The Legend of Garison Fitch (Book 1): First Time (22 page)

"No. I'll set it up like an explosive charge. It will be like lighting a fuse: I'll have time to get away before it goes off."

"Speaking of fuses, can't you just blow it up?" she asked.

He thought a moment, then said, "Yes. Yes, I could. But, for my own sake, I think it would be best if it were completely out of my reach. There are things in that machine that no explosive made today could damage. And, I don't want someone finding the machine, or parts of the machine. No telling what sort of questions such a find might generate. Those are devices that man should not know of for another two hundred years. I shouldn't have kept it around these five years. We have been tempting fate."

"This getting rid of it," she asked cautiously, "You are sure it is safe?"

"Yes," he replied. "I did tests with it long ago. It only affects a person who is inside the machine. I will be many yards away from it when it blasts into the future."

"When will you do this?" she asked.

"As soon as we finish eating, I guess. I'll set it up and have it out of our lives forever before you have a chance to get lunch on the table."

She sighed deeply and confessed, "You don't know how long I have wished for this day. Just to be rid of that machine—it has been a dream of mine for a long time."

"Why?"

She shrugged sheepishly, then told him, "Because, when that machine is gone, that will mean you truly are mine. Here and now, forever."

"Sarah, I will always be yours."

Excerpt from
A Fitch Family History by Maureen Fitch Carnes

Darius Fitch took his family north with him and over the Rocky Mountains in search of La Plata Canyon. Guessing it to be a Spanish name, he writes of questioning several of the people in present-day New Mexico but finding no one who knew of the name. Still, he had a map and was eventually able to make his way to the San Juan River where he found a guide he called Pancho though that may not have been the man's actual name.

With an Indian wife and four children in tow, Darius followed Pancho up the San Juan River until they came to the point where it was joined by a stream he thought was the La Plata for it flowed in from the north. In retrospect, one wonders how he chose the right river when the Animas also flowed into the San Juan from the north just a few miles to the east. Pancho abandoned them at that point, having heard rumors about the haunted Indian houses which were reportedly carved right into the sides of the mountains nearby. Undaunted, Darius pressed on.

Darius wrote:

"On what I believe to have been August 2, 1786, my family and I arrived at the mouth of La Plata Canyon. It was every bit as beautiful as my grandfather had somehow described it to my grandmother. It was a valley filled with wild-flowers even that late in the year and pine trees and aspens carpeted the valley walls. In the distance, I could see what Grandfather had called the San Juans sitting in the distance, brooding over the La Platas like watchful parents. It truly was a magical valley and I wanted immediately to settle there.

"I will always wonder how my grandfather, who I wish I could have met to talk to him, had known of the beautiful La Plata Valley. (He called it a canyon, but it looked more like a valley to me.) His directions were unerring and the descriptions he gave his wife, which she passed on to me, were so exact as to be unbelievable. He even provided directions to a little pool that I was able to locate exactly where he had said it would be—and it had fish just as he said!

"How did he know? I am sure my grandmother knew my grandfather's past, for they were a couple who shared everything as I have with my wife, but she never passed on the knowledge to me. It was rumored he was a sailor, or an outlaw, or a foreigner, but the truth was never known. Certainly, he must have preceded me to La Plata Canyon by fifty years to have such accurate details, but I could never find any report of a white man entering the country before me, save the Spanish conquistadors who had come through the area more than a century before me. Was grandfather a descendant of the conquistadors? Do I thus have a Spanish heritage I know nothing of?"

It was a mystery that would puzzle Darius for all his days and is yet to be solved. History tells us that it was John Moss, with the backing of San Francisco magnate Tiburcio Parrott, who first led a group of prospectors into the San Juan Mountains and found La Plata Canyon in 1874, but we Fitchs know Darius Fitch was there much earlier and maybe even his grandfather, Garison Fitch, was earlier still.

