Traveling Back

By Sue Ellis

"It's been a great vacation, honey, but we need to go home. I'm due at work — so are you." Rob tried to reason with Gloria. She'd become obsessed with her genealogy research — wanted to extend their vacation. Their flight home was scheduled in three hours.

She didn't reply but stood looking down, massaging the fingers of one hand with the other. Her delicate, dry skin made a whispering sound, like paper slipping from its ream.

"Do you want some breakfast?"

Gloria shook her head.

"All right then, I'll be in the coffee shop downstairs if you need me. You can dress, and we'll pack when I get back."

Rob was at his wit's end with Gloria's depression. Their thirty-one-year-old son had been killed in a car crash eight months earlier. They both felt that the lifeblood had been sucked out of them, although Rob had begun to recover. He'd been surprised but cooperative when Gloria mentioned a vacation. Her family history listed a distant relative who had worked in a pumphouse along the old James River and Kanawha Canal near Richmond, Virginia, in the early 1800s. Gloria wanted to see the canal for herself and use the local Richmond Library for further research.

Rob ordered an omelet. His table overlooked the strolling path in the restored section of the canal. The small brick pumphouse was situated a hundred yards up the path. Suddenly, a flash of color caught his eye. A woman in black capris and a familiar yellow sweater was running across the street on the canal side, heading for the pumphouse. Rob nearly up-ended the table in his haste to be out the door. "I'll pay later," he shouted, to no one in particular.

He caught up to her just as she stepped onto the pumphouse's footbridge. She struggled only for a moment, then stood quietly in his grasp.

"Don't you see, Rob?" Tears streamed down her face. "They're so important — the dead. Our Jim, our ancestors — everyone's — back to the beginning of time. I had to come, to make them real. To make Jim real."

She was rake thin. Rob enfolded her in his arms and rested his chin on her head to keep her from spiriting away.