Thanksgiving dinner at the Baptist Towers Rest Home had
always been difficult, but things had become an absolute circus since Anthony
Adair moved into 14B.
The media requests usually began trickling
in around Halloween. The locals still attempted to arrange an interview, hoping
their persistence would eventually thaw the wall of stubborn silence the old
man had erected. Time, The New Yorker and USA Today had thrown in the towel after
a few years of being stonewalled by the world’s most famous historical tourist,
but ambitious journalists still camped in the lobby on turkey day, hoping for at
least a few photographs for their efforts.
And so it was with great
anticipation that Jennie Granger flitted about the dining hall, refilling empty
punch glasses and hustling back to the kitchen for replacement cutlery as forks
and knives found their inevitable homes on the floor. Granger had built a cautious
rapport with Adair; she hoped that almost a year of tending to his needs would culminate
in what had proved to be humanity’s most elusive interview.
“Shoot,” she muttered as she
distributed squares of pumpkin pie from a serving cart. “I can’t believe I’m
doing this...”
“Doing what, dear?” Mrs. Salegovic
said, her eyes magnified behind what seemed like an inch of bifocal. She, like
many of the older guard, had turned down eye surgery on numerous occasions,
opting instead for a natural aging experience. It was cheaper, to be sure, and
there was more dignity in it, at least in the minds of the older generations.
“Oh, nothing,” Granger replied,
blushing. “You have excellent hearing, Mrs. S.”
Salegovic winked, the gesture
saying it all. You better believe I hear
well, young lady. I hear everything.
Granger had serious misgivings
about the plan, but she was going to go through with it.
Drugging Anthony Adair was their
best option. It was as simple as that.
“Look, half of the clients are on
the stuff already,” Caldwell Wilson, her professor at the university, had said.
They’d been in bed together, rehashing the plan one final time. “And we’re not
talking sodium pentathol here, Jennie. Just a single crushed Questar, dropped
into his evening tea. Just a little nudge in the direction of honesty. You were
born to tell this story, babe. Born
to do it, but you need to see the
tape...”
The memory was interrupted by Jim
Flagler’s sonorous Southern drawl. The director’s beaming face appeared on the
digital wall at the front of the dining hall.
“Thank you, one and all, for
another fantastic Thanksgiving holiday!” There was a smattering of applause;
someone in the back of the room called the director a turkey, and there were a
few jags of caustic laughter. “It’s great to see you all in such high spirits. Thanksgiving
truly is my favorite time of the year. It’s an essential reminder of all that’s
important in life—friendship, community, and sharing.”
Flagler carried on with his
Hallmark spiel for a few more minutes, then turned his eyes toward Anthony
Adair. “As has become our custom since Mr. Adair joined us here at Baptist
Towers, I’ll now ask the kind gentleman if he’d care to share his experience of
the very first Thanksgiving! If
you’re willing, Mr. Adair, we’d be honored to hear your tale.”
The room went silent. Over one
hundred pair of eyes drilled down on the old man in the wheelchair.
“Mr. Adair?”
Anthony Adair stared at the
digital wall for a long moment, then slowly folded his arms across his chest.
“Very well,” Flagler said. He gave
the room a gentle smile. “My momma always told me that it never hurts to ask. I
want to sincerely thank all of you, once again...”
His words faded into white noise
as Jenny Granger studied Adair. Just at that moment, his head swiveled and he met
her gaze. Granger gasped sharply as a smile slowly formed on his face.
When he turned his attention back
to the square of pumpkin pie before him she exhaled, unaware that she’d been
holding her breath.
“Miss! Miss! May I have some more
dessert?” Elmer Dunwoody called.
“Of course,” Granger replied,
putting Adair’s knowing smile out of her mind as she finished up with the
dinner service.
~0~
“Have you
ever kept a secret, Ms. Granger?” Adair said. “Something...really juicy?”
