Third Anniversary by Reavis Z. Wortham

PART THREE OF THE EXCLUSIVE SERIAL NOVELLA

It was raining and had been for hours, the type of cold, steady shower that seems to fall endlessly, whispering onto the cracked pavement. The saturated ground could hold no more. The runoff in front of the Alamo filled the gutter, curb deep.

The Boeing 737 hung in the clear blue sky above the Texas hill country. Flying business class, Ambrose B. Hollis stared out the starboard window while Sandy Anderson sat in absolute silence, poring over her iPad. She occasionally twirled a blonde strand of hair as she frowned at a website filled with information about the Kennedy assassination, as if disagreeing with the information.

Hollis frequently shifted his short legs hanging above his broad-brimmed hat on the floor. Being uncomfortable in a world designed for “average size” people was a way of life for him. His black cane with an odd metal head leaned against the seam between their seats.

A dwarf, the term he preferred over “little person,” Hollis kept shifting his position because his feet kept going to sleep during the brief ride from San Antonio to Love Field Airport in Dallas, the same airport that received President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. Coincidentally, Kennedy had also flown earlier that fateful day from San Antonio to nearby Fort Worth with his wife, Jacqueline.

Kennedy lived less than three hours following his arrival in Dallas, allegedly assassinated by a lone shooter, Lee Harvey Oswald. Despite mounting evidence, history still listed Oswald as the only shooter, and the unlikely odd couple were after the truth.

Together, Hollis and Sandy planned to stop the murder that had happened generations earlier. They felt they could possibly change history, after realizing that at two historical sites, the Custer Battlefield National Monument and the Alamo in Texas, they and an unknown third person could somehow open a brief window into the past allowing Sandy to step through.

She did it once, only a couple of days earlier when she met Hollis for the second time in their lives at the Texas mission. Somehow they completed a strange circuit that thrust her into the chaos of the battle for a couple of moments before being yanked back into the present.

—

The decision to visit Dallas was unscientific to say the least. While trying to make sense of the tragedy they’d been involved with in front of the Alamo, they holed up for the night in The Ranch Motel in San Antonio, a mid-century motor court tucked off Broadway Street, within walking distance of the Pearl Brewery.

In the uncommonly large motel room, the virtual strangers who to that point had only shared death, finally grew at ease enough with each other after consuming a rodeo-cool six-pack to discuss how fate had drawn them together.

“We have unimaginable power,” Hollis said, sitting on the motel’s worn desk chair. He finished his third beer and considered moving to the bed, but they were in Sandy’s room and the idea of mussing the smooth covers made him uncomfortable.

“We only have the power of death.” Eyes dull from fatigue and the horror of seeing what had occurred in the minutes before dawn on March 6, 1836, left her almost unable to function.

Sandy curled up in one of the chairs beside the round table, staring at the images on the television and peeling the label off a Miller High Life bottle. News crews breathlessly reported from in front of the Alamo after the afternoon’s incident where a man died under mysterious circumstances.

On the screen, Hollis caught a glimpse of himself and Sandy over a newscaster’s shoulder, near a bright yellow police line, answering questions from a uniformed police officer. He was surprised to see his blondee acquaintance looked much taller than he thought.

They couldn’t explain what had happened to the officer because the story was too bizarre. Hollis was leading a tour in front of the sacred Texas shrine when Sandy stepped off the bus. They made eye contact, she came close, and somehow the cane he used to support himself came alive.

The gnarled head made from a meteorite glowed beneath his hand, and seconds later a tourist somehow found himself seeing in his mind what had happened on that cold March morning as Mexican soldiers swarmed over the walls to kill everyone who resisted them.

As shocked tourists watched, the stranger stepped inside the mind of David Crockett, experiencing the horror of such a slaughter and soon became the final victim of a battle that happened close to two hundred years before.

Now in the motel room, Sandy surfed the available channels, watching different reports of the bizarre death from the various local and national news channels. Listless, she remained where she was, sometimes absently holding the remote and not really seeing what was on the screen.

His bad leg aching half an hour later, Hollis finally needed relief. Climbing on the bed, he adjusted the pillows and leaned back. “I want to try it again, but this time in a controlled situation.”

His comment yanked her back into the present. Her eyes widened in shock. “It always ends in death! There’s no way to control what happens.” Sandy shook her head and tucked a strand of hair behind one ear. “Neither of us understands the trigger or the actual process. I can’t take it again.”

As if expecting a news crew to be set up outside to do a live ten-o’clock report, she put the remote aside and peeked through the curtains at the brightly lit parking lot and the large neon sign over the front office. The lot was devoid of reporters and their broadcasting production trucks. No one knew where they’d gone after leaving the Alamo Plaza.

Hollis looked across the room to see his black cane with its gray metallic head leaning in the corner behind the door. “All I know is that whatever it is we have, that cane is the integral part that allows us to see into the past. There has to be a safe way to pursue this and there must be a use.”

Sandy closed the curtains and adjusted them so no artificial light bled through. “It’s best we separate and never see each other again.”

Virtual strangers, the first time they met was when her husband died on the hillside on the Custer National Battlefield. The media called the incident The Horrific Anniversary and reporters harassed her for months about her husband’s strange death, until Sandy quit her job, sold their house, and moved.

And now, they’d somehow connected for a second time at the historic Texas chapel when a stranger completed their deadly mental circuit and was somehow jolted into the past to watch the makeshift fort fall. It was only then that they came to understand what happened.

Hollis studied her profile for a moment. “Think about this. You were physically in the year eighteen thirty-six while that man saw it in his own mind. For a moment, you were there at the battle of the Alamo...”

Sandy shuddered. Her eyes flicked from the screen, to Hollis, then back again.

“...and I think you can do it again. If you can, we might be able to harness this power to see into the past at will, and not just on the anniversary of some historic event. We can uncover the secrets that have baffled mankind since the beginning of time, or even to change history. There’s a chance you can save thousands of lives with one little word or action.”

He pushed himself up against the wooden headboard and twisted around to better see the stricken woman. “Think about it. How many people would jump at the chance to waste Hitler? Think of the horrors that might never happen if he was eliminated.”

“You mean kill him? I’m not an assassin, and what if this power puts me in place when he’s a baby? I can’t murder a baby, no matter who he is. And if it pulls in someone like my husband or that poor man this afternoon, how are we going to explain that a little baby, or a child, or a young man needs to die, while another stranger is fighting for life?”

“Fine then.” Hollis settled back like a petulant child. “Maybe if we can learn to get you back in time, you can maybe keep Hitler’s parents from meeting.”

“What you’re coming up with is speculation, and it would be impossible to target a specific moment in time like that.” Exasperated, Sandy threw up her hands. “Besides, those kinds of things would change timelines and the world would be different. We might not even exist if I did that. Think of the consequences. I might be standing in Germany and show my boobs to Hitler’s dad half a minute before he’s supposed to meet his future wife, and it would change a whole world of people that might wink out of existence.”

“Austria.”

“What?”

Hollis smiled. “I’m a historian. Hitler was born in Austria.”

She threw up her hands in exasperation, something Hollis was used to after a lifetime of correcting people about history and dates. “You see my point.”

“We wouldn’t be able to pinpoint that exact moment, of course.” He thought aloud. “I wonder if we can touch some items from that period in time and make it happen? You said yourself that James saw items in the Custer Battlefield museum that began the process.”

