Nightfall

  Chapter Thirteen

  He thought about it quite a lot that day, during the long drive back to Natchitoches. And even though working the land wasn’t something he’d ever foreseen himself doing in life, he grudgingly supposed he could take care of the peach orchard, at least. The land patent only said that he had to work the place; it didn’t specify exactly what that meant or how much. He didn’t need to have a full-blown ranch and farming operation going on like his parents had had. He could devote a little time to raising fruit and then spend the rest of his time doing something else.

  Although, when he got to thinking about it, he couldn’t figure out what that something else might be to save his life. He’d been an astronomer and a scientific researcher for so many years, it was hard to imagine himself doing anything else. Maybe he could switch from astronomy to agronomy, he thought wryly.

  It wasn’t funny.

  “I guess I’ll do it,” he finally said, just as they were coming into the city limits of Natchitoches.

  “Do what? Move out there to Goliad?” Annabelle asked.

  “Yeah,” he agreed.

  “I thought you would,” she said.

  And so it was that they moved into the old home place, as soon as Mike was able to get the power turned on and the well working. Everything else could wait.

  For a while, they both had to work like demons to get the place cleaned up and even semi-habitable, and it seemed that the more they fixed and cleaned, the more things they discovered that still needed to be done. Mike tackled the driveway first, clearing out a wide enough lane to at least get the car through and park it under the old pecan tree, and then he cleared paths through the woods so they could reach all the important spots. He didn’t even attempt to start on the yard or anything else yet, for he soon found there were leaky pipes to be fixed and doors to be re-hung and windows re-glazed, and on and on and unendingly on. Annabelle swept and scrubbed and cleaned till her hands were raw, and still there was more.

  “I found something today,” Annabelle told him at supper one night, about a week after they first moved in.

  “Oh? What’s that?” he asked absently, his mind lost in other things.

  “An envelope with your name on the front. It was in a drawer upstairs in one of the bedrooms, all by itself,” she said, pulling it out of her dress pocket and laying it on the table next to his plate. It didn’t seem like anything unusual, other than a white envelope, but on the front was indeed written Micah McGrath in a flowing script that he recognized immediately as his mother’s handwriting.

  He picked it up to turn it over, but there was nothing on the back.

  “I’ll read it after supper,” he said, unexpectedly disconcerted by the incident. It was like getting a letter from the dead.

  “What do you think it could be?” Annabelle asked.

  “No idea. That’s my mother’s handwriting so I guess it’s from her, but I can’t imagine why she’d write me something and then leave it in a drawer somewhere. Was it in her room?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure whose was whose. It was the last one on the left at the end of the upstairs hall,” she said.

  “Yeah, that was my parents’ room,” he said.

  “Well, it was in the top drawer of the nightstand on the right side of the bed,” she said.

  “That was the side she always slept on. But it still seems like if she wanted me to find something like that then she would’ve picked a more obvious place. It’s a thousand wonders you ever found it, or even that we were here to find it in the first place,” he said, and Annabelle shrugged slightly.

  “Maybe she didn’t really mean for you to find it,” she said.

  “Why would she write me a letter if she didn’t really expect me to find it?” he asked, mystified.

  “Oh, sugar daddy, you’re funny. Women are like that sometimes. We like to talk, and if we can’t talk to the person we want to talk to then writing them a letter is the next best thing sometimes, even if we know they’ll never read it. Maybe she just missed you, that’s all,” she said.

  He considered it, and tried to imagine a set of circumstances when he might feel like doing such an illogical thing. He supposed it was possible he might find himself in a situation like that someday, though he couldn’t actually imagine what it might be.

  He finished his pork chop and wiped his mouth with the napkin before heading for the living room. Reading at the table was one of those things his mother had always disliked, he recalled.

  He found a spot on the old couch and sat down, switching on a lamp so he could see better. Then he opened the envelope, with more than a little trepidation. It was definitely from his mother; he saw that immediately. The handwriting on the paper was the same as on the envelope, and this is what he read:

  Dear Mikey,

  Letters like this are hard to write, because there are so many things you want to say and so little time to say it all. I hope you’re safe and well, and remembering to say your prayers at night and think on good things. Everyone sends their love, and especially your dad and your sisters and me, and uncle Brandon.

  We know where you are, son. Joey came by to let us know. I’m not sure if you’ll ever read this or not, but I figured you’d probably make it home at some point. If you haven’t already found it, there’s a cinder block buried in Cameron and Joan’s back yard in Tampa, with a key to a safety deposit box. There’s an identical one buried at Joey’s house beside the front steps, just in case you can’t get to the first one. It’s not much, I’m afraid; just some things we wanted you to have.

  Your daddy set up a trust at the bank to keep the taxes paid on this place, just in case you found yourself in a tough spot and needed a place to come home to. We didn’t want you to be lost in a strange time, alone and with nothing.

  I wish I could give you some comfort, Mikey; I can only imagine how it must be. The only thing I know to tell you is to cherish the time that you have, and be glad for the days you’ve been given. They don’t last forever, and they’ll pass by faster than you think.

