A Stitch in Time (15 page)

At first, Sarah imagined it to be the last little bit of transition from present to past, but everything else remained still. She rubbed her eyes and looked again. Inhaling sharply, she realised what was happening. The writhing mounds were not earth, but thousands of heaving grasshoppers clambering over each other trying to reach the last vestiges of corn foliage.

Stepping forward tentatively, she watched as some of the creatures devoured others and her stomach rolled with fear and revulsion as two or three took flight and landed on her head and arm. The vile thing on her arm was trying to bite through the cloth of a long-sleeved grey dress that had replaced her sweatshirt. Shrieking, she batted it off and flapped her hands at her head to remove the ones tangled in her hair. They felt dry and papery but their legs were strong and hooked into her scalp.

Panicking now, she swallowed her revulsion, grasped hold of one particularly stubborn insect, yanked hard, hurled it to the ground and stamped on it. It wriggled its legs feebly then lay still. She turned to run, still flapping her hands at her head.
Oh, thank God, another human!
Sarah could see a running figure draped in a blanket, hurtling towards her from a small homestead about fifty feet away.

‘Hell, Sarah, what are you doing outside without a blanket? Get over here and away from those devils!’ a man’s voice shouted. From under his arm he tossed her a rolled-up blanket. She quickly wrapped herself in it and hurried with him back to the homestead.

Once inside, the man slammed the door shut and removed the blanket. He wore rough blue overalls, was in his late thirties, tall, tawny haired and amber eyed. Sarah was reminded of the cowardly lion in
The Wizard of Oz
. Well, they
were
in Kansas after all, Toto. The cowardly lion rushed over to help a heavily pregnant woman tip a pot of boiling water into the fireplace, which was full of wriggling grasshopper bodies. Sarah shuddered. They must have flown in down the chimney.

The woman wore a long navy dress buttoned at the neck, similar to the grey one Sarah was wearing, with a stained apron over the top. She looked to be in her late twenties, with curly, light brown hair and chocolate brown eyes. Sarah was reminded of Dorothy in the film, but this woman was obviously older. Perhaps the lion and the girl had got married and she was about to give birth to a scarecrow?

On the other hand, perhaps one of the grasshoppers had bitten away a piece of Sarah’s brain that was normally responsible for rational and calm.

While the man and woman were busy scooping the insect bodies into buckets, Sarah looked around. The dwelling had a dirt floor and two walls were built of sod. The third and fourth were constructed of various types of wood and had obviously been begged, borrowed, or stolen from the look of the irregular strips and planks roughly nailed together. Two small windows allowed in some natural light, but overall the room was a little dark.

In the centre stood a rough table and chairs, in one corner was a rocking chair and a footstool on which knitting was placed, a battered armchair kept it company nearby, and in the other corner, looking strangely out of place in such rustic surroundings, a Welsh dresser displayed a few prized ceramic plates. My goodness, Sarah thought, Harriet Summers would be in her element here, though she imagined that a wind pump would be beyond this couple’s financial reach.

Noticing an internal door, Sarah walked over and opened it. A short passage showed two small bedrooms at either side. Drawing aside a curtain in an offshoot, a smaller bed was revealed, and a few books and a writing slate propped on top of a chair were squashed in next to that. Sarah deduced that a child must be lurking somewhere.

Through the tiny window Sarah watched the relentless devouring of the grasshopper army as thousands covered the ground like a wriggling, writhing carpet. She knew what was happening as soon as she’d seen them outside. This was the great grasshopper plague that had hit the Midwest and Great Plains in the summer of 1873, and had returned in even greater numbers in July 1874. Though they were called ‘hoppers’, they were actually Rocky Mountain locusts and literally millions of the creatures had descended on the prairies, eating everything in their path.

Tales had been told of swarms so big they blocked out the sun, and the beating of their wings sounded like the buzzing of gigantic bees and heavy rainfall. They had eaten anything growing – even the wool off sheep’s backs and the clothes off humans. They even bit through skin, as Sarah had witnessed firsthand; she was lucky that her arms hadn’t been bare, as the reports of grasshopper bites described them as more painful than a bee sting.

