The Winslow Tunnel
by John M. Floyd
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Table of Contents parts: 1, 2, 3, 4 |
conclusion
And looked up into my father’s face.
“Dad?” I mumbled.
He was standing beside me on the platform at the foot of the steps, and there were bright tears in his eyes. And more than tears, too — a look of shock and wonder and relief. Without a word he snatched me to him and hugged me as the conductor had done moments earlier, in another world.
“Timmy,” he whispered into my neck. “Oh, Timmy.”
And Mom was there beside him, hugging me also, and even my stupid sister. Off to one side, but watching me closely, was the modern-day conductor, Mr. Hardy. Not to mention about a dozen curious passengers.
“Tim, are you — are you all right?” my mother asked, sobbing.
“I think so,” I said. I still couldn’t quite put my thoughts together. Was I really back?
Jenny stuck her head between me and Dad, grinning. “You had us pretty scared there for a while, kiddo,” she said. The crowd had built up around us now. I stared at them in disbelief.
“Will you still be needing a doctor?” the conductor asked my mother. I noticed he kept his eyes on me as he spoke.
“Yes,” Mom said. She had stopped sniffling long enough to give me a worried look. “I think he needs to be checked out, at least. Don’t you, Robert?”
Dad just nodded. Like Mr. Hardy, he was watching me with wary eyes, as if I might decide to sprout wings and circle the station a time or two.
“What happened to me?” I said, to no one in particular.
My dad drew a shaky breath and let it out in a whoosh.
“It was the tunnel,” he said. “When we went through the tunnel near Winslow, you... changed. After that, you didn’t seem to see any of us, or hear us, either. You kept looking around, and frowning. You looked scared.”
“And that’s what scared us,” Mom said. “We tried to talk to you, and you just looked... lost.”
That’s because I was, I said to myself.
“And finally you started talking,” Dad said. “Not in answer to anything we were asking, though. You just started rambling. Something about Rogers, and Van Buren, and other things that didn’t make sense. Once you said your name. It was like... like you were having a conversation with somebody who wasn’t there.” He glanced at my mother, who was wiping her eyes with a soaked tissue. I noticed the crowd was dispersing now. The kid’s okay, their looks said. Time to go see about lunch.
“And then,” Dad went on, “you got up all of a sudden and walked over to the front seat, where Mr. Hardy had been sitting. You scooted right over to his window and looked out for a long time, just nodding your head now and then. You seemed to brighten a little, but you still wouldn’t respond to us.”
He paused, and I could see in his face the stress he’d been through. “We started to take you off the train when it stopped earlier, but we were told there was no doctor there, so we waited till now.”
I wasn’t sure I had heard correctly. “When it stopped?”
Dad glanced at the conductor, who explained, “We had an unexpected stop, not far south of the tunnel. They think it was a problem with one of the isolator valves. We were delayed only a few minutes. You just sat and stared out the window.”
“Mrs. Derryberry had to get off,” I said dreamily.
Everyone’s eyes narrowed at the same time. “What?” Dad asked.
I blinked and focused on him. “Nothing.” I turned to my mother, who still looked worried. She kept reaching over to smooth my hair, or touch my face. “I’m fine now, Mom,” I said, and forced a weak smile. “I really am.”
Not that I actually convinced anyone, but they seemed to accept the idea that maybe I wasn’t as loony as I had first appeared to be — or at least that I wasn’t about to lapse once again into a catatonic state. I wondered, as my family said their goodbyes to Mr. Hardy and got directions to the doctor’s office — my dad said we’d rent a car tomorrow so we could retrieve our own car from Delores — whether I would ever be able to explain to anyone what had really happened.
And then a thought jumped into my mind. It had occurred to me before, back when we first boarded the train, but it hadn’t seemed that important, then. It did now.
“Remember this morning,” I said to my dad, “you were telling us about the train wreck? The one that killed your great-granddad?”
“What about it?” He and I were walking along together on the tree-shaded sidewalk. Mom and Jenny had gone on ahead, to look for the sign for the doctor’s office.
