The Legend of Garison Fitch (Book 1): First Time (10 page)

"That's not what I mean," he said, knowing that she knew it. "I mean, well, I have not been here long but I find these people, while becoming friendlier, to be extremely cautious about people or things that are different from what they consider normal. People are beginning to talk to me, though for most it is still very succinct, with an air of suspicion about them. About me, I should say. They are also very concerned with appearances, what might be looked down upon by people in general but especially by their fellow church people. Even those at our chur—the Christian church or whatever we're called—are the same way. Why are you different?"

She hesitated, then replied carefully and with a voice that was obviously measured so as not to give away the emotions beneath it, "I do not have to worry about what other people think of me because I already know." Before Garison could ask her what that meant or make any sort of comment, she drew her shawl tightly around her shoulders and said, "I had better go in. Goodnight, Mister Fitch."

"Goodnight," he replied, more than a little confused. "Sarah," he called after she had taken a few steps, "Would you do something for me?"

She stopped but didn't turn around or say anything. When it became evident she was going to do neither, he requested, "Please call me Garison."

With an almost imperceptible nod, she said, "Goodnight, Garison Fitch."

While trying to fit an old metal rim on an even older but slightly repaired wooden wheel—Finneas had been unable to convince the owner that a whole new wheel would be better than a new band and less expensive in the long run—Garison hesitated then asked, "Finneas, can I ask you something?"

Hearing immediately the serious tone in Garison's voice and wondering at it for it was slightly uncharacteristic of Finneas's aloof but hard-working employee, he replied, "Certainly, lad."

"What do you know about Sarah?"

Finneas smiled and said, "I often wondered if ye would ever have the nerve to ask."

Surprised, Garison swallowed hard then asked, "What do you mean?"

"It was Sarah who first spoke to you after Sharif Purdy." At Garison's surprised look, Finneas explained, "Everyone knows such details in a town of this size. It has also been rumored that ye look her way quite frequently during church." At Garison's blush, Finneas laughed and continued, "Make no mistake, I fault ye none at all. She is a comely lass, no doubt."

"But, well, I've seen the way people treat her. Friendly, but...distant. Is it because she's single? Because she has chosen to live alone? I know they serve beer and ale at the tavern, as well as food, but it's not as if she were working in a...what's the word? A saloon? Many people actually go there for the food and conversation and never touch a drop."

Finneas bit his lip a moment, then said, "Perhaps ye had better ask her."

"I tried, but she wouldn't tell me. Is it some dark secret? I would really like to know before—" he stopped short.

Finneas looked up at the abrupt halt and said, "Now, don' ye be gettin' ideas such as that in ye'r head. Sarah is a fine lass, fine as any in this town."

He said the words with a force and conviction that made Garison sure there was something more there than just good-hearted Finneas defending a woman. Garison asked, "What is it? Tell me before—before I hear it from the wrong people. People who might not tell me the truth."

Finneas thought for a moment, a pensive look in his eyes, before nodding and saying, "Ye're right. Ye will hear things that aren't true if ye stay here long."

"So tell me."

Finneas worked on the wheel rim a moment, then began, "Sarah's mother was about my age when we were in school—no, some older, I guess. From the start she was a caution. I remember in school she used to flirt with the boys. It started out innocent stuff, like all girls do and like most boys give back. She was known to steal a kiss with a boy behind the school, which was quite scandalous, I assure you, though she was never caught by a teacher. All knew of it, though, as such things will get out.

"As she grew older, she became...wild. She came of good family, but her father—if you ask me—cared more for appearances than he did for his family. He sent Sarah's mother off to a boarding school in Boston. This is just me own opinion, and may not have no truth, but I often felt it was so if she did anything embarrassing, she would be too far away from him for it to rub off on the family. She came back after a few months and the rumor was that she had been forced to leave the school but no one knew why.

