10 X 11: TEMPUS FUGITIVE
By Martin
Category: Casefile
Rating: R
Spoilers: Season Nine
E-mail : rossprag@fgi.net

Mulder and Scully challenges the forces of time, fate, and the Cobbler's Knob Veterans of Foreign War...

Cobbler’s Knob, Vermont
July 1946

       Roger Knotts had been on the beach at Normandy, and when “the boys” saw the explosive flash down the beach, he felt frigid and clammy claws of fear grab at his heart.

The war had ended the year previous, but Knotts kept to himself his lingering terror that some wave of granite-headed Jerrys would one day come in on the late-night tide, storming the village and taking all for the Fatherland. ‘Til he heard on the radio that they’d found Der Fuhrer’s corpse, Roger would remain unconvinced the Third Reich was dead and cremated.

        “Fireworks, I’d reckon -- kids,” Asey Fouchard announced gravely. His folks were farmers outside town, and he shared their unflappably sensible economy of words and actions.

       Bobby Pelgrim tipped his beer back and took a fortifying swig. Since returning home from overseas, the trio had become virtually inseparable, playing endless rounds of pool down at the town tavern, promoting the local female population, and drinking and talking into the night, most often here on the rocks that rimmed the Atlantic. It was the closest any of them cared to venture to Europe ever again, but they ventured often, as if the horrors they had seen somehow continued to hold sway over their young lives.

       “Let’s investigate,” said Bobby, who not only was the tallest and most rugged of the three but also was the most literate. Bobby’d talked lately of going to medical school down in Mass, and though they razzed him, Roger and Asey had to admit he had an analytical mind – as Bobby referred to it.

       As they came within a good rock’s throw of the source of the flash, they spied the silhouette of a man, seemingly trying to stand and repeatedly failing.

       “Drunk,” Asey snorted.

       “Aye-yeah,” Roger agreed readily. “Let’s head back in.”

       “Nah,” Bobby countered, breaking into a sprint. “Looks like this fella might’ve hurt himself. C’mon.”

       The man took no notice of the trio until they were almost upon him. He was an unusually tall man, but otherwise average-looking, with medium-cut brown hair and an undistinguished face. The stranger’s clothing was something of a different matter: Tightly woven black pants that had a faintly plastic sheen to them, a black T-shirt with silvery stitching where his pocket would be, and a thick coat of some sort, waist length, unnaturally orange, a ridiculous number of plastic zippers and pockets scattered over it. He didn’t appear to be wounded, and he’d made it to wobbly feet in the rocky sand, but the man was dazed, and his voice slurred slightly as he addressed the young men before him.

       “When am I?” he asked apprehensively.

       “Maybe he is drunk,” Bobby suggested.

       “I meant, I meant,” the strange man struggled, “I meant, where am I?”

       “Cobbler’s Knob, Vermont,” Asey provided.

       The man appeared relieved. “What is the, ah, date today?”

       The young veterans looked curiously at each other. “July 14,” Roger drawled.

       “The year?” the man asked weakly and, Bobby thought, with embarrassment.

       “Year of Our Lord nineteen and forty-six,” Bobby supplied. “Mister, I think maybe you might’ve bumped your skull. Maybe a concussion.” He’d had some medic’s training in France, and now he reached for the man’s face to examine his pupils in the bright summer’s moonlight. The stranger yanked away, and fell to the gravel.

       “I’m OK,” he insisted. Then his face contorted in pain as he doubled over. He began coughing, and a thick gout of dark liquid erupted from his mouth. Bobby looked up the beach, toward the spare lights of the town, panicked.

       “You just relax there, Mister,” he urged. “Roger, Asey, you stay with him while I go get Doc Hawthorne.”

       “Yup,” Asey responded. Roger was silent as Bobby began scrambling over rocks and driftwood. He was about to the edge of the adjacent brush when he heard the gunshot. Bobby’s blood froze as he thought about the strange man he’d left with his friend. Could he have been one of Roger’s invading spies? Way he was dressed, maybe one of those space creatures in the pulp magazines Bobby’s mother had upbraided him for reading back in high school? His legs pumped as he raced back to the beach.

       Roger and Asey now stood over the man’s body, and a pistol was hanging from Roger’s hand. They looked up, wide-eyed and dumbstruck, at their friend.

       “He pulled some gizmo out of his pocket,” Roger finally mumbled, gazing at the man he’d just killed. “I thought it was a gun or something. I, ah...” Bobby needed no more explanation: The war had had a permanent impact on his friend, who had become skittish of every shadow and sound in the night, and it came as little surprise that Roger had started packing a weapon, maybe one he’d kept as a war souvenir.

       The “gizmo” the stranger had been carrying lay at the corpse’s feet, a gleaming black thing made of a material that felt somewhere between metal and rubber. Bobby picked it up and inspected it: The gadget was about six inches long, three inches across tapering to two, flat with rounded corners and a glass face of some sort built into the front of its casing. A series of enumerated buttons were inset below the glass face.

       “The heck is this thingamajig?” Bobby muttered, turning it about and pressing buttons. It apparently had broken in the fall. “Maybe this fella is from outer space.”

       “Nope,” Asey said in a voice that brought a cold chill to the already breezy evening. “He wasn’t from there. And he told us something. Something he wants us to do...”

 

Cobbler’s Knob
July 2002

       Scully studied the large creature before her, its fearsome assembly of claws, inhumanly black eyes, and rough, knobby surfaces. It had been dead for a matter of only minutes, and she considered the best procedure for its post mortem.

       “That is one huge lobster,” she concluded.

       “Why, Scully, thanks,” Mulder murmured, “Though that isn’t what you said this morning...”

       “Somehow, they look different at Red Lobster,” she lamented, adjusting William on her lap and looking up at Mulder across the table. He bore a deep tan that months ago had replaced the former FBI agent’s desk-jockey pallor, a thin beard, and a huge garlic butter stain across his Foo Fighters T-shirt. “Those are like little accountant lobsters, with the blue rubber bands around their claws and that pathetic look in their little beady eyes. These, these are terrors of the deep. Giant mutant crustaceans that could snap a finger off with one swift move.”

       “Confront your fears,” Mulder advised, ripping a claw from the monster on his plate and sucking out the succulent meat.

       Scully winced. “It’s working, Mulder. Apprehension is rapidly giving way to a tidal wave of nausea. How many of those things do you plan to eat?”

       “At these prices, until Greenpeace harpoons my ass for depleting the species.” Mulder peered contentedly at the growing throng of locals and tourists, at the scaly lobster boats bobbing on the water beyond the village, at the burly apronned men and women (in most cases, the women being less burly) dropping unwilling crustaceans and ears of sweet corn into boiling cauldrons. After a tip on an unusual extraterrestrial abduction and return in Montpelier turned out to be the product of the “abductee’s” excessive non-prescription drug use, the fugitive ex-agents happened on Cobbler’s Knob’s annual Lobsterpalooza.

       Actually, Cobbler’s Knob had celebrated Lobsterfest for more than 50 years, but it recently had lost a lawsuit over the name to a major seafood chain, and after six months of debate, the town selectmen reluctantly accepted the new name despite the grousing of the village’s seniors, who were convinced the world was going to crap, anyway. Whatever the name, Scully was grateful for the temporary diversion the festival provided: In the space of roughly three years, Mulder had come to grips with his sister Samantha’s death, been abducted and experimented on by aliens, died, was resurrected, disappeared to save William and herself from a conspiracy they had yet to fully define, and wound up on military Death Row before being sent once again on the run.

Mulder and Scully had recovered William a few months before, when their son’s adoptive parents had been slaughtered by the misguided agents of a counter-conspiracy bent on mankind’s salvation by any means. They’d struck a deal with Jeffrey Spender ensuring a measure of security for the trio, but the federal price remained on Mulder’s head – at least, if they resurfaced.

The economics of their dilemma weren’t a real issue: Mulder’s mother had left him a healthy inheritance, and Margaret Scully had managed to channel the bulk of Scully’s legacy from her father to the pair through a complex underground network. But while money for now wasn’t an issue, Scully remained concerned about her ex-partner and now lifemate. Mulder’s intelligence and humor had survived alien and government torment alike, but an odd remark here, some curious behavior on his part there had gradually convinced Scully that Mulder at least believed he could talk to the dead. In Haley Joel Osment, it was beguiling; in the father of her child, it was slightly disconcerting.

Scully was encouraged to once again see this more relaxed Mulder, enjoying something as mundane and non-cataclysmic as a small-town festival and a plateful of deceased lobster.

“Not gonna eat yours’?” Mulder inquired through a mouthful of invertebrate flesh. Scully nudged her plate toward him, and he caught her smiling beatifically at him.

“What?” he demanded, sending a lobster projectile over her left shoulder.

**

       “So, where to from here?” Scully asked as they walked down a relatively quiet side street, the sound of a local garage band and lobster-munching revelers doppling away. Even eight or so months after their forced retirement from the Bureau and, indeed, from societal involvement, she clung to an agency-bred need for organization, agendas, contingencies.

