ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

CHAPTER 17 ~ The Rebuilding America

ZZZZZZ-ZAP!!!

The small black boy was just about to throw an armload of hay over the wooden rail that held a brown cow in its stall, but he stopped when he was startled by a strange noise and a flash of blue light that came from the back of the barn. The cow mooed loudly and began acting nervous. The two mules in the stalls on each side of to the cow started shuffling around in a jittery manner. The boy dropped the armload of hay to the dirt floor at his feet.

The boy was eight years old, and his name was Jefferson Washington. His eyes grew large and round with fear as he remembered the stories about ghost which his grandfather had told him on dark nights when the wintry wind had whistle around their small log cabin. The old man would sit in his creaky rocking chair by a roaring fireplace while Jefferson lay on a horsehair rug at his grandfather's feet, along with the Jefferson’s two younger brothers and his older sister.

The children listened in fearful fascination to their grandfather's vivid descriptions of the ghostly creatures he claimed to have seen during his 83 years as a slave on a Southern plantation. He told them about strange beings from beyond the grave who walked between the rows of cotton on moonlit nights, and glowing images of long-departed relatives who appeared in the middle of the graveyard near the slave quarters where he and his family had grown up.

Grandfather was a freedman now, along with the rest of his family, thanks to the Emancipation Proclamation, a document signed by President Abraham Lincoln just one year earlier, on January 1, 1863.

Now Jefferson's family worked as sharecroppers on a piece of land that had once been part of huge plantation. The plantation owner's land had been sold off to carpetbaggers and scalawags who had come down from the North after the Civil War. These men had come to the South to take advantage of the formerly rich land owners who were forced to sell their plantations to pay the government's taxes on their land.

One of the new landowners had hired Jefferson's family to work part of the land as sharecroppers. They didn't get any money for working the land, but they did get a share of the crops when they were harvested in the fall, and these crops could be sold for the money which Jefferson's family needed to live on.

Their small farm raised corn and wheat and a little cotton. It was a hard life, and all the children worked in the fields with their mother and father, even the very youngest ones.

Jefferson sometimes wondered if, in the distant future, children would not have to work so hard, and the parents of those children could make all the money the family needed to live on, while the children could go to school and learn to read and write.

Jefferson could neither read nor write, and it bothered him to think he could not get all the knowledge and other wonderful things that books contained. Sometimes, when he went to town with his father, he would see the children of the rich white parents carrying beautiful books that they read as they followed their parents around town.

Jefferson decided that he would someday learn to read, and he would carry a book around and read it whenever he was not working. His father had told him that a school might be built soon by somebody called the Freedmen's Bureau. Jefferson didn't know who they were, but he sure wished they would hurry up and build a school he could go to.

On the farm where Jefferson and his family lived, his grandfather was the only one who didn't' work, because he was too old for the long, hot days of planting and cultivating and harvesting. And besides, Grandfather had earned his rest after more than eighty years of slavery and hard labor and heartbreak.

The fear which the old man's late-late ghost stories had caused Jefferson to feel came rushing back to the small boy now as he stood there in the dimly lit barn and wondered what sort of terrifying thing had just caused the flash of strange light and the crackling noise in the back corner of the barn, behind the wooden wall that separated the last horse stall from the one next to it.

Although Jefferson was young and frightened, he was also brave. With a trembling hand, he picked up the lantern that sat atop the wooden barrel next to him, and he began to walk slowly down the aisle that led between the stalls which held the cow and the two mules. The nervous animals continued to shuffle about and stir the hay on the floor with their hooves. The fact that they were just as uneasy as Jefferson made the boy feel even more frightened of what he might find in that dark stall in the back of the barn.

As he neared the stall, Jefferson thought he heard a few whispered words, then a "shushing" sound, as if someone was trying to quiet someone else. Jefferson stopped a few feet from the stall, holding the kerosene lantern higher than his head, his own quick breathing making more noise in the quiet barn than he wanted it to. For a moment he wondered – and hoped – that his two brothers were playing a joke on him. He called out in a quavering voice.

"George? Benjamin? If that's you messin' 'round back there, I'm gonna tell Poppa to see how good his belt will bounce off the backsides of yo pants!"

There was a long silence, and then a voice came back softly.

"We aren't George and Benjamin, but we are your friends. Don't be scared, okay? We'll come on out if you promise not to be scared."

Jefferson couldn't help being scared, but he tried not to show it. He made himself stand tall and straight, and he tried to make his voice sound brave and loud when he answered.

"Come on out if you ain't scared! And I'm warnin' you, don't start no stuff, you hear? I got me a pitch fork right here in this next stall, and I knows what to do with it!"

