Chapter 3: Getting Grounded

The Family

They’d worked out a pattern. Everyone had work to do and no one could spend all her time reading the book left for Ramie by her younger siblings. Nor could they handle more at one time than the hour they spent in the evening holding each other as they read. Every word the kids had written cut into the hearts of their mothers, father, and siblings. Even Aubrey, the only one not related by blood, worried that the babies might be affected by hearing the story at such a young age. But more than that, she worried about her husband and wife.

Cole was late when he parked the ATV behind the ranch house. He’d driven to the upper pasture to check on the herd and his ranch hands. He was steaming when he sat at the table for supper with the family.

“They’re fencing in the whole area up by the hot spring!” he shouted after they’d taken a moment to consider the land before eating. “Sons of bitches. The government sold mineral rights in the National Forest and they’re exploring for oil.”

“They can’t fence off portions of the land that they already sold us grazing rights to,” Ashley declared. “I’m going to call Arlen Logan at the Forest Service right now.” She pushed back from the table. Cole put a hand on her arm.

“I called as soon as I got in range,” he said. “Nobody’s in the office. It’s Sunday. The damned Forest Service has taken to keeping bankers’ hours. Believe me, I filled up their mailbox with my complaint and we’ll start again in the morning.”

“After the way they stood up to the government six years ago, I had more faith in them than this,” Mary Beth said.

“They got cleaned out by the administration,” Ramie said. “At least they didn’t just sell off the forest up there. Is it the same group that’s up in the Yellowstone? They’ve closed the whole north half of the Park because of the protests.”

“It’s gonna get worse before it gets better,” Kyle opined. His words applied to many things.

After dinner, the family gathered again in the office to hear the next section of what the kids had written. Ramie carried the box and sat heavily on the couch. Each time she lifted it, it felt heavier. Kyle reached for her and she leaned against him.

“Laramie, honey, let me. This is too much for any one of us to take on alone,” he said. “We need to share this among us.” Tears sprang to Ramie’s eyes as she hugged her brother/husband. She let him take the box and fuss with opening it while Moms and Pa settled into their chair.

“I’m so proud of you, Jason,” Aubrey whispered. Kyle turned to look at her. “I know you couldn’t take this on alone, Kyle. If Jason wasn’t there to help it would be too much. I’m proud of you both. I am lucky to be loved by the two most wonderful men in the world and only have to deal with one cock.”

“I love you, Aubrey,” Jason said with Kyle’s voice. “I love this whole family.”

Ramie leaned across to Aubrey and was met by her lips. They let a long delicious kiss deepen. A tap on Ramie’s knee turned her attention to the toddler, Theresa. She crawled up into Ramie’s lap while Aubrey fished her breast out of her nursing bra to feed Katherine.

Kyle took a handful of papers from the box and cleared his throat.

Phile: Aliens

We were so focused on the wolves and accepting our new names in before-time as we slept in now-time that when Moms called us for breakfast and to get ready for school, we were like the walking dead. It was hard to reconcile the attack of the wolves and the time we’d spent tanning their hides and even eating their meat with the one night of sleep we’d struggled through as we were separated in our rooms. We were used to our other selves aging faster than we were but it was beginning to worry us. We wondered if in before-time we’d be old people by the time we were sixteen in now-time.

It wasn’t until our hands touched at the breakfast table that we snapped into this reality again. Or both realities. I’ve seen Mom Mar walk around the house cleaning and cooking while the whole time she was reading some paperback book. I think we were a little like that. Only our book was a whole other life. That was why it was so hard for us to read books in school. It was like trying to keep track of a third reality at the same time as we were living two others.

We might even have gotten crazier after that incident. We concocted schemes in before-time and executed them in now-time. Even when teachers made us sit on opposite sides of the room, we’d just talk in before-time. Miss Bradley, our science teacher, was mean. Not just to us, but everybody. Especially those who were a little strange. There were a few in our class. We started playing tricks on her, like moving her books or her glasses while she wasn’t looking. I know some of our classmates saw us do things. I’d ask a question about an experiment we were going to run and just as soon as she turned to look at me, Caitlin would turn to a different experiment in Miss B’s book so when she turned back she was reading from the wrong formula. Some of the other kids even joined in.

We weren’t invisible, but we were quiet and sneaky. A lot of the time, our classmates didn’t know we’d done something until they saw the results. The day a bird flew through the open window and pooped on her desk might have been a little much. She never let us open windows again. It was Mandy Stevens that cornered us. We’d only known Mandy since we started junior high in Laramie. She was one of the ‘weird ones’ like us, but she’d never really spoken to us before. All the weird kids kind of kept to themselves.