“Neither of us is God.” Sandy’s voice was sharp. “You can’t change what has already happened, and like I said, the repercussions would be incredible.”

Hollis thought aloud, switching gears. “You said the Mexican soldiers heard you shout. You said they paused. Did you change history then?”

She looked surprised. Glancing around the room as if expecting something to be different, she shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“That’s my point! We wouldn’t know. Maybe you did in some way we don’t recognize now. What if you were on the bridge of the Titanic, then, and warned the officers of an approaching iceberg? You could save over fifteen hundred lives in a single moment!”

She thought about the problem and rubbed her forehead at the far-reaching implications of those many lives and their impact on history. “It’s not right. We don’t know what will happen if something changes. We save them, history will fall like dominoes and this room could not exist.”

Hollis shrugged. “Then we wouldn’t know. Maybe I’d be six feet tall.” He brightened. He tried another tactic. “All right. Try this. What if you could bring your husband back?”

Her head snapped around and her face hardened. “Don’t even joke about James!”

“I’m not joking. If you can get back to some point in time before you two arrived in Montana minutes before his death, you might be able to change his mind. A left turn instead of a right. We’d never meet, he would be alive, and the two of you would still be together.”

“And history would be changed. The history of the entire world.”

“I doubt there would be significant changes,” Hollis smiled and drew a cigar from where it nested with others in his vest pocket. He still wore the tour guide outfit from the early 1800s. His broad-brimmed hat rested crown down on the chest under the television. “No matter how we would like to think, you and I probably aren’t that important in the long run. World events wouldn’t be affected.”

He could tell her mind was racing with the prospect of getting James back.

Her voice came soft and he could tell the idea of getting her late husband back had merit. “What do you suggest?”

Trying not to show the joy that welled inside his chest, Hollis nodded. “I think we try one more experiment before we make any attempt to see James. I would love to hear what happened on the Titanic just before it went down, but there’s no way to be at that particular spot to wait for an Event. There are so many possibilities though.

“We could possibly discover what really happened to Nikola Tesla and uncover the mystery of his vanished papers, or find who carved the great lines in Nazca. That should be safe.” He waited for a moment and rolled an unlit cigar between his fingers. “Or we could go to Dallas and see just exactly who shot Kennedy.”

“I don’t know who Tesla or Nazca are.”

He sensed a crack in her resolve. “He’s an inventor and might have changed the world, but he died, and all his research vanished. The Nazca lines were created centuries ago in Peru and can only be seen from the air. It would be a magnificent achievement to answer those questions, and when it is over, we would have enough information about the process to possibly harness the power to go after your own personal history.”

Sandy ran a finger around her mouth in thought. “You said Kennedy. We could be there in a few hours. That’s Dallas where James grew up.”

“Then your husband was raised in the middle of the greatest tragedies and mysteries in the history of our country.”

“No mystery. Everyone knows Oswald killed him.”

“Au contrairie, sixty-five percent of Americans think Oswald worked in concert with others. One study I read said that only twenty-nine percent think he was alone.”

“They heard the gunshots.”

“They heard reports bouncing back and forth among the buildings. As a student of history, I’ve read accounts of Apache ambushes in New Mexico and Arizona canyons where the cavalry said they couldn’t tell where the shots were coming from. The echoes in those rocky walls distorted the sound and they thought they were outnumbered when only a handful of warriors were above them. If you look at Dallas as concrete canyons, it was an Old West ambush that succeeded. People had no definite idea where the shots came from.”

“So we need to go back to Dallas, where my husband grew up. He always said that’s where we would settle down.”

Hollis sensed a crack in her resolution and hid a grin. “Yes. I sense that getting James back is your ultimate goal.”

Her eyes went flint hard. “You’re right about that.”

—

On the plane, they were online researching the activities surrounding Kennedy’s arrival in Dallas and the planned motorcade.

None of the passengers around them noticed the luminescent blue glow emanating from the head of Hollis’ cane leaning against his seat and half-covered with an airline blanket. At the same time, a young dark-haired man passed the couple on his way to the restroom toward the middle of the plane.

Deep in thought, Hollis glanced away from the screen and caught a glow from out of the corner of his eye. He froze in the horrified realization of what was about to happen. It had happened twice before. The power in the head of his cane was growing.

“Sandy,” Hollis covered the cane’s head with the blanket. The passing traveler had completed their circuit, something they hadn’t considered while flying.

She tapped at the keyboard on her device with a well-chewed fingernail and looked up. “Hum?”

“My cane.”

Sandy’s eyes widened at the dim glow coming through the thin material. She realized what was about to happen. The only two other times Hollis’ cane had glowed resulted in death, James and the poor bystander at the Alamo. Fear froze her hand.

She checked to see if those around them had noticed. The people she could see were all absorbed in their own devices, books, or were leaned back with their eyes closed.  “Who is it?”

“Maybe that young man who just passed on his way to the bathroom in front of us, I suppose.”

“What are we going to do?”

Hollis looked around. “We have to separate. We’ve somehow completed another circuit with someone in this plane. One of us has to put some distance between us. You can move faster than I can. Go to one of the restrooms in the back and get away from me. Maybe it’ll be enough to cancel whatever is about to happen until the plane lands. It may kill us all if we have an Event while we’re flying.”

—

Unsnapping her seatbelt, Sandy virtually threw herself over Hollis and rushed down the narrow aisle to the rear of the plane. In seconds, she arrived at the restroom door at the same moment a nattily dressed elderly gentleman emerged.

Sandy slipped past, nearly knocking the old man out of her way.

“Young lady!” he began as he grabbed for purchase on the slick preparation counter beside the restroom. Before he could complete his admonishment, the metal door slammed shut and the “occupied’ sign appeared with a firm snick.

Sandy sat on the toilet lid in the harsh lights of the claustrophobic restroom and forced herself to breathe. She looked down at her shaking hands and stared into the mirror. The light enhanced the tiny wrinkles at the corners of her eyes.

Laugh lines, James had called them the night before he died.

The roar of the huge jet engines and their vibration seemed to be magnified in the tiny restroom. She waited, hoping the cabin would remain silent.

Maybe I got far enough away from whoever made the final connection in front of the plane. I wonder what we just avoided?

Checking her watch, Sandy sighed and again glanced into the mirror at a woman who was once bright and perky, but now looked worn and tired. She couldn’t stay in the restroom for too long or one of the flight attendants might become concerned and demand she open the door. Luckily, the flight to Dallas was short and they were ready to begin the descent which would take them to the airport in the center of the city.

Sandy heard the pilot advise the staff to prepare for descent. She unlocked the door and made a show of returning to her seat. Seeing the staff was moving down the aisle and collecting the last flurry of trash from the passengers, she took a vacant seat in the back and buckled up.

The overworked flight attendant didn’t notice, or chose not to say anything, and they reached their gate.

—

At the gate, Hollis glanced around the cabin and realized Sandy was somewhere in the rear of the plane. She must have found an empty seat and convinced the flight attendant to let her stay back there. She was a fast thinker and might have explained to a sympathetic attendant that they’d had a spat and she needed some space.

He gathered his belongings and followed the shuffling line of passengers as they disembarked. In the terminal, Hollis moved away from the crowd and found a location across from the arrival gate in Love Field. He waited for Sandy to emerge ten minutes later, the last one off the plane. Their eyes met in relief. With only their carry-on backpacks, they hurried out of the airport and into a waiting cab.

“Good job,” Hollis said as their cab pulled away from the curb.

