Ranger's Quest- The Beginning Page 4

  Archie shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. Holding that dead soldier’s firearm was the first time he’d ever held a weapon, much less fired one. He shook his head again and looked away.

  “Well, no mind. With you being here I might be able to get caught up. Then we can go set some traps later on.” Clemens smiled and winked at Archie.

  Jed returned to the barn and sat down next to Archie.

  “Well, let’s get back at it. You boys gotta build some shoes.” Clemens rose and looked at Archie. “You read?” Archie nodded. “There’s a shoe form on the wall there says DANIELS. Fetch it for me.” Archie saw a number of curved wooden plates hanging on the barn wall, each one a different size with a name written on it.

  Jed jumped up and looked at Archie. “Which one? I’ll get it.” Archie saw the form that Clemens spoke of and pointed to it. Jedidiah ran and pulled it off the wall. He stared at the name and appeared to be mouthing each letter. Archie smiled as he realized young Jed was trying to learn to read.

  “Pa lets me help make shoes. I can teach ya!” Jed walked past Archie and took the form to the anvil. He chose a bar of iron stock and shoved it into the red hot coals, turned back and looked at Archie. Jed’s excitement showed in his wide eyes and ear-to-ear grin. Archie smiled and nodded and joined him at the forge.

  “I’m gonna run that wheel down to Butler’s. You two make as many of those horseshoes as you can.” Clemens rolled the repaired wheel out to his wagon and with a single lift shoved the heavy wheel into the back of the wagon. He hooked up the team of mules and drove away.

  When evening finally came, Archie was covered in soot and completely exhausted. He couldn’t ever remember doing so much physical labor. The work was hard but rewarding. Archie was contented. Clemens came back just before dusk and Jed and Archie stopped working to watch him carry a sack into the house.

  Jed jumped up and shouted. “Yippee! We gonna eat good tonight!” Archie looked at the boy, wrinkled his brow, and shrugged his shoulders. Jed explained. “Mr. Butler owns a freight business. His wagons always need fixin’. Sometimes he pays Pa with money, sometimes with vittles. Boy, oh, boy.” Archie smiled at the boy’s excitement over something as simple as food. “We better clean up for Pa.”

  Archie and Jed cleaned up the work table, returned the tools to their proper place in the shop and went outside to a barrel to wash off the dirt. Clemens came out of the house. “How many, Jed?”

  “We done six, Pa.” Jed stood straight and tall with his shoulders back, just beaming with pride of his accomplishment.

  “Six?” Clemens crossed his arms across his chest and scowled at the boy. Jed’s shoulders sank. Then Clemens broke into a raucous laugh and placed a loving hand on the boy’s head. “Well, I guess six horseshoes is the best you’ve ever done.” They both laughed. Archie smiled relishing the loving relationship this father and son shared. His smile turned to a frown as he remembered his own father and how he had never been praised for any of his accomplishments. His father only criticized his work; whatever Archie did, it was never good enough for his father. It was good to see a father and son who cared so deeply for each other.

  Jed served supper in the barn at the worktable: greens, beans and eggs along with fresh bread and coffee. Archie watched and listened as Clemens and the boy talked about the day, about tomorrow, about their dreams and plans. After dinner, with a full stomach, it was all he could do to crawl back to the canvas-covered hay bale where he slept. Archie lay in his make-shift bed and enjoyed their company. Jed and Clemens continued to talk and joke for a little while longer.

  “Well, mornings come early.” Clemens stood and ushered Jedidiah out the shop’s door.

  “G’night,” Jed called out as he headed across the dark clearing to the house.

  Clemens stopped in the doorway. “We’ll set some traps tomorrow. You get a good night’s sleep and we’ll head out first light. Good night, boy.” Clemens turned and headed out the door.

  “It’s Charlie, Mr. Anderson,” Archie finally said. Clemens froze. He stared at Archie lying on his bed with his eyes closed, not moving a muscle. Clemens smiled and slowly shook his head. “Well, I’ll be,” he said under his breath.

  7

  Family

  The next morning, when Clemens opened the door of the barn, Jed ran in before the blacksmith.

