The Fallen Fruit, page 2
Nearly one hundred forty years had passed since the first Bridge, a man named Luke, slipped back in time, and questions still tainted the air as to how the family had been so cursed in the first place.
“You ever wonder what would’ve happened if the first Bridge had fallen into the wintertime?” she asked.
Isaiah’s gaze flicked from Crawford’s body to the unforgiving land. “For all we know, Luke might’ve.”
“He must’ve been terrified.” She shivered and wished it were merely the cold. “Back then, Luke could’ve been standing not far from here. Maybe he was eating his dinner or walking to Ivy Creek. Maybe he was talking to his mama. Then he was gone—whisked away twenty-two years to the past. It’s hard to believe he managed to survive and get home in one piece.”
Every Bridge child knew of Luke’s journey. He served as a lesson. Not to frighten them but to prepare them. Millie often thought of Luke’s circumstances, but even more so, she couldn’t help but feel for his siblings. His mother, Emily, too. How much pain had the woman endured after she lost her child?
The pain felt all too real as Millie thought of her brother. As the children of a Bridge man, only one of them would fall through time. The other would be spared the same fate.
“It’s always hard to be the first of anything.” Her brother picked up the man and placed him on the tarp. Then they draped the thick fabric over Crawford, covering the man from his ashen face to his stiff legs. After that, they searched for stones to protect his body from predators. He would be buried once the ground softened. The whole task ended in minutes—far too short a time. She glanced up to see her brother bleary-eyed and leaning hard on his walking stick.
“Why don’t you return home?” she asked.
Isaiah shook his head, wheezing. He turned his back on her as if that would make her forget all the times he’d collapsed while running. Or every time he’d clutched his chest when his heart stuttered.
“Your stubbornness isn’t bravery,” she said gruffly.
“And treating me like a child won’t get the job done, Millie.”
She considered returning home, but Isaiah walked away. Felix obediently followed. Her older brother had always been stoic when she faltered, pragmatic when she was idealistic. She’d tried to sleep in this morning, but Isaiah would have none of that, stomping through the house, banging pans loud enough to wake their ancestors from six feet underground.
His heart was weak, but he had a bear’s courage. Even when it came to the war in Europe two years ago, Isaiah answered the call without fear. He was twenty-one when the first registration opened that June. He wanted to go overseas, but the military deemed him unfit for service and sent him back to the farm.
She wished he could’ve left—seen the world and what it might offer.
Her brother shifted to accommodate his large pack. Though it was cumbersome, he never dared go out unprepared. Millie didn’t carry hers as often, much to her brother’s disapproval, but she always had her freedom papers.
Millie approached him to adjust his backpack’s straps. “It’s too heavy, ain’t it?”
He grimaced. “I’m fine.”
She reached for a strap, finding it difficult since Isaiah towered over her. He was birch-tree tall like Pa, while she was short like Ma. “Why can’t you take it off and rest?”
He shrugged. “Because I don’t want to.”
“Why are you so stubborn? You’re going to hurt yourself.” She’d given this lecture before, and he always took it. But this time he strode away. “It ain’t natural to live this way—all bent out of shape over a moment that might never come.”
“No, it ain’t,” he bit back, “but it’s all I got.”
“Isaiah, I’m sorry. Look, I don’t want to see you like this. You should be happy.”
“I told myself no regrets. Ain’t no way Ma or you are gonna make me believe otherwise.” His deep-brown cheeks reddened with his rising frustration. “Until I fall, I’m half a man.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Either you or I will end up in the past—which means, right now we are dead folks walking. Half of us are in the present while the other half have already left. We just don’t know who it’s gonna be or when.”
She shook her head. “But we’re here. The past has already happened, and we’re living now—”
“Don’t matter.” His lips lifted into a half smile. He accepted things too easily. “Anyone we love should be with someone else.”
She snorted. “And while she’s with someone else, you can live like a hermit in a cabin, wasting away.”
“You’re the hermit.” His smile deepened. “Especially when Sam comes around.”