“It was the only thing I could think of,” she answered. “What now?”

“To the Texas School Book Depository.”

“This isn’t the day he was assassinated. Why do we need to go there right this minute?”

“Because.” Hollis stared at the Dallas skyline, chewing on still another unlit cigar. “Somehow our bond has grown stronger and events are accelerating enough to have initiated an incident on the plane. Together we’re causing things to happen now, and not having to wait until a specific date. That’s both a good, and dangerous business. I have the feeling that an Event will occur once we’re at Dealey Plaza.”

Sandy looked unhappy. “Why don’t we wait then, and do some more research? We can prepare ourselves with a little more time.”

“Well for one, we were told by the police not to leave San Antonio. You’re supposed to be at your motel room and I in my apartment. You and I are essentially fugitives if anyone comes looking for us, and they will. The authorities might be after us at any moment and any detective worth his salt will check with the airlines, or bus lines, to see if we’ve fled.

“Time is against us in another way, also. It’s going to happen again soon if we stay together. Let’s try and control what we can. There’s no need to wait. We know what to expect.”

“And what is that?”

“I strongly believe that we tap into some sort of psychic force when we’re together with the right person. I think buildings and certain locations hold psychic concentrations or recordings of what happened there, if the emotions or events were strong.”

“Someone may die,” Sandy said again. Tears welled in her eyes.

He shrugged. “That’s a possibility.”

“Then it’s murder,” she snapped, watching the driver and hoping he couldn’t hear the insane conversation going on in his backseat. His music was loud, and he’d given no indication he was listening. Now that they were in Dallas, doubts began to creep in.

“No. It isn’t murder. Maybe it would be if we intended for something to happen, but maybe—just maybe—no one will be hurt this time. It’s not like the massacres at the Little Big Horn or the Alamo. This time it’ll be different since only Kennedy and Governor John Connally were hit.”

“I’m not talking about the historical figures. I mean the poor soul who connects with us.”

Instead of answering, Hollis only looked at his cane and the leaden head in his small hand until they arrived at Dealey Plaza.

The cab driver pulled away as Hollis and Sandy stood on the sidewalk beside Elm Street that looked much the same as it did that day in 1963. The wooden picket fence still stood a surprisingly short distance away, along the crest of what eventually became known as the grassy knoll—really a grass-covered slope leading up to the parking lot and railroad yard at the top of the hill.

Sandy studied the street on which Kennedy’s open-top car was traveling when the fatal shots were fired. Elm Street wound past the schoolbook depository and beside the hill. By the time Kennedy’s limousine passed under the overpass that day, he was out of range from the sniper, but the damage had been done.

Noisy cars passed on the street, most of the passengers not even paying attention to the site where the world was forever changed. Hollis turned his attention from the tree-shaded fence and a handful of tourists, briefly scanned the buildings across the divided four lane street, and then looked toward what was once the Texas School Book Depository.

The Sixth Floor Museum now occupied the floor from which Oswald fired. Anyone wishing to gather information on the assassination could easily find material on any theory they believed. There were plenty to choose from.

“We’re here.” Sandy turned in a slow circle. “So now what do we do?”

“We could go upstairs to the sixth floor and look around,” Hollis mused, adjusting his hat to better shade his eyes. He was concerned though, if an Event occurred there, he wouldn’t be able to see what was happening on the street where they stood.

Now that they were on site, neither knew what to do. Despite his verbal confidence, Hollis found himself unsure. They turned in slow circles on the street, looking for something they would only recognize when it occurred.

“Come on.” Hollis’ patience quickly waned and he limped toward the former schoolbook depository. “We can’t stand here all day.”

Glancing around, Sandy followed with some embarrassment. His strange period clothing from two hundred years earlier drew attention from everyone passing on the sidewalk or on the street. She managed to ignore it on the plane, but here his tour guide clothing for the Alamo stood out like a neon sign that said, Look At Me.

The elevator ride was uneventful, but both were alert and tense, waiting for something to happen in the quickly rising cubicle. With a sigh of relief, they stepped through the doors and into the museum’s entrance. Hollis dug in his pocket and paid their admission price, ignoring a quizzical look from the cashier.

They entered a room of glass-encased history.

Photos lined the walls, supported by text detailing the day of November 22, 1963. Everywhere they looked were photographs of the clear, bluebird morning Kennedy and Jackie arrived, first in Fort Worth and then at Dallas’ Love Field. Many were bright and cheerful. Jackie with an armful of roses or Jack smiling and shaking hands. Then, as they moved deeper into the museum, the scenes and copy began to grow darker, more ominous as 12:33 approached—grainy black and white.

They gave the cases full of memorabilia little more than cursory glances.

Hollis watched Sandy’s face. “Feel anything?”

“No.” She glanced at several nearby visitors who concentrated on the displays. At the Little Bighorn, James was already showing signs that something was strange when we passed the displays, but I was perfectly normal… just like at the Alamo until that man started seeing things.”

Both were drawn into the story depicted by those photos. Then came the shooting, the time of death, to the confusion and showdown at the hospital. Photos reported to be from the Kennedy autopsy were displayed without apology, in the interest of history and the search facts.

“The Warren Commission,” Hollis snorted at the volumes of books that made up the much-maligned report. “That bunch of stuffy paid-off boobs wrote what they were told and made history. The gullibility of the American public is an amazing thing.”

He’d unconsciously moved into his “tour guide” mode once again. The jobs he held both times when Sandy appeared.

“Guess who was a member of the Commission.” Hollis spoke loudly and felt in his pocket for a cigar. He held it between stubby fingers and pointed at the gold lettering on the report. “Gerald Ford. He wrote a book about the assassination and was the only person on the commission to make money off the investigation. He also ran to J. Edgar Hoover every time he heard something juicy. It’s not surprising that he became president. The whole thing stinks.”

Curious visitors drifted toward the quirky little man full of charisma and knowledge that made Hollis one of the best tour guides in the business, no matter if they were going through the Custer Battlefield, the Alamo, or here, unofficially at the Sixth Floor Museum.

He noticed the Plexiglas-protected window Oswald was said to have used as a vantage point. “I know one thing as sure as I know I’ll never be six feet tall. No matter what the government or the media tries to force down our throats, there’s no way in hell Oswald could have fired three rapid shots so accurately from a twenty-dollar rifle with a shaky scope.”

“So you think there were more people involved?” asked a tourist who looked as if he spent all his time indoors. “More than just Oswald.”

“Of course,” Hollis responded brusquely and chewed his cigar. A museum curator watched nervously, lest Hollis produce a match. No smoking signs were prominent, but they said nothing about chewing cigars. “There had to have been more than one. That’s why I’m here, to find out.” He trailed off uncomfortably, realizing he’d said more than he intended. The tourist waited for him to continue.

He didn’t.

Sandy paused in front of a photo showing the grassy knoll. A circle drew attention to a pale smudge near the fence line. The caption noted the smudge resembled smoke and many conspiracy theorists felt it was the location for a second rifleman.

“Hollis, did you see this?”

He limped across the room and joined her gaze. “It’s a logical place for the shooter. The Zapruder film shows Kennedy’s head snapping back from the impact of a bullet coming from ahead and to the right of the car, and not behind as Oswald purists say. It’s my opinion that a man’s head snaps forward when hit from behind and back when hit from the front.”

Sandy suddenly remembered her vision at the Alamo. Davy Crockett desperately fighting the soldiers ahead of him and the shot that came from behind. “You’re right. Crockett’s head jerked forward.”

