Justification For Killing (48 page)

He saw the accelerator
pedal. It was the same as the one on his car, check. And the brake,
yeah, he knew how it worked. Forrest decided to place his left foot
on the clutch pedal, but before he did he pushed hard with his
right foot on the brake. Was he ever a sight - sitting there with
both legs stretched out and both feet on the brake and clutch
pedals, and both hands firmly grasping the big ole steering wheel?
He knew he must have had a terrified look on his face, but Forrest
didn’t want this old Ford running through the end of the barn! They
needed the truck! Besides he didn’t want to kill himself or Olive
Marie, but he must have been funny looking because he took a glance
toward Olive and could see she had her hand over her mouth
snickering.

“
Forrest, my boyfriend
Ryan’s car is a stick shift, and I have watched him drive it. He
pushes the clutch then changes gears using this shifter
thing.”

With both feet still
pressing hard on the two pedals, and both hands firming gripping
the steering wheel he said, “Okay, your driving lesson was good to
know now turn the key on the dash while I hold on.” Olive grasped
the key and turned. From under the hood Forrest heard that grinding
motor sound again -
that has to be the
starter trying to turn this old, cold motor,
he reasoned. Over it turned, once, twice and on the third
time it sputtered. That was good; in fact, it was real good the
truck did not lunge this time. It needed a bit of gas, but Forrest
was afraid to lift his foot from the brake and push the
accelerator, but he must. He moved his right foot and touched the
gas pedal ever so slightly and quickly returned his foot to the
brake – Olive turned the key again and the starter turned the
engine a turn or two, and the old Ford came to life. They felt
extremely proud of themselves as they sat there, in the old barn,
on their frozen seat listening to the motor chug right along. It
was a terrific feeling, but what were they to do
now?

Now there were a lot of
things Forrest didn’t know about old manual shift Ford trucks, but
there was one thing he did know – he believed they had heaters. He
could see the lever on the dash, which surely must be the heater
control. He hoped it would turn on some life saving heat! With feet
still holding hard against the two pedals, he asked Olive Marie to
turn on the heater. As she moved the lever they both looked for the
vents in the dash to feel the heat begin to flow. Looked is correct
since there were no vents for them to see! What was the sensation
Forrest felt at his feet? There it was, he felt a bit of warmth
beginning to seep out from under the dash. It was warm air. The
truck’s heater was beginning to provide the much-needed heat he and
Olive Marie so badly needed.

All right, the fuel gauge
indicated the tank was full (or was it broken?); it surely had
enough to keep them warm for a few minutes. Now, since they weren’t
freezing to death, he could ponder their next movements. Forrest
did not know the time, the crystal on his wristwatch, was broken,
and his watch had stopped running. Olive Marie did not even have a
watch. Grandpa had not mentioned this phenomenon; however, he must
assume he had arrived at the same time as Grandpa did. Thinking
back, the time should be around 12:30 on December 20,
1963.

Wait a
minute
, Forrest thought,
if Grandpa returned at 12:30, December 20 in 1963
and we are here at, I guess, 12:30 on the same date... how can this
be possible. It can’t be! I know enough physics to realize two
objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time. We may have
traveled back in time, but space is space – something was wrong.
Either Grandpa misspoke his arrival time or today wasn’t 12:30 on
the 20th of November 1963!

Now Forrest began to doubt
they were in the ‘right’ cow pasture, he wasn’t even sure they were
in Texas. No! It had to be, how many pastures would have the grove
of trees, the cows, the oil wells and this old barn with an ancient
Ford truck sitting inside. He supposed it wasn’t beyond the realm
of reason, but if this were not his Grandpa’s pasture it would be
pushing coincidences to the limit.