       Mulder shrugged, holding tightly to William’s small hand and peering up at the gables of an ancient clapboard church. Though the building’s cornerstone placed its birth in 1832, the modern framed message board (“Sunday’s Sermon: Rappin’ with the Big J.C.”) indicated it was still in active use. “I don’t know – guess we’ve got 10 years or so to kill.” He looked down at Scully, who had fallen silent. “Sorry. Seriously, maybe we should follow up on that tip from Spender about the atmospheric anomalies over Massachusetts. Read an item about a Maryland House Intelligence Committee member on the Technology Subcommittee dying in a fire Saturday – maybe he found out something about our supersoldier buddies they didn’t want him to know.”

       He sighed. “Or, Scully, what if we just accepted fate, scraped up whatever cash we’ve got left, and sold tropical sno-cones down on the beach, there? What if we bought a little fixer-upper in town, got William on the local Pony League team, and ate lobster and made hot primate love until the first wave arrived?”

       “Could you do that?” Scully inquired calmly.

       Mulder smiled, sadly, and gave her hand a squeeze. “Just a thought. Every once in a while, I wonder what we’re supposed to be fighting. Could colonization be the fate some larger force has destined for us? I mean, what if this is the next stage of something humankind has no way of comprehending? What if we’re screaming and kicking to pre-empt some pre-ordained fate, to prevent an extinction that makes way for an even bigger and better sentient being?” He stopped before the church, inspected its peeling paint, and sighed again. “OK, I opt for the atmospheric anomalies – Maryland’s sposed to have some bitchin’ crab cakes.”

       Before Scully could offer up a counter-plan, the church exploded. At least a portion of it, pelting the immediate area with a Skittle-like rain of multi-colored stained glass.

Mulder pulled William to him, shielding his body from debris. As they looked up from the cracked sidewalk, Scully spotted another shape on the pavement – an old man, moaning, his hand outreached apparently for some kind of salvation. She wriggled out from under Mulder, and he ran after her to the fallen man.

“Had to,” the cadaver-thin man rasped. “Gotta keep the timeline moving...”

“You blew up the church?” Mulder asked, bewildered, clutching his child, who as usual was abnormally calm.

“The only...way.” The man gasped and collapsed, and Scully placed her ear to the plaid shirt covering his chest.

“Get some help!” she barked in her long-dormant doctor’s voice. As Scully began CPR, her partner dug for his cell phone and yelled to the first of the shocked villagers to arrive on the scene...

**

       “Roger Knotts,” Sheriff Ann Newby murmured, shaking her ranger-hatted head incredulously. The lawperson was probably about 40, short but muscularly compact, with leathery skin and attentive hazel eyes. She scanned the county hospital’s ER with them now. “Roger’s a pussycat, never raised anything more than a tomato garden. Can’t figure out what might’ve got into him.”

       “I’m assuming it wasn’t a hate crime,” Mulder reflected. “Unless the local Methodists have declared war on the Lutherans.”

       “Roger’s a Presbyterian, but the principle still applies,” Newby informed him. Knotts had remained in the present tense due to Scully’s lifesaving skills and the timely arrival of an EMT crew, one wearing a lobster costume. “Now, Mrs. Hoover, Maggie, was it?”

       “Yeah,” Scully replied promptly with a pleasantly false smile. William looked curiously from his mother to his father.

       “Maggie, you said Knotts said something before he went into arrest,” the sheriff continued.

       “Something about it being ‘the only way,’ about him having to keep up with some kind of timeline,” Scully recounted. She’d debated briefly with Mulder about what they should tell the law, given their need for official anonymity, but ultimately, Scully’s sense of duty won out. They would tell the truth with no personal embroidery, and then leave town by dusk.

       “Have you had any unusual bombings or fires in the area lately?” Mulder inquired, in Scully’s view, embroidering unnecessarily. “I mean, what if blowing up the church was part of some overall criminal or terrorist timeline?”

       Newby shook her head. “Only conspiracy Roger’s ever been part of was the plot to spike the punch at last year’s VFW Dance, and the only cause he’s ever been connected with was fixing the potholes on Main. ‘Sides, haven’t had any explosions or major fires in a tri-state area for years.”

       “Well,” Mulder ventured, avoiding Scully’s Stare of Death, “what if this was just the first one?”

       “Roger Knotts?” Newby repeated. “No, you’re barking up the wrong tree. I think I can spot violent tendencies – my old man was a beater. If I may ask, Mr. Hoover...?”

       “Jay,” Mulder beamed. Scully vowed again to kill the man from whom a friend of a friend had secured their latest fake IDs.

       “Are you in law enforcement?”

       Mulder’s brows rose. “Me? Oh, heck, no. I’m in advertising. You ever heard of McMahon and Tate, New York firm? No, I guess I just watch too much C.S.I. Sorry.”

       Newby nodded neutrally, and closed her notebook. “Well, I got your statement and your vitals, so I guess I won’t keep you. You may be called back to testify at Roger’s trial, but otherwise, you can head out any time.”
       “Thank you, Sheriff,” Scully offered before Mulder could engage in further embroidery.

       “Enjoy the Lobsterfes--, I mean Lobsterpalooza, ah, whatever,” Newby said as she shoved opened one of the ER’s double doors.

       “I thought we had an agreement,” Scully said evenly. “Don’t ask, don’t tell.”

       Mulder smiled weakly. “I was neither asking nor telling. I was merely speculating.”

       “Well, we’re adding speculating, crystal-balling, procrastinating, theorizing, hypothesizing, and analyzing to the ‘don’t’ list,” she said firmly, hefting William over her shoulder. “Mulder, where are you going?”

       “Just want to check on the Mad Bomber,” he shot over his shoulder as he approached the nurse’s desk. A large, overly-Maybellined woman in a white uniform looked up resentfully from what appeared to be a Nora Roberts book. “Hi, ma’am, I wonder if you could tell me about Mr. Knotts’ condition.”

       The woman considered. “You the folks resuscitated him? Guess it’d be OK, then. Roger’s stable but guarded. They got him under lock and key, though, causa the church and all.”

       “Well, sure,” Mulder nodded seriously. “I take it that wasn’t standard behavior for ‘Roger’?”

       “Oh, God, no,” the nurse gasped. “Roger’s a sweetie. Always a hello when he sees you in the street, would give you the shirt off his skinny old hide. Little skittish – hell, he’s scared of his own shadow. Don’t know what got his back up today. I just thank God nobody was at the church. Feel kinda sorry for old Tom Ridgpath, though. He was finally gonna get hitched in that church, next Saturday. Would figure – first bit of good luck he’d had in more’n 50 years.”

       “What do you mean?”

       The nurse looked up suddenly, remembering Mulder was an out-of-towner. “Oh, nothing. Just some local color, urban legend if you’d like. Like the tales some of the lobstermen tell when they get a load on, or the stories about the ghostly voices down to the park shelter. Old Tom’s the town Jonah – it’s like he lives under a storm cloud. Ever since he was a boy, it’s been one misfortune after another for him. Accidents. Scrapes with the law, romantic troubles. Man never catches a break. Finally up and sent for one of those Asian brides off the Internet – don’t know whether he wanted somebody to carry on the Ridgpath line or his juices were just about to boil over. Almost tragic, the church goin’ up, even if it is crabby old Tom.”

       Scully coughed for Mulder. He ignored her.

       “Well, it’s not the only church in town, right?” Mulder asked. “Or they could have a civil service.”

       “After his run-ins with the law, Tom ain’t inclined toward goin’ before a justice of the peace,” the nurse provided. “Plus, I’m hearin’ there’s some issues about the legality of the future Mrs. Ridgpath’s visa. And even if one of the other preachers in town would marry Tom – which they won’t cause he’s pretty much, oh, what do they say?”

       “Persona non grata?”

       “I was gonna say an old prick, but that sounds nicer. He ain’t particularly liked around town, though every time he’s tried to leave, the old Ridgpath luck kicks in, and he gets stuck back in his old shack. And, of course, the Internet thing has kind of a seedy feel to it for most of the local clergy. ‘Sides, it turns out this girl he ordered, she was brought up by Lutheran missionaries, and that’s the only church she’ll get married in. And the local church, the one Roger blew up, is the only one’ll marry Tom.”

       Scully felt slightly dizzy as the nurse concluded her narrative, but Mulder seemed intrigued. Which in Scully’s experience meant trouble.

       “Jay?” she chirped, remembering to use Mulder’s alias. “Honeybunch, the baby’s tired, and after the events of the afternoon, I’d like to get back to our room.” William appeared anything but tired, and the toddler glanced up with what to his vaguely wary mother seemed an uncommonly mature intelligence.

       Mulder held up a hand, still facing the nurse. “Just a second, Shmoopie. There a library in town?”

       “Go out the ER entrance, go five blocks west, turn at Maple, and you’ll run right smack into it.”

       “Thanks,” Mulder waved, taking Scully by the arm. Outside, she wheeled on him.

       “We are going to the motel, if I have to drag you,” Scully announced firmly.

       “Why, Scully, you insatiable little minx,” Mulder grinned.

       “Not for that,” she said through her teeth. “And if you ever want to get satiated any time soon, you’ll come back to the motel now.”