Hollis nodded and watched her. The tourist, who had been standing quietly nearby since Hollis began talking, overheard the conversation and likely wondered who Crockett was and how the slender young lady before him would know about impact wounds.

Hollis turned toward the exit and Sandy followed. He’d seen enough. “I say we return to the street. I want to get the positions of the buildings in my head.”

—

They returned to Elm Street without incident. both nervous as cats as they waited for something to happen. Neither noticed the tourist who followed them down, interested in the exchange he heard upstairs and apparently curious about what the two had in mind. Hollis didn’t stop, walking past a section of curb where he vaguely remembered seeing a photo where still another bullet impacted, throwing off the accepted number of shots from Lee Harvey Oswald’s rifle. That section was long gone.

He laboriously climbed the grassy knoll, using his cane to support much of his weight as he trudged up the slope. Sandy waited on the sidewalk below.

“He’s not just killing time, is he?” asked the tourist. Startled, Sandy turned toward him. “My name is Spencer Fields,” the curly-haired man said, introducing himself.

She backed away from him. “Go away. You don’t know what you’re doing or what you’re getting into.”

“I’m sorry,” he apologized. “I was just interested in the little guy’s discussion upstairs and wanted to talk a little more about the Kennedy assassination. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“I’m not scared of you. I’m afraid for you. You don’t know what you’re getting into. Just get away from here as fast as you can.”

“Wait!” Hollis called from the fence. “The two of you stay right there for a minute.”

She looked uphill. “This could be dangerous!”

“I don’t think so. I’m getting no response from my cane, and the weather is still bright and sunny. There’s not a cloud in the sky.”

Fields looked at them strangely. “His cane?”

“Don’t ask. Just go! Go now!” she hissed.

He didn’t leave the strangely acting lady. Spencer Fields simply moved a few steps down the sidewalk and watched Hollis pacing up and down along the fence, occasionally examining his cane. Other times he sighted down its length, as if he were holding a rifle. Finally, he slowly made his way back to street level.

“Here’s my theory,” Hollis offered without being asked. “Oswald was the fall guy. They, whoever they are, used him to take the focus off the entire operation. I believe there was one rifleman behind the fence, one across the street somewhere in the Dal-Tex building, and someone in the window above the sixth floor.”

He pointed at the old depository with the cane. “One shot may have come from up there, maybe it was the one which hit Kennedy in the back. But another shot must have surely come from across the street, and the killing shot, the one captured on the Zapruder film, came from the fence. The others were probably just insurance or diversions.”

“I agree with you,” Fields said, rejoining them. “Although I think there may have been someone else.”

Hollis studied him for a moment without answering. “I think there were two people at the fence, one to make the shot and one to escape with the rifle while the triggerman left without attracting notice. The second rifle, planted evidence they pinned on Oswald, was in the depository on the sixth floor, but I’ve always thought there was another shooter in the window directly above, sitting back so he couldn’t be seen.  It was an even better vantage point.”

He pointed to the Dal-Tex building across the street. “Maybe even one from the roof up there. They found a shell casing years later, and when they took down one of the stoplight poles there at the intersection, there was a bullet hole in it that no one had ever found.”

“You need to get away from us!” Sandy’s voice cracked in exasperation and she gave Fields a slight shove. “You don’t know what you’re dealing with here.”

“Probably don’t. But I think you guys are more than just typical Kennedy tourists.”

Hollis continued to stare upward at Spencer Fields without expression. Sandy finally realized he was being patient, waiting for Spencer to make that mysterious three-way connection which gave birth to an Event. The color drained from her face at the realization.

“Hollis, it isn’t happening! He’s not the one!” Her steadiness, sharp with anger, was directly opposite of his lack of concern or emotion of a potentially deadly Event. “I can’t believe you’re so callous and that life means so little to you!”

There was a long pause, then Hollis reluctantly agreed. “You’re right, no lighting, no clouds, no rain. It isn’t him.”

“What?” Spencer asked.

“Nothing. We’re waiting for storms and someone we haven’t met, and it isn’t you.”

“Well, that’s convoluted. To do what?”

“Never mind. Hollis jerked a thumb at Fields. “She’s right. You should leave now.”

Fields crossed his arms. “I have the right to stay here just as much as you two.”

Hollis dismissed him with a wave of his hand. “Fine. Just... stay out of my way when things start happening.”

More tourists on the street stepped around the trio, mostly ignoring their agitated movements. Fields began to formulate a response but stopped, baffled by the conversation up to this point.

“There should be some manifestation by now,” Hollis mused, more to himself than to anyone else. “We’re on location where a tragedy occurred, you and I are close enough to the cane, and we have a third person. I don’t know what else to do.”

“He’s not the right one.” Sandy stepped forward and rested her hand over Hollis’, which gripped the odd head. “Maybe it’s over.”

He looked down at her red nails. The cane began to emanate a dim, cold glow. “Maybe it’s not.”

She drew back in horror, as if it had suddenly turned into a snake under Hollis’ hands. Both glanced at Fields, waiting to see if he was behaving oddly. He stared up at the book depository and didn’t notice the queer light.

“It’s starting,” Sandy whispered.

Hollis studied Fields for a moment then gave up. Nothing out of the ordinary was happening. He turned in a slow circle, carefully watching the pedestrians on the sidewalk.

“There’s something different.” He held the cane higher. “There’s no weather manifestation. I thought Fields was the catalyst, but now I don’t know. Look, it’s glowing brighter.”

Sandy drew closer, awed by the glow. Fields finally noticed and stepped forward, fascinated by the bluish light. “What are you doing?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Hollis responded. “This is what we’ve experienced before when Sandy and I are together.” He looked up at Fields. “But the third person usually dies when it happens.”

Fields backed away from the couple.

The glow in Hollis’ fist intensified until it hurt the eyes to look into the cold blue core. A slight electric tingling traveled through the ebony wood, causing a chill to run up Hollis’ spine. A distant hum like the drone of bees far, far away filled the air around them.

Tense, Hollis clamped down harder on his ever-present cigar and continued his search for the mysterious third person who was being drawn into the past. It was becoming more difficult to do because the blue light attracted curious onlookers as moths are attracted to a lamp. Most kept looking at him, waiting for him to make a statement or acknowledge the phenomenon. Many smiled and pointed.

A trio of young people began to record the event with their devices.

The high-pitched hum continued to increase in volume. It drowned out the traffic sounds around them. Sandy could hear it too. Fear appeared in her eyes. “Hollis.”

“I hear it.”

“Hear what?” Fields asked.

“You don’t hear that hum?” Curious, Hollis had to raise his voice to be heard.

“No. I don’t hear anything but a train over there.”

The roar of its diesel engine was virtually drowned by the electronic hum.

“Do you see anything?” The strange noise forced Hollis to shout, causing the gathering crowd to titter.

She also unconsciously raised her voice. “I don’t see anything, but that sound is pounding in my head.”

“What sound?” asked a lady in shorts and sunglasses. She stopped at the edge of the rapidly accumulating assemblage of people watching what appeared to be some kind of strange play performed on the sidewalk.

Fields frowned in fascination, as if something extraordinary was about to occur. He answered her. “They hear something we can’t.”

The lady retreated with her friend, hurrying down the sidewalk. “Those people are crazy. They’re hearing voices.”