They were back in 14B, the nicest
suite in the complex. There was a large bedroom, a kitchenette, a sitting room,
and even a spacious study. They were in the study when Adair posed his
question. He remained in his wheelchair, his spindly legs covered with a quilt.
Granger had helped him shrug out of his dress shirt and slacks and into pajamas.
A fire sizzled and popped in the hearth, casting the dim room in shadows that
danced across the spines of hundreds of books. “Have you ever been saddled with
information that you knew might upset an important balance? Knowledge that
would fundamentally change an entire way of life?”
Granger nodded sincerely. “Probably
not to the extent that you have, Mr. Adair, but I have kept a secret. My sister confided something…something monumental in me years ago, and I
haven’t told another soul about what happened to her. I never will.”
Her pulse surged. She sensed that
she was on the edge of something important, and her hand covered the tiny bulge
of the pill in her smock. Perhaps there would be no use for it after all.
Adair caught the furtive gesture,
and his blue eyes twinkled as a smile lit his face. “No need for that, Ms.
Granger. No need. I think, if you’re willing to hear me out, then I’m finally
ready to tell my story.”
“What do you mean, Mr. Adair? I
just...”
“Come now,” he chuckled. “I’m not
without resources. I know you’ve been studying journalism at the university. I
actually applaud you for your dedication. And you seem very pleasant. It’s just,”
he frowned and considered the gnarled hands folded in his lap, “I’m not sure that
you’re strong enough to look at the tape. To tell the whole story.”
Granger sighed. “Do you mind if I
join you—near the fire here?”
“Of course not,” Adair replied,
smiling warmly. “Please—make yourself comfortable. But before you do, fetch me that
volume there.” He pointed to a large book on the desktop in the corner.
Granger retrieved it and slid a
high-backed chair into position across from the old man. “May I record this?”
Adair nodded, and Granger
activated the device embedded within her contact lenses. She studied the book.
The cover depicted the man—confident, smiling, much younger—now sitting
opposite her. The book had become an almost universally required text in high
school history classes over the last three decades.
She handed it over to Adair, and
he looked at it for a long moment. Finally, he turned his gaze on the young
woman. “So tell me, Ms. Granger. Are
you?”
“Am I what?”
“Are you strong enough to bear
witness to what I saw on that very first
Thanksgiving?”
“I am,” she replied, betrayed just
a little by the warble in her voice. She felt a rush of adrenaline, then a pang
of anxiety.
Adair nodded his head slowly.
“Very well. In that case let’s start at the beginning.”
He opened the text.
~0~
“What do you know about Albert Quindlen?”
Granger smiled. “You mean the
most famous person in all of human history?”
Adair nodded.
“Um, okay,” Granger said. “He
created the Quantum Discovery Module in 2019. He was an amateur scientist and
frustrated inventor, and then he stumbled upon the existence of parallel time
channels. The first-generation QDM was the natural technological progression
from that discovery. I know that he was the first historian to travel back in
time—that he recorded the explosion of Mt. Vesuvius
from a safe vantage point just outside of Naples
“Very good. And what else?”
“Well, he created Quindlen Technologies
in 2025. In 2030, he opened the first Living History Travel Station out at the
old Air Force Base—what used to be called Cecil Field. And then after that, his
story and yours are pretty much intertwined.”
Adair nodded in concession. “Very
good, Ms. Granger. A solid thumbnail synopsis. Albert Quindlen, like another
famous Albert before him, was a very bright light in an otherwise dim world. He
was an honorable and brilliant man who created something that changed the way
we live. Did you know that he designed the first QDM in the machine shop of a little
old swimming pool supply store?”
Granger nodded that she hadn’t
and Adair chuckled at the memory.
“’Al’s Discount Pool Supply,’” he
mused. “His shop was located in the second unit of a depressing old strip mall,
located almost at the northern end of St. Johns Bluff Road. Sandwiched between
a nail salon and place called Canine Creations. They made gourmet dog
treats—even doggy ice cream, if you can believe that! Albert once told me that
he knew it was time to quit for the day when the woman next door would bake those
treats and his stomach set to growling.
