A Tunnel in the Brush

A TUNNEL IN THE BRUSH

By: Paul Revis 10/31/14

Early July, 1798, on a newly claimed farm in Virginia, nine year old Thaddeus Tinker pushed his cart a little closer to the dusty rump of the family’s mule. The stubborn beast rarely allowed itself to be tethered to the cart without showing its deep displeasure in one subtle way or another. Thaddeus had learned, however, that if he were very careful, it could be done without the mule trying to kick the young boy’s head into the next state, or worse, running off. With five brothers and three sisters in the family there were enough hands to run the farm, but there was only one mule to do the heavy hauling and no matter how cantankerous the animal was the family could scarcely do without it. Thaddeus had allowed the mule to escape the confines of the farm once before and it had taken his father, Hosea, almost the entire day to retrieve it. The boy knew better than to allow that to happen again. As soon as he grasped the mule’s belly strap the animal bolted. Thaddeus held tightly to the leather for as long as he could, his unshod feet digging tiny trenches in the dirt as he was dragged along the rough ground. He struggled to pull himself onto the mules back and hopefully rein it to a halt, but in doing so he managed to pull the animal’s neck and body to the side, causing it to change direction. Deep into the brush it ran until it finally peeled the boy away from its side.

Thaddeus screamed at the mule, watching as it stopped only a few yards away.

“Now I’ve got you, you devil,” he muttered, keeping an eye on the beast while wiping the blood from his legs and arms. The mule took three steps, and disappeared. Thaddeus knew he was in deep trouble this time. Satin had finally reclaimed his mule.

2

Early July, 1998, eight year old Emily Tinker sat in the soft grass a few dozen yards outside the fence that surrounded her family’s farm house, playing with her dolls, singing softly to herself. The stand of heavy brush afforded Emily the privacy to act out some of her innocent daydreams, and she hid here rather more often than her mother would have liked, but it was a safe place for the girl to be so Brenda Tinker rarely worried about her daughter, so long as she could at least see a flash of the girl’s sun-dress from time to time through the thickening branches.

A very deep hum, not loud, but impossible to ignore, startled the girl. She stood up slowly, not knowing quite what she should do, but instinctively knowing that something odd was happening and that she should be ready at an instant to scream, or run. She peered deeper into the brush, dropping her favorite doll onto the grass, and watched as a dusty looking mule came into view. It wasn’t as though it had come from the Jackson’s farm, no, it was as though it came from, well, sort of nowhere. Emily could see the head appear, and then a front hoof, then the other hoof, and then both legs and part of the animal’s body, but not all of it. The noise continued and it was beginning to frighten the young girl, especially since she couldn’t tell where the back half of the mule was, but then it suddenly became funny to her. A half of a mule with no back legs to stand on, it should fall backwards, but it didn’t, and that was funny. Emily giggled and clapped her hands, frightening the dusty mule which now emerged fully from its nowhere place and trotted a few yards away to nibble at the succulent grass of her yard. Suddenly, a stick appeared from that nowhere place as though thrown by some unseen hand. The mule voiced its opinion on the matter as the stick struck the dusty hind-quarter and sent the animal scampering a few more yards away.

Thaddeus noticed that the place where the mule disappeared had an odd sound, and things didn’t look quite the way they should. The brush looked like it was under dirty water, and it sounded like thunder that never stopped the way thunder was supposed to. The boy imagined that the devil himself was about to appear and take him away along with the mule. Scrambling about, he found a stout stick with which to defend himself before deciding to strike first, as his father had taught him, and threw the stick as hard as he had ever thrown anything in his life. The stick disappeared as well. Beelzebub, it seemed, had claimed both the mule and his weapon. This meant war. Another stick came to hand, every bit as stout as the first and Thaddeus knew from his father’s stories of the Revolutionary War that to strike fast and hard was the way to win any battle, so with a continuing war whoop, the boy ran towards the place where he last saw the mule, flailing his hickory stick as menacingly as he knew how, hoping it would be enough to ward off the demon that had stolen his mule.

