Now, Then, and Everywhen (Chronos Origins) Read online

  The town is relatively quiet and less historically interesting in the summer of ’63. And that’s kind of the point. If I make a rookie mistake and something I do or say changes the opinions or actions of a deacon at Mount Moriah Church or one of the patrons at the Southside Diner, the odds are good that the timeline will keep rolling right along without the slightest hiccup.

  Or, at least, that’s the theory. And I really hope it holds true, because as I round the corner, approaching the courthouse, I spot trouble, in the form of two white men leaning against a car parked on the side of the road. Trouble spots me, too. I keep my eyes down, hoping to avoid interaction. It’s pointless, though. I can see from the shadows on the sidewalk that they’re heading straight toward me.

  Both men are dressed in what seems to be standard male summer business attire for this era—a short-sleeved dress shirt, usually white, with black or gray pants. Add a hat if the guy is balding, and a tie if he thinks he’s important. Both of these men are sporting ties, and the short, tubby one is wearing a hat.

  “Hey, boy,” the slightly taller and considerably thinner of the two men calls out. “Where you goin’ with that bag?”

  I glance up and get a clearer view of his face. He looks familiar, with dark hair and a square jaw. It’s hard to be certain, but I think I’ve seen him before. Maybe in the local papers or in my research prior to the trip.

  “I’m just makin’ a delivery over to the courthouse, sir.”

  “Mmm-mmm-mmm.” The tubby man steps into my path. He leans in toward the bag I’m holding, and inhales deeply. “Smells like somebody ordered up some nigga-fried chicken.”

  My jaw tightens, and so does my grip on the bag, but I know better than to meet his eyes. I’m here to observe. To experience events as someone living in this time would experience them. This is the sort of crap a black man in 1963 South Carolina has to deal with all the time. It’s part of the experience, and I took an oath not to interfere.

  Right this minute, however, I’d love nothing more than to punch this fat fuck right in the face.

  Square Jaw spits on the sidewalk, just missing my shoes. “What’s your name, boy?”

  “Tyson Roberts, sir.” It’s actually Reyes, but if these two are police and they ask for my ID, Roberts is the name they’ll find on my Illinois driver’s license. I don’t think they’re cops, though.

  “You ain’t from around here, are you?”

  “No, sir. Not originally.”

  “‘Not originally,’” Tubby says, and they both snicker.

  “You must be that high yella college boy Ida hired,” the taller man says. “Wanna tell me who ordered that chicken box?”

  “Don’t know, sir. I was just told to—”

  “I did, Mr. Scoggin.” A gray-haired black man comes around the side of the building, limping slowly across the lawn. “My lumbago been botherin’ me somethin’ awful, and Miss Ida said she’d have someone carry it on over.”

  I’m not sure if this is the person the judge sent downstairs to fetch his lunch or just a Good Samaritan who decided to intervene. Either way, I’m glad to see him.

  “Maybe you oughta just fix yourself a shit sammich next time before you leave the house,” Tubby says. “Save your money for when your lumbago gets so bad you cain’t work no more.”

  The old guy laughs uneasily. “That’s good advice, sir. I prob’ly should bring somethin’ from home. You got my extry hush puppies like I asked?”

  Well, that answers my question about whether the judge sent him. “Yessir. They’re in the bag.”

  He gives me a dollar bill in exchange for the food and heads back to the rear entrance of the courthouse, moving much faster now. In fact, he’s barely limping at all. I risk a quick glance up at the two white men and can see from the wry twist of Square Jaw’s mouth that he’s also noticed the old man’s miraculous recovery.

  His face still looks familiar. Where have I seen him before?

  “You know Eddie Franklin?” he asks as I stuff the dollar bill into my pocket.

  “Yessir,” I say, but don’t elaborate. Eddie is Miss Ida’s fry cook, and also her nephew. He’s a few years older than me, and he’s introduced me to a few people. Invited me to have a beer after work a few times. I’m not sure if being friendly was his aunt’s suggestion, since I’m new in town, or Eddie’s own choice. Either way, he seems like a decent guy.