Chapter Fourteen

Garison was walking down the tree-lined lane between his house and the old shed as the early morning bustle of the growing community of Mount Vernon was coming awake. He had thought about building another shed and moving the machine closer to his house, but rather liked the walk early of a morning and again in the evening. Besides, the shed was on the way to his furniture shop and he would have been walking by there anyway.

As he turned a corner, he saw a little boy playing in the street. The boy looked to be about eleven and Garison recognized him as he came closer as one of the Washington children. The boy was playing with something in the well-packed dirt of the street and, apparently, oblivious to the world around him. Garison shook his head, thinking of all the times he had had to tell Justin and Henry not to play in (or near) the road. This boy was much older and should have known better.

Garison was about to say something when a break in the trees to his right showed him that a heavy wagon driven faster than it needed to be was coming down the cross street. Without taking time to think, Garison took five quick steps and jerked the boy out of the road with a tackle that sent them both rolling into the rocky grass of the right of way. The wagon roared by and the driver cursed Garison and the boy for being in the road but took no time to stop and see if anyone might be injured. With a flurry of dust, the wagon was around the bend and out of sight, the jangling of the harnesses fading into the distance.

Garison rose to his knees to look at the boy and saw a young man stiff with fright and red with embarrassment. Garison knew instantly that there would be no scolding he could give the boy that would be any worse than the scolding the boy was giving himself. He hoped the boy would learn from his mistake, for another such mistake might preclude any learning.

The boy looked at Garison and saw that the man seemed a bit disoriented. Though the man was only sitting up, young Washington put out his hand to steady the man. "Are you all right, Mister Fitch?"

Garison looked at the boy and found that, for a brief second, he was seeing two of the lad. He closed his eyes for a moment and, when he had opened them again, the double vision had cleared. Still, he felt somehow disoriented. Lightly fingering his scalp, Garison replied, "I must have hit my head or something, but I don't feel a knot." He closed his eyes again and mumbled, "I feel really strange."

"Should I go fetch the doctor?" the boy asked.

"No." Garison shook his head and the movement seemed to make him feel better. He remarked, "I'm all right. Just got a little dizzy for a moment." He stood up and realized that, whatever he had been feeling, was now gone. The sensation reminded him of that instant headache he had gotten the day he met Sarah. He had forgotten about it over the years, but for one brief moment he had had one of those headaches again. The double-vision was new, but now that it was cleared and his head felt fine, he was already forgetting again.

Garison helped the boy up off the ground and dusted the dirt from the boy's britches. He was a dark-headed young man, lean but with the look of someone who would be quite a size when he grew up. The boy looked up sheepishly and said, "Thanks Mister Fitch. You saved my life!"

"Oh, I doubt that. Saved you some broken bones, maybe—"

"No, you saved my life. You know how they say a person's life flashes before their eyes just before they die? That happened to me just now! I saw that wagon just before you tackled me but I froze and couldn't get out of the way. You saved my life."

"Well, you're welcome," Garison replied as he brushed the dirt off his own clothes. He was wearing the leather jacket and had been quite well protected from the fall, which further served to make him wonder why he had felt the way he had. He felt his head again, knowing a lump on the head sometimes takes a few minutes to form, but there was still no evidence of a knock. "You be more careful, though." Looking at the boy, he said, "You're the Washington boy, aren't you?"

"Yessir. George Washington, sir. And you're Garison Fitch," the boy added excitedly. At Garison's questioning glance, George explained, "I wanted to be on your football team last year, sir, but—I, um—couldn't."

"Injured?"

"Uh, not really. I had trouble sitting for a while but—" the boy suddenly said, by way of admission, "I got this new axe for my birthday and I wanted to try it out and, well, I tried it out on one of my father's cherry trees. As punishment my father didn't let me play football."

"You learn lessons the hard way, don't you, George?"

"Sometimes," the boy grinned.

"Well, you come out for my football team this year, George."

"I plan to, sir."

"George Washington," Garison nodded, "That's a good name. You make something of it, you hear?"

