Time Drifters

We had left the forest party at the fork in the road. Walker was to stay out of sight, watching from cover of the trees, while the others would wait, hopefully, for the arrival of Major Andre.

The plan was that Capucine would stand on the trail, supposedly looking for berries to pick… even though Gwendolyn said it was “preposterously late in the season” for berry picking. At twelve, like me, Capucine was young enough not to arouse concern from any approaching traveler. When a man on horseback got close enough, Gwendolyn, with her lovely British accent, would scold the child that she must stay off of the main road. That would indicate to the Major which was his fated route in case he thought to take the other. And plan B was for Walker to simply scare him back to the main road.

If that failed, Walker would hunt him down on horseback and Caelen would, supposedly, beat the crap out of the Major and any other escort who was unfortunate enough to be with him, and then shove the Major to his horse and send him south. I giggled at the idea because it was both funny and had never been written in any history I had heard. Then again, we were supposed to stay out of the history, not rewrite it.

Rufus and Barkley liked the idea of getting in on a scuffle in the forest but it was a short-lived hope. Thomas assured them that there might be just as much, if not more, scrapping to be done with us.

I wished Capucine good luck and waved goodbye as our “town party” proceeded south to Tarrytown. The last thing I heard from them was a kind of argument between Gwendolyn and Caelen about when cranberries came into season and whether it was beyond reason to be looking for them in a forest instead of a bog.

“Ye’ll simply no’ let it go, lass, will ye,” Caelen muttered.

The walk seemed to take forever. I kept looking at gullies and small creeks that we passed, trying to place them in the geography of my own time period but none of it looked absolutely familiar even though I knew that the Hudson was to the west of us.

The twins were all over the place and Thomas was setting a fast pace with Marijka and me doing our best to keep up. She’d scolded him again about “trying to kill” me. He snapped back that he’d done nothing with bad intentions, that he had more than paid for any wrongdoing—and she was welcomed to examine the bruise on his stomach if she felt otherwise—and that she was being ridiculously protective.

“He’s just like the rest of us,” Thomas said with disdain. “He’s thrown into the mix and he either has to sink or swim. You’re not helping him by coddling.”

I felt badly but l didn’t think their argument was just about me. It didn’t make for a very talkative walk, however, and I wasn’t the only one who noticed the tension.

“I wish Aurie was here,” said Barkley. I could tell it was Barkley because of the blood that got onto his sleeve when he’d been with Gwendolyn in the cabin.

“Who’s Aurie?” I asked.

Barkley lit up and struck a pose, grandly announcing, “Aureliano Ermenegildo Baldom…”

“Enough! Stop it!” Thomas snapped, cutting him off.

“But he knows him,” protested Barkley, even though Rufus was also giving him a nudge.

“That’s not the point,” Thomas said. “You know better, Barkley.”

“He would be singing the entire way,” Barkley continued defiantly.

“Really?” Thomas asked, his jaw dropping and his eyebrows colliding. “Really? I give up.”

“What?” I shouted. “Do you guys never want to tell me anything? I’m going to go home, and I’m just putting it together that I can’t tell my parents or any friends. And my postmaster, Mr…”

“No, no names,” Marijka shouted, jolting forward and waving her hands at me to stop. “No names, never.”

“Okay, fine,” I said, “no names.”

“Trinder,” Thomas said, surprisingly quietly.

“But I’m only talking about now,” I insisted. “Not about my future, or, I mean, your future and my present. I’m saying, why can’t you talk to me about the other Drifters?”

“Trinder!”

“Don’t ‘Trinder’ me, Mr. Loud-Mouth,” I yelled.

Thomas spun around and dropped to his knee to come face to face with me.

“Listen up,” Thomas said, his breathing heavy but controlled. “I do know you. I know that you’re an only child and I am, too. So I get you better than you realize. I also know that you’re used to getting what you want when you want it. But that doesn’t fly here, kiddo. And when your parents tell you there are things you can’t know about because you’re a kid, sometimes they’ve got their reasons.”

“You’re not my parents,” I hissed back.

“No, we’re something even more important to you,” he said. “Right now, we’re your ticket out of here. All of us. Him and him and her and me,” he said pointing to the others who were watching intently.

“Because if any one of us screws this up, Liam, we’re stuck here,” he continued. “Do you get that? Really get it? I’m not kidding. Stuck! As in not ever leaving 1780 and living out our days in this Revolution. And if we’re lucky, dying in the early 1800s.”

I tried to swallow but couldn’t.

“I, for one, will not allow a snot-nosed kid to mess this up and make me stay.”

“I will talk to him,” Marijka said.

“Superb,” Thomas said sarcastically, standing up. He took a step but then wheeled back.