“What do you think you should be seeing?” Fields asked Sandy. The noise filled her head and she couldn’t hear him. She could only see his lips moving. Fearfully, she reached a hand to Hollis’ shoulder to steady herself, anchoring herself in reality.

Her touch was like an electric jolt. “Hollis!” The pressure in her head became almost unbearable.

At the sound of her shriek, the high-pitched tone cut off as if someone had thrown a switch.

The buildings and overpass shimmered as if viewed through shimmering brackish water. Time adjusted itself in a way that made Sandy’s head spin. For a moment, they were surrounded by thick groves of trees, which gave way to a burned landscape, as if a wildfire had raged through. From where they stood, the Trinity river’s clear banks were visible before another shimmer erased that world and replaced it with board buildings to the east.

It was Dallas in the late 1800s, before flickering again to tall glass and steel buildings stretching into the blue sky, reflecting sunlight down on a mass of moving cars and trucks unlike any they’d ever seen. The air darkened with ugly, green clouds threatening a tornado until the skies again cleared to a sunny day.

Sandy looked upward at the blue sky and shivered. “What was that all about?”

Hollis looked from Sandy to the antique cars passing on the street. “It was us moving through time!”

She followed his eyes past the strangely dressed pedestrians lined up along the street. Facing away from them onto Elm Street they laughed and talked, waiting for a glimpse of the president as he passed. Sandy hadn’t seen such clothing in her lifetime. She was looking at Dallas in 1963.

“We’re here,” she breathed.

“Yes.” A grin spread across his face. “This time we both made the trip. You and I connected with the cane when you touched me. Quick, what time is it?”

She looked at the watch on her wrist. The inside of the crystal was fogged as if water had somehow seeped inside.

“They’re coming!” Hollis said loudly. He pointed. The crowd of parade-watchers craned their necks to see up the street and frowned at the queerly dressed couple with annoyance.

“Very funny, bub,” said a man holding an old Brownie Hawkeye camera. His young family gathered around them. “We’ll see them before long. You shouldn’t ought to tease these kids that way.”

Hollis scanned the face of the book depository and saw the suspicious window Oswald was said to have used. It was partially opened. He couldn’t see anything inside. However, in the window one floor above he noticed a slight movement as if someone was standing back in the shadows.

“One of us needs to get up there. I see someone in that window above Oswald’s! It has to be you. I can’t move that fast.”

Two or three people looked up at the window and seeing nothing of interest, resumed their watch on the street, waiting for Kennedy’s limousine. Without responding, Sandy headed for the building at a run. Hollis, knowing he would have never made it up to the seventh floor in time, turned his attention to the grassy knoll behind him.

Two shadows moved behind the fence.

He began a laborious scramble up the hill.

They had moved from being observers to being participants in the drama that was about to unfold.

—

Fields almost laughed at the antics of the strange couple beside him. At first they were hearing things, which was weird enough that they shared the same ailment, but suddenly neither acted as if they were standing inside a crowd on the busy Dallas street.

At least the dwarf’s cane had stopped glowing, but now they reacted as if they were talking to invisible people. Both had a weird look in their eyes, making Fields think they were seeing something beyond his vision.

“We’re here,” Sandy said in awe.

“Yes,” Hollis’ grin spread across his face. “This time we both made the trip. You and I connected with the cane when you touched me. Quick, what time is it?”

She looked at the watch on her wrist.

“They’re coming!” Hollis said loudly.

—

In Field’s world, the blonde woman looked at the watch on her wrist. She frowned as if she couldn’t see the timepiece’s face.

“They’re coming!” Hollis announced loudly. The crowd of awed onlookers around the odd couple glanced up and down the virtually empty street, expecting to see something exciting. Yet, all they found was traffic and more sightseers.

Hollis looked up at the former schoolbook depository. “One of us needs to get up there. I see someone in that window above Oswald’s! It has to be you. I can’t move that fast.”

Everyone surrounding Hollis, including Fields, looked up at the famous window. They saw nothing but the aging building which hadn’t changed in decades. The blonde woman bolted back up the street. The crowd fell back as if a scythe were cutting through wheat. Had they not moved, she would have surely run completely over anyone in her way. The look on her face was pure determination.

The dwarf turned and looked up at the knoll. The expression on his face was one of absolute satisfaction. He painfully began climbing the slight grade, using the cane to maintain his balance.

Fields was drawn between the two. He wanted to follow Sandy to see where she was headed, but the little man was having difficulty walking across level ground. Climbing to the top of the little knoll was challenging enough.

Deciding to follow Hollis, Fields was ready to catch him if he fell.

Unknown to Sandy, an off-duty policeman trailed behind her as the possessed woman wove through the crowd no one could see, waiting for Kennedy. The policeman in jeans and a sweater had been watching the activities with more than a little interest. The odd couple’s antics on the sidewalk were strange enough to make him wonder what was going on.

Punching his cell phone alive, he spoke softly to dispatch, requesting an additional officer. Getting confirmation, he held up the phone and snapped a picture of the blonde woman rushing down the sidewalk.

Officer Randy Philips didn’t know what they were up to, but he had a good idea the young lady was the one who would be hardest to catch in the event something happened. He decided to stay close to her. He didn’t think anything illegal was happening, but his policeman’s instinct said to be cautious just in case.

—

Sandy ran behind the crowd waiting for the president and through the double doors of the Texas School Book Depository and past a startled secretary behind a worn gray metal desk. She almost dropped the cigarette she’d just lit and jumped to her feet.

“Wait a minute! You don’t work here! There’s no sightseeing in here.”

Before the stern-looking employee could catch the young woman running down the hall, Sandy turned the corner and rushed through what she thought were the doors leading into the stairwell. She had no time to wait for an elevator.

A handful of people lounged in the smoke-filled room, uninterested in the presidential motorcade about to pass by outside. Sitting around a battered aluminum table and sipping soft drinks from bottles, they frowned at her sudden appearance. Sandy almost ran past without stopping but her attention was caught by a nervous-looking man in a short sleeve plaid shirt.

She stopped halfway through the spartan room and stared at the nervous-looking man she had seen hundreds of times in still photos and newsreels. Holding a soft drink, Lee Harvey Oswald froze in mid-swallow when Sandy burst into the room. He raised an eyebrow at the young woman in an apparent hurry and seeing she posed no threat, tilted his Dr Pepper again.

“Hollis was right!” Sandy charged through the opposite door and headed up the stairs. First, she’d stop at the sixth floor. She knew the real gunman would be above, though, a second rifleman would make the diversionary shots that might or might not hit something, and vanish in an instant, leaving Oswald to take the fall.

Hollis was right. She had to get there to hear what was going on.

—

The off-duty officer, Randy Philips, followed her through the front doors of the Sixth Floor Museum, and then continued to shadow the young woman as she hurried through an empty office. He was making no effort to hide, but she acted as if she didn’t care if anyone followed or not.

Staying close, though she gave no indication he was behind her, Philips watched her screech to a momentary halt halfway through the room, stare in wonder at a blank wall.

“Hollis was right!”

She sprinted through a second door. A uniformed security guard appeared and started toward Sandy.

“Whoa!” Randy called and flashed his badge. “Let her go. I want to see what she’s up to.” Skeptical, the guard followed the police officer as he chased Sandy up the dusty stairs.

—

The distant roaring of cheers reached Hollis halfway through his difficult ascent. The motorcade was coming and would soon turn the corner down Elm Street. Then it would be only a matter of seconds before the first shot was fired. He was closer now to the top, and the movement had ceased behind the fence.