“At any rate, Albert Quindlen had
intended that his invention to be put to noble purposes. He hoped to provide a
first-person account of humanity’s benevolence and strength. Do you recall what
happened after Bindal Al Mirashi went back and recorded Muhammad’s first
revelation? Back in 2034?”
Granger nodded. “Radical Islamic
terrorism, as we had come to know it, ceased to exist. Al Mirashi’s
observations created the truest interpretation of Islam that the world had ever
known. Things changed forever.”
“And those were the beautiful assurances, you see. Those were the
affirmations that were necessary for mankind to move forward as a global community. And for many years,
the most astonishing facet of the technology was just how useless it truly was.
Because history had been, by and large, phenomenally accurate.
“Sure, there are the infamous
misses. Those are bound to happen, of course. Who would have ever guessed that
George Washington had such nefarious…appetites?
Who could predict that Elvis Presley had been murdered by his own manager? And
of course, I don’t need to get into the JFK tapes. That remains my most
controversial trek—well, aside from the tape that I’ll show you later tonight. But,
what I mean to say is that instances like those were few and far between.
“The QDM brought the past to life,
and for many years, I was its most prominent advocate.”
Granger nodded and watched as
Adair thumbed through the book until he arrived at the first chapter. He passed
it to the young woman.
“Read this, please.”
Granger cleared her throat. “To
know America—the term often used synonymously with the country now called the
United States of America—is to know a nation built upon a foundation of bloodshed
and conquest.” She looked up from the page, confused, and then pressed on. “That
foundation begins, for practical purposes, with Spaniard Pedro Menendez de Aviles and the country’s oldest continuous settlement of
European descent: St. Augustine ,
Florida Florida France , Spain ,
England and America
She read through the end of the
first section of the first chapter before closing the book and staring at
Adair. “What is this? It’s nothing
like the text I remember reading back in school.”
“It’s my final edition. The
truest draft, my dear. Go ahead—scan the tape.”
Granger cracked the book open and
touched the pads of the index and middle finger on her right hand to the
sensors at the bottom of the page. In the telefields of her contact lenses, she
saw familiar images of the Spanish and the Timucua hunting together. There were
images of the natives trading with their foreign visitors and building homes
and forts together—all neatly edited and spliced together. The overall effect
was to give a primary account of daily life in the 1560s.
“I’ve seen all of this, Mr.
Adair. We had quizzes on every one of your lessons. You should be very proud to
have…”
“You haven’t seen this version. In this version, I’ve
included everything that I witnessed.
Even the sections that were…edited for sensitive audiences.”
Granger swallowed, nodded and returned
her fingers to the sensors. The tape showed the Spanish and the Timucua fishing
together. She knew the waters were nearby, and she felt excitement and pride
that such an important period in her country’s history had unfolded in her own
back yard.
There was a momentary blip in the
tape, as if another portion of footage had been affixed to the original she
recalled from high school, and that’s when she saw the massacre. A group of
Timucua natives were hunting in a marshy slough. She counted nine of them, all
males. One, recognizable by his dress and the way he wore his long hair, was
Seloy. They crept through the saturated lowlands, bows at the ready; two more
carried nets as they scanned the pools for fish.
Granger was absorbed by the images. The
methodical manner of the hunting party increased the tension of the scene
playing out before her. She heard, far in the distance, the occasional cry of a
whippoorwill. Other than that, Adair’s footage was almost preternaturally
silent.
She flinched when the first Timucua
fell to the ground. A shaft of arrow jutted from his back, and he lie perfectly
still—face down in the muck.
She withdrew her fingers and
locked eyes with Adair.
“It was all very sudden,” he said
quietly. “Thankfully, by the time that I captured this footage, Quindlen’s
people had perfected the Whisper Suits. I can’t imagine what might have
happened if I’d been discovered.”
