New Yesterdays by Jim L Wright - HTML preview

Chapter 26

He should have been surprised to find Dustu sitting on the ground just outside the portal, but somehow, he wasn't. The long shadows made his hair and eyes look even darker. His face, though passive when Jim walked out of the portal, lit up with joy at seeing his old friend coming home.

"Have you been waiting here for me all day?" Jim asked.

"I hoped you would be back before the day was ended, so I decided to wait here for your return. I told my father before we left, I intended to wait for you. He thought it was a very good idea."

Jim was touched by his new brother's gesture and any lingering fears he may have had about the future vanished.

Adahy's usually taciturn face lit up when he saw the two boys walking in the door. He smiled broadly and extended his arms to embrace both of his sons. He had begun to consider Jim as his own son quite some time back. The boy had a bright personality that matched perfectly with Dustu's. The two boys were practically inseparable.

"Sit yourself and give me news of the future my Son!"

Jim was startled at being called 'my Son' when Adahy was clearly looking at him, not at Dustu. He felt a sudden wash of happiness engulf him and he sat immediately, giving the old man his biggest smile.

"Our new country is beautiful my Father! This place is no longer a village on the other side. It is a nice sized town with mills that make yarn and fabrics from the cotton and factories that manufacture, um... other things."

"What other things?" Dustu wanted to know.

"Well, um, things that you don't know about yet. Things that haven't even been invented in our time."

"Tell me about them!" The Indian boy was practically dancing with anticipation.

Adahy raised his hand for silence.

"We have already saved our world and our people by knowing about the future. I think we know enough and some things are best kept in Jim's head. It is impossible for us to imagine the changes we made in the future of the world by using the knowledge he brought to us. We cannot do more at the risk of upsetting all of history. No more questions about the future."

Dustu looked crestfallen and Jim felt decidedly uncomfortable, considering what he had planned when he came back. After a moment's silence, he looked deeply into Adahy's eyes.

"I did bring one thing back from the other side that would be a great help to us. It will change the future, but not so much. The machine I brought back will be invented in three years’ time anyway. It will revolutionize farming and it will earn a lot of money for the inventors. This could be a great thing for the Cherokee and I already know it is a great thing for the farmers. This machine is used all around the world to help them harvest their crops more quickly and with fewer people in the fields."

Adahy considered his words carefully.

"I will not make this decision. It is not mine to make. Tomorrow I will go to Diwali, our new Chief and it will most likely need to be talked about in Council. Keep your information in your head and we will let the village decide how to proceed."

Jim knew he would never be able to sleep that night. The excitement over the things he had seen on the other side and the possibility of inventing a machine that could make them all rich had him too much on edge to even consider sleeping. He glanced over at Dustu and knew instantly that he was in the same state. They would talk very much this night, of that there was no doubt!

The two boys lay on their sides, facing each other in front of a blazing fire they had made. The clear, crisp night was alive with the sound of crickets and tree frogs. The occasional call of the whippoorwill broke through the darkness. Jim had always loved the whippoorwill’s song. He remembered his father telling him that when he begins singing in the autumn that it means it's time to pick the cotton. For a moment he felt nostalgic for his old family and home. His father was full of wisdom and lore and loved to share it with his boys. It was he, in fact, who had taught Jim to read not more than seven or eight years before. He was the only child in 1960 at Roy Webb School to enter first grade knowing how to read. Of course, Roy Webb no longer existed... it never had.

Dustu broke the companionable silence.

"Jim, tell me everything you saw when you were on the other side. My curiosity is eating me alive!"

Jim was in a jovial mood,

"Oh, not very much. Everything looked just as I expected it to..."

He was interrupted by a sudden shove and broke out in laughter. The two boys wrestled around the fire, laughing and giggling. Dustu was desperate to know everything and Jim knew he would never be able to keep it from him. He couldn't resist the temptation to tease him, though.

"Brother, you won't imagine what it was like on the other side" he said when they had settled back in front of the fire, "it was just beautiful!"

“All this area, and more where we live now is a town! The streets are paved and have sidewalks. There are so many shops and banks and factories!"

Dustu's face wrinkled for a moment, "What does this mean, paved and sidewalks?"

"I'll tell you about that later, just know the streets are not dirt." He continued,

"I went to the library where they have hundreds of books about everything in the world. I read about the history of Unalii. And then I read something that set me thinking. Three years from now, a guy named McCormick will invent the machine I told you about. It's called a combine harvester. Horses will pull this machine through the fields and it will gather the grains and tie them into sheaves and drop them on the ground. Another horse and wagon will follow behind and men will pick up the sheaves and throw them on the wagon to be taken back to the barn to be threshed and ground into flour."

"A machine? Is this real or are you having another of your jokes?"

Dustu couldn't fathom a machine doing what men and women had to do now.

"I promise, it's true!"

"But this is cotton country! Cotton has always been grown here, at least since the white settlers came."

"I know" said Jim, "but do you reckon it's cotton country because the white men 'said' it was cotton country? If cotton will grow here, I bet wheat will grow, too! We can clear more land and grow both crops; they both make money and we need money to survive."

“And the inventors of this machine, you and me” he said pointedly, “will also make a ton of money and be rich! Every farmer both here and in the United States will want this thing to help them farm better. And we will own it!”

"This is the most amazing thing I ever heard of" said Dustu, "I hope my father and the Chief will agree to do it. Now, tell me about 'paved'. I never heard this word before."

"Well" replied Jim, "I don't know exactly how to explain it. It's some kind of black stuff they put on roads and streets. I've seen them do it. When they bring it out, it's soft and hot, so hot you can see smoke coming off it. They put it on the road and then pack it down smooth and after it cools it becomes hard. After that, the road is smooth and doesn't get muddy when it rains."

"That's amazing! Is it mined from the ground?"

"I have no idea where it comes from. Maybe they make it in a factory somewhere. I didn't think of looking it up when I was over there because I'm used to seeing it everywhere and it didn't seem important. I know this though, in the future the streets in our town here will be paved with it. I saw that."

Having unburdened himself of his secrets with Dustu made Jim feel less disappointed over Adahy's seeming rejection of the information he had brought back. Truth be told, he felt somewhat sure the Chief would approve, but he had been so anxious to share what he had learned and planned. Now, he could feel his eyelids getting heavier and heavier and he knew sleep would take him within minutes. And it did.

***