OverTime 1 - Searching (Time Travel) (6 page)

It really was made out of layered dirt! As in...
dirt!
The window had rough plank on three sides, like the doorway, but an exposed cross-section on the fourth, where the board must have fallen away, showed the walls to be over a foot thick with… sod.
The shade of the soddy
. Suddenly that word seemed exactly right; this house was made out of
sod
, thickest at its base, not over a foot wide at the low roof's edge. It still had grass on it! When we stepped into its cramped shadows, it felt blessedly cool after the sunny ride.

An uncertain rock fireplace filled one narrow end, with a rough-hewn table and four chairs. A hanging sheet with a seam down the middle blocked off the rest of the single room. The floor was dirt but, inside,
sans
pig poop. The ceiling boasted some kind of once-white cloth across it.

Young Sherman Peaves stood beside the sheet, his long arms dwarfing the clothes he held, staring dumbly until his father took the load and handed it to me.

"You take whatever you need, Miss," Wendell Peaves assured me, pulling back the sheet to reveal a rough, narrow bed. I realized the curtain made it a bed
room
, and the only privacy they could afford me.

They were giving me clothes. Dirt poor—literally—they were still going to help me. I almost said,
Really, there's no need
... but I caught myself in time. There
was
a need, especially if I wasn't dressed "decent." So, with a quick smile of gratitude, I ducked by the youthful giant that was Sherman. He blushed and hurried to the fireplace on the other side of the room.

I mean, of the house. The soddy.

At least I felt fairly sure I didn't come from any place like this.

I let the curtained divider fall back behind me and stood in the heavy shadows by a lumpy looking, quilt-covered bed. I could clearly hear Wendell Peaves on the other side of the curtained wall:  "Might as well sit, Drover. Sherman, fetch the pail from the crick."

I stripped off the dusty coat.

Getting dressed was like trying to solve a puzzle, and not just because I felt stiff and self-conscious about bumping the curtain with hip or elbows. The illusion of self-sufficiency I
'd gained from my horsemanship faded the minute I encountered the underwear. Of course there were no bras; poor, drowned Eb hadn't been that kind of boy. Luckily I wasn't built to seriously need one. But neither were there underpants, only one-piece long johns, like kiddie pajamas, complete with a handy flap in back.

In this weather? I hesitated. The material in the pants looked pretty rough, though, and my inner thighs
had
rubbed raw and ugly from riding, despite Garrison's vest. I
hurt
. Padding seemed the wiser idea.

"We seen a wagon go by,
'bout three weeks past," I heard Peaves say, breaking the silence on the other side of the sheet, "but I don't recall mention of no lost woman."

"Don
't know as she's been lost more'n a day or two," drawled Garrison's more familiar voice. It was a strong voice, when he used it. "Weren't starved nor wasted."

Oh well, the long-john material seemed to breathe okay. I
'd just take a pair of scissors to the sleeves and the long legs, first chance I got. If they seemed completely unfamiliar, I could blame that on them being for boys—right?

"If
'n she's addled, could be any number of rough men got to her," Peaves noted from the room beyond as I studied my two choices of shirt in the gloom. One looked to be bluish, with white dots that had faded gray. The other might be an orangey once-red. "There's still some renegade Injuns in off the Territory now and again. And some years back, regulators came up on a wagon train and stole themselves a girl—"

Garrison cleared his throat significantly, and Peaves stopped talking. Awkward silence reigned.

I held a fistful of my frighteningly tangled hair against first one shirt then the other and chose the blue, only belatedly realizing, when I thought about it, that I didn't give Peaves' theories any credence at all. The idea of being abducted by Indians seemed just plain silly, not to mention insulting to the Indians, and I didn't even know what regulators were. Either my subconscious knew something I didn't, or denial worked much more thoroughly than I could ever have hoped.

"Could be a blessing if she don
't remember, is all I meant," Peaves finished, and the reign of silence continued.

The pants were a hoot. I had to roll up the cuffs but, even fastened with the button-fly, the pants themselves wouldn
't stay up. I was about to actually poke my head out past the curtain and ask Garrison for help—wouldn't that thrill him?—when I remembered the familiar
Y
of his suspenders. Sure enough, another rummage through poor little Eb's belongings found a set of straps that turned into suspenders—those buttons at either side of the waist hadn't been for decoration after all! With several tries I actually got them on so they didn't twist, and adjusted them to the right length.

"Folks what lost her should be askin
' about," noted Garrison finally. "If she has any. You know of any womenfolk live nearby?"

Peaves said, "Nope. Ain
't so settled, this far West."

Rolling on my second sock, I made another emotion check. Surely if I
'd lost somebody precious along with my memory, my heart would be aching for them, wouldn't it? But that took me too close to whatever I
had
lost—
everything,
screamed my soul,
everything
—and I suddenly developed a fascination for boots. They were heavy and scuffed, with square toes and low heels and a strap around the ankle that buckled. Probably the ugliest things I'd ever put on my feet. They were a bit large, too. But because of them I felt whole again, independent at last, no longer as vulnerable to burrs or pig droppings. A floppy, flat-brimmed hat completed me. But I had noticed the men baring their heads as they stepped inside, so after testing it for fit, I took the hat back off.

I had clothes! One step closer to being a real, functioning person again. In purdah long enough, I slipped around the curtain like an actress stepping on stage.

Mr. Peaves immediately stood when I emerged, and he limped forward to pull a rustic wooden chair back from the rustic wooden table. He was missing a leg, I realized with shock, and had a peg-leg, like a pirate, but it didn't slow him down.

