The Legend of Garison Fitch (Book 1): First Time (11 page)

There was one other facet of the eighteenth century that he liked above all others, though it had taken a long time to admit it to his journal, let alone himself.

October 12, 1739

I have never met anyone like Sarah.

Sarah.

At first, it seemed strange to me to think of someone not having a last name. Everyone I've ever known had a last name, even if I didn't know it. More often than not, I knew only a person's last name. You just assume that, even if someone only gives you their first name, they have a last name. But to know someone and not know their last name because they don't have a last name—it's rather odd.

If Sarah had a last name, I guess it would be Monroe. That was her grandfather's name and there are still some Monroes in nearby Alexandria, though they are quick to point out how distant their relationship to Sarah and her grandfather is. They are Sarah's cousins but they don't treat her as such or in any way claim her. Whereas the rest of the town seems to be warming up to Sarah (after nineteen years I'd say it was about time!), her "family" is still as cold as ever. Personally, I think, deep down they resent the fact that she's the only likable member of the clan for they are a sour lot and likely to give the Puritans a bad name if more like them ever come out of that church.

On the whole, though, I have gotten used to her name being only Sarah. Like any person you meet, you begin to associate their name with them. They are that name, whatever it may be. John Smith becomes John Smith, Ellen Jones is Ellen Jones, and so on. So, while it was odd at first, I now only think of her as Sarah. Just Sarah.

Well, that's not strictly true. Whether I have the right or not, I sometimes think of her as "my Sarah."

It had all started out very simply and fairly innocently. Once Garison had moved into his own place, he had quickly tired of his own cooking where an open flame was concerned, for it ran the gamut between burned and "still on fire" (he had never been that good at cooking with gas or electric stoves, truth be told). Gelena had graciously extended a standing offer to eat at her table, but Garison felt he had been a burden on her hospitality enough already. That left the tavern as his only viable alternative.

The tavern was a long, log building with a low ceiling and few windows. Coal oil lamps lit the room and cast everything in the sort of lighting Garison associated with old theater productions. There was the smell of freshly cooked meat always lingering in the room, and a faint hint of musty ale permeated the air. Mike, the proprietor, chief cook and bottle washer, ran a clean establishment and, while he sold ale and beer, attended the Anglican church and would allow no drunkenness, coarse talk, or fighting in his establishment. It was also closed on Sundays, a fact that caused a few in town to quietly grumble. Their grumbling was quiet for it would too easily indicate that, while the speaker remembered the Sabbath, he did not necessarily keep it holy. It was rare that a woman ate in the Blue Boar, but when one did, she was treated with the utmost respect for Mike would have it no other way. This attitude had crept into the minds of the patrons and, if a woman did enter during a busy time and the benches were full, half a dozen men would leap to their feet to offer her a seat. If no one leapt to their feet, like as not someone would shove another man off his stool and make some room for her.

Sarah had started working for Mike when Mrs. Clives had passed away and she suddenly had to support herself. While living, Mrs. Clives had received a comfortable income from her children, and had taken in some washing to augment the sum, but upon her death the children had, understandably, been unwilling to support Sarah. The children, now elderly themselves, had become friends with Sarah over the previous two decades (almost thinking of her as a relation) and had allowed Sarah to stay on in their mother's house rent free; provided she kept it, the yard, and their mother's gardens in good repair, though. Sarah had somehow inherited or been embued with Mrs. Clives' love of gardening and had no problem meeting the demands of the "rent". Still, there were such necessities as food to be taken care of, and Mike had been happy to give her a job for not only was she pretty and attracted customers, he had always liked Mrs. Clives (though she had berated him more than once for selling spirits).

Each day before work Garison ate breakfast at the tavern and each day after work Garison ate supper there. Occasionally, he was invited to eat at the home of a friend, or still attempted to cook something on his own, but he longed for his electric stove in La Plata Canyon and could never get the hang of cooking over a fire—even one in a stove.

So, as many as twelve times a week (with the tavern closed on Sundays), Garison sat at the table that ran the length of the dining room and was served by Sarah. And, more often than twelve times a week, Garison told himself he was going to have an actual conversation with Sarah, but when the meals actually rolled around, he found himself tongue-tied. He asked questions about the weather and how work was going, but they were meaningless questions, intended to be conversation starters and not entire conversations, and he was often too nervous to fully understand the reply. It was a small triumph when he began to actually eat the food for, the first few times, he had been too nervous to eat and had left hungry but with butterflies.

After each meal in the tavern, Garison walked out mad at himself for not speaking to Sarah and vowing to do better the next time. He even tried to tell himself to relax for he knew that the harder he tried, the more nervous he got. The more nervous he got, the less he actually said. The less he said, the madder he got, the more he wanted to talk to her, and so on. But the more he tried to be calm, the more nervous he became.

What served to exacerbate the situation, at least in Garison's mind, was that he was getting over his fear of people in general. He could meet anyone in town on the street—male or female—and have a perfectly wonderful conversation with them. The tenseness he had grown up with was ebbing away as he became more enmeshed in the eighteenth century and left more of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries behind. So, he asked himself time and time again, why can't I talk to Sarah that way?

Sarah was wondering the same thing. She felt like Garison really wanted to talk to her, but couldn't bring himself to do so. She began to worry that maybe it was her and not him as she saw Garison chatting calmly with seemingly everyone else in town, even the people in stocks. Still, she had a sense that he looked at her with something in his eyes that wasn't there for other people. She knew how men in taverns could look at a woman—and had been looked at that way more than once by travelers (or locals who didn't think she noticed)—but his look was not like that. His look seemed to be full of affection, but his words never were. His words were full of...nothing.

