Author's Note: New Chapter. In this one, Marty Jr arrives in town and finds Doc's shop. It's pretty boring, but at least it isn't copied straight out of the movie. Anyway, please enjoy.
7: Chapter Seven
September 2, 1885
03:00 PM PST
"Wow."
Martin McFly Jr whistled as the carriage of the Western Union postman that had been passing the McFly farm earlier that day finally arrived in Hill Valley 1885. While he'd had some image of what Hill Valley in the 1880s would've looked like, he certainly didn't expected it to be like this! The streets were made from sand – in fact, there was not really more than one street – the Courthouse was a wooden structure without a clock, and the whole thing looked straight to have come out of a Wild West movie. Well, of course it did, since it was 1885 – the Wild West.
As the wagon continued to drive through the Hill Valley streets, Marty Jr came upon the realisation what he had to do. He'd told the driver that he 'was looking for the blacksmith, Doctor Brown', and the man had told him that, while he didn't know about him being a doctor – there was no hospital in Hill Valley, after all – there was a blacksmith named Brown in town, and that he would be willing to get Marty there in case the teen would pay him money. After getting some confusing things at Marty willing to pay a hundred dollars for a ride – which made the man gasp from surprise that the teen had this much, he didn't have hundred dollars in cash at home himself – Marty Jr and the man finally agreed at 1.50 dollars, and the wagon rode to Hill Valley, California, 1885.
The man turned around, as Marty Jr said that word, and chuckled. "This is Hill Valley, young man! One of the finest young towns in the West. Surely, there is some trouble with Mad Dog Tannen an' his gang, but they'll get over it. The town will celebrate it's thirtieth anniversary next Saturday, as you can read on those attachment screens up in the air, and with the speed the economics are movin' in the city nowadays, I wouldn't be surprised if it'd hold another thirty years!"
Marty Jr chuckled, as he of course knew how old the town would be. "Make that hundred and thirty" he said, laughingly at the knowledge that except Doc and his parents no one in this era had. "I'm sure that town can hold it out until twenty-fifteen, if not for longer! It's like the signs at the skyway always use to say – it's a nice place to live!" As he realised where he was, and saw the man frown at his use of the term 'sky-way' – airplanes and regular cars weren't invented yet, let alone flying cars who could use a way through the sky – he quickly went onto another subject, a matter that was far more accurate as well. "Now where did you say that I could find the blacksmith, mister?"
"In the smithy stable, at the end of the road" the man said and pointed to a rather large building that looked like it was a shop or something like that. "He lives there since he got the work at it in mid-January… but actually, he'd been living in there from the beginning of the month, working on some carriage of his he ain't want any of us to see." The man smirked. "Anyway, be careful. From what I've learned about the guy, I am sure that he might blow up things one day. He has this large cooling thing standing right in the middle of his workshop! And the things he's working on sometimes… he really looks like a nutcase to me. He also got this automatic food-producer-system. Anyway, here it is." He let Marty Jr out, then stared at Doc's workshop once again, this time with a look of fear in his eyes. "Whadda ya wanna do here, anyway? Old Brown ain't getting too many visitors, or if he does, I've never noticed them."
Marty Jr sighed. Still hoping this would be over soon and Doc would be able to provide him some help, he wasn't exactly in the mood of explaining the man what he wanted to do at the blacksmith's shop. "I've got a message for him, from his friends from San Fransisco" he finally settled on. "It's about Mad Dog Tannen, and they thought I'd better not send it with the post, to make it more personally and make sure he listens to it." The post man frowned, obviously wondering why it couldn't have been send with Western Union, then shrugged it off. "Anyway. Have fun at Brown's place." He smirked, and rode off.
The first thing Marty noticed about Doc Brown's 1880s living was that it looked quite familiar. It resembled the garage in the alternate 1980s a bit, as it was also quite messy, but there were a few things Marty thought of sure not fitting into the picture. There was a large thing that looked like it was going to be producing something giant from looking at the size of it – probably the 'cooling machine' the post man talked about – and there were a few things close to the bed, stung together with cords and rope. Probably the so-called 'automatic food-producer-system'. Marty Jr's eyes rolled at something he'd already gotten to learn about his new friend – the Doc was always the Doc, no matter what time period you were in.
The next thing Marty found was on the table – a note for eventual visitors coming past. It was short, and obviously Doc's handwriting as he mentally compared it to the writing he had seen on the letter that Doc had send him and his parents 70 years…130 years… yesterday. He whistled at the confuse of the whole thing as he scanned the note. It shortly read: 'Out to fix Mr. Jones manure wagon. Be back at 9 PM. If it may turn out to be necessary that the reader of this note will have to leave before then, please be so kind to leave a paper filled with explanation about the writer's identity and what he needed me for. I will try to do things necessary for him then. Signed, Emmett L. Brown, September 2nd, 1885, 01:53 PM and 17 seconds.'
Sighing, Marty Jr set him down on Doc's bed. Great. Doc was out. And he wouldn't be back until nine P.M. either. As he checked one of the many clocks in Doc's room, the teenager saw that that time was about five hours and forty minutes away. Probably, they wouldn't get outta here before night.
He groaned. "Perfect, just perfect" he whistled, as he grabbed a Pepsi out of the case filled with twelve bottles of the sweet drink that he'd had the presence of mind to bring it along from 1955. He really hoped that Doc would be back earlier than he'd written on the note… apparently a manure wagon was hard to fix. Marty Jr let out a short smile, as he realised that the farmer's grandson had driven a wagon of manure on the evening of November 12th of 1955, allowing one Biff H. Tannen to crash into it. He recalled hearing Biff shout that he hated manure… and having laughed at it, knowing that his father had been the one to crash another manure truck into Tannen a few days earlier… 1950s time. Only after they had burned the almanac and finally everything seemed to be all right again, lightning had come down from the sky, hit Doc's flying DeLorean and send the 80s inventor back to the Old West. Marty sighed, staring around once again. This era sure was boring.
As Marty stared at the clock – which now chimed 3:30, making it another five and a half hours until Doc's return – he realised that he was hungry. Of course he wasn't supposed to be, but they had left the fifties at 11am and arrived in the West at 8, making it technically 6:30 PM for him right now. Of course, Marty thought as he stared at his watch that he had kept unchanged all the time, the real time was even more different to him. Actually, the him who was now in the year 1885 was supposed to be at 4:58 PM – also around eating time – at Tuesday, October twenty-seventh, 2015. Whoa – heavy.
After Marty Jr had grabbed something to eat in the storage room, which he had managed to found after a few minutes of desperate searching – and somehow had managed to prepare it and eat it, he glanced at the clock again and saw it was 5:45, making it 7:28 PM in 2015. "I've been on this for six full days now" he muttered, realising the facts. "Six full days… I gotta lie down…" He searched his way to the bed again, changed his clothes to one of the pyjama's he'd found in Doc's private part of the shop – he had brought something along from 1955, things he'd borrowed from one of the fifties shops, but had forgotten to take it along to the shop while underestimating the length of the trip to Hill Valley – and lied down.
While Marty relaxed himself, he felt the exhaustion from the past few days coming down on him. He felt real tired all of a sudden, and however it wasn't even six P.M. yet, he felt comfortable with a little nap. "Who's gonna care if I sleep an hour or two?" he murmured. "I mean, there's no one else in here – and Doc ain't going to be back 'till 9. It should be just fine here." As he lied on the bed, sleep came over him and he quickly dozed off.