Gingerly, Emily crept towards the now contented grey animal, stopping long enough to retrieve and examine the stick that had magically materialized. The blood curdling shriek startled her so that she swung the stout stick, only missing the boy’s head by a scant six inches, but causing her to lose her balance and fall to the ground.

“Who are you?” they asked, simultaneously, both lowering their fighting sticks.

“I’m Emily, Emily Tinker, and you are?” she asked. “He’s kind of cute,” she thought.

“Thaddeus Tinker, at your service, miss,” he replied with a proper bow that made Emily giggle. “What place is this?”

“Silly, it’s the Tinker farm, and has been for two hundred years, my dad says.”

“That’s not so! White people have only been farming the new world since 1620, that is not two hundred years, and we Tinkers have just settled here but a year ago. I got no schoolin’, but I do know that much. I need my mule. I’ve wood to fetch for the cook fire. I’m pleased to meet you, Miss Emily.”

“What do you mean you have no schooling? Don’t you go to school at all?” asked Emily.

“No ma’am. Nearest school is three days ride, and we can’t be away from the land long enough for no schoolin’.”

“Hah! It’s a half hour away by bus, and that’s after picking up the rest of the kids on the way. School is in Wakefield,” said Emily.

“Your talk is strange, miss,” said Thaddeus, “I do not understand your meanings.”

“That’s because you’re just a stupid boy!” replied Emily, her hands on her hips in frustration. “Do you want to come and watch TV for a while? We got the Disney Channel. Maybe you’d like to go ride bikes.”

“You talk strange, miss. I understand nothing of bikes or that tea you speak of.”

“It’s TV! Television! Don’t pretend you don’t know what television is. What are you, Amish?” Emily had heard her father and mother talk about the Amish people that lived a few miles away, the way that they didn’t have electricity in their houses or things like that, and she thought that just maybe this boy could be one of them that had gotten himself lost while looking for his mule.

“We’re Friends, but paw says we may be aligning ourselves with the Primitive Baptists since we moved into their part of the state. We knowed some Amish folk back in Maryland.”

“We’re Baptists,” said Emily, proudly, “and have been for two hundred years, my dad says.”

“I need to get my mule and fetch that wood or my paw’ll switch me good.”

This time the mule came willingly and Thaddeus took the beast’s lead and stepped toward where he thought the way back should be. The mule nudged the boy a bit to the left and both children watched awestruck as the mule’s head suddenly disappeared.

“I’ll put a pile of stones here when I get to where I live,” said Thaddeus, as though these things happened to him every day.

“Okay!” said Emily, “See you later!”

Thirty minutes later, two piles of weathered, moss covered stones appeared one pile just a few inches from the other. The top stones had a faint T chiseled into them that looked very old. Tall grass grew around the piles.

3

“Daddy, do you know Thaddeus Tinker, is he a cousin of mine that lives near here?”

“We don’t have any relatives anywhere close to us, Emmy. I think the closest ones are over in Kentucky, and the only Thaddeus Tinker I know of was the one that was supposed to have disappeared without a trace back in 1798, according to the family history that I remember,” replied her father. “They figured the Indians took him. I guess that wasn’t too uncommon back then. Why do you ask, Emmy?”

“I just wondered, daddy. I met him today and he has a mule.”

“Oh?” said her father, “Is he still here?”

“No, he went back home with his mule through the hole in the brush. He said he needed to fetch wood for the cook fire. He left the rocks though,” replied the girl.

Emily’s mother appeared at the doorway just then, requesting her father’s help and attention. The girl’s explanation became lost to the father for the time being, but nagging questions kept stealing into the man’s mind for the rest of the evening.

