The Inheritance Paradox
Thirty-One (Eugene’s Story)
EUGENE AND SARAH were soaked to their waists as they helped push the wagon across the river—Sarah to her armpits. She was that much shorter than Eugene. Her simple dress and apron clung to her like a second skin as they tried to keep up with the wagon in their soggy clothes.
A shot rang out before they were a hundred yards from the river. The canvas on top of the wagon ripped open. Turning back, Eugene saw gray uniforms flooding into the campsite and a couple at the edge of the water reloading their rifles.
“Go!” Eugene cried, waving Sarah to the front of the wagon. Eugene knelt on one knee beside the trail and unslung his rifle as the first rebel to reload entered the water of the ford. He fired his first shot, and the lead soldier fell. He took a calming breath as he worked the lever, and his copper casing was ejected. Then he brought a bead on the next soldier in the water.
The rebels had apparently not expected resistance at this ford. They scattered for shelter and searched along the northern shore for a target. Eugene fired at another rebel entering the water and then dove for the brush along the trail. A dozen shots rang out, landing around and mostly above him. As soon as they stopped, Eugene steadied himself against a tree and shot the next rebel to enter the water. The remainder panicked and headed back into the trees and away from the clearing as the bodies of their comrades floated downstream.
You should get out of here now.
“No. Without me here, they’d come across the ford and pursue the evacuation. The best place to stop them is here.”
Eugene didn’t attempt to shoot anyone who was retreating. The rebels had not located him. Eugene’s replica Henry came with smokeless powder, an anomaly for the time. The flash from his muzzle when he fired was far less noticeable in the daytime than the smoke of the enemy’s black powder. He stayed concealed and started firing again when a small party made another attempt to cross the river. He could fire fast enough with the Henry that it seemed to the rebels like there was a company concealed on Eugene’s side of the river. Two more rebels fell in the water before they retreated.
Now you really need to get out of here. Someone’s coming.
Eugene could hear the approach of troops from upstream on his side of the river. He didn’t know if they were union troops or rebels. He decided it was better not to wait to find out. He retreated up the trail to follow the wagons.
A couple of miles up the trail, he met Sarah, coming back toward him. She carried a leather satchel, and when she saw him, she rushed to hug him.
“I don’t want to lose you now that I’ve found you,” she said. “We need to find a place to camp for the night. A runner got to our lead wagon and told them to push on north because there was a relief company with their own medical team approaching from Kentucky. Your unit will be back to Louisville before we can possibly catch up with them.”
“Thank you for coming back for me, Sarah. I’d have wandered on all night.”
“There’s a stream crossing just a mile on up the trail. If you can walk that far, we should camp there,” she said.
“I’m not in pain from my leg and have no new injuries. You’ve walked farther than I have. Should I carry you?” Eugene asked.
“So noble of you. I think I can walk, though you might have to carry me to bed.”
“I need to tell you something,” Eugene said as they cuddled beneath his single blanket at their campsite.
“You’ll not take my maidenhead tonight!” Sarah said, shaking her head. “You are big enough to force me, I suppose, but I chose to trust you based on the good character you have shown.”
“Of course not,” Eugene said. “That is not what I wanted to tell you.”
“Okay, then tell me.”
“I’m not from this time and place. Well, closer to this place but certainly not this time,” he started.
He didn’t know exactly why it seemed so important to tell Sarah he didn’t belong here. He didn’t want to believe this was more than a dream. He’d killed more than a dozen men in the past forty-eight hours. If he wasn’t really time traveling, they would all still be alive. Others would have died. Wilbur. Lorne. Perhaps others that dozen would have killed. It was war. They might even have killed Sarah.
Dirty, nasty stuff. I’m a doctor not a soldier, Jim.
“What does that mean? I know you are not from here—in Kentucky. But not from this time?” Sarah asked.
“I mean, I come from the future. A long time in the future. One day, I will have to return to that future,” Eugene said.
“Like the ghost of Christmas Future in Dickens?”