She touched her fingers to the
sensors and watched in mounting horror as a group of Spanish horseman overtook
the hunting party. With knives and clubs and arrows, they made short work of
the Timucua, piling their bodies on a spit of dry land before setting covering
them with driftwood and Spanish moss. A captain set fire to the remains and the
Spaniards celebrated their ambush.
The only thing they did not burn
was the Timucua chief’s head, whose unblinking visage was instead tucked into a
saddlebag by an infamous Spaniard with streaks of blood in his beard.
“We were always told that they
coexisted,” she whispered when the tape was finished. “We were told that the
Spanish and the Timucua relied on each other for survival.”
Adair flashed a mirthless smile—a
grim line that spoke to an underlying pessimism that was as strong and reliable
as the St. Johns River . “Go ahead. Finish the
chapter. I think I’ll pour myself a brandy. Would you care for one?”
Granger refused; she paged
forward in the text, engrossing herself in a history the world had never known.
~0~
It was ten minutes before 11:00 p.m. when Granger
had finished the first chapter. She closed the book with a sigh, turning her
attention to her host, who had been snoring in his wheelchair for more than an
hour.
“Mr. Adair,” she whispered. She
put her hand on his forearm, amazed at how brittle the man was. It was like
touching a chicken bone wrapped in a dishcloth. “Let’s get you into bed.”
She began to wheel him toward the
bedroom, and he came awake with a start. “No! Not yet, Ms. Granger. There is
still time to finish this before the conclusion of our beloved holiday.
Please—fetch me that text.” He pointed to a bookshelf on the far wall. Granger
went to it.
“Which one?”
“Third row from the bottom. To
your right just a bit. Just a bit more. There! Try that one!”
Granger pulled a slender volume
from the shelf.
“Please, Ms. Granger—build up the
fire a little, would you?”
She added another Duralog,
smiling at how sentimental the old ones could be, then handed him the text.
“I can’t...I can’t believe what I
just saw, Mr. Adair. Roanoke Jamestown
Adair offered a grim nod. “Such
is the way of conquest. This is the
one that they all want to see. This
is the one that they’ve hounded me for since I returned.” A wistful quality
appeared in his eyes and he smiled. “Would you like to hear something amazing?”
Granger nodded.
“Two months before he died,
Albert Quindlen told me that he’d found a way to replicate the coding for the time
channels. Quindlen thought, within a matter of years, technology would make it
possible to visit these places more than just that single time.”
“But they never discovered how?”
“They never did,” Adair replied
with a rueful shake of the head. “That’s one secret—although I’m sure there are
many, many more—that Albert took with him to the grave. The government has
tried to go back—to observe him at
work in his laboratory—but they haven’t learned anything useful. Now they’re scared
as hell to use the time channels; they’re worried they’ll exhaust the Quindlen
footage without having anything useful to show for it.
“At any rate, you hold in your
hands a chapter called ‘Plymouth
He smacked his lips a few times
and closed his eyes, his head shrinking down on his shoulders like a turtle’s
ducking into its shell.
Granger opened the text. The
notes had been recorded on a typewriter—not a word processor or a digipad, but
an honest-to-goodness typewriter.
There were hand-written scrawls in the margins.
She started to read—the words
merging together in the firelight to create a narrative of struggle and misery,
of determination and achievement. She read for over an hour and, in the first
minutes of the day after Thanksgiving, in the year 2063, she touched her
fingers to the sensors and became one of two living souls to see the only
eye-witness account of the very first Thanksgiving.
~0~
“Ms.
Granger,” Adair whispered to the distraught girl. He reached out to touch her
arm. “Ms. Granger!”
She flinched at the feathery
contact, squirming away from him in her seat. “How did you? How could you..?” she said, tears streaming
from her eyes.
Adair merely nodded. “Perhaps I
could have better prepared you for that footage. Perhaps I should have...”
Granger stood. “You! You just sat there and watched!”
“But I did not—I could not—intervene, Jennie! You must
understand that! I merely recorded what happened. I could not intervene—you know that! And now—now you’ve seen it! You must understand why I’ve kept this to myself
all these long years. Why, can you imagine if that footage had been leaked to
the American people? Can you imagine if..?”