  “You talked! You told Pa your name was Charlie!” The boy ran up to Charlie’s bunk with a big grin on his face. Clemens stood in the open doorway holding the lantern, also with a smile on his face.

  Archie sat up on his canvas-covered hay bale and smiled at Jed. “I suppose I did talk.”

  Jed jumped and spun around with excitement.

  “Jed. Get on that fire, son.” Clemens set the lantern on the table and walked a little closer to Charlie. “How you feelin’ this morning?”

  Archie stretched his arms and twisted his back. Every muscle in his body ached. The life of leisure and privilege he had been raised in had been turned upside down. Now he was in a world where everything was a chore that required physical labor. “Other than being pretty sore all over, I guess I’m all right.” Archie smiled at Clemens.

  “That soreness will go away. I saw something flash in your eyes yesterday. I sort of figured you was remembering things.”

  Archie’s smile slowly waned. He didn’t want to give up his charade but felt an urge to tell the truth to this kind soul who had taken him in. He was torn: should he confess to being an imposter and live as Archie? Or completely immerse himself in this way of life and take on the persona of Charlie? He leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands.

  A long silent pause hung in the air as Clemens looked at him. “You sure you’re Charlie Turlock ...?”

  Archie raised his head. His eyes met Clemens’s and a cold chill ran down his spine. He could feel the blood drain away from his face. What does he know about me?

  “… Cuz you sure don’t sound like a ‘bama boy.” Clemens turned and walked back to the forge. “Get on those bellows with Jed, and once the fire’s hot you two can fill up that coal bin.”

  Archie let out a sigh of relief but sat for a moment feeling empty inside for living a lie. He knew that eventually he would have to explain himself to his benefactor, but not now. Now, he was Charlie, and Charlie Turlock was who he’d remain until a situation arose where he could tell Clemens the truth. He shook off the guilty feeling and began working the bellows alongside Jed.

  Breakfast was the same menu and the same routine as the day before. They sat around the work table and ate in relative silence. It seemed like the blacksmith and his son waited for Charlie to speak. Now, aware of his accent, or lack of one, he chose to say nothing. After breakfast, the three worked together on various projects. Archie didn’t say much other than a few short remarks and questions.

  Late in the morning, Clemens hitched the mules to the wagon. “I’m going over to Daniel’s today to shoe his horse. While I’m gone you two can fix that fence around the garden.” He placed the horseshoes that Archie and Jed had made the day before in his wagon, along with a wooden box of tools and a cloth sack of handmade nails. “I’ll be back this afternoon.”

  Archie and Jed worked on the fence for the better part of the afternoon. Toward the end of the day Archie got curious about Mrs. Anderson. “What’s your mom like?”

  “Fran’s not my Ma!” Jed said sternly. Archie was taken aback by the boy’s harshness. “My Ma’s dead.”

  “I’m sorry, Jed. I didn’t know.”

  “She died some years back from the fever. I got sick, too, but I got better.”

  Archie nodded his understanding. “I’m sorry.” He let the silence hang. He could tell he had struck a nerve in Jed concerning his mother. Archie dug another hole and set in a new fence post. When the tension in the air had dissipated, Archie reinitiated his conversation. “Is Fran your father’s wife?”

  “Yep. She’s a darky.”

  “A what?”r />
  “She’s a Negro. She don’t come out much. Pa wants her to stay inside the house.”

  Archie didn’t see what the issue was. Then he remembered the slave history of this place in the nineteenth century. He had a hollow feeling inside him when he realized Fran was a slave. A white man married to a Negro woman, especially in the South during the Civil War era, would be scandalous at best. But it could be outright dangerous depending on people’s feeling within the community. He understood why Clemens wanted to keep her out of sight as much as possible.

  “Do you like Fran?” Archie asked.

  “Yeah. Sure. She’s nice. And she cooks real good.”

  Archie stammered his way through his question. “How did… I mean, when, or… how did your father get… or, find… or acquire Fran?” He was uncomfortable talking about slavery, especially in the eighteen-sixties.

  Jed stopped stringing fence wire and stared at Charlie blankly. Finally he asked, “You mean where’d we get her?”

