“I was never more so. Do not think to cheat me of the prize, Ozzie. You could no more wield such a talisman than you could summon the green-haired wantons of the sea. But if you help me, you shall be my vizier in an empire encompassing the world.” The witch’s hands toyed with his own, stroking their backs, tickling their palms.
Icy though the room was, his face was damp with sweat. “I wish I knew if you’re crazy.”
Epilogue
The ragged man and the ragged boy came down the alley slowly, picking their way between pools of melting slush. The air was cold, but the sun was bright. “There it is,” the man said, pointing. “See, I told you they wouldn’t bother to fence off the back. Think you can climb over that junk?”
The boy had already begun, scrambling over an abandoned stove and dodging through the gutted body of a wrecked car. The man was still clambering after him when he halted on the porch.
“Can we go in?” the boy asked. “There’s a sign.”
The man nodded, half to himself. The sign, crudely hand-lettered in black paint, read FREE LIVE FREE. It was a trifle weatherworn now.
Through a broken window he saw the looted kitchen and the ruined parlor beyond it, a doll’s room laid open.
The knob turned, and taking the boy by the hand, he stepped over the sill.
Coffee was perking on the stove. A taller Stubb and a slimmer Candy stood beside it, she dressed in some shimmering material he had never seen, a gown of silver light.
In a wall, the ragged man thought. The old fox. Free told me he’d hidden it in a wall. He thrilled with fear, with discovery and joy, an unnamed emotion.
“Glinda!” Candy called. “Look who’s here—it’s Popeye!”
The sorceress’s familiar voice floated in from the parlor. “Ah, Mr. Barnes!” she said. “The quadrumvirate is complete.”
Chronology
A Chronology of the Life of Samuel Benjamin Whitten, Brigadier General, United States Army, Retired b. 1889, d. 1983, age about 82
1803—“Ben Free” joins the Lewis & Clark Expedition during its descent of the Ohio River. Physiologically Whitten is sixty, though he appears younger.
1807-1818—“Free” makes periodic visits to the house at 808 South 38th Street, using the portable gizmo he brought with him to leave the frontier and the gizmo built into the rear door of 808 South 38th Street to return.
1819—“Free” leaves the frontier for good, bringing with him certain valuable furs, his rifle, and other memorabilia. Recovering the portable gizmo from a cave in central Kentucky, he conceals it in the wall of 808 South 38th Street behind plaster and wallpaper.
1889—Samuel Benjamin Whitten born, Buffalo, New York, the only son of John B. Whitten, founder of Whitten Crystal Works, and Mary Standbridge Whitten.
1917—Whitten, already a member of the New York National Guard, enters the U.S. Army. Commissioned, he volunteers for pilot training.
March 1918—Lt. S. B. Whitten lands in France with the United States Army Air Service.
November 11, 1918, 11:00 A.M.—Hostilities on the Western Front cease. Capt. S. B. Whitten of the 135th Aero Squadron is the pilot of a DH-4 day bomber.
1924—Standbridge “Kip” Whitten born, Manila, Philippine Islands.
1937—Brig. Gen. S. B. “Buck” Whitten retires, aged forty-eight, his career damaged by his support of Brig. Gen. William “Billy” Mitchell’s theories of high-altitude bombing.
May 30, 1942—Whitten vanishes from his office at the Whitten Crystal Corp. and returns to High Country from 1952, bringing information on nuclear fission.
June 2, 1942—Whitten returns to Buffalo from Langley Field, Virginia.
July 1942—Whitten joins the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) at the invitation of William J. “Wild Bill” Donovan.
August 18, 1942—Whitten flown to High Country. Enters space-time singularity induction coil and the year 1952. Returns to Washington, where he is debriefed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Hopkins, and Donovan.
August 20, 1942—Whitten reenters the space-time singularity induction coil, accompanied by Robin Valor, his daughter (Kip), and others. He carries with him the disassembled gizmo.
September 17, 1942—All U.S. atomic research is placed under the direction of Brig. Gen. Leslie R. Groves and code-named “Manhattan Project.”
December 2, 1942—A self-sustaining nuclear reaction is achieved at the University of Chicago.
July 16, 1945—An atomic bomb is exploded on a steel tower at Alamagordo, New Mexico.
August 6, 1945—The B-29 bomber Enola Gay drops a uranium fission weapon, code-named “Little Boy,” destroying Hiroshima, Japan.
November 5, 1982—On the Five O‘clock News, anchorman Bryan O’Flynn reports sightings of a B-17 and speculates that it may be on its way to an air show. (Newspapers later point out that air shows are not normally scheduled for the winter months.)
November 9, 1982—Buck Whitten buys the Flying Carpet.
Friday, January 14, 1983—“Free” returns to 808 South 38th Street and discovers the house has been condemned. Whitten vanishes from his living quarters at the airport.
Sunday, January 16, 1983—“Free’s” ad appears. He agrees to allow the witch to live in his house.
Monday January 17, 1983—The witch, Osgood M. Barnes, Jim Stubb, and Candy Garth move into the house.
Wednesday, January 18, 1983—Stubb lights Candy’s cigarette in the rain. “Free” watches television in the parlor.
Thursday, January 20, 1983—Kip takes “Free” prisoner. The house is partially wrecked.
Friday, January 21, 1983—Stubb searches the house. Kip and “Free” return to the house, and “Free” dies in its basement. Whitten (the man in the duffle coat) reappears at his headquarters.
Saturday, January 22, 1983 (before dawn)—The man in the duffle coat vanishes again. The witch, Stubb, Candy, and Barnes talk to Whitten (“Free”) in the cockpit of High Country.
Monday, January 24, 1983—The man in the duffle coat deserts, using the gizmo in the wall of the house and taking with him the gizmo he brought from 1942.
Note: This chronology has been prepared at the request of the editor of the U.S. trade edition. It did not appear in the small-press edition and may not appear in the British edition. It attempts to cover only the parts of Whitten’s life stated or implied in Free Live Free.