The Legend of Garison Fitch (Book 1): First Time (24 page)

Garison finished typing and looked up at the camera once more, "Well, that's it. You have my journal entries here to tell you a lot more than you will probably want to know, so enjoy reading them. I've copied all my old ones off the screen by hand, but the one I just put in...Oh, well, consider it my gift to you. When the countdown is over, this machine will blast itself into the future and I'll be stuck here—which is where I want to be. To whoever finds this, say hello to the future for me and God bless."

He tapped the final key in the instructions and calmly stepped away from the machine. He had told Sarah he would be far away from the machine when it left, but when the moment came he had to stay and watch it go. In the dim light from the computer screen, he could see the countdown registering in a small box in the upper left-hand corner of the screen.

At three seconds to go he shuffled his feet a little nervously and heard an odd sound beneath his shoes. At two seconds, the sound registered on him and he looked down in the dim light to realize he was standing on the tarpaulin. At one second, he realized one corner of the tarpaulin was still tied to the machine. At zero seconds, he tried to step off the tarp but realized it was too late.

The machine was going to the future and it was taking him and the tarpaulin with it.

Excerpt from
A Fitch Family History by Maureen Fitch Carnes

Darius writes of his love for La Plata Canyon, but the love was apparently never shared by Fawn. Perhaps it was the winter, or the proximity to the Utes and Navajos, but Fawn persuaded Darius to pack up when spring came and head east.

Whether Fawn had intended for the family to go all the way back to Tennessee is not known, but when they had crossed the mountains, Darius led the family northward. They found a spot on a small creek that came out of the mountains and flowed into the South Platte. Darius met some trappers who called the stream Cherry Creek and, according to his writings, the name suddenly sounded like home. It became his home for the rest of his life.

Darius made friends with the nearby Arapahos and Cheyennes and, with Fawn's blessing, set up a trading post of sorts. It started by accident, as Darius traded one type of fur for another type of fur, but the business began to grow. By the early 1790s, Darius had also made a deal to trade with some of the white mountain men who came through the area. They traded him blankets for furs—which they could then take back east and sell for a large profit—while he traded the blankets to the Cheyenne and the Arapahos for prime furs and other items he could use or sell. The furs he then traded on to the whites, making a slow but steady profit for himself and endearing his family to both the white and the Indians. He was also busy with Fawn and they produced two more sons and another daughter. Darius writes of loving all his children, but there may have been a special affinity for Julius, who was the only one of the seven children to inherit his father's blonde hair.

Chapter Fifteen

With a flash of light and a complete absence of noise, Garison found himself swept out of the eighteenth century. He had just begun to have the beginnings of a thought that would have turned into wondering where he was going when the trip ended. In all, he had traveled for a length of time that would have registered on his body as less than a nano-second. To the world, however, the trip took longer. Still, it was not as long as Garison would have guessed it to be.

Garison and the interdimensional machine-come time machine reappeared in his laboratory in Colorado approximately one point three seconds after it had left. With a pop that signified the nuclear core had just melted all the circuits then collapsed in on itself into a ball of radiation with a half-life of a few millennia, Garison found himself dressed for the seventeen-forties and standing in the early twenty-first century.

He was suddenly assaulted by a woman who threw her arms around him before he could get a good look at her and exclaimed, "It worked Garison! It worked! You were gone and now you're back!"

There were so many thoughts and so much confusion going through his head that all he could do was stand there limply while she hugged him tighter and tighter, kissed him on the cheek, and went on and on about how proud she was of him and how she just had to congratulate him and how she wanted to hear all about it.

When she had worked her way across his cheek and was on the verge of kissing his mouth, he finally got his wits about him enough to push her away and stand back a pace himself. He backed into a bench and turned to look, momentarily surprised to find a work bench where there wasn't supposed to be one. He also spotted the tarpaulin under his feet, and kicked it away in anger.

The woman looked at him strangely and asked, "Garison? Is something wrong?"

He looked around the room without answering. It was his lab all right, but it was different. The windows were in the wrong places, but only by a foot or so. The workbenches had been moved and the place was, well, decorated differently. His lab had been strictly utilitarian while this one had curtains on the windows and some sort of wall-paper border half-way up the walls.

But, he told himself, the cameras are in the right place. There were four video cameras, one mounted in each corner of the room, but their lights were showing red instead of green. While the workbenches were in different spots, the tools on them were laid out just as he would have laid them out and there was the right number of workbenches.

Then he looked at the woman. She was beautiful. She stood almost as tall as Garison, probably five-eleven or six foot he estimated. She had shoulder-length black hair, done in loose curls such as the women had worn in the twenty-first century he remembered. She had green eyes like Sarah's, but was dark complected like someone who spent time out in the sun. Her figure was astounding, and quite shocking in a sweater and form-fitting pants made of, it looked like, the sort of material he had once seen warm-ups made of. On her feet, she wore white leather tennis shoes much like the shoes he had once worn himself.

He looked up at her and noticed that his confused scan of the room somehow troubled her. He looked her over from head to foot once more and asked, "Who are you?"

The look of confusion turned to fright as she stepped forward and started to put a hand to his head, "Are you OK, Garison? Did you hit your head?"

He brushed her hand away angrily and stepped to the side. "No, I didn't hit my head. I'm fine. Who are you?" In fact, he thought to himself, the concussion symptoms of moments before and the dizziness were completely gone.

She looked as if she still wanted to touch him, but kept her distance. Then, it was as if she were seeing him in a whole new light as she said, "Wait a minute, you've changed. How did your hair get so long in two seconds? How did you grow a mustache that quick? And those clothes? Except for that jacket, you look like you're...from the revolutionary war or something. And you look older." She looked extremely concerned as she implored, "Garison, what happened?"

