The Legend of Garison Fitch (Book 1): First Time (27 page)

As she showered and dressed, she told herself that she wasn't afraid of Garison anymore. Maybe she was being foolish, but she believed his apology of the night before. There had been something, an old something, in his voice that she trusted. She was so anxious to get about the day, though, that she had to make herself take the shower and take time to pick out clothes. She had the feeling that the day would be a touchy one, with the opportunities for helping Garison not coming easily. Like her husband as he had prepared to make the interdimensional trip, she knew her every move needed to be deliberate and careful. When a chance to offer help came, she didn't want to miss it.

Still, there was no denying that she was afraid. Not for her physical safety, but for her world. The fact that something was wrong with Garison seemed incontrovertible to her. It scared her that she didn't know what to do about it. It scared her even more to think that he might not ever recover. She couldn't envision ever wanting to leave Garison, but what if he wanted to leave her? He didn't seem to know her, after all, and what if his memory never did come back? What if, in that case, she could never convince him to want to get to know her all over again? What if he were to meet and fall in love with someone else?

Could she bear that?

She dressed in one of his favorite outfits hoping that—at some subconscious level, at least—it might spark some memory. She wore a thick white sweater with light-blue bead work that gave it a frosty, snow-like look. It was an Indian-made sweater; Charlie Begay's wife had helped Garison pick the sweater out before the previous Christmas and Heather had liked it just as well as Garison. Heather had matching cotton pants, freshly pressed and tapered to the ankles which she also wore. On her feet, she wore simple white tennis shoes, but they went well with the ensemble. In times past, all Heather had had to do was mention wearing "the white outfit" and Garison would brighten. It was, realistically, more of a "winter outfit," but Heather thought it would be all right to break with tradition this once.

She had taken some time on her hair, too; curling it just as he had said before he liked. She didn't put on any makeup, though, as she didn't even own any—and hadn't since junior high. Garison had remarked more than once that he thought makeup hid a woman's natural beauty and she agreed. She dabbed on a little perfume, but only a minuscule amount and not enough to be noticed, unless he were to somehow wind up behind her ears. She told herself it was for psychological effect—hers, not his.

Heather went downstairs but saw no sign of Garison. He wasn't in the kitchen or living room and it didn't look like he had eaten any breakfast. She was about to panic when she looked out and saw movement in the window of the lab. She smiled, for the first time in a while, and thought that that was, at least, a little bit of the old Garison shining through. How many mornings had she found him in his lab working away, having not gone to bed the previous night?

She started to grab a coat, but decided against it as it was such a short walk and she didn't want to rumple her ensemble. She went outside holding her arms around herself for warmth in the frost-bitten air and walked quickly over to the lab. Fortunately, she thought, the side-walk had received enough traffic since the last snow to be clear. She had found out the hard way sometime before that her tennies weren't water-proof. She had also found out the hard way how slippery the side-walk could get and how hard on one's derriere, so she took it as carefully as she quickly could.

She went into the laboratory and found him watching the videos of the experiment with great interest. He looked up at her, seemed to cast a glance across her outfit, but merely forced a "greeting smile" and turned back to the television. If her outfit had sparked anything at all in him, it had quickly been snuffed. A little bit of wind went out of her sails, but she was determined not to be sunk. She would just have to paddle harder.

After a long moment of silence in front of the video machines, Garison looked at Heather and spoke his first words of the morning, "Where did these machines come from?"

"You bought them," she replied. She had decided that morning in the shower not to question everything he said. If he were suffering from amnesia or some such affliction, it would be best for her to just give straight, honest answers. No judgements, no recriminations. Perhaps something she said accidentally would unlock a door for him, while badgering might just fortify his weak mental condition. Maybe, the thought had crossed her mind, I should have always approached him like this. Maybe then he wouldn't be blocking me out of his memory.

