Chapter 3

It was the morning that I returned the book about the American Revolution to the small library in our neighborhood that it came into my mind the best way to replicate my travels into the past was not to ride the subway endlessly like some addicted junkie looking for a fix, but to search within my own core for the trigger that would sent me on my way.

I looked at the book one last time before I returned it to the librarian for placement back on the shelf for another reader. It was right at that moment that I realized we were all like books on the shelf waiting for someone to read us and pass us on to the next person to enjoy as well. I decided that I would take out a book about a specific battle in the American Revolution and see if it would trigger my sub-conscious to make that mystical jump back into the past in the same way I had done with the American Civil War. It seemed like a weird and ineffective plan but strangely I felt at ease with it and could not wait to finish the book and stretch out for my slumber thinking it was as good a plan as any I had previously considered.

The book was all about the Battle in Monmouth, New Jersey and the heroine was none other than the famous “Molly Pitcher”, the battleground artillery expert that helped win the day. I smiled and hoped that I would not wake up as a female inside the body of Molly because I had a sense of gender identity that found that far too confusing to even contemplate actually happening as some gigantic cosmic joke.

It was the smell of cooking bacon that filled my nostrils with the suspicion that I was not home safely in my own bed waking up for my early morning run down along perimeter of the nearby park avoiding the “doggy dew” that stained the sidewalks and gutter with a checkboard of foul-smelling residue found all too often since budget cutbacks had ended the water truck program to keep the streets clean and fresh. I was reminded of a visit I had made in the recent past to the wonderful city of San Francisco and finding the streets to stink like urinals because of hordes of homeless people using the doorways as urinals in an animalistic state of careless abandon.

I was happy to be reveling in the scent of cooking bacon and it made me hungry even though I had gouged myself on a pepperoni pizza the night before.

When I opened my sleep-filled eyes, I found that I was under a tree in the middle of what looked like nowhere until I turned the other way and saw a group of uniformed men gathered around a cooking fire and waiting expectantly for the food to be served any moment. I could see a line of cannon sitting like guardians of some valuable treasure on the side of a muddy road that led off to a faraway tree line across several pastures of rolling grass and cows that moved as if in a trance chomping on the stuff like it was their last meal. The similarity between the cows and the soldiers struck me as amusing and I had to smile despite my sense of alarm at not being in my own bed.

One of the creatures must have had a bell around its neck because I could hear it tinkling like some signal far off in the distance.

I was fully dressed in a strange uniform with the exception of my boots and I spied them on the ground right under my long rifle with the bayonet still attached right on top of it.

There was no doubt in my mind that this was my new reality and that I had made a successful jump back in time to a past that looked suspiciously like some scene from the time of the American Revolution against and unpopular King on the other side of a wide and deep ocean.

“Jack, get your ass in gear, boy and get those cows away from our bleeding gunpowder.”

I looked to my left and saw a veritable giant of a man in forest greens standing in the shade of a spreading chestnut tree with a long dagger in his hand and an Indian style “tomahawk” in his wide leather belt. I didn’t recognize him, but he certainly seemed to know me. I figured that my memory of this other time would come to me soon just like in the other trip into the past.

I just grunted because I was afraid any response would give my reversal away and make me suspect in the eyes of the other party. Quickly, I pulled on my boots and grabbed my rifle noticing that it was already loaded and ready for action. The other side of the dusty road had several long lines of stacked barrels which must have been the powder for the artillery pieces and I banged my hat against my trousers to chase the animals away from their curious nuzzling of the dangerous stuff sitting right out in the open with no containment to keep any explosion from endangering those in the local area.

There was an assortment of cannonballs and other collections of iron and metal to use as grapeshot against an attacking opposing force sitting in a jumbled pile in the nearby ditch like they were tossed there from a wagon backed up to offload them. Needless to say, I was not much impressed with the logistical support element of this operation whatever and wherever we were but I was obviously not in charge and was probably the low man on the totem pole. Actually, that was where I liked to be when push came to shove because it was the safest place to be.