The Later Journeys - 8. Commitment

                      
Previous Chapter

“Well,” said Gerard Greenfield IV, “You know I can’t do much more than I’ve already done. I’m actually surprised he hasn’t heard planes overhead yet.” He paused, thinking. “It’s not like he doesn’t know it’s the 21st century. If he wants to go out, he’s gonna have to understand that he’ll see weird things. The coach, you can do. The roads, we can keep blocked off. But once you get to the boundary, he’ll see pavement, he’ll probably see cars, or at least hear them. Trains too, depending on the time of day. Maybe people. Those are the easiest to deal with. Just prepare him the best you can. How’s everything else coming along?”

I had, of course, been sending him summary emails the whole time Ben had been with us. Gerry was a great guy. He was 40, the younger brother of a close friend. And he was rich as all hell. He’d inherited quite a bit, as had his sister, but as intellectually gifted as he was, he had made some highly unfortunate decisions when it came to using it. So much so, he’d landed in federal prison for a time, and now his career prospects were limited. The experience had made him cynical about a great many things, and about most people. He was brilliant, and bored, and this whole idea had brewed itself out of a perfect storm of ideas as Trevor, Warren, Gerry and I sat getting drunk and more than a little high one weekend.

The idea had come when we started talking about our favorite books, one of which we all had in common: Jack Finney’s acclaimed novel from 1970, Time and Again. That premise involved no time machines, just a lot of playacting and hypnosis. It is true that in a precious few parts of the country and the world, time seems to stand still. The landscape and skyline don’t change. A person can orient themselves toward a tiny sliver along a sightline, at a carefully planned moment, and forget briefly that they are no longer in the current century but decades or more in the past. But how far you can take that illusion, requires a certain amount of credulity and more than a little luck.

We had plenty of both for now, but there was no telling when they would run out and the whole experiment would come crashing down.

We still didn’t know what had made it work. We idly tossed ideas around, as to which period of history we thought we might visit. The discussion hadn’t gone far. In the book, the project is funded and sponsored by high-level military intelligence. We had no such connections, and despite our collective educations, none of us really felt like doing enough research to pinpoint a time or place to shoot for. Gradually we started musing about the opposite: If someone from the past could “transition” that way to our time period. Who would we most love to meet from a bygone era, and serve as tour guide as they beheld how whatever seeds they’d planted back then had blossomed?

The answer, Benjamin Franklin, was a total no-brainer for all of us. Not only was he one of the great minds of our country’s history, an architect of a simple yet complex government system, and a contributor to numerous areas of knowledge, he was also accessible. From portrayals in literature and on the screen, we perceived him as a true mensch, someone who could relate, at least somewhat, to our time as well as his.

And, he had spent quite a bit of time in New Jersey during his lifetime.

We knew that in 1785, Franklin had returned from his long stint as the first American ambassador to France, and that he had begun the conversations that would lead to the Constitutional Convention in 1787. In November, he had been on the road from New York to Philadelphia but had stopped in southern New Jersey at an obscure little place called the Flatiron Inn. We knew this from one or two memoirs that had made brief mention of that. From there, the idea blossomed: The Flatiron Inn had been renamed the Pine Branch Inn years before, and just by coincidence, Gerry had gone and purchased it. He’d been thinking of selling, though, because the place was struggling to stay afloat. It was just on the other side of the boundary line to his family farm. Gerry’s overactive mind started churning right there in his living room as we sat together. If Finney’s premise were correct, we could change the signage back to something resembling the original, disconnect the phones just for a short time, and have the staff dress in Colonial costumes. Gerry could simply say he was trying out a new theme to boost tourism. A cinch. Gerry actually had enough capital to buy the neglected stretch of private roadway adjoining the driveway of the farm, dig up the pavement, reroute the traffic and even use some of his connections to hold off the airlines for just an hour or two. To complete the illusion, he would try to find an actor (professional or otherwise) to play the part of Benjamin Franklin and have him arrive by horse and buggy at the “Flatiron Inn” between 10 and 11 pm. We could assume that some associate of Franklin’s would have communicated a desire to meet with him, promising some good accommodations at a friend’s home nearby. The coach would meet him at the appropriate time and bring him to the farm, with the cabin retrofitted to complete the illusion.

All a fantasy, of course. But somewhere along the line, we agreed to do it, to suspend disbelief, to trust Gerry with the logistics and just play our parts. When we visited the inn to “scout the location,” we were astonished at the view from the front door. It faced a circular cobblestone driveway and porte cochere, beyond which was nothing but dense woods. The parking lot was behind the inn, but if the lights were doused and the cars cleared... It could be exactly as Finney had envisioned. A person under the right set of circumstances, the right mindset, could believe, maybe just for a moment, that they really were back in 1785. Finney was right.

We reopened the cabin and had it retrofitted with the wood stove and the outhouse. Then came the riding lessons, the seminars, the months of research, the arrangements for sabbaticals and leaves of absence, and everything else leading up to this moment. A moment that had me standing at the back of the barn, crouching out of sight, my phone charger plugged into a hidden electrical outlet, talking to Gerry with the aid of a wi-fi hot spot and spotty data connection. A moment that kept us still hanging in that place where we thought we knew what was real ... but couldn’t quite be sure.

Thanks for reading! Comments welcome. Here's the next chapter.