Version 1.0 dtd 040700

PRAIRIE SUN

By Edward Bryant

Stillness.

Except for the boy, nothing moved on the prairie. The hawks did not hunt this morning. Not even the vultures circled in the empty sky. The birds evidently were waiting until Micah Taverner made his kill.

The heat hung like a heavy curtain over the world. All motion seemed suspended. The thought entered Micah’s mind that on these plains, anything at all could happen. His was a sudden and early maturity, and not one he relished.

Thirteen-year-old Micah moved quietly-perhaps not so silently as an Indian, but still disturbing the saw-toothed grass with less noise than most others in the company. He balanced his father’s long muzzle-loader carefully, thumb ready to take the hammer off half-cock. A small antelope would be welcome. A young deer would be better. A rabbit would suffice.

To Micah’s right the River Platte wound slowly east by

south, the direction from which the company had come. At this point the road followed a straighter path than the river. The boy’s present course took him up a gentle rise so that he had now attained an elevation of a hundred yards above the river. Within a rod of the Platte, all was lush and green. The grass and the trees grew luxuriantly. Beyond them the world turned to shades of brown and tan and yellow.

The world seemed to contain little more than the river and the prairie. And the road. Had he wished to stand in the ruts, they would have taken the boy in up to his waist.

Micah heard a sound in the dead air. He froze, waiting. He heard something again. Glass breaking. The mutter of words. The sounds came from beyond the low rise ahead. Tivo voices. Whoever were speaking, they were close by the trail.

The boy slowly cocked the hammer of the rifle. It seemed to him the click echoed out across the parched land like the gunshot itself. Again he heard words too distant and indistinct to understand. But the tone did not sound alarmed.

White men? he thought. Pawnee! had been the first word in his mind. Or Sioux. Or Blackfeet. He had heard the tales of slaughter and torture from the talkers around the fire. He had listened then with eyes wide and the breath catching in his throat, even though his father had laughed and suggested wryly that the red tribes were no more monsters than were the men of the company. And after all, men of other companies had given deadlier gifts than bullets to the Indians.

Micah gripped his father’s rifle tighter and stealthily approached the summit. Sounds again-this time a rattle as though iron articles and wood were being placed together in a bag. Outcroppings of porous stone afforded the boy

some cover as he reached the hill’s crest.

White! At least the strangers were not red men, though they appeared odd to Micah’s eyes. There were two of them, and they were poking through the heaps of discards beside the trail. The road was lined with all manner of belongings thrown away by the exhausted, overburdened men and women barely halfway along their arduous journey. The wagons, the oxen, the horses and mules, the people-all could carry only so much across the months and the thousands of miles demanded.

Micah had seen the jettisoned tools and household goods start to appear beside the wagon ruts not long after Fort Phil Kearney, many miles even before reaching the ford of the South Platte. Before the sickness began, his father had tried keeping a running tally of what he saw for just a mile or two. “There must be ten thousand dollars worth of goods there,” he had said. “All for the picking had one the time or the desire.”

But few struggling toward California or Oregon, of course, had the time or the desire. So the prized New England heirloom furniture, the discarded barrels of flour and sacks of white beans, the Franklin stoves and the printing presses, all lay rotting beneath the prairie sun.

And now Micah saw the two strange white men rooting like hogs among the once-prized belongings scattered beside the road. Their backs were to him, so for a while he watched without their knowledge. Both men were tall, each easily attaining a height of over six feet. Though one had dark hair and the other was a towhead with hair as light as the dried grass, they seemed much alike in appearance. The pair wore similar clothing: plaid shirts with braces, brown cloth trousers, and thick-soled boots. The towhead’s shirt was red; the darker man’s was green. But Micah saw there was something not quite right about the

clothing. For one thing, the cloth was slick and it gleamed under the direct sun. For another, he abruptly realized as the men flexed to pick up objects that each man’s outfit was all of one piece of material. It was as though each were wearing a set of long-johns colored to appear as real clothing.

The towhead was showing the other a New England hooked rug much like the treasure Micah’s mother still packed deep in the wagon after adamantly refusing to discard it at the Platte River crossing. Micah wondered if he should accost them or if it would be wiser simply to backtrack along the trail and forage in another direction. Then the darker man turned slightly, glanced up, and looked straight at Micah. He said something to his companion. Both of them stared at the boy.

