Chapter 6: Schrodinger's Cat

I have a girlfriend. I mean, besides Mary Beth. Sweet girl who found me my freshman year of college and stuck to me like a cocklebur. There was not much I could do to shake her. Well, I didn’t try very hard. Like I said, Ashley is a sweet girl and she appeals to me in a strange way. I lived on campus, even though it was only thirty-five miles home. I went home most weekends and trained Bolt into a fine working horse. I was looking forward to riding him on the range in the summer. But during the week, I stayed in a dormitory in Laramie at the University of Wyoming. I studied agri-business. The world was changing and our ranch was going to have to change, too. The damned recession that caught Dad by surprise had damaged a lot of ranchers in our area and their land was being grabbed as fast as they went under.

Okay, Ashley. We met. We studied. We dated. But it was a lot more than that. I joined Alpha Gamma Rho during fraternity rush week. Before you start thinking Animal House and all, AGR is also called Agro. We’re the agricultural fraternity. Let’s face it. I’ve always known I was going to be a rancher. I just didn’t figure it would happen this soon. So, there’s no pledge process. You join or you don’t. I did. We’re pretty active on campus, but our focus is on the agricultural and ranching business. The UW sports teams are The Cowboys. The brothers of Agro are the real thing.

Sigma Alpha is our sister sorority. These are girls who love the country and plan to stay there. Look at the promo pictures of all the sororities on campus. You have all these cute girls in short skirts or off-the-shoulder evening gowns, the Kappas, the Tri-Delts. Then you get to the Sigma Alpha girls all posing in their best blue jeans. Let me tell you, they do as much for blue jeans the way they pack them as any Tri-Delt ever did for a mini-skirt. I know the stereotype is loose sororities full of beautiful girls, but really—did you ever meet a college girl who wasn’t beautiful? Sororities or not, just walking across campus while the weather is still warm will give a guy a boner.

By the time I got to college, I already knew the two women who could be the love of my life were equally unattainable. Shit! One was my first cousin and she’d lectured me soundly that I couldn’t be pining for her this year when I got to college. Izzy had been fun, but Mary Beth was convinced that I needed to be looking for the woman who would share my home and ranch. I guess a guy will agree to anything when he’s about to come in a beautiful, tight pussy under a moonlit sky. I agreed that when I met a girl this time, I wouldn’t bring up Mary Beth right away. I’d focus more just on the relationship.

The other love of my life lived 100 years ago. How unattainable is that? There were days when I’d just go out riding through the high plains hoping I’d see a redtail hawk. But it seems they’ve gotten rarer as our little bit of wilderness becomes more urbanized. No matter how much I wished and prayed to be taken back to 1892, there was no answer.

Roped and Tied

I adjusted to campus life pretty quick-like. There were a lot of hands-on classes where we were working on the school ranch as a professor taught us about grading beef. I got a couple of used textbooks and I swear one had smudges of cow manure on the pages. I sure know it did after I was done with it. There was a class on accounting and finance that I really dug into. I’d been around the cows and horses my whole life, but I never got my hands on the ranch books until Dad and I had our little conversation.

While I was studying for my classes, I had the chance to do some independent research. All I knew about Joe Teini was that he showed up in a Corvette and stole my girlfriend when I was a junior in high school. There were times when I still had a pang of missing her if I let myself think about it. Things were working out well for her though. She graduated from high school without getting pregnant and was going to technical school this fall, but I didn’t know what she was studying. That was pretty much the last I’d heard about Joe until Dad said he was offering to buy property in our valley.

Finding information about him was no real problem. He graduated from the same high school I did, but six years before. Mary Beth might remember him, but they only overlapped a year. According to all the things I read, he was dirt poor growing up in Laramie. His pa was a ranch-hand on one of the big spreads east of town and his ma took in sewing. School records were locked, of course, so I couldn’t find out how he’d done. I looked through the yearbooks from the high school, though, and he looked like a nobody. There was never a picture of him with a girl. He wasn’t listed as a member of any of the school clubs. And the day after graduation, he hopped a train out East. Nobody expected him to come back again.

