“Daddy, there’s a man with no clothes on,” Ella said. “Out by the river, the Steamship. And I only saw him because Blue saw him, and barked, and then I came right here.” She sped through this last line, her eyes wide. She was typically so self-possessed – I often thought she was the oldest soul in the village, and I really don’t think that was just paternal pride talking – but now, this once, she seemed worried what I would think.
“No clothes on?”
“None,” she said.
“What was he doing?”
“Just sitting there. He may be hurt, I think. I didn’t stay long.”
“Okay, sweetheart. I’ll go look. You stay here. You were back with the sheep?”
She nodded. “On that back hill.”
“All right, stay here. When Mommy gets back, tell her where I’ve gone.
“And tell her not to worry,” I added.
Blue was looking at me, ears up a bit, sensing he might be able to get in another walk.
I went first to the barn to get a staff, although I doubted this man, if he were truly naked, and perhaps injured, would be much trouble. Blue cantered behind me. I nearly cantered myself – I was very curious to see this visitor. Our village did get travelers walking through, now and then, sometimes in varying states of distress. This might be one of them. Or, perhaps just a stranger who had been swimming in the river and had not expected a girl and a dog to chance upon him. Or – well, we would see.
And then on second thought I went back into the barn to get an empty feed bag. I picked up two of them.
“Beggars, choosers,” I said to Blue.
The Steamship was our name for an outcrop of rocks to the east of our farm, close to the river. It had an older name – En Yan Leota – which dated back to an age before there was steam power, but now in our time, with its two large central stones that looked like paddlewheels, and the tall one behind them which stood in for a smokestack, The Steamship it was.
I passed the vegetable garden, our horses, the apple trees, and then entered the back grazing field. The sheep were off in a corner of it. Blue and I went straight through, ignoring them.
On the other side of the fence, by the rocks of the Steamship, the man was there. He made no attempt to hide, just sitting on one of them even as Blue and I drew close. He was aware of us, and watched us approach. He seemed tired. He was indeed completely naked.
He was about forty, I would say. I had never seen him before, that I could remember. He had black hair. His skin was very white; he looked like he hadn’t been out in the sun for a long time. And he looked very, very tired. He seemed fatigued to the point of being dazed.
“Can I help you?” I asked him. “Do you have clothes?”
He shook his head, but it didn’t look like he was answering the question; it looked more like he wasn’t understanding.
“Where have you come from?”
He spoke a few words then, and pointed with this thumb down toward the river. I didn’t catch anything he said.
“Do you understand what I’m saying?”
I had been speaking Common, and I decided to switch to Cape:
“How about now? Do you understand me now?”
He shook his head.
“Can you get up and walk?” I gestured to indicate standing up. I had switched back to Common, which is the language I really wanted to know if he spoke.
He braced himself with his hands and stood. He looked to be in pain, and I saw that his right ankle was hugely swollen. He balanced on his left foot and tried to hop forward.
“Well just stay there then, my goodness,” I told him. I waved him back. “You can wear one of these, and I’ll wrap that ankle with the other.”
I showed him the feed bag and laid the staff down on the ground. I wore a knife in my belt and pulled it out to haggle the bag in half. The man just watched.
“Did you come here from Redenton? Redenton? No? How about Meyerton? From that far? Meyerton?” He clearly wasn’t understanding me, but I thought maybe the names of these neighboring towns upriver would get a response from him. They didn’t.
“Did you float here?” I motioned to the river. “Float in on something?”
No answer.
It took me a while to cut one bag into long strips, and the other into a wrap, but eventually we had his ankle bandaged up tight, and him covered up somewhat. I had him put an arm over my shoulder, and we inched our way toward the house. That also went pretty slow. I wasn’t able to talk to him.
We put him up in the barn, and I gave him some of my clothes. Lulu – my wife – had no problem with it.
“He can barely move, and we’ll know him better in a day or two.”
“I agree.”
We talk to Ella once more about him:
“You know to be careful with that man, right? People who have lost everything may have had it taken from them for a reason. He could have been put out of law for something he did. And he may have deserved it, for all we know.”
She had just nodded, her eyes once again wide.
The first couple days, this guest of ours just lay down in the barn, mostly. On the third day he started to move about more. He began testing his ankle every day, as if he wanted to leave. He also fashioned a travel sack for himself, with a shoulder strap, from another feed bag.
