Shift (ChronoShift Trilogy) (5 page)

It
was
a time travel machine.  He had just traveled twelve hours into the future.

 Pushing the button again, he returned to the glaring heat of the midday sun.  Along with a severe case of nausea of course.

He emptied the remaining contents of his stomach into some colorful shrubs which soon reeked of bile.  Thankfully, he hadn’t had much to eat since his last vomiting session and it wasn’t long before the peaceful, post-regurgitation calm settled in.  Then and there, Mark vowed to be more careful about how often he “shifted”.  Doing it too frequently was not much fun.  He just hoped the effect wasn’t cumulative.

The nausea was probably part of some kind of time-travel jet lag, he reasoned.  A person could probably get a serious case of that, jumping around like he was.

A few hours later, Mark ran into Highway 129.  He knew if he followed it to the left, he’d end up to North Carolina.  To the right led down to Cleveland, Georgia.  He turned right and started walking.

Curiosity was picking at him again.  It had been several hours since he last used the watch.  That had to be enough time to mitigate the nausea, right?

He twiddled with the buttons and set his target time back to the original 1890 date.  He wanted to see what the road would look like back then.

Familiar stumble — a sense of falling about an inch. 

The forest “shifted” as it had before.

Slight nausea.

The highway was now a dusty, dirt road, and it lay twenty feet to his right instead of under his feet.  They must have changed its path when they paved it. 

Besides the road jumping around, nothing else was different.  Same Georgia woods, same sounds, same air and sky.

Kind of unsettling actually.  In his mind, the late 1800's was life in brown sepia.  Photos of the early 1900's were always in black and white, and those of the 1800's were brown.  He knew those were just photos, but still, seeing 1890 in full color seemed weird.

The road was barren of movement.  Just like a hundred years in the future.  It was anti-climatic in a way.  He wasn’t sure what he’d expected to see, maybe a parade of people dressed in Victorian clothing, but there wasn’t anything remarkable aside from the road.  He poked around a little bit and then pushed the button to return.

A long, high-pitched tone sang out, and the display flashed to red again.

Dang!

It hadn’t made that noise before.  What did that mean?  Frantically, he punched at the button over and over, but all it did was beep and flash.

The display had turned red before in the house, but it hadn’t beeped then, and he’d only used it a couple of times since.  He feared it might be breaking down on him.  His breathing shortened.  If he didn’t even understand how the watch worked, how could he fix it?  Its body felt warm against his skin.  Maybe it had just overheated — or something.  Would it reset itself again or was he marooned in 1890?  He had no clue.

Broken or not, there was nothing he could do about it for now except to keep walking.

Beads of sweat broke out on his forehead as he continued down the dirt road that would one day be Highway 129.

Time goes, you say?  Ah no!

Alas, Time stays, we go.

                        ~ Henry Austin Dobson

A few hours later, he arrived in what he guessed must be Cleveland, Georgia.  The town was much smaller than the version of Cleveland he knew from his day.  Its roads were a messy confluence of dirt and mud, and their configuration was also different from what he remembered.

Horses pulled wagons and buggies.  Women walked about in cotton dresses and bonnets, and the kids had on outfits he’d only seen in the movies.  Some were accompanied by men in rough-looking pants held up by suspenders.  It was all so hard to believe....but there it was.

He suddenly realized he would stick out like a sore thumb in his 21
^st
century clothing, so he decided not to go all the way into town, but instead retreated back into the woods to give himself time to think.

The watch was either broken, or it had overheated, or.....who knew?  It could be anything.  He hoped the problem was only temporary.  He did
not
want to be stuck in 1890.

Well, now....wait a minute.  Why
didn’t
he want to be stuck in 1890?  Why did he care?  There was nothing left for him in the future.  Hadn’t he already given up on that life?  Maybe he could get a fresh start here.

Yet, something about the idea bothered him.  Perhaps he hadn’t really cut all the emotional ties to his old life after all.  Or maybe he just didn’t like being stuck somewhere, regardless of where that place was.  After all, any prison is a prison still. Whatever the reason, the bottom line was: He didn’t like it.  Not that he could do much about it though.

He’d give it overnight.  If the watch didn’t start working again by morning, he’d assume it was broken and regroup then.  For now, he wouldn't panic.

“Son, ya look loster than a frog in a desert!”
 

The voice came from behind.

Slowly, Mark turned.  The voice belonged to a farmer wielding a shotgun.  Thankfully, its barrels were pointed toward the ground.  The man’s crooked grin signaled a wary friendliness.  His overalls were well-worn, patched in several places.  Gray beard stubble lined his jaws.

“Them’s gotta be the craziest lookin’ citified duds I e’er seen. Where’d ya get ‘em?”

Mark was still trying to recover and doing a poor job of it at that.  He hadn’t expected to speak to anybody.  Psychologically, he’d woefully unprepared himself for the possibility.  This world hadn’t seemed quite real until now.  This man was really here though, really speaking to him, and he’d probably died long before Mark was even born.  It popped any lingering perception he’d had that this was somehow just one big, long dream.  It wasn’t.

“At...Atlanta.”  Mark stuttered, grasping for whatever story came to mind.

“Ya don’ say.  Ain’t ne’er seen rags like that ‘round here.  What’s this here world comin’ to anyhow?  Mays ah ask whatcha doin’ on mah property?”

