In Times Like These (33 page)

“You can de-graviti
te something?” Blake says. “I thought Quickly said the effects were permanent.”

“Well he said they were permanent on people,” I say. I flip to the next page. “Oh. This is probably why.” A drawing on the next page shows an object being zapped by a complex looking device. A note is scribbled near the sketch. “While I have been able to successfully purge metal and some durable organic and inorganic matter, purging of biologically living matter still eludes me. Trial results so far remain discouraging.”

“So how do we de-gravitite these?” Blake says, holding up the ladle.

“We need
one of these things.” I show him the drawing.

“That looks
 . . . involved,” Francesca says.

“Yeah. There are a couple more drawings of it.
Component parts maybe. Couldn’t tell you what any of it is though. I think we are out of our depth with this one.”

“So we’re back to being screwed,” Blake says. “All this stuff is useless.” He gives my
tortoise shell a spin and it twirls around on the table, wobbling and knocking.

I
pick up the photo of the toolbox and flip it over. It’s the one with Mym’s handwriting.
May 2nd, 1989. Montana. She’s going to be in Montana.

“M
aybe they’re not completely useless,” I say.

“Why?” Francesca says.

“We still have the pictures of these things. And we know that Quickly and Mym were there to take these pictures at these times. What if we could find them and ask one of them for help? They helped us before. Why wouldn’t they help us again?”

“You want to find Quickly again somewhere else?” Francesca says.

“Yeah, well, either of them. Malcolm said we shouldn’t bother the one at the Temporal Studies Society. He never said anything about finding Quickly somewhere else. We need help from someone.”

“Someone who won’t rob us blind,” Francesca says.

“Yeah, and who knows? Maybe they’ll have another chronometer for you to use.”

“Oh, that’s a conversation to look forward to. Hey, I know you loaned me a priceless piece of technology
, and I let some sleazeballs walk off with it, but do you mind giving me another one?” Francesca frowns.

“
I’m as much to blame there as you,” I say. “I’m the one who left it on the counter.”

“It’s the fault of those guys being assholes,” Blake says. “Well, I wouldn’t mind finding someone trustworthy to help us this time. How do you plan to find them though? These dates on these photos are all still pretty far away. That one you’ve got there is probably the closest, and that’s still a couple of years out.”

“I was thinking about that. This toolbox looks pretty well used, and it’s not an object people usually throw away. Whoever owns this toolbox is probably using it right now somewhere. If we find the toolbox, we can use it to jump ahead to this date in the photo. Mym was there on that date, taking the picture. If we can find her before she leaves, we can get her to help us.”

“How do we find the toolbox?” Francesca says.

I flip over the photo and show her the address on the back. “We go here.”

“You want to go to Montana?”

“Do we have any better plans?” I look from her face to Blake’s.

“How are we going to get to Montana, if we don’t have any other anchors from there?” Blake says.

“Well, we can’t blink our way there.” I reach into my pack and then lay one of the stacks of hundreds on the table. “But we can fly.”

Francesca looks from the stack of bills back to my face. Blake slurps the last dregs of his coffee and tosses it into the trashcan.

“Let’s do it. Anything beats doing nothing.” He grabs the photo from Francesca. “Let’s go to . . . Scobey?”

<><><>

The ticket agent at the counter at Logan International Airport is not having it.

“You can’t fly to Scobey.” Her fingertips are slightly orange between her index and middle fingers. Her teeth are yellowed too. Despite her obvious habit, I get the impression that she hasn’t had her cigarette fix in a while. “Nobody goes there. You’ll have to pick somewhere else.”

Francesca steps in front of me, and smiles at the woman. “Brenda. You mind if I call you Brenda?” The woman narrows her eyes slightly but doesn’t respond. “People live in this city, yes?” Francesca waits for a response but doesn’t get one. “So these people have to get there somehow. How do they make that happen?”

Brenda gives Francesca a cold stare but then begins checking a list of airports in a black binder. “You could fly into Minot, North Dakota. You would probably have to drive from there, but we have a flight leaving in an hour that goes to Minneapolis. You could connect to Minot there.”

“How far is the drive once we get there?” Blake says.

She flips to a map of the area and considers it a moment. “Looks like it’s probably five or six hours, depending on the weather.”

“Weather?” Francesca says.

The ticket agent smirks at her. “I believe the average temperature in that area this time of year is about five. Bad snowstorms too.”

“Five?” Francesca blanches. “Degrees?”

“Sounds great. We’ll take ’
em,” I say, before Francesca has time to back out. I hold my wad of hundreds up to the counter.

Francesca still has not forgiven me by the time we’re ready to board. She sulks behind Blake and me as we walk down the jetbridge. She has pulled her scarf up over her face again and keeps it that way even after we take our seats, as if trying to store up the warmth for later. By the time we make our connection in Minneapolis to our smaller flight to Minot, the situation has not improved.

“Cheer up, Fresca. Did you know that Minot is the geographic center of North America?” I hold up the brochure I’ve found and try to hand it to her. She has her hands buried under her coat. I settle for setting the brochure in her lap.

Blake smiles beside me. “So, you think we can find Mym before she leaves
, once we get to the right spot? It didn’t really work that way with Dr. Quickly last time.”

I think about my fruitless search in the cul de sac.
“Yeah, but this is out in the prairie of Montana, not a Boston suburb. Maybe she won’t be able to disappear so quick.”

“Yeah. That’s true I guess.” He settles into his seat and closes his eyes. “We certainly are due for some good luck for a change.”