  “Okay. Yeah. Where’d you get her?”

  “We got her from Mr. Talbot in Williamsburg,” Jed said matter-of-factly.

  Owning, giving or acquiring people as a commodity was a foreign concept to Archie. He had read about slavery and the harsh treatment of slaves, but now he was in the reality of it and had a hard time understanding how people behaved regarding it. He raised his eyes and saw Clemens leaning against the corner of the house watching and listening to the two of them talk while they repaired the fence. He felt embarrassed for prying into their personal life. The look on Clemens’s face showed he was agitated. Clemens walked over to join Charlie and Jed.

  “Fran’s a freedwoman, Charlie,” Clemens said.

  Charlie hung his head. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t meaning to pry. It was just… talk.”

  “No matter.” Clemens smiled at Jed and commended the job he had done on the fence. He sent the boy into the house to get ready for supper, picked up Jed’s tools, and began slowly walking back to the barn with Charlie.

  “The Talbots had a small plantation near Williamsburg. It was a fine place at one time. Mrs. Talbot died about twelve years ago and old John Talbot was never the same. He just let the place go. He was always needing me to fix something. Eventually, he got to where he didn’t have any money left to pay me for my work.” Clemens put the tools away. “But I kept helping him, nonetheless. You hate to see a man go down like that.”

  Clemens sat down on Charlie’s makeshift bed and watched him clean the shop. “Once his wife passed, John kept Fran in the house to take care of him. When John died a few years back, he left instructions for me to take Fran. He knew my wife died and he knew I needed someone. The other slaves went with the farm… like cattle.” He spit on the ground as if he was getting rid of a bad taste in his mouth. Charlie stopped cleaning and sat on the edge of the work table intently listening. There was a pause. “Don’t hold much for slavery. How ‘bout you?” Clemens’s eyes burned into Charlie. He could see the antipathy the blacksmith held inside. Charlie didn’t answer, he just shook his head.

  Clemens slapped his knee and stood up. “No matter.” He walked to the open door and leaned against the doorjamb watching the sun set. He turned back to Charlie, the tension in his face appearing to have eased. “The boy needed looking after. Right after I got her, I freed her and asked her to be my woman. She’s smart. She’s pretty. And she’s good with the boy.” He lowered his head and stared back at the darkening horizon. “Folks didn’t cotton much to our living together. Especially after they found out she was free. Business started falling away. So I sold the armory and moved us away. We ended up here.”

  “Armory?” Charlie asked.

  “Yep. Anderson’s Public Armory. Maintained the militia’s firearms, held their magazine and had the forge. It was a good business… a good life.” He smiled. Then his smile faded. “Least till the city fathers got to complaining about Fran. They had their own ideas about a slave’s position in society. Being my wife didn’t fall in line with their way of thinking.”

  Clemens looked at Charlie and smiled. He chuckled as he stared at the holes in Charlie’s twenty-third-century pants. His pants and shoes, although flame-resistant, hadn’t fared very well around a forge. Small holes had melted through the fabric wherever sparks landed. “You work another day around that fire and you won’t have any britches left at all.” He laughed at his own remark, put a hand on Charlie’s shoulder and gently pulled him along as he headed toward the house. “I think I got a pair of trousers you can wear. Besides, it’s time you met the missus.”

  Archie enjoyed meeting Fran Anderson. As Clemens said, she was attractive. She kept her head down and never looked directly at anyone. She spoke softly and only in brief sentences. He enjoyed the evening meal, sitting around the table with their family. The cabin was small. Inside, where they took their meals, was a single room from one side of the cabin to the other. He noticed Jed’s bunk on one side of the room and a stone fireplace and cookstove on the opposite side. A pantry shelf stood next to the stove. The only other furniture, besides the table and four straight-back chairs, was a small three-legged stool near Jed’s bed and a rocking chair in front of the fireplace. There wasn’t room for anything else. There was one door on the back wall that Archie assumed led to Clemens’s bedroom.

  After dinner the four sat around in the house talking and planning the next day. Archie mostly listened in silence. He was glad to be accepted into their house, but still felt uncomfortable in his situation. Before he returned to the barn, Clemens gave him a pair of his trousers to wear and an old pair of boots. He took them back to the barn and tried them on; they were a little big for him, but he could make them work.

