Running Out of Time (3 page)

Mary grimaced and nodded. Jessie looked around to count the empty benches. Nine pupils were missing between Katie's first-grade row and the seventh- and eighth-grade row where Jessie, Hannah, Mary, Chester Seward, and Richard Dunlap sat.

“Back row, are you doing your spelling words?” Mr. Smythe asked.

“Yes, Mr. Smythe,” Hannah said. She was the only one, since Chester and Richard were drawing dirty pictures.

Jessie bent over her slate and wrote “independence” five times. She couldn't wait for school to get out.

But when Mr. Smythe finally dismissed everyone, Jessie held herself back from the rush for the door.

“Want to come home with me? Pa gave me some extra clay,” Mary said. Her father was the potter, and when he was feeling generous he let his children play in his workshop. He once helped Mary and Jessie make a clay doll for Jessie's sister Katie.

“No thanks. I've got to pick some herbs for Ma,” Jessie remembered to say.

She was walking out behind Mary when she noticed Katie still sitting in the front row.

“My insides don't feel good,” Katie said.

Jessie stooped beside her and felt her sister's forehead, as she had seen Ma do with sick people. Katie's face was burning up, but the little girl shivered so hard that her teeth clattered.

“What hurts?” Jessie asked gently.

Katie pointed to her throat. She looked like she was going to cry, but she sneezed instead.

“Here.” Jessie handed Katie her handkerchief. Katie blew her nose, loud for such a little girl, and began coughing.

“Can you walk home?” Jessie asked Katie.

“No,” Katie whispered. Her eyes filled with tears.

Jessie rubbed Katie's eyes with the handkerchiefs clean end.

“That's all right,” Jessie said. “I'll carry you, just like when you were really little.”

Crying, Katie climbed onto Jessie's back. It was awkward to carry Katie, both their lunch pails, and all their books. Jessie wished Mr. Smythe were a nicer man, and would come help them. But he was watching poor Caleb Benton erase the blackboards, as if waiting for Caleb to make a mistake.

“Don't worry. You'll be okay,” Jessie said softly, so Mr. Smythe couldn't hear her. She didn't want to be punished. “Okay” was a bad word no one was supposed to say, but Jessie liked it. Sometimes she wondered if it was forbidden because it had a secret power to make things okay. If that was true, Jessie wanted that power now. She wasn't sure Katie would be okay. Betsy Benton had said she had a sore throat yesterday, too. And now she was so sick even Ma looked worried.

“Comfortable?” Jessie asked as she walked unevenly out the schoolhouse door.

Katie just sniffled, her face buried in Jessie's hair.

“You'll be okay,” Jessie repeated, so quietly that maybe even Katie didn't hear. She didn't answer, only moaned when
Jessie stumbled and jolted her. As they lurched past the Websters' house, Jessie saw there was no quarantine sign on the door. Was that good or bad?

Although she stumbled a few more times, Jessie finally made it to the door of the Keyser cabin.

“Hello? Ma?” she called.

No one was home. Jessie's brothers were all out in the forge helping Pa, and Jessie remembered that Hannah had planned to stop off at Seward's store and look at some fabric she wanted but would never be able to afford. Ma must be at one of the neighbors'—which was strange. Usually at this time of day, Ma was in the cabin fixing supper. The fire was banked on a Dutch oven full of some kind of food, but there was no other sign that Ma had been in the cabin since morning.

“Here, we'll get you to bed. Then you'll be fine,” Jessie told Katie with false confidence. “Doesn't that feel better?”

Katie's face was almost as pale as her bedding.

“Thirsty,” she murmured.

Jessie got her a drink and waited until Katie fell asleep. It didn't seem right to leave Katie, but Ma had acted like it was important to meet her in the woods. Jessie stopped at Pa's blacksmith shop on her way.

“Can you tell Ma that Katie's sick?” Jessie asked Andrew, who was sorting scrap metal while Pa worked at the forge.

“Why can't you?”

Andrew was Jessie's favorite brother, but he could be a horrible pain.

“Ma wanted me to pick some herbs, and I don't want to go in the dark,” Jessie explained.

“Chicken?” Andrew taunted.