Behind Hollis, the motorcade made the turn northward and headed for the freeway. From an elevated concrete slab Abraham Zapruder wound his camera, placed it to his eye and from his vantage point, found the president’s car in the viewfinder. He pressed the button and recorded the scene. Dozens of cameras snapped on the street, and the supportive crowd snapped photos of their president.

Kennedy and the First Lady smiled at the people lining the sunny street. Kennedy, shifted in the seat away from Jacqueline to ease his aching back, rested his right arm on the door and waved with a huge smile. In the front seat, Governor John Connelly and his wife, Nellie, also waved at the crowd. Connelly held his trademark Stetson and occasionally waved with it.

Secret Service agents rode in the limousine immediately behind Kennedy. Most were suffering the debilitating effects of hangovers from a night spent at a club owned by a minor-league criminal named Jack Ruby. One or two more dedicated agents were carefully watching the people on the streets.

No one paid the slightest attention to the tall buildings behind them after they passed. There were no signs of danger anywhere on the Dallas street.

Most of the people on the street missed Hollis’ desperate climb behind them. They were intent on the approaching motorcade.

—

One gentleman waiting for Kennedy near the curb adjusted the umbrella in his hand and watched with concern as a dwarf in strange clothing made his way up the hill. He turned back to the street, said something to the Latin man beside him and then returned his attention to the president’s car.

—

Spencer Fields watched in wonder as Hollis achieved the crest of the knoll and listened in amazement when he shouted at the empty parking lot at the top.

“I knew it!”

Fields and a curious businessman standing nearby exchanged glances. Fields shrugged as an electric car passed on the street behind him.

—

When she burst into the sixth-floor area, Sandy was gasping for breath from her climb up the stairs. She’d been there only minutes before and knew the layout, but now her way was blocked by crates and boxes of books covering the floor. It looked completely different. The dim lighting from shaded bulbs suspended from the ceiling gave the room an eerie feeling. She dodged through the narrow aisles toward the bank of windows overlooking Elm Street.

There was the window ahead and the stacked boxes obscured the view of anyone who happened to be casually passing. The theory was that Oswald had moved the boxes around to create a secure shooting nest. The Warren Commission said he was at the window at that moment, through with lunch and preparing to fire at Kennedy as he passed below.

Without thought for her own safety, Sandy jumped up on a cardboard box full of books and looked over the top of the stack.

—

Officer Philips rushed through the door behind her in the Sixth Floor Museum, followed by the security guard. Ahead, they saw Sandy race past the ticket counter and run a zig zag pattern through the brightly lit floor and approach the famous window. Patrons leaped out of her way and gestured angrily at the young lady.

An employee on the floor shouted. “Hey!”

Sandy took a running leap, breaking through the thick plastic barrier designed to protect the display. Unfazed by the Plexiglas shattering around her, she landed on the lowest box and peered over the top.

Museum patrons watched her actions in astonishment. Startled visitors screamed. Most patrons hurried away from the frantic woman while the rest of them raised phones to record the incident. The museum curator shouted again.

For a second time the security guard moved to take her into custody, Philips held his hand out. “Hang on a second.”

Sandy held the pose on top of the box for a good fifteen seconds without moving. Then she was off in a flash, running back through the gathering crowd and past Philips and the guard.

Frustrated, the security guard pointed. “I have a job to do. She’s wrecking the place.”

“I do too. Let’s do it together.”

Her glassy eyes were proof that she wasn’t seeing the people in front of her.

She was looking into another dimension.

Oswald wasn’t there.

The shooting site was nothing more than a ruse. Sandy knew the Warren Commission had been wrong. The whole thing was a set-up to draw suspicion away from the real shooters, wherever they were, and to implicate Oswald as the lone assassin, the patsy.

The only thing she saw were the remains of a chicken dinner and empty shell casings carefully arranged on the floor, as if someone had eaten lunch while waiting for the motorcade before firing through the partially opened window.

Sandy took in the whole scene and evaluated it in seconds. She leaped off the box and ran for the stairwell. Someone upstairs had the rifle.

Two men dressed as tramps stood behind the chest-high wooden picket fence, just as Hollis expected. Though they wore faded, tattered clothing, dingy shirts, and tousled hair, their smooth shaves belied the costumes.

One shouldered a gleaming scoped rifle. Even with Hollis’ limited knowledge of firearms made after 1900, he could tell the weapon was on the 1960s cutting-edge technology of long-distance killing machines. The other tramp watched Kennedy’s procession through very expensive looking binoculars.

Both were so intent on their target neither was aware of Hollis’ approach up the small hill until he shouted and swung his cane high over the pickets. “You’re not going to do it!”

The tramp nearest to him lowered the binoculars and stared in openmouthed shock at the cane-wielding dwarf. He put out a hand to ward off the apparition as Hollis swung the cane upward with all his force. The heavy meteorite head caught the spotter solidly on the jaw and he fell back.

Another voice shouted from the parking lot and railroad yard behind them. Hollis ignored the shout and swung the cane again. Off balance, he fell forward and reached his entire length at the rifle barrel extending over the fence.

The rifle went off in a blaze of white light and physical shock from the muzzle’s pressure wave.

—

From the sidewalk below, Spencer Fields was joined by a dozen other onlookers as they watched Hollis reach the top, lunge forward toward the fence and swing his cane. “You’re not going to do it!”

Incredibly, the cane ceased its forward movement in mid swing, as if he had impacted with some solid object.

Hollis, though, faced nothing but empty air and a barren fence.

He collected himself, stepped forward to swing again. This time his balance appeared to be off, and he fell forward, reaching for some distant goal with the cane.

“That man’s lost his mind,” the businessman said.

Fields was quiet for a moment. “Somehow, I think we’re seeing something remarkable.”

—

Sandy hit the stairs to the seventh floor and took them two at a time. It was almost 12:33. She’d spent too much time with the sixth-floor decoy. She burst through the unlocked metal doors, slamming one of them into the wall in her rush to get in.

An explosion filled the entire floor with noise. She knew the distinctive sound. It was the harsh report of a rifle shot. Ahead of her were still more large boxes, but this time she knew exactly where to go. She rounded the corner and ran full tilt into a surprised man in a white shirt.

He and his associate had been startled by the boom when the door slammed open. So startled in fact, the one with the rifle had almost missed his first shot. He cursed, worked the bolt and slammed another shell into the chamber.

The spotter grabbed Sandy and tried to wrestle her away from the window. A professional, the shooter grimly ignored the fight behind him and attempted to regain his target in the scope.

Below, Kennedy jerked forward from the impact of the misdirected low-velocity bullet in his upper shoulders, near the soft tissue at the base of his neck. The bullet exited and struck the inside door frame as Kennedy gasped at the sudden, horrific pain.

Another report came through the open window from a building’s roof across the street. Sandy braced her tennis shoes against the dusty floor and pushed hard, raising her head sharply under the chin of her attacker. The equivalent of a violent uppercut snapped his head back and he stumbled.

Together they fell toward the rifleman. The three of them collided in a tangled heap and the rifle boomed again.

On a curb below, a puff of powdered concrete went unnoticed by most.

—

Officer Philips watched her gyrations with awe. Before him the woman struggled with a phantom. She stopped suddenly as if she’d hit an immovable object. Straining, actually straining against an unseen force so hard the muscles on her arms bulged, she planted her feet and raised her head with a grunt. Sandy toppled forward, her arms held in a loop ahead of her. She appeared to be holding something, or someone.

