Written in Time (32 page)

The photographer’s left hand was raised high, holding the long flash-powder tray, his right hand controlling the shutter; his head vanished under the camera’s black cloth shroud. Perhaps it was just the desire to stay in character for the period, or perhaps it was something deeper than that, an unexpressed fear that, when the flash powder detonated, they would all be blown to bits. But they stood rigidly, waiting, and waiting, and waiting.
 

There was the flash, and the photo was made. Ellen leaned up to whisper in Jack’s ear, “I’m going into the back of the store to change and get rid of this stupid hat and this damn corset.”
 

“I’ll help you, at least with the corset part,” Jack gallantly volunteered.
 

“I bet you will.”
 

Ellen entered the store, expecting that Lizzie would be right behind her, expecting that Lizzie would be just as eager as she to change into more comfortable clothing. But, as she looked behind her, she saw that young Bobby Lorkin, the boy who did odd jobs and messengering, was outside, trying to make conversation with Lizzie. He was sweet on her, Ellen knew the look well, remembered it from the mirror when she’d had that look in her own eyes after first becoming aware of Jack as more than just one of the guys in high school.
 

Lizzie did not have that look for Bobby Lorkin, hadn’t yet had it for anyone. And Lizzie was waiting for that look. Lizzie wanted a marriage for love, not convenience.
 

Ellen walked on through the store, toward the back room, where she would change. David hadn’t yet turned the store into a supermarket, but it was a little reminiscent of a convenience store. Stock was arranged to facilitate traffic patterns, to allow customers to inspect goods at closer range than over a counter. The self-serve supermarket was not to be “invented” for quite some time yet, the credit for that innovation reserved for Piggly Wiggly stores. Yet David had displays, was using his merchandising skills to pitch product rather than merely waiting for a customer to ask for something by name. Since so much ordering was done from catalogs, David had catalogs arranged on a smallish desk the height of a bar, with three bar stools next to the desk, the setup almost identical to that used with pattern books in some stores in the late twentieth century.
 

Closing the storeroom door behind her and wedging a chair under the door handle in order to avoid having someone walk in on her while she was changing, Ellen began to undress, the ridiculous hat the first thing to go. The hairstyle that went with it would be rectified later. She started getting out of the dress. For a woman to properly dress, with all the requisite undergarments of the period, could take the better part of a half hour. Undressing was quicker, but not anything near what one might call convenient or quick.
 

But, all told, things weren’t so bad. They had working plumbing and could shower and wash hair as regularly as they had in the future. A large, central room of the house—for privacy’s sake a room with no windows—was relatively fully electrified. They could listen to music, watch a video, run a hair dryer, almost live like normal people. Admittedly, washing dishes without a dishwasher was a total drag, and cooking on a wood stove, albeit the best multiburner model available from back East, was not only a chore, but sometimes quite an adventure.
 

By rationing her supply of modern 35mm film and mastering the antiquated equipment of what was the present day, she’d been taking some of the best pictures she’d ever taken, and had been forced by necessity to get into developing, something she had always avoided (just as Jack, firearms aficionado that he was, had always shied away from hand loading ammunition).
 

She had created a small scandal in town by taking on a few writing assignments for the local newspaper, pieces which had nothing to do with church socials, recipes or women’s fashions.
 