       “Doesn’t this strike you as unusual?” Mulder inquired. “The town pussycat blows up a church? The one church the town jinx was about to get married in? The one and only church he could get married in? Do you believe in luck, Scully? Or even unluck?”

       “Unluck?”

       “Fated misfortune? Bad karma? A genetic propensity toward chronic Gilliganism?”

       Scully held William at Mulder’s eye level. “Be afraid of Daddy. Be very afraid,” she informed William before tucking him over her shoulder. “Maybe the town pussycat didn’t take his medication today, and this Ridgpath was merely the unfortunate recipient of his dementia. What do you hope to find out, Mulder? And what’s it have to do with us?”

       He shrugged, and looked off toward the ocean for an answer. “I dunno, Scully. I guess my brain’s just getting kind of cramped up from focusing on a single, overriding problem. Saving the earth’s wearing down my brain lining. I need a little trivial exercise, something to shake things loose a little.”

       Scully’s raised brow dropped a notch, and she gazed in sympathy at her partner. “Just the library, right?’

       Mulder raised his hand in a Scout’s pledge. Scully nodded, and he pecked first her and then William on the forehead. Halfway down the block, she turned. He smiled sweetly and waggled his fingers, and they disappeared around the corner.

“The truth is out there,” he murmured, and set off.

**

       “It was a frame-up,” the old man charged, thumping an index finger on the bartop. It was his favorite form of punctuation, and Mulder was concerned his new friend might fracture a metacarpal on the warped wood.

       “By who?” Mulder ventured gently. His visit to the town library, and the basement stacks of yellowed Cobbler’s Knob Gazettes, had offered up only enough to whet the former agent’s curiosity. Tom Ridgpath had indeed been one unlucky bastard, from an unfortunate summer accident at age 13 that had kept him in traction until he was nearly 14 to a series of suspected thefts and vandalisms that had kept him under local watch – but never resulted in any arrests -- through high school. Ridgpath’s enjoyment of his senior prom post-activities, down by a nearby cove, was interrupted by his date’s three brothers, who rebroke his right leg and wound up getting a semi-stern scolding from the town magistrate, who’d been hoping to get the goods on Tommy Ridgpath for years.

       He’d learned from the librarian – the unconsummated prom date, by the way -- that Ridgpath, whose chance of college had been blown by his alleged community crime spree – had decided to enlist in the Army as a way of escaping his reputation. However, the recruiter up to Montpelier, who’d been quite eager to ring up one more sale when Ridgpath had shown up in his lonely office, had called the teen and, according to his former girlfriend, actually threatened him if he showed up to sign up. A baffled Ridgpath took a job at the town cannery, where two weeks later, he was cornered by three coworkers and warned to “get your homo ass out of this plant.” Ridgpath found out a few months later that one of the men who’d questioned his manhood shared a last name with the recruiting sergeant in Montpelier. By that time, he was finishing up his first stint in the county jail: Ridgpath had wearied of broken bones, and had cleaned up on his coworkers pretty good by the time the foreman called the cops. The magistrate was delighted to see the young man before him again, this time as defendant.

       The local Lutheran preacher’s jailhouse ministry sparked something in Ridgpath, and he emerged from the system a reinvigorated town scumbag. He became the church custodian and handyman, graduated to one of its younger deacons, and offered the Word to anyone who’d stand around long enough to let Tom Ridgpath preach at them, mainly drunks and other folks who lived to spread the Word any time, any place. He met a nice girl, daughter of the local banker, and the Sunday before his wedding, a heavily painted young woman from Montpelier (in this part of Vermont, Montpelier was pretty much the center of the known universe, the county clerk had informed Mulder) had shown up at Ridgpath’s door as he was hosting that week’s Youth Bible Study. The woman wanted to know when she would be paid for services Ridgpath sweatingly insisted he had never received, and his living room cleared faster than the town beach before a good storm. After a menacing call from the his ex-future-father-in-law, Tom got good and shit-faced and did something disrespectful to the statue in the town park that got him another week in the county stir.

       “Framed by whom, sir?” Mulder repeated. The old man, who’d become hypnotized by the head of his beer, jumped slightly and squinted at the younger man.

       “Well, by the VFW,” the man snapped, as if the solution were obvious. “The Veterans of Foreign War have had it in for the poor boy since he was 13.”

       “Jesus Christ, Elbert,” a rotund barmaid in a Homer Simpson T-shirt breathed. Mulder and the old man jumped at her sudden appearance. “You’re gonna scare the tourists. Don’t listen to him, Sweetie – he’s the town conspiracy buff, listens to Art Bell and thinks Hitler runs the meat counter down to the IGA.”

       “Mengele,” the old man growled. “I told you a dozen times, Meg. They got Dr. Mengele down there, and they’re too greedy to boot his Nazi ass out. Just cause he’s good at cuttin’ chops.”

       “It’s OK,” Mulder smiled. “He’s not bothering me.”

       The barmaid’s face suddenly tightened, and she turned to Elbert. “He botherin’ you, El?”

       “Whyn’t you go piss up a rope?” Elbert grinned meanly. “Hell, I’d turn over my Social Security to see that little trick.”

       She sighed, and went to the other end of the bar.

       “So why’s the VFW got it in for Tom Ridgpath?”

       Elbert, basking in his victory over the bar wench, blinked. “Oh, cryin’ out loud, I don’t know. But that’s who’s behind it. I remember when those McGreevey boys busted Tom’s legs. A couple weeks later, I’m sittin’ right here, and old Roger Knott’s on the very stool where you’re sittin’, about three sheets to the wind. He starts blubberin’ about that poor kid, how he didn’t mean for nothin’ like that to happen. I ask him what he was crappin’ about, and he clams up and makes for the door. But I knew he musta been the one ratted out Tom. Which was crazy, cause Roger had a good eight years on him and didn’t even know him or the McGreeveys, far as I could ever tell.

       “Then there was Fouchard. Asey Fouchard, runs a lobster boat in town here. He’s a good Christian fella, war hero, and it struck me a bit odd one night when I’m takin’ my evenin’ walk and I see him about a half block down from Tommy Ridgpath’s house talkin’ to some whore. Givin’ her money, for cryin’ out loud. Then I hear some proslitute screwed up Tom’s weddin’ to that nice girl of his. Don’t haveta have a brick wall fall on me to see the writin’ between the lines.”

       Mulder quickly deciphered Elbert’s metaphor, and forged on. “And they’re both members of the VFW?”
       “Them and Bobby Pelgrim, the town vet. They was all in Europe in the Big One, and they’re all thick as thieves in whatever the VFW’s got goin’.”

       “How’s this Pelgrim involved?” Mulder asked.

       “Summer Tommy was 12 and busted hisself up, Ray Theobald, down to the hardware store – wasn’t down to the hardware store then, was just 14  -- spotted Bobby round back of the Ridgpath house, lookin’ over their ladder. Big wood one Tom was about to climb up to fix a loose gutter, one fell apart when Tommy stepped on the top rung. Ray didn’t think too much about it – Bobby was the pride of the town, veteran an’ all, an’ why would a 23-year-old man try to kill a boy never done anythin’ to anybody? But you put Asey and Roger and Bobby together an’ you’ll soon find you get four. Elementary: The VFW’s out to frame Tommy Ridgpath. Meg, ‘nother beer this way!”

       “Too busy pissin’ up a rope,” Meg called from her end of the bar.

       Elbert scowled and waved an angry paw at her. Then he brightened. “You ever hear a’ Area 51?”

       Mulder decided it was probably time to get back to the motel.

**

       But not before one last stop.

       “Asey Fouchard?”

       The old man looked like he was assembled by a saddlemaker – leathery, slightly battered by wind and salt, peppered with liver spots and skin cancers that likely would have killed him long ago. Mulder guessed the lobsterman was too mule-headed and weather-toughened to be beaten by a few rogue cells. It had been the third time he’d called to Fouchard, and this time, Fouchard acknowledged him.

       “Aye-yep?” the old man squinted at him with concentrated disinterest.

       “Ah, Jay Hoover, sir.” Mulder didn’t extend his hand – he figured Fouchard wouldn’t take it, and besides, the New Englander had been elbow-deep in a trap full of scuttling, scum-coated lobsters. “I believe you’re a friend of Roger Knott.”

       “Aye-yep,” Fouchard nodded, returning to his crustaceans.

       “You heard about what happened at the Lutheran church today, sir?”

       “Aye-yep.”
       Mulder waited a second for amplification that never came, looked out over the lapping Atlantic, and then smiled. “Mr. Fouchard, while I enjoy being treated to a sample of genuine crusty Vermont stoicism, your performance could use just a little more nuance. Less is sometimes more.”

       Fouchard glanced up, his eyebrow arching in a very Scullian manner. The crease in his face the old sailor called a mouth jerked into a momentary grin. “That’s what they tell me. Guess I been playin’ the part for the tourists too long, though I gotta say myself, most seem to eat it up with a spoon. Mind I ask you your interest in Roger?”

       Mulder searched for a clean place to sit on the houseboat’s deck, gave up, and remained on his feet. “So then you have heard about the church.”