The video-tape he had showed her which seemed to present him as having done the experiment without her belied this hypothesis, though, she admitted. How could he have filmed that little bit without her knowing about it? And how could she just let it go as if there were nothing to it? Was it possible that he was—

Of course, to ask such questions was to admit to possibilities she was not ready to accept. The possibility that this stranger really was who he said he was was unacceptable, for the moment.

But yet, he didn't seem a stranger. He seemed like Garison. Mannerisms and even little facial twitches that he had had been Garison's also. Even a certain turn of phrase had echoed back to her Garison, though she couldn't remember exactly what it had been. What was going on? she asked herself—hesitant of what the reply might be if it weren't "simple" amnesia.

He looked at her strangely, but corrected, "The machines I put in here" [motioning to the laboratory] "Were manufactured by Tesla. These say...I am not familiar with that company."

"Sony," she told him, pointing to where the nameplate was on the nearest machine. "They're manufactured in Japan. Well, they may be manufactured over here, but it's a Japanese corporation."

"Japan?" he asked with shock. Was that where she was a spy from? She must be from the Japanese Americas, he thought, for she obviously had no Asian blood in her. But surely the Japanese wouldn't have sent in a spy with such a wild story and mode of operation. They operated differently, from what he had always understood; being more ruthless than cunning.

"Yeah," she shrugged, "Almost all electronics come from Japan. You know how you always complained about that? You wondered why Americans couldn't make equipment that was just as good. You spoke about it a lot."

"Americans?" he asked. "What of the Japanese Americas? Do they produce these electronics, too?"

She looked at him strangely, then smiled, trying to keep a good face on it all, "Boy, that went right over my head. What are you talking about, 'Japanese Americas'? You mean Japanese Americans, maybe? I imagine some of them make electronics."

He started to reply, but didn't know what to say. Finally, he said, "You seem to know everything about me—or so you think. Do I have anything to drink in the house?"

"Yeah, lots. Do you want to go in and get something cold to drink?"

"Yes," he told her. "I could use something to drink." He wondered why it would be cold, though. The only drink he ever kept cold was milk—and that was only to prevent spoiling. He had heard that some of the Texans often drank their drinks cold, so maybe she was from there. She had said the word "ya'll", which he thought was used pretty much exclusively in Texas. Her spy trainer should have cautioned her against such obvious slip-ups. He was oblivious to the fact that—in less than five minutes—he had attributed her actions to the KGB, the Japanese and the Texans.

"You could also use a change of clothes," she laughed. He looked down at his clothes then looked back at her and shrugged.

In a rare moment of humor, he smiled weakly and said, "They were the height of fashion this morning. Uh, yesterday morning. Whenever."

"You haven't been to bed yet, have you?"

"No. I wandered around the house for a bit. You probably heard me bumping into things. They, uh, weren't where I remembered them being. Then I came out here. I've been out here ever since, well, ever since I talked to you last night."

"How come?" she asked, finding herself genuinely interested.

"I-I felt funny in there," he told her. A part of him said he ought to tell her any and every thing about himself, but another part was saying he needed to keep quiet. Oh well, he rationalized, I've heard the best cover story is one founded basically on the truth.

"Funny? Why?"

"Well, it was my house, but it wasn't. Things are different. Some of the doors are off—not where they're supposed to be. A few inches to the left or right of where they should be. There was stuff in there that wasn't mine, and other stuff that was. But it was all changed just slightly. Even the fountain pens were made different. It was, well, unsettling.

He stopped and looked at her with what was supposed to be a stern countenance. Heather thought, though, that behind it she was seeing something like the fear she had been feeling. He told her, "I don't know who you work for or who set this up, but you did a good job. This whole place is like a haunted house version of my life. If your goal is to scare me, you're doing a good job. I'll admit that. I don't know what it is you want out of me, but you're not getting it. At least not until I get some straight answers."