"When she came back, the town soon saw that she was wilder than ever. Then the next thing I remember—I was only about thirteen or fourteen years old then and not long in the colonies, but three or four years—she had been kicked out of her father's house. Her family attended the Puritan church and some of them would have, I believe, taken her in but for her father. He was a powerful man in both the church and the community. An older woman name of Clives took her in and it was soon obvious Sarah's mum was with child. Who the father was no one knew and so far as I know she never told. All sorts of rumors floated around.

"She gave birth to a little girl but died in child-birth. Mrs. Clives tried to get Mister Monroe—that was the family's name—to take in his granddaughter, but he would have no part of her. Even some of the other church members said the mother had gotten what she deserved and allowed that it was too bad the daughter couldn't have been taken as well. Of course, no one ever said that in public, but ye'd hear that sentiment whispered around the town nonetheless.

"Mrs. Clives was an elderly woman, her own children long grown and moved away, but she took in the baby just as she had the mother and named her Sarah. The father—now the baby's grandfather—put pressure to bear and Mrs. Clives was forced to leave her church for harboring a...bastard." Finneas said the word as if it left a bad taste in his mouth.

He continued, "Mrs. Clives became one of the founders of the church you go to now and raised Sarah in it. They looked at Mrs. Clives for what she was: a good Christian woman doing her Christian duty. They supported her. Now, don't get me wrong. There are some fine people amongst the Puritans, as God-fearing and Christian as any I've ever known. But there were also those who, like many a person, were willing to listen to money rather than scripture and went along with Mister Monroe. Most of those people are gone or dead, now, but the seed they planted remains. Even though there's not a person in this town who would dare say anything against Sarah's character, to many, she's still just a bastard."

Garison shook his head, wanting to either weep for Sarah or smash some obstinate heads with the hammer in his hand, or both. He finally said, "So that's why she said something like it didn't matter who she talked to because people had already made up their mind about her."

Finneas nodded sadly but said nothing. Garison, after a bit, asked, "So whatever happened to the Monroes? I don't recognize that name from around here."

Finneas shrugged and said, "That there's a strange tale of human nature, Garison. Despite the fact that they had let him turn them against his daughter and granddaughter, the people began to look down on him."

"Why?"

"Because he had turned his back on his own kin. Kinfolk are very important to people around here. He finally got tired of being looked at like he were a leper and moved the rest of the family to Richmond."

Garison shook his head, "That makes no sense, Finneas."

"Human nature," Finneas replied with a twist of his shoulders. "We knew we shouldn't be listening to him, but we did. Then, we ran him out of town out of our guilt when what we should have done was reach out to the one innocent person in the whole miserable affair. Instead, to cover our guilt we remained indignant."

"'We'?"

"Aye, lad," Finneas said, great shame covering his face like a painful mask.

Excerpt from
A Fitch Family History by Maureen Fitch Carnes

Darius returned to the Cherokee camp with visions of being like John Rolfe, the husband of Pocahontas, though he hoped his young love would live much longer than the famous Indian maiden had. Like John Rolfe, however, he had found an Indian maiden who became beautiful in his eyes due to her infectious spirit more than for her appearance, which was becoming more attractive as she crossed over from adolescence to adulthood.

Darius's diary indicates that she had undergone a significant transformation in the months since he had last seen her. Going from a cute adolescent to an attractive woman. And, if his diary is correct, she had missed him as much as he had missed her.

Like Pocahontas, White Fawn was open to the teachings of Christianity and both White Fawn and Bear and their other siblings were baptized by Darius in a nearby creek.

It was not a simple matter of taking White Fawn as his wife, though. Lazy Bear was true to his whispered nickname and, though he much liked the prospect of being rid of one of his wards, he saw also a chance for profit and exacted a high bride-price for the niece he claimed to love so much.

Darius was forced, then, to remain with the Cherokee until late fall before he had accumulated the required price. While the slovenly uncle irritated him greatly (Darius's journal references to the uncle become increasingly uncomplimentary), Darius reminds himself several times in the journal that Jacob worked fourteen years to acquire Rachel while he planned to be able to do it in half a year. With hard work, he had put the payment together in half that time.