“Of course not. I just want to be able to see.”

Andrew shrugged, which Jessie took to mean that he would tell Ma about Katie. He waited until she had walked down the road before he yelled after her, “Sure you're not going out to meet some boy?”

“Shut up!” Jessie shouted. Then she ran, hoping Pa hadn't heard her.

“Shut up” was like “okay,” another bad word no one was allowed to use. They were even worse than taking the Lord's name in vain. Jessie could never understand why. She could see that God might be offended at being used as a common curse, something she'd heard only a few men do when they appeared very, very mad. But even though Jessie pretended “okay” had special powers, she knew it wasn't black magic or anything. And “shut up” was maybe a little rude, but … Jessie knew it was no use trying to figure it out. This was another secret.

Jessie stopped running only when she reached the woods. With all the branches blocking the sun, it was always a little dusky and hard to see in there. She knew from school that the woods went on and on, clear to the Mississippi River, with only a few settlements like Clifton carved out in their midst. She kind of liked that, even though she'd heard some grown-ups talk about being afraid of the woods. She guessed it was because there were still dangerous Indians about when they came out from the East. But the Indians had all moved farther west now.

Jessie remembered the stories about the battles of Fallen Timbers and Tippecanoe and shivered. It didn't seem fair.
The Indians had been here first. But Mr. Smythe had threatened to spank her for saying that in school.

Jessie sat down on a log, thinking it would never be truly dark. Since she was here, she might as well pick herbs. She turned around to pull bark from a witch hazel tree.

And then Ma was standing beside her.

“You shouldn't let people sneak up on you like that,” Ma said. It seemed like a joke, but Ma's voice held an edge.

“It's just you, Ma,” Jessie said. She waited for Ma to smile, but Ma didn't. “Where were you? What's the dangerous thing I have to do? Is Katie—”

“Shh.” Ma looked around, guardedly, then placed her lamp and medicine bag on the ground. She bent beside the rock as she had the night before. Jessie moved into the same pose.

“I think we're safe, but we'll have to whisper,” Ma said. “I'll answer all your questions, but it's going to take a while. I did see Katie—”

“Does she have the same sickness as Sally and Betsy?”

Ma looked away, as though she was too sad to look at Jessie.

“I'm afraid she does. It's a disease called diphtheria.”

It scared Jessie that Ma sounded so solemn. Jessie thought about her towheaded little sister, who was only six but always tried to do what “the big girls” did.

“Is she going to be all right?” Jessie asked. “Are Sally and Betsy and the others—”

“That depends,” Ma said. “I have a lot to tell you.”

Ma stopped. A strong wind rustled the leaves of all the trees around them. Jessie shuddered. But maybe that wasn't just because of the wind.

“I never wanted to tell you like this,” Ma said. “Jessie, I don't know how you're going to react—”

“To what?” Jessie asked impatiently. Ma's voice frightened her.

Ma held her finger to her lips.

“Be still a minute,” she said. “I'm trying to think. How do I tell after all these years? It's so complicated….”

Jessie waited, not used to seeing Ma so puzzled and worried. Finally Ma looked back at Jessie.

“We've been in Clifton for twelve years now, right? Remember how Pa always told you we came here because there was more opportunity than back in Pennsylvania?”

Jessie nodded.

“Well, that's true, but not in the way we led you to believe. Clifton isn't an ordinary village. It's a historical preserve.”

“What's that?” Jessie's voice shook a little.

Ma's gaze was steady.

“Here, everything's like it was in the 1800s,” Ma said slowly. “Outside, it's”—Ma seemed to be counting in her mind—“Outside, it's 1996.”

F
or a long moment, Jessie couldn't say anything. How could it be 1996? Jessie's mind felt jumbled. If it wasn't 1840, last year wasn't 1839, and—

“Jessie?” Ma said. “Are you listening?”

“I'm trying to,” Jessie said.

“Pa and I always wondered if we were being fair to you children. At least—I always wondered. Many times I wanted to tell, especially you and Andrew. But it got so it was safer not to.”

“Why?”

Ma frowned.

“I don't understand everything myself. I know what Miles Clifton said in the beginning, but I can't believe it anymore. How can I explain what I don't know?”

