The Legend of Garison Fitch (Book 1): First Time (20 page)

In some people, such treatment would have rankled almost inconsolably. For, underlying it all, was the thought that Sarah's existence was substantiated by her husband. Her years of being an outcast, however, had taught her to not really care what other people thought about her. She sought respect from God, her husband, and her children (in that order), and cared not a wit for the gossip around and about her, a truly remarkable woman.

Late one night, Sarah and Garison lay in bed. They were talking softly, for the children were asleep and the walls of their house were sturdy but not very soundproof. It had taken Garison some months to get used to the bed clothes of the eighteenth century, but he had finally learned that it was possible to sleep in them without feeling as if he were in imminent danger of strangling. He had even come to find Sarah's completely unrevealing nightgown to be attractive. But then, he reasoned, everything she did or wore he found attractive.

"Garison," she asked softly, "Do you ever think of what it used to be like? When you lived in the twentieth-first century?"

He shrugged and replied, "On occasion. I recall an old friend like Charlie and think to myself, 'I should call him this evening.' I then remember that, not only has the telephone not been invented, the friend has not been born. I guess maybe I could write him a letter and leave it in a box marked, 'Do not open until 1988' or something. Of course, if I'm here and he's there, he might not even know who the letter is from."

"But do you ever miss it? You left your home and everything."

He stared at the dancing lights the coal-oil lamp made on the ceiling, then replied, "No. I can't say that I do. I was never at home then, I don't think. Someone once said that 'home is where the heart is'. While my heart might have been somewhat attached to La Plata Canyon, my heart never belonged to anyone. And, as much as one can enjoy a place, you can't really love it. Love has to be returned to be fulfilled—like what you and I have."

"Do you never miss your life there, though?"

"There was such a push to do and be great things that I never really got to be Garison Fitch. I didn't have a life there that I could miss now. I was the New Soviet Man, everyone's ideal, but never my own ideal. Never the man next door. I kind of began taking my life back when I moved out to the canyon, but it wasn't much of a life. So secluded and all. A life needs good friends and shared purposes.

"And I never really had a childhood or the things that come with that period in one's life. I didn't play sports on the vacant lot with the other kids because I had calculus homework to do. I didn't meet girls because all the girls I went to school with were so much older than me. So were the boys, for that matter. I didn't really develop friends with them either, really. Some kind of sucked up to me so I would help them with their schoolwork, but it was never really a friendship. We never minded leaving each other behind.

"I was never really allowed to speak out as to how I felt, either. Certainly, the Puritans stifle us in some ways now, but not so much as they did in my day—and then it was the government. I mean, the Puritans have a religious base for what they believe, but our government was operated by, and out of, fear. Two very strict systems can be vastly different if one is based on a sound foundation of faith and the other is not. It's hard to explain unless you've seen both. I can respect the Puritans, but... " he let it trail off with a shake of the head.

He brightened as he said, "I like what I do now. I like taking a piece of wood and shaping it into the runner for a rocking chair, or a leg for someone's table. In my day, that was only a hobby for me. I like the fact that I'm better at it now, using hand tools, than I was when I used power tools. I like arguing a case before a real jury, not a state-picked one whose verdict is already decided." He turned to her and said, "But most of all, I enjoy being with you. I never had a friend like you back there. And I certainly never had a wife."

"I worried about that," Sarah confessed. "I used to think one day you would tell me about some woman back home. Some woman you wished to return to. I was sure you weren't married, or you wouldn't have married me, but I wondered if you had left someone behind." She smiled mischievously, "You sailors are supposed to have a girl in every port, you know."

"No, not this one. There were no women back there. I never had the time—or the nerve. That's another thing we have here that I did not have then: time. We had so many inventions that were supposed to create time for us, but we spent all our time locked to those machines. We were always repairing them, maintaining them, or selling them to buy new ones. And you had to work all day to gain the money to pay for all these machines. Even our so-called leisure time was filled with machines. Televisions and stereos and automobiles and even weight machines for exercise instead of just going for a walk or building something like I do now.

"I love Sundays here. One day a week the whole town just shuts down and we worship together and play together and almost forget how hard life sometimes can be. I think that's what God meant Sundays for."

She looked at him and asked, "Did people really say in your time that there was no God?"

"They tried to," he nodded. "Tried to wipe out Christianity, too, but it had survived in Texas, and even Argentina had a form of Christianity—as did a few other smaller countries. I wonder how Argentina justified a treaty with the comparatively pagan Japan? Expediency, I guess. Covering their own skins. But anyway, all thinking men know there is a God—just as they all knew the world was round long before Columbus ever sailed the seas. That was the same then as it is now. Some try to deny it, or live as if it were not true, but they know. Deep down in their hearts they know they know there is a God. After all, to those who always fought so hard to say there was no God, I always wondered why they spent so much time fighting something they said didn't exist. Seemed rather wasteful and, well, stupid."

She asked, nervousness slipping into her voice, "Do you ever go over to the machine anymore?"

"Every now and then. Maybe once or twice a month on the way back from the shop, I'll stop in and make sure it's still OK. Or, I might write something in the journal program on the computer. Why do you ask?"

She looked around, as if embarrassed to reply, and said, "I am sometimes afraid you will go to the machine and ride it back home."

"I am home," he told her seriously. "I go over there sometimes to see it because it's all I have left. I know I will never go back there, and I don't even want to go back there, but I feel like I need to get in touch with it from time to time. I would be like a man who ignores his roots if I were to forget the machine. Like your past, my past is what made me what I am. That machine and my leather jacket and that Bowie knife are about all that's left of my past."

She shrugged and told him, "I just don't like having it there. Deep down, I know you will not leave me until death; but I worry. What if someone were to see it? You know these people. They might say it was an instrument of Satan or a device for witchcraft. This isn't Salem, but we still deal with people."