She stifled a retort. Her brother’s best friend, Samuel Ross, had taken a liking to her. Based on how often he’d asked if she planned to attend the dance in town tonight, he hadn’t given up.
As much as she wanted a beau, she didn’t want to deal with the aftermath. One minute a boy would come courting, and in the next, she’d be married and stuck at home with babes circling her skirt. Now wasn’t the time.
“And I’m not wasting away,” he added, staring at her like he could steal her apprehension and keep it for himself. “I’m preparing and providing for my family.”
He turned his back on her and walked away with his dog. Far too often she saw his retreating back. She feared he’d disappear without saying goodbye.
* * *
Hours later, the doors opened to the dance hall, but Millie never arrived on time. All the boys sauntered in as they pleased while the girls waited outside well before the dance began. Last year was the first time Isaiah had dragged her to the Negro dance hall in town. She’d been the new girl at the time, fresh-faced in one of her mother’s dresses. She spent the entire time gawking at the gleaming oak floors and sweet-talking band members. After hiding away from the Spanish flu, folks couldn’t wait to slow dance with one another. But once or twice around the dance floor with boys who wouldn’t keep their hands above her waist had left a bitter taste in her mouth. About as bad as the foul odors from the boys’ mouths after their moonshine drinking and cheap-cigarette smoking.
So she took her time and waltzed in an hour late. Might as well make an entrance.
The crowd outside the doors had thinned, and she strode through the entryway into the thrum of a pulsing drumbeat and a trumpet’s trill. She hadn’t worn one of her mama’s dresses this time but an almost-new hand-me-down from her well-to-do cousins up in DC. Eyes from all across the room swept over the sage-green and lace affair. The gown had a cinched waist with chiffon flowers and sheer scalloped sleeves with beaded trim. Anyone would say the dress bordered on perfection. Even her hair had been brushed and pulled up into becoming coils. But as she walked over to the nearest wall, she decided to leave after she listened to a song or two.
This was all a fantasy, and she soaked it in—the couples strutting and swinging to the music; the girls laughing and chatting at the small tables. Life continued here in Charlottesville while she waited for the inevitable back at the farm.
Before the next song—a slower number—began, her brother made his entrance with a fresh cigarette between his lips and Samuel at his side.
Millie spotted Eloise, at the other end of the room, glancing in Isaiah’s direction. The girl had turned seventeen not too long ago, and the glow from her dimpled cheeks and her soft laugh had drawn many an admirer. Isaiah had shown up in the only suit he owned, a frayed dark-brown garment with an old gray tie and too-long trousers, but Eloise’s gaze sipped at him with anticipation.
Sam, on the other hand, limped in grinning in his linen pin-striped suit. A wound from the war had slowed him down, but he flashed his toothy grin while Isaiah glowered.
Millie abandoned the wall to go to her brother. Might as well tease him a little before she left.
“Hey, Millie,” Sam called out to her. “You gonna dance with me tonight?”
“Maybe,” she said.
“You always say maybe.” Sam turned to Isaiah. “Is she trying to let me off nicely?”
“All women are letting you off nicely.” Isaiah tugged his friend to follow him. “I say you need to find Gladys.”
Sam shuddered with a mischievous smile. “Oh no. Not tonight, my friend. That woman is as scary as they come. Maybe even scarier than them Germans.”
Isaiah laughed. Seeing her brother smiling, and without his pack, set Millie at ease. She returned to the wall and pressed her sweaty back against the cool surface. Whether the liquor or the company he kept lent to his happiness, that didn’t matter. They needed nights like this one to taste the world outside their prison.
Two songs came and went. While Millie stood at her spot, she tried to keep her left knee from shaking, her fingers from flexing. Her chest tightened, then relaxed. She fumbled with her purse instead of glancing at the doorway. Couples formed. New relationships bloomed. While Eloise tried to coax her brother into conversation, Sam joined Millie at the wall.
“Looking beautiful tonight, Millie.”
“Thanks.”
Over the years, Sam had grown taller, his shoulders broadening, and he’d splashed an enticingly spicy aftershave across his dark-skinned cheeks, but she could still see the filthy boy who’d followed her brother around and teased her.