“Oh. Well, not exactly. In Dickens, the three ghosts were merely guides who showed what the three Christmases were and would be. In my case, I’ve literally traveled back in time and am physically here. Either that, or I am dreaming you and you’ll disappear when I wake up,” Eugene tried to explain.
“Or you’ll disappear when I wake up? Until that time, I’ll simply be living in this dream? It was a ghastly nightmare until you showed up,” Sarah said.
“It has been a nightmare since I showed up—until you came back along the trail to find me.” Eugene squeezed Sarah tightly. “I don’t want this to be a dream. But I’ve killed a dozen men since I arrived. It’s not the first time I’ve killed men in my past life experiences, but it is the most I’ve killed. I don’t know how to have this part of my experience be real, but to only have dreamed the former part.”
“All this is your way of telling me you are an insubstantial dream and will eventually leave me,” Sarah said.
“Whether it is tomorrow or in ten years, I don’t know,” Eugene said. “But it will happen.”
Not more than seven years. You cannot overlap your time in Chicago in 1871.
“Why would anyone from the future come here in the middle of a battle in which he’d be wounded? Certainly, he’d choose a better time and place,” Sarah said before Eugene could respond to Galahad.
“I always seem to arrive during a crisis of some sort. I was in Chicago in 1871. There was a great fire. I can’t overlap one time with another.”
“You were in Chicago or you will be?”
“Yes. I suppose so. It wasn’t my choice to land here in the midst of a battle.”
I did the best I could. You landed behind a tree and had time to get your rifle ready.
“Truly, Eugene, are you simply sent back in time to save someone in a crisis? Was it me? Or was it Lorne, who you dragged out of the firefight?”
“No. I mean one time I was sent back precisely in order to save a woman with whom I’ve since fallen deeply in love. But she is in my timeline, not in the past. I found her in 1979, and I am hoping to marry her this year. I mean in 1980.”
“Hmm. There is no sense in me being jealous of someone who has not yet been born,” Sarah mused. Eugene wondered why she would be jealous at all. “If not to rescue someone, then why are you here?”
“First, understand that I’ve been sent by someone who is still far in my own future, and I don’t understand all the reasons. I’m supposed to leave a genetic marker of some kind so it can be discovered sometime in the future and save mankind,” Eugene said.
“What is a ‘genetic marker’?”
“I scarcely understand it myself. You know, when a child is born, people can see a resemblance to his parents? Like same blue eyes. Same nose. Same curly hair. That kind of thing?”
“Yes. So?”
“That’s the result of inheriting characteristics in their genes from their parents. That’s really as much as I understand.”
“So, you were sent here to have bald children?” she asked, stroking his forehead.
“No. It’s a characteristic of some sort that won’t even be discovered for a couple hundred years. It’s supposed to improve humanity’s ability to survive in a cataclysm of some sort. I don’t know what it is because I have never traveled into the future—I mean my future—more than the normal day at a time,” Eugene said.
Sarah was quiet as she processed this information.
“Why you?” she asked. “Saving the human race seems to be a task for some great hero. Cú Chulainn should have been sent.”
“Who?”
“An Irish hero of the first century. My father came over from Ireland when he was young and was full of Irish legends. I was born here, though my elder brother traveled with Mum and Pa. Now, why were you chosen?”
“Sarah, I don’t know why I should be so free in telling you this. I believe I was given this task as punishment for my wickedness.”
That’s an interesting take. Why haven’t I heard this before?
“What wickedness? Were you a murderer?”
“No. I was unfaithful to my wife. I betrayed the church and my vows. When my illness was miraculously healed, God chose a different punishment that I could not escape because it is all in my head.”
“I take it you were divorced since you are now contemplating marriage with another,” Sarah said.
“Yes. The peace I have is found in the arms of my beloved.”
“How is this genetic marker you speak of transferred?”
“Through having children.”
“You are sent back in time to father children? How many?”
“Usually just one on each trip. Sometimes more.”