Darius paid the bride-price to White Fawn's uncle in late fall and they were married on the first day of December, 1780, by Darius's reckoning. The winter snows had come again and Darius decided, reluctantly, to once again stay until spring. He mentions in his journal that the first winter of married life, with a teepee to themselves, was "idyllic" but it is obvious that Darius was anxious to begin again his journey to the west.

Chapter Nine

Garison, in the free moments that seemed to become more and more rare, tried to figure out a way to go home, back to 2005. He tried to find a way to reconfigure the "homing device" which was to have returned him to his lab in the event of a power shortage, but it had been based on his theories of interdimensional travel and he wasn't sure that the same principles would apply now that his invention had somehow become a time machine. The longer he stayed, though, the more he found himself becoming part of 1739—and Mount Vernon in particular. He was also hampered by the fact that he couldn't figure out how to get back because he hadn't the slightest idea how he had gotten where he was.

He took a part in town meetings and even spoke on occasion at the Baptist church. His training in the Bible was minimal, having only read it twice before, and he had been exposed to very few books on theology. Still, he was a logical thinker and, long able to squelch most of his shyness with a force of will when it came to public speaking, he became a tolerable expositor, taking his turn along with the other men in the congregation. He alleviated much of the anxiety by remembering his days lecturing at universities, where he had trained himself to think of the audience not as people, but as a faceless mass. (Once in a while, though, he remembered something aprapo to the subject that he had read and made the mistake of quoting from a theologian or philosopher who had not yet been born. At such times, he merely explained the questions away by saying the theologian was European, or of some such origin, which often enough was true.)

This all led to a somewhat awkward moment, both for the congregation in general and Garison in particular. As the men's adult Sunday School class made their way slowly through the Acts of the Apostles, Garison decided that he needed to make a formal commitment to God and Christianity and be baptized—a decision he announced publicly at the end of the services one day in July. The decision was met with an odd mixture of excitement and horror. While all were excited to see a soul "come to the Lord," as they expressed it, many were embarrassed to realize they had allowed their pulpit to be filled by someone who had not previously made a confession of faith, let alone be immersed. Garison was immersed in the Potomac that very afternoon, as was the congregation's tradition, but much discussion was had on the matter later—both in formal and informal sessions. It was finally decided that, in the interest of public decorum, Garison would still be allowed to teach in the Sunday School, but would not fill the pulpit for a while until he had had time to study with the elders of the congregation. Garison consented to the decision saying he had always felt a bit inadequate during his times in the pulpit, anyway. Clarence Jansen, one of the elders and a respected dairy farmer, remarked in his slow, dry voice that if inadequacy were taken into account the pulpit would never be filled.

With each day, Garison Fitch became more eighteenth century than twentieth. He took part in life as it was handed to him, rather than sulking about the life he had lost. He remembered often the words of one of his favorite British writers, who had been executed by the Soviets in 1959 for outspoken views on theology (views which, though he hadn't thought of them at the time in such a way, had played a great part in Garison's conversion). The writer had written of a character in one of his books who had undergone a great change and remembered their former life as one remembers a dream. That was Garison. Soviet rule and physics lectures and even things he remembered fondly, like La Plata Canyon or Dr Pepper, faded into the background of his mind and only occasionally surfaced.

Truth to tell, he didn't miss his former life all that much and he wasn't sure why. At least, he wouldn't admit the reasons to himself. Had he been honest, though, one of the things he liked most about his new time that he had never known before was freedom. The concept itself might have been hard to explain, he realized. In his old world, he had been part of the privileged class and had had a freedom accorded to very few because of his station. Yet, he found that a society where everyone worked, and worked hard under primitive conditions, was much more free than the technological one which he had left behind. Technology, he remembered, was supposed to afford its users more free time for personal pursuits, but technology had enslaved his people until they had no personal pursuits.