“You said there were no survivors,” I said.
“That’s right.”
“Well... if there were no survivors, there wasn’t anybody around to tell what happened. Right?”
Dad stopped and looked down at me. “What are you getting at, Timmo?”
“Why did people think the wreck was caused by the Langtree gang?” I asked.
He frowned. “People didn’t think so. They knew it was the Langtrees.”
“But how? How could they be sure?”
Dad hesitated then, and I realized it wasn’t because he didn’t know the answer. It was because he was worried about me again, and wondering why I was so interested in this. And during that pause I also knew — I knew with a goosepimply, spine-tingling certainty — what he was going to say next.
“Because of the letter,” he said.
I swallowed. “The letter?”
“They found a letter the next day, after the accident. In a mailbag that was thrown clear of the wreckage. It said the Langtree brothers were going to hit the train, even mentioned the time of day.” He glanced up the street, where Mother and Jenny were marching back to fetch us. “With that as evidence,” he added, “the Law raided the Langtrees’ hideout, somewhere east of here. A month later, all three brothers were hanged on the gallows beside the Fort Smith courthouse.”
I felt my stomach flip over. What had I done?
But I couldn’t let myself think about that. Not now. Right now, another question had locked into my mind, one even more important.
“But if the Langtrees were all hanged,” I asked, holding my breath, “who murdered the kids at the Brineyville school?”
Dead silence. Even Mom, who had arrived in time to hear my question, looked confused. “Brineyville?” she said.
“What kids?” Dad asked. He and Mom and Jenny looked at each other, and that look — open and honest and impossible to fake — told me all I needed to know.
There had been no schoolhouse killings in Brineyville, Arkansas, in the spring of 1911. There had been no killings because the killers were already dead.
I must have gone really pale or something then, because Jenny’s eyes widened and Mom rushed forward and Dad scooped me up in his arms the way he’d done when I was a baby and carried me to Dr. Edward Summerall’s office.
Fifteen minutes later, after a great deal of parental and medical attention, I sat in my underwear on an examining table and listened as the doc reassured my mom and dad that I would in fact live to see tomorrow’s sunrise. But I was only half listening.
Mostly, I was thinking. Not about the Langtrees and who they might or might not have murdered, or what other changes I might have caused to the future of mankind — I would think plenty about that later. I never even stopped to consider, at that point in time, whether one of the future descendants of those kids at the Brineyville school might grow up, in this new and altered universe, to pilot a shuttle to Jupiter or become President or find a cure for cancer. Those things never crossed my mind. What I was thinking about was my great-great-grandfather.
I couldn’t seem to get him out of my thoughts. His kindly face, his bristly gray mustache, the blue eyes behind his glasses, the smell of his cologne as he held me in his arms.
I found myself smiling a little, partly because of those images and partly because I knew now that they were real, and that I wasn’t crazy after all.
The moment of truth had come only minutes ago, when the doc had asked Mom and Dad to get me undressed. Far more embarrassed by this than by my earlier behavior, I pulled away from them and informed everyone that I was quite capable of taking off my own pants. It was then, as I unbuckled my belt and stepped out of my jeans, that I felt it.
At some point, you see — probably when we’d hugged each other just before we parted on July 4, 1910 — Cecil Burnside had slipped me a little memento. And I didn’t have to take it out and look at it to know what it was.
Hidden in my pants pocket, warm now against my fingertips, was a fine old pocket watch, with a copper case and a winding key and a long gold chain.
* * *
I thought about it all the way home.
A strange peace had settled over me. Something incredible had happened to me today, something unbelievable but true. I had the proof in my pocket. But should I tell anyone? I could only imagine the looks on my family’s faces. Would they ever believe me?
No. Mom and Jenny wouldn’t. But Dad would.
Finally, at about the time we pulled into our driveway in Nashville, I made up my mind. Dad would turn forty in a few weeks. My secret could wait until then.
I even smiled a little, thinking about it.
Birthdays were good times for surprises...
Copyright © 2018 by John M. Floyd