Finally one of them, the towhead, said, “Come on down here, young man.” He put down the hooked rug and stood there quietly with empty hands. The other man slowly spread his hands, palms outward. Micah realized they were both looking at his father’s muzzle-loader.

He warily approached the pair, then looked beyond them. The muzzle of the rifle came up. “Don’t-“said the darkhaired man. Whatever else he was going to say was interrupted by the black-powder explosion. Two yards of decapitated prairie rattler jerked and flopped in death throes close by their feet as each man yelled and leaped aside. They looked from the snake to Micah and back to the snake again.

“Thank you, boy,” said the towhead.

“Mighty big one,” said Micah. He felt very pleased with the shot and tried not to grin. He started to reload the rifle. Probably the biggest one I’ve seen.”

The men exchanged glances. “What’s your name, son?” said the darker man.

Micah told them.

“Well now, Master Micah Taverner,” said the towhead. “Please call me John. My friend here is Droos.” Droos inclined his head. “We both of us truly do appreciate your eliminating the serpent.”

“It wasn’t nothing,” Micah said as he rammed wadding down the barrel. “Just glad to help.”

There was silence. The men seemed trying to communicate with each other by sharp looks. Micah paid attention only to the muzzle-loader.

Finally John said, “I suppose you’re wondering what the two of us are doing out here.”

“None of my business,” said Micah.

“Admirable,” said Droos, turning away. “His mouth isn’t as extraordinary loose as yours, John. Now let’s get back to work and see if we can find any more East Middlebury bottles like the one you so carelessly dropped.”

But John seemed fascinated by the boy. “May I asked what you’re doing out here?” he said. “I believe the last train passed by here nearly a week ago, and the next wagons aren’t due for days.”

“My mother sent me to look for game,” said Micah. “She believes that meat broth will soothe Annie’s innards.”

“Who is Annie?”

“My little sister. She is sick with the smallpox.”

Droos turned around from the wooden crates in which he was rummaging and stared. “Smallpox? We totally eradicated that more than a century ago.”

“In our time,” said John.

“Your time?” said Micah, confused now.

“Never mind,” said John. “It’s a long story. Where’s your wagon?”

“That way.” Micah pointed back along the river. “About

three miles. We should have stayed in Fort Laramie, but Annie did not seem so ill then. The rest of the company said they would wait an extra day at Independence Rock. I fear by now they will have gone on.”

“But your family stayed alone.”

“Annie cries out when the wagon moves. She is too weak. My mother thought that the rest might help her.”

“Your mother,” said John. “What about your father?”

Micah stared at the ground. “He took ill and died of the cholera shortly before the crossing of the Platte.”

“God almighty,” said Droos.

“And so your mother and you have brought the wagon this far since?” said John.

The boy nodded. “Some of the men of the company helped us. But they had their own wagons, and their families. And many of them were weak with cholera.”

“Unbelievable,” Droos said. He unconsciously fondled a silver teapot.

“Now we have seen the elephant,” said Micah.

Droos cocked an eyebrow. “Elephants? You actually found one here?”

Micah looked equally quizzical. “It means only that we found far more on our path than we expected. We would return to Ross County, Ohio, but it is now just as far to go back as it is to go on. Perhaps we can catch up with the company when Annie is better. Before he rode on, the captain told us we would have to move soon, or we should all be caught by the winter in the Sierra Nevada.”

The two men stared at him, transfixed.

“People truly used to live and die this way,” Droos said bemusedly.

“Micah,” said John slowly. “Can you keep a secret?”

“If it is an honorable secret.”

“What if I told you that we both were from the future?”

The boy shook his head. “I do not understand.”

Droos opened his mouth as though to protest. John held up a restraining hand. “Droos and I are travelers, and we’ve come a great distance to be here. But we didn’t make the sort of journey you might imagine. Not from England, not around the Horn; but instead, through time. What year is it, Micah?”

“The year of our Lord, 1850.”

“Our world exists more than two centuries beyond that.”

Micah shook his head silently. Food meant something. Sickness meant something. But the future? His mind already reeled with too many burdens.

John turned toward Droos, who was slowly stowing a silver tea service in a fabric pack. “Can you explain it more adequately?”

Droos stared down at the objects he held. “These are truly exquisite,” he said. “Standish Barry, Baltimore, probably about 1820.”

“Droos.”

The darkhaired man looked up and said, “This is against all the rules, you know. Why must you be a compulsive fool?”