The security guard began to laugh, and then stopped when Philips cut him off with a savage look.

The building shook ever so slightly, causing Philips and the security guard to stumble. They looked up, but nothing seemed amiss.

—

Spencer Fields watched the little man with the cane pretend to fight at the top of the knoll. If anyone had asked him for an opinion, he wouldn’t have even been able to venture a guess.

The businessman snorted. “Drugs, or crazy as a Betsy bug.” He walked away.

Light flickered around them, as if lightning fractured the sky and the ground shifted almost imperceptibly underfoot, but when they looked up, there was nothing but sunny skies.

—

Hollis knew what Sandy’s late husband, James Anderson, had experienced all those years ago on the grassy hills of Custer’s Battlefield. He was solidly in the past. He could feel the slight breeze as it blew under the small live oak trees. He felt the solid jolt as his cane impacted with the man holding the binoculars, and when the head of his cane connected with the bolt action rifle in the gunman’s hands, he experienced the most painful sensation he’d ever known.

The crafted meteorite head of the cane touched the rifle barrel, and the resulting explosion was as if he’d held the bare wires from a hot 220-volt circuit against the metal. Sparks showered them both, heat sizzled throughout both the cane and the rifle, and the concussion from the detonation rendered them both senseless.

Darkness took over for a moment as Hollis passed out. He lay below the fence without moving. The shot, which had been directed toward the right side of Kennedy’s head, missed completely and shattered into a hail of lead fragments when it hit the brick wall of the building across the street.

The ground underfoot seemed to move sideways before it stabilized.

The limousine driver turned, saw his wounded president, and tromped on the accelerator. The big automobile leaped forward. Bleeding profusely, Kennedy fell to the left, into Jackie’s lap.

Her personal Secret Service agent, Clint Hill, raced from the limo behind, vaulted onto the trunk and fell across them both. A fourth shot hit him in the lower back.

Another bullet struck Connelly.

Still a different round came from another shooter on the Dal-Tex building across the street from the book depository. That executioner realized the entire assassination attempt was foiled. He’d hit the governor instead of the President. He disassembled the rifle as he hurried away and placed it into a cotton laundry bag.

—

Officer Philips watched Sandy roll on the dusty floor. Face contorted, she grunted and pushed at invisible objects or assailants until she suddenly lay still. He and the guard moved closer. Her eyes were closed as she panted from exertion.

The loudest clap of thunder either of the officers had ever heard rolled over the entire city and rattled the building. The vibration was a physical presence. Windows rattled. The clear blue sky outside gave no hint of an impending storm.

—

Suddenly, Sandy’s eyes snapped open and she looked at the two men staring down at her. Shocked, she recoiled from her surroundings as if seeing them for the first time.

“Can we help you, Miss?” Philips asked. “You’ve taken a pretty severe fall.”

Her brow creased at his comments. The uniformed security guard reached a hand. “You really shouldn’t be up here. They’re doing renovations on this floor and you might get hurt.”

Sandy surveyed the room and noted the debris usually associated with building renovation. Sheetrock lay stacked in large piles, and aluminum supports and struts were everywhere. Cables hung from the ceiling like leafless vines. Half-finished walls were everywhere, their aluminum skeletons waiting for someone to apply a skin of sheetrock.

“I’m sorry,” was all she could say.

“There’s nothing to be sorry for. I just heard a noise up here. We came up to investigate.”

Something wasn’t right. Sandy moved slowly to gain time. She needed to think. Moments ago she was wrestling with two killers in 1963, and now these two were talking to her as if nothing had happened. She knew from experience her actions should have attracted attention. They didn’t even seem curious.

“I must have taken a wrong turn somewhere,” she said. “I was looking for the Sixth Floor Museum.”

Both men looked perplexed. “What museum?” Philips asked.

“You know... the one about the Kennedy assassination? In 1963?”

The guard shook his head. “You mean the attempted assassination. Oh, sometimes we have people come into the building to look at the site where the rifle was found, but they never made a museum out of it.”

Sandy began to grin.

—

An incredibly loud clap of thunder rattled the Dallas skyline. The people riding on the elevated monorail glanced fearfully out the windows at the sunny city. They relaxed and settled back in quiet comfort when there seemed to be no danger. The thunder rolled away into the distance.

A man named Fields watched Hollis regain his feet near the fence. He called up to ask him if everything was all right, but the Bullet Train bound for Houston drowned his voice. He waited for it to pass and then called again.

“Mister! Are you all right? You fell pretty hard. You’d better come on down.”

Hollis moved to a sitting position and picked up his cane. The metal grip was malformed, and the ebony wood had cracked along its length. He shook his head to regain his senses and started to respond to the man calling from the street.

His answer never materialized. The passing automobiles on the street behind the curly-headed stranger caught all his attention. Their streamlined bodies were something out of an old Buck Rogers serial. Strangely, no sound came from them. Then he realized the implications.

They were electric cars. The roar of diesel and gasoline engines was absent.

He looked toward the schoolbook depository, hoping to see Sandy. It was different somehow, newer looking, the results of a recent facelift. It wasn’t the same building he’d seen moments before.

The concerned stranger called out again. “Mister?”

“I’m all right. I’m coming down.” Hollis painfully made his way down the grassy knoll being careful not to put too much weight on the fractured cane. He stopped beside the pedestrian to knock dirt and leaves from his trousers.

The man considered the dwarf wearing western clothing and a big hat. “You hit pretty hard.” He produced a card from his suit coat pocket. “I’m a doctor and my office is down the street. Come on by and let me check you out. There won’t be any charge.”

“I’m fine.”

“Hollis!”

He turned toward, Sandy who was hurrying down the street.

“We did it!” She hugged him. Bewildered by the events of the past few minutes, Hollis barely responded to her enthusiasm.

The stranger shook his head at the behavior of the two strangely dressed individuals and continued down the sidewalk.

“We changed history!” Sandy said, still pumped from the adrenaline rush.

“Looks like it,” Hollis laughed. “Are you all right?”

“Of course. Things got a little scary there for a while, but now everything is fine. You’re not going to believe what happened.” She told Hollis what had occurred after they separated. He listened intently, located a cigar in an inside pocket of his jacket and then filled her in on the details of his own.

“Together we kept Kennedy from being assassinated,” he surmised. “That’s why things have changed. This means Johnson probably never took office, there wasn’t a Vietnam War because Kennedy was withdrawing troops when he died in our world, and the entire thrust of this nation took a different path. I think it was a good one.”

A frown flickered across her face. “So how are we here and now?”

“I have no idea.” Hollis shrugged his small shoulders. “Time traveling writers have struggled with this concept since H.G. Wells.”

“Who?”

“It doesn’t make any difference. The answer is, I don’t know.”

Still jubilant, Sandy moved from one foot to another. “We did it without hurting anyone else.”

“We sure did. But we may be through now. Look.” He held up the shattered cane.

Her enthusiasm slowed. “Oh, Ambrose. We can’t use it anymore?”

“I don’t have any idea. Probably a good thing. We didn’t know what we were doing anyway. We were lucky. Things could have turned out differently. And besides, you have your own mission now.”

“What’s that?” she asked, not understanding.

“You have to find James.”

“What makes you think he even exists?”

“I don’t know. Probably because time took a different turn. We both know for a fact that everything has changed.”

“But maybe we aren’t supposed to be together in this world.”