“Eugene, are you here to plant a baby in my womb and then disappear?” she demanded.
“Your womb or someone’s. I may have spread the gene or the marker or something to the men I brought in from the field by bleeding into them. It is less reliable than through my children,” Eugene sighed.
Sarah was quiet for a long time. Eugene thought she had gone to sleep. When she spoke, it was scarcely above a whisper.
“I agree.”
“What?”
“I already decided I was going to marry you and bear your children. What difference does it make if they are carriers of your inheritance? If I can have a few years with you before you are snatched back into the future, I will be satisfied with that. But until that moment, we shall be married and I will give birth in wedlock.”
“Sarah, after all I have told you… You would still consent to be with me?”
“Yes. You have told me you believe this to be your punishment. How could I decline the task of making you pay for your sins? I’m sure I will make life miserable for you, forcing you to copulate until my belly swells and then forcing you again once I give birth. I will see that you pay—over and over again,” she said.
“I detect that you do not completely believe what I’ve said. I’ve told you, though, so when the time comes, I will make love to you. As my punishment.”
“Make love. What an interesting concept,” she mused. “Sex is the way most women become pregnant, I’m sure.”
“Yes. We’ve known each other only a couple of days and you have already declared your intent to marry me. That would logically follow,” Eugene said.
“That was based more on the quality of your rifle than on your charm. And in your bravery. You fell back to protect us from the rear. Your loyalty in bringing your wounded comrades to the hospital. Your charm.” She turned toward him and lightly kissed his lips before turning her back once again.
“I never considered myself charming.”
“Hold me closely through the night, Eugene. You can charm me in the morning.”
You must have a charm of some sort. How else would you entice her like that?
Charming Sarah did not mean sex in the morning, though she quickly got him out of his clothes.
“You need to get out of that uniform. You were never really a part of the army and there is no record of you there. You don’t want to be mistaken for a deserter. You look too old to have been in the army. Better to have simply been a hunter or mountain man,” she said. “Do you have the clothes you wore when you found this uniform?” she asked.
There’s a change in your rucksack. Wells thought ahead.
Eugene looked in his rucksack and pulled out trousers and a white shirt. There was a leather waistcoat as well.
“Will these do?”
“Nicely. Quickly, change.”
She stripped off her nurse’s apron and folded it into her leather satchel. She took the cap he wore along with his uniform and went into the woods to bury it as well as she could. Then they crossed the stream and continued north.
“Tell me what it is like in the future,” she said as they walked.
Eugene had used the extra space in his rucksack to push his blanket into, along with his ammunition pouch and the strap for his rifle. He carried the rifle under his arm, more like a hunter than a soldier. He slung the rucksack by one strap under his other arm.
Careful!
“Hmm. What would you want to know?”
“Will this war ever end?” she asked.
“Yes. In a year or two. Lee will surrender to Grant at Appomattox.”
“So, the Union is preserved?”
“Yes… Though the scars still run deep. Lincoln freed the slaves and made them citizens, but they didn’t get some semblance of equal rights until the 1960s—a hundred years from now,” Eugene said.
“But at least there is peace,” she sighed.
“There’s never really peace,” Eugene said. “It gets more frightening every year. War with Spain. Two world wars. One of them ends with an unbelievable explosion that destroys an entire city. Then war in Korea, scarcely ended when there is war in Vietnam. Wars and rumors of wars.”
“Oh, Eugene, then how can you believe you are being punished for such a small thing?”
“Small? I suppose the world doesn’t care, but I proved myself a man of no morals and no faith. Perhaps this trip will prove to be my redemption. I will care for you as if I were to be here a hundred years,” he said fervently.
“I believe you. I believe in you, Eugene.”
She hasn’t run screaming into the woods with your fantastic tales. That’s a good sign.
It was four days’ travel before they reached the waters of the Ohio River. Rather than attempting to cross the river and head north through Indiana, they chose to follow along the south bank until they reached the port of Newport where they could get ferry transportation across the river to Cincinnati. Even though Kentucky was still part of the Union, Ohio felt more civilized.