       “Aye-, pardon me, yeah, Sheriff radioed me as I was comin’ back in. Been mighty hectic last week with the Lobsterfes--, shit, that damned lobster festival goin’ on. Plan to see if Ann’ll let me visit Roger after I dispose of this batch.”

       Mulder regarded him oddly. “You don’t find it a bit strange? Your childhood buddy blows up a church for no good reason?”

       “Bit don’t near say it,” Fouchard grunted. “Got folks to satisfy here, and Roger ain’t goin’ anywhere, right? Crusty Vermont stoicism, Mr.--?”

“Hoover,” Mulder supplied. “Is Vermont stoicism why you’re not curious why a complete stranger would come around asking questions about your friend?”

“Bit curious,” Fouchard admitted. “Want some coffee, and you can tell me what makes you such a curious fella?” The lobsterman then glanced at the door to his cabin. “Aw, hell, just remembered I forgot to get coffee last trip into town.”

“That’s OK,” Mulder said. “My wife and son and I were walking past the church when the explosion occurred, and my wife performed CPR on your friend.”
       Fouchard nodded. “Give her my thanks you see her next. Roger’s a nervous old fart, but he’s good for a few laughs on down to the VFW. Still don’t explain real well why you’re grillin’ me like a cod fillet.”

“Cod fillet?”

“Shit, did it again.”

“I used to be a cop, and the circumstances of this case are so bizarre I guess I couldn’t resist poking around.”

Fouchard’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Jay Hoover, huh? Musta taken some ribbin’ down to the station house. Edgar your middle name?”

Mulder blinked. “Any idea why Mr. Knott would blow up the church?”

“Never cared much for Northern European Protestant doctrine, I spose. Just yankin’ your pud. Mebbe he’s just got the Alzheimers – lot of us are forgettin’ where we put our marble bags these days. You may be able to sidetrack time, but you can’t stop it from screwin’ somethin’ awful with you.” Fouchard was silent for a moment, looking at the deck. “Ah, sorry – see what I mean? Naw, you find out why Roger went haywire, you let me know.”

Mulder nodded. “Oh, by the way, you know where Tom Ridgpath lives?”

Fouchard’s leathery façade cracked for a moment, and Mulder was treated to a flash of tobacco-yellowed teeth. His face resettled after a moment. “Off on Grove Avenue, near the Ace Hardware downtown. Ridgpath don’t even know Roger, though.”

“What I heard,” Mulder smiled, sidestepping an escaped lobster.

**

Fouchard locked up and headed presumably for the hospital. Asey had taken his sweet time sorting his lobsters, and as the sky began to turn a golden pink, Mulder knew Scully likely was ready to commit Cobbler’s Knob’s first motel homicide of the new millennium.

Nonetheless. The lock to Fouchard’s cabin was a simple Yale, and it proved no match for Mulder and his year’s of infiltrating government labs and bunkers. As the cabin lights blinked on, the former agent scanned the old fisherman’s holdings: Bachelor-scattered clothes, unwashed dishes on nearly every surface, blaringly heterosexual skin magazines accessorizing the dishes, an old console color TV anchored by a vintage top-loading VCR, and a pullout sofa bed, sheets peeking from under the couch cushions. The coffee he’d smelled up on deck was burping away in a corner. Mulder had no concept of what he was looking for, except that it would be something that wouldn’t fit Popeye the Health Hazard’s décor.

The first anomaly was easy: The sofa/bedside table held a couple of well-worn trade paperbacks, one by physicist Stephen Hawking, the other a drily academic volume on Einstein and his wildly popular Theory of Relativity.

The second was less obvious: Asey Fouchard’s home video library. Amid a few scuffed-up porno selections, Mulder spotted the classic Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Groundhog Day, Back to the Future, and Peggy Sue Got Married. Mulder felt his heart beginning to pound, and not over Fouchard’s copies of Forrest Hump and Jackee Wang’s Rush Whore II.

The third item was hidden in the back of the drawer in Fouchard’s sofa/bedside table. Mulder examined its smooth, black surface, hefted it in his hand, and pointed it at the TV. He pressed its single recessed button, and when nothing happened, he gleefully and reverently slipped it into his jacket pocket.

**

       “Scully?” Mulder ventured as the door to Room 15 halted abruptly on the deadbolt, nearly dislocating his elbow. “Hey, Scully, it’s me. Open up.”

       “Who is it?” Scully’s flat voice sounded from inside.

       “Aw, c’mon, Scully,” Mulder implored, trying to sound boyish. “I’ve got something I know you’ll want to see.”

       “If it’s what I think you mean,” his partner drawled through a crack in the door, “I probably won’t want to see it for another six months.”

       “Scully...”

       The door slammed in Mulder’s face, and he heard Scully slide the deadbolt free. He pushed inside to find her staring neutrally at him, chin set in stone, arms crossed, one brow strategically raised.

       “You weren’t gone as long when you were dead,” she remarked, turning around and rejoining William on the bed. Their son was cheerfully observing Emeril on The Food Network as he pledged to kick things up yet one more notch. He looked up, beaming. “Daddy,” William chirped, waggling fingers. His attention quickly returned to the motel set.

       “I’m sorry, Scully, really. I know it was inexcusable. But wait ‘til you see what I found.”

       “Found.”

       “Well,” he shrugged, handing her the rounded rectangular instrument he’d appropriated from Asey Fouchard’s boat. She turned it over in her hand, first skeptical, then intently curious.

       “What is it?”

       “Hell if I know. Heck,” Mulder amended as Scully nodded toward William. “No apparent battery compartment, no obvious function. It feels like some sort of plasticized metal, and if you’ll look at the bottom...”

       Scully glanced up. “This screw must hold the casing together, but I’ve never seen a screw slot like this before.”

       Mulder nodded anxiously. “The construction clearly follows a terrestrial design, but this screw is more streamlined, I’m guessing more efficient than any slot, Phillips, or Allen screw on the market today.”

       “Wonderful -- you’re doing infomercials. What do I get with it if I order now?”

       Mulder sighed. “Look, the man who owns this gadget--”

       “Which you found...”

       “...also has books by Stephen Hawking and about Einstein’s Theories.”

       Scully’s red head bobbed up sharply.

       “And his video library includes Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Groundhog Day, Back to the Future, and Peggy Sue Got Married.”

       Scully’s forehead wrinkled, then she got it. “Please.”

       Mulder held up a hand. “All of which deal in some way or another with the nature of time travel, temporal rifts, or efforts to affect the outcome of time and fate.”

       “Which has what to do with an old man blowing up a church?’

       Mulder dropped onto the bed. William wobbled, but his concentration remained on the stocky man preparing a roué on the motel TV.

       “Let me tell you a story about three war heroes and a boy,” Mulder began.

       Scully nodded, then jumped from the bed. “You hold that thought. Gotta tinkle.”

       “Sure, all right, fine,” Mulder sulked.

**

“So these three men have conducted a systematic campaign of harassment and persecution against this Tom Ridgpath over what, the last half-century?” Scully summarized after Mulder completed his account and she had put William to bed. “To what end, Mulder?”

       “Fate, Scully,” he stated, eyes gleaming. “I think this is about fate, about altering destiny. I think that, for whatever reason, Fouchard, Knott, and this Billy Pelgrim have been working to prevent some event from happening – some event that involves Tom Ridgpath.”

       Scully laid back against the pillows. “And have you formed any hypothesis regarding this event?”

       She had set the ball in motion, and Mulder seized it. “Ridgpath’s first twist of ‘fate’ occurred when he was 13, when his body was beginning to go through major hormonal changes. When a young man’s fancy turns to thoughts of horndoggery. No, hold on, Scully.

       “All through high school, thefts, vandalism, all kinds of suspicious acts are laid at Ridgpath’s feet, though there’s never enough proof to lead to his expulsion or arrest. Just a shadow of suspicion dark enough to make the boy a social outcast. When he attempts to get back on track, to realign fate, if you’d like, someone, most likely one of our heroes, calls an Army recruiter and drops some sort of innuendo about Ridgpath being a homosexual. This was the ‘50s, remember, and a rumor like that could ruin you, or at least fu--. uh, play havoc with your love life.

       “But, once again, Ridgpath tries to fight the future, to set things right. He gets religion, and is about to marry when, once again, our dynamic trio intervenes. Tom falls off the horse, and pretty much stays in the dirt until now. Via the miracle of the Internet, Ridgpath rediscovers love on the Hot Asian Brides website. Unfortunately, he orders a cyberbride with scruples, and then Roger the Pussycat blows up the church where they’re to pledge their eternal devotion.”

       Scully’s lips had pursed halfway through Mulder’s hypothesis, and now she waited to ensure he was finished. “OK, so to wrap this all up, Roger, Asey, and Billy have been busting their asses for the last five decades to keep Tom from getting laid.”

       “Well, that would seem to be the end result,” Mulder said, failing to grasp Scully’s sarcasm, “but in the larger picture, I believe these three men have devoted their lives to preventing Ridgpath from reproducing.”

       “Well, all right then,” Scully chirped, slapping her knees. “Wanna catch NYPD Blue?”

