The Legend of Garison Fitch (Book 1): First Time (35 page)

Garison sat down and asked no one in particular, "Why would something like that change?"

"Cereal?" Loraine asked.

"Sure," Garison nodded.

His father asked, "All this stuff you and Heather told us last night, you really believe it, don't you?"

Garison nodded and said, "I know it sounds ridiculous, Fa—Dad, but it's true. I mean, look at me. You saw me two weeks ago but I look five years older. And if you had seen me yesterday morning you would have seen me with a pony tail I could not have possibly grown in two weeks."

"But it's all so fantastic," Loraine remarked, setting out a bowl and a couple choices of cereal.

Garison eyed the container that said "skim milk" warily, but tried it anyway. Looking up, he said, "This is just white-colored water, isn't it?"

"That's my boy," Bobby said proudly, having waged a war for whole milk for ten years—ever since his by-pass surgery. Loraine had stuck to her guns but Bobby never had gotten used to skim milk.

"What I can't get over," Garison told them between mouthfuls, "Is all the little things that have changed."

"What do you mean?" Loraine asked.

"Well, I can kind of see the big things, like governments and stuff. Kind of a snow-ball effect. But I'm having a hard time getting used to all the little things that changed. Dad, you were an only child just like me in the Soviet Americas. How did my having saved George Washington change your parents decision to only have one child? And Mom, how is it that you, after having all sorts of trouble conceiving me, seem to have been, well, extremely fertile in this world?"

"I didn't have any trouble conceiving," Loraine objected. "Your father and I decided to start trying and boom! you were there nine months later. Same with the other three—until medical intervention helped us stop."

"See," Garison said, gesturing with his spoon, "That's what I mean. You and Dad had been married five years before I was born and had been trying pretty much ever since you were married to have a child."

"Five years?" Bobby snorted. "If only it could have happened that slowly. We were married in June of seventy-four and you were born in December of seventy-five."

Garison related, "Not as I remember it. In, well, 'my day', you and Mom were married in sixty—"

"We didn't even meet until seventy-three," Loraine corrected.

"That's what I'm getting at," Garison replied. He paused, wanting to make sure he said it right, then told them, "What I don't understand, I guess, is not so much why the little things are different, but how anything could be the same. With so many big and small changes, how did you two meet at all? How could I have possibly been born on the same date, given the variables? For that matter, it defies all the laws of probability that I would be born in any two timelines—that anyone could be born in any two timelines. You see what I mean?"

Loraine, who had taught classes on logic and mathematics said, "I think I do. It's rather like a cone. Let's say you had changed something in the past, but just twenty years ago. Lot's of people are going to be outside of the effects because there hasn't been enough time. Over time, as people meet and intermarry and so-on, the cone grows bigger and bigger and effects more and more people. Like the way a family tree starts with two people and then gets larger and larger."

"Exactly," Garison nodded.

Bobby nodded, catching on, "I get you. You're saying that, based on the enormity of your action, and the length of time since that action, the cone should have effected even more than it has." While still doubting the story, he found himself enjoying the conjecture.

"Right! See, I am less confused about the changes than I am that anything could remain unchanged. Maybe, in a country on the far side of the world which has virtually no contact with the United States and was little effected by communist rule—like maybe somewhere in Africa—I could understand things being the same. Like one of the third world nations that maybe escaped the notice of the Soviets because there was nothing worth conquering. I could see that country being basically unchanged. But, well, how are you here? How am I here? How does one timeline have you meeting in sixty-nine and another meeting in seventy-three but I'm still born on December 14, 1975 in both times? Like they say, 'What're the odds?'"

Bobby laughed and said, "You always did know how to start a day, didn't you?"

Garison laughed, remembering all the breakfasts at which he had bounced his ideas off his logic-teaching mother and baseball coach father. He suddenly remembered his father coaching baseball and it seemed so different from the man he had known who had been a mechanic. Yet, they were so much alike. And his mother, how come she had the same job in both worlds and his father didn't? After a few more bites, he said, rather abruptly, "Heather and I are going to Virginia today."

His mother looked up at the sudden change in the conversation and said, "All right. Why?"

"I, uh, I've got to find out about Sarah, about my kids. I've gotta know what happened to them—if I can find out. Did they get married? Did they have kids?" An uncomfortable thought came to his mind and he asked sadly, "What if Sarah remarried? What if she had more kids by her second husband? I mean, it's only been a few days for me, but she might have waited five, ten, or fifteen years before remarrying. She was—she was certainly young enough to have remarried and had kids."

Bobby reached over and put a hand on his son's arm and asked, "Are you sure you're up to learning about that, yet? Whether all you say is true or not—and I've never known you to lie to me or your mother even though this sounds so...improbable—you've still been through a lot. Maybe you ought to just rest for a while. Go camping or something. You always liked that. Said it calmed you down after a big case or something."

Garison shook his head and explained, "It's something I have to do, Dad. Before I end up putting it off."

Loraine got up then, went into Bobby's office, and came back with an old book. It was "coffee table size" and bound in brown leather-like material. On it's spine in gold lettering it bore the legend “A Fitch Family History by Maureen Fitch Carnes”. Loraine handed the book to Garison and said, "Your aunt Loraine wrote that. She was your father's cousin, actually, so I guess she was really your second cousin but we all called her Aunt Maureen. Anyway, besides telling about the Fitch family, she tells how she found all the information. Old graveyards, county records, and things like that. I know she worked backward through time and you'll be working forward, but you might get some ideas on how to operate."

"Thanks," Garison nodded as he took the book. He glanced at a couple pictures, but didn't really pay any attention, catching only the names Darius Fitch and Franklyn Fitch. He laughed and queried, "You don't really believe all this, do you?"

