by Darryl Brock
I nodded.
“You talk funny out in Frisco.” Andy grinned at me. “Yep, we’re signed on for the whole season. First time it’s happened anywhere. Some folks think it ain’t right, though, so we don’t generally go around puffing ourselves.”
“Whose chain are you in again?”
“What?” Sweasy frowned.
“You’re minor leaguers, right?”
“What’s that?” Sweasy snapped. “Juniors?”
“Don’t sound like us,” Brainard said wryly.
“But the only pro Cincinnati club I know of,” I said, “is the Reds.”
“Right,” said Andy proudly, “we’re the ones. Ain’t nothin’ in the shape of a ball club can lay over us.”
“You guys play for the Reds?”
“Guys,” Andy repeated. “That’s a dinger!” He laughed. “Some call us Reds, or Red Legs. Most say Red Stockings, though. So you have heard about us?”
I shook my head, beginning to wonder if I’d blundered into a carload of loonies. “Look, what’s today?”
Sweasy muttered. Brainard’s spaniel eyes regarded me brightly, as though I’d introduced a fun guessing game.
“That’s easy,” said Andy. “June first—my birthday.”
“When were you born?”
“’Forty-six.”
Which was loony. It would make the kid more than forty, not twenty-three.
“Just what year do you think this is?” I demanded.
He looked at me strangely. “’Sixty-nine.”
My brain seemed to sputter and stop.
“What’s the matter?” he asked. “Eighteen sixty-nine. Something wrong with that?”
Eighteen sixty-nine. I looked at their clothes, the kerosene lamp, the spittoons. “Very wrong,” I muttered, starting to rise. “Either with me . . . or . . .”
Footsteps sounded outside the door. “All right, Millar, all right,” rumbled a deep voice, drawing near. “I’ll take care of it. Enough of your pestering.”
Andy’s face went pale. “Land alive, it’s Champion! The game’s up! I’m off the nine!”
Brainard reached for the flask on the table, then snatched his hand back as a man’s large figure filled the doorway. Stooping, the figure moved purposefully into the compartment and stood before us, blocking the lamplight. I squinted upward. Above the dark suit blazed a pair of pale blue eyes. A Roman nose of impressive proportions was trained upon us. Thick black hair blended into the ceiling shadows. A black goatee looked pasted to the pale skin of the lantern jaw.
“Why are you men here?” he rumbled. The blue eyes flashed past me to fix upon the others. “You were to retire by now.”
Slowly, with elaborate nonchalance, Brainard produced a watch. “Why, how the time got away, Mr. Champion,” he said blandly. “Sweaze and I were extending Andy our personal felicitations, and then we set to congratulating ourselves on being members of your tip-top nine, and then commenced discoursing with this gent who knew our repute clear out in Frisco, and—”
“Yes, Mr. Asa Brainard, that’s all very well.” Champion bent ponderously and picked up the flask. A gold chain drooped below his ample stomach. All he needed to model for the old cartoon figure of Plutocracy, I thought, was a vest with dollar signs. Sniffing the flask, he said ominously, “And whose is this?”
There was silence. Andy stared morosely at the floor. Brainard and Sweasy exchanged a glance. Then, in rough unison, they answered, “His.”
Grinning malevolently, Sweasy pointed at me.
Chapter 2
Champion’s big jaw tightened. Looming over us, he turned slightly, unblocking the lamplight, and I got a good look at him. He was more thick-bodied than fat, probably only in his late thirties, but deep lines edging his eyes and crosshatching his brow made him look older. “Well?” he said, blue eyes boring into mine. “Is that true, sir?” The rumbling voice had a sharp-edged prosecutor’s tone I didn’t care for.
Andy hung his head like a schoolboy caught by the principal. What the hell, I thought, things couldn’t get much crazier.
“It’s mine,” I said, picking up the flask. “They didn’t touch it.”
Andy’s head rose quickly. Sweasy stared. A smile pulled at Brainard’s lips.
“I trust I have your word as a gentleman,” Champion said at length, eyeing the blood caked on my face; then, “Millar!”
The plump journalist squeezed in behind him, face twitching. My own White Rabbit, I thought; he’d ushered me into this topsy-turvy world. Then, like Alice, I’d been left on my own. I glanced around the table: Muttonchops, Meatball, Huck. Who were they? Who was this colossal stuffed shirt, Champion?
“Yes, sir?” Millar piped.
“Is this the man?” Champion demanded.
Millar blinked rapidly behind steel-rimmed lenses. “That’s him.”
Champion swung toward me with almost theatrical quickness. “Sir, would you please account for your presence in this car? And your refusal to return the ticket mistakenly given you?”
