The Oregon Trail

By Marie LeClaire

with contributions by Marc Deshaies, David Brenner, and M.J. Cote

Sally arrived at the Alcove Springs campsite, just south of Marysville, Kansas, in late afternoon. A granite rock overhang sheltered a fresh water spring that was reported to be drinkable but she always filtered her water anyway. It was one of the ‘modern’ conveniences she appreciated. Clean water was one of the major challenges of the early wagon trains that passed this way.

She dropped her pack, which averaged about sixty pounds, and leaned it against a boulder before loosening the straps that held her tent tightly to the top. During her journey she had learned what the old wagon train drivers knew, that a daily schedule was critical. If she didn’t set up camp first, she’d be too tired or it would be too dark when bedtime rolled around. Still, she took a moment to survey the area and honor those souls much braver than she who had come before her. Some had carved their names in the rocks and trees; more of a living testimony than the graffiti of today. There was one name in particular she was hoping to find in the stone, that of her great great great great grandfather, J. F. Reed, leader of the Donnor-Reed Party.

She tried to imagine what it was like back then. They still numbered eighty-seven when they camped here for four days waiting for the Big Blue River to recede before crossing. One of the travelers was her five-times-great grandmother, Sarah Keyes, already sick with consumption and hoping the California climate would improve her health. She was buried here somewhere just off the trail, actual site unknown. There was a marker somewhere, installed by the Arthur Barrett Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution in 1950, 104 years after her death.  Sally wondered if she knew she got off easy. 

She pulled out her cell phone. No bars. Not surprising. She tapped open the Spoken Diary app, then hit record.

“Day eight. Another long but relatively easy day of fourteen miles. I’m making about the same time on foot as the wagon trains did. Mostly flat and clear. I can see how travelers could be lulled into thinking it an easy journey. I found J. F. Reed’s name in the stone. I’ve included a photo here. I also took a rubbing of the larger area which includes six other names from various parties over the years. I haven’t located Sarah’s grave marker, yet. I’ll look again in the morning before I head out.”

Sally shut the recording down then turned to photograph her four-times-great grandfather’s handiwork. She ran her fingers over the chiseled lines, imagining the effort it must have taken to carve into the hard stone.

Leaning back against the rock, she scanned the area for a tent site. Best to get that up soon. There was a large pine tree about fifty feet off the clearing. She’d head over there, hoping for a pine needle mattress curtesy of mother nature.

She was pushing herself off the rock when a young man entered the clearing, startling her. Instinctively, she reached for her pepper spray. Even the serene nature of hiking trails and campgrounds had been sullied by vagrants and violence.

"Hello!" yelled the stranger. "I have food if you're hungry."

"No thank you," Sally replied, not wanting to be in any debt to the man, however slight, never mind the risk of some sort of date rape drug by a psycho.

"Happy trails!" He said, and kept walking past her. There was a strange other-worldly glint in his eyes, like a cat’s eyes that glowed with reflected light.

As soon as he was out of sight, Sally re-tightened her tent straps, hoisted her pack on one shoulder and kept walking to put some distance between herself and the stranger, even if it meant skipping the search for Sarah's grave. She did not feel at ease again until she was near the banks of the Big Blue River. She wondered how the man with the strange eyes had got to Alcove Spring. He wasn’t carrying any gear, just a small day pack. Maybe there was a shorter trail that only the locals knew about.

As she neared the river, she took out her cell again, and even without cell phone coverage it got enough of a GPS signal to navigate and pinpoint her location. She looked around to make sure she wasn't being watched, then darted into dense forest to find a partly hidden place to camp. Crossing the river could wait until the light of morning.  It was dark by the time she set her tent up and her backpack stove was heating water to pour into a freeze-dried pouch for a meal. She bedded down early but sleep was elusive as thoughts of the man she’d seen earlier crept into her mind.