“Uh....Sorry.  I didn’t realize this land belonged to anyone.  I was just hiking through the woods.”

The man chuckled lightly, yet sincerely, the laugh lines around his eyes deepening in prominence as he did  “Wall, ah’ll be.  Yeah, its mah farm, aw'right.  Name’s Johnson.  Red Johnson.”

“Pleasure to meet you, sir.  Mark Carpen.”

“Mark....like the Mark of the Bible?”

“Yes.”

The man squinted, staring, as if he were sizing Mark up.

“Good name.  Ya got the look of a famished bear ‘bout ya, Mark.”  Red drawled his name as if it had two syllables.  “How ‘bout ya foller me on up to the house.  The missus prob’ly’s got a good spread set fer lunch.”

***

Red’s house was the typical farmer’s house.  Simple in style, white-washed boards covering the frame, a stone chimney running up its side.  It was a fresh, well-kept version of one of those crumbling, old farm houses you might catch a glimpse of while driving by on the highway in modern times, wondering what life had been like there when it was still pretty.  Now he could witness the answer to those wonderings first hand.

The warm aroma of freshly baked cornbread flooded his senses the moment he entered the Johnson home.  Plates filled with salt pork, green beans, and other goodies covered the rough kitchen table. 

Red’s wife smiled meekly when she saw Mark and quietly set an extra place at the table for him.  She did not seem at all bothered by his unexpected appearance.  The way she acted, Red must bring strays like him home quite a bit, though he could tell part of it was she was shy.

Her floral stamped dress was modest and rustic, yet classically pretty.  A well-used apron over her front displayed several fresh stains from today's cooking.  Her long hair was pulled back and pinned up to keep it from interfering with her work, though a strand of it had fallen free and hung loose across the right side of her face.  She was a brunette, but the color of her hair was a pallid brown.  It did not have the same shine or silkiness as women’s hair from....well....from his time.

It felt odd to distinguish things in terms of his time and the present.  It was an unbelievable concept, the idea that his “home-time”, once absolutely unified with his present, could now be separated from it.

Several barefoot, dirty-faced children scampered around the backyard, playing raucously.  Red whistled and in the bat of an eye they’d run to the house, into the kitchen, and seated themselves obediently in their places.

“Yer just in time for Sabbath dinner.  Leah can cook a mean meal when she sets her mind to it.”  He grinned from ear to ear, obviously proud of his wife.  She blushed but seemed to appreciate the compliment.

“This here’s Johnny, and that’s Mickey.  This little princess - that’s mah Daisy”

“You certainly have a nice family, Mr. Johnson.”

“Call me Red.”

“Well, Red, thank you very much for having me to dinner.”  As if on cue, Mark’s stomach rumbled loud enough to be heard by all.

Red threw his head back in laughter and the children joined in.  Leah's smile grew, but she didn’t allow herself a loss of composure.  “You and yer stomach are both welcome here,” Red assured him, “A man who cain’t be hospitable, well he ain’t got no right to ‘spect no hosp’tality from the Man upstairs.  That’s what I say.”

Mark did his best to not appear greedy as he shoveled the home-cooked food onto his plate, but he was famished and it’d been too long since he’d eaten decently.

“Whatcha doin’ roun’ these parts, Mark?”

“Passing through.”

“Ya speak mighty refined, I must say, Mark.  Don’ sound like ya from Atlanta.”

“No...uh, I’m from up....out west.”  He’d been about to say “up north” to cover his tracks, but then he’d remembered the year.  He guessed Yankees probably still weren’t being offered the welcome wagon very much in Georgia in 1890.  It’d be another couple of generations before the animosity fully died down.

“Ya don’ say.  Where ‘bouts?”

“California.”

“What’d ya do out thar?”

“It was a long time ago.”  The last thing he needed was to trap himself in some elaborate lie and get tangled up in the details later.  Best to keep it simple.

Rather than take offense, Red held up his hands, laughing, “No skin off mah nose.  We kin be pow'rful curious ‘round here, but a man’s got a right to privacy.  So, where ya headed?”

“Not sure.”

“Ain’t got no plans?”  Red cocked his head, puzzled.

“Nope.”

“Jes’ a wanderin’?”

“I guess you could say that.”

“Yup, did som' dat when I was younger mahself, that's fer sure.  'Till Leah tamed me that is.  Figger to be in town fer a bit, or ya movin’ on?”

“Don’t know, sorry.  Don’t mean to be so vague.  I’m just not sure what I’m going to do next.”

Silence reigned.

“Well, Mark, ya surtainly seem to be an ed’cated cuss, but ah sure could use a hand ‘round here if’n ya ain’t got no plans.  Ya lookin’ fer work?”

Mark chewed on the offer.  Even if he could get the watch working again and return home to 2011, how would he survive?  He had no home to go to, no bank account, no driver’s license, no nothing.  He’d given it all up.  How could he make it the modern world without any of those things?  Regardless of the year, he was going to need some money.  Maybe it would be easier to earn it here in 1890.

He nodded, slowly at first, then more decisively.

“Yeah, I could help out around here for a while if you need it.”

Thus, Mark Carpen found a job 80 years before he was born.

After Leah's wonderful feast, Red gave Mark a spare set of work clothes, which included a pair of overalls and a white cotton shirt, and helped him get settled in.  Mark didn’t wait to put them on.  He was more than ready to get rid of the stinking rags he'd been washing over and over again for the past few months.