       “Scull--” Mulder protested. Then they both turned as they heard a knock at the door.

       “Yeah?” Mulder called.

       “Fresh towels,” the voice, old but cheerful, called. “You two ordered some fresh towels?”

       Mulder glanced at Scully, who shrugged. He placed a finger to his lips. “Just a minute – we’re naked,” he shouted, creeping toward the door.

       In a single move, Mulder flicked the bolt and yanked the motel door open. The old man on the other side gawped and dropped his gun in surprise. Mulder scooped the weapon from the doormat and shoved it in his waistband.

       “Dr. Pelgrim, I presume?” he inquired.

**

       “Just call the sheriff,” Bobby Pelgrim grunted, his wire-rimmed glasses still slightly askew on his long nose.

       Mulder leaned back on the dresser. “Oh, I don’t think we need to bring the local authorities into this, Doctor.”   He reached behind him, and brought up the gadget he’d lifted from Asey Fouchard’s lobster boat. “I assume this is what you came for.”

       Pelgrim’s jaw tightened. “Just what’s your interest, Mister? ‘Sides breaking and entering and grand theft, that is?”

       “Whoa,” Mulder protested blandly. “Grand theft? I don’t know that we’ve established a value for this object yet.”

       “You got no idea what you got there,” the veterinarian veteran said quietly.

       Mulder glanced at the shiny black plastic/metal instrument. “The secrets of time and fate? The key to chronokinesis and temporal transmutation? The answer to every conundrum of quantum mechanics? Or merely a clearance sale at Radio Shack?”

       Pelgrim’s eyes were wide behind his lenses, and he was displaying his dentures for Mulder and Scully. “Jesus, Mister? Just who the hell are you?”

“You can call me Jay,” Mulder smiled. “So, was I warm? And if so, how’d you come across this thing?”

“What do you want?” Pelgrim demanded weakly.

“Just some answers. I’ve worked out that you and Fouchard and Knotts have been tinkering with Tom Ridgpath’s love life for maybe 50 years. Why’s it so important Ridgpath not be allowed to reproduce? Is his son destined to be the most heinous mass murderer of the 21st Century? His great-granddaughter the next Adolf Hitlerette?”

Pelgrim sighed. “I don’t have the slightest idea.”
       Mulder blinked. “What?”

“We never found out.”

Scully’s back came off the headboard. “Dr. Pelgrim, could I ask who asked you to, ah, intervene in Mr. Ridgpath’s life? Did he or she give you this device?”

“Who are you two? Are you cops or something?”

Mulder exchanged a quick glance with Scully. “We’re not cops. But I am curious. Someone gave you this device, whatever it is?”

“Yup.”

“Someone who claimed to have arrived from the future, and who told you it was crucial to prevent Tom Ridgpath from bearing offspring?”

“Yup. Just look at that thing in your hand there. You think Westinghouse was cranking those babies out back in ’46?”

“Well,” Scully breathed. “With all due respect, sir, we have only your word that you received this, this gizmo 56 years ago. And, in all truth, we have no idea what this device actually does, if indeed it serves any function at all.”

Mulder shrugged. “The ball-and-chain. What can I say?”

“You think that thing’s worthless, that I’m trying to con you?” Pelgrim posed. “Then give it back to me, and I’ll be on my way.”

“What happened to the person who gave you the device?” Mulder asked. “This person from the future?”

Pelgrim appeared to grow pale, and he sat silently on the edge of the bed.

“Sir?” Scully prompted. “What happened?”

 

July 1946

       “Christ, Roger,” Bobby gasped as his friend completed his story. The trio stood solemnly clustered around the oddly-clad body. “You think this fella’s who he says he is? I mean, I don’t even know this Tom Ridgpath. You, Asey?”

       The farmer’s son shook his head, absently rubbing his stubbly chin.

       “And how would this fella know what happens if Ridgpath has himself a kid?”

       “Look at him, Bobby,” Roger stammered. “You ever seen duds like that? I don’t think even the Nazis coulda come up with this kind of queer get-up. This is like one of them stories I read in Amazing Stories , where folks travel through time to change stuff. Like I go back and plug your grandpa so you won’t ever get born. Or that story where the fella goes dinosaur hunting an’ steps on a butterfly, an’, oh, crap, I can’t remember the end, but you know what I mean. He said we have to stop this Ridgpath, that everything may depend on it. Maybe the fate of the world.”

       The three young men, who’d fought on the other side of the ocean by which they now stood to ensure that very fate, silently acknowledged that they were about to make a pact.

       “All right,” Bobby finally sighed. “What are we gonna do with this goomer?”

 

July 2002

       “We knew someday we might have to explain to others what’d happened, and they’d be skeptical, like you,” Pelgrim told Scully as he moved his shovel and pickax to his bony right shoulder. Mulder had offered to carry the implements, but the old Yankee was stubborn, as Mulder figured old Yankees should be.

Scully tightened her grip on William, wondering what she was doing dragging her sleeping son around a New England graveyard in the middle of the night. She then reminded herself that her son had been born with the ability to move objects with his mind, had subsequently been stalked by and recovered from a fanatic UFO cult that had perished in an extraterrestrial cataclysm, had then been injected by Jeffrey Spender – an inoculation that purportedly had restored him to normality (well, quasi-normality), had as a result been given up for adoption, had ultimately lost his adoptive parents to yet one more shadowy conspiracy, and now was moving from mom-and-pop motel to mom-and-pop motel (Holiday Inns left too sharp a paper trail, and Mulder’s inheritance and Spender’s funding didn’t provide for Embassy Suites). Scully assumed fear of cemeteries wouldn’t make even the top hundred of William’s eventual psychotherapy issues. If he was lucky enough to grow up in a world where he could afford to be phobic and neurotic, she amended.

When Pelgrim offered to show them the body of the time-traveling stranger, Mulder had practically soiled himself with delight. But he needed Scully’s medical expertise, and she knew she wasn’t going to convince Mulder to stay back at the motel with William.

“It’s my people’s cemetery, and I’m about the last of my line that stayed around these parts,” Pelgrim continued as they reached a limestone crypt. “We figured this was about as safe a place to stow him, even though Roger had his first heart attack back in ’78 when those kids from the school down the way wrecked some of the stones to get even for losin’ the basketball tourney.”

Pelgrim struggled with the large padlock on the crypt’s wooden door, then admitted them to the eerie inner sanctum, placing his Eveready floodlight in a cobwebbed corner. He and Mulder then went to work.

The man’s “coffin,” a simple wood box sealed against the elements and insect buffet-browsers with tar, had been placed atop the more ornate resting place of Jebediah Pelgrim (1871-1943). Scully was unnerved by the sharp creaking of nails being pried from the lid, but the forensic pathologist was even more unnerved as she glanced around Mulder’s arm to inspect the temporal tourist inside the box.

“My God,” she murmured apprehensively. “Dr. Pelgrim, when did you say you and your friends interred this body?”

“1946,” the vet responded, staring in awe and not without some satisfaction at the too-fresh corpse in the box. “This is the first time we ever brought him up, and even though we did a proper job of keepin’ the maggots out, I got to confess I didn’t expect him to be in this kind of shape.”

“You sure you didn’t have him in Tupperware for the last 50 years?” Mulder asked. “It looks like he might’ve died two hours ago. Scull--, ah, Honey, what do you make of this?”

She shrugged, her eyes searching the crypt for answers. “Well, you can see the nails in this man’s coffin have oxidized over at least a few decades, and the wood, where the tar didn’t reach, shows the effects of long-term aging. Unless, of course, you and your friends used antiqued wood and hardware to manufacture this coffin.”
       “Aw, for cryin’—” Pelgrim expelled.

“Puh-lease,” Mulder shook his head.

“I’m just saying,” Scully said with dignity.

“She still thinks Coke and Pepsi are the same drink,” Mulder explained to the elderly Yankee. “Look, I know your views on time travel, but scientists have suggested that some subatomic particles may in fact be capable of moving backwards in time. If we accept that this man traveled here from some point in the future, might we not also accept that his entire subatomic makeup could have been altered to accommodate his temporal movement?”
       “He always talk like this?” Pelgrim inquired.

“Oh, yeah,” Scully responded. “Conceivably, your theory might not be outside the realm of physical plausibility. And I suppose that if this man were subject to such an anomalous structure, his body might not be subject to the effects of routine putrefaction and deterioration. And to anticipate what I’m certain will be your next point, yes, such as effect likely would extend to the inorganic clothing, tools, and accessories that are transported with him. However, and it is a huge however...”

“Gimme a break,” Mulder moaned. “OK, I know. If this man were shot 46 years ago, wouldn’t the bullet show signs of aging? Doctor, you do have full veterinary surgical facilities, don’t you?”

“Yup.”

He turned to his son, cradled obliviously in the crook of Scully’s arm, and tickled his nose. “How would the big boy like to see Mommy do her first cross-temporal post mortem?”

William began to snore lightly.

