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Stories from the Verse
Multiverser: The Thirteenth Story
Chapter 24: Brown 372
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Takano 164
It struck Derek that he wasn’t certain whether even Brian could walk thirty miles in a day, but they would be lucky if they made it in three. Still, checking the map he worked out how to get to the main road toward Joliet, and they left Welford behind. Four miles out of town, a rumbling auto drove up behind them. It pulled up alongside. Derek turned and faced a man who sat in the open-top black auto.
“Need a ride?”
“We’re going to Joliet,” Derek replied.
“Well, I’m going to Camwood, but it's three miles down the road toward Joliet, and I have to turn off. I can get you that far if you like.” Derek glanced at Vashti, and then nodded. As they loaded their light goods into the back, and Derek lifted Vashti over the top and into the back seat while he got in the front on the far side, the man introduced himself.
“Steve Foster. I run a farm out near Camwood.” He started the car, and it lurched off, sounding a bit more like a lawnmower than a car. He pulled out a small, shining metal case from his overcoat. He handed it toward Derek.
“Want a nip?”
Derek caught a harsh scent of alcohol.
“No, but thank you.”
Steve shrugged, and took the case back, and took a sip. “More for me, then.” The car lurched again on the road, and Derek realized that Steve had already had more than a few nips. He took a look back at Vashti, and then grabbed his hands on the sides of the car. She took the hint, and did likewise.
“No worries, Derek. I haven’t crashed Betsy in over, ah, two months.” He reached out with one hand to pat Betsy, which with one hand on the case left no hands for the steering wheel. Derek had to strongly resist the urge to grab the steering wheel. Steve took another nip.
“Hey, friend, you want to slow down on the drink.”
“Don’t tell me you’re an abolitionist.” Steve gave him a look of hurt and contempt while clutching his metal drink case protectively.
“No, but--” The Model T started up a hill, and Steve shoved the gas down, and with a flutter the car flooded and coasted to a stop. Steve hit the brakes.
“Oh no, not this.” He sighed, and took another sip.
“Hey, Steve, how about you let me drive?” Derek said as softly as he could. Steve blew out his breath, and then nodded.
“Provided you can get it started.”
This led to Steve taking them to the trunk and pulling out a heavy metal bar twisted into an almost S shape. One end fitted into the front of the Model T, and extended out five inches, went vertical for a foot, and then bent back out the other side for a hand grip. In order to get it started, one had to physically crank the engine.
The first time Derek tried, the bar hardly moved. Steve snorted.
“You can do it, Derek,” Vashti encouraged him. Forewarned that this was no simple job, Derek gave it another go, but this time he put his back into it. Whipping it around and around, Derek almost got the car started, but it was still flooded out.
“We have to wait,” Steve said, and got out, pulled out a cigarette, and offered one to Derek and to Vashti who both refused.
“Doctors say it's good for you. Fights sore throats and chest colds, and helps to keep you slim.” He added the last to Vashti who looked inquiringly at Derek who just shook his head.
“It’s not actually good for you,” he replied, but he was bothered by how you would prove that. ‘Hi, I’m from the future and Reynolds Tobacco is lying through their teeth, and it causes cancer, and is terrible for you. Trust me.’ Well, that was not going to convince anyone. Steve shrugged, and Derek rubbed his face, and they waited as the birds sang in the woods near the road.
“Hey, be careful when you wind it. Thing can kick back and break an arm. Happened to a cousin of mine,” Steve said a few minutes later as Derek got ready to try again. Derek nodded, and spun the handle. He kept going and going, and it almost caught, and didn’t, and then it caught. The engine roared to life. Derek was sweating in his shirt. It was early summer, decently humid, and the iron bar was heavy and hard to turn. Tossing the crank in the back seat with Vashti, he took the wheel.
It was not easy as he had never driven a Model T before, but he got the auto moving on the road, and his training on heavy equipment and trucks when he was a spy helped. It also helped that he was sober. Soon they came to ‘Camwell Road’, as the sign said, with a five miles distance on it. By this time, Steve was asleep and drooling on Derek’s shoulder.
Being a standard transmission, the Model T did not have a 'park'. Instead he had to put the car in neutral and then put the parking brake on. It was the reverse of what he had done earlier when he had started driving the car. That remembered, he parked the car.
“Honey, I can’t in good conscience just let this guy, drunk as he is, drive home.”
“Which means we might have to walk back. I understand, and I agree.”
Derek took the car to the new gravel road, and drove it along. As he went, he noticed the corn fields on both sides. The stalks were not man-tall yet, but they were getting there. The cool air as he kept the auto to about twenty miles per hour was pleasant. He was wondering how he was going to find the place, but then he saw a sign on the right side of the road next to a rutted driveway, and an unpainted wooden fence of post and planks.
Foster Farms.
Slowing the Model T, he turned it in, and rolled up to the farmhouse. A blonde woman, her hair drawn back and lines of tiredness on her worn face, came out letting the screen door bang behind her. She smiled at them, and with a bit of fondness and sadness at Steve.
“Thank you, mister, and lady, for taking Steve home. He drinks too much. I had hoped abolition would get him to stop, but now he does it even more. And it's rotgut.” She opened the case after prying it from her husband’s fingers, opened the bottle, and sniffed. She winced, and then poured it out on the grass front lawn of her homestead.
Steve woke up and smiled.
“Hey, beautiful.”
“Hi, yourself. Go to bed.” He nodded, and a bit unsteadily got out of the car and straightened up so he was almost as if he were not seriously buzzed.
“You have a good day.” Majestically he turned and headed for the house. After he went in, she turned and asked if they needed money.
“No, but we need to go, we have miles to go before we sleep.”
“Robert Frost,” she said. “Um, just wait. She came back with three kids, who got stuffed in the back, and a pie stuffed in a wrapping of paper. She drove them back up Camwell Road to the intersection with the main road to Joliet. Here she left them off, and handed them the apple pie. The children were eyeing the package with forlorn looks, and Vashti cheerily laughed.
Over the mother’s polite objections, she insisted on sharing the spiced apple pie. It was still warm, and undoubtedly the children had been planning on eating it. Vashti broke out chunks for each child, and the mother, and herself and Derek. He bit his, and it tasted of warmth, and cinnamon, and sugar, and apple, and skill, and love.
“Good pie,” he said once he finished and was licking off his fingers.
“Thanks. And thanks for rescuing my husband.” She turned around the Model T and headed back with her three children who waved wildly as they left.
“I suspect we could have walked the same distance of three miles in the time it took to do that.” Derek said as he started off.
“But we’d be out pie.”
“That’s true.”
They walked the rest of the day, pausing at a creek to cool their feet and drink a bit of water. Toward mid afternoon, they were passing a small farm on the left when Vashti pointed out a ‘rooms for rent, by day or week, or month’ sign under the name of the farm which itself swung on a metal pole.
Derek looked, and then read the name of the farm.
“No, it couldn’t be,” he murmured.
“Hilton Inn & Farm. Fresh eggs.”
“We could stop here. Or we could push on,” Vashti said. Derek’s own feet were tired, and even if it was only three in the afternoon, or thereabouts, he was curious. Was this really the famous Hilton that started the world wide hotel chain? He thought another half a minute, then decided not to decide. “I suppose we should at least find out what a bed for the night and breakfast in the morning is likely to cost. I’d like to sleep comfortably and have a decent meal--the apple pie was delicious, and the tomatoes were good, but I’m not sure my mom would have thought either of those were a meal.”
Vashti smiled, and in a few seconds he stood and she followed him.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