“You two are aliens,” she whispered after the final bell rang and we were on the way out to wait for the bus. “Can you teach me how to do that mental telepathy thing you do?”

“Huh?” when we answered with the same sound at the same time, Mandy started nodding her head.

“Like that. I won’t tell anyone. Do you have, like, a hive mind so you always know what everyone is thinking, or is it more like you talk to each other in your heads? Will you take me to your ship? I want to learn how to do it. Don’t worry, I’m good at keeping secrets. Oh, god! Can you read my mind?” She blushed crimson. Caitlin looked at me in our other life.

“I think she’s having dirty thoughts!” she said. We were usually careful about not speaking English in before-time. But Cait just blurted it out.

“I wonder which of us she’s fantasizing about,” I laughed. We didn’t get a chance to guess in now-time because Mandy never really shut up.

“I have to watch myself around you two. Just know that I mean you no harm. I friend.” She gestured to herself. All of a sudden, she was talking like she had to explain something to foreigners who didn’t speak English or something.

Mandy was a little strange, but she wasn’t a bad person. Other kids sometimes made fun of her because she was a little overweight and had a blotchy complexion. We never did. Just that little bit of interaction made us like her. Besides, we felt like we could use an ally, you know? We agreed in before-time. In now-time, we both put our hands out at the same time to touch her shoulder.

“Mandy friend,” we said in unison. She squealed and bounced a little.

“I knew it! I have to run right now because my mom’s waiting, but I’ll be ready any time.” She ran to a small car that pulled up and got in the back seat. Cait and I got on the bus and went home.

Caitlin: Friends

Strange as it sounds when Phile tells that story, Mandy has been our friend ever since that day. Until you opened the box, she was the only one who ever knew the truth about us. She helped us figure out some of the stuff that was going on. And, as wonderfully crazy as she was ... is, she’s really smart and understands better than we could ever hope. She is a great adviser. And more.

Mandy became a kind of co-conspirator at school and we got away with things we never would have pulled without her. We just had to see Merv again after our encounter with the wolves. When Mandy saw the teacher was going down the attendance list and looking for us, she asked for a restroom pass and pulled the fire alarm. We got back to the school in time to make attendance at the rally point.

Merv had listened but had no time to respond to our experience before we had to run back to the school. He said he’d see us during the summer, but to keep learning.

“Suppose you had a bucket to fill with water from the garden hose,” Phile tried to explain to Mandy. “And there’s a good stream of water. But then someone comes along with a firehose to help you fill the bucket and suddenly it’s overflowing and you are trying to find another bucket but the water just keeps pouring in. We get now-time information just like everyone else. But we get before-time information two to five times as fast at the same time.”

“This would make a great science fiction story,” Mandy said as she listened. We’d started having lunch together every day and, little by little, the story came out. We weren’t sure how she’d take it and were always prepared to laugh at her and tell her we really put one over on her. That made us both uncomfortable because she really was becoming a friend. “Of course, it isn’t fiction, is it? What’s it like to have two lives going on at the same time? How do you keep them separate? With all the input you are receiving, how do you function at all?” She believed us and she was sympathetic. The only other person we had who we could talk to was Merv Longsteer and he just wasn’t available most of the time.

“It kind of drives us crazy,” Phile said. “Sometimes we forget which is now and which is before. We blurt out something in Cheyenne in now-time and people think we’re talking gibberish.”

“I’m learning Cheyenne language!” Mandy said. “I’m a quarter Cheyenne. Maybe you are my ancestors!”

“Oh, wow! How would you like to be my great-great-great-granddaughter?” I laughed. “That would really get confusing.”

“Before-time and now-time. It sort of makes sense,” Mandy said. “Do your before-time selves have a problem with that designation? I mean, to them, ‘now’ must be the future.”

“We were separated from the rest of the People after the massacre. When we left, we didn’t really have a native concept of future. The word that we’d translate to future is just the word for what is in front. Like if you walk in front of me, you are future. Even the word for tomorrow just means ‘in the morning’. But that only makes a difference if we are trying to explain to someone else—which we don’t. We only have one brain.”

“No, that’s not right,” I interrupted. “It’s part of the problem. We have two brains, but only one repository for all our memories. So, my before-time self is dreading the math assignment that’s due Monday as much as my now-time self is. And the me that is talking to you is just as concerned about having enough meat dried for winter to survive. And skins to keep us warm.”