**

       “Do you have any idea how dangerous this is, Mulder?” Scully asked quietly as she began the initial Y-incision. Pelgrim was in the front of his animal hospital, brewing coffee. “And I don’t merely mean the risk of exposure if we’re caught, although that alone is a significant risk. You know as well as I do that there’s no statute of limitations on murder, especially when he looks almost like he could jump off the table. We don’t even know these men or what they’re capable of.”

       Mulder rocked William. “But if their story is true, everything you wrote about in your college thesis is no longer theory. Time travel would be possible, and with it, the possibility of altering the course of mankind.”

       “The organs have maintained their integrity,” Scully noted with wonder. “That’s another thing that bothers me about this whole thing. Can you imagine the monstrous enormity of what Pelgrim and his friends claim to have done? These three have taken it upon themselves to systematically prevent this Ridgpath from establishing any lasting romantic relationships, from fathering any children, from discovering the joy of true love. From your account, this man has lived a hollow unfulfilled life of bitter desolation. What these men have done is nothing short of spiritual murder, Mulder.”

       Mulder reflected for a moment, unconsciously tightening his grip on William and staring at his partner as she isolated the bullet wound Roger Knott had inflicted more than a half-century before. “But, Scully, what if by doing this, Pelgrim and his friends have prevented some future calamity, the birth of some human monster responsible for the genocide of millions or a nuclear apocalypse? I’ll admit it sounds cold-hearted, but what if we could alter destiny?”

       Scully looked up, and placed Pelgrim’s scalpel aside. “Is that what this is about, Mulder? Is that why you’re so obsessive? You think this man may be the key to determining man’s fate? To heading off colonization?”

       “What if we had the benefit of today’s scientific and technical knowledge back in the late ‘40s, when all of this supposedly started? What if we could go back and prevent my father and the rest of them from sealing our doom? At the very least, maybe you could establish when...” Mulder’s voice trailed off.

       “When what, Mulder?” Scully pursued. Then realization dawned on her face. “That’s what you’re really after, isn’t it? You want to know when this man came from.”

       “Given the pace of changing fashion trends,” he said, riffling through the plasticized clothing they’d removed from the “time traveler,” “I’m thinking post-colonization.”

       Scully recovered the scalpel and began to probe the bullethole. “Certainly, time travel would appear to be beyond current technology – at least known technology. But we can only guess how much technology we’ve been allowed to know about. If we accept the idea of time travel, this man conceivably could have embarked on his little temporal jaunt this morning. I don’t know that the clothing provides any clues. I mean, don’t you find that outfit a little much? Maybe a little too ‘futuristic,’ in a sci-fi sort of way?”

       “What do you mean?”

       “Gaudy, cheesy, lots of plastic and zippers,” she drawled, nudging a pair of tweezers into the wound. “If your objective was to travel back in time and unobtrusively affect events, why would you dress like a member of a bad boy band? Wouldn’t you try to blend in, go native?”

       “What’s your point? That this is some kind of scam? A 56-year-old scam, perpetrated by three men who don’t appear to have a heck of a lot to show for tinkering with Tom Ridgpath’s life? A scam by Dr. Who here, to convince these three schmucks to make some smalltown kid a lifelong project, at the expense only of this poor guy and, of course, their own lives. Look at them – they’re not too much better off than Ridgpath. No wives, no kids. Who benefits, Scully?”

       Scully didn’t answer: She bit her lower lip as she worked a slightly flattened piece of metal from the corpse. The former agent examined the bullet from all angles, finally looking up at Mulder with a neutral expression. “Well, although ballistics has never been my strong suit, your question would appear to be academic. Beyond the fact that this is clearly vintage ammunition, probably World War II-era, the shell casing shows heavy oxidation. So, unless this man, who doesn’t appear to be much older than his mid-30s, has been carrying this bullet for several decades, which would appear unlikely given its unquestionably lethal placement, I would reluctantly have to conclude that, indeed, he could have been killed when Dr. Pelgrim claims he was.”

       “See?” Mulder said, placing a hand on Scully’s shoulder. “Was that so hard to admit?”

       “Why don’t you...” She paused. “Why don’t you see how the coffee’s coming along while I close up Marty McFly here?”

       “C’mon, kid,” Mulder told William. “Let’s leave Mommy to her sewing.”

       Pelgrim was pouring aromatic black liquid into three mugs with names of animal health products boldly printed on them. He glanced up as Mulder entered the office.

       “Well?” the vet asked. “Your wife, girlfriend, whatever – she finally satisfied?”

       “Close enough,” Mulder said, accepting a cup and savoring a late night caffeine rush. “What I don’t understand is how any of you were able to make a living keeping an eye on Tom Ridgpath and his sex life.”

       Pelgrim sighed and dropped into a battered naugahyde swivel chair. “Well, it wasn’t easy. At first, it was a little easier: Tom had school every day, and, back then, there was more parental supervision, and we didn’t have any MTV to get the kids’ hormones percolating.

       “Got a little tougher when Tom got into high school, and he started taking a shine to the girls. We’d taken to doing a week’s shift each, so the others could get on with their lives, such as they were. I mean, we couldn’t really start dating, cause sooner or later we’d have to explain why we were spying on some high school kid. Hell, I know there were times when folks would talk about the three young guys who were always hanging out together and who didn’t seem interested in the women. But we were vets, war heroes, so it always passed. Wasn’t easy, though – we hated like hell when we had to break up Tom and that nice Hadford gal, and it was risky setting him up to take the blame for all those thefts and vandalisms and other things. See, we’d agreed on a few basic rules first thing. We couldn’t kill the boy – wasn’t even a question. We couldn’t let him go to prison for anything serious – God knows where he’d head off to after he was released, and, besides, we just didn’t have the heart.

       Pelgrim spotted the look on Mulder’s face. “Yeah, I know. Seems pretty coldhearted, huh? Well, I wouldn’t disagree with you, but you gotta understand the responsibility Asey and Roger and I were given. It took over our lives, for the most part. We thought the worst was over when Tom hit 50 with no prospects and a personality Saddam Hussein himself would find hard to tolerate in the same room. Then he sent away for a woman. Damned Internet.”

       “Yeah, but where else are you going to find streaming video of Pamela and Tommy Lee at rock-bottom prices?” Mulder posed. He pulled the time traveler’s device from his pocket. “Look, Doctor, do you have any thoughts as to what this thing might do? You have to have considered it.”

       “Asey was the handiest of us, so we left it with him to try to fix. Course, it was like trying to use duct tape to patch a leak on the space shuttle. I assume it’s some kind of communicator, or maybe a receiver so his people could reel him in when they needed. Always wondered if they’d send somebody else to find out what happened to the fella in there.”

       “Maybe—” Mulder began, and then the front window imploded. A second shot sounded, and he saw a framed photo of a Labrador on the opposite wall shatter. “Doctor, get down!!” Mulder screamed, for the second time that day shielding his son’s body. “Scully, stay in there!!”

An engine gunned and tires squealed, as Mulder resisted his instinct to act and hugged William against the wall. As usual, the boy neither squirmed nor cried. The fleeing vehicle sounded large – a van, maybe, or an SUV.

       Scully appeared in the doorway. “What happened?” Then she looked behind him. “Doctor Pelgrim!”

       Mulder wheeled to find the veterinarian sitting against his desk. Though he could see no blood on Pelgrim’s shirtfront, the doctor’s face was gray, and his breathing was ragged.

       “I think...it’s my...my heart,” Pelgrim rasped as Scully kneeled beside him. Mulder was on his cellphone to the sheriff’s department. William had become bored, and was again asleep.

       “Sheriff’s on patrol, but one of the deputies is going to send her and an ambulance over here,” he informed Scully as he pocketed the phone a few minutes later. “How’s he doing?”

       “I think he’s stable, but I don’t want t take any chances.” Scully looked up at her partner. “Who do you think did it?”

       “Two guesses. If I were Tom Ridgpath and I found out who’d been behind my 50-year-old case of coitus interruptus, I might be just a bit terse. Or maybe Asey Fouchard saw everything unraveling and wants to get rid of as many loose ends as possible. I suggest we pay a visit to the waterfront after the EMTs get here.”

**

       “You two are like a couple of bad pennies, popping up everywhere there’s trouble,” Sheriff Newby commented, examining the shotgun damage to the office wall. Bobby Pelgrim was on his way to a room not too far from Roger Knott’s. She didn’t sound unduly suspicious, but Mulder avoided glancing conspiratorially toward Scully.

       “We called home to check on Queeqeeq, our Pomeranian,” Scully improvised. “The sitter said she’s acting strangely, maybe an allergy, and since we were driving around, looking at the town, we thought we’d stop in and see what Dr. Pilgrim thought.”

       “Yeah,” Mulder confirmed.

       “Pelgrim,” Newby corrected absently as she examined the damaged windowpane. “So somebody just started blasting away, then just screeched away into the night.”
       Mulder paused. “Yep, that’s about it. I guess we’re pretty lousy witnesses, huh?”

       “Wouldn’t sweat it. Probably some kids, a little stoned or shit-faced. It’s the MTV,” the sheriff concluded.

       “By the way, how’s Mr. Knox doing?” Scully asked.