“You said yourself back in the motel room that you believe couples come together throughout time. Maybe now you’re supposed to find each other here and start a new life. Look… nevermind. Come on. Let’s find a telephone, you have some calls to make.”

“I hope money hasn’t changed too much,” she said, digging in a jean pocket for change for what she hoped would be a pay phone. She grinned. “We’re here and now. Back from the future.”

Hollis raised an eyebrow. “You beat anything I’ve ever seen.”

—

Sandy hung up the oddly-shaped phone screen on Dr. Field’s waiting room wall and turned to Hollis. There were tears in her eyes.

“Well?” he asked.

“He’s alive, and a full professor at the university where we met. They say he’s in the classroom right now, teaching a history course, so I couldn’t talk to him. When I asked if Missus Anderson was picking him up after work the receptionist said he wasn’t married. He’ll be available at three.” She laughed.

Hollis checked his watch. “You’d better hurry. You can get there in time to see him leave class.”

“Aren’t you going with me?” She was still worried. They were strangers adrift in a new world, without a home, job or friends, or money. She was also suddenly scared that James would have no desire to talk to her.

“No ma’am. When the two of you meet, you’ll feel just the same as you did the first time. Just control your emotions. I have no doubt you were meant to be together. There are some parallels in all these possible worlds. You’ll be fine. Now remember, meet me right here this same time next week. We’ll catch up and compare notes.”

“What are you going to do for a week?”

“Find a library and read. I’ll probably watch a lot of television, if I can find one. I have a lot to learn.”

“What are we going to do for money?”

He smiled. “I’ll find a Y, or a church that’ll take me in until I can get on my feet. I have a suspicion Professor Anderson will take care of the rest for you.”

“I don’t know what to say, or what to tell him.”

“That’s easy. Tell him the truth.”

“What? He’ll think I’m crazy.”

“Don’t tell him right off, of course. But, after the two of you have time to get reacquainted, you and I will sit down with him to talk.”

“Great. And how do we convince him we aren’t escaped inmates?”

“Tell him everything you know about his life from when he was born until our worlds diverged. You know his mind, how he thinks, what he likes, what food he likes. You knew his mother and father. That part will be the same, everything before the moment someone fired at Kennedy, and I’m sure they had dozens of stories to tell about him when he was growing up. Use them for verification. Tell him about a secret mole, or about the scars on his hands and body that only he knows about. James can’t help but believe you when he hears details about his life you couldn’t have known.”

She listened intently, her mind racing with possibilities.

“You’re right. Let’s go.” She leaned down, hugged Hollis tightly for a moment and then turned away.

Hollis headed downtown to find a library. He paused at a trash can near the monorail terminal. He hefted the broken cane for a moment, thought about dropping it into the garbage and changed his mind.

A group of people passed him on the sidewalk and he followed, limping slowly up to the monorail gate to wait for the next train.

The sky remained clear. There were no clouds in sight.

A stranger brushed past, barely touching, and the now-malformed cane’s head glowed for a moment before Hollis’ head spun and he lost consciousness. The last thing he heard was a sharp snap.

—

Ambrose B. Hollis’ eyes opened, and he looked up into a sky bluer and brighter than anything he’d ever seen. Water hissed nearby and it took a moment to realize a horse was peeing in a dirt street only a couple of feet away.

A man wearing a big hat knelt beside the dwarf who would have barely stood little more than four feet high, if he was upright. The puzzled stranger tilted back his hat and smoothed a thick mustache with one finger. “Hey, feller. You all right?”

Struggling up on one elbow, Hollis took stock of his surroundings. Lying on a board sidewalk, a nearby pile of horse dung filled the air with an odor he hadn’t smelled in years. “What happened?”

“I don’t rightly know. I heard something like a gunshot and turned around to see you laying there like you’d been hit. You’re not wounded, are you? Some of these durn fools’ll shoot their pistols wherever they want, and I’d expect one to take a notion to shoot at a circus performer, if he saw one.”

“I’m not with a circus.” Hollis stood and took stock of a dirt street lined with false-front buildings, horses hitched to wooden posts, wagons pulled by mules, and people dressed like they were in a western movie. “Where is this?”

“You must’ve been knocked in the head. This is Dallas, of course. You just get off the train? Where you from? I ain’t seen clothes like that since I was a kid.”

“A long way off.” Mind reeling, Hollis struggled to his feet, leaned on his split cane that seemed incapable of holding his slight weight, and took stock of his surroundings and the cowboy standing close by. He’d hoped to see Sandy, but she was nowhere about. “What year?”

The cowboy frowned and handed Hollis his hat. “I believe you need to sit down and let me find a doctor to check your head. You might’ve been grazed by a bullet.”

“I’m fine. What year is this?”

“It was eighteen and seventy-five when I woke up this morning.”

“Well, I woke up in a different time myself.”

The stranger shook his head. “I don’t know if I believe that.”

“You wouldn’t believe most of what I can tell you.”

Down the street, he caught sight of an old woman who seemed to be floating about a foot above the street. It was a world of strangeness, and the street seemed to shift for a moment before Hollis steadied.

The old white-haired woman’s voice came soft and clear as if she were standing beside him. “Hollis, now that you’re finally here, you need to get yourself out to the Magic Spring as soon as you’re able. We need you to escort the baby, White Buffalo Calf, to safety. I fear my time is short, and bad folks are on the way.”

“Who’s that woman?” Hollis asked the stranger.

The man looked in the direction Hollis indicated. “You’re hurt worse than you think. There ain’t no woman down there.”

“They call me Miss Hattie, and don’t dawdle. Hurry, hon.” The old woman smiled. “Look for a couple of Texas Rangers in your travels. Buck Dallas and Lane Newsome. Lane’ll want you to know Buck won’t bite. You’ll soon learn why. Now, get going, hon.” She vanished like a puff of smoke.

Which reminded Hollis. He found his last cigar and stuck it into the corner of his mouth and looked up at the stranger. “Got a light?”

The man struck a lucifer and held it down low. Hollis puffed the cigar alive and squinted upward. “Your name isn’t Buck or Lane, is it?”

He smoothed his handlebars. “Nope. King Fischer. Here in town from down around Eagle Pass, visiting kinfolk over in Collin County.”

A student of Texas history, Hollis nodded in recognition of the part-time outlaw’s name. “I’ve heard of you, but it would have made things easier if you were one of the other two.”

Fischer pointed. “There’s a blacksmith here in town who can put a strap around that cane for you.”

“I’ll have to look him up.” Hollis settled his hat back into place. “Ever heard of Magic Spring?”

“Well, there’s stories coming out of Comancheria about Magic Spring, though I’ve never seen it myself. An old woman lives beside a big spring up there with a Kiowa squaw and an albino baby called White Buffalo Calf. The Comanches stay away from there because she’s a witch.”

Hollis sighed and stared down the busy street, now devoid of strange old women floating in the air. “That figures.”

THE END

New York Times bestselling author Reavis Z. Wortham is the recipient of numerous Will Rogers Medallion Awards, the Western Writers of America Spur Award, and the Independent Book Publishers Association’s Benjamin Franklin Award. He has been a newspaper columnist and magazine contributor since 1988, penning over 2,000 columns and articles, and has been the Humor Editor for Texas Fish and Game Magazine for the past 26 years. When he’s not writing, Reavis is also an avid outdoorsman, loves to travel, camp, canoe, backback, hunt, and fish. He and his wife, Shana, live in Northeast Texas.