Michael Sullivan - Hollow World

Around noon they ported to the front gate and walked the sidewalk-lined streets with drooping bluebell lamps and Civil War-era architecture. No one stopped or greeted them. No one was there at all.

“Volunteers help maintain the museum,” Pax mentioned as they walked through empty streets. “And I’ve heard a few have actually begun living here full-time, history students, professors, and such, but this place was never all that popular.”

“I imagine the murder won’t help attendance.”

“No—I doubt it would.”

Ellis thought of Hollywood backlots—it was too well kept to be a ghost town. All the lawns were trimmed, the gravel smooth. Occasionally they would pass a buggy or a buckboard parked on the side of the road. After several days in Hollow World, being in Greenfield Village brought a flood of familiarity. Ellis fit among the curbs, pavement, shutters, and fences. He understood the windows and the sewers. A plastic garbage bag fluttered in the wind where it was held in place by a large rubber band—an old friend waving. Even the way his shoes slapped the pavement spoke of home, of cars, plastic bottles, and cellphones. Ellis was time traveling again, the sensation of tripping through eras becoming disorienting. He felt as if he’d woken up in the cozy comfort of his own epoch, the sights and sounds so much easier to accept than the idea of interdimensional doors spilling into the lithosphere where disembodied voices made convenience-store-quality coffee from gravel. After only a few minutes he might have begun to question whether any of it was true if not for the person walking beside him with cocked bowler, pin-striped pants, and silver vest.

Pax had explained that the coordinates supplied by fake-Pol’s vox indicated the Firestone Farm in the northwest portion of the village. They both had felt it best to approach cautiously, so instead of using the Port-a-Call, they walked through the tree-shaded memory of the Industrial Age. He saw Pax focus on the old buildings, then glance at him with a curious look. Ellis could hear the unasked question, How did people ever live like this? He had felt the same way when watching the History Channel when it showed the ruins of Pompeii or ancient Egypt.

They walked past the Wright Brothers’ cycle shop and Edison’s Menlo Park complex. Cutting through Liberty Craftworks, they went by the glass and pottery shops, the gristmill, and the printing office before reaching Firestone Lane. At the end of the dirt road stood a two-story red-brick building with a green-shingled roof, a welcoming porch, two chimneys, and a perfect white picket fence. It was an honest house, a solid place of early virtues and Yankee determination. The mid-nineteenth century boyhood home of tire magnate Harvey Firestone had originally been in Ohio, but Ford had it moved to his village in Dearborn. Painstakingly restored to its 1885 likeness, the Firestone estate wasn’t just a museum piece. It was a working farm and had been even when Ellis visited for his school trip well over two millennia prior. As they approached, they could see sheep, cows, and horses in the pastures that lined the road. They also saw people.

Ellis spotted five. One off to their right was tossing hay with a pitchfork into the horses’ corral. Two more shooed cows from one pen to another, calling out “Mon boss! Mon boss!” A fourth opened the door to the house, focused on them, then retreated inside. The last sat on the porch at the end of the road. Creaking the boards beneath an old-fashioned rocker, the stocky man watched their approach. He was wearing an Amish-style straw hat and button shirt left open to the waist, revealing white chest hairs against deeply tanned skin. Black trousers were held up by suspenders. His bare feet thrust out toward them as he sipped on a glass of tea.

“Well, if it ain’t Mr. Rogers. Wonderful day in the neighborhood to ya, old man.”

Ellis stopped, staring in disbelief. The man’s hair was long and white, and he had a chest-length beard that made him look a bit like a cynical Santa Claus. But there was no doubt—the man kicking back on the porch was his old friend, Warren Eckard. Despite the I’ve-seen-the-face-of-God hair , and a few more wrinkles around the eyes, Warren looked great. The layer of fat that he had built up after high school was gone. The luxury package of a pregnant stomach, love handles, and pale-skinned man breasts had been replaced with the sportier look of defined muscles and a Caribbean-fisherman’s tan.

“Warren?” was all Ellis could say.

Pax halted beside Ellis, looking understandably confused.

“Didn’t expect to see me again, did ya?” He laughed with a bemused smile. “Figured I’d be dust, right along with the rest of them, right? Almost, pal, almost. You’re the surprise. I expected you years ago. You just arrived, didn’t you?”

“Yeah.”

Warren shook his head with the same disappointment he used to exhibit when seeing a woman past her prime wearing an outfit meant for a teenager. “Don’t make no sense, does it? I’ve been here three years.”

“Who are you?” Pax asked.

“Sorry,” Ellis replied. “Pax, this is Warren Eckard, an old friend. We grew up together.”

“Met in high school. You know what that is—Pax, is it?”

“An institution of education?”

“Close—it’s a place where they kill dreams.”

“Warren, how did you get here?”

“You, buddy—you and your time-machine notes. Remember Brady’s? Ought to. It was only a few days ago for you, right? I kept your time-machine blueprints—stuffed them in the glove box of my Buick that night. When you went missing, the cops had dogs and forensic types all over your place. Peggy couldn’t figure out if you had killed yourself or just took a powder. Your disappearance was a big deal. No one figured out what happened—no one but me. I knew it the minute I poked my head in your garage and saw all those cables and that poster—the old Mercury Seven. The one you had in your bedroom when we were in high school. I figured you either made it or died in the attempt, but either way you were gone and none of them was ever going to find you.”

The door to the farmhouse opened again, and Ellis saw a face shadowed by the screen peeking out.

“Hey, Yal,” Warren called over his shoulder. “Bring these nice folks some tea.” Warren drew in his feet to grant them passage. “C’mon up, have a seat out of the sun. Gets hot this time of day.”

Ellis slipped off his backpack, climbed the weathered steps, and pulled over a wicker-backed rocker, feeling as if he’d just entered into an old-school western. Bring these nice folks some tea? It was as if Warren had become Gary Cooper. Ellis didn’t think Warren had ever tasted tea. For half a century he’d been a black-coffee-and-domestic-beer man, with the occasional shot of Jack or Jim when he could afford it.

“Careful.” Warren pointed at Ellis’s chair. “That one doesn’t have a backstop on the runners. If you rock too far, you’ll go ass over shoulders—I know—I’ve done it.”

Pax moved in under the shade of the porch, but didn’t sit. Instead, Pax stood rigidly to Ellis’s right.

“Got something against sitting?” Warren asked.

“No,” Pax replied.

“Nice getup.” Warren gestured to Pax with his glass of tea. “You fit in perfect here. Well, not so much here as Main Street. That’s where the hoity-toity class of folk with your sort of finery would have strolled with walking sticks and umbrellas. Out here on the farming frontier, we just let the rain fall on us.”

Ellis expected some comment about loving the rain, but Pax remained oddly silent.

Yal stepped out, carrying two glasses of coppery tea with a pair of mint leaves in each.