Echoes of Tomorrow (11 page)

Elise slapped her arm around Jan's shoulder and gave her a hearty hug.  "Of course.  We'd love to.  Just let me check my schedule and make sure I'm in town.  I'll get back with you."

Jan started toward the door but turned around to give Elise a peck on the cheek. 

"Don't let him get away, kiddo," she mumbled against Elise's ear.  "It'll take more than a lap full of ice water to cool this one off." 

When she walked away she gave Elise a lascivious smile, applying her lipstick in a most obscene manner.

*******

On the way home Elise filled Reed in on her two friends.  They were probably her best friends, she said, but they had drifted a little apart.  She was still single, and after Jan had given birth to twins five years ago it had created a gap in their relationship.

"I don't seem to have much input in a conversation about diaper rash and baby food."

As they strolled to the back door of the house, he draped his arm over her shoulders and tucked her up against him.

"Too bad they happened by when they did," he murmured into her hair, his breath causing it to stir slightly.

She stopped on the step and turned her face up to his with a grin.

"I rather liked the conversation we were having when they so rudely interrupted us," he whispered against her neck.  "Volant.  Why did you say volant right before you kissed me?  What does it mean?"  His warm breath on her neck caused shivers along her spine.  Elise nuzzled her face against his and brushed his lips with hers.

"You were...trying....to...describe......flying."  One long, mind-numbing kiss followed. Her bones melted and that welcome ache that had begun earlier in the day grew with every passing second.

"Oh, hell.  Look it up!"  She grabbed a handful of shirtfront and dragged  Reed through the back door.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Reed paced the floor like a caged lion.  The dark evening sky created a mirror on the den window, and after several passes he caught a glimpse of himself.   He paced in the opposite direction.  Elise was on another flight and had only been gone since two o'clock that morning, but he was totally lost without her.  How could anyone take over his mind and his life in less than a month's time?

He looked at the clock again.  A quarter past ten.  It had only been three minutes since the last time he'd looked at it.

He picked up the remote and flipped on the TV.  The control still felt foreign in his hand, but according to Elise he'd begun to use it like every other man in this day and age.  Watch ten seconds, flip to another channel; another ten seconds, another channel; finally get interested and a commercial prompts more flipping.   Once she'd finally grabbed it out of his hand  and aimed it toward him.  He'd half expected the darned thing to actually do something to him!

He sank to the couch, rested his forearms on his thighs, and after one last flip, dropped the remote between his feet.  He settled back and decided to leave it on one channel in his own kind of silly tribute to Elise.

At two a.m. he woke up and staggered to bed, wondering what Elise was doing, where she was, if she was thinking about him.

The jangling finally penetrated Reed's sleeping brain.  He jumped out of bed and banged the alarm clock with a fist.  He would never get used to that obnoxious, relentless sound.

The jangling stopped for a second, then started up again.  He banged the clock again then shoved it under the closest pillow.  As he came fully awake he realized the sound was coming from the phone.  Hesitantly he reached for the receiver and slowly put it up to his ear.  He'd only answered the phone once before.  He always just let it ring until that machine answered it for him.

"Reed?  Reed?  It's me, darlin'.  Are you there?"

"Elise?"

"Oh, I hope I didn't wake you.  Did I?"

Reed stared at the receiver, then placed it back against his ear. 

"Why would you imagine I was asleep?  Why it's..." he dug under the pillow to find the clock, "four-thirty in the morning.  My day's half over.  I was just about to go order up some lunch."

"Oh, I'm sorry.  It's just two-thirty here."  Just two-thirty.  Reed smiled and shook his head.  "I've tried for hours to go to sleep and I thought maybe if I could talk to you I'd be able to sleep better."

He grinned to himself and reassured her that he didn't mind.  "There's only a couple of better ways I can think of to be woken up," he mumbled, then smiled when Elise groaned.

They talked quietly for a few more minutes, mostly trying to find new ways to say "I miss you," then Elise said she'd better try again to get some sleep.  Her last words before hanging up were a sleepy, "I'll see you tomorrow night, my volant lover."

Reed hung up the phone, grinning at Elise's reference to their day at the restaurant after their flight.  "Look it up," she'd said when she grabbed his shirt and dragged him into the kitchen.  He hadn't given it another thought until now.

Look it up.  Very Well.  A quick trip to the bookshelves in the den should satisfy his curiosity.

After locating a dictionary among the eclectic array of books, he flipped it open and glanced at a guide word: 
antebellum.

"Oh, there's another one I meant to look for," he said to himself as he glanced down to the bottom of the page.

He read the definition, then squinted with concentration and read it again.

antebellum - before the war.  Usually

in reference to the American Civil War.

American Civil War?  Could they be referring to the Revolutionary War?  He'd never heard it described as a civil war.

He laid the dictionary to the side and scanned the bookshelves again.  Somewhere there was an encyclopedia Elise had shown him earlier.

Not sure exactly how to find his topic he pulled out the A and C volumes.  He found it under C.

"Ah, here it is," he said and settled back to get comfortable.

He was back on the edge of his seat in an instant.  A cold sweat dampened his shirt and a knot suddenly formed in his throat.

The very first piece of information was:

Civil War (1861-1865)

He readjusted his precarious seat on the edge of the couch and read on.  He read about how more lives were lost in that war than all the other wars in American history combined. 

My God!  How many wars had there been?

He read about the slavery issue and the differing attitudes between North and South.  This was no news to him.  He'd long debated the morality and legality of slavery, and had heard a few radical suggestions of a southern nation.