“I was the only one in the department you could trust.” John bent down to look at Micah levelly. “Do you know about the Romans?”

Micah nodded. “Father read us stories.”

“Have you ever thought about what it would be like if you could really go back and visit the Romans?”

“Yes,” said Micah.

“Well, we can do that, Micah. We live in your future. We can come back and visit your time, or the time of the Romans, or any other time of our choosing. We come from a year when smallpox has long since been banished

from the Earth and most other diseases eliminated equally.”

Micah knew he did not understand all that was being said to him. But a few words punched through the confusion. “You can heal smallpox?”

“Our ancestors did,” said John. “Your grandchildren will.”

“Can you cure Annie?”

Time again seemed suspended on the prairie. Everything was still. Micah stared at the men. They stared back at him.

“Well, I suppose …” said John.

“No,” said Droos.

“Droos has an emergency medical kit; it might alleviate the symptoms.”

“No.” This time Droos’s answer was more vehement.

John wheeled angrily on his companion. “Just once,” he said.

“Absolutely not,” said Droos. “If I have to pull rank, I’ll do so.”

“One child,” said John. “One life.”

Droos dropped a dozen silver spoons and let them lie on the dusty trailside. “Let me remind you of a few things,” he said. “I’m not being arbitrary about denying your humanitarian impulse. The first thing is that this is not exactly a sanctioned mission, you know. The second thing is that we’ll be strung up doubly by our balls if the department finds out we’ve been salvaging collectibles from the past for resale in the present. Third, there’s the primary travel directive-“

“Come on,” said John. “Saving one little girl’s life is highly unlikely to alter the future in any significant-“

Droos interrupted him, raising his voice even higher. “We don’t know that. It’s one thing to scavenge these antiques because nature would have destroyed them anyway. It’s quite another to meddle with lives. Besides, we don’t know that his sister is going to die of smallpox. She might recover. I believe children were more resilient-“

“I say we do it,” said John.

“If I have to, I’ll put your neck on the block without endangering mine,” said Droos, his voice quiet and deadly. “I am capable of that, you know.”

“I know that.” John spread his arms helplessly. “Please?”

“No. There are rules-and these rules we will follow implicitly. We live in that kind of world.” Droos knelt and began picking up the spoons, blowing the dust off and polishing them against his leg, before placing the utensils inside a bag of soft cloth. “Accept that.”

In the ensuing silence, Micah said, “Can you cure Annie?”

John did not meet his eye this time. The towheaded man hesitated for a long time. Finally he said, “No, we can’t. I’m sorry, Micah.”

Micah considered that. Then he said, “But you could?”

Neither man said anything.

“But you won’t?”

John flushed. Droos stowed the packet of silver and extracted a crystal loop-and-petal candlestick from a crate. “I’m truly sorry,” said John. “I never should have spoken at all”

Very slowly, Micah said, “Father used to tell me, `I help my friends; God help my enemies.”’

“We’re not your enemies,” said John earnestly. “There are simply rules that say we cannot be the friends we’d wish.”

Micah said nothing. He only turned and, picking up both the dead snake and the muzzle-loader that leaned

against a free-standing gilt mirror in its hardwood frame, walked away from the two men.

Micah distractedly shot the rabbit on the way back to the wagon. The big jack darted from the brush, and then made the mistake of pausing to assess the intruder on the plains. The ball passed cleanly through its right eye. The meat was unspoiled.

When the boy arrived at the wagon, the sun was long past its zenith. The oxen looked up incuriously to greet him, then bent their heavy heads back to the tough grass. Micah paused by the rear of the wagon.

“Ma?” he said. “I have a snake and a rabbit, Ma.”

His mother drew the canvas flap aside and held a finger to her lips. “Hush,” she said. “Your sister is dying.” The gay colors of her gingham stood in stark contrast to the somber gray of the canvas top.

They waited an hour, then a second hour beside the small bed, listening to Annie’s labored breathing. They took turns squeezing new compresses for the girl’s forehead. Every few minutes, Micah took the bucket to the river for fresh, cold water.

Annie’s face continued to shine with sweat, even with the compresses. At the same time, she shook as though with a chill, and they kept her bundled in her mother’s hand-loomed blankets.

Finally the breathing stopped. Mother and brother waited minutes in the sudden stillness. Micah started to touch his mother’s shoulder. She shook his hand aside. “Let me be alone,” she said. Slowly she unwound the fine wool blankets and took up her daughter’s body in her arms. Without words, she stepped down from the wagon and walked through the cottonwood and box elder toward

the river’s edge.