Last night Sarah had read the heartbreaking reports of the poor farmers as all hope for a new life disappeared into the bellies of those insects. Most of the homesteaders had left the overpopulated East Coast, or had even come from outside the United States to escape poverty or persecution. All had come with a hope to find a patch of land they could call their own and build a future for their families. The Homestead Act of 1862 had done much in fostering the American Dream. Under the Act, up to 160 acres of free land was allotted to a person. If the homesteader built a house and worked it for five years, it became theirs. This was something most poor people had only dreamed about and most had risked everything to realise it.

‘Sarah? Will you come out and help Joe burn the damned things? Hoppers or no hoppers, I have to prepare our meal,’ ‘Dorothy’ called. Sarah wondered if ‘Dorothy’ was Martha Klearny. Just in case Martha hadn’t yet stepped on to the set of
Little House on The Prairie
, Sarah decided to answer from the offshoot. If she was wrong, then at least she wouldn’t be standing face to face with the woman when she said, ‘What in the world has come over you, child? I ain’t Martha, I’m Dorathee!’

‘I’m comin’, Martha!’ Sarah called and was shocked to hear an American drawl come out of her mouth. Why she was shocked, she didn’t know. She would hardly fit in if she spoke with a modern English accent, now would she?

Peering round the door at the woman, Sarah was relieved to find that she was arranging flour tins and various other tins on the table. Must be Martha then … but was Joe her husband, brother, or what? Joe looked like he was preparing to go back outside. He shook out one of the blankets with his big farmer’s hands, doubled it and placed it back over his head.

He lifted the blanket and peered at her like a lion from a cave. ‘Quit gapin’ and get the kerosene from the barn while I start rakin’ ’em, woman,’ he said, striding outside.

Sarah turned to Martha. ‘I thought you meant burn the ones you just dowsed?’

‘Why’d we do that? We need to burn them live uns in what’s left of our field. This mornin’, Greg Olson told Joe that’s what they done yesterday. Damn critters stayed away after that, on account that they smelled the smoke of their brothers’ burnin’ bodies.’

Sarah nodded and folded her blanket. She knew that burning hadn’t done much good. Whatever the farmers had done or not done, after a day or two, depending on the area, the grasshoppers had taken to the air swarming in formations resembling big black snakes as they moved south leaving bare earth where crops had once stood.

Outside, from under her blanket, Sarah could see what must pass for the barn. A long lean-to shack was situated just behind the house, and as far as she could see was thankfully free of hoppers. Her rough work boots kicked up red dust as she made her way over. She wondered where the child was. It would be unlikely that it would be in school in the middle of a plague like this. Besides, many children were taught at home, if they were taught at all.

Opening the heavy wooden door, she stepped inside. When her eyes got used to the dark interior of the barn, she could see a variety of tools, sacks of grain and a couple of horses tethered to a hitching post. A milking cow stamped at flies and six or seven hens scratched in the dirt. A ladder led to an upper level, presumably a hayloft, and a large jar marked kerosene stood just inside the door.
That grain needs protecting, it’s a wonder the hoppers haven’t been at it already.

‘Be sure and plug the gap under the door, Ma! I burned a few that came in up here, but I don’t think it’ll be long before more come.’

Ma? Sarah looked up. A pair of forget-me-not blue eyes peered down anxiously at her from the top of the ladder. The eyes belonged to a boy of around ten years old; he had a shock of white blond hair and held aloft a flaming torch. Sarah thought he was the personification of Ralph in
Lord of the Flies
.

‘Ma, are you listening? Plug the door with those kerosene rags!’ He ducked back into the gloom, gave a whoop and she heard his feet stamping on presumably a few more hoppers.

Sarah looked down at a line of rags by her feet that she had disturbed when entering. Kicking them back under the door, she cursed John. How could he let her go on a mission knowing that this Sarah had a child? Didn’t he know that for the past few years she had yearned for one? Didn’t he know that her husband had started a family with her best friend, leaving Sarah wondering if she’d ever get the chance to have one of her own?

She knew the answer to these questions was yes. The first day she’d met him, he’d read out her life story from his clipboard. One thing was for sure; he would get a piece of her mind … if she had any of it left when she returned. Another thing was for sure; whoever she had to save had better be bloody well worth it.

No sooner had Sarah plugged the gap under the barn door than it was flung open again and in stomped an angry Joe. ‘What’s keeping ya, woman? I raked a pile o’ hoppers as big as Artie up there, but the damned kerosene didn’t show!’