Then three years ago, he shows up in a flashy car with a big bank account. Said he’d gone to stock brokers’ school and had done well in the markets. First thing he did was buy the ranch where his dad worked and move into the big house. Alone. His parents still lived in the hired hands shack on the property and his dad now worked for him. It looked like Joe Teini had an axe to grind and was set on paying everyone back for what they’d done—or not done. Joe kept an office in Laramie and was brokering for some of the big-shots in town. Not bad for a 26-year-old former nobody. I was getting pretty suspicious.

Those suspicions turned to near panic when it was announced that our County Sheriff was in bad health and there would be an off-year election in November. Joe Teini announced his candidacy.

I looked at his picture in the newspaper with a new Stetson perched on his head and I swore I was looking at a younger version of Sheriff Cal Despain.

Of course, all that was taking place in my “spare time.” My focus had to be on my studies and on training my horse. And on fraternity obligations. The first obligation was to show up at the Fall Cotillion sponsored by our sisters in Sigma Alpha. Sigma Alpha’s big fall dance in early October was really just a mixer for the two organizations to get to know each other. But we were expected to dress our best and dance with a young lady. The dance was Western Formal. I had a pretty good suit with a Western cut jacket and boot-cut slacks, and of course I had my good boots. The young ladies all dressed in party clothes that would have been appropriate back in my other timeline in the 1890s.

There were some couples who were automatically paired up with each other, but in order to keep the event from being a typical high school dance where all the women lined up on one side of the floor and all the men on the other side waiting for someone to get so embarrassed they made a run for it, Sigma Alpha had a different method. The singles were lined up on opposite sides of the room promptly at 8:00. A hostess who already had a date then took the list of names and paired us up for the first dance. Us guys were looking over the line of eligible women and more than a few of us had already taken a sip from our hip flasks. By the way the girls were giggling, I guessed they might have been hitting it a little, too.

I hardly noticed my name had been called when I saw this absolutely beautiful blonde detach herself from the crowd and walk to the center waiting. One of the guys gave me a shove toward her. My head was doing all kinds of flip-flops and my stomach decided to get in on the act as well. The girl facing me brought up memories of hours spent on a sitting room sofa, carefully not touching, and not saying much as we got to know each other. This was the girl Kyle was falling in love with: Kat Tangeman.

“Kat?” I said as I approached her. She looked a bit shocked but then giggled.

“Well sometimes I’m a pussy and I do scratch, but I’m just a kitten if you make me purr.”

“I’m sorry, Miss. I didn’t get your name when they announced it and you look so much like a girl I knew a long time ago that I thought you’d just grown up and come here to UW and then I was so shocked when they called my name I didn’t even realize I was supposed to come out and join you because you are without a doubt the most beautiful young woman at this dance and...”

“God! You do ramble! Are we going to dance?” she asked. Fortunately, they started with a nice medium-paced two-step and I was able to take the young woman in my arms and not make any more a fool of myself.

“Sorry. I really didn’t get your name. I’m Cole Alexander Bell and I’m pleased to meet you Miss...”

“Miss Ashley Kay Brewer at your service, Cole Alexander Bell. Does your name mean you are related to the famous Alexander Graham Bell?”

“No, Miss Brewer. Alexander was my mother’s maiden name. We Bells have been in Albany County for a long time. Where do you hail from?”

“Glenwood Springs, Colorado. And we Brewers have been around Garfield County for a long time.” She laughed, making fun of me. I didn’t mind. She was good company and beautiful and seemed to fit in my arms like she was made for it. I wracked my memory—or Kyle’s—to see if Kat Tangeman was like this. Of course, he’d never held her in his arms quite like I was holding Ashley. Things moved at a different pace in respectable society back then and Kat was a school teacher. I supposed that meant she was about 19 or 20—the same as Ashley and me—but if I figured the times correctly, Kyle wasn’t much more than 18 or 19. His timeline was moving at a different pace than mine.

“So, what does your family do out in Glenwood Springs that brings you to Laramie, Wyoming to study and become part of Future Ranch wives of America—I mean Sigma Alpha.”