Granger tossed the book onto the
old man’s lap, as if it might burn her. “It’s horrible, Mr. Adair! It’s revolting!
You should have destroyed the tape years ago!”
“Well, then, do it now, girl!
There,” he pointed, “throw it in the fire!” With shaking hands, he extended the
book to her.
Granger swiped a tear from her
cheek, snatched the text, stomped over to the fire and tossed it into the flames.
They watched in silence as the edges caught and began to curl in the heat. When
the book was nothing but collapsed ash, Granger made her way to the doorway.
“Did you get what you needed?”
Adair called to her. She paused, her hand on the doorknob. “Did you find the
story that you hoped to tell the world?”
“It’s a curse,” she replied, her
voice barely above a whisper. “And now you’ve cursed me. Goodbye, Mr. Adair. I
think this is the last we’ll be seeing of each other.”
She opened the door and stepped into
the sitting room, the old man’s shrill laughter chasing her from Suite 14B
“It’s a secret, Ms. Granger!” he shrieked between cackles. “It’s a secret, not a curse!”
Granger left him there, laughing
like the madman that he surely was. She took the elevator down to the lobby,
unpinning her identification on the way down.
“Oh, there you are, Jennie,”
Rita, the head nurse, said. “I was hoping you might...”
Granger swept right past her,
pausing only once in the foyer to toss her badge in the garbage. The outer
doors yawned open, a rush of cold air flooding into the Baptist Towers Rest
Home, and Jenny stormed out into it, oblivious to presence of goose bumps rising
like dunes on her forearms.
~0~
“You’ll never believe this,” he said. He was in his
early twenties; the smirk came easily to him, and he had much occasion to use
it at the Atrium Retirement Villas. “That old broad in 23C claims that she saw
the first Thanksgiving! Says it’s all there—right in those old contact lenses
of hers. Can you believe anyone still wears those things?”
“Granger?” the head nurse
replied. She thought that if the kid could finish up the week, he might actually
work out. Then again, young people like him came and went all the time. That
was the nature of assisted living.
Troy Spenser consulted the
clipboard he was holding. “Uh…yeah. Jennifer Granger. You guys must have heard
that one before, I take it?”
Beverly Quemps nodded. God, but a
cigarette sounded good! She yawned. “Ms. Granger has been singing that
particular tune since she joined us...oh, I don’t know, nine or ten years ago.
Only it gets worse right around the holidays—when the big day’s just a couple
of weeks away.”
Spenser’s smile widened just a fraction.
“Did anybody ever check it out?”
Quemps frowned. “Now why would someone
go and encourage her?”
Spenser shrugged. “Well, that’s
not something you hear every day, you know. It just sounds interesting, I
guess.”
Quemps waved her hand, like she
was shooing a fly. She rummaged in the front pocket of her smock, hunting for
her cigarettes. “Nothing interesting about a senile old woman’s fantasies,
Troy. It can be harmful to their minds if you encourage certain things. We have
to be careful in what we acknowledge as reality. Mind the front here while I
step outside for a cigarette, would you?”
Spenser nodded. He put Granger’s
chart down and took a seat at the front desk, where his eyes found the bank of
monitors that displayed everything
inside the Atrium’s walls. One lonely camera was trained on a closed door.
23C.
Hell, he thought, maybe the old broad’s seen some interesting
stuff. Yeah, she’s lying about the Thanksgiving thing, but who was to say
there might not be other interesting things to look at? Contact lenses!
He laughed out loud at the
thought of it. Nobody wore lenses anymore—not since ocular replacements had
gone mainstream.
Spenser hated the gig—the clients
were often hostile—but for the first time since he’d signed his employment agreement,
he was just a little excited about the following day’s shift.
If the old woman wanted someone
to take a look, why, he’d help her out.
Where was the harm in it? He
could indulge an old woman’s fantasies during the holidays—it was, after all,
the happiest time of the year…
The End
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