Early the next morning, Emily hurried through her chores, and waited somewhat impatiently for her mother to begin to ignore her. She grabbed her favorite dolls, and then as an afterthought, her prized possession, a new cassette player and several tapes with her favorite music stored on them, and headed for the thicket and the newly discovered pile of old stones. She hoped her new found friend, Thaddeus would come back to play, and maybe even bring his dusty mule with him. She sat near the stones, her ears listening for the strange sounds that came from that spot the day before. Hearing nothing, she plugged in her headphones, placed them over her ears and switched on the cassette player, singing softly to the music that now played in her head.

Emily had all but given up on seeing her friend. Maybe it was just her vivid imagination that conjured the cute boy and his silly mule. Her mother had warned her about being too imaginative. Behind her, the air began to swirl, the brush becoming a blur as the vortex once again opened, expelling Thaddeus and his mule.

“Hello, Miss Emily,” said Thaddeus as politely as he could, but she didn’t turn around to acknowledge him. She continued to sing as if in some sort of trance. It frightened the boy; it got him thinking that possibly she was possessed of evil demons. The uneasy feeling made him think that maybe he should run back to the tunnel, and escape this girl’s influence. He had heard whispers of people like her. A day in the stocks under the hot summer sun did little to help them.

Suddenly, the mule strode into the girl’s view, startling her. She whirled around to face Thaddeus. The boy’s clothes were a bit dirtier than they were the day before, and he looked to Emily as though he was quite tired.

“Did you find all of the wood you needed for the cooking fire,” she asked? “Sorry I didn’t hear you, but I was listening to “Hanson” on my cassette player. Have you heard their new album? It’s really good. I like their music, do you? I like Phil Collins too.”

Thaddeus looked even more bewildered than ever as the girl crashed on about things he had never heard of. Names of people he thought maybe he should know but didn’t. People that may be important, like General Washington.

“I know nothing of these things you speak of. I hear no music. Are you possessed of the devil, girl?”

“Sometimes my mom says I have the devil in me. That’s when she gives me a “time out” and I have to sit in my room alone for an hour. Here’s the music,” she said putting the headphones over the ears of her new friend and handing him the player. Emily pushed the “PLAY” button and turned up the volume on the “Fine Young Cannibals” tune of “She Drives Me Crazy”.

Thaddeus shrieked in terror, tearing the headphones off of his bewildered head and with a wild look in his eye dropped the player to the ground, began to run for the swirling vortex of the tunnel in the brush.

“Where are you going? You just got here, don’t run away! If you don’t like the music I have other cassettes. You like country music?” Emily was getting frantic. Something had frightened Thaddeus and she wasn’t sure what it was.

“That is the devil’s work!” shouted Thaddeus, pointing at the cassette player on the ground. “Save us, God, from the demon in the box! I curse you in the name of God! Be thou gone back to the depths of hell from whence you came!”

“It’s only the “Fine Young Cannibals”, said Emily, “They aren’t that bad, geeze.”

“Did you conjure the demons into the box? Are you truly a witch, girl?”

“What demons are you talking about, Thaddeus? It’s a cassette player, and I’m not a witch!”

“The demons in the box. From whence did they come?” Thaddeus was becoming almost as curious as he was frightened of the demons. Nothing evil seemed to be happening to Emily, she hadn’t tried to turn him into a goat or anything.

“You think there are demons in the cassette player? Wow, that’s funny!” Emily said with a laugh. She picked the box up from the thick grass and opened the lid removing the cassette. “The music is on this,” she said, handing the cassette to him, “there aren’t any demons. It’s just a magnetic tape.” She pulled a little of the tape loose to show him. He held the tape to his ear. “It doesn’t work that way,” she said, smiling, “you have to have the player. You really are a silly boy,” she said. She handed the box to him and showed him how to put the puzzle together to make the music play. “And then you push the button and music plays as long as the batteries hold out.” His look of bewilderment returned and she showed him the batteries. “No demons,” she assured him, “just music.”

“It sounded like demons from the depths of perdition,” he said.

“Well, I think they’re just dreamy,” she retorted. “What kind of music do you listen to?”