“Watch it there, buddy. My specialty is making bulls into steers.” I laughed, a little nervously. My balls were tingling. “Seriously, we’ve been in the cattle business for years, but the past few years, we’ve been making more off of hay production than the cattle. My brother figures we could turn our remaining pastures into hay fields and not have either as much work or as much risk.”

“So, he wants to turn the ranch into a farm.”

“Right. That doesn’t match my goals. I’m studying Agricultural Education, but I may double with Agricultural Business. You a rancher?”

“Indeed. My family controls about 6,000 acres west of here. Most of it is good grazing for cattle, especially in the high country. We run at least three cuttings of hay in the bottom land a year, though. If it doesn’t snow too early, we’ll often get a fourth cutting. As you know, it’s a seasonal business. We run our own feedlot come winter and start shipping fat and healthy beef around mid-December.”

“How about horses?”

“Well, it’s not a business for us anymore. I hear in my great-grandma’s day they were raising more horses than cattle, but there was a little break in the chain some years ago and when Dad started running the ranch, it was all cattle.”

“Cole, I think I might like you. Now, keep in mind that’s a big ‘might.’ You’ll have to show me what kind of man you are before I make that definite.”

“Well, Miss Ashley, I might just like you, too. Right now, I sure like dancing with you and talking to you.”

And dance we did. I think we were the last ones on the dance floor when they called it quits at two o’clock in the morning. It had been a stimulating evening. We’d have a drink and catch our breath as we talked about everything from ranching to politics to economy to our love lives. Well, that last was a subject we tiptoed around a little bit. I did find out she was a year older than me and a sophomore. And when we danced those slow tunes, the cowboy was always at attention. Ashley never moved away from me though. The last dance was a slow one and Ashley pulled away from me just before we went into a clinch.

“Mr. Bell, before we go back to polishing your belt buckle, I need to know if there’s a woman already in your life.” I sighed. “Please, don’t tell me...”

“Miss Brewer, we’re going to get to know each other a lot better before we do more than polish the belt buckle and I’m looking forward to that. Let me say honestly that I’m single and free to make any commitments that I might wish. I will never lie to you about that, but I’m not ready to talk about everything that’s happened in my life.”

“Including your broken heart and the girl you’re still pining for,” she concluded for me. Well, that wasn’t exactly it, but it was as good a place to start as any. She came into my arms and laid her head against my chest. I could feel her bosom pressed against me and the cowboy responded appropriately. He might have got in the way of the belt buckle a little.

“Ashley, would you consent to see me again? I’d like to take you out someplace where we can talk and get to know each other better. Maybe dinner on Friday night?”

“Cole, I’d like that very much. I’ve had a wonderful time this evening and yes, you are going to get kissed before you leave. But I’d like to take it slow from there if you don’t mind. I hadn’t really thought of taking up with a boy so soon after school started this year. I sorta had my heart broke last year, too.”

“I think that’s fair. No strings and no commitments, just a simple invite to dinner.”

“Here’s a simple yes,” she said. She lifted her face to me and our lips made contact for the first time right in the middle of the dance floor. I’d never been that much into dancing, but I was beginning to think it could become a favorite pastime with a girl like Ashley. We kissed until that last number ended.

“Can I walk you home, Miss Brewer? Or drop you somewhere?”

“I live right here in the sorority house, Mr. Bell. I’ve had a wonderful evening, Cole. I know you came with a bunch of guys from AGR. Can you find your way back okay?”

“Thank you, Ashley. I look forward to Friday night.”

“As do I,” she said. Her smile and the sparkle of her eyes lit the room for me. Then she turned and went up the stairs. I watched her out of sight and then headed for the door my own self.

I had to leave thirty bucks with Mom for the telephone bill because I spent all night Saturday night on the phone with Mary Beth. Honest to God, this was the first girl besides Mary Beth to really ring my chimes in this timeline. I loved dating Geneive. Who wouldn’t love wild sex with a pretty girl like Geneive? She was so outrageous that it was hard not to fall for her. And Izzy had been the aggressor in our relationship, even to inviting Mary Beth to join. But Ashley made it hard to think of anything else. Mary Beth said she was happy and that I should see where it leads.

“Cole, will you want to ... cool it with me so you can have a real relationship with Ashley?”