‘Sorry, Joe, I’m comin’ now,’ Sarah said, hoisting the heavy jar into her arms.

‘Artie! Git down here too, bring another rake,’ Joe yelled, and then ran back outside.

When Artie and Sarah arrived at the field a few minutes later, Joe had managed to rake another pile of grasshoppers. Sarah felt her stomach roll at the sight of the tangle of legs and bodies writhing in a heap. Artie set to raking more of the creatures from the cornfield and Joe wrenched the kerosene from her grasp.

‘I swear to God, Sarah, you are acting like a sleepwalker today!’ He dipped a piece of rag in the jar and threw it on the pile. ‘Matches?’ he snapped, glaring at her.

Sarah felt in the pocket of her apron. Nothing. ‘Um … I don’t have any …’

Her shortcomings were interrupted by a
THRUM, THRUM, THRUM
 …
The ground under foot seemed to shudder and the air around their heads suddenly vibrated with the beating of thousands of tiny wings. Sarah looked up in awe as the hoppers took off as one into the sky. Even though she had read reports of the scale and shape of the swarms, now she was an eyewitness to it, she could hardly believe what she saw.

A huge undulating black ‘S’ stretched from the field and high into the blue like some hideous Biblical pestilence. A few minutes later, they had disappeared over the plain, ready to wreak havoc on the next homestead. Apart from the tangled pile at her feet and a few injured hoppers in the ruined field, the whole lot had vanished in a matter of minutes.

Sarah looked at Joe and Artie. If anyone wanted a definition of utter despair, they could forget the dictionary and just look at Joe’s face instead. Sarah had the strange feeling that he had turned from a living, breathing man into a sepia photograph. His shoulders slumped, the passion in his unusual amber eyes was snuffed out like a candle, and the corners of his mouth endeavoured to reach the red dust beneath his feet. His huge capable hands hung limp, as if paralysed.

Artie looked from Joe to Sarah. An ocean of tears swelled in his blue eyes. Utter despair had somehow travelled across the few feet of dirt from Joe and seeped into his every pore. The ocean crashed on to his cheeks and his wave of sadness washed Sarah’s own eyes.

Brushing her tears away, she looked at the ruined fields. Just a few pathetic stalks of corn sprouted from the ground, like a few unshaved hairs on a man’s face. Sarah knew that this might well be the end for all of them unless there was enough food in the barn to get themselves and the animals through the winter.

‘Joe! Thank God, they’ve gone …’ Martha hurried towards them holding her bump, her face smudged with flour. Then she saw the destroyed fields and gave utter despair a voice. An animalistic wail left her mouth, piercing the hot, dry air; a cry so gut wrenching that it chilled Sarah’s blood. Putting her hands on her head, Martha let out another anguished cry. Her legs buckled, refusing to support her any longer, and she knelt in the dust crying over and over, ‘Why, why, dear Lord, why!’

Sarah realised Joe was oblivious to anything except his own private misery and Artie gave a strangled sob and sped back to the house. She knelt next to Martha. ‘Come now, Martha, we’ll survive … we’ll get through somehow …’

Martha stopped wailing, threw back her head and laughed humourlessly. ‘That’s what we always say. We moved from Missouri when we couldn’t make ends meet just two year ago, came here to this land of milk and honey … remember, Joe? Remember that’s what
you
said, Joe, a land of milk and honey? Well, the milk’s curdled and the bees forgot to come to this Godforsaken land.’

‘Hush your mouth, woman!’ Joe strode forward and towered above them both. His whole body trembled and his hands, having shaken off the paralysis, clenched and unclenched. Joe’s eyes had re-found passion but a red mist had kindled it.

Before things took an uglier turn, Sarah stood and dragged Martha to her feet. ‘Let’s git you inside. It’s not good for the baby gittin’ all distressed like this.’

Once inside, Martha went to the rocking chair, sat down and stared vacantly at the wool on the footstool. Utter despair must have squeezed in under the door as it shrouded her from head to toe. Sarah could hear Artie sobbing in his room and right at that moment, if she had a choice, she’d have demanded a return ticket to the present.

Sarah put a kettle on the stove and looked for coffee. She didn’t have a choice though, did she? No. And why didn’t she have a choice? Because she would lose John, and with him would go her heart, neatly broken into a million pieces and shortly after that, her sanity would follow. She looked at Martha, drained of all spirit.
There’s another reason, too, isn’t there, Sarah? You could never live with yourself if you abandoned these poor folk now.

