‘It might be some joke,’ her husband said. ‘Something that the father said in jest and the son picked up as truth.’
‘I think,’ said Mrs Forbes, ‘I’ll go upstairs and see if they’re asleep. I left their lamps turned low. They are so little and the house is strange to them. If they are asleep, I’ll blow out the lamps.’
Jackson Forbes grunted his approval. ‘Dangerous,’ he said, ‘to keep lights burning of the night. Too much chance of fire.’
The boy was asleep, flat upon his back – the deep and healthy sleep of youngsters. He had thrown his clothes upon the floor when he had undressed to go to bed, but now they were folded neatly on the chair, where she had placed them when she had gone into the room to say goodnight.
The bag stood beside the chair and it was open, the two rows of jagged metal gleaming dully in the dim glow of the lamp. Within its shadowed interior lay the dark forms of jumbled possessions, disorderly, and helter-skelter, no way for a bag to be.
She stooped and picked up the bag and set it on the chair and reached for the little metal tab to close it. At least, she told herself, it should be closed and not left standing open. She grasped the tab and it slid smoothly along the metal tracks and then stopped, its course obstructed by an object that stuck out.
She saw it was a book and reached down to rearrange it so she could close the bag. And as she did so, she saw the title in its faint gold lettering across the leather backstrap – Holy Bible.
With her fingers grasping the book, she hesitated for a moment, then slowly drew it out. It was bound in an expensive black leather that was dulled with age. The edges were cracked and split and the leather worn from long usage. The gold edging of the leaves were faded.
Hesitantly, she opened it and there, upon the fly leaf, in old and faded ink, was the inscription:
To Sister Ellen from Amelia Oct. 30, 1896
Many Happy Returns of the Day
She felt her knees grow weak and she let herself carefully to the floor and there, crouched beside the chair, read the fly leaf once again.
30 October 1896 – that was her birthday, certainly, but it had not come as yet, for this was only the beginning of September, 1896.
And the Bible – how old was this Bible she held within her hands? A hundred years, perhaps, more than a hundred years.
A Bible, she thought – exactly the kind of gift Amelia would give her. But a gift that had not been given yet, one that could not be given, for that day upon the fly leaf was a month into the future.
It couldn’t be, of course. It was some kind of stupid joke. Or some mistake. Or a coincidence, perhaps. Somewhere else someone else was named Ellen and also had a sister who was named Amelia and the date was a mistake – someone had written the wrong year. It would be an easy thing to do.
But she was not convinced. They had said the name was Forbes and they had come straight here and Paul had spoken of a map so they could find the way.
Perhaps there were other things inside the bag. She looked at it and shook her head. She shouldn’t pry. It had been wrong to take the Bible out.
On 30 October she would be fifty-nine – an old farm-wife with married sons and daughters and grandchildren who came to visit her on week-end and on holidays. And a sister Amelia who, in this year of 1896, would give her a Bible as a birthday gift.
Her hands shook as she lifted the Bible and put it back into the bag. She’d talk to Jackson when she went down stairs. He might have some thought upon the matter and he’d know what to do.
She tucked the book back into the bag and pulled the tab and the bag was closed. She set it on the floor again and looked at the boy upon the bed. He still was fast asleep, so she blew out the light.
In the adjoining room little Ellen slept, baby-like, upon her stomach. The low flame of the turned-down lamp flickered gustily in the breeze that came through an open window.
Ellen’s bag was closed and stood squared against the chair with a sense of neatness. The woman looked at it and hesitated for a moment, then moved on around the bed to where the lamp stood on a bedside table.
The children were asleep and everything was well and she’d blow out the light and go downstairs and talk with Jackson, and perhaps there’d be no need for him to hitch up Nellie in the morning and drive around to ask questions of the neighbors.
As she leaned to blow out the lamp, she saw the envelope upon the table, with the two large stamps of many colors affixed to the upper right-hand corner.
Such pretty stamps, she thought – I never saw so pretty. She leaned closer to take a look at them and saw the country name upon them. Israel. But there was no such actual place as Israel. It was a Bible name, but there was no country. And if there were no country, how could there be stamps?
She picked up the envelope and studied the stamp, making sure that she had seen right. Such a pretty stamp!
She collects them, Paul had said. She’s always snitching letters that belong to other people.
The envelope bore a postmark, and presumably a date, but it was blurred and distorted by a hasty, sloppy cancellation and she could not make it out.
The edge of a letter sheet stuck a quarter inch out of the ragged edges where the envelope had been torn open and she pulled it out, gasping in her haste to see it while an icy fist of fear was clutching at her heart.
It was, she saw, only the end of a letter, the last page of a letter, and it was in type rather than in longhand – type like one saw in a newspaper or a book.
Maybe one of those new-fangled things they had in big city offices, she thought, the ones she’d read about. Typewriters – was that what they were called?
_do not believe_, the one page read ,_your plan is feasible. There is no time. The aliens are closing in and they will not give us time.
And there is the further consideration of the ethics of it, even if it could be done. We can not, in all conscience, scurry back into the past and visit our problems upon the people of a century ago. Think of the problems it would create for them, the economic confusion and the psychological effect.
If you feel that you must, at least, send the children back, think a moment of the wrench it will give those two good souls when they realize the truth. Theirs is a smug and solid world – sure and safe and sound. The concepts of this mad century would destroy all they have, all that they believe in.
But I suppose I cannot presume to counsel you. I have done what you asked. I have written you all I know of our old ancestors back on that Wisconsin farm. As historian of the family, I am sure my facts are right. Use them as you see fit and God have mercy on us all.
Your loving brother,
Jackson
P.S. A suggestion. If you do send the children back, you might send along with them a generous supply of the new cancer-inhibitor drug. Great-great-grandmother Forbes died in 1904 of a condition that I suspect was cancer. Given those pills, she might survive another ten or twenty years. And what, I ask you, brother, would that mean to this tangled future? I don’t pretend to know. It might save us. It might kill us quicker. It might have no effect at all. I leave the puzzle to you.
If I can finish up work here and get away, I’ll be with you at the end._
Mechanically she slid the letter back into the envelope and laid it upon the table beside the flaring lamp.
Slowly she moved to the window that looked out on the empty lane.
They will come and get us, Paul had said. But would they ever come. Could they ever come?
She found herself wishing they would come. Those poor people, those poor frightened children caught so far in time.
Blood of my blood, she thought, flesh of my flesh, so many years away. But still her flesh and blood, no matter how removed. Not only these two beneath this roof tonight, but all those others who had not come to her.