After a few seconds, a head poked around the edge of the stall. Even though the head obviously belonged to a person and not a ghost, Jefferson's eyes grew wide again because of the person's strange appearance. It was a white boy about Jefferson's age, and he had long red hair that stood straight out from his head like the white fuzz on the dandelions that grew in the summertime.

When the strange boy saw Jefferson's frightened face, he said, "I know we look kinda weird to you — but we're friendly, I promise."

The boy stepped out slowly from behind the stall, and Jefferson found more reasons to look amazed at this stranger's appearance. His clothes were made of a cloth that shimmered like the expensive silk scarves of the rich white ladies. There wasn't a single button in sight. A strange pair of dark glasses were attached to the front of his shirt, but nothing seemed to be holding them there! On the boy's belt there was an odd object, a small black box that had little glowing red lights, like the tiny burning embers that sometimes popped out of the fireplace.

Jefferson was beginning to believe this boy was a ghost after all!

The boy looked back at something in the stall from which he had emerged, and he waved his hand as if beckoning someone to follow him. A moment later, someone did — a young girl about the same age as the strange red-haired boy. her clothes were not as strange, but she did have the same small black box with the glowing lights on her belt. The two strangers smiled at Jefferson for a moment, then the red-haired boy spoke.

"Hi, my name is Jon-Max. This is my friend, Laura. We were just . . . traveling through this area, and we thought it would be okay to rest in here for a while. Hope we didn't scare you."

"You didn't scare me," Jefferson lied. "I jus' don't like folks pokin' 'round in our barn, that's all." Then a puzzled expression came over face. "Hey, how'd you get in here, anyway? And what was that light I saw?"

Jon-Max sidestepped the first question by answering the second one. "Oh, I was just trying to light a match to see our way around back here in the dark." Then he spoke quickly before Jefferson could ask him where the match was now. "Hey, listen, we're sorry we bothered you. We'll be moving on now, okay? Uh, which way is to the nearest town?"

"Town? The town is 'bout six miles north of here."

"Six miles?" said Laura.

"Five or six, yeah. But how you gonna see yo way in the dark?"

The red-haired boy just smiled and said, "Oh, uh . . . we've got a flashlight — I mean, we've got plenty of matches. And I think a full moon is comin' up seen. Don't worry about us."

Jefferson didn't say anything, but he was worried about the two young people, because he was sure they weren't too smart if they thought they could make it all the way to town by lighting matches!

"You want me to ask my daddy to let you stay here, tonight? It ain't too cold outside, so you could sleep in the barn."

Jon-Max smiled and said, "That's really nice of you. We appreciate it. But I think we got sorta lost, and now we need to get back to where we're supposed to be. We'll be okay. Thanks."

Jefferson smiled back and said, "Okay, if that's how you wants it. Tell you what, though. I'll just sneak into the house real quick and grab a couple of left-over biscuits from supper. You'll need something to eat if you gonna walk all night."

Without waiting for an answer, Jefferson dashed off towards the farmhouse, leaving Jon-Max and Laura standing in the barn, whispering to each other about the bravery and generosity of this young son of a former slave.

When Jefferson returned a few minutes later with two fat biscuits he had sneaked out of the kitchen while his busy mother wasn't looking, Jon-Max and Laura had prepared a little gift for him.

Jefferson handed the biscuits to the two young time travelers. "My momma's biscuits are the best there is. You'll make it to town if you got them to eat along the way."

"Thanks," said Laura. "We really appreciate this. Hey, we've got a little present for you, too." She handed Jefferson a small and colorful rectangle of slick cardboard.

As Jefferson looked at the gift, his face showed both pleasure and puzzlement. After examining it for a moment, Jefferson said, "This is real pretty. Did you paint the picture?"

"No, somebody else painted it," Jon-Max said.

"What does this writin' say?"

Laura smiled as he answered. "It says Yu-gi-oh. Where we come from, the kids love these things. It's called a Yu-gi-oh Card."

Jefferson looked up with a big smile on his face. "Thank you."

"You're welcome," said Jon-Max. "Well, I guess we better be gettin' on down the road. Thanks again for the biscuits."

Jon-Max and Laura made their way to the door of the barn. As they left the pool of yellow light provided by the lantern Jefferson held as he watched them walk into the darkness, they turned and waved one last time. Jefferson peered into the dark night for a moment, waiting to see if Jon-Max would strike a match to see his way to the dirt road that ran along in front of Jefferson's house.

About 60 seconds passed, and suddenly there was a flash of blue light in the darkness about 200 feet away. Jefferson stared into the blackness of the night for a few minutes, pondering the strange events that had just taken place. Finally he decided that the best thing to do would be to sleep on the matter and then talk to grandfather about it tomorrow.

Maybe grandfather could make sense out of it.

NEXT: CHAPTER 18 ~ Rails That Spanned a Nation
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)