Postmark USA Back Story - Part two of a three part series
Pine branches slapped him in the face, pelting him with ricochets of wet snow, and more than once Spencer slipped and fell in the slush. After a few minutes, he slowed and began to compose himself. He instinctively reached into his pocket for his phone and found it gone, no doubt swallowed by the river. Walking through the darkening woods, Spencer was suddenly much more aware of how cold and wet he was. Dangerously cold.
After wandering for another twenty minutes or so, Spencer saw a small rustic cabin in a clearing ahead. It had a rusty and very old padlock on the door. With a pang of guilt, he smashed the lock with a large rock several times until it snapped off in a shower of sparks.
He peered into the dusty cabin. A rusty old lantern hung on a nail by the door, and there was a small jar full of matches and a piece of sandpaper on a crude wooden table. He lit the lantern and gazed around the rest of the cabin. Given the seemingly remote location, it wasn’t surprising there was no electricity in the cabin. Spencer found a couple of musty blankets and after a glance at the stained bed covered in mouse droppings, looked for a better option. There was a broom in the corner, and he swept a space on the floor, laid down one of the blankets, stripped off his sopping clothes, and pulled the other blanket on top of himself. He was asleep in minutes.
The next morning, a shaft of sunlight crept across the room, eventually waking Spencer from a restless sleep. He pulled the rough blanket up to his chin. It did little to mute the cold air, and swirls of his frozen breath swirled in the cabin along with the dust coming off the blanket. His mind wandered as he watched them mix in the shaft of sunlight coming through the cabin’s one window.
While his sleep had not been deep, it had been enough to clear his mind. Where the hell was he? He sat up, stiff and sore from sleeping on the floor in the cold, but otherwise unharmed. After starting a small fire in the fireplace, he stumbled outside to see a beautiful blue sky. It was cold enough that the snow squeaked and crunched under his feet as he walked a ways down the forest path. His footprints from the night before were coated in a thin layer of fresh flakes, soft ghosts of their former selves. He retraced his steps back to the river and splashed some frigid water on his face, then drank a few mouthfuls.
The cold air jolted him further awake, and Spencer dusted some fluffy snow off of a log and sat down. Several things about yesterday troubled him. While the blackout and loss of memory were extremely disturbing, so were the looks on the faces of the men who had pulled him from the river. They looked like witnesses to a crime who were afraid to tell their story, or perhaps had bad news that they were reluctant to share.
Spencer saw a small column of smoke rising from a clearing near the edge of the river, and headed in that direction. He was pleased to see the two men from the day before huddled around a steaming metal pot over a cookfire. They were wearing thick denim coats that appeared to be lined with wool. Their tent was a large piece of canvas draped over a rope tied between two trees. While the corners were staked out with pieces of rough twine, it was clear these dudes were roughing it out here. One man was blonde and the other had dark hair, and both had impressive beards. They looked to be in their fifties or sixties. Spencer was reminded of old Western films that were always playing on the old Magnavox TV at his grandparents’ house when he used to visit them as a kid.
“How’s it going y’all?” Stewart shouted as he approached their camp.
The men looked a bit apprehensive and exchanged a quick look at each other that did not go unnoticed by Spencer. One man glanced at a pair of antique hunting rifles leaning against a tree, but he made no move towards them.
“Sorry, I don’t mean to interrupt your breakfast, I just wanted to say thanks again for helping me out of the river yesterday. To be honest, I have no idea how I got there. I must have hit my head or something. Pretty shaken up right now. Did y’all see anything before pulling me out? Was I in a boat? Swimming?”
“You from the South?” asked the darker haired man, seemingly ignoring Spencer’s question.
Spencer laughed, “No sir, I’m from Chicago, well the suburbs at least.”
“Hmmm, I never heard of Suburbs, is it a big town?”
“Not really.” Spencer was now looking at the man in earnest. Maybe he wasn’t the brightest.
The blonde man piped in, “My cousin down in Texas is Scots-Irish, and he’s the only one I ever heard say “y’all.”
“If you’re from Chicago, how did you end up all the way out here in Oregon?” the dark haired man asked. Spencer tried mostly unsuccessfully to hide his shock at this revelation, and the men exchanged another quick glance at each other as if his reaction unsettled them further.
“Oregon?!” Spencer ran a hand over his face and settled shakily onto a rock near the campfire.
“Sir, you don’t have any idea how you got here, do you?” asked the blonde man. Spencer slowly shook his head. “Do you have anywhere to go, or any money?” He shook his head again.
Spencer had a strong sense that while the men were perfectly kind and helpful, they were not eager to continue to talk with him. Something had them spooked, and he didn’t want to linger and overstay his welcome. “I think I’m going to head into the nearest town and try to sort this out. Can you please point me in the right direction?”
“Just follow the river about two miles that way, and you’ll come to Hood River,” said the dark haired man. “And here, hopefully this will get you back on your feet,” he said as he flipped a silver dollar towards Spencer, who caught it and pocketed the coin.
“Thanks, I really appreciate all of your help.”
“No problem sir, and good luck to you. Just got my war pension payment, and I’m happy to help another man in need.” He patted a stiff leg as if to thank his wounded limb for its service.
“Desert Storm?” Spencer inquired.
The man looked slightly confused, but responded with “Antietam,” and gave Spencer a somber wink.
As Spencer trudged away, the blonde man whispered to his friend, “Should we tell him about the light we saw before we found him in the river?”
“Hell no, people already think we’re crazy enough, you want to get that rumor started? Besides, it might have just been the sun reflecting off of something.” The other man looked dubious. They both knew what they saw, but didn’t pursue the subject further.
Spencer returned to the cabin, which was cozy after being warmed by the fire for a bit. He was still confused and disoriented from the events of the last 24 hours, and his head suddenly felt like it was filled with cotton balls. Angry at himself for not asking to share breakfast with the men, and stomach grumbling, he absentmindedly took the coin out of his pocket and started flipping it in the air with a flick of his thumb. It was only on the third or fourth flip that he recognized the slightly different “ping” of the coin. He had handled old coins with his grandfather, who was an avid collector, and recognized the distinctive sound that a solid silver coin made. He snatched the coin out of mid air and examined it. Spencer was stunned to find himself looking at a Morgan silver dollar, and even more shocked when he read the date on the coin - 1893.
And then a torrential, nauseating wave of realization pierced his foggy brain. He thought back to the men’s antique rifles and camping gear, and then looked around the cabin. No outlets, no modern fixtures, no plastic candy wrappers or empty soda cans. The comment about Antietam that Spencer had taken to be a history joke. He scrambled outside and looked up at the bright blue crisp morning sky. Not a plane to be seen, and no trailing exhaust vapor either.
Spencer sank to the ground. He was pretty sure that somehow, incredibly, he was in the 1800s.
To be continued…