  But God is good, in this as in all things. I trust and believe that that’s true, son, and so should you. No one escapes this world without trials of some kind, you and I both included. All I can say is, when your time of testing comes, trust in His love and do whatever it may be that He asks of you, even if you can’t see the reason why.

  One of these days when you have a wife and children of your own, make sure you give them a kiss for me and let them know I would have loved to meet them.

  Love you always, baby boy,

  Mom

  “I love you too, Mama,” he said, half to himself. After a few seconds he got up and returned to the kitchen, where Annabelle was clearing the table. He kissed Tyke on the cheek for his mother.

  “There, that’s from your Grandma Lisa,” he murmured.

  “Who’s she?” Tyke asked.

  “My mother,” he said.

  “Oh,” Tyke said, not terribly interested. But then, Mike supposed he shouldn’t expect a three year old to be all that interested in someone he never met before. Mike took him out of the high chair and put him down on the floor to play, and then came up behind Annabelle to put his arms around her midsection and rest his chin on her shoulder.

  “Did you read the letter?” she asked.

  “Yeah, it didn’t really say much. She basically just said that she loved me and wished she could have met you and Tyke,” he said.

  “That’s all?” she asked.

  “Yeah, that’s pretty much all. She told me about the safety deposit box in case I hadn’t found it yet, and then she said something about making sure to cherish the time we’ve been given, and trusting God in hard times, or something like that,” he said.

  “Oh. Well, that’s always good advice,” she said.

  “No doubt,” he agreed.

  That was all they said about it, but whatever his mother might have meant by her cho
ice of words, he supposed they were probably wise ones. And since they were also something in the nature of a loved one’s last wishes, he decided to make a conscious effort to put them into practice.

  It wasn’t always easy to be thankful for a day of hard and sweaty manual labor, cutting brush and saplings and fixing things. But gradually the heavy workload eased up as the place became livable, even if it was nowhere near the level of luxury they’d been used to in Tampa.

  Indeed, as the summer wore away and he tried consciously to be glad for the days he’d been given, he gradually found that his heart tended to look more kindly on their circumstances than it had to begin with. Goliad was quiet, yes, and backwoodsy and perhaps even dull, but it had its compensations. Dark nights when he could lie on the rock atop Mount Nebo and watch the stars with Annabelle and Tyke, just as he’d done when he was a kid himself. Swimming in the bayou. Fresh peaches from the orchard. They weren’t spectacular things, no, but he found himself enjoying these small pleasures more than he thought he would.

  He took to wearing his father’s ring sometimes, and the glass ball and the wooden bear cub from the deposit box he placed on opposite ends of the fireplace mantel so he could see them now and then.

  Occasionally they went to Natchitoches to spend a day or two with Damon and Katrina, at least whenever Damon was home. He seemed to be gone quite a lot on secret missions both near and far, and came home looking worn and weary. He rarely talked about what he did on these expeditions, except to say that they were worth it.

  “Your dad looks tired,” Mike said to Katrina one day, when Damon had come in more exhausted than usual and gone straight to bed.

  “Yeah. . . he’s really too old to keep doing the work he does. I wish he’d go ahead and retire. I’ll be turning sixteen in November so he keeps telling me to wait till then, but I’m not sure that he won’t come up with some reason to put it off even after that. He loves it too much; he’s been an Avenger for almost fifty years now. Longer than anybody,” Katrina said.

  “Shouldn’t he be the leader, then?” Mike asked. He vaguely remembered something about the oldest Avenger also being the leader of the group, but he wasn’t sure.

  “He used to be, till Philip got here,” Katrina said.

  “But Philip’s only twenty-five years old,” Mike said.

  “Well, yes and no. He’s twenty-five in physical years, but he’s more like a hundred and fifty in calendar years. That makes him the oldest, strictly speaking. Papa was ready to let somebody else do it, anyway. He never did enjoy having to assign cases and coordinate efforts and anoint new members and all that stuff the leader has to do. Not his cup of tea,” Katrina said.

  “What does he like to do, then?” Mike asked, and Katrina looked at him sidelong.

  “Well. . . I’m not supposed to talk about current missions because that could be dangerous, but you’re welcome to read about some of the older ones if you like. There are case narratives for every mission going all the way back to 1872, and spotty ones for about a hundred years before that. Papa makes me read them because he says it’ll teach me things I need to know when I start doing it myself. If he ever decides I’m old enough, that is,” she added.

  “Sure. Where do I find them?” Mike asked.

  “Um, everywhere, really. There’s a catalog system in the computer; if you give it a keyword then it’ll pull up a list of books and case histories that deal with that topic, and tell you where the book is supposed to be. Just like in a library,” she said.

  “All right. I’ll read a few,” Mike said, not giving it much more thought at the time. But later that evening when Damon was still asleep and Katrina had gone walking downtown with Annabelle, he found himself alone at the house and bored.