Again, the prosecutor’s tone. I sighed and explained that I’d collapsed on the station platform and missed my train.
“After taking spirits?” he said pointedly.
“There’s more to it,” I said, irritated. “But okay, I’d been drinking. Is it a crime?”
He stared at me distastefully.
I felt anger rising. I’d had enough weirdness. I briefly considered hitting something. Very hard.
“I presume you can reimburse us?” he said finally.
“Hell yes!” He seemed to flinch at the words as I stood to reach for my wallet. I must have looked menacing. Champion stepped back with alacrity, looking surprised that I stood as tall as he. The others watched in fascination. He untensed when he saw I wasn’t coming for him, then frowned as he noted my unsteadiness.
“Need sleep,” I muttered. Seeing his gaze on my Visa card in its plastic sheath, I covered it and handed him two twenties. “That’s excessive,” he said, then looked closer. “Federal Reserve Note. What is this?” He shook his head. “I thought I’d seen every variety of greenback since the war, but these take the cake!”
“Those good in Frisco?” asked Brainard.
“Gold, sir!” Champion said, handing the bills back. “This won’t do.”
My anger dissolved in weariness. “I don’t have anything else.” I sat down shakily. “I’m just trying to get back to Cleveland.”
At that point Andy said, “There’s an empty bunk above me. I’ll take it on myself to look out for him.”
“He’s drunk,” Champion said flatly. “I’ll not risk our good reputation—”
“I think he’s had trouble and feels sickly,” Andy said. “He could stand some help.”
“I won’t allow—” Champion began.
“We can’t put him off the train,” Andy persisted. “I’ll make good his fare.”
And that was all I remember. Later I learned that I passed out and pitched face forward from my chair, effectively ending the discussion.
I slept for three days. Andy claimed that my eyes were open when he guided me in and out of train compartments and hotel rooms. But I recall nothing but a succession of vivid dreams. Stephanie figured in a lot of them, as did my girls.
But the best ones were about Grandpa. And me. About things that happened long ago. The dreams took old pictures from my memory and made them live again. . . .
I am beside him on the bleachers at the high school diamond. It is the sun-washed afternoon of my first game. Grandpa wears his khaki windbreaker and his blue legion cap. He has promised me this for weeks. I’m too excited to sit still. Everything before me is wondrous—the grassy field, the infield dirt, the bright uniforms, even the chalked lines of the diamond. I look out at the teenage players warming up as though they are gods. More than anything I want to be one of them, to wear a jersey and spikes, to throw and catch and swing the bat. When they trot past they greet Grandpa respectfully—he supports the team each year—and he introduces m
e to them. I am shy and enormously proud. “Give a good account of yourselves,” Grandpa tells them. “Do the Post proud.”
The innings pass. I am entranced by the pop of the ball into gloves, the infielders’ chatter, the crack of line drives, the dirt-spilling slides. Already I know that I am in love with the game.
“Will I play for the legion team someday?” I pester Grandpa, wanting his promise that I will be as good, as worthy, as these older boys. Already I sense that certain things will come hard for me. I am moon-faced and hulking, the butt of barbs and jokes at school.
“Could be,” Grandpa says, promising nothing—his stock reply.
But afterward he takes me downtown, grasping my hand—the iron-haired man in his sixties linked with the eager boy of seven—as we cross busy streets. He leads me to a sporting-goods store where he buys me a glove and ball. At home he shows me how to oil and mold the pocket. I can’t believe the glove is mine. I’ve never owned anything so valuable.
At dusk we play catch on the front lawn. With each toss he seems younger. He talks of waiting in hushed crowds outside the telegraph office in Philadelphia during crisp autumn afternoons in the century’s first years—awaiting inning-by-inning scores of World Series contests pitting his beloved Athletics against McGraw’s fearsome Giants and Christy Mathewson, the greatest hurler ever.
Catch and throw. Catch and throw.
“That’s a strong arm you’ve got, Samuel.” He is not given to praise. The warmth of his words makes me feel tall and powerful.
“Like Christy Mathewsons?”
“Could be.”
Grandma has kept the food warm. “Only damn fools stay out tossing a ball after dark,” she informs us. During supper she looks at me with mock sternness. But I detect a glint of something else in her eye as she asks, “Why are you grinning like that?”
That must have been one of the times when Andy claimed I laughed out loud in my sleep.
In my dreams Grandpa read aloud to me again. It could have been any of the nights I was growing up. His voice nasal but firm, his horn-rimmed bifocals in place, reading from Huckleberry Finn or A Connecticut Yankee or Life on the Mississippi—always Mark Twain, his favorite. By the age of ten my mind was filled with jumping frogs and buried treasure and riverboats. By the time I reached high school Grandpa had read nearly all of Twain’s works to me. And by then I’d decided I wanted to be the kind of journalist Twain had been. I’d travel about, composing humorous accounts and satirical sketches that flowed marvelously from my own experience. In the process, of course, becoming wise, rich, and beloved.