“And you are not just going to sulk and pout and not say anything,” Thomas said. “Don’t even think about keeping anything you know about this history to yourself, only because you don’t want to talk to Mr. Loud-Mouth. We’re all adding something to this and what you know may save our lives. Understood?”

“Yes,” I said, and, as tough as it was, I glared back as hard as I could. I might not be able to fight him or talk back, but I knew I could do that much.

He nodded and stormed away, calling back over his shoulder, “Mind that you keep up because every time we have to stop it puts us all in jeopardy.” He strode on.

The twins were looking at me, hesitating. I didn’t know if they thought I was a suck for getting so upset, but I was tired of being shut out, whatever the consequence. They jogged to catch up with Thomas. Marijka urged me to get moving.

“What ever made him so mean?” I asked, more to the trees around us than to Marijka. She murmured something.

“Why is he so mean to you?” I asked, troubled.

“Thomas has come to see things one way… that is different from the way I see it,” she said.

“He likes you, doesn’t he?” I said. “I can feel it, even though it’s all twisted up inside of him like a corkscrew.”

She looked at me with some astonishment, as though she was even embarrassed.

“Sorry,” I said.

She just laughed it off.

“Do you know who the oldest one in our group is?” she asked.

“Walker, Sr.,” I said quickly. “And why is he Walker, Sr.? Is there a Walker, Jr?”

She smiled. “The oldest person is Capucine,” she said, looking pleased with herself. “You’re right, about Walker, Sr. being 18 and the eldest in our Drift. Capucine, however, comes from the 1850s. If she were still alive in your day, she would be 160 years old.”

“Whoa!” I said, shocked.

“Yeah,” she agreed. “Now imagine if you met someone on a Drift who was from the year 2150. How do you think you’d feel about what they had to say? Don’t you think you’d be curious about how they lived and what had happened in your future?”

“I suppose,” I said. “Well, yeah, honestly. No doubt.”

“I’m from the 1950s and to Capucine, I’m like some being from a flying saucer,” she laughed at the thought. “I don’t think she even knows about those, even from books that haven’t yet been written in her time. So you and I, we’re more like angels. Now just think about how vital it is for the angels not to put her into jeopardy.”

“She’s in trouble,” I said, suddenly struck with the thought. I told Marijka about our bedtime conversation. She shuddered.

“Oh, the horrors of medicine, particularly then,” she said. “They would bleed people quite regularly and for all sorts of ailments.”

“That’s so wrong,” I said.

“They didn’t know any better,” she answered. “They used to think that disease came from the four Humours… well, that’s something you can read about, if you want to know. But the point is made, Liam; we have to stick to the things we’re doing so we get the current task done, without messing up our own lives or those of the other Drifters.”

I thought about it for a while and then I got a bad feeling in my stomach.

“I might have said something to her last night that I shouldn’t have,” I confessed.

“What was that?”

“I told her that I thought she should run away, if she could.”

“Oh dear,” Marijka said, biting her upper lip and chewing on it. “Well, you didn’t know any better,” she said, shrugging her shoulders, “and now you do.”

“Thank you for being nice to me,” I said.

She laughed and reached over and gave me a sideways hug as we walked along.

“Nice to hear you say that, Liam,” she said. “Nice to hear it turned around. And I’ll just leave it at that.”

Thomas had stopped and Rufus and Barkley were waving at us to catch up. They had snuck down and stepped into a thicket of bushes. Beyond, there was a large cleared space that looked like it was a field, and to the left there was a forest going up a hill towards the east.

Marijka and I ran and picked our way into the hiding place. Then I saw there was fencing along a road and a ploughed farm field. On the far side, there was a brick house with smoke curling out of the chimney and a woman in an apron and bonnet walking towards a little barn… a shed.

“This is Tarrytown?” I asked, pretty bewildered at how nothing looked familiar.

“So says Caelen,” Thomas said, spying around at the landscape. “I was telling Rufus and Barkley that there’s a tavern down the road to the right. And that’s the spot where Caelen said the monument stones are to be placed, right beside that third tree along the fence.”

He pointed and we all followed his indication.

“No one’s around,” Marijka said, in a hushed voice.

“Not yet,” said Rufus. “But by the sun, I’d say it’s not going to be more than twenty minutes. D’ya think we should go down to the tavern and start rousing up some interest?”

“Do you have the Post to send while you’re there?” Marijka asked.

“At your service,” said Rufus, pulling the letter out of his boot just enough to prove he had it ready.

“What is it doing in there?” Marijka asked.

“You’ll see,” Thomas said, smiling at the boys conspiratorially.

“Will the tavern be open yet?” I asked.

Thomas chuckled. “The question is more whether they’ve closed yet.”

