Riding Shotgun (17 page)

“In God’s time.”

“God thinks in centuries!” Cig peevishly shot back.

“And so do you—now.” Margaret, stifling a laugh, started back to the house.

A light frost made the grass crunch underfoot. The James River lapped little gray waves on the shores as low dark clouds brushed the treetops. The brilliant color of the leaves against the pewter sky provided the only cheer but the wind was fast ripping the leaves off the trees. Winter had arrived overnight.

Cig’s spirits rose and fell in direct proportion to the sunshine. She’d taken over the animal chores and checking the bee boxes so that Tom could put in more hours in the back fields. He carried a huge flintlock, which he’d said he’d fire if there was trouble. A huge bell by the back door would call him if the house were threatened. A systematic, slow clap of the bell meant dinnertime. A rapid clanging meant fire, injury, marauders. Cig had little faith in Tom’s flintlock but she declined to tell him.

“Pryor.” Margaret called from the back door to wave her in. “Stew’s ready.”

Pryor wiped off her boots and stepped inside.

Margaret placed a bowl of lamb stew in front of her sister-in-law.
“That money you showed me, the paper. I’ve been thinking, how much would that be in pounds?”

“Oh—twenty-five pounds,” Cig guessed.

Margaret gasped, “Why would you carry so much money on your person?”

Cig laughed. “That’s not enough to buy a good meal.”

Scandalized, Margaret jabbed at her stew with a spoon. “Twenty-five pounds could buy you a strong man’s labor for a year or one of the finest mares in the New World.”

“Uh—I don’t know how to explain what’s happened to money. Inflation.” This met with a blank stare. “Okay, think of it this way. One pound buys less and less because the price of things and labor keeps going up. Governments print more money and it isn’t tied to anything—gold, for instance—it’s just paper.”

Margaret laughed. “No government that foolish could stay in power. The king would be toppled. Parliament would be swept away. You can’t just
print
money.”

“Ah, but they do—in my time, they do.” Cig held up her hands in a gesture of supplication. “I don’t have anything to do with it. I have no political power.”

“What woman does unless she’s the queen or mistress to the king?” Margaret continued poking at her stew. “But I cannot believe that men would be so foolish.”

“Inflation is the least of it. We have something called the federal deficit. It’s like running this farm on debt, literally. You are fueled by the debt and you work to service the debt so you never advance. That’s how my government works. They don’t have any money but they pretend that they do.”

“Why would people allow this to happen?”

“I don’t know. Lack of will?”

“That much hasn’t changed.” Margaret smiled for a moment. “Pryor, these things you tell me, they are so—so—”

“Outrageous?”

Margaret nodded her head. “—that they must be true.”

“They’re true all right. But for all the messes we’ve made, we’ve done a few things right. Just give me a minute to think of them.” She reached for a warm apple crisp.

Margaret’s fresh features underscored her natural openness.
She probed a bit more. “The morning you rode away, you left us a note—with numbers.”

“My phone number. In my time we have an instrument so we can talk over miles… continents even.”

“Ah.” Margaret sipped some tea. “Can you order supplies?”

“Sure. I was frantic for a telephone to call my children so they’d know I was all right. I couldn’t believe you didn’t have one but when Tom saw the dead Indian and said he’d ride over to Shirley to tell them, I think at that moment I
knew
this was 1699. Even if you all were reenactors you’d call—that’s short for using a phone—in an emergency and you’d have let me call.”

“Yes, I can see that. What’s a reenactor? I hate to ask so many questions but I’m curious, and you use such strange words.”

“I suppose I do sound funny—but our accents are surprisingly close. That’s a comfort.” She smiled sadly. “Much of what you know or do has been, maybe forgotten is the wrong word, superseded, replaced by something better and faster like the telephone.” Margaret nodded that she comprehended and Cig continued, “Reenactors are people who—gee, how do I explain this?—people who become captivated by some era before they were born. They study everything and then try to live that way—almost like a living museum.”

“Why, that’s a lovely idea.”

“It is, actually.”

“I could be like Cleopatra.” Margaret struck a pose.

“Watch out for snakes.” Margaret laughed as Cig continued, “I’m the one that needs to ask questions—like why did Pryor go to London?”

“Your father wanted you to see civilization before you became a broodmare, as he put it.”

“Why didn’t he send Tom? I thought men were more valuable than women in this time.”

Margaret refilled her teacup. “Value depends on what you want and need, does it not? Tom had no inclination to visit
the Old World. You did, and you were the apple of your father’s eye.”

“What happened to him?”

Margaret cast down her eyes. “No memory?”

“None.”

She sighed. “Charles Deyhle filled up a room. He’d argue with the governor or he’d tease James Blair, an important man and not a Toady to the Crown, although he can often be too serious. He’d take issue with Lionel and few men would dare. He had a way about him that even if you disagreed with him you liked him.”

“He sounds wonderful.”

“He was.”

“But what happened?”

“After your mother died, which happened shortly after you left—”

Cig interrupted. “Had she been sick? What I’m trying to get at is, would I have left if I’d known she was ill?”

Margaret’s left hand fluttered tip as she set down her teacup with the right. “Oh, no. Elizabeth was robust. She walked to the springhouse and fell over dead. Bobby ran over to her, he was fixing the fence, but she was gone.”

“At least she didn’t suffer.”

“God is merciful.”

“But what happened to my fa—to Charles Deyhle?”