  Later that night, Archie burned his old pants and shoes in the forge. He kept his borrowed Confederate blouse hanging in the barn. Now, the only remaining tie to his old life was the time belt. He had to hide it. Charlie found a small canvas bag in the barn containing a few nails. It had a leather drawstring around the top. He emptied the nails onto the work table, placed his time belt in the bag and buried it in the dirt behind the hay bale where he slept.

  Charlie lay on his bunk staring at the barn roof. He was now Charlie Turlock, a battle-scarred Confederate deserter. Charlie had been accepted as a member of this family. His predicament with the army didn’t seem to be an issue with this peace-loving blacksmith. He was a hired hand, earning his room and board. Charlie thought about going back home, back to his girlfriend, his father and the trouble he had caused only two days ago. Surely the trouble he was in back home had not yet blown over. He thought that he’d give it a few weeks and then go back.

  Back to what, though?

  8

  Life On The Farm

  In the weeks that followed, Charlie became accustomed to his new life in 1862. He was accepted and welcomed into the Anderson family. He took his meals in the house with them, but still slept in the barn. His appearance and his attitude had completely changed. He hadn’t experienced a panic or anxiety attack since the first night he arrived in Clemens’s barn. His hair was longer and he hadn’t shaved at all. The weak muscles and excess body fat he carried from a life of leisure, instant meals and inactivity had been replaced with a strong, lean, muscular body. He carried himself with confidence and assuredness, something he would never have achieved back home around his father. The longer he stayed here, the less he thought about his home, his father and the trouble he had run away from. He pushed his thoughts of returning to his future to the back of his mind.

  Charlie learned quickly and became a first-rate blacksmith apprentice. A few times Clemens assigned him simple tasks to achieve on his own; Charlie even interacted with some of Clemens’s clients. Occasionally, Jed and Charlie would visit customers to perform some farrier duties. He learned to trim hooves and shoe horses.

  Each day was a new learning experience for Charlie, and he welcomed every challenge. He worked hard and enjoyed this simple, less stressful life. On top of learning the
blacksmith trade, he also learned about farming and the care of animals, which was the most difficult task for him. In Charlie’s old life he had never had any contact with any animals much less ones as large as the mules. He was very skittish around them. If one of the mules hadn’t taken a liking to him, Charlie may never have gotten used to being around them. He learned how to groom the mules, harness them, feed and care for them, saddle and ride one, and how to drive them as a team.

  The life skills were the most challenging for Charlie. He was used to the comforts of his former existence, where everything he ever needed was easy, available and efficient. Here, medical treatment and medicine were essentially non-existent. Although he hated it, Charlie got used to using an outhouse. Bathing was done periodically as a necessity. He stood in an old washtub and washed himself using water from the stream and a small bit of soap. Fran washed clothes on Saturday evening and hung them to dry in the cabin. He sat with a blanket wrapped around him until Sunday morning.

  Eating and drinking was an entirely new world for Charlie. He had to learn about getting food and keeping it fresh. Here, food was gathered and prepared daily; preserving food was a survival lesson. He learned that people’s diet would change with the seasons. In the spring and summer months, they ate what fresh fruits and vegetables the armies didn’t steal. During the winter months, they ate the fruits and vegetables that they’d dried for preservation. Meats, if not eaten right away, were either smoked or salted. The purpose of each method was to draw out the moisture to prevent spoiling. The process took well over a month to complete before the meat could be eaten.

  The chore that Jed hated the most was churning butter. Fran would skim cream after the milk had set for a couple of hours and hand whip it to a pudding-like consistency before pouring it into the churn. Then it was Jed’s duty to continuously turn and beat the cream into a solid chunk of butter. Jed would coax Charlie’s help. It quickly became one of Charlie’s dreaded tasks. Once the butter was solid it was taken to the nearby stream where it was stored in a small keg that Clemens fastened to a hemp rope. The rope was secured around a tree and the keg was kept underwater in an area of the stream where the water flowed but wasn’t turbulent. The stream would keep the butter fresh and cool.