  “Well then, you tell Eddie to watch hisself,” Tubby says. “We know all about that girl over at Arkwright.”

  I have no idea what girl they’re talking about, but I can put the pieces together. Arkwright is a textile mill, one of many in the area, and the vast majority of mill workers are white until the end of this decade.

  “Yessir,” I repeat. “I’ll tell him.”

  “Get on back to work, then,” Square Jaw snaps.

  They return to their car, peeling away from the curb as I head down the sidewalk toward the south side of town. I continue that way for a bit, until I’m certain they aren’t following me. Then I turn onto Dunbar Street and walk the two blocks to Woolworth’s.

  The manager smiles broadly when I step through the door. “Tyson! We got some of them new Marvel books you were lookin’ for.”

  I don’t know if this manager, who is white, was for or against segregation during the sit-ins three years ago, but he’s always delighted to see me. That’s almost certainly because I’ve dropped about half my meager salary from the diner on magazines and comics during the three weeks I’ve been here. The CHRONOS archives have copies of most major publications, but a lot of pop-culture stuff wasn’t preserved. Historians usually look for a few things to carry back with us, even stuff outside of our own research agendas.

  The particular items I’m looking for today, however, won’t be going to the archives. Edwina didn’t have to answer my questions about her genetic designs, and she definitely didn’t have to be nice about doing it. And September 1963 was a big month for comic books. Marvel released the very first issues of both X-Men and The Avengers. Given the immense popularity of both series well into the next century, I’m certain that our archive has both of those issues in digital format. But they’re rare enough that Edwina might not have print copies in the collection she inherited from her father. And at twelve cents each, it’s a pretty cheap thank-you gift.

  Two of the Mount Moriah deacons are already seated at their usual table when I get back to the diner, but between the morning shift in the kitchen and the humidity outside, my shirt is drenched. I take the stairs up to the small apartment over the diner to stash the comics and change into fresh clothes. Even though I need to get back downstairs, the encounter at the courthouse is bugging me, so I pull my CHRONOS diary from under the mattress and flip it open, bracing myself for a message.

  And just like last time, there’s nothing. No indication that my little run-in at the courthouse affected the timeline in any way.

  “Everything go okay?” Miss Ida asks when I bring the first round of orders back to the kitchen.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Eddie is dropping a basket of chicken into the fryer. I decide not to mention the two men yet. Regardless of whether there’s any truth to their claim, Sharon—Eddie’s on-again, off-again girl—is the other waitress on duty today. I’m certain it’s not the kind of thing he’d want discussed in front of her, and even more certain it’s not something he’d want discussed in front of his aunt.

  For the next few hours, I deliver plates of roast beef, meat loaf, pork chops, and fried chicken. I fetch iced tea and coffee, and “maybe a few more of those good biscuits” for Deacon Faircloth, who will furtively wrap them in a napkin to take home for tomorrow’s breakfast. In between, I watch, and I listen. I’m under no illusion that I’ll see or hear all of their conversation, but I don’t need to. There’s a tiny audio device at the table to pick up what I miss while shuttling plates to and from the kitchen, and I’ve set numerous stable points in the dining room to cover the visual side. I can use
that data to fill in any gaps in my notes once I’m back in my own time. And CHRONOS isn’t really looking for a verbatim account of what was said and done. If that’s what they wanted, there are less risky ways of getting it.

  In fact, historians tried the remote-recording route for a few decades, dropping cameras and microphones at the various stable points. They soon realized, however, that context is vital. Even day-trippers miss a lot. If I’d simply jumped in this morning, parked myself at a nearby table, and ordered the lunch special, I’d probably have heard more of the deacons’ conversation. But I wouldn’t have understood as much about who they are. I wouldn’t have caught the things that lie beneath their words. I wouldn’t know that the oldest among them, Deacon Fry, was born a slave or that the preacher’s brother-in-law thinks Martin Luther King Jr. is a stooge for the Communist Party. I wouldn’t know that Deacon Smith’s dismissive comments today about the significance of the march and King’s speech were almost entirely due to him being passed over in favor of Deacon Faircloth when the congregation chose someone to travel to DC along with the preacher. All of that subtext would be missing for a day-tripper.