“My father has a tin whistle and sometimes he will play it for us if he be not so very tired from work in the fields.”

“Not even a radio?”

“What is radio?” he asked.

“Wow, you really are clueless, aren’t you?” she asked sarcastically.

“You ask of things that I know not of, and make sport of me for not knowing. Truly thou art a shrewish woman,” he said, mimicking something he had heard his father say to one of the town’s women.

“You called me a witch,” said Emily, her fists clenched and jammed into her hips defiantly. “And you still talk funny, Thaddeus Tinker!”

There was silence for an unpleasant amount of time before Thaddeus spoke again.

“Why be it, Emily Tinker, that we both have the same surname, and yet I know you not? Our family has only claimed this land last planting season and we have no kinfolk in this state.”

“What do you mean your family claimed this land? We’ve been here for almost 200 years, I told you that yesterday. I asked my dad if he knew a Thaddeus Tinker and he told me that the only Thaddeus Tinker he knew of was a boy that got stolen by Indians in 1798.”

“It is 1798, and I am the only Thaddeus Tinker in the family,” he replied softly. “And the Indians live right over that ridge. The Mattaponi have a Long House and teepees there.”

“It’s 1998, Thaddeus, and there hasn’t been an Indian around here for in, like, forever. Do you want to go and look? Over the ridge, I mean? There is a town over there.”

The boy nodded a very perplexed look on his dirty face.

“We can ride the mule,” he said “He’ll let us ride him.”

“That’ll take days,” she exclaimed, “We’ll take the four wheeler. My dad lets me ride it if I’m careful.”

The two made their way to the barn where the well-used but still shiny ATV sat, its blue fiberglass body glistening in the sunlight as Emily pushed it from its stall.

“If you think it’s 1798, Thaddeus, this thing is going to drive you crazy,” said Emily handing the boy a helmet. “Put this on your head. You’ll need it!”

“Does a pony pull the cart?” the boy asked, putting the helmet on backwards as Emily giggled.

“There’s 25 of ‘em right inside here,” she said patting the engine compartment with one hand as she twisted the ignition key with the other. As the engine roared to life, much to the horror of the young boy, Emily adjusted his helmet and cinched it tightly. “Get on behind me and hang on to me. It’s just like riding a horse, only a lot more fun. And by the way, it’s not evil, but it is wicked!”

Thaddeus screamed like a girl as Emily twisted the throttle and the unseen horses pulled the machine onto its back wheels while the front ones dangled uselessly in the air. The knobby tires dug into the soft dirt and sprayed it out behind them as Emily pointed the now tamed beast toward the bluff a full three quarters of a mile away. The girl expertly roared past logs and rocks on her way to the fence line that she knew so well. It was another place she liked to go to think. Thaddeus held on to Emily’s waist tightly as they roared along and after a few hundred yards he stopped screaming at every bump and actually began to enjoy the ride. Never had he conceived of moving this fast along the ground. No horse could ever run like this carriage, nothing in his life had prepared him for this, and he knew that if he ever told anyone in his village about it they would think him mad, or a warlock. How does one keep such a secret to oneself and never share the wonder of it with anyone? This young girl so wise in the ways of these iron machines, the farm his family owned, so familiar and yet so very strange somehow. He could see the edge of the bluff coming at them fast and he began to panic again, knowing how deep the crevasse was. Suddenly Emily pulled the brake lever, stomped the brake pedal, and expertly drifted the ATV to a dusty stop only a foot from the protective fence that also marked the boundary of the family farm.

“You see? No Indians. Houses, and cars, and a highway. No Indians, anywhere,” exclaimed Emily as she tore off the helmet and pointed over the cliff toward the village below. Thaddeus watched intently as the cars and trucks dutifully followed the highway far below, watched as people entered and exited the shops and restaurants. “What is cars?” he asked.

“Cars are the machines that carry people, kind of like what we just rode to get here, but you ride inside, and they’re a lot faster!” replied Emily. “See that place down there with the red roof? We go there for pizza sometimes.”

