Time Drifters

Even if we didn’t know exactly how we were going to get Capucine to want to listen to us, or how we were going to help her leave, we were all pretty impressed with the sweep of history that had been pulled together to face this Drift.

Renatta Shantz was German-born, of course, and from 1875. She’d traveled from Carolina station, the same as Gwendolyn Whitehall who had Drifted back from 20 years later, in 1895.

Caelen and Aureliano and I were all from Tarrytown station, arriving from 1900, 1927 and 2001. Marijka and Thomas both came from Seneca station in Upstate New York, from 1952 and 1978. Rufus and Barkley were from Kentucky in 1933. Calico McGregor was from 1963 and came from Wyoming Station.

And Francesca Sutherland came from 1944 from Albuquerque Station, although she indicated that the town was quite a ways from her actual Drift Station. Her mother was Mexican-American and her father was some kind of academic scientist from Pittsburgh.

Calico had offered to save Renatta’s toes and busied herself scratching our names and Drift dates in the dirt while we waited for the return of the twins.

When Mrs. Dalcour came in with a big jug of warm tea and a fry pan of hot potatoes, Marijka was smart in dragging the horse blanket with her, dropping it onto the ground to cover up the evidence of our “ciphering in the dirt,” as Calico called it.

In response to our chorus of thanks for the generous sharing of food, Mrs. Dalcour added the provision that we could sleep there so long as each and everyone of her husbands’ tools remained in the shed, and that she wanted us to know she knew all of them intimately, as well as how to use them.

The twins reappeared as if they had sensors that detected food. Renatta let Calico and Marijka rewrite the Post properly on paper.

Imogene didn’t reappear and I was still really worried about what was going on in her mind.

“Mi hermano,” Aureliano responded when I asked him about it, “The snake in the forest scared all of us. Maybe it had venom. Maybe not. But I do know that we made much more of a rattle than it did.”

“Imogene’s more afraid of us than we are of her?” I asked, seeing if I’d gotten his point. “Poor Imogene, then.”

“Everyone you meet is afraid of something,” he said. “Everyone has loved and everyone has lost. It’s why I love opera; every passion of humanity is bared for all to see. And when you bare yourself so honestly, someone else will recognize that same thing inside of themselves. It’s how I know you and you know me, even though we’ve just met, yes?”

“OK,” I said. “But I’m still twelve, remember.”

“Why does that matter?” he asked, laughing.

“Because I have the feeling you’re a lot better at not being afraid than I am,” I said. “I don’t want you getting mixed up about how old I am and then being disappointed if I freak out about something.”

“Golden, all-giving, bold and famous,” he said, puffing out his chest. “That’s what my names mean. But do you know how I’ve come to live up to that?

I shrugged.

“Proverbs, 27:17,” he said. “’As steel sharpens steel, so one man sharpens another.’”

I shook my head, still trying to wrap my thoughts around the quote. The fact that it was from the Bible threw me off, thinking of the old people at my Mom’s church as being the only ones who ever noted the chapter and verse when they quoted scripture.

“I am becoming a better man for the company that I keep,” he said, nudging me with his shoulder. “Young, we may be. But numerous, talented and bright… that we are. We Drifted here by no small mystery. I doubt I’ll ever figure that one out completely, and I maybe there are things that we are not meant to know. I am just as certain, however, that we shall succeed because we decide to face whatever comes.”

I nodded and leaned back in the bed of hay that I’d pulled together into a sort of mat for sleeping. Ours was not the only whispered conversation in the shed, but the surges of rain hitting the boards in the rooftop, the drips sneaking through holes and plunking into puddles, and the louder splatting noise of water coming from a downspout and landing on a rock by the corner of the shed, all made for an oddly comforting lullaby.

“Aurie?” I whispered.

“Leoncio,” he answered.

“If we’re going to be friends, do you think I have to learn about opera?” I asked.

“Ah,” he said. “Steel sharpens steel, mi hermano. But only where you turn it to be sharpened.”