With a sad look on her face, Heather merely nodded and started for the door. She opened it and looked back to make sure he was following, then went on out and across the yard. Her shoulders were hunched, but it struck Garison that she looked more like someone carrying an unbearable load than like someone who was cold. Or, maybe, she was hunched like someone expecting a blow from behind. The thought of shoving her to the floor the previous night leaped to his mind and he immediately felt guilty.

Outside, La Plata Canyon looked the same as it had the day he left. Each tree looked the same and even his house looked the same—from the outside, anyway. He paused on the driveway and looked through the trees at the road. He knew something was amiss, but it took him a moment to spot the anomaly. He suddenly exclaimed, "The road is paved!"

Heather laughed, the first genuine one he had seen or heard from her since she welcomed him back. "Of course it is. It's been paved since before we moved up here. I think they said it was done in the '70s—and they've hardly repaired it since. You know how you always complain when the county doesn't maintain it. This year we're going to have chug-holes the size of bushel baskets, I'm afraid."

"Paved?" he muttered again, shaking his head. If his idea about being drugged were right, he would have had to have been out of it for quite a while for all the work that had been done to have been done.

The house was drastically different on the inside from the day he had left—and yet it wasn't. The walls were still in the same place—and most of the doors were pretty close to where they had been—but only pretty close and it had the touch of a woman. The furniture matched much better than the furniture he had picked out or built and there were little odds and ends lying about that made the house look like a home. If Heather were a spy (and he admitted that the ifs grew bigger each moment) it must have taken an efficient crew to fashion the changes that had come about. They almost looked like they were done by someone who cared, and not just a "prop man."

Maybe it wasn't really 2005, he thought to himself. Maybe he had really been gone a long time and all this had been created for his benefit in case he ever came back. Why?

And, if so, he suddenly remembered, they were even monitoring his television. He had turned on the TV in the living room for a moment the night before and everything he could find on the dozen or so channels seemed to point to the idea that it was March 15, 2005. Although, the fact that there had been a dozen channels, each with a different program displayed, was a minor miracle in itself. He had had a TV before, but it had depended on the wind and other atmospheric conditions whether he even got one channel or not. On rare occasions he had received three fuzzy stations, but never a dozen—and certainly never with the picture quality he had seen the night before. Not out here in the canyon. Even in the cities, there were rarely more than three channels, all state-controlled and all boring. He often went weeks without turning on his TV and then it was usually just to check the news.

He went to the kitchen and saw that it showed the touch of a woman even more so than the living room. He hadn't gone through the kitchen the night before because it had smelled like fresh-baked bread; and that had reminded him too much of Sarah. He had gone out of his way to go through the living room and across the yard to get to the laboratory, almost falling in the snow more than once for that path was not as well trodden. He looked at the refrigerator and noticed that it was different from the one he had installed. It was still just a box, but somehow much more attractive and modern-looking that the one he remembered. He looked from it to Heather and asked, "Kenmore? Is that another Japanese company?"

"No," she laughed, "That's one of the last of the American-made products. That's why you bought it. That and the fact that it was on sale."

"Sale? Aren't all items for sale?"

"Um, 'on sale' means an item is being sold for a lower than normal price."

"Ah." He thought about commenting that the Japanese were, technically, Americans, too, but did not know what good the statement would do. Unbeknownst to him, he was trying the same tack she was in hopes of gaining ground: play along with whatever the other says. It was not a foreign game to him as it was a lot like the "dance" he used to have with Tex.

He was about to open the refrigerator when something caught his eye. He turned to look and saw what it was. He asked, "When did we get a telephone out here?"

"Before we moved in," Heather replied. Why would a telephone be a big deal? It seemed to her that it should have been one of those "given" things in his memory—like his name. On the other hand, a little light went off inside her at his use of the word "we." He hadn't made that admission before. Maybe things were looking up. "Remember? we had an awful time getting the telephone company to put it in. But, you kept your promise and had it here before your blushing bride moved in."