Of course, Sarah could have instigated a conversation with Garison. She had shied away from it initially for fear of appearing too forward and because, she told herself, ladies were supposed to wait and let the man make the first approach. As time wore on, however, it was becoming obvious he might never make the first move and it became harder for her to make that move herself. She, too, was nervous about the same things he was nervous about. Due to her heritage, she had never really had a beau or dealt extensively with boys or men (other than in the business relationship of the tavern) and so was a little ignorant in how to go about instigating a real conversation with a man, let alone one she cared for like Garison.

"Cared for?" she would ask herself. Then she would realize, time and again, that she did care for him. Though she didn't know why or how to show it, she knew she cared.

Sarah also worried because of the night when she had found him hiding something in the shed. That night she had almost told him all about herself but had put a stop to the idea because he was a stranger. Now, she knew he must have heard her life story around town and she was afraid what it might have done to his impression of her. She told herself she didn't care what other people thought of her, and she mostly didn't, but she did care what Garison thought of her. Since that night, she had recriminated herself over and over for speaking to a man after dark, prying into his secrets, dropping hints that probably made it sound like she was ashamed of her past, and so on.

And what had he hidden? Something illegal? Something dangerous? It seemed she had a thousand reasons for not talking to him and not a single good one for breaking the awkward silence. No reason except that she desperately wanted it broken.

The big day finally happened on a Thursday in October, a full seven months since his arrival in the eighteenth century. He was just finishing up a plate of fresh-cooked eggs and was anxiously waiting for the last of the other patrons to leave the tavern. They were lingering unnecessarily as there were several bets around town as to when the wall of silence would finally come down between the only two people in town who didn't know Sarah and Garison were in love: Sarah and Garison. The smart money said it would be Sarah who spoke first, while Finneas, Purdy and the Anglican vicar were betting on Garison finding his tongue first (Finneas out of loyalty to his friend, Purdy for reasons known only to himself, and the vicar so as to prove to the Catholic priest in Alexandria that he knew more about man-woman relationships for the story was known even over there). When the slow eaters finally left, confident another day would pass in silence and they could continue to hold onto their wagers, Garison wiped his mouth, took a deep breath, and tried to steel his will. He had been planning this almost since the moment he first saw Sarah, but he just hadn't been able to work up the nerve.

When she came out of the kitchen, she asked, "More coffee, Garison?" Ordinarily, she called the patrons by their surnames, but ever since the night in the alley, which neither ever referred to, she had obeyed his wish and called him by his Christian name. She liked the sound of his voice saying her name and hoped her voice was as pleasant to his ears. It was.

"Please," he nodded. As she poured his coffee, he took another deep breath, then asked, "Sarah?"

"Yes?"

"W-w-would you ah, I mean, um. What I want to say is, uh. I mean, what I want to ask is, um, would you—there's a town social tonight and, um, I was wondering if you would do me the honor of—ah—accompanying me?"

"I would love to," she replied calmly, though quickly. It scared both her and Garison that the answer hadn't required a single second's thought. Inside, her heart was doing flip-flops belying her outward demeanor. While she knew as well as anyone that Garison came into the tavern principally to see her, she had begun to despair of him ever making any move to get to know her. And it just wouldn't have been proper for her to make the first move she told herself for the thousandth time.

For his part, Garison was gulping down the coffee despite its scalding temperature. His mind was on...nothing. Try as he might, in the midst of his shock, he just couldn't come up with a single thought.

Seeing that he seemed to have entered an almost catatonic state, Sarah tried to awaken him by saying, "It should be a lovely evening for the social. There will be a full moon." Afraid that such a phrase might have been too forward a thing for her to say, Sarah quickly added, "The last big social was almost rained out. We had to do everything indoors at the Lawson's barn, which was not to anyone's satisfaction."

"Uh huh," Garison nodded. "Um, ah, what time should I, uh, you know, come call for you?"

"I will be off at six o'clock this evening."

"That won't be a problem, will it?" he asked quickly. He wanted to get to know Sarah in the worst way, but his nervousness almost made him hope she might back out on him. It occurred to him briefly that anything she might do along those lines from this point on would be completely devastating, though.

"Not a bit. The whole town closes down for these socials, including this place. Strange, though, as the town closes down it becomes more lively than you have ever seen it. Still, I should make sure Andrew isn't planning on keeping us open."

"I can't wait—" he started to say, but she was already through the kitchen door.

In the kitchen, Sarah grabbed Andrew's hands excitedly. Andrew was the cook during Mike's busiest hours and one of the few people in town who treated Sarah as if he had no clue as to her past. Excited, but trying to keep Garison from hearing, Sarah told him, "He finally asked me to go to the social with him!"

"That's wonderful," Andrew smiled with her. "Before you know it, me and the missus will be calling on the two of you—as one married couple to another."

Sarah slapped Andrew playfully on the arm and scolded, "Don't say things like that! He's a scared rabbit as it is. I don't want him to turn and run."

"He's scared? You're not exactly a bengal tiger, you know. He does seem a different person around you, though, Sarah. I've known shy folks, and he's not a talkative one under the best of circumstances. But when you're around, I'd swear he was like a snappin' turtle the way he slides back into his shell." With a wink, he added, "It must be love."

She repeated the slap and said, "Shh. Talk like that will run him out of the country! So, can I have this evening off? I mean, the tavern's not open tonight, is it?"

"You must be joking. Do you really think Colleen would let me work and miss the social? This isn't Boston and such events as this don't come around every week. Mike's already told me to lock up as soon as I can clear the place. Opportunities for you to spend time with Garison don't come very often, either," he added with another wink.

"It's just a town social, Andrew. In plain view of everyone so there can be no talk, I might add."

"Me and the missus started with no more." He chuckled and reminded her, "And rest assured: there is always talk."

"Shhh!" she told him as she left the kitchen.