  I can’t help but wonder how many other things beneath the surface are hidden from someone like me, who has been in town less than a month. You can live for years in places like this and still be considered an outsider. But you have to strike a balance. Most historians want a bit of variety. I’ve only known a few CHRONOS agents who were willing to put down roots and stay in one historical location permanently.

  The lunch rush gives way to dinner prep, and then I work the dining room until we flip the Closed sign at a little after nine. Sharon is sweeping, and I’m bussing the last table when a motor revs outside.

  Miss Ida, who is counting out the register, wraps a rubber band around a stack of dollar bills. I still haven’t had a chance to talk to Eddie and decide this might be a good time while the other two are busy.

  The engine roars again. “Some fool needs a new muffler,” Sharon says.

  As soon as I step into the kitchen, I smell the smoke. Not cooking odors from the fryer, but the sharp, pungent smoke of a gasoline fire from outside. The fumes are being pulled in by the fan wedged into the window facing the road that runs alongside the diner.

  Eddie stands frozen a few feet from the window, watching the bright glow through the blades of the fan as they spin. The burning object is a cross, about five feet high. As the flames spread up and out, three men in white hoods—the modern kind that proudly show their faces—climb back into the cab of the truck. I’m pretty sure one of the three is the tubby guy from the courthouse. And even though he isn’t with them, the hoods are what make me finally recognize Square Jaw’s face. He’s one of the Klan leaders in the photographs Rich included in the proposal for our upcoming research trip with Katherine.

  Eddie grabs the fire extinguisher from the wall near the fryer. “Sharon! Get Aunt Ida upstairs and stay there. Both of you.” Then he turns to me. “You sure nothin’ went wrong with that delivery today?”

  “Nothing went wrong, except for two men who told me to give you a message. Something about a woman you’re seeing over at Arkwright.”

  His eyes shoot toward the dining room, and then he curses. “This ain’t about no woman. Get the other canister from the dining room.”

  Ida pushes through the swinging door seconds before I reach it. “What you yellin’ at me about, Ed—” She stops when she sees the cross outside. “Sweet Jesus, Tyson. You said everything went okay today! That don’t look like okay to me.”

  By the time I make it outside with the fire extinguisher, Mr. Larson, the owner of the little store across the street, has joined Eddie and is spraying the cross with a stream of white foam from his own extinguisher. Eddie’s canister is now empty. He snatches the second one from me, smacks the top against the sidewalk to open it, and puts out the last of the flames.

  “Any idea what’s got ’em riled up?” Larson asks.

  Eddie shoots a glance at me, and then at his aunt, who is standing in the doorway, hugging her arms to her chest. “Judge ordered a chicken box today. Lenny Phelps saw Tyson making the delivery.”

  “All they saw was me giving it to some old man who worked there.”

  I want to protest some more, to argue that this isn’t my fault, or at least not entirely my fault. For one thing, I’m not sure that it is. While he may be dating Sharon, Eddie has, as they say in this era, a wandering eye. I’ve been out with him on two different occasions, once here in town and once over in Gaffney, and I’ve witnessed that eye wander across the color line.

  I’d like to think that Eddie’s smart enough to keep the rest of his body from following, because there’s no faster way for a black man in this place and time to get himself killed. Of course, it’s also the perfect excuse for the Klan to target a successful black business that’s seen as a threat to a white business’s profit margin.

  But the worst thing that happens to me if Ida decides this is my fault is that she fires me. I might have to head back home early, although I suppose there’s nothing to stop me from hanging around town for a few days until I can gauge community reaction to the Birmingham bombing. So I don’t protest further. I just give them what little I know. “They didn’t use the name Phelps. The old guy said Coggins. Or something like that.”