  There were computers in every room, of course, so he went to the nearest one to see if there were anything he cared to read about. The user interface was self-explanatory; it simply asked for a subject keyword, as Katrina had said. He thought about it for a second, and then idly typed time travel in the box, just to see what it would say. He didn’t really expect to find anything.

  To his surprise, the computer pulled up two references containing that subject, which piqued his curiosity considerably.

  “Now that’s strange,” he said aloud to no one in particular. When he followed the links, he found that one of them led him to a thick bound volume entitled Case Notes of Zachary Trewick, and the other was the Lab Manual of Dr. Andrew Garza.

  Both of them were located on the second floor, according to the reference, so he quickly went to fetch them. He already had a copy of the lab manual, of course, but at the moment he was much more interested in the case notes anyway. He started flipping through them as he went down the stairs, and before long he was so engrossed that he forgot to keep walking. He just stood on the stairs and kept reading.

  They told everything from Zach’s point of view, naturally, and Mike knew from personal experience that the old boy wasn’t averse to throwing in his own opinions about things from time to time. That part only made things more entertaining, though.

  Then he came across a section which made him purse his lips and furrow his brow with concern, and this is what it said:

  Justin told me once that it’s perfectly all right to pray about things which took place in the past, as long as you don’t know what the outcome was. Such as, you could pray that your mother survived a plane crash that happened two hours ago, as long as you don’t actually know whether she did or not. Once you know, that’s your answer. But the same thing holds true for things that happened hundreds or even thousands of years ago, or things that will happen hundreds of years from now. God is outside of time completely, and therefore so are your prayers to Him. In that way, it’s quite possible for you to be the partial cause of something that happened long before you were even born. Nothing at any point in time is outside your reach because nothing is outside His.

  But for that very reason, looking through the tachometer at the future is like looking at God’s will revealed. You can’t change it because your own free choices are already built into what you see in the first place. Whatever you choose, that’s the result it will lead to.

  Up till then, Mike had always assumed that if he saw something happen in the future, then he could take steps to prevent it or alter the outcome. But if that wasn’t so, then the tachometer was almost useless for the kinds of purposes the NADF had in mind. They wouldn’t be able to prevent attacks or change future events at all.

  It was scary, in hindsight. They never would’ve put him to work as a researcher in the first place if they’d known that little tidbit. He would have been a dead duck as soon as they first arrested him three years ago, or possibly rotting away in a prison cell if Lieutenant Bartow had been feeling particularly generous that day.

  In fact, Mike was glad he hadn’t known about that particular secret till now; the constant fear that it might be discovered at any time, with fatal results, would have driven him crazy over the past several years.

  Then he reminded himself firmly that that was all a thing of the past, never to be worried about again. So he told himself, and as months slipped away with no sign of pursuit, he more or less came to believe it.

  Indeed, by the time early fall arrived in September, he was relaxed enough that he could even whistle while he worked at times, something he’d never done in all his years at the University. In fact, he was whistling an old tune mindlessly to himself when Lieutenant Bartow stepped unexpectedly into the barn where he was fixing the lawnmower.

  Mike looked up and dropped his screwdriver in shock, but before he could think or react, the man sat down. For some reason, that simple action made it impossible for Mike to run, although if he’d considered the matter he couldn’t have said why.

  “You’ve led us on a merry chase, Dr. McGrath, I’ll certainly grant you that,” Lieutenant Bartow said conversationally, crossing his legs and leaning back in the cha
ir. Mike had no idea what to say.

  “Surely you didn’t think we wouldn’t find you sooner or later, did you? I’m frankly disappointed in you, Dr. McGrath. I expected more intelligence,” he went on, and then paused as if he expected Mike to answer. When nothing was forthcoming, he went on.

  “In any case, we’ll expect you to be back at work Monday morning. We’ve already notified the University,” Lieutenant Bartow said, and at that Mike found some emotion.

  “You can’t do that,” he said.

  “I think you’ll find that we can, Dr. McGrath. Naturally, our relationship will have to be adjusted in light of this unfortunate series of events,” Lieutenant Bartow said.

  “What do you mean?” Mike asked.

  “You’ve become a flight risk, Dr. McGrath. Therefore, until you convince me it’s in the best interests of the country to do otherwise, we’ll be keeping your wife and child at a secure location. They’re already en route even as we speak. Now don’t mistake me; they’ll be perfectly fine. This is just to ensure that you don’t develop another sudden urge to disappear again, and to encourage you to work a little more expeditiously than you have in the past. If you’re a very good boy, you might even get to visit them every weekend. Can I be any more fair than that?” Lieutenant Bartow asked reasonably.

  There were a lot of things Mike wanted to say at that point, but his mouth was too dry for words. They knew all the tricks, all the pressure points, all the ways to force a man to dance to the right tune if he wouldn’t do it willingly. He was trapped, and they both knew it.

  His shoulders sagged in defeat, as he mentally prepared himself to be taken back into slavery.