Whether his ankle was a sprain or a fracture, it healed enough after a couple weeks for him to walk fairly normally.
Stolen story; please report.
Lulu spoke Franco, in addition to my Common and Cape, but the man apparently didn’t know that, either. He spoke to us a few times, a few words we couldn’t understand. Lulu agreed with me that his language wasn’t so very different from ours; it wasn’t something from across the ocean, but we couldn’t make it out.
He learned a few Common words. He helped out around the farm as soon as his ankle allowed, digging potatoes once and then helping me clear brush in a field beyond. He was clearly careful never to be alone with Ella. Also, very reassuringly, Blue liked him.
He either could not or would not tell us where he had come from or what he was doing, though. He identified himself as Sterling, although he pronounced it more like Steerling. He didn’t mention a second name.
*
He was an interesting twist to what was otherwise a placid, blessedly eventless summer. The six previous ones had all had long bouts of dangerously hot weather, but this one backed off on that a little, for once. (And in the last one of those, just the year before, Lulu’s sister’s house had burned down, so they had spent the season with us while we put up a new one. So that had been an especially busy few months. It had been enjoyable, and memorable, having these guests so close to us, but also hard.) The sheep were content, the apples were growing, the wheat was coming in. We went to the fair for Solstice Day and spent the night outside in tents, as we always did. Ella had fun at the fair, but I soon couldn’t recall any particulars about it that set it apart from the others I had gone to for the past fifteen years.
Ella turned ten. Jake and Walt were thirteen, and they had gone to spend the summer at Lulu’s father’s farm, helping out there. This was their second summer doing that, and they loved it. Other than that, we just worked our farm. It was a smooth summer. Our guest stayed just over three weeks, total.
Sterling seemed to be a level man, and I trusted him, as I mentioned, but it was a little odd that he made extremely little effort to learn Common beyond a few survival words. Once he was walking around easily he clearly wanted to move on, and because of his reticence I thought it was just as well.
He did ask me if I wanted him to stay to help around the farm in order to pay off the food and clothing I’d given him. He just spoke, in his own language, what had to be words to that effect, quietly, but from his gestures I understood his meaning. He first motioned that he would be walking; then he pointed to his shoes (which had been mine, of course), and then out to the fields, and made some hoeing motions. His question was obvious.
“No, don’t worry, you can go ahead,” I said, shaking my head and waving my hands.
But I added:
“I do want to show you something first, though.”
*
We had set up a cot for him in the south end of the barn, the end by its large door. We kept our buggy and our farm wagon in there; the wagon in front, with the buggy backed up to the far wall.
I swung open the door, and together we pulled the wagon out. Then we moved the buggy away from the wall. I then went back to the floor beneath where it had been, and lifted up planks while he watched. I could see that he was confused about why I was doing this, but he didn’t say anything.
Beneath those planks was where I kept the white case, under a cloth.
“I wanted to show you this, before you go,” I said. “Do you recognize this?”
I pulled back the cloth. The case was still clean, and looking new, even fifteen years since it had opened up and let me out, plus the two hundred, three hundred more, whatever it was, since it had been made, back in my first life.
He looked down at it, then up at me. He clearly didn’t know what it was.
“You didn’t happen to come here in one of these?”
He just looked down and up again, politely confused.
“So you really don’t speak any Common, any English? You don’t understand me at all?”
“Don’t understand,” he said.
“Well then.” I shook the cover and laid it back down on the case. He, helpful as ever, grabbed the far corners to assist. We put the planks back in place, and pushed back the buggy and wagon. He may have frowned just a bit, wondering what all that had been about.
*
I had been the naked guy coughed up on the edge of a town, fifteen years earlier. It had happened upriver from Meyerton. I had been taken in by a family, but I wasn’t in quite such a rush to leave as Sterling had been, with us. I learned the language and also met Lulu. We had come here to our farm, land her family owned, within a year. The twins came soon thereafter.
I did not, at that time, remember, and never have since, what exactly happened to me back when I was placed in the case. I can remember Jennifer and Ara, and our house in Richmond, and my job; but nothing after that until the case lid rose above me, here in this time, on the bank of that river, and I sat up, choking on the vaseline or whatever it was.
Jennifer would have liked Lulu.