The balding man at the rental car stand in Minot takes one look at the date on Francesca’s driver’s license and slides it back. “You think I was born yesterday?”

I slip a pair of
hundred dollar bills out of my pocket and place them on the counter. I set her license on top and slide them back. He considers me from over top of his glasses, before reaching his hand up and grabbing the bills.

“
I guess even the government makes typos every once in a while. What year were you really born, honey?”

Francesca is ready. “1961.”

“Good answer.” He smiles and scribbles her ID number on a rental form. “Sign here.”

“You have any maps? I ask
.

“Yeah. Where are you headed?”

“Scobey, Montana.”

He leans over the counter and notes our single backpack. He straightens back up and hands Francesca the keys. He smiles at me. “Hope you have a warmer coat.”

When we get to the parking lot, Francesca takes one look at the snow piled up near the exit, and holds the keys out toward Blake and me. “I’ve never driven in snow before. I don’t think I’m going to start today.”

Blake and I trade off driving and navigating duties for the next few hours as we head west on Highway 5. The expansive plains around us are seas of white, but I occasionally make o
ut tracks and paw prints in the snow. At one point, we pass a small herd of buffalo grouped together near a fence. Their beards are gleaming with ice crystals and large swaths of snow have been cleared around them as they’ve foraged for grass. Francesca is huddled miserably in the rear seat but her eyes follow the buffalo as we pass them.

The other vehicles on the road are infrequent and most of the miles consist of long
, straight expanses of nothing but snow and highway stretching toward the horizon. The few drivers of other cars we do pass, tend to wave at us.

“At least they’re friendly out here,” I say
, as I wave back to the tenth pickup truck we see. Blake keeps his hands on the wheel. “This address is right off the highway somewhere. These roads don’t seem well marked,” I say.

“Yeah. I noticed that. I don’t know if we are supposed to be looking for the road on this side of town or the other side,” Blake says.

We come upon some buildings, and cruise through an intersection where I see a couple of men pulling an old Ford truck onto a flat bed. A few minutes later we’re back to prairie.

“How far are we from town?” Francesca says.

I look out at the expansive plain stretching ahead of us and then pivot in the seat to view what's behind us. I double-check the map. “Actually, I think we just passed it.”

Blake slows down and pulls off into a dirt side road that looks like it was recently plowed. Chunks of dirt and frozen gravel litter the drifts along both sides of the road.

“I thought you said Scobey was a town,” Francesca says.

“Yeah. It is,” I say. “They might have a broader definit
ion of the term out here.”

Blake turns us around and heads back the other direction. The men with the flat bed truck have successfully strapped down the Ford by the time we cruise back into the intersection. Blake pulls the car up next to a man bundled up in a thick
, tan, Carhartt coat.

“Excuse me. We’re looking for an address and we could use some help.”

The man crunches through the snow and leans down to take us all in. He has snow in his beard too. He looks a lot like the buffalo. I hand the photo with the address across Blake, and the man reaches out a gloved hand to take it. “Where you all from?” he asks. His dark brown eyes glide from Blake and me to the pile of clothing that is Francesca in the back seat.

“We’re from Florida,” Blake says.

“Oh. Long way from home, eh?”

“Yeah. Very,” Blake replies
.

The man reads the back of the photo.
“This is the Parson’s place. Used to be Hank Parson’s ranch. I think his son’s got it now. Don’t see much of him lately, but the ranch isn’t far.” He squats down a little and points west. “You’re gonna wanna go about five miles. You’ll see the grain silo on the Farnsworth farm. It’s on the right. Can’t miss it, they painted it blue last summer. Two roads past that, you’ll hit the road to the Parson’s. Just stay on it going north. You’ll find the house eventually. Hopefully they’ve got around to plowing it. Do they know you’re coming?”

“No. Not yet, we’re a little early,”
Blake says.

“I
f you can’t make it out there in this thing, come back and use the phone in the diner. They can probably come down and get you.”

“Thank you
, sir,” Blake says.

The man gives us
a thumbs up and climbs into his truck.

“People are really nice here,” Francesca says.

“I hope that’s true of the Parsons too,” I say.

Blake heads us west again until we spot the blue grain silo. We creep along
more slowly after that and find the second drive that heads north. A mailbox sticking out of a snowdrift across the street from the entrance is the only sign of a residence. We turn north and bounce ourselves along a dirt road that makes its way over gentle hills that would normally present little trouble, but covered with ice, make the tail end of our rental slip and slide. Many of the potholes are frozen over, which improves the bumpiness slightly.

We’ve traversed a dozen small hills before I catch sight of some outbuildings up ahead. We pass a small shed and an old farmhouse that appears to have been abandoned for many years. The road continues on, and a couple of hills later, I spot a larger group of buildings in the distance. The sight is lost to me however
, because as we descend the next little valley, the tires of the rental slide on a thick patch of ice. Blake tries to steer us out of the skid to keep it straight, but we slide sideways off the edge of the road and stop with a thump, nosed into a snowdrift. The front end of the car is in a ditch to the right side of the road and partially buried in white. Blake shifts into reverse and tries to back out, but the angle of the car gives the rear wheels very little traction on the icy road. The wheels spin futilely for a few moments.

“Try going forward a bit and then back again,” I say.

Blake attempts to move the car forward but it won’t budge. He tries backwards again with no luck.

“Well this sucks,” Blake says.

“I think I saw the house from the top of the hill. Maybe we can just walk the rest of the way,” I say.

“Don’t they say not to leave the car in these situations?” Francesca says.