The Legend of Garison Fitch (Book 1): First Time (37 page)

"I don't know. I don't think so. If I had the chance to do it all over again, I don't believe I would have stood on the tarp. That much I probably would change. But, I don't believe I could let the boy die. I know I couldn't let anyone die if it were at all in my power to prevent it. Part of me wishes I had not been in that place at that time, so that it would never have come up, but..."

"But what?" Heather asked, anxious to hear what he was feeling. Despite the momentary pangs that had been caused by his allusion that he would rather still be in the past, she was intrigued by what he was thinking.

"I started to say that you cannot change the past. I've already proven that maxim incorrect, have I not?" He speculated, "Which begs this question: would I go back in time, with another machine, and reverse what has been done? To let George Washington die? No. That would be murder. Perhaps I have already committed murder."

"What?" Heather asked, being caught off guard by his statement.

"Perhaps my action caused the death of someone in these last two hundred years. Obviously, I caused the death of several British soldiers in the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 who would not have otherwise died. I caused the death of the people at Hiroshima and Nagasaki—and all those Japanese young men who died in the war over the Pacific."

She interrupted, "You didn't kill those people. You may have inadvertantly provided the circumstances that led to their deaths, but you didn't kill them. And you saved the lives of so many others—the Americans in the war of 1812, for example. All the people who lived because World War II ended earlier than it would have otherwise. I don't think you can hold yourself accountable. If so, then we are all accountable every day. Each of us does things that, down the line, has repercussions on someone else. By you and I deciding not to have kids, yet, is that murdering the grandson of that child we might have had a year ago but was never conceived?

"To be blunt, my dear husband," she said with a smile, "It would be stupid to hold yourself accountable for these things you have mentioned. It's like the old saying that says the saddest of all words are, 'It might've been'. You just can't dwell on what might've been, because the might've-beens never happen."

"Mine did."

"But you can't change that now."

"I guess you're right," he shrugged, still unable to fully drive the ideas from his head. "Thank you for your wisdom." Inwardly, it was a question that would disturb him for some time. Maybe all his life, he conceded. Just how much havoc had he wrought and, on the Day of Judgement, would he be held accountable?

Garison Fitch had married an extraordinary woman in Heather Dawson. He had known it before the time travel and knew it even more afterwards. He wondered how he could have been so lucky, especially considering that his "alter ego" had never apparently realized just how fortunate he was and what a "catch" he had made.

His thoughts ran that direction for a few moments. He remembered the nights he had slept on the couch rather than sleep with Heather—either by his choice or hers. He remembered the arguments they had had, some over incredibly silly things. It surprised him, because arguing just didn't seem in his nature. He could do it before a jury, but not with a friend. He was embarrassed for the way he had treated Heather and vowed, if stuck in this time line as he appeared to be, to make up for it.

It took an extraordinary woman, he admitted to himself, to believe the story he had told her. It was an unbelievable story and he would not have been offended had she not believed it. In fact, he probably wouldn't have believed it had it been told to him. Maybe she did not believe the story, he conceded, but she did believe in him. In all his dealings, he had only contacted that sort of love in one other woman, only one other woman had been able to believe him when he told her the fantastic:

Sarah.

He thought then about Sarah for the first time in a few hours. It had been just four mornings before that he had last seen her, but something was happening to him. He was not forgetting her, but he was letting her go. This is what I must do, he thought. Like any other husband who has lost his wife, I must let her go.

Just thinking those thoughts, though, made him feel guilty. Let go of Sarah? Hadn't he promised her the day he married her that he would love her forever? Of course, that promise had also included the clause "til death do us part".

Well, she was dead, wasn't she? Of course she was, he told himself. Still, he thought, shouldn't there be a period of mourning? She may have been dead for two hundred years, but he had seen her only four days ago. He had held her in his arms just that long ago. Had made love to her just four nights before.

But what was the appropriate period of mourning? A year? A month? A week? He had known some people who mourned for the rest of their lives and, while he didn't think he would or could do that, he also couldn't fault the people who did for maybe it was what they needed to do. He couldn't imagine ever fully letting go of Sarah. She would always be with him.

In this, the memories from "Heather's Garison"—as he had come to call his alter ego—were helping, if confusing. The memories he carried with him of his marriage to Heather helped ease the pain of his losing Sarah. As he had gone over before, though, the quick recovery also made him guilty. In short, his mind was in a turmoil where his relationships were concerned and the conundrum of time travel seemed relatively simple in comparison.

To some, it would seem odd that Garison Fitch was able to deal with such a great trauma so quickly and thoroughly. Garison Fitch would have expected more of himself than anyone else. It was these high expectations that had caused Garison—both Garisons—to be such enormous successes in whatever they attempted—except, of course, in relationships, where even the highest ideals are sometimes crushed by reality.

Garison's enormous success in everything he had ever done came from the simple fact that he had learned to control his mind at a very early age. His sports prowess came because he had conquered his mind first, and this made the conquering of his body all the more easier. And, of course, to be able to control one's mind makes education infinitely easier.

To the uninitiated, Garison would probably have appeared as a stoic. This was as far from the truth as possible. Garison was often more attuned to his emotions than other people, or so he thought. His stoicism was actually just a mask for introspection. He just believed (and this was the underlying secret of all his success) that the human mind had enormous capabilities but could only be used properly if all facets were equal: humor should have the same importance as logic, sadness the same importance as happiness, academics the same importance as common sense, and so on. He had lived rigidly by that code, until five years before.

The current situation went beyond anything he had ever prepared his mind for or realistically could prepare it for. All his logic and academics and humor (and everything else) were not enough to ward off the fact that he was being torn up inside. He wanted to grieve for Sarah, but found his love for Heather growing. He wanted to...he didn't know what he wanted.

