The Legend of Garison Fitch (Book 1): First Time (7 page)

The man eyed him suspiciously, obviously taking great care to inspect Garison's clothing, and replied, "What kind of wire?"

"Telephone wire," Garison replied, already afraid of where he guessed this conversation would go.

The man was curious, despite his obvious desire to have nothing to do with the stranger, and asked, "And what would you use tele—that kind of wire for?"

Garison had a sinking feeling that trying to explain what one used telephone wire for would be a fruitless effort, so he shrugged and said with a smile, "I'll ask someone else."

He started to turn away, but the man said gruffly, "Stranger?"

Garison turned back and asked, "Yes?"

The man had drawn himself up to his full height of six inches below Garison's hairline and struck a stern pose as he said, "I don't know how they dress where you come from, Mister, but around here we obey certain rules of propriety."

Completely confused, Garison looked at his own clothes again, then asked, "Excuse me?"

The man fingered Garison's shirt and said, "Perhaps they dress like this while working at sea—or wherever it is you have come from—but around here we expect a man to be covered when he walks out in public."

Guessing that no good could come of arguing, Garison slipped on his jacket and asked, "Is this better?"

The man put his hands on his wide hips and said, "It's a start."

Garison looked at the man for a moment, hoping to receive some clue as to what else he could do. When no clue was forthcoming, he decided to try snapping up the front of the coat, even though the sun and the walk were already making him sweat. When he had snapped all but the top two fasteners, he asked with just a little sarcasm in his voice, "Is this better?"

"Much." The man relaxed and introduced, "I'm Shariff Purdy. And who would you be?"

"Garison Fitch." He offered his hand and was a little surprised when Sharif Purdy took it.

The sharif had strong hands, calloused from hard work. He still didn't smile, though, as he said, "We have a quiet, friendly town. We welcome strangers but we expect a certain decorum from them." It crossed Garison's mind to briefly be amazed at such an articulate vocabulary coming from one with Purdy's appearance. The sharif continued, "Now, I've never heard of this kind of wire you're asking for, but if someone in town has any, I imagine they will sell it to you. Feel free to ask around, but don't you go bothering or pestering anyone or I will hear of it."

"I wouldn't think of it," Garison replied truthfully. Thinking outloud more than anything, Garison complimented, "I have the feeling that if the sharif doesn't know about telephones, no one else will, either."

It was the wrong thing to say, for it gave Sharif Purdy the idea that Garison might be looking for something illegal. Perhaps this tele—whatever—was something Purdy had better learn about before he discovered it the hard way.

"Besides," Garison mumbled, "No one seems very keen on talking to me, anyway."

Garison walked down the street, smiling and trying to make eye contact with anyone who would look his way, but no one was having any. While a few had stuck their heads out of doors or windows and watched as Sharif Purdy provoked with the stranger, none seemed willing to do so themselves. Many who had stayed outside while Garison talked with the sharif scurried for cover as he came near.

For his part, Garison was wondering what he should do next. Should he keep traveling down the road, meeting paranoid people in town after town, hoping that someone somewhere would know what a telephone was and where he might find one? While it was not an attractive prospect, he was running out of ideas on what else to do. What if he had landed in some country entirely without telephones? What then? And, try as he might, he could think of no English speaking countries thus effected. Certainly there were no such regions on the east coast of North America.

Garison stopped in the street momentarily as another hypothesis came to his mind. What if, he thought, rather than passing through dimensions I have somehow passed into some other plane of reality? A plane where English had developed, but the people were somehow two hundred years behind the people in his own. He had read theories that such planes might be out there, but he had never found any scientific warrant for their existence. They were the talk of science fiction writers and theorists so far out of the main stream they couldn't even see the water. Still, he reminded himself, there were a lot of people who thought the same about him.

Garison saw a bench in front of a nearby building and went and sat down on it. He put his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands as he tried to figure out what to do. He told himself that he had just stumbled into some isolated valley or the world's most elaborate test of social engineering, but the feeling in his gut would not let him believe such thoughts. This was something else entirely.