“Oh,” Margaret stalled, “he was despondent as you would expect, yet he continued to work and conduct his business. He missed you but refused to write to you. He felt the news of your mother’s unexpected death was dolorous enough and as you’d recently arrived in England he thought it foolish to call you back because of his own low spirits.”

“So—” Cig pressed.

Margaret’s face grew flushed, “He was found hanging from the willow tree that used to be by the bend in the river.”

Cig was distressed. “I didn’t mean to upset you, Margaret. I’m sorry I brought it up.”

Margaret’s voice rose, “You see, Pryor, he wouldn’t have taken his own life. I don’t believe it for a moment. Although
he mourned your mother he wouldn’t spurn life. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.’ Charles Deyhle would never hang himself.”

“What does Tom think?”

“The same. He cut down the willow.” Margaret added that fact.

“Who would want to murder—”

Margaret jumped in. “No one! Oh, he had his spats. What strong-willed man does not, but those disagreements evaporated in time. I can’t think of anyone angry with him.”

Cig, curiosity flooding now, said, “When was he last seen alive?”

“Sunset.”

“When was he found?”

“Around nine. When he didn’t come in for supper we searched for him. It was December, dark very early, and that compounded our difficulties.” She stared out the window. “Tom found him when he went down to the river to hail John MacKinder.” She added, “He’s the ferryman and he happened to be coming up this way. When Tom saw his lantern he ran to shore to hail him and when John came closer they both saw your father.”

“How awful.” Cig imagined a swinging corpse on a cold December night. “You all have had your share of sorrow.”

“Everyone does,” Margaret stated.

“Forgive me for pressuring you.”

The turn of phrase was unusual to Margaret but she understood. “You had to know sooner or later.”

“Did you write—me?”

“Tom wrote that your father had been carried away by grief. He didn’t mention the hanging. He instructed you to stay out the year as that had been your father’s wish.”

“And I’ve returned, in a manner of speaking,” Cig ruefully said, “with no memory, wild stories, or so they must seem to you, and peculiar ways.” She stood up to clear the table. “How did Charles Deyhle dispose of his property?”

Margaret picked up a wooden bowl. “You and Tom own everything in common. Should you marry, the two of you will divide the land in half as well as tools, livestock, furniture,
if you wish. Or, if your husband can work with Tom, we will keep the land intact.”

Cig halted. “Isn’t that unusual?”

“No, not for your father. Your father hated lawyers and this way he ensured you and Tom would cooperate. You see, he was a lawyer.” A wry smile played over her lips.

“I can’t imagine marrying.”

She paused for she didn’t want to offend Pryor. “Your father swore you would never marry—he didn’t mean that as an insult…” she paused, “he meant—”

Cig interrupted. “That I was too independent.”

Margaret nodded.

“Lionel and Tom seem to think I’m going to marry.”

“Lionel courts you vigorously. You respond yet slip from his grasp. He could have any woman in the colonies, you know.”

“Then why’ does he want me?”

Margaret shrugged. “Because you’re elusive—and because marriage would greatly increase his land holdings. If he marries you, he would own more land than anyone in Virginia.”

“I see.” Cig had hoped Lionel’s ardor was only about her, foolish as that may have been. “Margaret, we have an expression in my time. The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

The wind howled that night as Cig curled up in a ball under the covers. The fire helped keep the room warm but the wind found its way through every crack. Now and then she could feel a little puff emanating from a crack under the window. Insulation was yet to come. She could bear that but she’d find herself craving Coca-Cola or a candy bar—especially Snickers. And potato chips. Indoor plumbing joined her list of lamented luxuries, but somehow that was easier to forego than Coke or the radio. Classical music helped her muck stalls.

If she set aside the niggling problem of nearly three hundred years, then everything appeared normal.

Whoever Pryor Deyhle was, she must be a good person. People genuinely cared for her.

Whenever she felt madness brushing her cheek, Cig told herself to hang on for Hunter and Laura. If there was a way back, she’d find it. Lately she told herself to hang on for Tom and Margaret.

Perhaps in the end it didn’t matter how she got to this place. Perhaps she could do some good in this life. And reflect on that life she knew in 1995.

When crushed by loneliness, she could call up Hunter’s face, Laura’s smile, Woodrow’s enormous bushy tail, Harleyetta’s penciled eyebrows, and Binky’s inept leer. She could recall Grace’s lovely alto voice and had to fight the tears for as much as she hated her, she missed her.

The sound of their voices, the cadence of their footfalls, those tiny triumphs of individuality, how vivid they were in her memory. Margaret and Tom could never imagine these unborn people whom they would produce.

The future used to seem like a distant point, an X or Y coordinate on the graph of life, yet the future was all around her. It must have been all around her in 1995, but she couldn’t taste it.

The past always seemed clear enough and now she knew that wasn’t true either. She realized that when a generation passes they take with it their breath, their laughter, the colors of their lives like a flag of being. Reduced to dates, battles, economic forces, or even to the more personal, a birth date, a death date on a tombstone, their experiences flattened until half or totally forgotten.

The past was not at all what she had been taught: a chain of seemingly inevitable events. No, it was a multitudinous, simultaneous chaos of choices made or not made by each human being alive. Sometimes those choices were made for you and some you made for yourself. The exercise of will, compassion, intelligence, complacent brutality, the stench of fear, and the struggle for beauty: choices. Even the choices you didn’t know you were making, like Tom’s acceptance of a sovereign, would set the future. Or Margaret’s choice to reach for whatever was good in any human being she happened to meet.