SADDLEBAGS, Trunks, and Tombs

Chapter 2

The edges of the letter tried to crumble in my hands as I gently removed it from the tattered envelope.  I was holding in my hands something that was written almost a hundred years ago!  It deserved to be handled with the utmost delicacy.  I laid the envelope back in the box, slowly unfolded the letter and began to read:

January 29, 1910

 Dearest Jackson,                                                                  

      I am hoping that this letter finds you well.  It has been nearly a year since your last letter.  It is my grandest and most desperate hope that you are still residing in Kingman at the address on your last letter.  I have waited patiently and have gone through many trials here, in hopes that you would send for me soon as you had promised so many years ago.  

     My situation has now become dire and it seems the only choice I have is to attempt to make my way to you and hope that your arms still welcome me as they did the night before you left.  With that hope in my heart, I send you this letter in the box that you gave me when you first began to court me as a young girl.  You gave it to me to hold my dreams, now I send it to you to fulfill my dreams.  

     I have done everything I can to survive here in Cornish and now have nothing left but the box, my health and the very last blessing ever bestowed upon me.  I have made my final arrangements and am set to arrive into Kingman on April 29th of this year.  On that day, I bring to you myself and all that I have in hopes that your promise will be fulfilled.

                                                                With all my love,

                                                                 Martha

I held the letter in my hand for a few moments, wondering what happened to Martha.  Did she make it to Arizona?  Was Jackson there to meet her?  Did her life have a happy ending or did she come to find that she would be utterly and completely alone, thousands of miles from home?  

I’ve gotta tell you, I have written fictional stories that didn’t have this kind intrigue behind them!  Finally I laid the letter down on the coffee table and made my way back to the kitchen to grab an apple, the whole time my mind twisting with thoughts of Martha and Jackson.  

As I walked back towards the couch, tossing the apple in the air and planning to sketch out a story idea about the letter, the picture window went black.  Let me tell you, I’m surprised the apple landed in my hand and not on the cold hard wood floor!  Even if it had been midnight, the view out of that window had never been pitch black.  But it was no later than 9:30 am!  

I don’t know how long I stood still in my tracks, fear of the unknown running through my veins like ice water.  I didn’t know what to expect to see and I didn’t want to expect to see what I couldn’t fathom to expect!  I felt cool beads of sweat forming quickly on my brow.  My legs found the front edge of my couch and I was braced against it before I realized it.

I stared at the window praying to see the familiar sites of the waterfront, needing to see them.  As you can probably guess, that was not to be.  The darkness began to swirl, (I really needed that with the nausea already getting worse), until a scene began to form.  As the window began to clear, a moving picture began to take the place of the darkness that had stopped my breath just moments before.  Panic enveloped me, but my naturally curious mind caused me to be captured by the scene that should not have been in my vision.  Though I felt I was surely losing my mind, I was cohesive enough to slide myself onto the couch just before my legs decided to drop me to the floor.

The scene that had cleared into the window appeared to be like a western shoot ‘em up movie.  In what appeared to be a small, dusty town, of very few buildings, a stage coach had just pulled to a stop in front of a small building that bore the name “Hobbs Postal Office”.  

As with a television western, when there is about to be a problem, the few towns people in the area seemed to be moving quickly to whatever cover or building they could find, as far away from the post office as they could possibly get.  All that was needed was the music to let you know that the bad guys were there and there was about to be some big problems for the men who were starting to unload the coach.  

As the first bags were unloaded from the coach a solid handful of men began to emerge from the settling dust that the stagecoach had stirred up.  They weren’t even wearing masks!  Guns were drawn just as the three men unloading the coach became aware that they were no longer alone.  The look on their faces was realer than I had ever seen on TV I saw true fear just as the first shots rang out.  

One of the three went down instantly, one tried to run and one tried to fight.  In the midst of it all, bags of mail and boxes seemed to be flying everywhere.  The two remaining postal workers were quickly disposed of and the outlaws rummaged through the mess of mail, found what they were looking for and rode off.  Before they left, one of the men decided to toss some sort of fire wielding bottle into the postal building as the abused boxes and bags lay scattered on the dirt road, then the scene in the window was gone, just as fast as it had come.

As my mind still reeled in fear and confusion, the river and the waterfront took their rightful places back in my window.  I grabbed the closest bottle of scotch, something my father had sent me years ago, I could get my hands on, no glass necessary, and began to drink.

A glance at the clock on the wall told me that I had been in a welcome stupor for about five hours.  Five hours didn‘t seem like enough!  There was no way that I was ready to be coherent yet!  I had slid off of the couch, onto the floor but I didn’t seem to have suffered any damage, as I felt no pain.  I could feel the beginnings of fear wrapping its hands around my chest.  Lord, don’t let me have a heart attack now.  I’m too young to die!!  (Laugh if you want to, if it were you, you would be saying the same thing!!). 

As I pushed myself back onto the couch, I found myself staring at the window.  A middle-aged man with a fishing pole was being led to the waterfront by a large German shepherd, a normal window view for this time of year.  The grip of fear loosening its hold on my chest, my eyes drifted to the coffee table.  I stared for the longest.  This would teach me to impulse buy!  

There sat the letter and the box, just as I had left them before I had temporarily lost my mind.  I didn’t want to touch anything, didn’t want to move.  I barely took a breath!  The last thing I wanted was to see the blackness in the window again.  Yet the scene that I had witnessed called softly to the right side of my brain and whispered, “Write it down.”   

I am a writer and as afraid as I was, I found my legs pushing me up off the couch and moving me towards my desk.  As my body moved me towards my desk, I did everything in my power to keep my head turned away from the window, the window that I had spent so much time looking out of.  My legs kept moving until they were positioning me in front of my chair and dropping me in front of my laptop.  

I watched my hands reach forward, turn on the computer and bring up the word processor programs new document, which sat there waiting for me to work magic.  I remembered everything I had seen and began to type it all onto the bright white space in front of me.  I had not realized that I had been holding my breath until I inhaled deeply after typing the period which followed the last word on the page.