He demanded more forcefully, pronouncing each word carefully and distinctly, as if she might not have heard him before, "Who are you?"

"Heather," she replied, as if it were something he should know. She took a step closer, but he took a step further away, backing down the workbench, keeping one hand on the cabinet as if it would steady him.

"Heather? Heather who? I don't know a Heather. What kind of name is that, anyway? A plant name?"

"You don't remember me?" she asked, seeming totally at a loss—and looking genuinely worried.

"Why should I?"

"Heather Fitch," she told him. "Heather Dawson Fitch."

"Fitch? You're not related to me. Just what are you trying to pretend here?"

She reached out to touch him again and again he slapped her hand away, this time with more force. As she brought the hand back, seemingly shocked that the slap had stung, she said, "I'm not just related to you, Garison. I'm your wife."

"My wife?" he replied with a forced laugh. He stood there and stared at her, wondering what this woman's game could be. A spy? he wondered. The KGB had been known to use some pretty elaborate schemes to learn information, but he had never heard of one like this. Did they think just sticking a stranger in his lab who claimed to be his wife would make him tell some secret? There had to be more to it.

"All right," he smiled, "What's going on? Who put you up to this?"

She reached out again and asked, "What happened to you, Garison?"

He stood there rigidly as her fingers reached out and touched the side of his face very lightly. Did she really think that the touch of a woman would make him break down? He almost smiled as he thought of the futility of her actions. Still, he wondered what the point to her actions were. She seemed to have a point, but he couldn't imagine what it might be.

She came a little closer and looked intently at him. After a moment, she touched the corner of his right eye and asked with something that sounded like genuine puzzlement, "What are these?"

In spite of himself, he mumbled, "Huh?"

"These lines around your eyes. You never had these before." She pivoted slightly to look at both sides of his head and said, "And you've got gray hair that wasn't there before you left. How do you turn gray in a couple seconds?"

"I've been turning gray for—who are you? Tell me the truth!"

"I'm Heather Fitch. I'm your wife."

Garison had to give the girl credit for acting. She certainly seemed convinced of her part even if her part were ridiculous. In fact, it actually seemed like she believed what she was saying. Could it have been possible that she had been brain-washed or something into believing what she said? If so, he wondered, what was the point? She had to just be a very good actress, he thought. The whole charade was too stupid to accomplish anything.

Sarah Fitch heard the ringing of the bell that signaled the volunteer fire brigade to readiness and stepped outside to see what the commotion was, as did all the other citizens of Mount Vernon. She saw a tendril of smoke rising above the town, but could not discern its location.

Just then, Davey Jefferson, one of the volunteer firemen, came riding his horse at full gallop up to the house. "What is it, Davey?" she asked, disturbed by the look on his face—and the fact that he was riding away from the fire and not towards it. He was certainly not a coward and seemed to be going somewhere on purpose. Her blood ran cold as she realized he was heading toward her.

"It's Garison," Davey replied frantically as he jerked his horse to a stop. "That old shed of his is on fire and Finneas said he thought Garison was in there." Seeing that Sarah was at a loss for what to do, Davey offered, "Here, you take my horse. I can watch the little ones for you."

Sarah nodded and was on the horse in a split second, riding astride and not caring whether or not it were lady-like. She rode as fast as she could through town and jumped off just outside the shed. The townspeople who had gathered to watch parted as she walked near. They were silent, yet obviously compassionate. About what, she wasn't yet sure.

The dry wood of the shed had gone up like a wick and there was now nothing left but charred embers. She saw Finneas standing nearby, a water bucket still uselessly in his hand, and asked, "Was he...?"

"I dunno," the Irishman replied, in shock himself. "He told me he was going in there. But we have not found any evidence, except this." He held out the padlock.

"Where was it found?" she asked.

"Out here, on the ground," he said, pointing to the spot where Garison had dropped it.

Trying to be encouraging, Finneas told her, "We heard no sound or voice. And we've seen no sign of a body. Maybe he weren't in there."

The realization slowly sank in and she fell to her knees in the grass. Looking at the padlock, she said, "He was inside, then. He would never leave the lock outside like that unless he were inside with the door bolted. Garison always did it exactly the same way every time."

Finneas sank to his knees and put his arms around the sobbing widow of his best friend. He found himself crying as well.

Silently, Sarah prayed that Garison was not dead, but had been somehow whisked to the future by his time machine. For, if he were still alive, there was always the remote chance that he could somehow find a way back.

The woman calling herself Heather went to hug him, but he backed away. "Who are you?" he demanded again, already having lost count of how many times he had asked that question and beyond losing his temper at not having it answered. "And how did you get into my laboratory? I locked it when I came in here." How long ago had that been? he asked himself. Five years? A few seconds?

The woman looked at him with genuine puzzlement, then said—more to herself than to him for she didn't intend it to be aloud, "He must have amnesia."

There was a temporary stun caused by the trip through time, he admitted to himself, but it had worn off. And the fall after saving young Washington wouldn't have caused him to see what he was now seeing. Unless I'm dreaming, he thought. Maybe I did get a concussion and this is all just a dream. Surreptitiously he pinched himself and was disappointed to feel the pain. Can you dream pain? he wondered. He stood up straighter and demanded, "What are you doing in my laboratory?"

The woman backed away from him and said incredulously, "You really don't know me, do you?" She looked as if she were trying to look into his eyes and see completely into his thoughts or his soul. It had an unnerving effect on Garison as it seemed like she might actually be able to do it.

"No ma'am, I do not," he replied. Anger wasn't working, he told himself, so he thought he would try to approach things as rationally as possible. Maybe he could figure out her secret. He had never seen her before—of that he was sure—but, yet . . .