He was disturbed from his reverie by a voice saying, "Feet up."

It took a moment for the voice to register on him at all and he raised his head with a, "Huh?"

The sun was behind the source of the voice and cast a halo through the speaker's blonde hair and placed her entirely in silhouette. With a broom, she repeated in a pleasant tone, "Feet up. I'm trying to sweep."

"Uh, OK," Garison mumbled as he lifted his feet. She stepped a bit to his left just then and he got a look at her face. It was a pretty face, with pale, blemish free skin and deep green eyes. She wore a smile that was pleasant to look at and warming in its touch.

She said, "I don't believe I've seen you around here, Stranger."

"Uh, no. I'm from—I'm from out of town."

She looked at him and smiled genuinely. She asked, "Whereabouts? We don't get many visitors around here."

"La Plata Canyon," he replied instinctively.

She thought a moment, then told him, "I've never heard of it. Is it near Boston? or down in the Carolinas?"

"Neither, really," Garison replied with a sigh. Finally, she had mentioned places he had heard of, though he knew the Carolinas as Stalinland. "Carolinas" was a name belonging to the old British Americas. Had he perhaps landed in an alternate reality where the British Americas hadn't fallen to the Russians? That still wouldn't explain the lack of telephones, he thought sullenly. To finish the answer to her question, he said, "It's out in Marx—on the other side of the Rocky Mountains from Cherry Creek."

She shrugged and shook her head, "I'm afraid I've never heard of those places. And here I thought I knew my geography quite well. What with studying maps and—" she stopped as if she had been about to say something she would rather not be known.

It suddenly occurred to Garison to ask, "Tell me something, why are you talking to me?"

She looked unreasonably hurt by the question and he quickly added, "I mean, no one else will. How come?"

"How come they won't or how come I will?"

"Either. Be kind of nice to have an answer to something, even that."

She shrugged again and replaced a lock of hair that had fallen across her eyes. "I uh, I didn't realized at first that you were a stranger. I couldn't see your face and..." she let the sentence trail off as if unsure where to go with it.

He nodded, but after a moment said, "Just being a stranger doesn't account for the looks I've been getting. People look at me like—I don't know what. Like they're afraid of me. Do I look like an outlaw from these parts? Maybe someone who used to live here and no one wanted to see return?"

The strange note in his voice, as of anguish or despair tugged at her heart and she said, "You really don't know?"

"No, I don't."

She made herself smile what she hoped was a comforting smile and said, "To begin with, it is true that we don't get many strangers around here. Especially not one dark as night, big as a tree and—" she stopped short, biting her lip.

"And what?" he asked quickly.

With a genuine smile, she told him, "And wearing the strangest clothes I have ever seen in my life."

He looked down at his clothes for the umpteenth time and then back up at the young woman. "What's wrong with my clothes?" he asked honestly.

Laughing an infectious chuckle, she returned, "What's wrong? What's right? You have on a jacket of the oddest cut, and pants like a sailor's and, well, I have never seen shoes like that in my life."

"You've never seen tennis shoes?"

Shaking her head but still smiling, she replied, "If those are tennis shoes, then, no. I have not. They look something like mocassins, but not much."

Garison was somewhat disturbed by the fashion review, but found the young woman utterly charming. He looked her in the eye and asked, "Can I ask you a question?"

"Certainly."

"Where am I?"

She hesitated, but finally replied, "Mount Vernon."

"What state or province is that—are we in? Or, maybe I should ask what country."

"Why, Virginia, of course."

"Virginia?" he asked in awe, the name ringing in his memory from stories his mother had told him as a boy. She had been born in Virginia, before its name was changed to Kruschev. "Virginia of the British Americas?"

"No, Virginia Colony. Named for our dear departed Queen Elizabeth herself."

Garison looked around himself in confusion, then a light went off in his head. He quickly looked her in the eye and asked, "What year is it?"