“Care for a dance?” he drawled. “I won’t take no for an answer this time.”
She held in a laugh. “Guess you’ll have to hear no again.”
“Why not? Didn’t you come here to have fun?”
Good question. “I don’t know.”
They stood beside each other for some time as the party continued. Gladys hovered nearby with a near-empty cup of lemonade in her hand, almost within earshot.
“You should go to her.” Amelia bumped her shoulder against Sam’s side. “She’s probably still thirsty.”
Sam snorted. “She’s still thirsty for something.”
“Be a gentleman and refill her cup at least.”
Sam’s shoulders slumped as he abandoned the wall for the refreshment table.
Not long after Sam’s attempt, another gentleman, a light-skinned fellow, asked her to join him, but she declined and made her way to the door. The fantasy had to end sooner or later. There would be no happily ever after.
Chapter 2
Amelia Bridge
February 1920
Millie startled awake with sweat drenching her back and her hands clenched in fists. Again, she’d dreamt of that dead man from a year ago. Crawford Bridge. She closed her eyes and grimaced from the sunlight flooding through the single window above her head. Behind closed eyelids, she returned to stumbling onto Crawford curled up beneath those trees—the dead man’s frozen eyes wide, and his lips parted in the middle of a scream. The dream was too fresh, too vivid. Turning onto her side, she faced her brother’s bed across the room. As expected, his bed was empty. Long before the sun rose, Isaiah’s usual routine was to prepare breakfast. Based on the buttery smells wafting under the door, he’d cooked hotcakes and fried eggs again. Her favorite. Even their ma, who rarely left her room, gobbled up his eggs. He was likely lumbering around that kitchen with his survival pack on his back. He even slept with it slung over his shoulder.
Millie swung her socked feet off the bed and twisted to stretch her weary muscles. Her own pack lay within arm’s reach. Today, she wanted to be free of it.
A dull thud from outside the closed door tugged her out of bed. She caught the sounds of Felix’s muffled whimper as she crossed the room in two steps. Beyond the bedroom lay the summer kitchen—or what could be called a kitchen for a cabin as small as theirs. She listened. Something scraped along the wood floors. Was Isaiah struggling to stay standing? She reached for the doorknob, then froze. Through the door, she heard a faint wheeze, her brother fighting for each breath. He’d taxed himself again. She murmured a prayer for their hearts to beat in time, for his heart to match the strength of hers. But she knew the human body didn’t work that way.
“He needs heart medication,” the county doctor had told them. “And I’m not talking about herbal tinctures like foxglove leaves or nightshade berries. What he needs is expensive manufactured medicine.”
She pressed her forehead against the door’s cool wood and counted each breath her brother took. One, two, then three. He kept moving. Someday he wouldn’t.
An ache formed behind her eyes, a familiar sign of stress. She had to get the hell out of here, perhaps find a job in town or Richmond, but she wouldn’t find much. Most factories wouldn’t hire Negroes—whites got the best positions first. Over the last couple of years, many parishioners at their church left to seek work, never to return. Now and then she’d heard rumors they’d resettled up north in New York or Massachusetts. Some even relocated to the Midwest. Millie didn’t want to go that far away. Plenty of well-to-do ladies in Charlottesville would hire an educated colored girl like her as their housegirl. Whether she fell through time in town, instead of at the farm, didn’t matter. Hadn’t her brother said they were half in this world and half in the next? All this standing still and waiting got them nowhere. A couple months of double shifts scrubbing floors and tutoring children could earn her enough money to pay for Isaiah’s pills. And if he fell—no, he wouldn’t fall through time. God wouldn’t be so cruel as to thrust him back to a past where nothing could save his heart. She would be the one to go.
Eventually, her brother shuffled back to the stove. By the time she got dressed, she’d made her decision. Come Monday, she’d head down to Charlottesville to find work.
* * *
When the sky finally cleared and the wavering brush quieted, Millie and Isaiah patrolled the farm again. Just like last year and the year before that.