Although David, through skillful ordering, could obtain many comparatively modern products for their use, to get a decent shampoo still required brewing their own. Other personal items demanded innovative approaches as well. Lizzie and Helen Bledsoe had become great unlikely friends. Theirs was an improbable friendship because Elizabeth, with the vastly broader range of experiences to which she had been exposed, was savvy and sophisticated. Helen was wildly naive. Whereas Helen was grounded, by and large, in only the homely skills and her knowledge of the world was, by any standard, parochial, Liz had traveled much of the United States, had rubbed elbows with the famous, stayed in some of the finest hotels and dined in some of the best restaurants. Through books, magazines, newspapers, television and radio—even school field trips—Liz had a knowledge of the world around her and its possibilities, even in this time. She knew that men would walk on the Moon in three-quarters of a century, would perform open-heart surgery, and would cross the United States coast to coast in hours rather than months. Yet more importantly still, Liz had been raised with the idea that “The only thing a man can do that a woman can’t is piss standing up without getting his legs wet.” For a woman to compensate for the superior physical strength and endurance of the male simply meant—usually—the substitution of brain for brawn, even if that meant recruiting a man to do the strength-related task for her, such as twisting open a stubborn jar lid. Elizabeth was very much the traditional female, but realized that her horizons could be as broad or nearly so as she worked to make them. Helen was schooled in the idea of achieving full contentment and realization of personal abilities in keeping a clean home for a husband who was the ultimate authority and had the final say-so in every aspect of life, to raise their children so that the boys would be as he was and the girls would, however such meekness might not be to their liking, acquiesce, serve, obey.
 

In discussing this concept of female second-classcitizenship with their daughter once, Jack had described the arrangement in a manner at once bizarre, yet painfully accurate. “However much a man might care for a woman, genuinely love her, in certain societies at certain times— even today—a wife was/is expected to be a love dummy which does not require inflation, yet is capable of housecleaning and cooking.”
 

Despite a chasm of differences between the two girls— and, sometimes, Ellen imagined, to Helen’s mother’s consternation—Lizzie and Helen were pals, buddies, and Lizzie, Ellen aiding in the conspiracy as often as she could, was regularly and conscientiously planting the seeds of independence in Helen’s life, the idea that in order to have a free will and the intelligence to use it, testicles were not required.
 

Clarence’s wife, Peggy, a medical doctor possessing knowledge of which the finest doctors in the age had not the slightest inkling, would be considered an oddity, nearly a freak, merely because of her sex. So far, at least, Peggy had hidden her skills; Ellen doubted Peggy could perpetuate so distasteful a charade.
 

That Lizzie would someday move to a large city, where a woman’s role could be less constrained if she had the brains and the talent, was obvious to Ellen. Lizzie would still only be in her thirties in the 1920s, when skirts shortened and minds broadened—at least a bit.
 

But the thought of Lizzie moving off sometime was very depressing, would leave a hole in her own heart and in Jack’s.
 

Ellen buttoned her blouse, rolled up her sleeves, cursed her hemline and left the storeroom.
 

Soon, David and Clarence would be off to San Francisco, “sin city” with its enticing Barbary Coast brothels, its ruthless press gangs shanghaiing the unwitting and its vile opium dens where a night on the pipe was some men’s glimpse of paradise—their only glimpse. David’s and Clarence’s mission was to convert a modest quantity of the family diamonds into coin of the realm, the remodeling of the store and the completion of their house having seriously depleted the family’s cash reserves.
 

However, there was a plus to David and Clarence being gone; she would be so worried about them she wouldn’t have much time to fret over Lizzie moving away someday and how lonely Jack and she would be.
 

And, in it all, Ellen found herself unable not to smile. Jack, ever the fan of Richard Boone’s immortal black-clad gunfighter, had instructed David and Clarence, “Whatever you do, if there really is a Hotel Carlton in San Francisco, get me a piece of hotel stationery or something. Okay, guys?”
 

David and Clarence, who had once obtained a Texas Ranger badge made from a Mexican peso and framed it with fake Texas Ranger identity papers as a gift for Jack, enthusiastically agreed to humor him this time as well.
 

Titus Blake swung down off the same big chestnut mare on which he’d ridden into Atlas when he’d come to assume the job of town marshal. Ellen remembered that day very well; Blake’s arrival had meant that Jack would no longer be filling in as the only peace officer in Atlas. She had never been fond of the idea of Jack being a cop (although Jack and she had several good friends in law enforcement in the future they’d left behind); Jack being the town marshal—a cop by another name—had been fraught with the potential to shatter their life together.
 

When Titus Blake rode down Atlas’ wide, dusty Main Street that first time, there’d been little gear on his saddle, merely a canteen, a rifle scabbard and a pair of saddle bags that had looked all but empty. The second horse he’d had in tow wore a pack saddle with what, she’d assumed at the time, were all of Titus Blake’s worldly possessions.
 