As he had lain in bed the previous night, he had taken stock of where he was. He had placed before himself—as if on a table—all the facts that were available to him of his situation. Then, he had studied each fact and filed it away in his memory. This had always worked when facing dilemmas before.

"For who by worrying," he quoted to himself, "Can add a single year to his life?" Worry achieves a man nothing, but considerate thought (using all of man's God-given ability—including emotion) can lend a man the solution to every problem or fortune that might come his way. This was what Garison firmly believed, and he had a lifetime of success to prove his hypothesis.

Now, if he could only convince his mind of that one more time.

Excerpt from
A Fitch Family History by Maureen Fitch Carnes

Harry Fitch's "Cherry Creek Emporium" did a good enough business to send all seven of his children to college—which had become his dream as soon as his oldest daughter, Angeline, was born. The six daughters all went to a prominent girls school in St. Louis while Harry Jr. went to the fledgling University of Colorado.

Harry Jr. studied for the bar, but spent only a two years in practice before foregoing law for a career in politics. What began with a two year seat on the Denver city council culminated in a thirty-two year stint in the United States Congress as a representative from Colorado. His outspoken opposition to America's participation in the war in Europe cost him his seat in 1916, but he won it back in 1920 and served for fifteen more years. He died on the floor of the House of Representatives, chastising his home state of Colorado for its inability to attract tourists as a delegation of mayors from Colorado were sitting in the gallery. "Our state," he said in his loud, commanding voice, "Has the potential to attract more tourists than the entire state of New York." There were chuckles from the representatives of other states, but it wasn't long after that speech that someone attached a rope to a motor and figured out a better way to get skiers to the top of a mountain.

Chapter Twenty-two

Heather landed at a small airport she found near Alexandria in the small community of Manassas in the late afternoon, and rented a car for them to take to Mount Vernon. Having never been to Virginia, she had located the small airport with the help of a man at the Centennial airport in Colorado and had been able to file a flight plan with surprisingly little red tape. They spent the night in a motel there, then headed out early in the morning.

As they entered the area of Alexandria that had once been Mount Vernon in a rented car, Heather asked, "See anything you recognize?"

"Not a thing," Garison replied sadly. "We could be a thousand miles away from Mount Vernon by the looks of things. Everything's changed so much. I know: drive by the river—if you can find it. It may not be there anymore, though. They may have filled it in to make more building space for video rental stores," he told her sardonically.

There was nothing on the banks of the river to make Garison think it was the same river he had swam in with Sarah and the children. Its once blue waters were rather murky (despite a clean-up project Heather told him they were working on), and nothing on the banks spoke of the days Garison had fished there. There were buildings that tried to look nostalgic, but Garison didn't recognize them. How could so much have been allowed to be destroyed?

"This thing we call progress," Garison mused, "Why is it always so regressive for the...nostalgia? Can they actually say this area has progressed in a healthy direction from what it was three hundred years ago? What was it? Two hundred and fifty one years ago? You know, standing up here you could see the bottom of the river. Now, the river looks as if you could walk on it."

"'We have met the enemy, and he is us'," Heather offered.

"What was that? Famous quote or did you say that yourself?"

"It comes from a man named Walt Kelly. Back during the Cold War, he hypothesized that man's greatest enemy might not be communism, but himself and his refuse."

"Judging by what I see right here, he was right," Garison nodded.

Heather shrugged, having heard Garison make similar observations before. It had been another reason why they had chosen La Plata Canyon to build their house and lab. It had been mined for gold a century before, but it had since been left pretty much alone and had healed many of the old wounds man had inflicted on it. Heather shared Garison's love for the ecology and wished she could have seen the Potomac as Garison had. No, she thought to herself, it would be too angering. It was hard enough seeing some of the still-scarred areas of Colorado and knowing they once looked like the La Platas. For, there were still areas in the mountains where the enormous piles of slag were blights on the landscape that offered no purchase for plants to grow and reclaim the site.

Perhaps what was most angering was knowing that something could be done about it. She knew of places where reclamation projects were working wonders. It angered her to think of the places where less conscientious people had taken advantage of the environment without repaying it.

"Let's start with the cemetery," Garison suggested. "We were not of the Anglican church, so none of my family would be in the church yard. When I left, the Baptists, Puritans and Quakers were buried in the community lot. Let's see if they have torn that down, too. The old cemetery would make an excellent spot for a fast food restaurant or a car wash."

"They might have relocated the graves to a less commercially viable spot," Heather mused, trying not to be sucked into his cynicism, and failing.

Heather nodded and pulled into a gas station. An old man with a few teeth that pointed every which way came over wiping his hands with a greasy rag. He asked, "Fill 'er up?"

"No," Heather replied. "Actually we were looking for directions."

"Probably want to see George Washington's house, huh?" He pointed and said, "Well, go down to this next light—"

"No," Heather interrupted. "We were hoping to find the oldest cemetery in town."

"Cemetery, eh?"

"Yes," Garison offered. "We are hoping to trace my family tree. I have heard I have chil—ancestors buried here. Some as far back as the 1700s, possibly. I'm hoping to find their g-graves." The words sent a chill through his body and he physically shuddered.

"You must come from an old family. My family's been here since just after the Civil War. Come over from Scotland." The old man thought, then said, "There's the old community cemetery. There are graves in there from the 1700s, I hear. I haven't been there since I was a kid and we used to play hide and seek among the tombstones. Kids today, they just go into graveyards to vandalize. Would that be what you're looking for—the old one, I mean?" The Fitchs nodded and he proceeded to explain how to get there. It was not far, he said.