“Men drank until morning,” Barkley said with admiration. “They have rooms upstairs to rent, in the really good roadhouses. Sometimes, other things, too.”

“You may stop right there,” Marijka cautioned.

“Wow,” I said.

“Don’t say, ‘Wow,’” Thomas whispered, using his nice voice again. “Say, ‘Whoa,’ or ‘Oh.’ Fits the time period.”

“Sorry. I forgot,” I said, whispering back in his ear. He withdrew, like he was annoyed that I’d gotten too close.

“How are you going to pay to post the… Post?” I asked, trying to prove I knew how to use the correct lingo.

“No money required when you’ve got lots to barter,” said Barkley, pulling the flint out of his pocket.

“Or this,” Rufus said, besting his brother by revealing the shiny knife he’d been carrying. “More than a bargain for them. They could surely send it first class all the way.”

“Even Air Mail,” I added, figuring how expensive such a knife would be compared to a postage stamp. It was Marijka who jabbed me in the ribs this time.

“Right! Air Mail,” Rufus said cautiously, exchanging knowing looks with Barkley.

Thomas winced and rolled his eyes at Marijka who just shook her head.

I’d screwed up. Again. The twins were from the 1930s and they had airplanes but likely not postal service that used them frequently. I was starting to understand but I still felt the warmth of embarrassment rising in my ears.

“Uh, here they come,” said Thomas, pointing at a group of men meandering along the road towards us.

“That can’t be them,” said Marijka. “There’s… eight of them.”

She was right. But then I saw one of them in a green coat with red piping.

“That’s him,” I said, “That’s Paulding in the Hessian jacket.”

“You said only three, didn’t you?” Rufus asked.

“Think fast,” Thomas muttered. “Come on. United they fall and divided we stand. Time to break up the party.”

In seconds we had rushed back through the brush and emerged onto the road, brushing twigs and wet leaves from our shoulders. I wanted to know what we were doing but there was no time. Thomas had set the pace, striding along the road and emerging around the corner of the bushes amongst which we had just been hiding.

We were now in full view of the group of men, but headed straight for the elm tree and the fabled spot in history.

“Nephews, take heed!” Thomas hollered, spinning around and walking backwards. “My wife and I have extended patience liberally. Now, let this be the spot where justice is revealed and I receive satisfaction. Both with the return of my horse and with the letter I maintain you still hold on your person.”

Marijka looked at me, her own eyes wowing a bit, unimpressed with Thomas’ grand show. But she hardly missed a beat.

“Oh, my dearest,” she said. “They have said truth, I swear I know it. I have searched them even, over and over. Do calm yourself. The horse will come back. If ever I knew a more devoted animal. You do so belong together.”

“You are too, too kind, I fear,” Thomas said, grabbing Marijka by the arm and hugging her in a way that indicated she was to stand and be still. The twins and I were facing our pretend aunt and uncle and shuffling uncomfortably in the dust.

“Aha!” Thomas said, pointing downward. “Your boots. Off with them now.”

“But Uncle,” Barkley protested.

“Do it now, before I knock you out of them, young man,” he said. I looked down at my own simple shoes. My feet were sore from walking and I knew that I had blisters that would pop open if I unlaced them. But they weren’t boots, so I figured I was safe to stand and watch.

Both boys hopped around while they removed their boots and Thomas swept in and grabbed Rufus’ boots first, tipping them upside down and shaking them. Next, he grabbed Barkley’s boot and the letter dropped to the dust.

“Treacherous child,” he said, picking up the letter and shaking it in Barkley’s face. He cast a glance to the side towards the approaching men. He flinched at me and I realized that I was likely blocking the show. I stepped back until we were in full view.

“Hiding the letter in your boot, I should have known,” Thomas said. “Hold out your hands, nephew.”

“Uncle, no,” Barkley protested.

“Do it,” Thomas commanded. Barkley obeyed and Thomas smacked the back of his hands with one swift blow of his palm. I flinched at the sound and Barkley tried to shake the pain out of his knuckles.

“Now, what might you be doing?” asked one of the younger men leading the pack. They were a mixed bunch, but I was surprised that most of them didn’t look much older than Thomas.

“A personal matter between my wife and me and our nephews,” Thomas responded. “And a good day to you, gentlemen.”

“Aye, it is that already,” laughed one of the shorter men from the middle. “Good indeed, until I arrive at home.”

“The later the better then,” said another beside him who appeared to be serving as his physical stabilizer.

“Our nephew was hiding an important correspondence in his boot,” Marijka noted, “Have you ever heard of such a thing?”

“Peculiar, I would say,” said one of the oldest men, who looked like he had terribly sore feet. There were bandages wrapping his ankles and the souls of his footwear were loose and revealing holey socks and red, blistered toes.

