* * *
“Turn it the other way—Walter Cronkite’s orange!” Lenny Abernathy obligingly twirled the knob, turning the commentator green. Unaffected by his sudden change of complexion, Cronkite went on talking.
“In approximately two minutes, Commander Neil Armstrong and the crew of the Apollo 11 will make history in the first manned landing on the moon…”
The living room was darkened and packed with people, everyone’s attention riveted on the big TV as the footage shifted to a replay of the Apollo’s launch.
“I’m impressed,” Roger said in Brianna’s ear. “How did you fix it?” He leaned against the end of a bookshelf, and pulled her snug against him, his hands on the swell of her hips, his chin on her shoulder.
Her eyes were on the television, but he felt her cheek move against his own.
“Somebody kicked the plug out of the wall,” she said. “I just plugged it back in.”
He laughed and kissed the side of her neck. It was hot in the room, even with the air conditioner humming, and her skin tasted moist and salty.
“You’ve got the roundest arse in the world,” he whispered. She didn’t answer, but deliberately nestled her bottom against him.
A buzz of voices from the screen and pictures of the flag the astronauts would plant on the moon.
He glanced across the room, but Joe Abernathy was as hypnotized as any of them, face rapt in the glow of the television screen. Safe in the darkness, he wrapped his arms around Brianna, and felt the soft weight of her breasts on his forearm. She sighed deeply and relaxed against him, putting her hand over his and squeezing tight.
They would both be less bold if there were any danger to it. But he was leaving in two hours; there was no chance of it going further. The night before, they had known they were playing with dynamite, and been more cautious. He wondered if Abernathy would actually have punched him, had he admitted that Brianna had spent the night in his bed?
He had driven them down the mountain, torn between trying to stay on the right side of the road, and the excitement of Brianna’s soft weight, pressed against him. They’d stopped for coffee, talked long past midnight, touching constantly, hands, thighs, heads close together. Driven on to Boston in the wee hours, the conversation dying, Brianna’s head heavy on his shoulder.
Unable to keep awake long enough to find his way through the maze of unfamiliar streets to her apartment, he had driven to his hotel, smuggled her upstairs, and laid her on his bed, where she had fallen asleep in seconds.
He had himself spent the rest of the night on the chaste hardness of the floor, Brianna’s woolly cardigan across his shoulders for warmth. With the dawn, he’d got up and sat in the chair, wrapped in her scent, silently watching the light spread across her sleeping face.
Yeah, it was like that.
“Tranquility Base…the Eagle has landed.” The silence in the room was broken by a deep collective sigh, and Roger felt the hair rise on the back of his neck.
“One…small…step for man,” said the tinny voice, “one giant leap…for mankind.” The picture was fuzzy, but not through any fault of the television. Heads strained forward, avid to see the bulky figure making its ginger way down the ladder, setting foot for the first time on the lunar soil. Tears gleamed on one girl’s cheeks, silver in the glow.
Even Brianna had forgotten everything else; her hand had fallen from his arm and she was leaning forward, caught up in the moment.
It was a fine day to be an American.
He had a momentary qualm, seeing them all so fiercely intent, so fervently proud, and she so much a part of it. It was a different century, two hundred years from yesterday.
Might there be common ground for them, a historian and an engineer? He facing backward to the mysteries of the past, she to the future and its dazzling gleam?
Then the room relaxed in cheers and babbling, and she turned in his arms to kiss him hard and cling to him, and he thought perhaps it didn’t matter that they faced in opposite directions—so long as they faced each other.
PART THREE
Pirates
6
I ENCOUNTER A HERNIA
June 1767
I hate boats,” Jamie said through clenched teeth. “I loathe boats. I view boats with the most profound abhorrence.”
Jamie’s uncle, Hector Cameron, lived on a plantation called River Run, just above Cross Creek. Cross Creek in turn lay some way upriver from Wilmington; some two hundred miles, in fact. At this time of year, we were told, the trip might take four days to a week by boat, depending on wind. If we chose rather to travel overland, the journey could take two weeks or more, depending on such things as washed-out roads, mud, and broken axles.
“Rivers do not have waves,” I said. “And I view the notion of trudging on foot for two hundred miles through the mud with a lot more than abhorrrrence.” Ian grinned broadly, but quickly exchanged the grin for an expression of bland detachment as Jamie’s glare moved in his direction.
“Besides,” I said to Jamie, “if you get seasick, I still have my needles.” I patted the pocket where my tiny set of gold acupuncture needles rested in their ivory case.
Jamie exhaled strongly through his nose, but said no more. That little matter settled, the major problem remaining was to manage the boat-fare.
We were not rich, but did have a little money, as the result of a spot of good fortune on the road. Gypsying our way north from Charleston, and camping well off the road at night, we had discovered an abandoned homestead in the wood, its clearing nearly obliterated by new growth.
Cottonwood saplings shot like spears through the beams of the fallen roof, and a hollybush sprouted through a large crack in the hearthstone. The walls were half collapsed, black with rot and furred with green moss and rusty fungus. There was no telling how long the place had been abandoned, but it was clear that both cabin and clearing would be swallowed by the wilderness within a few years, nothing left to mark its existence save a tumbled cairn of chimney stones.
However, flourishing incongruously among the invading trees were the remains of a small peach orchard, the fruit of it burstingly ripe and swarming with bees. We had eaten as much as we could, slept in the shelter of the ruins, then risen before dawn and loaded the wagon with heaping mounds of smooth gold fruit, all juice and velvet.
We had sold it as we went, and consequently had arrived in Wilmington with sticky hands, a bag of coins—mostly pennies—and a pervasive scent of fermentation that clung to hair, clothes, and skin, as though we had all been dipped in peach brandy.
“You take this,” Jamie advised me, handing me the small leather sack containing our fortune. “Buy what ye can for provisions—dinna buy any peaches, aye?—and perhaps a few bits and pieces so we dinna look quite such beggars when we come to my kinsman. A needle and thread, maybe?” He raised a brow and nodded at the large rent in Fergus’s coat, incurred while falling out of a peach tree.
“Duncan and I will go about and see can we sell the wagon and horses, and inquire for a boat. And if there’s such a thing as a goldsmith here, I’ll maybe see what he’d offer for one of the stones.”
“Be careful, Uncle,” Ian advised, frowning at the motley crew of humanity coming and going from the harbor nearby. “Ye dinna want to be taken advantage of, nor yet be robbed in the street.”
Jamie, gravely straight-faced, assured his nephew that he would take due precaution.
“Take Rollo,” Ian urged him. “He’ll protect ye.”
Jamie glanced down at Rollo, who was surveying the passing crowds with a look of panting alertness that suggested not so much social interest as barely restrained appetite.
“Oh, aye,” he said. “Come along then, wee dog.” He glanced at me as he turned to go. “Perhaps ye’d best buy a few dried fish, as well.”