He visualized the first shots at Fort Sumter, the raid on Harper's Ferry, the southern states seceding from the Union.  He saw the pictures of dead soldiers in trenches, some missing parts of their bodies.  There were pictures of a man named Lincoln in one of the camp tents; of the most famous generals of both sides.  There were black men in Northern uniform, and the caption said twenty-three of them had been given the highest honor for bravery.

He read about two ironclad ships battling with no apparent victor; the battles of Bull Run, Antietam, Shiloh and Gettysburg.  He read about the Emancipation Proclamation, Sherman's march to the sea, and every other word written in the book about it, ending with the South's surrender and the president named Lincoln's assassination.

He felt like he was going to throw up. Sweat drenched his shirt, and he couldn't swallow past the constriction in his throat.  He got up and numbly walked to the bathroom, turned on the cold water and stuck his head under it.

Dear God Almighty
  He stood and raised his eyes to heaven.  Water ran unheeded down his back and chest. 
This is going to happen in twenty years.  Just twenty years.  No.  Not twenty years.  It's already happened.  These men are already dead.  One hundred and thirty years ago.  No one is left alive from when it happened.  Except me.  I'm alive.  I'm alive and some of my friends died in a war one hundred and thirty years ago.

For the first time since waking in this time, he felt a wave of depression settle over him like a heavy, suffocating blanket.  He plunged his head back under the cold water.  After several seconds he calmly dried off and walked back into the den, picked up the book, and turned to the last page that was titled "related topics."

*******

Elise roared into the driveway, not bothering to call out as she stormed into the house.  She'd seen the den light on and knew where to find Reed this time.

Bless his heart, he waited up for me,
she thought as she clattered up the sweeping staircase and down the hall.  She jumped the last couple of feet to land squarely in the middle of the doorway, arms flung wide and a huge, stupid smile on her face.  When her gaze took in the room her head jerked back and she blinked.

Books, most of them open, were scattered on every possible surface.  Three or four lay on cushions and the arms of the couch.  Reed, looking like hell with a day's growth of beard and dark circles under his eyes, sat in the middle of them with one open on each leg.  As she forged a slow path through the room she glanced down at the open pages.  All of them had one thing in  common. 

The Civil War.

Her eyes flew to Reed's, and as he saw the look of sympathy on her face he rose in stages, like an old man.  The books fell to the floor unnoticed.  He took a few hesitant steps in her direction, then she had her arms around him, his face buried in her shoulder.  He leaned against her as if it hurt for him to stand on his own.

He held her tight, almost squeezing the breath from her, and  er knees started to buckle.  They both sank to the floor and knelt against each other.  Finally she guided Reed's weight over to lean against the couch, his face still buried in her neck.

She smoothed his hair and rocked him back and forth, trying to find soothing words.  His head shook in denial.

After several minutes he finally took a deep breath and blew out slowly.  Stiffly, he started moving away from Elise. He sat up straight and flopped his back against the couch, his knees pulled up in front of him.  Plunging his fingers through his hair, he held on to his head with his palms cupped at the back.

"Now I know why you evaded the word ‘antebellum.’"   His voice wasn't much more than a whisper.  Elise looked at him, sitting there, with forearm dangling on one knee and shoulders slumped.

She opened her mouth to speak but could find no words to comfort him.  Finally she simply let her heart do her speaking for her.  She gathered him into her arms and held him tight, waiting until he was ready to talk.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The coffee had just finished brewing when Elise thought she heard Reed moving around upstairs.

What a hellish night. It had been one-thirty in the morning when she'd walked into the scene in the den, and four-thirty or later before, exhausted and numb, they had finally gone to bed.  That was only after Reed had barraged her with questions, some of which she could answer, and some which no one could.  After three hours of talking, Reed had still asked questions, trying to fathom the devastation of the war.  But he'd seen that Elise was nearly asleep on her feet, and he'd had to admit he was, too.  They'd both fallen into bed with their clothes on.

She turned toward the refrigerator to pull out a couple of eggs to scramble when she saw Reed standing in the doorway.  With palms on the door frame he leaned into the kitchen, studying her.  The night had taken its toll on him.

Closing the space between them, Elise slid her arms around his waist and laid her head on his chest.  It only took him a second to wrap his arms around her and rest his head on top of hers.

"How's my best guy this morning?" she whispered as she snuggled up closer.

He was quiet for several seconds before he shrugged.

"I feel better, I suppose."  He released her, scooped up two mugs and poured each of them a cup of coffee.  After tipping a few drops of milk into one he handed it to Elise then leaned against the counter.  He crossed his ankles with misleading nonchalance.

"I've had time to think about it.  I woke up a couple hours ago and just lay there, trying to sort out my feelings.  The news about the war was devastating, and I believe it will haunt me for the rest of my life.  But I realized this morning that up until last night I've never really come to grips with or accepted the fact that I'm here, in this time, seemingly for good.  With all the things to see and learn, and with you here to help me, I guess I've always felt this was more like a dream than reality.  Last night the reality came crashing home.  I'm here.  I don't know why; I don't know how.  All I know is that if it weren't for you I'd be insane right now."

Elise warmed at his words, yet struggled with this type of a declaration.  She was always uncomfortable with ambiguous statements from men.  Did he mean he was merely grateful for her help, or that she meant so much to him, she could make
an impossible situation livable?

"I know what you're feeling.  Sometimes when I'm on trips I think I must be losing it.  I can't make myself believe that I have a man from the mid-nineteenth century living in my home.  You know, I never really reacted to your being here like a rational human being.  I'll make up my mind to come home and quiz you until I get to the bottom of all of this, but when I walk in the door and you slide your arms around my waist, all my doubts melt away.  My resolve disappears.  You make everything feel right.  In fact, I don't care where you came from, as long as you don't go back there."