  Eddie spits into the grass. “Scoggin is their leader. Tall guy, dark hair. Phelps’s sister owns The Dixie Chicken. And Phelps goes ever’where Scoggin goes, like a fat, ugly shadow. Kinda strange to call him muscle when he’s barely got any, but he’s the one in charge of enforcement. He’s got half a dozen guys who’ll do pretty much anything he wants if he gets them liquored up.”

  “He sure does,” Larson says. “That’s four crosses they burnt this summer alone. Only saw one more ’n that all last year. My brother says they’re the ones killed those two Whitman boys a couple years back. And Louise Freeman swears her girl Emmy didn’t just run off. I still think they had somethin’ to do with it.”

  Nothing in my research for this jump mentioned cross burnings in Spartanburg this summer. There’s no mention of Klan-related killings, either. After three weeks here, though, that doesn’t really surprise me. The only African American newspaper from this area in the CHRONOS archives was a short-lived enterprise that operated for a few years in the 1920s. And things like this generally don’t make the white-owned papers.

  Once the fire is fully out, Eddie gives the cross a few hard kicks, and it topples onto the sidewalk. We spray it down with the hose until it’s cool enough to drag around by the dumpster and then go back inside.

  Ida is in the dining room, writing something on a note card. She looks up when I walk by.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Ida. I would have gone around back, but those men cut me off. Started asking questions. The judge’s man came out and got the chicken, though, so I didn’t think there was a problem. I guess I was wrong. You want me to work out the week, or go now?”

  “No,” she says. “I’m countin’ on you to stay on through mid-September like you promised when I gave you this job. This ain’t your fault.”

  I glance down at what she’s writing. IDA’S FRIED CHICKEN is scrawled across the top.

  “I’ll have to give him the recipe for the hush puppies, too,” she says. “It’ll prob’ly end up in the hands of half the people on this side of town.”

  “I bet Dixie Chicken will get it,” Sharon says.

  “Dixie Chicken already has my recipe. I had someone say they stole it from me and offer to sell it to that woman right after she opened, hoping Judge Turner would order from her. He’s the only white folks who ever orders from me, so it’s no skin off my back. That Phelps woman paid five dollars for the recipe, but she thinks her food is better, so she ain’t ever switched. And I suspect that’s exactly what will happen if I send it to the cook at his house. So this is goin’ to the judge’s wife.”

  “You think she’ll cook it for him?” I ask.

  I
da and Sharon both look at me like I’m crazy. “No,” Ida says. “But maybe she’ll tell her cook to follow the recipe. And if that don’t work, I’ll just have to carry the durn thing over to his office myself. ’Cause if he don’t quit orderin’ from me, those fools are gonna burn my place clean to the ground.”

  FROM THE DIARY OF KATE PIERCE-KELLER

  March 9, 2074

  History has changed again.

  It was a gradual change this time around. I’m sure it took months of organization at every level of government to ensure that people in the United States, as well as those in our allied nations, were in compliance with the new law.

  It was gradual in another sense, as well. The seeds for this change were planted in a time shift that happened more than half a century ago. No one activated a CHRONOS key to set it in motion. I don’t even know if there’s anyone alive who can use the thing, although I’m sure there are government scientists working on that by now. They probably started the wheels turning on that project as soon as they removed the bullets from Simon Rand’s body and patched him up. They had my Aunt Prudence, too, and my mother told me that the reason Prudence’s coffin was closed at the funeral was that there was no body inside—as soon as they removed the medallion grafted to her arm, her body simply vanished.

  Unlike the time shifts that occurred when I was a teenager, this one didn’t make me dizzy or panicked, although I’ll admit I was a little unnerved when the medical technician arrived about a month ago for our appointment. Aside from that, the only thing I felt was the tiny prickle against my skin as they stamped my left arm with the immunizer. Thankfully, it didn’t imprint a temporary lotus tattoo this time. When I saw the stamping tool, I asked the med tech if she could apply the stamp to the back of my hand—a joke that Trey got, even if no one else did. She said no, and the other tech pointed out rather unnecessarily that I am old and my hands lack the necessary padding to absorb the medicine. And then the two of them moved on to the apartment complex next door, probably thinking that this old lady was a little soft in the head.