Garrison and Sherman also rose. The old-fashioned manners startled me. After blinking at them a moment, I had to remind myself to hand Garrison his coat and vest before I took the offered seat.

The three men sat as well, Garrison nodding his thanks for the returned garments in a way that seemed almost embarrassed. He looked younger beside Peaves, whose revealed hair was indeed a scrubby, iron gray. Maybe Garrison was in his late thirties?

Sherman, handing me a tin cup of yellowish milk, looked downright young. When I took a sip, the milk tasted rich and kind of tangy and not at all familiar. Still, like the house, it was vaguely cool—especially after the hot ride, I liked it. I smiled my thanks.

Sherman blushed.

Then we sat in silence, Garrison finishing his milk in a few quick swallows, me savoring mine. Sometimes Peaves glanced suspiciously at Garrison. Garrison kept from returning the inexplicable hostility by gazing at the grayish, plastery wall over Peaves
' shoulder—and occasionally glancing at my tin cup. Young Sherman stared at me the whole time until, fidgety from the inexplicable undercurrents, I began to finger-comb the ends of my wind-tangled hair.

Then I noticed that Peaves and even Garrison were staring at that innocuous activity as well, and I stopped. Oh. Bad manners at the table, right?

To break the uncomfortable silence and to recover my manners, I said to the Peaveses, "You're very kind to help me out this way. I wish there were some way I could repay you." Maybe once I reached civilization....

Sherman looked at his father and finally spoke. "Could we maybe marry her? I mean... could I?"

For a moment I thought I wasn't hearing right, but no, that's really what he'd said. He wouldn't look directly at me afterwards, either.

As soon as I recovered the ability to even
move
, I looked quickly at Garrison.
What?
He didn't help matters any by raising his eyebrows at me, as if curious to see my response, so I whipped around in my chair and stared at the Peaves men. I opened my mouth—and couldn't manage a sound. What did one say to something that ridiculous?

"We were thinkin
' 'bout advertisin' for a woman," Wendell Peaves admitted, cocking his head like he might examine a pig he meant to buy.
He was really considering it!

"She has purdy teeth," Sherman
noted softly, not looking at me. "Never seen teeth so purdy."

Say something. Say
anything
as long as it's a negative! Horrified, I could only shake my head at them, then twist in my chair again to stare imploringly at my oldest and closest friend. If eyes could speak, mine were trying to say
please please please please please save me
. But I couldn't seem to draw the breath to turn it into words. I couldn't conceive of the sequence of actions that would politely extract me from this farce on my own. He
had
to do it for me!

Garrison sighed, sat back in his chair and said, "Might already be married."

My eyes tried to say
thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you
, but he wasn't bothering to glance my way.

"Ain
't wearin' no ring," Peaves pointed out.

"Rings can get took.
" Garrison didn't mention my original state of undress. "Got no name to marry by. Ain't proper jest yet."

Just
yet
?

Once Peaves took hold of an idea, though, he didn
't seem to let go easily. "A name's easy enough. We'll call her Martha, after my second wife."

I opened, then shut my mouth again. Whoever and whatever I was, I was
not
a Martha. And even if I wanted to marry a complete stranger, I wouldn't pick an adolescent living in a dirt house!

"Ain
't proper," Garrison repeated patiently. "Not touched in the head like she is."

Touched in the head?!
With a great deal of willpower, I grasped the edge of the table, took a deep breath, and finally managed words:  "I'd rather not." I then added, "Thanks anyway." Etiquette, or wimpiness?

"She
's got a lady's hands, Pa," said Sherman to the tabletop, as if my words hadn't even registered. It was like a nightmare, where you scream and scream and nobody hears you. "Ain't they nice?"

"What ain
't proper," Peaves told Garrison in the meantime, "is takin' the gal back to whatever wild cow camp from whence you hail. Mix her with them Texas cowboys and seems to me she'll be doin' all
sorts
of marryin'!"

He raised his chin triumphantly at that, as if it made perfect sense. Sherman, maybe concluding like me that this argument was getting bigger than the both of us, didn
't add to my catalog of attributes. Not out loud, anyway.

Garrison
's gray eyes gleamed with something dangerous at Peaves's words. When he directed his stare full force at me, I actually drew back from it. And I was only getting peripheral anger! "Do you wish to stay with these here nesters?"

The direct question both startled and annoyed me—hadn
't I just
said
I didn't? My throat tightened with the longing to say something sarcastic to that effect, but under the weight of his gaze, I only shook my head. Wimpiness it is.

He didn
't look particularly pleased, but he nodded, pushed back his chair and stood. "What'll you take fer the clothes and the buttermilk?" His words came out low, deceptively so.

"Jest leave the girl where we can keep her respectable," Peaves insisted, "and we
'll throw in some greens. You ain't doin' her no kindness, cowboy."

"She
'll be safe until Dodge," assured Garrison, with the certainty a person would use to mention the sun rising.

Peaves spat on the floor when he heard the word
Dodge
, as if it were Sodom and Gomorrah. And as if floor-spitting was ever justified.

With one hand Garrison pulled my chair back—me still in it. I took that as my cue to stand, edged behind him, and tried not to linger on this new information about cow camps and Texans and Dodge. If Garrison said I
'd be safe....

Actually, I hadn
't known the man long, so any opinion was a gamble. But on instinct alone, I trusted him more than I trusted these crazed farmers—especially if he never aimed that angry gleam directly at
me
.

"Stay with us, Martha," Peaves said, finally directing his words to me but using his dead wife
's name. "We could sorely use a woman's touch 'round here. Sherman and I could give you a decent life."