Chapter 1

I looked out at the river that seemed dismally dark and uncertain in a majestic sort of way.

It flowed with serene sureness of direction out to the vast ocean and the dark depths of the open sea and the faraway lands beyond that seemed so mysterious to one that had never been there before.

It had been almost a full year since my return to present-day Brooklyn and I felt fully adjusted now to the regular routine and my lifestyle was back to the normalcy of city-life that never had really quite suited me if the truth be known with complete accuracy.

I had managed to cover my tracks fairly well and there were no FBI agents knocking on my door or, even worse, newspaper hacks with an itch to find the story that would make them a byline in the minds of a mostly non-reading public.

I still had a gunshot wound just above my left hip that hadn’t healed properly and each time I went to the hospital or urgent care to have it looked at, the health care professionals were nervous about my explanation that it was just an accident involving a hit and run automobile. I expect they had seen gunshot wounds before and I looked a little suspicious with my poorly trimmed beard and my careless attitude that didn’t match my scarred body from numerous encounters in the American Civil War as well as the jungles in Southeast Asia in modern times.

It would be difficult to explain rationally how I got back into the nineteenth century fighting with the Union Army or my travels out West after the war and the conflicts with the Indian uprisings and my expedition into the Great Pacific Northwest Territory and the building of a railroad system that spanned an entire continent. I would doubtless be transported posthaste to the nearest psychiatric facility for observation and extended repeated exposure to calming drugs in case I reverted to a physical explosion of some magnitude.

I had no family any longer and that was for the best.

I managed to find some new friends that had not the slightest inkling that I was a time traveler with many secrets in my past. It was simple for me to pretend to be a boring office worker with not the slightest interest in adventure or anything related to my hidden violent nature. In fact, I enjoyed being so drab and dreary that most females were immediately turned-off as soon as they came into close proximity. On the other hand, it was relaxing to know that most women considered me so innocuous that they would not hesitate to undress in front of me thinking me to be either far too slow to react or, even worse, had no interest in the other sex at all.

An older woman doctor at the VA hospital up in the Bronx did see me just this past week because my record showed that my wound was not from any combat related incident in my medical jacket and she had received a call from some newly formed Homeland Security unit to verify that former military personnel with obvious gunshot injuries be screened for any sort of domestic terrorism connections as a matter of preventive intervention.

Of course, I was not fully aware of her connections with the shadowy unit and I had assumed that I was selected for treatment because I did have more than fifty percent disability from my activities in jungle warfare. I was only a teenager in 1970 and now forty plus years later; I was biologically a man fast approaching social security age at least according to the records. In actuality, I had been almost fifteen years transported in some mysterious way back into the past and for some strange reason that I did not understand at all, I did not age those years and I was still for all intents and purposes a man of about fifty years of age and in reasonable good health despite my scars and poor hearing due to too many loud explosions on the battlefield.

The female doctor did all those doctor things that checked out my major systems and she kept looking at me with a frown on her still attractive fifty something face. I figured I might have some medical problem so I kept my mouth shut waiting to hear the bad news. I suspected it might even be cancer because there were so many former military getting that dread disease in one form or another ever since the days of “Agent Orange” and other lovely toxic chemicals introduced to the combat zones in recent years. They were still trying to figure out what was in the smoke and fumes in Iraq that made us military types cough like heavy smokers even if we never lit a single cigarette.

The attractive doctor dressed completely in white stood up and I could see she had the body of a runner. Us runners can recognize that long lean look that runners have if they were the long distance stamina type and she had it from her white high heels shoes right up to her pretty little pointed nose that looked like it was put there just to make guys wish she was the type to bend over on command and follow orders like a good little girl.

I hoped she didn’t see my big boy was starting to stir down below just because of the way she was leaning over the desk with her tight white skirt pulled snugly across her well-defined ass cheeks like an advertisement for some gentlemen’s entertainment club that featured two for one lap dances.

“The good news is that you are in great health for your age. In fact, all of our testing indicates you are as fit as a man at least twenty years younger and that is quite the small miracle in this day and age.”

I looked at her and kept my mouth shut about the whole time travel deal because I sensed instinctively that any mention of my mysterious travels would put me in the closest mental institution faster than a speeding bullet fired with evil intent.