Loraine paused, then replied, "No. But I can see you believe it. And I can also see you're not crazy. I think you need to find this out for yourself. If it really is real."

He smiled at his mother and asked, "So, Mom, how does it feel to know you have grandchildren who were born two hundred and fifty years ago?"

Her eyes widened as the idea hit her for the first time. She smiled and quipped, "I certainly hold my age well, don't I?"

Bobby remarked, "Until you can absolutely prove you don't have a concussion, you let Heather do the driving, all right?"

Excerpt from
A Fitch Family History by Maureen Fitch Carnes

Franklyn Fitch had a younger brother named Harrison "Harry" Fitch. Harry Fitch left Cherry Creek for the silver fields in and around Oro City, which eventually became Leadville. He was a little late for that strike, hitting only a small pocket on his claim. It was enough of a pocket, however, to give him a stake for the next strike.

Harry Fitch fell in with some other disgruntled late-comers to the Oro City strike and they started home over Mosquito Pass, which should have taken them into Alma. They took a wrong turn somehow and wound up on a pretty little stream the locals were calling Blue River. In that summer of 1860, someone found gold in the Blue River and, within a few months, the booming town of Breckinridge had been born.

Breckinridge was named for United States Vice President John Cabell Breckinridge in the hopes that they could get a post office. But Breckinridge left office in less than high style and died shortly thereafter. So as not to be associated with a loser, the townspeople voted to change their name to Breckenridge. More than one scoffer remarked derisively that this was what one expected from a town of miners.

Harry became a millionaire many times over but, and like more than one miner of his day, blew it all in one way or another. Harry had learned one thing in his mining days, though, perhaps especially in Leadville as he watched the Tabors and the Gould's become unrealistically wealthy in a short period of time: the people who sell goods to the miners make more money than the miners. With the last of his Breckenridge money, Harry went back to the store in Cherry Creek, which had been closed since Julius passed away. Harry fixed up the store, brought in a new line of goods, and began to sell. He did a sizable business with people of the burgeoning Denver, but his main business was outfitting greenhorns from the east with "all the equipment they would need to prospect for gold" according to one of Harry's brochures.

Harry married a woman who, from her pictures, was somewhat homely. She bore Harry seven children: six girls and a boy. The story says that, when the seventh child was born and proved to be a boy, no one sighed more loudly than Harry's wife Sharon. She reportedly remarked that, if the last one had been a girl, she would have died right then because it would have been the only way to get out of trying again for a boy.

Chapter Twenty-one

Garison's Journal

March 19, 2005 (ten thousand feet in the air)

The United States of America, it seems, have become a world power since I pulled little George from in front of that wagon. The Russians are still a world power, but they do not control all of Europe like they did in my day. Heather says they still pull a lot of the strings, but the maps say they no longer control as much land as they did just a few years ago. The relative strength of Russia seems to be a point of contention among many people. Some say it is almost dead, while others say the big bear is just hibernating. I do not yet know enough to have a strong opinion either way.

Japan is still locked onto that little island in the Pacific, but they, too, are a world power, proving you don't necessarily have to own land to be in control. They aren't a military power, Heather tells me, but they do hold a portion of the world's purse strings, it seems. Again, I am not sure if this is truth or merely Heather's conjecture. She seems to take a somewhat cynical view of world politics.

I was surprised to learn that there is still a royal family in England. They just have no power. Heather tells me they receive enormous sums of money for occupying a castle and cutting the ribbon at the openings of new super markets. As diminished as their power may be, it is still far better than it was in my time when virtually the entire royal line was wiped out by the German bomb. Any that survived the bomb did not survive the Russians, who—with a sense of historical irony that was completely uncharacteristic—manufactured a guillotine to do away with the heads of state of conquered monarchies (pun not originally intended, though I kind of like it now as I look back on that sentence).

To the north of the U.S.A. lies Canada, a British province. I know very little about them, as yet, but Heather says they are very friendly to Americans. She mentioned something about them housing many of our soldiers during a war called Vietnam. She said that with an odd tone in her voice, but I don't know yet what she meant by it. The Vietnam war is one of the many memories I do not seem to have recalled, yet. There was no such country as Vietnam in my day, and my alter ego (I can think of no better term) has supplied me with no information concerning the country, which I believe to be somewhere in Asia.

To the south of us lies Mexico. Of the few people I've talked to (all relatives), no one seems to know much about Mexico except that it is crowded, hot and basically impoverished. The capitol of Mexico—the ancient Aztec city of Mexico City—is so entrenched in smog, they tell me, that a mutated form of human being is arising. I find this hard to believe, but there is no other explanation as to how a person can live there under such horrible conditions, they say. Heather, who has been to Mexico City, says it is reminiscent of the Black Plague. This is a far cry from the highly industrialized Mexico I remember. Of course, the Mexico I remember had had more than fifty years to be industrialized by the conquering Japanese.

Alaska belongs to the United States, Heather tells me. I still have not figured that one out. I never understood how the Japanese wrestled it from Russia's grip, and I certainly do not understand how the Americans (as we are called—even though everyone from this continent should be called Americans) came to possess it. Heather tells me it was an outright sale, but I cannot imagine Russia selling another country land. That is less believable than a car dealer who will actually make you a good deal. [Yes, we had car dealers in my day. The cars they sold were inferior to those on the market now, but the salesmen certainly would not have admitted to that. Odd that it seems some seemingly inconsequential details are constant. Like the trails of the Old Ones, car dealers appear to be one of those things.]

A most curious thing is my growing ability to "access" the memories of my alter ego. It is much like a computer. If Heather mentions something (or some other event sparks an idea) I merely concentrate on the phrase or word and the memory begins to take form in my mind. If it weren't for the detail of the memories I conjure up, I would think that is exactly what was happening: some conjurer's or hypnotist's trick at work in my mind.