“I’m hunting in before-time while we talk in now-time,” Phile said. “What I want is to be out hunting in now-time, too, so I can bring home twice as much meat. I just can’t get it to me in before-time.”

Just talking about it with Mandy helped us understand who we were. In both times. And she accepted everything we said as true, even to the extent of tossing out Cheyenne words that would help. Hétsetseha éšeēva: today. Nésta-hétsetseha: before now.

We still got confused. We could be as noisy or as quiet as we wanted in before-time. Once I let out a whoop when Phile brought down a buffalo and realized that I’d whooped in the middle of English class. We were so thankful to get out of school for the summer.

We were confined closer to the house that summer because of the reports of wolves. We never went anywhere without our rifles. But being inside was like being trapped in a cave with an angry she-bear. We stole food from the kitchen at breakfast time and didn’t come in until dinner. We spent the time close to the house, but there were lots of animals we could talk to. Rabbits and squirrels were flighty and tended to have too much to do to stop and talk. That image of the White Rabbit being late is brilliant. Rabbits are always late for something and having to rush off. But they forget where they were going almost as fast as they run.

But there were some animals we just couldn’t get through to at all. It was funny how we could walk down a street near school and quiet a barking dog. But there was no communicating with a wolf. We came upon a rattlesnake sunning itself on a rock and both sat about ten feet away from it and tried to reach into its mind. We couldn’t tell the difference between the snake and the rock. There was just nothing there to contact. We finally agreed that we needed snakeskin sheaths for our knives. A rattlesnake doesn’t have a liver, I guess, and there was no spirit we could find there to thank. We cooked the meat and ate it anyway.

Phile: Horses

That was embarrassing. If it wasn’t for Mandy, though, Caitlin and I would have run away that summer. We’d started out twice and thought better of it. We’d finish our chores and go to the pond or the woodlot. We’d experiment talking with animals, but most of the animals around the ranch were dull. Squirrels, rabbits, gophers, pronghorns, and the occasional deer weren’t much company. The pronghorns and deer were the best of the lot. It wasn’t so much their intelligence that drew us, but their joy in freedom.

I think that’s what attracted us to birds, as well. I could attach to a hawk or an eagle and fly. Their thoughts were as alien as their view on the world. They did not spend all their time hunting. Much of the time was spent flying just to be in the air.

We were down in the river bottom when we heard about the new arrivals. No one bothered to tell us at the house. The horses passed the word along.

Talking to a horse is more akin to talking to a human than a rabbit. Horses have very long memories. In fact, I think a horse remembers everything from the time it is foaled until it draws its last breath. It only takes a flick of the ear to communicate between them. The entire time a horse is grazing, it is listening. It pays attention to everything. When that brown gelding I sometimes rode turned his eyes to me, I knew we needed to head to the barn.

Caitlin and I could see them—sense them—long before we got to the paddock. And there was such a joy that I’d never expected. Horses travel through time. The two paints in the pasture knew us. They were with us in other time as well as here. It was the first time that we did something completely simultaneously in both times. We looked into our horses’ eyes and they spoke to us in both times at the same time.

If this sounds anywhere near as strange as I think it does, it’s still nowhere near as strange as it was. It was like suddenly being grounded. We were calm and happy. Neither one of us could stop talking about it when we came in for dinner. I even had to tell Ramie I loved her. She did it without even knowing what it would mean to us. She brought our horses to us.

Caitlin: Bonding

The bond between our horses and us increased. Of course, Ramie didn’t know the two crippled horses lived an alternate life with us. No one knew, except Mandy. Ramie and Kyle had to go to the upper pasture for two weeks, but at least Pa let them go together. It was plain as the noses on our faces that they were in love with each other. But Kyle had a girlfriend he kept sneaking into the bunkhouse thinking no one knew.

I looked at them all together and could see a bond among them that had two very strong lines. One was between Kyle and Aubrey. The other was between Kyle and Ramie. What we could see, though, was that there was already a deep bond between Ramie and Aubrey and it was getting stronger every day. We’d overheard Moms and Pa talking, trying to figure out ‘what are we going to do with them?’ and knowing there was nothing they could do. It was funny that they never asked that question about Phile and me. It was like they were blind to the fact that Phile was my mate, even if we hadn’t had sex yet. We knew we would. We spent almost every night together in one or the other’s bed. We didn’t even think about wearing clothes. We never did when we slept together in before-time, so why should we in now-time.