The Legend of Garison Fitch (Book 1): First Time (31 page)

"Your...other wife. What was she like?"

He hesitated when he heard the term "other wife," but then he remembered that Heather seemed to believe she was also his wife. How could he explain it? He thought for a while, then decided the truth was the best plan. He said, "She was wonderful. She had flaxen hair and a slim figure—even after having given birth three times."

"You have—had children?" There was something odd in her voice, he noticed, and her hand went to her abdomen as she said it. It almost sounded like the statement pained her. Why would that be? Garison wondered. Even if she weren't a spy and everything was just as it seemed, why would that pain her? Then, he realized anew why. He put himself in her place and realized how unhappy it would make him to think the woman he was married to had children he had never known about. Still, was there something else in her voice?

He nodded, "Justin, Henry and Helen. And wonderful children they are—were. The boys, unfortunately, took too much after their father. They, too, were blessed with this nose."

Some things never change, she thought. He never did think he was all that handsome. And I was not the only girl who thought he was the handsomest man in the world, she remembered. There were still young women in Durango who resented Heather, an outsider, for "capturing" Garison Fitch.

He looked at her and asked, "Do we...have children?"

She hesitated, then shook her head. "We had started to talk about it. Remember? we wanted to be married for a couple or three years, first." She forced a laugh and said, "Don't want that biological clock to tick away."

He got the feeling that she was lying; that that wasn't really why they didn't have children. He looked at her strangely, and apologized, "I'm sorry. I do not understand. 'Biological clock'?"

She laughed, more genuinely than her last laugh or two, then said, "Men never do. But, tell me more about her. What did you say her name was?"

"Sarah," he replied. "She had no last name when I met her..." As the mountains wound underneath them, he spun the story of his courtship and marriage to his beloved Sarah. With each word, it was clear to Heather how much Garison must have loved the woman. Although she did not let Garison see it—and she wasn't completely sure why herself—it hurt her to hear such things. Had she known, it would have surprised her to know that this strange Garison had known her feelings better and before she had herself.

What am I thinking? Heather asked herself. If I acknowledge that his love for Sarah is real, then I acknowledge that his story is real. Could it be?

Then, a horrifying question appeared in Heather's mind. If this were all true: what happened to the Garison Fitch she married? Did he cease to exist? Was he replaced by this new Garison Fitch? who seemed so like the old one, but so much a new person? If this truly were a Garison Fitch from another time or dimension, where was her Garison? Could they have somehow traded places?

She asked Garison as much. His eyes widened as he tried to fathom the answer himself. What rips in the fabric of the universe had he caused by his attempted foray into another dimension? If there were rips, would he be able to mend them?

What if he is with Sarah? it occurred to Garison. What if he is sitting in my house, surrounded by my children, trying to figure out how to get to his time? This time? But how could there be two Garisons?

"Perhaps I am he," Garison finally answered.

"But how can you be?" she asked. "What of his memories? What of all those things inside the head of a person that make them who they are? Hopes, dreams, ambitions—even faults: is all that destroyed of the Garison Fitch I married...and loved?—love?"

"I don't know," Garison replied. Not even thinking about the action, he put his hand on her leg and said, "I'll help you in your search if you'll help me in mine."

"What do you mean?" she asked. The thought passed briefly through her mind that his touch felt like Garison's. But she had to pause for a moment to identify for herself what a touch felt like—his touch. When he had wanted to say something important or tell her things that were only for her ears, he—her Garison—had touched her on the leg in just that way. If this were not "her Garison", why did he have the same traits? Could "her Garison" really be in there somewhere?

"Consider this," he said, "What if there is another Garison Fitch out there? Possibly, he belongs to this time line and I belong to another. But maybe he cannot return to this time line until I have left it."

"And if that's true?" she asked. "Where would you go then?"

He looked out the front window for a long time, then replied, "Back in time, I suppose. Perhaps I could go back and find Sarah. It is all I have been able to think of since returning to this century."

It was Heather's turn to think long and hard before making a reply. Finally, she said, "I don't think you can. Or, rather, I don't think you had better go back. Not with things as they stand now."

"What do you mean?"

She explained, "What if you were to attempt to find her, yet overshot her time? You have proved that you have little or no control over where the machine goes. What if you were to, say, land in the seventeenth century instead of the eighteenth?"

"I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at," he said, trying hard to comprehend. His mind was so full of images these last few hours—some of them completely foreign—that he had a harder time than normal concentrating on a single thing. He thought it might be some residual effect of time travel, but since he hadn't gone through it on the trip backwards through time it had him worried. What might it lead to? The old question of the knock on the head resurfaced.

"An effort to go back in time might succeed in doing what you have done here. What if you went back to the year 1697, for instance? There, you stop only to ask a man the year, or the time. But, your asking him delays him from making some appointment on the time line. By asking him what time it is—in essence—you might destroy everything, including Sarah."

"The great conundrum of all time travel scenarios. You have the voice of wisdom," he nodded. "I have been so intent on finding a way to return to Sarah that I have not considered how that attempt could destroy her. And here, I appear to be living proof of what time travel can do—to everything." He sat and looked at his hands for a moment, then asked, "But what of your Garison Fitch? What if I stay here? I don't wish to destroy your life by, essentially, murdering your husband. I pray I have not already done that."

She looked at him with a smile that bespoke of some inner happiness that really surprised him under the circumstances. She asked him, "Did you have the term, 'womens' intuition' in your day?"

"I'm not sure, but allow me to guess at its meaning," he responded. "Women seem to have an innate sense for guessing things that men cannot fathom with their overtly logical minds—or so we like to think of them. Maybe it comes from women anticipating the actions of men and the world better than men do. Perhaps because women study variables such as human nature while men deal more with cause and effect—or concrete ideas—is that what you mean?."