The door crashed back against the wall and shuddered on its hinges. Sarah, nearly dropping the tin coffee mugs, whirled round to see Joe framed in the doorway, his hair blowing in the wind like a great lion mane, hope and anger vying for dominance in his eyes. ‘I’m packin’ a bag and goin’ to Wichita,’ he growled, rushing past her and into one of the bedrooms.

Martha heaved herself up and put her hand to the small of her back. ‘I’d better go see what he’s talkin’ about.’

Sarah put the tin mugs down and followed her out into the bedroom, scared of what Joe may do in his feverish state.

‘But what if there is no work in the stockyards, Joe?’ Martha was saying.

‘I’ll find work somewhere else. I have to, Martha; we have food to last a few weeks but that’s it.’

‘But you’ll be so far away, must be twenty mile or more and … we ain’t never been parted afore, not since our wedding day,’ Martha whispered, her eyes filling with tears.

Sarah folded her arms and leaned her head on the wall. That answered the ‘are they married?’ question then.

‘No we ain’t, Martha.’ Joe finished stuffing clothes into a canvas holdall and turned to face her. ‘But we ain’t ever been as near to destitution as this before, neither.’

Joe pushed past them both and hurried outside to the barn. A few minutes later, he drove a big black horse hitched to a small cart up to the house. Martha and Sarah stood in the doorway, but Artie pushed past and ran out to meet him. ‘Take me, Uncle Joe. I can work with you.’ He put his hand on the horse’s reins. ‘Just gimmee a minute to pack my bag and …’

Joe flicked the rein and backed the horse up. ‘No, boy, you gotta stay here and look after the women; no telling what would happen if they were left alone.’

Artie looked as if he might argue, but then seeing the set expression on his uncle’s face, he looked to the ground. ‘Yes, sir, I’ll protect ’em.’

Yeah right, a ten-year-old boy? How sexist is that?
Sarah shook her head. Perhaps not the best time to foist modern opinions on the situation, though.

Joe held his hand out to Martha. She walked out, stroked the horse’s neck with one hand and gave her other to Joe. ‘I’ll be as quick as I can, hopefully no more than a few weeks. I’ll return with this here cart full of provisions.’ He looked lovingly into his wife’s eyes. ‘We’ll survive … we always do.’ He smiled and kissed Martha’s hand.

Sarah swallowed a lump in her throat. ‘We’ll be fine, Joe. Me, Martha and Artie will keep this place safe until your return.’

Joe nodded at her and Artie, flicked the reins, and kissed his teeth at the horse. The horse tossed its head and set off at a fast trot out on to the plains, churning up a red cloud as it went. The three of them watched until Joe became a little dot on the horizon, and then they went back inside.

Sarah wished that utter despair had hitched a ride with Joe and jumped out on route, instead of choosing to keep them company. Artie shoved his hands in his pockets and mooched, whilst Martha just shook her head at Sarah and sighed heavily enough to plunge the house into the centre of the earth.

‘Do you want me to finish making bread?’ Sarah asked, hoping that the answer would be no, as she hadn’t a clue how to do it.

Martha shook her head again and poured water into a bowl from a ewer similar to the one Sarah had used in 1913. Scrubbing her hands with a bar of rough soap she said, ‘I’m not making bread, I’m making pancakes, and I need to keep busy anyways.’

Sarah drew a chair up to the table and paid careful attention to what Martha did with the pancakes in case she may be required to make them. As she watched Martha’s spoon measure and beat, she wondered where her husband was – Artie’s father. It didn’t seem likely that he was around, or surely Joe wouldn’t have asked Artie to take care of them. This thought comforted her, as performing wifely duties in the bedroom would be above and beyond the call of duty … unless by some miracle Artie’s father turned out to be John.

Sarah placed her elbows on the table and cupped her hands under her chin. How she missed him. She’d only been away from him for a few days and her body yearned for his touch. If only she could hear his voice on a telephone line across time, she’d feel less lonely. But that wasn’t going to happen and so she’d better stop mooning over him. Besides, he was going to get an earful over Artie before he got sweet nothings.

A few minutes later, Artie quit mooching and joined them at the table. ‘Ma, can I go over and see Abe Reimer? He said they were getting a new cow.’