"You are saying I should get rid of it?" he asked.

She thought a long moment, then replied, "Yes. Maybe you could save a small part for a reminder. Something you could carry around with you, or put in a box that you could look at when you need to. But I do wish you would get rid of it. It makes me uncomfortable. And I just feel that keeping it around is tempting some terrible fate."

He smiled and, placing a hand to her cheek, said, "I'll be rid of it. I would do anything for you, Sarah."

With the sort of smile people of those days saved for those moments behind closed doors, Sarah asked, "Is that so?"

He moved closer to her on the bed and began to untie the strings that held her nightgown. "Careful," she whispered, "We don't want to wake the children."

Excerpt from
A Fitch Family History by Maureen Fitch Carnes

Darius and White Fawn—who he had begun to refer to by this time as, simply, "Fawn"—arrived at the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains in October of 1780. He writes that he was in favor of continuing westward, but then mentions in a sort of off-hand way that Fawn is pregnant. They decided to stop and built a shelter of some sort near what appears to be present-day Canôn City. Darius's decision to stop was quickly proven wise as a snow-storm of some magnitude swept through the area. He writes:

"As I look up towards the mountains that surround our little valley, knowing they are but the foothills of giants beyond, I now thank the Lord that we chose to remain here rather than pressing on. I will explore these mountains when spring comes, but I do not know enough of their ways to tackle them now. Nor would it be good for Fawn to travel in her condition."

Fawn gave birth to a boy, Halberd Bear Fitch, in January of 1781. One can only imagine now what it must have been like to be all alone, snowed in in a strange land, with only your husband to help deliver. Darius was able to support the family by hunting for meat and trading with the Utes who wintered nearby, but one wonders how they provided sufficient nourishment for the young child. Still, the natives of the area had done it for years and may have assisted or taught the Fitchs. Of course, Fawn was no stranger to living in the wilderness and it's likely she taught Darius much of what he learned about surviving on the frontier.

When spring came, Darius had apparently had enough of the mountains and reneged on his vow to explore them at the first sign of thaw. When the streams began flowing to the east, Darius—family in tow—went with them. He seems to have gone south to Raton Pass, then over to the Spanish settlements in Tejas. Apparently deciding to forego his exploration of the west for a while—it having been two years since he saw General Washington, the mission may have lost its imperative—Darius and family lived in Tejas for four years before Darius got itchy feet.

Packing up his family, which now included Garison White Eagle, Helen Snowbird, and Julius Mountain, Darius set out for the west. For the first time, Darius mentions in his journal—now written on paper purchased from a Spaniard, the original journals long since full—that his grandmother Sarah had given him a map of a place called La Plata Canyon, which was thought to be on the western edge of the mountain range the Spanish called the Sangre de Cristos. How Sarah came to be in possession of the map was a mystery even to Darius, but he indicates that he thinks Sarah's husband (and progenitor of this line) Garison had given it to her. How he came to possess it is even more in question, but much about Garison Fitch is. Even though Darius never met his grandfather, he named his second son after him.

Chapter Thirteen

March 1, 1744

I had never dreamed that life could be as good as it has been with Sarah during these first four years. We have not necessarily, as the children's books used to say, "Lived happily ever after," but no hardship has been so great that it could tear at our love. Each day, life seems to get better and better. And each day, I find another reason or way to love my Sarah. She has found just as many ways to love me. I do not deserve such favor—but neither will I turn it down.

My two sons look too much like their father to suit me, but they are healthy and good lads. [It strikes me as funny that, five years ago, I would not have used the word "lads". I have probably changed in more ways than I can acknowledge—maybe as much as my world changed.] Our daughter is becoming as pretty as her mother and tugs at my heart strings with her every glance. It is good that Sarah is here because Helen is already learning that she has her father wrapped tightly around her finger. On occasion, Sarah has to scold me for favoring our daughter too much, fearing that I am excluding the boys. It's hard, though, for I love her so much. But then, I don't love my sons any less. I love all of them (and their mother) more than I can say.

By happenstance, my wood shop became a lucrative business shortly after I bought it and re-opened it. A chair I had been particularly proud of was bought by a man from Boston who was in Mount Vernon visiting a relation of some sort. He took it home with him and, suddenly, I was receiving orders from as far away as Massachusetts to make more of the chairs. I was even offered a job with a large furniture manufacturer in Boston, but I declined in favor of staying in Mount Vernon. They wanted me to start a "whole line of furniture" but it would have meant living in the big city. We toyed with the idea, but even Sarah wants to stay in Mount Vernon now. Our home is where our hearts are. That could be anywhere, as long as we are together, but right now our hearts are here.

Sarah and I still speak of going to La Plata Canyon some day, but it may be just a dream. The roots that I had once thought belonged beside that lonely river are now firmly implanted in the Virginia soil. I have done enough travel in my youth to quench my thirst to see the horizon, so I have no great urge to travel now. Besides which, I am the only person around who has seen that horizon and life there was never as good as life here. Sarah, having never been further away than Boston (and nowhere at all before our marriage), longs to see other places, though, so I may do it for her. She would like the La Plata as much as I did. She would love the way the San Juans look at dawn and the way the icy cold water cascades over the rocks on its way to Texas. The best way to see beautiful country you are familiar with is to go with someone who is seeing it for the first time. That, alone, makes me want to see the La Platas with Sarah.

Sarah is a hundred times more beautiful than when we were first married—she was just a girl then. Her beauty has matured but much more beauty comes from deep inside her than any exterior could ever produce. Sometimes, I am almost embarrassed to look at her face because it shines so brightly for me. I look forward to each day the Lord allows me to spend with her.