Each spring, she held on to the hope they’d encounter someone alive and well. That the provisions her family left for time travelers would be discovered and save a life. During her more pleasant dreams, the ones from which she woke feeling refreshed, Millie and her brother would turn a corner and see smoke rising. There’d be a campsite right over a hill. The sun would be shining without a single cloud overhead. The smiling face of their kin would feed her soul, and all the wrongs and sorrows in the world would disappear for a moment.
How she wished their efforts weren’t for nothing.
The unsettling feeling pressed on her shoulders, circling like the chilled air seeping through her coat.
They passed a copse of evergreens, and she couldn’t help but stare at the spot where they’d buried Crawford once the soil yielded to a shovel. The man had died no more than one hundred yards from a satchel with life-sustaining tools.
This time they didn’t find any bodies, so they set about another task: replenishing the survival packs the family stowed away inside wooden boxes. After restocking three packs, they returned to the spot where they’d found Crawford. With a knife, she nicked his name into the evergreen trunk—so she could pay her respects—but a part of her wished she could send a message to the future: Don’t rest here. This marks your end.
“He’d almost made it,” she remarked.
“A year ago, we couldn’t have seen our hands in front of our faces. He was doomed,” Isaiah replied somberly. “What’s done is done.”
She expected her brother to say more, but they continued in silence to the next container, a weathered maple one. Millie lifted the cover and withdrew a twenty-year-old doctor’s bag. Carefully, she surveyed the contents. The velvet-lined interior had held up well. If Crawford had stumbled upon this, he would’ve discovered flint, dry kindling, and beef jerky. A fire would’ve warmed his face and the food would’ve nourished his belly, but all these things meant nothing if their kin never found the packs. She replenished the supplies—at first cramming them inside, before her heart settled. Then she nestled them in with care. The final touch, a folded piece of paper, contained a reminder of the Bridge Family Rules:
Never interfere with past events.
Always carry your freedom papers.
Search for the survival packs in the orchard.
Do not speak to strangers unless absolutely necessary.
Over a century had passed since Luke, and then many others, had disappeared. Back in the 1830s, the Bridges established the rules and devised the packs to protect those who’d fallen. For those who had time traveled earlier, they wouldn’t have found any of these things—only an unfamiliar landscape filled with confused ancestors. She shuddered to think of their fate, and that it could be hers too.
“You done yet?” Isaiah touched her shoulder.
She gave a nod and tapped the top of the box for luck. If God heard her prayers, and half the time she suspected He didn’t, He’d see fit to send her instead of her brother. Maybe she’d return to this very box in 1901.
Isaiah gave her a lopsided smile and drew her back to the present. “You’d put a winter coat into that thing if you could.”
She chuffed. “I would if we built bigger boxes.”
“Too much work.” He chuckled. “You reckon Uncle Oswald will return to Free State this summer?” He removed his hat and rubbed his bushy hair. She’d chased after him with scissors, but he disappeared every Sunday morning before church.
“Hope so,” she said. “Feels like he’s getting too busy to see the likes of us.”
“Plenty busy, Millie. Now that he knows he’s not gonna fall, he should move on.”
She nodded. Her uncle hadn’t forgotten about them, but she’d still felt trapped as she watched him leave. Many Bridges tried to forget about the family curse and settle elsewhere, but they’d learned the hard way. Grandpa Elijah loved to tell Millie the story of the Bridges who’d fled the farm to head west. Back in 1842, they’d escaped through the mountains into Kentucky, crossed the plains in Illinois to reach the Missouri River. Once there, they built a house, along with a new orchard of apple and peach trees. In the beginning, they’d always carried packs on their backs like Millie and her brother, but over time, they grew complacent. They left their packs at home. But they could never deceive time. And when the tides of the past plucked away one of their children, that poor child fell through time to the prairies of Missouri, a wilderness they still knew little about. In all their wisdom, they could never predict how the landscape would change. When the land would flood. When the forests would burn from a lightning strike. Or how some rivers had bridges built across them in the future but none in the past. Death awaited the foolhardy—if they fell in the wrong place.