“Mary Beth! Please don’t pull back from me. Before I have any kind of relationship with a woman, or if I should ever get married, it will be to a woman who understands I love you and will always have you in my life. We don’t have to try to make things go three ways like we did with Izzy, but until you tell me to stop and go away, I will be with you, Mary Beth.”

“Well, find out if she’s the real deal before you go telling her all the details,” Mary Beth said. “We’ll deal with us after we figure out if you’re a couple.”

I discovered we had the same economics class when Ashley walked in on Monday morning. She spotted me and sashayed over to where I was sitting.

“Is this seat taken, sir?” she asked. Damn! I liked the way she filled out those jeans. Levi Strauss could have made a fortune just by showing her in his pants. Or something like that. Not that he didn’t make a fortune anyway. Hell, in 1891, Kyle had been wearing Levi’s.

“Hey, Ashely. Please sit here. I realized when I got home that I didn’t get your phone number or arranged when to pick you up on Friday. I was going to make a fool of myself and camp out on the sorority steps until I saw you.” We laughed but didn’t have time for any more chitchat because class was starting. I had to pay attention in this class. I understood accounting pretty well, but economics is more than just raising the price when demand is high.

“Government intervention in the marketplace. Good or bad?” Professor Saunders said. We’re a pretty conservative lot at UW. You could hear groans in the classroom. “Let’s take a look at the oil industry for this next example. Everybody loves to dig at the big oil monster. In 1985, oil hit sixty dollars a barrel. It was a thriving industry in the United States. Oil companies were hiring people left and right. There was huge pressure to deregulate the industry. Get government out of our business. But we hit a recession in the late 80s and by 1987, oil was going for ten dollars a barrel. Was that because there was no demand? Did people stop driving their cars and trucks? Did semis quit rolling down the Interstate?”

“Seems like people still needed gas,” somebody down front said.

“Exactly. But the Arabs got together and established OPEC to regulate the price of oil they were selling. Prior to that time, the various Arab oil producers were competing with each other. OPEC changed the game. Now they competed as a group directly with American oil producers. They dropped the price to get more of the market. What happened in America?”

“Layoffs,” Ashley said. “They couldn’t afford the payroll, so the oil companies started laying people off. The economy just got worse.”

“Bingo. Good old American competition, free economy, worked against our economic stability until the government stepped in and started placing tariffs on foreign oil. I’m not making a comment on whether that was good or bad. I just think it’s interesting that the big oil companies were all of a sudden asking the government for subsidies and protections. Most of you are studying agricultural business. So, let’s look at food. How much of the food you eat is imported from other countries?”

“Seems like all our vegetables in the winter come from Central America or Mexico,” another student volunteered.

“Exactly. In fact, 35% of produce consumed in the United States is imported from foreign countries. But it gets worse. 70% of seafood is imported. That’s a lot of sushi. Now, what happens if Mexico or Canada becomes the largest beef producer in the world and we start importing 70% of our beef from NAFTA countries. Even 35%?”

“We’re screwed,” the guy up front said. It wasn’t eloquent, but the point was well taken. Most people were scribbling down notes, but not many were talking. I was thinking mostly.

“Right now, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association’s number one concern is to stop government intrusion into the marketplace. But if Canadian beef imports rose from the current level of around three percent to as much as five percent, it would have an adverse effect on what you would get per pound of beef on the hoof. What would the NCBA’s position be regarding government regulation then?”

“It would make sense that the NCBA would want the government to impose tariffs on imported beef to protect American beef producers,” Ashley volunteered.

“Now what does that tell us about economic theory?” Saunders posed. There was quiet. He didn’t volunteer an answer. I liked that about his classes. They really made you think.

“Are you saying a free marketplace only works in a closed system where the players are pretty much operating on an even footing? If someone from outside the system competes because they have lower production costs or government subsidies, then the entire marketplace is threatened,” I said. It got a nod from the professor.

“That’s economics,” he said.