Late that night, looking out the tent's mesh bugproof screening, she glimpsed what appeared to be a light in the sky hovering above the river. It had a sound she found hard to describe, but it was faint and so high pitched as to be at the very edge of her range of hearing. Sally thought, at first, that she might be imagining it.

His back was towards her when she spotted him through the trees. He was facing a large rock embedded in a cliff face. Bright pulses of light reflected off the rock in front of him at eye level, seeming to originate from something he held in his hand. Though his body blocked her view, his movements suggested that he was working something into the rock, or out of it.

Sally froze, both fascinated and frightened. Intent on his task, the man gave no sign that he was aware of her presence. Sally crouched lower and stared, not realizing that she was holding her breath. It was the man she had seen earlier. She was positive.

The man dropped his hands revealing a strange metallic object clutched in one of them. He leaned forward to examine his handiwork. Apparently satisfied, he straightened and turned around, smiling. Sally shivered, gripped by a paralyzing chill. Such a strange, eerie man. He must see her. What should she do?

Before she could decide, he plunged into the trees to her left and vanished from her view. Sally slowly let out her breath. She listened for his footfalls in the woods for several minutes, but there were none she could detect. Was he still right there, in the dark—just out of sight? What about that weird sound? She abruptly realized that she no longer heard it. When had it stopped?

Standing up slowly, she looked around in the moonlight. There was no sign of the odd man. If he meant to do her harm, he probably would have already. Despite the strange events, she decided to stay put for the night.

After a restless night of dozing on and off, she emerged from her camp to watch the sun rise over the river, reflecting on the peace of twilight and the hope of a new day.

When the sun had cleared the horizon, her attention turned to the rockface where the man had stood in the night. Looking around for observers and finding none, she walked slowly towards it, where she encountered a deep engraving in the rock.

Sally stiffened and her eyes widened. Her finger traced the deep smooth lettering, unmarred by any tool-marks.

J. F. Reed

this 4th day of June

in the year 2021

Sally took a step back, putting a hand on her chest as if to calm her racing heart. What did it mean? She had to know.

She turned quickly. The man stood staring at her from the edge of the river. She felt for her knife on her belt, in case she needed it.

“Good morning,” he said, with a calm familiarity that alarmed her.

She was silent for a full minute, assessing her situation. A path lay to her left, if she had to run. Knife and pepper spray at her side if she had to fight. When he made no advances in her direction, she decided to stand her ground.

“How do you know J. F. Reed?”

“What is he to you?” asked the man.

“He’s my great great grandfather.” She could only bring herself to say two greats. She wasn’t even sure why she told this stranger that much. Maybe it was because he had written his name in stone, and she wanted to know why.

The man smiled as if he had some sort of secret. “A bit young to be a great great grand-daughter for someone who lived so long ago?”

“What is he to you?” she countered.

He sat on a nearby rock. “Sit down.” He indicated a log near where she stood. “I won’t get any closer. I promise. I’d just like to talk.”

“Why?”

“I’d like to get to know you,” he said.

“I’ll stand,” she said.

“Suit yourself. Why did you come out here?” he asked.

“It’s a free country,” she said. “I can go anywhere I want. Why did you write that?”

“Make you a deal,” he said. “You answer a few of my questions and I’ll answer yours.”

She considered the proposal. “It depends on what the questions are.”

“I’ll let you decide on what you want to tell me—just tell me a little about yourself.”

“I’m not telling you where I live,” she said.

“What will you tell me?”

As the sun continued to rise, his face began to look somehow familiar in its features. She let her guard down slightly. “I’m out here looking for his mother-in-law, Sarah Keyes. Well, not looking for exactly. Looking for her grave.”

The young man looked out over the river, but said nothing, as if holding back some sort of emotional response. Sally could tell.

“Do you know where she might have been buried?” Sally asked, thinking that if he knew J. F. Reed, he might know something about Sarah, too.

“Tell me about you first. That was the deal,” he insisted.