Jessie had never seen her mother so uncertain. She
snatched on the familiar name. “You said Miles Clifton—”

“Yes, I know you learned about him in school,” Ma said. “What's the story again?”

“He built the first cabin in Clifton in 1825, invited other people to live here, then moved on when he felt Clifton had become too civilized,” Jessie said in the singsongy voice she used to answer Mr. Smythe. It was comforting to repeat the well-known history.

Ma laughed bitterly.

“That's so ridiculous. Miles Clifton couldn't survive two days in Clifton. He's a millionaire—he'd probably die without his limousine.”

Jessie tried to understand.

“What's a millionaire? What's a limousine?”

“A millionaire is someone who's very rich. A limousine is a big car,” Ma said. Jessie must have looked puzzled, because Ma went on. “And a car is—oh, Jessie, this is too hard! There's so much you need to know, and so much even I can't tell you—”

Ma looked like she was going to cry. Jessie felt frozen. She swallowed hard.

“Tell me what you do know,” she said, trying to sound calm.

Ma nodded, and soon she went on, her tone as even as when she explained the multiplication tables to Nathan.

“Miles Clifton did found this village, in a way. He came up with the idea of building an authentic historical preserve, instead of doing it halfway, like at Williamsburg.”

“Williamsburg? The old capital of Virginia?” Jessie asked, hoping she'd recognized another name. Maybe she wasn't as ignorant as Ma thought.

“Well, yes—you would know that, wouldn't you?”

“Mr. Smythe's from Virginia, remember, and he talks like it's really the only state in the Union.”

“That's right. Only Williamsburg pretty much fell to pieces after the capital was moved. Then it was restored years ago as a tourist site.” Again, Jessie felt confused, but this time Ma added the explanation smoothly. “A tourist site is someplace people travel to, to look at. Sometimes they go to learn something—Williamsburg was restored to help people understand the past. But mainly people go to tourist sites just for fun.”

Jessie tried to make sense of that. Traveling was so difficult, she couldn't imagine people doing it to learn about the past. Didn't they have history books? And traveling just for fun would be crazy. All the adults in Clifton talked about how terrible their journeys out from the East had been. Except—Jessie herself had always wondered if the rest of the world looked like Clifton. It might be fun to find out.

Ma was still talking. It seemed that in Williamsburg and the other historical “tourist sites,” people just pretended to live there, in that time period. Then they went home at the end of each day to twentieth-century lives. And tourists in shorts and tank tops—“strange twentieth-century clothing,” Ma explained—had packed the streets of the tourist sites, killing all the historical feeling.

“So Miles Clifton wanted someplace where people lived twenty-four hours a day, year-round, and the tourists were hidden,” Ma said.

Ma paused. Jessie wrapped and unwrapped one bonnet string around her finger. She was missing something in Ma's
explanation…. Then she understood. She jerked back, hitting her head on the King of the Mountain rock.

“You mean—people watch us?”

Looking down, Ma nodded.

“All the time?”

“No, but—a lot. Oh, Jessie, I'm sorry. I'm trying to think how this must sound to you. It's terrible that you've been watched all these years and never knew it. And that's the part of Clifton we all agreed to, before things got worse—”

Jessie stopped listening. She was thinking about all the things she'd done that she wouldn't have wanted anyone else to see. Once when she was really little, she'd stolen a piece of barley candy from Mr. Seward's counter. But she felt so horrible, she took it back when no one was looking. And when Andrew was still too young to talk, she'd slapped him while Ma's back was turned, because Jessie hated everyone cooing over what a cute baby he was. And then there'd been other times, when she'd been alone or just with Mary, and they'd done dumb things like making faces at trees or doing imitations of all the adults in Clifton—Mr. Smythe as a bear, Mrs. Seward as a peacock. No one else was supposed to see those things. The people called tourists were watching her then, too?

For the first time in her life, Jessie wanted to scream at Ma. But Ma looked so worried and sad that Jessie couldn't. Jessie felt her anger ebb.

“Well, you always did tell us that God saw everything we did,” Jessie said weakly.

Ma laughed.