"I will, sir."

He shook the last of the dust from his clothes and went on into town as George headed off in the direction of his house. As Garison watched the stout little boy trot away he had the strangest sensation. He couldn't even begin to put his finger on it, but something about watching George Washington run away like that gave him a funny feeling in his stomach. He told himself it was just because he was seeing what his boys would be like in a few years, but he also thought there was more to it than that. He finally tried to shrug off the thought and went on his way. The feeling in his stomach didn't go away, however, and the best he could do was try to ignore it.

He had to pass the smithy on his way to the shed where the machine was stored, so he decided to stop in and talk for a moment, as he almost always did when passing. Even after he had left the smithy to start his furniture shop, he and Finneas had remained the best of friends. Garison was godparent to all of Finneas's children, even though most of them had been born before Garison's arrival. Since the church where Garison and Sarah attended didn't officially sanction godparents, Finneas and Galena were something like a surrogate aunt and uncle to the Fitch children.

"'Tis the world renowned lawyer Garison Fitch," Finneas announced when he saw his friend walk through the door. "On your way to argue the cause of man, today?"

"Not today," Garison laughed. "Man will have to argue his own cause this day. Today...today I'm taking off from work to complete some old business."

"Goin' to the shed, are ye?" Finneas asked casually as he hammered out a horseshoe for Purdy's horse. Garison knew the shoe belonged to Purdy's horse just from looking at the shoe for Purdy's horse was the biggest in town (a necessity, as Purdy's girth seemed to grow almost daily).

Garison looked up quickly and asked, "What do you know of the shed?"

Finneas shrugged, "Just that ye used to go there a lot. I haven't seen ye down there in quite some time. I thought maybe there wasn't anything in there anymore."

"How many people know about the shed?" Garison asked, a little afraid of what might have leaked out.

"Only the whole town," Finneas laughed. "Has been a great source of discussion at the taverns and around town and even among some of the people in Alexandria, I wager. 'What's he got in there?' they all ask. Some say ye've a stash of treasure ye live on. Others say ye bottle yer own corn."

"What do you think I have in there, Finneas?"

The Irishman shrugged and replied, "I think ye've an elephant. Ye go in there once a month to feed him and tell him not to trumpet."

"And here I was, thinking I was being so clever no one would ever figure me out," Garison replied. "I thought my pet elephant would be a secret to last to my death. I guess I can bring him out to wander the streets now. Mind where you step, you know."

Finneas tossed a horseshoe into a pot of water to cool and asked, "What have ye got in there, me lad? For five years now I've been aching to ask. 'Tis been an everlovin' bee in me bonnet."

Garison laughed, "And I've been aching to tell you, Finneas. I can't tell you, though, old friend. I will tell you this: it's something from my life from before I came to Mount Vernon. One little thing I held onto to remind me of the past."

"Aye," Finneas nodded. "I have some things to remind me of Ireland. That clock on the mantle, for one. But none so secret as what you have in the shed."

"What's in that shed, is a story best left untold at this time, Finneas," Garison told him. "Some day, when you and I are old men, I will tell you what was in the shed. Then you'll laugh at me for my foolishness and I'll laugh at your unbelief. Then, we'll go away, each feeling the other is holding something from us. In other words, telling you about the contents of the shed will raise more questions than answers. But someday, I'll tell you."

Finneas laughed and said, "'Tis a bargain, me friend. One day, I shall enjoy the hearing of your yarn. And you speak the truth: I will probably not believe it."

"I will tell you this," Garison told him mysteriously, "It has a little something to do with that La Plata Canyon we spoke of once."

"Aye," Finneas nodded. "Something from that past ye have tried to leave behind. I understand, Garison. Many's the man in these colonies whose name was something else where he came from. I've met men whose name once had an 'O' on the front, and others who claimed an 'O' when they had no right to it. More than any other place on God's green earth, maybe, we've got people who came here to leave something buried somewhere else. Or to start over."