       “Knott. I’m afraid Roger’s taken a turn for the worse. He’s in a coma now, hasn’t said hardly a word since we brought him. Pulled the deputy off his room, even though the state boys would have a fit if they knew the church bomber was unattended. But with Lobsterfes--, shit, Lobsterpalooza goin’ on, I need all of my boys and girls on the streets. Anyway. I guess that’s all I need from you folks. Got your home address and number I need it.”

       In homage to Belushi and Ackroyd, Mulder had provided the address and main office number for Wrigley Field. “C’mon, Lambcakes,” he told Scully.

       She fixed him with a dazzling death smile. “Coming, Poopypants.”

       In the car, Mulder turned the key with a heavy breath. “Good thing we’re in Cabot Cove, or Jay and Maggie Hoover might be answering some hard questions about now.”

       “And who’s fault would that be?” Scully inquired lightly, securing William’s blanket around his pudgy chin.

       “Happy you’re not rubbing it in,” Mulder responded as lightly, kicking up gravel as he exited the animal hospital. “Want to take a romantic moonlight drive down to the boardwalk? Just you, me, the boy, and the stiff in the trunk?”

**

       “What the blue bloody hell have you people done?” Fouchard growled, admitting them into his marine salon. “More’n 50 years, me and the fellas have managed to keep things in line, then you tourists come here, and in one day, everything’s gone to heck in a handcart. Guess you’ll be wantin’ some coffee, right? You Yupsters seem to run on it.”

       “Tank’s full,” Mulder declined. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to get the unpleasantries out of the way early. Could you tell us where you’ve been tonight?”

       “Well, you know I went to the hospital to see Roger while you was committin’ felonious burglary on my home,” Fouchard said pointedly, nudging a pile of Penthouses from his couch and lowering his bony ass. “Deputy acted like I was gonna sneak in a howitzer and break Roger out, and Roger was babblin’ on like a crazy person. Luckily, nobody’s listenin’ to him, much less believin’ anything he’s sayin’.” The lobsterman squinted at the couple. “So why’re you two buyin’ into this, and what’s your business with it?”

       “Intellectual curiosity,” Mulder offered weakly. “Where’d you go after the hospital?”

       “You think I’d try to blow a hole in a man’s been my friend since we were pups? Aw, hell with it. I called Bobby about you stealin’ our gadget – he always had his head on a little tighter than the rest of us – then I went down to the VFW, had a few beers, and swapped stories with the fellas for awhile. They’ll back up where I was, or if you wanna call Newby and tell her this whopper of yours’, she can check it out.”

       Mulder nodded. “What about Tom Ridgpath? You think there’s any way he might’ve found out what you three have been up to, and maybe decided to avenge himself.”

       “Wouldn’t be surprised,” Fouchard sulked. “People’ve been openin’ their yaps pretty good all day. By the way, heard you was pumpin’ old Elbert down to The Lobster Trap. I know the old souse’s suspected somethin’ was going on with us and Tom – maybe you got him goin’. Maybe he went to Tom, and Tom got his gun for some target practice.”

       Mulder had nothing to say to that. “So, Mr. Fouchard,” Scully inquired, “do you have any idea why you were supposed to intervene in Mr. Ridgpath’s life?”

       Asey Fouchard looked open-mouthed at her and waved a resigned hand. “You got me, sis. Over the years, I’ve begun to wonder whether Tom or us or all of us have been prisoners in this town for 50 years, all cause we just took it as gospel what some fella claimed to be from the future said. I mean, who knows what he mighta been up to? Maybe Tom’s great-great-grandkid – one his great-grandkid woulda had, if his grandpa had been born – married the woman he felt he was meant for. Maybe some Ridgpath down the line got a job he was sposed to get, and he got us to set it straight. Maybe the laugh’s on all of us, and whatever will be will be somehow, like Doris Day said. Que sera, sera. Maybe no matter what you do to churn up the waters, eventually they settle back into their natural currents, an’ all you’ve done is muddy things up with the same result. Sure you don’t want that coffee? French vanilla.”

       Mulder chewed on his lip. “I think we’ll just say goodnight, Mr. Fouchard, maybe drop in on Mr. Ridgpath.”

       “I’ll ride along,” Fouchard volunteered, struggling to his feet. “He was down at the VFW, guest of a couple of the boys down at the cannery, drownin’ his sorrows over his spoilt nuptials. With Roger and Bobby dangling one foot over the grave, I’m thinkin’ maybe it’s time to come clean with Tom and take my medicine.”

       “I don’t know that I’d advise that,” Scully cautioned. “Mr. Ridgpath may not react, um, graciously, to the knowledge that you and your friends have been tinkering with his life over six decades. Especially if he’s already taken a shot at Dr. Pelgrim.”

       “Wait a minute, Scully,” Mulder murmured. “Tom Ridgpath was at the VFW the entire time you were, Mr. Fouchard?”
       “Jesus, that’s right,” Fouchard exhaled. “He couldn’ta blown out Bobby’s window. So who woulda?”

       “I’ve got a theory,” Mulder mused.

**

       Lobsterpalooza was still going full guns on the town square, with country bands seguing into garage rock and then into New England rap and crustaceans still sizzling on barrel grills and burbling in cauldrons. The festival had contributed to the town’s general inebriation factor, and that was apparent as Mulder, Scully, William, and Fouchard entered the Cobbler’s Knob VFW off the main square.

       “Wha’d I ever do to you cocksuckers?” a loud baritone erupted from the center of the smoky barroom. “’S cause they wouldn’ take me, right? Not good enough for you G.I. Joes, huh?”

       Tom Ridgpath was a huge, stocky man with an unruly beard and yellow-gray wisps of hair dancing around his broad skull. He was wearing grimy jeans and a 1997 Lobsterfest T-shirt stained with either motor oil or the garlic butter of a pre-Lobsterpalooza feeding frenzy. His motions were sloppy and erratic, but his eyes were blazingly sharp as he glared at the white-haired men surrounding him.

       “Guess news does get around in a small town,” Mulder commented.

       A small Asian women clearly of childbearing age and draped in an oversized peacoat was gesturing at Ridgpath and   attempting to calm him in rapidfire – no doubt the unfortunate man’s Internet fiancé.

       “What got him goin’?” Fouchard asked the bartender, a burly bearded man in a 9-11 T-shirt and camouflage suspenders.

       “Aw, one of the guys from the cannery brought him in for a drink, and I guess some of the older guys who remember that bullshit about Tom bein’ queer and started razzin’ him,” the barman related. “Didn’t take more’n a beer or two to knock that chip off his shoulder, and then he started yelling around how we were all out to get him, how we’d all ganged up to fuck up his life. Called Lin Yu there, his old lady, but now I’m thinkin’ maybe that wasn’t such a   great idea.”

       “Kee-rist,” Fouchard grunted. “Guess I better go square this now.”

       As the lobsterman shoved through a sea of men who’d survived four major wars, Mulder caught the departing bartender and held out a five. “Ask you a question?”

       Whatever Fouchard said to the huge drunk, it must have been persuasive, because he led Ridgpath, the prospective Lin Yu Ridgpath in tow, off the floor. A tableful of Persian Gulf vets rowdily cheered his exodus before the room settled back into a dull roar.

       Outside, Tom reeled in the fresh sea air, and Mulder and Fouchard had to stabilize him before they could escort him to the far end of the parking lot.

       “Cocksuckers,” Ridgpath mumbled, glancing back at the yellow brick VFW. Scully wondered silently what kind of vocabulary William would develop at this rate. Ridgpath squinted at Fouchard. “I seen you. You one a’ them?”

       “Ain’t no them,” Fouchard sighed.

**

       The old fisherman began on the beach in 1946 and wrapped up 20 minutes later with Roger Knott’s destruction of the Lutheran Church.

       Tom, working to process the entire incredible saga, stared blankly and mutely at Fouchard for another three minutes. Then he reared back and swung a huge ham of a fist at the lobsterman, missing by a good foot-and-a-half. The force carried Ridgpath around 180 degrees before he fell like a maple into the gravel.

       “You wanna go over that again?” Lin Yu asked Fouchard.

       “I think we all might get a chance to go over it all again,” Scully warned as a police cruiser bumped up the drive into the lot. Sheriff Newby was behind the wheel.

       “Got a call Tom was causing a ruckus here,” Newby announced as she exited the vehicle and adjusted her holster on her right hip. She regarded Mulder and Scully impassively. “You two again. What’s the story?”

       “I think you know the story,” Mulder said, to Scully’s surprise smiling. “Or at least enough of the story to be dangerous.”

       “You want to explain that remark before I haul everybody in?” the sheriff inquired, too casually.

       “Oh, I don’t think anyone’s hauling anyone in,” Mulder said, gently correcting her grammar. “Then you’d have to explain why you tried to blast Dr. Pelgrim into eternity tonight.”

**

       “You hit a wrong note when you told us Roger Knott hadn’t said a word since he was taken to the hospital,” he explained as the sheriff stood planted in the limestone and granite, hands dangling at her side. “Mr. Fouchard told me that when he visited Roger, he was ‘babbling like a crazy person,’ and since at that point you had a deputy posted on the room, probably with instructions to let you know if Roger gave any reason for bombing the Lutherans, you would’ve known that.