Half the time I say that, it sounds to me like a weak excuse, a cop out, a denial. Maybe even a betrayal of Jennifer. I have often repeated it out loud; just to hear myself say it, I suppose, to leave no uncertainty that I am really buying into the idea.
But . . . she would have. Lulu is tough, and down-to-earth, just like Jen was. Lulu can shear sheep, graft apple branches, tackle her sons. She has a sarcastic sense of humor. And she puts up with me.
Ella, of course, reminds me so much of Ara, her long, long ago half-sister. I wish so much that they could have met. And the past few years, when Ella has been eight, and nine, and now ten, have put me to thinking so, so often about the ways in which she is like and unlike Ara; because I lost Ara – or she was lost to me – when she was nine, just about this age. I would guess that in years to come, as I see Ella grow, I’ll see hints, reflections of the person Ara must have been.
I figure it had been at least two hundred years, and perhaps much longer, since I had been locked into that white case at the end of my first life. I also think that at least one hundred years have passed since something apocalyptic happened in this world; something I obviously missed. I think it was likely a nuclear war. I’ve seen rubble fields which local folklore says you shouldn’t walk too far into; I assume this is a warning about radiation that has been simplified over time and lost its origin story. Who knows if the areas are still radioactive – we’re not back to the technological level to be able to produce a measurement device to find out.
The world depopulated and fell into a dark age, but had now emerged. Well, many or most people from 2025 would regard these years right here as still a dark age, I’m sure. But we are doing well enough. We have plenty of food. Our technology is about late Nineteenth Century, and that seems good enough to me. We do have painkillers; going to the dentist is not a torture session.
We do, certainly, lose more women to childbirth than in my first life. And I see older people being struck down by strokes and heart attacks who I’m sure would have done better back then. But . . . late Nineteenth Century, as I said. It could be worse. I suppose part of why I feel content here is the civilization, more so than the technology; we don’t have slavery, nor a Seven Years War, nor a Thirty Years War, nor an Eighty Years War, nor a Hundred Years War.
Anyway, once Lulu and I had established our farm, I retrieved the case from where I had hidden it, and put it in our barn. I didn’t know what further use I would ever have for it. Just keeping it for – the day when someone like Sterling appeared.
I was so nearly certain that this visitor of ours had been another survivor from my time. Common is basically English, which is why I kept trying it with him.
*
I keep finding myself wondering what it was about me – or what it is about me, I guess, present tense – that I’m the one who was put into a coma and then revived like this. Then I catch myself, because I know that’s ridiculous, a spotlight effect: we assume we’re special, but we’re really not. This was random; I’m just the guy who -- needed to be put to sleep for some reason at the same place and time that whoever-it-was had that case ready to go. And then apparently it was never done again, or at least not that anyone has heard of.
(I wonder if they just decided it was unethical, after they put me down in that thing; that must be torture for that poor guy, what if he’s having endless nightmares, we can’t do that again, etc. Or maybe they decided it wouldn’t really work, but thankfully they didn’t pull the plug on that case when they decided that. I mean a figurative plug of course.)
So I know there’s almost certainly nothing special about me. I was just right place, right time if you want to call it that. Still, it’s human nature to at least form a coherent story, a narrative. What kind of a life is this; how can this make sense; why did this work. And well, I did read a lot of science fiction, especially when I was younger, which sort of prepared me for this. As soon as I saw that case, I had a sense of what must have happened, which maybe some other people in such a position might not have had.
This man I had found was apparently just a drifter. I never did learn why he turned up with no clothes.
Now that he has departed, I feel freer, somehow. All these years, my story has seemed so odd, so unbelievable, so unlikely, that I had always hoped to find someone who might confirm it. Another person just like myself would have been the perfect person to do that, of course. But now that he has come and gone, I feel like I made an honest attempt to figure out my story, and now that it hasn’t worked, I can drop it. I am fifty-five, after all, in waking years, and I’m getting too old to wonder about the end of my first life. I spent so long trying to solve a mystery about my life which could not be solved – or maybe it was no mystery at all. Something had happened to me such that people around me thought I’d be better off frozen and preserved for the future. I had had a beloved wife, back then, and had raised a happy daughter. What more was there to know, really? I needed to pay attention to Ella, now, and to the twins, and to Lulu, and to the farm. This is now my time; my second time, but now the only one that matters.