All of a sudden he
had a revelation! Forrest remembered his Grandpa had told about how
he traveled from one Parallel Universe back forty-nine years and
arrived in the cow pasture in another Parallel Universe. At 12:30
Friday Grandpa would change the Parallel Universe path of the Earth
again.
Is it possible there are dozens if
not hundreds of Parallel Universes
?
Forrest thought.
We may be in ‘C’ or ‘D’
or who knows which one.
This Universe
stuff was beginning to make his head hurt. He decided since he
could not do anything about it, he would forget about it and
continue with his original plan (whatever that
was).

Regardless of where
they arrived, the door on the time machine would not re-open for
another twelve hours, he knew for certain this was correct. Forrest
wondered how long it would take to walk to Clem and Penelope’s
house. He had to do something because in exactly twenty-four hours
from now
Pegasus
was going to return to the lab at SCAR headquarters. Wait a
minute, he thought of something, Grandpa was SUPPOSED to leave
Texas on Saturday December 23, 1963 twenty-four hours after his
arrival. Mr. Rousseau messed with the setting on Grandpa’s gauges,
and Grandpa ended up arriving on Wednesday November the 20th, so he
had from Wednesday until Saturday to complete his mission. Although
he left Texas on the 23rd, he came back into the meeting in
Washington, D.C., on the 22nd of November. He changed
Universes!!

This was the
predicament Forrest and Olive Marie were in. They did not know how
much time they had. What if Mr. Watkins had changed the return
time? Forrest wished he had paid more attention to the
‘
RETURN
’ dial.
That will be the first thing he would check when the hatch
re-opens. Even assuming they were in Texas on Wednesday November
the 20th, they only had one day to find out about the meeting with
Vice President Johnson at Clint Murdock’s house. They had to be at
the party Thursday night the 21st.

Sitting in the truck, the
motor running, incredibly warm air poured out from the heater
thawing their frozen bodies. Forrest wondered how he and Olive were
going to spend the next twelve hours.

Olive exclaimed, “Forrest,
I don’t know if I should thank you or not for letting me come with
you, but I have just one question since we are here,” she
emphasized waving her arms through the air. “Tell me again what are
we doing in Texas? I know you said something about this Murdock
fellow, but what are we hoping to accomplish?

The cab of the Ford had
warmed to the point Olive Marie felt comfortable enough to engage
in conversation, “Forrest, tell me more about this Mr. Murdock and
Margaret White. “Do you seriously think this Margaret White woman
was telling the truth, and President Johnson actually had something
to do with the Kennedy assassination?”

“
Sis it is not even known
whether Margaret White was the girlfriend of President Johnson or
not. All we have is her word. Even if she was his girlfriend, and
was at a party at Clint Murdock’s estate the night before President
Kennedy was assassinated, just her saying it does not prove
President Lyndon Johnson was there nor had anything to do with the
assassination.”

“
Forrest, where in the
devil did you find all this information?”

“
From Kym
Holmes.”

“
Who is she?”

“
I don’t believe you know
her Sis. Remember last summer Grandpa had me working in SCAR’s
Department of Research well I thought when we got a chance to go to
Dallas to work on the Kennedy Assassination I wanted to be ready.
Kym is one of their best research specialists, so I picked her
brain daily for information that might be of use to us. Clint
Murdock was just one piece of information she supplied.”

“
Okay, but how does that
concern us?”

Little Sister, now I’m
getting to the good part! That is what you and I are doing in
Texas. This is ‘The Plan’, what do you think?”

“
Think? Think what,
Forrest? All you have done is rambled on and on about some Texas
millionaire, Lyndon Johnson and his so-called girlfriend. As I
said, how does this concern us?”

“
I filed the information
away Kym Holmes gave me, thinking this would be something I could
investigate when the time was right. Well, Sis the time is right -
right now. We’re going to the Clint Murdock’s estate and see who
shows up at his party. Especially, we want to see if Lyndon Johnson
makes an appearance. If Johnson comes to Murdock’s party, and meets
with a bunch of high-level politicians then the story his
‘girlfriend’ Margaret White told is probably true. If we could hear
what they discussed in their meeting, maybe it might provide
evidence there was a conspiracy by the Vice President of the United
States to assassinate the President of the United
States.”