This time there was no packhorse. Blake’s saddlebags bulged, and a bedroll covered by a faded yellow slicker was lashed to the saddle as well. The rifle scabbard was there, its mouth just beneath the right saddlebag, the butt of a lever-action Winchester poking out from inside it. A shotgun with double barrels and exposed hammers was secured in a second scabbard on the left side of the saddle, near the horn. Ellen remembered Jack calling such a firearm a “Greener.”
 

Titus Blake looked ready for a gunfight and not some showdown at high noon with a lone gunman. But for the moment, all he did was remove his high-crowned, broad-brimmed gray Stetson and ask, “Miz Naile, Jack home?”
 

Ellen Naile inquired, “What seems to be the problem, marshal?”
 

“Ain’t for no woman’s ears, ma’am, lessen your husband thinks it’s proper. But I can say this. I need his help.”
 

“Come inside,” Ellen said without further hesitation.
 

“Ma’am?”
 

“Yes?” She turned around and looked at Titus Blake. “What is it?”
 

“Reckon I should remove my spurs?”
 

Ellen Naile could never remember the names for different styles of spurs, whether they were “jingle bobs” or whatever, but the marshal’s spurs had big rowels with spikes. “If you’re careful, Marshal, I don’t think they’ll be a problem.”
 

“If you say so, Miz Naile.”
 

Ellen forced herself to smile. Exaggerated politeness to women generally pissed her off. Ellen Naile opened the front door and went inside, Titus Blake’s spurs jingling after her. “You can leave your hat on that table, if you’d like.”
 

“Thank you kindly, ma’am.”
 

Ellen led him into the parlor off to the left of the short entrance hallway, the civilized side of the hearth to her right. The hearth in the kitchen, on the other side of the wall, shared a common chimney with this one. Sometimes, pleasant kitchen smells wafted their way into the room and imparted a cozy atmosphere she would have never thought she would enjoy, but did.
 

“Would you care for a drink, Marshal?”
 

“Right kind of you, Miz Naile, but I ain’t got a lot of time.”
 

Ellen took that as meaning he wished she’d shut up and go get her husband. “Please, take that chair by window. It’s quite comfortable.”
 

“Standin’ is just fine, Miz Naile.”
 

She nodded to Marshal Blake, gathered her skirts and walked out of the room and down the side hall, stopping at the door on her right. Very faintly, she could hear something that sounded like a car chase, punctuated by gunfire. She opened the door quite quickly and just wide enough to slip through, closing it even more rapidly behind her. Jack was listening to a CD, but wearing headphones while cleaning a revolver partially disassembled on the smallish table in front of him. It was the audio from the Mel Gibson videotape that Lizzie was watching on television that Ellen was afraid Marshal Blake might hear. How could she ever explain the sounds of gunfire, incidental music and high-speed “horseless carriages” coming from inside her house? Ellen had never thought that she would ever utter such words, but she said, “Turn off that Mel Gibson movie, Lizzie! Now!” Her daughter’s eyes registered naked shock.
 

Jack stood in front of the cold hearth, his right arm outstretched along its mantle, his right foot on the hearth’s elevated brick apron, his knee bent. He smoked a cigarette he’d just rolled.
 

Titus Blake, hands resting on the butts of the Colts at his hips, cleared his throat as if about to make a school recitation. His prominent but tiny Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. “I need a man who’s got a good hand with a gun and a cool head, Jack. There’s gonna be killin’, I reckon. You sure it’s all right for Miz Naile and Miss Lizzie to hear this?”
 

Ellen was sometimes very proud of Jack. “You said that time was of the essence—very important, Titus. If you feel uncomfortable talking about this in front of my wife and daughter, it’ll just take that much longer if I help you, because I’ll have to take the time to repeat to them everything you’ve told me. Ellen’s a grown-up. So’s Lizzie. We have no secrets around this house.”