She seemed a bit concerned and took a step back as she asked, "Did you hit your head, or something?" Looking at his clothes, she wondered if he had been part of a shipwreck and was still suffering the effects of a blow to the head. Or, maybe he had been thrown overboard from a prison-ship. No, she reasoned, he wouldn't have such a fine—if oddly cut—coat. Unless he had stolen it off someone. Maybe that's why he was on a prison ship. Maybe he was a thief, or a highway man.

"No." Realizing what he must sound like, he quickly amended, "At least, I'm pretty sure I didn't. If I did, the memory of it is gone. What year is it?"

"The year of our Lord, seventeen hundred and thirty-nine."

He mouthed the date in something that went beyond a state of awe. Slumping back against the wall of the building behind him, he mumbled, "I've traveled through time."

The young woman leaned a bit closer, almost against her will, and said, "Excuse me? Did you say something?"

Before he could think about how much wiser it might be to remain quiet, Garison repeated, louder, "I've traveled through time."

The girl was suddenly nervous and looking around for help, saying in a nice but patronizing voice, "Have you now?" She was rapidly thinking of putting some space between herself and the stranger for everyone knew insanity was contagious.

Excerpt from
A Fitch Family History by Maureen Fitch Carnes

Reading between the lines of his journal, one can easily believe Darius's main reason for staying with the Cherokee all winter were not so much due to inclement weather as to a burgeoning love for White Fawn. Anyone who reads his journals, but especially those of us who are his progeny, would love to know more details of this love story. Unfortunately, men of Darius's stamp rarely ever wrote of romance,

Having spent a night sleeping on the ground at roughly the same locale that the Cherokee's teepee village was located that winter, I can imagine my ancestor sitting at a fire and admiring White Fawn. Darius writes of a strong bond between himself and Bear and one can easily picture him slyly asking questions about the young man's sister. As a friend of Bear's and Bear's family, Darius must have spent a great deal of time around the young Indian maiden, perhaps even sharing a teepee, though in a completely chaste relationship as the Cherokee custom would have dictated—not to mention Darius's own strong Christian roots.

At the onset of spring, however, we read that Darius is getting "itchy feet" and is anxious to set out again. It seems as if the love story is coming to an abrupt and unsatisfying end as Darius leaves the village alone.

Darius is quite meticulous in the following journal entries as he records the sights, sounds, and life of what would one day become western Tennessee. So devoid is the narrative of any personal thoughts or feelings—or even the "impressions" he so frequently chronicled in the previous summer's writings—one gets the idea of a man trying to repress some deeply held thoughts and emotions.

In early June, after meeting with several other Indians—and fighting his way out of a couple scrapes, Darius Augustus Fitch arrived at the Great River, the Mississippi. Having never been sure before whether or not it was just a legend, Darius writes with awe (not just clinically, anymore) as he describes the unbelievable expanse of moving water with logs floating in it large as a house. He also expressed worries about the rest of his journey—not the least of which is wondering how he will get across the river.

Chapter Seven

Garison looked up at the woman—not long from being a girl, he realized—and asked, "Might I, um, might I have your name? It might make all of this seem a little more real." He extended his hand and said, "Mine's Garison Fitch."

She hesitated, but something in the man's eyes made her change her mind. She took his hand and felt how strong it was. The skin was tough like one who worked with his hands, but somehow softer than most of the men she knew. The touch of his hand somehow, though it made no sense to her even at the time, convinced her that the man wasn't insane. Lost, maybe. Hurt, maybe. Strange, definitely, but not insane. She smiled, "Sarah."

He nodded and when it became evident that no last name was forthcoming, he smiled, "I'm very pleased to meet you, Sarah."

When she had taken his hand a brief headache started at the front of his head and coursed through his whole body in a moment of pain like he'd never felt before. Just as suddenly as it came, it was gone. There had been just enough time for him to say, "Ow!" quite emphatically.