“We’ve been traveling as refugees for a week. We need better transportation if we are going all the way to Michigan,” Eugene said.
“What do you propose?”
“The railroad. There must be a train from here to Detroit.”
“I knew you were a man of means,” Sarah laughed. “Make a lady of me.”
Perhaps make a woman of her. She’s impressed with you.
During their journey, she’d continued to ask him about his time. Eugene did not let her off easily, though. He found she was twenty-one, lived in Ann Arbor with her Irish immigrant parents, and had two brothers who attempted to spoil and protect her. They were upset when she decided to travel with the army as a nurse. She was happy to end her service at this time, though.
In Cincinnati, they found a hotel for the night, and Eugene took Sarah shopping for a few clothes and a better suitcase.
Not that you should flash it around, but there are $50 and $100 greenbacks sewn into the lining of your pack. Better pull them out before you get rid of that bag.
“Anything else I should be aware of?” he demanded of Galahad.
“That I’ve grown quite fond of you, Eugene,” Sarah said.
They bought a suitcase and packed all their things in it, including the various medicines Sarah had in her bag. She was prepared with laudanum, chloroform, and alcohol, with her knife, pliers, and tweezers for removing bullets. They ate dinner in the hotel, included in the price of the room. They were registered as Mr. and Mrs. E.W. Holbrook.
When they returned to their room, Sarah set about giving Eugene a shave and a haircut. They’d decided he should let both grow while they were hiking from Tennessee. With his receding hairline and gray hairs, it made him look older. Now that they were about to journey as husband and wife, Sarah wanted him to look younger.
“It’s nearly official now,” Sarah said as she put away the scissors and Eugene’s razor. “All we need is a minister to record our marriage.”
“Perhaps we can do that in the morning, before we board the train,” Eugene answered.
They spent the night together in the same bed, but they continued to be circumspect regarding sexual contact. Eugene held her in his arms but did not molest her. She kissed him politely but did not offer deeper affection.
In the morning, they found a Methodist church on the way to the railroad station. The minister was happy to fill out a wedding certificate and pronounce their vows. The only hitch was when the minister asked for their birthdates.
“September eighteen, nineteen… um… I mean eighteen, uh…” Eugene stumbled.
Better make it twenty-five. She thinks you are forty.
“Eighteen twenty-five,” Eugene finished softly.
The minister pronounced their vows and witnessed the certificate. From the church, they went directly to the train station and Eugene bought two $8 tickets to Detroit.
Boarding a train just an hour after marrying meant consummation of their new relationship was necessarily delayed. They rode next to each other, looking out the window, and talking in low voices.
“What is your real birthdate, my man of the future?” she asked.
“Um… September eighteenth,” he said.
“You know what I want. What year?”
Eugene sighed.
“Nineteen forty-nine,” he whispered.
“And what is the current date when you get back home?”
“May thirtieth, nineteen eighty.”
“But you are… Only thirty? Why did you place your birthdate in twenty-five for our marriage certificate?” she asked.
“Because you believed I was forty years old and placing my birth in 1849 would have made you a cradle robber.”
“Or more. I thought it as likely that you would make me a widow before you were called back to your time. Why do you look so old?”
“Well, when I travel, I live the amount of time I’m gone, even though I return at the same time I left,” he said. “I have traveled more than eight years in other eras. So that makes me nearly forty.”
I have to say the travel has taken a toll on your good looks, too.
“I needn’t mention that.”
“Mention what? You often talk to yourself.”
“I’m sorry. It is a side-effect of the time travel. I hear a voice prompting me at times.”
“So, what did you decide not to mention? I want to know, husband.”
“That the time travel has taken a toll on me as well. It has aged me more than the years. I have been in battles, run from pursuers, fought with an angry mob. All these things make a man age more than the years.”
“I pledge this to you, Eugene. I will do my best to see the time you spend with me does not age you more.”
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
