“It’s the truth,” he insisted, shooting a look at Mead. “I told you he wouldn’t believe us.”
“I didn’t think he would, but he deserves to know the truth just the same. I’m sick of lying.”
“The truth?” Matt snorted. “You two wouldn’t know the truth if it bit you in the ass. What the hell made you think you could pull the wool over my eyes?”
“Come on, let’s get away from the house,” Mead suggested, taking Matt’s other arm. “I don’t want to upset Ma.”
“Upset her? She’d laugh herself right out of her rocker if she could hear the shit you’re spouting off.”
“Matthew, you have to listen to us. We are telling you the truth, whether you believe it or not. I’m from the future, and if you’ll shut up and think about it, you’ll come to recall all the things you found strange about me when I came here.”
“You were different, but you’d been wounded, and I know a head wound can really rattle a body’s brains for a while. Now you seem normal, well, you did until you made up this fantastic tale.”
“Think about it. You wondered why I was running every morning, and why I did pull-ups in the barn. It’s because that’s normal exercise where I come from. I’ve never worked a farm in my life, which is why I had to keep asking you what to do.”
“Only because you were addled! Everything came back to you, eventually.”
Morgan shook his head and looked to Mead for help.
“What about me?” Mead asked as they made their way down the sloping yard. “You have to know I could never have recovered like I have under normal circumstances.”
“But you went to that fancy hospital.”
“Yes, I did, but I traveled to the future. My knee isn’t even real. It is titanium, which is a metal used for joint replacements. I have a plate in my thigh to strengthen my leg. I can show you the scars.”
“Then how did you get there?” Matthew demanded.
“The same way Morgan got here, time travel.”
“That’s not possible,” he replied, dropping onto the damp grass beside the creek.
“And I say it is,” Morgan asserted. “It’s all very scientific, and I’m not smart enough to explain it, but I’m living proof it can be done.”
“Why? Why would you want to come here?”
“To be honest, my life sucked. My parents and my brother were dead. My marriage was falling apart, and I’d been to war in a foreign country. When I came back, I’d lost all will to go on, so my wife, who is a scientist, suggested I be the test specimen for her experiments. I agreed.”
“Your wife?” Matthew gasped out. “You’re married to Callie Mae!”
“I am, in 1880, but in the future, I have a different one, well I did have one, but she’s remarried now, so I guess I’m in the clear…maybe…morally…”
“If what you’re saying is true, and I’m not saying I believe it, how long were you supposed to stay?”
“A few weeks at most.”
“But you didn’t leave. You sent Mead back instead?”
“Yes. Once I arrived and was accepted as your brother Morgan…”
“Wait! Is that your real name?” Matthew demanded.
“Oddly enough, it is. I chose this place because I had ancestors here. I figured if I was going back in time, it might as well be somewhere I had some sort of interest in. There was an old photograph, a tin type actually of you all. I found it in my mother’s things and researched my family. It was taken when you were all much younger.”
“I remember Pa taking us to Topeka. We did have a photograph taken,” Matthew said thoughtfully.
“The one thing that shocked me was my resemblance to your brother. I never expected to be welcomed. I was going to just mosey around and see what life was like here, but all that changed once I tasted Ma’s cooking,” he stated with a grin as he dropped to the ground beside Matt.
“You did eat like a starving field hand,” Matt acknowledged reluctantly. “I thought, well, we all thought it was because you’d been near starved fighting with Sheridan’s Army.”