It got me thinking about what Joe Teini was doing. For some reason, he wanted to buy up land in Albany County. Dad and Uncle Angus weren’t the only ones he’d made offers to. Now he was running for sheriff. If he was the other time traveler the old prospector had warned me about, as I’d begun to suspect, was his real goal simply to buy the county? It seemed like there was something else to it, but I couldn’t make the connection. The prospector had said it was simple greed, but that just wasn’t enough in my book. Now I was thinking about economics.

We moved into winter in earnest. Light snow started falling the first weekend in November.

I was making a trip out to the cemetery almost as often as I was having dates with Ashley. It was a short walk from my dormitory and just going to visit Caitlin’s grave gave me a connection back to the people I knew in that other time. And while Ashley and I hadn’t gone beyond some great making out, we were real close to calling each other boyfriend and girlfriend.

“Cole, are you going to be around Thanksgiving weekend? A couple of the girls and I were thinking about making a dinner at the house and I’d invite you if you want,” Ashley said the Saturday before Thanksgiving.

“Ashley! It never crossed my mind that you wouldn’t go home to be with your family for Thanksgiving.”

“Glenwood Springs isn’t that easy to commute to for a long weekend. I’ll go home for Christmas.”

“Well, why don’t you join me and my family then? I know for a fact that Mom and Dad would love to meet you and I’d like you to meet my Aunt and Uncle and cousin, too. If you’re uncomfortable about staying at the ranch for the weekend, I’ll run you back to the house after dinner, but we’ve got plenty of room if you’d like to stay and I’d love to introduce you to my horses.”

“You live that close that you’d run me back after dinner?”

“It’s about thirty-five miles from campus out to our place. That’s why I go home most weekends to work with my horses.” The answer I got was a huge kiss. I guessed I was having company for Turkey Day dinner. I called Mary Beth the next morning.

The day came and when I pulled up in front of Sigma Alpha House on Thursday morning, Ashley came running out with a small suitcase in hand.

“I didn’t know for sure if the invitation to stay for a day was still open, and then I thought that if we’re going to work with horses I needed a change of clothes anyway, so I tossed some things in a bag, just in case, you know?” Ashley was looking at me with those big brown eyes that I loved. How could I resist. I pulled her in for a smooch.

“The invite is open for as long as you want to stay, sweetie. If you meet my family and get freaked out, I’ll bring you right back. If you want to stay all weekend, I promise to be as much a gentleman as you want me to be.” I grinned and she punched me in the arm. Under her heavy coat she was wearing a skirt and I glanced over at her legs. I took a deep breath. “Ashley, I also promise that if you want the whole story that I promised to tell you before we got serious, I’ll tell you this weekend. I’m damned close to being serious right now and I need to tell you this stuff.”

“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “What’s past is past.” I didn’t respond. “Oh shit. It isn’t past, is it? Maybe this isn’t such a good idea.”

“Ashley, please let me tell you about it before you decide that. I really want you to meet all my family first.”

“Okay. You promised to be straight with me and the least I can do is listen to the story. Cole, please tell me my heart ain’t gonna be broken.”

“Ashley, honey, I will never intentionally do or say anything to hurt you. But if that interferes with my pledge to be honest with you, I have to choose honesty.”

She leaned against me with both hands wrapped around my right arm the rest of the way home. I love the big bench seats in a pickup with a center seatbelt.

Thanksgiving turned out to be fine. In fact, more than fine. I got dragged to the den with the men-folk where we chewed on cigars and watched the football games until the women yelled for us and the kids to come to the table. We professed our thanks for the hands that fed us and paused to consider the land, and then settled into a big yummy meal.

After dinner, the menfolk headed to the kitchen to do the clean-up. It’s a family tradition. The women get the den, have sherry, and sometimes smoke. It’s about the only time Mom allows smoking in the house. The men get the kitchen. We thanked God for the hands that prepared the food; they thanked God for the hands that cleaned it up.

When we were all finished, we went to the den to see what the score was. One glance around the room and I wondered exactly what the score was. Mom, Aunt Lily, Sally Ann, Brenda, and their kids on the floor. No Mary Beth and no Ashley.

“Um ... Where’s Mary Beth and Ashley?” I bravely asked.

“Hmm. Girl-talk, I think,” Mom said. “Mary Beth said she wanted to tell Ashley all about you. They went to the barn to see your horses.”