“
Why Forrest? Why would
the Vice President be involved in something so
sinister?”

“
Just look at the title in
front of his name: “Vice”, Vice President Johnson”. He wants the
‘Vice’ removed, he would like his title to be just “President
Johnson”.

“
How... how are we going
to find out whether the Vice President came to the party or
not?”

“
Questions! Questions,
Olive Marie, I don’t know... I didn’t say I had all the answers. In
fact, I don’t have any of the answers. If I had it already solved,
there would be no reason for you and me to be here. I’ll just have
to figure it out as I go along.”

“
Okay Forrest, let me see
if I’ve got this straight. We have time-traveled forty-nine years
into the past. We are now, supposedly, in the year 1963. Let me see
if I’ve got this right: you’ve got me in a frozen, snow covered,
dilapidated barn, sitting in a truck that is probably a reject from
the 1950s, freezing my butt off, and now you’re saying you don’t
know what ‘The Plan’ is? Is this about right?”

“
Now Sis don’t get upset!
It’ll come to me, it always does. Just give me a minute to think...
all I’ve been doing is talking to you.” For the next few minutes,
Forrest sat thinking. Olive Maria went to the barn door to check
the weather conditions.

Getting back into the
truck, “Okay Forrest – I’ve got good news and bad.”

“
Dog gone it Sis, you know
I hate those good and bad news things. Okay, I’ll play along, give
me the bad news first.”

“
It is snowing, and
snowing real hard... there must be four or five inches of snow on
the ground now, and it seems to have gotten a lot
colder.”

“
Okay, now give me the
good.”

“
The
good Forrest is, I have a plan. I know it’s not ‘The Plan’, but at
least it is ‘
a
plan
’.”

Olive Marie sat there in
the old Ford and outlined a series of clandestine operations she
thought might work. She actually came up with some things Forrest
had not even thought about. Yes, his Sis, little Olive Marie...
(let’s be honest he didn’t have anything). Her first comment
concerned the weather. She correctly explained the frivolity of
sitting in this old barn all night and patiently waiting until
12:30 tomorrow afternoon. Her concern was the temperature was
dropping, and they probably would run out of gas long before seeing
the hatch open again. If they ran out of gas they were going to be
in deep do-do, and not the cow kind piled in and around this old
barn. The worst part: they probably would freeze to death before
anyone ever found them. They couldn’t walk in this blizzard; so she
purposed Forrest drive the truck to Clem and Penelope’s Ponderosa
before the snow could get any deeper.

“
Drive! Drive!” Forrest
had to come clean. “Sis, I have to admit I am embarrassed – I don’t
know how to drive this thing!”

“
It’s okay Forrest, I knew
you didn’t... let me think...”

Olive Marie had another
idea. She said, if Forrest would let her, she believed she could
figure out how to drive the truck. She reemphasized she had watched
her boyfriend drive his Mustang, and knew she could drive this ole
Ford.

Before he had a
chance to protest she continued, “We knock on Clem and Penelope’s
door and seek refuge from the storm. Grandpa has explained how
warmhearted the two of them are so getting them to invite us to
stay overnight will probably not be too hard.” For her plan to work
she asked if Forrest knew, without his notes in
Pegasus
, where Clint Murdock
lived?

He explained he had
memorized the directions to the Murdock estate by listening to Ms.
Holmes talk. He said it was located on the north side of Dallas at
45 Ash Hill Lane. Ash Hill is just off Hwy 279 about forty miles
from their present position in Celina, Texas (assuming they were
actually near Celina).

“
Forrest,” said Olive
Marie. “Grandpa said Clem was a part-time limo driver, and Penelope
was a waitress. They must have uniforms! If we had those uniforms
you could pose as a chauffeur and I could pretend to be a maid, we
could go to the estate, snoop around the grounds and watch who
comes and goes. I might even get close enough to hear some of the
conversation from the meeting room.”