“My darling, that is not likely of concern to these good fellows,” Thomas quietly scolded his wife, giving her a pleasant squeeze of her arm, though annoyance flashed briefly on her face.

“Well dearest, I suppose these gentlemen are on patrol,” Marijka continued.

“Quite so,” said the verbal man, pushing his way up through the ranks. “Ho!” he remarked, stopping in his tracks when he saw the twins. His eyebrows wavered as he strained to focus. He turned back to his closest friend and leaned heavily on his shoulder.

“I told you that grog was bad,” he belched, “and I want my accounts to be…. righted.”

“No, Joseph,” his friend said, trying to turn the man around again. “Look again. There are two of them.” It seemed the twins had been through this before because they leaned their heads towards each other, probably to heighten the effect.

The drunken man squinted but there seemed no help for him. I truly hoped that the fate of the Revolution and America itself did not rest with him. I wondered if the statue in the center of town that we had all been honoring for so long was such an accurate depiction after all.

“I suppose this is as good a spot as any,” the drunken man said, stumbling towards the fence post under the elm.

“Surely, you usually split up the patrol,” Thomas said.

“What are you implying?” said the tallest in the bunch; the man who was wearing the Hessian jacket that I assumed was Paulding. I was relieved to hear him speak so clearly without a hint of alcoholic slur.

“Merely that there are several trails leading through here,” Thomas said, “This one, and the one… uh…”

“By the river,” Rufus said.

“Yes, the river,” Thomas agreed.

“Oh, not there,” the drunken man said. He was now practically sliding down the bark of the elm and yet he was still conscious enough to be vocal. “Too much piss and powder down there,” he continued, punctuating his point with a painful sounding belch.

“Pardon, ma’am,” his friend said, nodding to Marijka. “He means that most stay clear of it, with all the firing going on, and such.”

“And that is exactly the reason that I would go that way,” Rufus said, daring to speak out, “Were I to want to sneak something through.” All heads turned to him with suspicion. “Were I a Tory. Which I am not, gentlemen.”

“No, he is not,” Thomas agreed. “Though he is quite clever, my nephew. Devious as the day is long. Yet he makes a fine observation.”

There were murmurs and nods. I could see the idea was implanted, but I knew that only three of these men were the “right” ones to stay.

“Who was born in October?” I asked. I was trying to think of a way to use the information but I spoke before I realized the words were out of my mouth.

Thomas looked horrified. His eyes bored into mine, and he never wavered, even as he swallowed very hard. Suddenly his hand shot up.

“That would be me,” he said, lighting up with a smile. “Who else for October, then? Come along.”

I was amazed to see the man with the Hessian coat raise his hand slowly. And then another, and another… And another. Four men.

“Very well,” Barkley said, stepping into action. “How about my brother and I show the rest of you the trail by the river?” He started walking without even giving them the time to agree or disagree. Rufus ran back to Thomas and I noticed that the letter was slipped into Rufus’s jacket within an instant. He moved towards the fence and assisted the drunken man and his friend to navigate away from the comfort of the elm tree.

The four remaining men began to shuffle towards Thomas and Marijka.

“Pardon me while I confer with my other nephew,” Thomas said, stepping over to me and pulling me away from the men.

“What kind of an idiotic move was that?” Thomas said, squeezing my shoulder uncomfortably with his fingers.

“It worked.”

“We made it work, barely,” he said.

“I didn’t tell you the Major was also born in October,” I said, trying to make up for it.

“Terrific,” Thomas sneered. “We have just enough time to get him a paper hat. Maybe make up a sign. ‘Welcome to Tarrytown, A nice place to hang.’”

“I’m sorry!” I said.

“Just don’t….” Thomas began, when we heard Marijka behind us.

“I am just so grateful for everything you are doing for the cause,” she said, clasping her hands daintily to her heart. “No, you must not be modest, truly. Please… May I know the names of you brave men?”

“She’s good,” said Thomas, smiling in admiration.

She curtsied as each introduced himself.

John Paulding, in the Hessian coat.

David Williams. David was his name.

Richard Cartwright, a man in his twenties.

And Isaac Van Wart.

“Thank you all so very, very much,” Marijka said, looking back over her shoulder to ensure that we had heard which one was the bad apple.

“Rufus,” Thomas called out, catching his attention. He motioned to Mr. Cartwright and Rufus nodded, urging the man to come along.

“My nephew was just requesting for one more to join in,” Thomas said, shaking Richard’s hand even as he was beginning to move him towards the tavern and the river.

“I suppose I could,” Richard said, “If the others will be well enough?”

“Oh, I think the good Lord is watching over all of us, in His own way,” Thomas said, with confident assurance.