"That's it," she nodded. With a laugh, she added, "Although, my 'non-logical mind' probably wouldn't have put it so clinically."

"Well, what does your woman's intuition tell you?" he asked with sincere interest. Many was the time that it took the observations of Sarah for him to see the problem clearly and, especially, its solution. And, more often than not, the answer had been right in front of his eyes the entire time. Could it be, he wondered, that Heather had the same ability? He found it hard to believe it was something that all women just innately had.

"I'm not completely sure why, but I think you are my Garison Fitch. Your story you have told me may be true, but so is my memory. I can see almost every day since we met at the airport that day with Bat and Jody. Somehow, that machine we created has melded the two into one. The great unanswered question that all lawyers deal with is this: how can two contradictory stories both be true? Logic says they can't, but time spent observing life tells us they can."

"And that is your intuitive assessment?" Garison asked, a slight smile creeping over his face.

"Yes," she replied, enjoying the seeing of that smile again. Again? she asked herself. Yes, it was the same smile. She could tell, somehow. "I see him in you. Not just your appearance, but your mannerisms. The way you're holding your hands together right now. Other things you have done and the inflection you put on certain words. There leaves the one big problem to solve, however—if this is true."

Heather almost gasped as she realized how quickly her mind had gone from total rejection of the time travel idea to acceptance. Was she being ludicrous? Then, something in her memory reminded her of her courtship with Garison. Love had seemed to come suddenly, as if one moment it wasn't there, then the next it was. That didn't make this true, she told herself, but it did prove to her that sudden reversals of thought had not always been foreign to her—or bad.

"What is that?"

"How do we reconcile the two Garison Fitchs? If there are two of you in there, how do we bring both of you to the fore without destroying one or both of you?"

He raised an eyebrow, something he never remembered doing, but Heather had seen him do many times. It caught him off guard for a moment as he realized what he had done. When he had thought about it a moment and come to the conclusion he had no idea where the ability had suddenly come from, he shrugged and said, "I seem to have caused myself mountains of trouble with that machine. Some would say it is the wrath of God upon me for delving where I did not belong. Perhaps they're right and my punishment is that I must live my life with two conflicting memories of my life as it was before today—or yesterday. Day before. Whenever. They all start to run together when you don't sleep."

He smiled again and said, "But, there is one memory I am very clear on that I must question you about."

"What's that?" she asked, wary of the gleam in his eye that used to signal mischief. Certainly, an action like that was genuinely her Garison.

"What do you mean, 'the machine we built'?"

"Well..." she replied meekly, caught in her words, "I did pick out the color for the upholstery."

Excerpt from
A Fitch Family History by Maureen Fitch Carnes

Julius Fitch was married in 1802 or 3 to a Consuella Ramirez, whom he seems to have met in Santa Fe. They lived In Santa Fe for five years and had four children, two boys and two girls. Not much is known about the marriage but it appears to have been relatively happy until cholera swept through the community, killing Consuella and the youngest of the girls. Heartbroken, Julius returned to Cherry Creek where he could help his father run the store and his mother could help raise the children. He remarried in 1817, to a woman named Annella Roules, but they had no children together.

Julius's surviving daughter, Margurithe, married a Daniel Johnson and moved east, reportedly to St. Louis but no records can be found to either confirm or deny that supposition. Julius's oldest son, Henry Ramone, left for Texas in 1829 and died shortly thereafter at the Alamo, manning the short wall with Davy Crockett and his Tennessee mountain boys. He had gone to Texas seeking adventure and, like 187 other white men and a few Mexicans who fought for independence, he found the short end of it and was buried in the communal grave. (It is my theory that his story has been confused with that of Darius’s son Garison, for there was only one Fitch at the Alamo.)

Julius's second son was Augustus William, "Billy", and he seems to have never left Cherry Creek. He ran the store when his father and grandfather—and later, father alone—went off exploring in the mountains. He married the daughter of a trapper and died, like his grandfather, behind the counter at Cherry Creek. He seems to have found entertainment only in producing offspring for he and his wife produced fifteen that lived, eight girls and seven boys.

Chapter Nineteen

They landed at the Centennial airport and Garison was fascinated by the experience. Airports in the Soviet Americas had been like most government edifices under the communist rule: adequate and utilitarian. He marveled at the attractive (if older and poorly cared-for) buildings and was told by Heather that he ought to see the bigger Denver airport.

"Why didn't we land there?" Garison asked.

"Because it's not located in Colorado," Heather laughed. At Garison's questioning glance, she explained, "It's way out from town. And it's for commercial travel, anyway."

""Commercial travel'?"

"Airlines. You know, you buy a ticket to somewhere in the world and they take you there."

He asked Heather, "Anybody can just walk into one of these...places, and book passage to anywhere? No questions asked?"

"Pretty much. If you've got the money, they'll take you where you want to go and send your luggage somewhere else." She chuckled at her own joke, realized she'd probably have to explain it, then noticed that Garison was no longer beside her. He was stopped, looking at a little souvenir shop with over-priced momentos of Denver and their sports teams.

When she had returned to his side, Garison asked in a disbelieving voice, "Anyone can just walk in there and buy whatever they want?"

Heather smiled in reply, "Only if you want to spend a lot of money for something you could get for half the price at a dozen places within a mile of here."

"Then why buy it here?"

"You've hit on one of the big philosophical questions of our time."

As they walked through the relatively small building, Heather finally had to take his hand and pull him to keep him from dawdling over each new sight. As she did so, it briefly crossed his mind that holding her hand was something he had missed. Then he realized what he was thinking and suddenly jerked his hand away.

She looked at him with great puzzlement, then realized what she had done. She told him, "Sorry. It's just that, at this rate, you're parents will have gone to bed before we ever even get out of here."