Frustrated and realizing she was in for a longer conversation than she wanted, she made her way to the fallen tree for a seat.

“Okay,” said Sally, on the hope that he might know something. “I like hiking.” She wasn’t giving away any important information with that. She paused to think what else she could say that would suffice without being too personal.

“Do you like to sew?” he asked, quite suddenly, his brows narrowing like a sad puppy, his eyes still holding a bit of the glow she had seen yesterday. “Are you left-handed? Do you like to cook and slap people’s hands if they try to eat before grace? What about history? Does history intrigue you?” He asked the questions as if he were speaking about someone he knew.

Sally raised an eyebrow. “Yes,” she hesitated, “I would say that sounds a lot like me.”

 After a short pause, he asked, “Do you help people in need, even if they might kill you dead?”

“Are you going to kill me?”

“I did once, kill someone.” There was a soft sadness in his voice. “He was striking my wife in anger,” he said, hoping to justify it in her eyes.

“I know,” she replied. She was putting the puzzle pieces together, despite the bizarre picture it was creating. “You’re him, aren’t you?”

He hesitated. “Yes, I suppose. Or at least I used to be. Now, I don’t really know.”

“What happened to you?”

“After I killed that man, the party banished me into the desert alone, with no provision. Miraculously, I made it to Fort Sutter two weeks later, barely alive.” He paused again.

“And then you saved them,” Sally responded, wanting to defend his honor for some reason.

“That’s one version, yes. But two weeks alone in the desert changes a man.”

“I don’t understand.”

He took a deep breath and continued. “In the Nevada desert, somewhere between the Humboldt River and Fort Sutter, there’s a hole. A place. Some call it a singularity. The Native Americans call it a navel. A place where worlds converge. Not worlds, exactly, but time. A place where all time exists simultaneously.”

Sally was studying him intently. “Are you talking about a worm hole?”

“In a way, yes. Except it opens to all possible timelines from one singular event.” He paused to gage her understanding. When she nodded slightly, he continued.

“I literally stumbled into it. You’d think someone would mark those things better but . . . Anyway, I seem to be trapped in a loop of sorts, living out all the possibilities forward from that moment. I’ve died in the desert. I’ve made it to Sutter only to be hung for murder. I’ve rescued my wife and children and not rescued them. Somewhere along the way I realized I could walk along any given line, forever as far as I can tell.”

“So, what are you doing here?”

“I’m just wandering through infinity, literally, trying to find someone who can help me get out.”

“And you think I can help?”       

“I don’t know. So far, no one else has.”

“You mean you’ve talked to others about this?” 

“When I find someone that I think can understand and won’t think I’m crazy.”

Sally stifled a laugh. “And you think that’s me?”

“Well, you at least fall into the later.”

“Even if this is all true, I assure you I have no idea how to help you.”

“But you will.”

Just then, a light opened up in the sky just over the river. Sally jumped to her feet.

J. F. Reed looked at it calmly. “I’m afraid my time here is up in a moment. Think about what I’ve asked. Come back here and look for my name.” He gestured to the rock face. “If you see it, it’s a timeline when we can meet.”

Before Sally could continue her argument, her great great great great grandfather was drawn into the light like a ghost pulled into a whirlwind and she was alone on the banks of the Big Blue River.

She stumbled backward into the woods, frightened that she might be pulled in with him, all the while keeping her eyes on the patch of light. When it disappeared, she slowly made her way back to the water’s edge, looking for any sign of Reed. Realizing he was gone, she swiveled quickly around to the rock face. The carving was gone. She ran over for closer inspection only to find that the surface was completely untouched. She swiveled around again, hoping to see something, anything, that would corroborate her experience. There was nothing there, not even footprints other than her own.

Hours passed as she sat by the water, reflecting on the morning’s events.  When she finally got up, it was to pack up her campsite and return home to Santa Clara, CA, where the Reed family had settled after the rescue – at least in one timeline. She was sure UC Berkley had a quantum physics department.