       “My guess is, you and Roger probably had a nice long talk by yourselves, probably wanted to get his guilt over the last 50 years off his scrawny chest. Whether or not you believed his claims about time travel, you found out Roger, Fouchard, and Pelgrim had been responsible for all of Tom’s misfortune. That’s when you went after Pelgrim, who you figured was most likely the ringleader, not realizing he had a couple of guests.”
       Newby considered for a moment. “Even if that was true, why would I give a red rat’s ass if these three made Ridgpath’s life miserable?”

       “Destiny,” Mulder replied, drawing perplexed looks from Scully and Fouchard. Newby’s face went blank. William was playing with the top button of Scully’s blouse. “What was your mother’s maiden name, Sheriff?”

       “Critchlow,” the lawperson murmured. “Jane Critchlow.”

       “Daughter of the town’s former bank president, and former fiancé of Tom Ridgpath,” Mulder told Scully. “At least until Asey and his Musketeers ended their relationship. Had a little talk with the bartender inside, Sheriff. He tells me you became interested in law enforcement because of your father. After your mother broke up with Tom the Born Again Choirboy, she met your dad, the loan officer from Grandpa’s bank. Seemed like a good catch, ‘til he started using your mom as a punching bag. He beat you, too?”

       Newby sighed. “Until I was 15 and I came back at him with a Louisville slugger. He kept it up on Mom after I left home, and I busted his ass myself and made sure Mom put him away.”

       “And that would seem to be that, except I’m guessing you started wondering what might have been had your mother married Tom. Maybe you started looking back into old history, and at some point, Elbert – Elbert, right, Mr. Fouchard?”

       “Yup,” Fouchard said, carefully eyeing the sheriff and the gun on her hip.

       “And Elbert shared his theory that Tom Ridgpath had been framed the night your mother left him. Did Roger Knott put it all together for you? Did you decide to avenge your mother’s lost happiness – or yours – by going after Dr. Pelgrim?”

       “The old fools,” the sheriff said listlessly. She turned to Fouchard. “Asey, you mean to tell me you idiots bought this science fiction bullshit? Screwed around with this man’s life, and my Mom’s, and mine, all because some drifter told you to?”

       “Show her the gizmo,” Fouchard urged Mulder. “You still got it, ain’t you?”

       Mulder pulled the device from his windbreaker pocket and offered it to the sheriff.

       “Already got a universal remote,” Newby said, examining it under a parking lot halogen. “What’s this supposed to do?”

       “Your ‘drifter’ had this on him,” the ex-agent informed her. “I don’t know what it does, but you have to admit it doesn’t look much like a 1946 Flash Gordon alien transmogrifier.”

       “So the drifter had some cool props,” the sheriff snapped, tossing the device to the concrete. “What you and your friends did was still monstrous.” She unsnapped her holster.

       “Wait,” Scully called, juggling William. She nodded to the gadget, which had bounced lightly on the concrete without breaking. The small screen built into its face began to flicker bluish-gray, and the device whirred like a hard drive kicking up.

       “May I?” Mulder asked, crouching toward the device. Newby nodded.

       As Mulder plucked the object from the ground, the screen cleared.

       “Jason?” The voice that crackled from inside the apparatus was tentative, slightly fearful. Then Mulder heard other whispered voices, hushing the original speaker. A nose and two eyes appeared on the screen. The partial face jostled, and a set of fingers covered the screen.

       “Hello?” Mulder ventured. “This is Fox Mulder, and this is 2002.”

       “Mulder?” Newby and Fouchard blurted.

       “Mulder!” Scully gasped. “Jay!”

       Mulder waved her away. “C’mon, answer me. I can hear you breathing. Where are you? More importantly, when are you?”

       The screen went black, and the whirring stopped.

       “No, you bastard!” Mulder yelped. “You effing jerks!!” He hurled the device to the pavement. It bounced twice, and Mulder kicked it, sending it dinging off Newby’s cruiser.

       “Think your car’s on fire,” Fouchard commented, interrupting Mulder’s tantrum. The younger man whirled around to see light seeping from the trunk of the “Hoovers’” sedan. Mulder, Fouchard, and Lin Yu raced across the lot; Newby glanced at Scully, who shrugged and started toward the car with William over his shoulder.

       “Aw, shit,” Mulder muttered as he dug for his keys. Popping the trunk, he stared inside despondently.

       “What’s supposed to be in there?” the sheriff inquired.

       “One dead time traveler,” Mulder moaned.

       “Hey,” Fouchard breathed, glancing nervously at Newby.

       Mulder continued to stare at the spare tire and jack. “Relax, Asey. The corpus delicti has evaporated into time and space. Gone.”

       “I’m sorry, Mulder,” Scully offered, capturing his hand and squeezing. She looked to Newby. “So what now?”

       The sheriff leaned on the bumper of a neighboring Silverado. “You two appear to be withholding some crucial information, including your identity, Mr. ‘Mulder.’ I saw the Blues Brothers, and my brother’s a big Cubs fan. I assume there’s a reason for you trying to send me on a snipe hunt.” She turned to Fouchard. “You and your buddies have fucked up big time, but I guess what’s done is done, and I don’t expect Roger will make it to trial. Doc says Bobby’s going to be OK, and I don’t think you fellas or Bonnie and Clyde here really want to bring charges against me and answer a bunch of questions. Am I right? And as for Tom over there, he likely won’t remember jack shit tomorrow morning. And my guess is, Yu hasn’t understood more than a few words of what we’ve said. Right, Yu?” Yu nodded eagerly, confusion creasing her face. “Uh huh. My suggestion is we all just pack it in and go home, and let Tom live as happily ever after as he’s ever going to.”

       Scully nodded. “I believe that’s agreeable. Gentlemen?”

       Mulder mumbled something and slammed the trunk. Fouchard said something unpleasant under his breath, and headed off toward the lights of Lobsterpalooza.

       “All right then,” Scully said brightly.

       “Go home,” William mumbled.

**

       A flash of light roused Scully from a sound, dreamless sleep. Mulder, already dressed, McDonald’s bag in hand, smiled sheepishly and eased the motel door shut so as not to wake his lightly snoring son.

       “Sausage McMuffin?” he inquired. “I figured after yesterday, we might want to eat in, get packed, and blow town quietly. Look, I’m sorry about--”

       “Mulder, you had me at ‘sausage,’” Scully murmured, reaching for Mulder. They kissed, and he began to stroke her fugitive blonde hair.

       “Still bothered about last night?” Scully asked after a few minutes.

       Mulder’s chest rose in a sigh under Scully’s head. “Maybe it’s best not to know. If we know the outcome, whether Man faces extinction or somehow fends off colonization, then maybe we start second-guessing and alter fate, maybe the wrong way this time. When it all comes right down to it, I guess I can influence only one future at a time.” She followed his gaze to William’s small, slumbering form on the other double bed, and smiled.

       “Or two,” she suggested. “I just hope Tom Ridgpath can manage to squeeze some happiness out of what’s left of his life.”

       “Ah...” Mulder trailed off.

       “What?” Scully probed ominously.

       “The nurse from the hospital where they took Roger Knott – the one who put me onto Ridgpath in the first place? Well, she was at Mickey D’s, behind me in line, and she told me they brought in Tom Ridgpath early this morning. Seems he was still a little ‘under the weather,’ if you catch my drift, and he climbed up on his roof to fix his TV aerial. I guess he slipped or something, but the fall snapped his neck instantly.”

       “My God,” Scully gasped, sitting up. “That poor man.”

       Mulder nodded soberly, drawing her back under his arm. “I guess timing truly is everything.” He held her silently for a moment, rubbing her forearm, and then his fingers froze. “Hey, Scully? What if...”

       “Oh, boy.”

       “What if this whole thing was never about Tom Ridgpath’s descendants? What if our time traveler was working to alter destiny in a whole different way by preventing Ridgpath from procreating? I mean, wouldn’t a son have helped him fix that antenna, preventing him from breaking his neck in a fall from the roof? Or at least prevented him from going up on the roof drunk. Maybe by removing an obstacle to Ridgpath’s death, Bobby and the guys prevented him from accidentally running down the kindergartner destined to give birth to the next Mother Theresa or Dave Matthews. Maybe Lin Yu now returns to her native land -- where was she from? – to bring new economic prosperity and social justice to her people. ”

       “Mulder,” Scully sighed. “I know it’s important for you to make some sense out of all this, to believe some benevolent cosmic order will rise out of the chaotically blind efforts of those misguided men. But maybe Doris Day had it right.”

       “Not with Rock Hudson, she didn’t.”

       “Mulder. Maybe the future’s not ours to see – maybe it upsets the order rather than correcting it. Maybe what will be simply will be. Plus, you’re giving me a sharp, throbbing pain behind my eyes.”

       “Yeah, but what if--?”

       Scully grabbed Mulder’s shirtfront and thumbed open the top two buttons. “Mulder, focus. Is there anything, and I mean pretty much anything that won’t wake up William or the motel management, that I can do to help you achieve some level of intellectual and emotional closure?”

       Mulder considered very quickly. “Que sera, sera.”