> “I… read your application,” I lied.
Doc is in love. I’ve seen him fix a time circuit, outrun a plutonium deal, and explain the space-time continuum to a 1955 high school dance. But I’ve never seen him forget to wind his pocket watch. He’s forgetting to leave.
He looked toward the schoolhouse. Clara was hanging a star chart in the window. “Some futures,” he said quietly, “are better than the ones we planned.”
P.S. The locomotive worked. He never looked back. Neither should you.”
“So would you,” she smiled. “Let’s be anomalies together.”
But history, as I have learned, is a stubborn but editable document.
Clara Clayton. The new schoolteacher. She arrived on the afternoon stagecoach, a steamer trunk full of books and a telescope case under her arm. According to the historical plaque in 1955, she was supposed to fall into Shonash Ravine on her first week, the canyon later renamed after her. Clayton Ravine.
I will be on the platform, watching the lightning rod strike the locomotive’s copper armature. The thunder will shake the valley. The townsfolk will call it the “Devil’s Train.”
But fate, as Marty would say, has a twisted sense of humor.
“Dear Marty,
Then Buford Tannen walked in.
“Miss Clayton!” I shouted, running against the wind. “Your skirt! It’s caught on a nail!”
Marty arrived three days ago in the DeLorean, skidding across the muddy main street of Hill Valley, 1885. His face was pale, not from the 88-mph journey, but from the photograph. The fading tombstone. The ticking clock. He shoved the tintype into my hands and gasped, “Doc. You have five days.”
But I was there. I had read the old newspaper. I stood on the rickety bridge as the planks began to snap.
