. When he stepped out of the chamber of stones, he stepped into thicker air, a darker day, and a neighborhood that looked a whole lot different than the one he had left.

Grandpa Roger's house still stood on Garnet Street, but it didn't stand alone. Stately homes occupied nearby lots, including two Victorian mansions that looked like they had been built in the past twenty years. The inhabitants of
this
Johnson house did not live in isolation at the end of a wooded lane but rather in the company of others at the end of a crowded street.

Kevin gave the back of the residence a quick inspection. When he didn't see any lights or faces in the windows, he walked to the middle of the yard and raised his arms.

For a moment, Kevin did nothing but stand in place, stare at the sky, and let the truth sink in. He had done it. He had really done it. He had traveled back in time several decades, if not an entire century, in a matter of minutes, proving science fiction writers right and twenty-first-century physicists wrong. He had done something that had rarely, if ever, been done before. He smiled as he thought about what he would say to his family.

"So what did
you
do this weekend?"

Then he thought about something else, and just that quickly his exhilaration turned to fear. What if he couldn't go back? What if Time Travel Airlines, otherwise known as Asa Johnson's chamber of stones, didn't do roundtrip flights? Or what if it was some sort of magical history tour that sent him to choice locations like Little Big Horn in 1876 or San Francisco in 1906 or even Hiroshima in 1945? He didn't like that idea at all.

Kevin turned his head and stared at the shed. Maybe he should play it safe. He could always come back another day, after he'd had an opportunity to think things over and consider possible drawbacks. It was one thing to conduct a little science experiment while your parents and sister shopped in Spokane. It was another to mess with the supernatural.

For a few minutes, Kevin thought not of the unfamiliar world in front of him but rather of the familiar world he had left behind. No matter what he saw or did this day, he wanted to return to that world. He considered his options for a moment and then walked back to the shed.

Kevin reached into his pockets and pulled out another two-dozen coins. He wasn't at all convinced that the coins were necessary, but he was glad he had brought them along. Time travel was not horseshoes or hand grenades, where almost was good enough. He didn't want to leave anything to chance.

Kevin dropped to his knees and laid out the gold in the still ample evening light. He didn't know if the chamber gods liked heads or tails, but he decided to do what he had done the first time and turn all of the coins sunny side up. Consistency couldn't hurt. When he finished flipping the eagles that belonged to the man in the apparently unoccupied house behind him, he formed the first M of MMXIII. He didn't finish his spelling bee.

About halfway through the second M, he realized that he was letting fear get the better of him. He didn't want to leave just yet and, in fact, felt an obligation to stay. He was a man of science, after all, a man on a mission – much like the Apollo astronauts. He had an obligation to leave the safety of his ship and check out the neighborhood. If the natives of this world were little green men with paintball guns, then he'd just have to learn how to play paintball.

Kevin picked up the gold and returned to his feet. A moment later, he stepped into the yard and took a closer look at the world he had come to see. It was a world that looked remarkably different even from thirty feet away. Though Kevin knew he had returned to the home of his ancestors, he knew it was not the home he had left. The home he had left had an overgrown lawn, a greenhouse, and a hot tub that sat atop a large redwood deck. The home he saw now had a neatly cut lawn, two vegetable gardens, rows of roses, and a black wrought-iron fence.

The residence, too, looked different. It was white, for one thing, and had paned windows, black shutters, and a wood-shake roof. Roger Johnson's slate-gray house had energy-efficient windows, blue shutters, and a metal roof – not to mention a satellite dish.

Kevin zeroed in on each of the rear-facing windows and looked again for signs of life. He didn't see anyone, which was probably a good thing. The last thing he needed was to be spotted coming out of someone's storage shed, even if that someone might be his great-great-grandfather.

Convinced he had not aroused the suspicions of anyone in the vicinity, Kevin stepped away from the chamber of stones and took a closer look at the estate. He could see from the leaves on the trees that summer had come to the Silver Valley. He could tell it was summer by the warmth of the air and tell that this particular summer was further along than the one he had left. It was hotter and, from the appearance of the vegetables in the gardens, drier too.

Something else was different as well. He hadn't noticed it at first, but he noticed it now. There was smoke in the air. Though it didn't rise to health-hazard levels, it was definitely annoying. It was the kind of smoke that brought smiles to the faces of kids in campgrounds but frowns to the faces of firefighters who knew how quickly campground embers could turn into hellish infernos.

Kevin knew he could have picked a safer year. By choosing 1909, he could have visited the Great Fire era without risking the Great Fire itself. But he assumed that the time portal was an apples-to-apples kind of device that would send him to June 21, 1910, and not a later date. From what he had remembered of Walt's Walking Tour, the fire had flared up in August.

Kevin had no way of knowing for sure that he had arrived in 1910, a year he had selected out of simple curiosity. For all he knew, he could be in 1909 or 1931 or 1895. The neighborhood looked like a scene from 1910, but confirmation would require venturing beyond the withered tomato plants in the back of the Johnson estate. After giving the matter a little more thought, he decided to continue. As long as he stayed out of trouble, he'd be all right.

The time traveler checked the windows again for onlookers. Seeing none, he walked around the side of the house. When he reached a U-shaped driveway in front, he saw not a Volkswagen powered by 150 horses but rather a surrey wagon that was probably powered by two horses. When Kevin drew closer, he saw the words MAY & JOHNSON VENTURES and a three-digit telephone number painted on one side. He had little doubt that he had traveled
at least
to 1910.