“Oh hell,” I muttered.

“MB did say you should come out when you were done with the men’s work,” Aunt Lily said. “They’re probably getting cold out there by now. They’ve been gone half an hour.”

“Well, I’ll just go tend to Bolt,” I said. Damn!

It wasn’t hard to find them. They were sitting on a bale of hay just outside of Bolt’s stall talking intently. I involuntarily flinched when I thought about the fact Mary Beth and I had made love on that very spot on my graduation day. Well, it was a different bale of hay, but it was right there.

Ashley looked up at me with a curious expression on her face as I approached.

“Hey. What do you think of Bolt?” I asked, not asking anything I wanted to ask. What the hell are you talking about?

Before Ashley could speak, Mary Beth stood up and gave me a solid, for real kiss.

“I’ll go in the house, hon. I’m cold and you and Ashley have a lot to talk about.” She headed toward the barn door and I turned back toward Ashley. She had a little moisture in her eye, but I couldn’t tell if it was just starting or just ending.

“Ashley...” She held up her hand and bit her lip. I braced myself for getting smacked.

“I knew,” she said. “I knew it would be something like that. I had visions of it being your kid whose mother had deserted you, or a crippled sister you were committed to care for, or God! Just about anything. It wasn’t what I expected, but I figured that it was going to involve some getting adjusted to.”

“It’s nothing either of us ever intended,” I said. “But we’re committed. We just can’t be the couple that either of us would like to be. In fact, both of us want to have a happy normal life, but neither of us can imagine it without the other.”

“Yeah. I understand that. Intellectually. Emotionally, I’m still a little adrift. But I ain’t quitting. Not yet. Tell me, Cole, is there any chance that you could ever love me like you love her?”

“You mean the exact same way?” I already knew that I didn’t love Mary Beth the same way I loved Laramie. That wasn’t like I loved Caitlin and I’d hardly known the fiery redhead. “No.” I said it with finality, but Ashley kept looking at me and waiting. “Ash, I’ve been in love a few times. Some that Mary Beth doesn’t even know about. There isn’t any two that have been the same.”

“Yes, but...”

“No. Wait. There’s more. I wouldn’t want to love you like I love Mary Beth. I can tell I’m falling for you. I mean, really thinking you could be the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with. I know that sounds awful rushed. We’ve only known each other for a couple months. But there’s something special about you. And...” I cut myself off. How could I tell her that my other self, Kyle, was falling in love with her other self, Kat? Kat probably wasn’t even her other self, any more than Laramie was Mary Beth’s other self. The fact that I had parallels going in a different time period only needed to confuse me, not everybody.

“There’s more, isn’t there, Cole? There’s something hidden deep down inside that you haven’t even told Mary Beth. I can see it in your eyes. I can see it when you go out and put flowers on Caitlin’s grave.”

“What? You ... you know?”

“I wasn’t spying on you, honest. I saw you go into the cemetery a week ago and thought I’d catch up and walk with you. I lost track of you, though, and when I finally saw you, it was in the really old section and you’d cleared the snow off her stone and left flowers. I was going to ask you why you were leaving flowers for someone who died 100 years ago but I never really had an opportunity. I decided I was really in the wrong place and I shouldn’t invade your privacy.”

I let it rest, hoping that we could move on to another topic—maybe back to Ashley and me.

“Oh my God!” she screamed and then clapped her hand over her mouth. “You aren’t like one of those immortals like in that movie—what was it?—Highlander, who outlive their first love and go back to the grave hundreds of years later, are you? Please tell me that can’t be so?” Christ! This was getting worse. I didn’t make it better.

“She wasn’t the first,” I said softly then caught myself. “I’m not immortal. It’s nothing at all like Highlander. Nobody is out looking for my head—at least that I know of. It’s just ... something different.”

“Okay. That settles it then.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I won’t push you about your mysterious relationship with a girl who died 100 years ago. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you have a very real relationship with your cousin right now. What matters is that you’re asking me if I can put up with that and maybe even be a part of it. And what matters is that I’ve fallen in love with you. So, the answer is yes.”