RELATIVE TIME
“We shall see you at the pub, then? The new one, that Mick’s place- Kelly’s Logan House, a proper place for a drink!”
Richard Bradley Spencer the Third glanced at his comrade, Private John Pearce, and nodded. He clapped a hand upon John’s shoulder.
“I will be there, my friends,” he grinned at the other men.
John turned, shouldering his rifle, and pulling up his trousers (for he had no belt and the rope he’d used had rotted through) headed towards the road, but then he stopped.
“Don’t be late, Spencer!” he called jovially.
Richard rolled his eyes. “Come on now, I am not always late!” He was greeted with laughter from his comrades. He’d earned the nickname Molasses because of his propensity for often showing up hours, days past his expected arrival. “Just let me secure this wagon, and then I will be with you all- and I shall expect liquid compensation!” More laughter.
An hour later, Richard was still struggling with the bindings on the wagon, and the restless horses’ constant shifting and yanking at the reins proved to be quite the hindrance. He removed his tattered jacket and leaned his rifle against the wheel hub, draping his jacket over the barrel. This cost him his life.
Because when the Confederate soldier emerged from the shadows of the bushes behind Richard, Richard didn’t hear him. The Confederate limped on dead frostbitten feet, his shoes long gone and replaced with rags.
Because when Richard saw the shadow of a man behind him, he laughed and called out without looking, “Come on now, you didn’t send a man back to fetch me, did you?” The Confederate, a hungry, desperate boy by the name of Henry Frederick felt his innards twist and clench at that laugh. Henry was not yet an adult yet he could not remember the last time he laughed.
Because when Richard did turn to look, and saw the maddened eyes of the boy in an uniform so bleached by sun and smeared with mud it was more brown-black than grey, he fumbled for his rifle, and instead grabbed a handful of his jacket. The boy slit Richard’s throat with a dull and cracked knife, and as Richard bled out his thirty-three years of life, he thought of his own boy and namesake, just born recently to his wife, according to her last letter at the last post.
His son grew up known to friends and public as not Richard Bradley Spencer the Fourth, but R.B. Spencer, and in 1898, he enlisted aboard one of the ships in the fleet dispatched to Cuban waters, to challenge the Spanish domination of Cuba. He never returned, and neither did his body, lost beneath the ocean. Lost forever to his wife of eight years and his three children, the youngest being his only daughter.
She grew up wondering about the patriotism that took her father from her while she was still in the crib. When she was seventeen, in 1915, she had the chance to find out when the Great War started. So she did, by running away from home, dressing in men’s clothing, and lying to the Army about her gender and age. She fooled enough people long enough to fly to Europe, where she, under the pseudonym Ricky Spencer, became an expert in demolitions. She fell in love with one of her fellow soldiers, and during one very dangerous mission in Vienna, she revealed her true self to him.
Eight months later, a surgeon performed emergency surgery on the dying girl, her heart struggling to pump blood to her baby around the bullets in her chest. The newborn babe was claimed three years later by her granduncle and aunt.
Twenty-eight years later, William Spencer, son of a very brave and adventurous mother who’d died giving birth to him, was drafted into the second World War. He did not want to go, and tried to find excuses to remain home with his beloved wife and twin sons, Bradley and Richard. Yet America demanded his service, and he gave it, along with his life, gunned down by strafing from above. The skies now were just as deadly as the ground in warfare, and both of William’s sons grew up always looking up into the skies, with both fear and wonder.
At nineteen, Richard, called Dick, became a certified pilot, and therefore was an obvious choice for the draft, but it was his twin brother Brad who got drafted, not Dick. So Dick enlisted to follow his brother all the way to a jungle known as Vietnam. He lived four years (two and a half years longer than his brother did) in the jungle and in the helicopter he flew until he made the mistake of trying to help a small child in an isolated village; a child wearing a harness of grenades. He left behind several children with various Vietnamese (and an American nurse) women, one of which was named Ricky after his American father.
When Ricky was eighteen, he moved to America for a better life, emboldened by the words of his mother who spoke of his American father and his country in glowing terms. He was not impressed with the reality, but sensing the opportunities to create a better life; Ricky got U.S. citizenship, and changed his last name to Spencer. He was killed on campus in 1990 by a drunk driver, a mere block from his dorm building. In his crushed and bloodied hand, he held a broken ring box. The engagement ring he had just bought for his pregnant girlfriend was never found.
She gave birth to a son, who she named Brad in honor of his father’s uncle, but she kept her own name for him until her eventual husband legally adopted Brad at age 11, and gave him the last name of Pullin.
At age 22, Brad was enrolled at the Delaware College of Art and Design, studying animation. He wanted to make a film about the Civil War, and he was delighted to be in a location with such strong historical ties to history.
But tonight, he was not going to study, or work. Tonight he was going to go out with friends. And he was running a little late. He hurriedly got into his car, and sped through more than one yellow light. He parked his car, put on his coat and a hat, and then walked up to the entrance of Kelly’s Logan House. He entered, and scanned the interior for his friends. His friends saw him first and called out to him, pointing out the beer they’d already ordered for him. Brad grinned, and sat down in the booth seat next to Devon, one of his closest friends.
“So, am I really that late?” he asked.
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