Micah stood in the rear of the wagon and watched her go. The thought reverberated in his mind: what sort of people would allow a child to die this way? What form of Christian charity would let his sister perish in such a fashion?

He realized he simply did not know.

After what seemed a long, long time, Micah emptied his mother’s most prized possession, the finely carved sandalwood chest, and repacked it.

The two men who claimed to be from the future were a half-mile further down the trail from where they had met with Micah. They were still rummaging through the heaps of abandoned goods, apparently working their way toward Missouri.

Scrub cottonwoods, sage, a dusty draw, juts of porous stone, the wagon ruts themselves, all lent Micah cover. The boy knew that an Indian would have discerned him in a moment. But John and Droos had no such skills. For the second time, but for only a moment, Micah truly wondered what it was like in the future. Then his mind told him once again that such speculation was an impossible luxury, and he bent all his effort to remaining undiscovered.

For two or three seconds he actually stood in full view had they only looked up. But both men were apparently absorbed in examining a bulky contraption of legs and drawers. Micah set the sandalwood chest down in the dust, strategically in sight only a few yards beyond the men. Then he melted back into the country’s natural cover.

In a few minutes Micah reappeared, walking down the

slope toward John and Droos and making no effort at concealment. The two men were looking over a William and Mary highboy, touching the smooth finish, sliding the drawers in and out, checking the joints. “Note the lacquered Chinese detail,” said Droos. “Though not actually executed by Oriental artisans, the figures are Chinese in both feeling and technique.” Buried in his task, he did not look up to see why John had not responded until Micah stood before them both.

The boy’s face was coated with dust; his eyes felt like burnt holes in a mask. He tasted prairie grit and would have spat out the dirt, but he no longer had the saliva.

John sounded unsure and awkward. “Hello, Micah. Welcome back. We were just preparing to-leave. Our time is almost up.”

Micah looked from one to the other steadily. He had to start the words several times because of the dry rasp in his throat. “You still would do nothing for my sister?”

“We can do nothing,” said Droos. “We come from a quite different world, Micah. There are things we must not do. There are rules.”

Micah turned his gaze to John. John finally stared at the ground and nodded agreement. “Very well,” the boy said, sounding tired and much older than his thirteen years. The men looked at him warily.

“I truly am sorry,” said John.

Micah said nothing. Nor did he answer any other entreaty made by either of the men. He retreated to sit on a wooden crate that held mining tools and simply watched them.

“We’d best get back to work,” said Droos, checking something on his wrist. With redoubled energy, the two men again busied themselves among the debris. Every once in a while they looked at Micah. The boy remained

stationary on the box.

“A swirl bottle!” said Droos. “A second!”

“This looks like a Pennsylvania Dutch door hanging,” said John.

“A full set of eighteenth-century sextant gear.”

“Another Roosevelt teapot.”

“What’s this?” John hunkered down beside the sandalwood chest.

“What extraordinary workmanship,” said Droos, also bending over the chest. “Absolutely gorgeous.” His fingertips ran eagerly over the inlaid panels. Then he raised the flat lid and said, “Oh yes, yes indeed.” Drawing the contents from the chest, he said, “Shetland?”

“Looks like it,” said John.

And loomed by my mother’s hand, thought Micah, but spoke no word aloud.

Droos again inspected his wrist and said, “Damn! It’s almost over. You attach a tracer to the chest. I’ll finish up the rest.”

Their departure was not dramatic.

“Ten seconds,” said Droos, adjusting something at his belt.

John at least spoke to Micah. “Good-bye,” he said, offering a slow, sad wave of his hand. “I’m sorry, Micah.”

Both men simply were gone. As though they had never existed. Micah watched as all up and down the trail, objects vanished. Crates and bags melted into the air. The massive William and Mary highboy disappeared. Finally his mother’s sandalwood chest vanished too, and along with it, the fine hand-loomed blanket of good Shetland wool, the blankets that had kept his sister from the frontier cold these past nights.

Micah stood then, and hoped his mother was waiting for him at the wagon. The chest and blankets were gone.

They had left him there to stand sweating in the prairie sun; in a plain of near-absolute stillness, hushed but no longer expectant; a plain on which, it seemed to him, anything at all could happen. And it had.

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