Sarah felt a warm glow in her belly. She was someone’s mother and it felt good. ‘Well, don’t you think you’d better eat your pancakes first?’ She smiled, ruffling his unruly mop of hair.

Martha stopped beating the mixture and pointed the dripping batter spoon at Sarah. ‘Just because my Joe has gone don’t mean that you can go over his head. You know Artie ain’t allowed by that Mennonite place.’

Mennonites? Now why did that ring a bell? Sarah remembered. Yes, they had been an immigrant group that had settled in the area and elsewhere around this time. They had come from Russia and had, she thought, German origins, too? Why wouldn’t Joe want Artie to visit them? Artie looked at her, obviously expecting an answer. Sarah shifted uncomfortably in her seat. How could she ask why, without asking why?

‘I know Joe said that, but they’re not that bad, are they?’ Sarah asked. She thought that if a thoughtful and caring little boy like Artie wanted to visit this Abe, he must be OK.

Martha frowned and continued to beat the batter. ‘Well, your Arthur gave his life fighting in the war for what was right. Them folk don’t raise a finger to no one. Joe’s says as how they hide behind this fancy “pacifist” word, but really, just plain cowardly is what they is.’

Sarah sighed. So, that’s what had happened to her husband. The American Civil War had ended in 1865; poor Artie must have only been a baby when his father was killed, or perhaps Sarah had been pregnant at the time. Whatever the scenario, it was incredibly sad. Not only had these people struggled with the harsh winters, the droughts, and now a locust plague, they had recently been through the bloodiest war in American history. New weapons for the time, such as hand grenades and machine guns, were used, alongside swords and rifles. Over 600,000 had been killed in total.

‘So what do you say, Ma?’ Artie looked up at her hopefully.

As much as Sarah wanted to let him go, because if these people were pacifists, they had her vote, she thought that may cause more tension in an already tense atmosphere. ‘Perhaps another time, Artie. Why don’t you go and make sure that all those hoppers are dead out in the field and in the barn?’

Artie looked at her as if to say ‘that’s a cop out’, but he nodded. ‘Yes, Ma,’ and slipped out.

Sarah left the table and from the door watched him run to the barn. If the situation hadn’t have been so hopeless, the scene before her (apart from the ruined field) was breathtaking. Sarah had never seen a landscape as vast. From her front door back home, she could see a row of houses, and though the scene from John’s door was beautiful, she felt as if the next hill was within easy reach, the next tree a walk away, but here – the great flat expanse of land joined hands with the sky and rolled away to infinity.

The scent of wild sage drifted on the wind, so relaxing. Sarah closed her eyes and leaned her head against the rough wood. If only she were here on a time-travelling holiday instead of a mission to save a life. Now, that could catch on back home; she should open a business. A smile flickered across her lips as she pictured a customer going to the counter in the time-travelling agents.
Morning, madam, please take a seat. Now we have Rome, Paris, or an 1830 holiday? Yes, madam, I do mean the real 1830!

She opened her eyes and yawned. So, who the hell did she have to save this time? Joe had gone, so that left Artie or Martha. No itchy feet, tingling in the back, or hiccups so far, but then she had had none of those in 1913, either. And what harm were they likely to come to in the middle of nowhere? Certainly in the 1860s Indians may have attacked them, but not now.

The aggressive expansion of the great American dream had forced the Native Americans off their homelands and ever westwards, into smaller and smaller reservations. One of the last big battles was set to take place when Custer would get his comeuppance, but that would be two years into the future and in Montana. No, though it wasn’t impossible, it was unlikely that they were in danger from Indians. Much more likely to be bitten by rattlesnakes, struck by lightning, or get a disease due to the dirty conditions they had to live in. Mm … lovely.

‘Hey, Sarah, can you wash these dishes while I cook us some pancakes?’ Martha called, halting her contemplation.

‘Yes, I surely can.’ She laughed at the ‘surely’. It was as if someone in her brain was rifling through the ‘stereotypical Old Western speech’ section and emailing appropriate words to her tongue.

Sarah looked past Martha at two big buckets of water. There was no sink. One bucket looked decidedly scummy, and on its surface a few flies were doing a few lazy circuits on their way to a watery grave. The other one didn’t look much better, but at least it looked a little cleaner. Picking a dish from the table, Sarah went to dunk it in the clean bucket.