“What is …?” he began.

“You don’t know what pizza is, do you?” asked Emily.

“No,” replied Thaddeus simply.

“Wow, what a boring life you must have. It’s food,” she explained.

“No Indians. None, anywhere. Where did they go?” He paused for a while, watching intently the activity far below, and then suddenly said, “I need to go home, Emily. I have things that must be done. Animals to feed and such.” There was a note of fear in his voice, thought Emily

“We pushed the Indians off of the land, pushed them west and killed most of them,” replied Emily softly, parroting her school teachers, secretly ashamed of her own people for the way the Native People were treated two hundred years before. It wasn’t her fault, but the teachers in school made her feel like it was as they taught the children of the atrocities brought on the Native American people by the White invaders. “Do you really need to go away again so soon?” she asked.

“Pa’ll skin me if the animals ain’t fed proper,” he replied. He planned to tell his sister about this girl and the strange things he had seen. Betsy was older than he by a year and was the delight of his father. She was bright and level headed. She would know what to do about this, he was sure.

Reluctantly, they regained the ATV, and this time Emily drove much more slowly, and took a longer route back to the barn. She dusted the machine off with a handy rag. “I wish you could stay here a while longer,” she said. “You could meet my friends. Come to school with me. That would be cool.”

“I got no book learnin’. Don’t know how to write, nor read. Pa says he’ll get me some learnin’ when we have enough time for it. Maybe winter, after the crops is in,” he said as they headed towards the grove of trees. Once there, Thaddeus noticed that the vortex didn’t look as big as it did earlier. He tugged on the mule’s halter and dragged the beast towards the whirling tunnel, pushing its nose into the vortex. The mule brayed, sounding oddly hollow from the outside where the two children were, and refused to go any further. It pawed the ground and brayed again as it backed away, shaking its head violently.

“Durn stubborn mule!” exclaimed Thaddeus. “Guess I’ll have to pull you through,” he said squeezing himself into the whirl. Suddenly, the mule bolted away, tearing the lead from the boy’s hand. Thaddeus struggled to exit the tunnel, and discovered that he couldn’t. He panicked. “I gotta have the mule, Emily,” he shouted. “It’s all we got to do the plowin’ with!”

“If you can’t get out, the mule can’t go in,” shouted Emily, her own fear rising. “Take the tape deck and show that to ‘em. Tell ‘em it was the devil that took the mule and left the music box. They’ll believe you when you turn it on! Are you going to be all right, Thaddeus?”

“I think so, I…” Then the vortex was no more.

It was very quiet as the vortex closed, and she could only hear what sounded like a shout from very far away, but she couldn’t make out what was said. She hoped Thaddeus wouldn’t be punished too harshly for the loss of the mule.

Thaddeus made his way the short distance to the other end of the tunnel. The entrance was now very tiny, only big enough to stick his arm through. He slipped the tape deck through the hole and was about to drop the tiny machine on the ground when it occurred to him that if he was stuck here in the tunnel, he might want some music to keep him company. He wasn’t going to make it home, he knew, but somehow it didn’t frighten him. Thaddeus plugged the earphones into his ears and pushed the play button. He wasn’t sure how long it took him, but he learned the words to all of the songs, eventually, and played them, and sang them over and over.

Three weeks later, Emily sat in the grove by the stone pile with the mule that her father thought belonged to the neighbor, and listened intently for the sound of the vortex to return. “She drives me crazy, and I can’t help myself…”

“He’s learned the words!” she exclaimed to the mule as she sang along.

Fine’

(((two stone piles because as the hole closes the second pile is revealed, but since it has been there since the beginning it must always be visible)))

Thaddeus must squeeze through the hole in order to get back, the mule can’t fit and stays…Thaddeus is caught in the vortex and is lost forever as the hole closes in 1798. Emily gives Thaddeus the MP3 player and he feeds it through the rapidly closing worm hole in his time.