It hadn’t worked out that way. In J school, at Berkeley, my thesis on Twain’s formative years as a reporter won honors. Then I hit the real world and in the next decade encountered precious little in the way of Twainesque romance or riches. I became a second-banana reporter for the Chronicle, a major daily newspaper. And there I remained, stuck on an unwanted crime-and-disaster beat. Juicy features went to others while I punched out depressing police-blotter stuff on the green-glowing terminal I detested. The rewrite people duly snuffed individual style—not that I showed a hell of a lot. I was scooped routinely by electronic media. Worst of all, reporters with less experience were promoted over me. I couldn’t see that they possessed superior talent. It all hurt. The dream faded.
None of which was Grandpa’s fault. Never one to go halfway in important matters, he’d even given me Twain’s name. Born James Fowler, Jr., I became Samuel Clemens Fowler on my first birthday. Grandpa made the change some six months after my mother, his daughter, was killed, her car demolished by that of a drunk GI just home from Korea.
My father disappeared with the insurance settlement. He never returned. For the next twenty years—the rest of their lives—my grandparents acted as if he hadn’t existed. Grandpa had always wanted a boy to raise. And to name for Twain. When I entered college he offered me the chance to change it back.
I hadn’t wanted to.
Something was shaking me. I opened my eyes. “Wake up, Sam.” Through a blur I saw somebody with red hair smiling at me. “You’re makin’ pretty good chin music.”
Chin music? I lay in a soft bed, gray light streaming around me. Slowly, picking through jumbled images, I raised my head. “You’re Andy, right?”
He grinned. “Big as life and twice as natural.”
“Where are we?”
“Rochester.”
“Rochester?” I sat up groggily, trying to focus. Grandma and Grandpa had been alive again. It was hard to let that go. “Not Cleveland?”
“We played there,” Andy said. “Warmed the Forest Citys.”
“Yeah?” Who or what was that?
“Then we went to Buffalo and whipped the Niagras,” he said. “You slept the whole time.”
Buffalo, I thought, where Twain had set up housekeeping after his marriage. . . .
Andy was watching me. “Everything hunky?”
I pushed back flannel sheets and swung my legs out. My headache was gone, but I felt badly out of sync, weighed down by a fuzzy sensation. It was something like jet lag. But worse.
I looked around. Nearby stood a tall maple wardrobe and a dressing table with a constellation of mirrors. Across the room was a cathedral-shaped cabinet holding an assortment of doors and drawers. Beside it perched a brass spittoon.
“This a hotel?”
Andy nodded. “Congress House, next to the depot. We pulled in last night about nine.”
“Where’s the bathroom?” I descended to the floor. My balance seemed okay. “Gotta piss six quarts.”
“Which d’you want first?” he asked, grinning. “We can bring you a tub—or maybe they got a special room like the highfalutin places—but you ain’t fixin’ to pee in your bathwater, are you?”
I felt like a tourist. “Where’s the John?”
“The joe?” He laughed and produced a chamber pot from the large cabinet. “Ain’t no commodes in Frisco?”
I used the pot self-consciously. “Andy, what year did you say this is?”
“Eighteen sixty-nine.”
Twain was alive, I thought.
“What’s the matter with you, Sam? What year you think? You gone and done a Rip van Winkle?” He laughed hugely, enjoying himself. “Slept through whole years—like you slept through days and nights lately?”
I couldn’t help smiling. “Guess I’m a little mixed up.”
“Maybe you got amnesia. I’ve heard as how folks bump their beans and lose track of their past.” He looked at me challengingly. “Can you recite yours?”
I considered it—and saw no end of complications. “It doesn’t really seem . . . connected to me now.”
His face sobered. “Why, I believe that’s a prime sign!”
“Anyway, thanks for taking care of me.”
“You saved my job,” he said emphatically. “Acey’s a veteran and Harry needs him, but Harry thought I was too small; I’m only on the nine ’cause Sweaze wouldn’t sign without me—see, we’ve played together since we were kids in Newark. If Champion’d wanted to teach a lesson by letting one of us go, I’d surely be that one.” He took my hand and shook it warmly. “You made yourself a true pal, Sam.”
There was no hint of self-consciousness in his smile or in the clear green eyes that looked straight into mine. I was warmed and a trifle embarrassed by his directness.
“I’m freezin’ for hash!” he said. “How about it?”
“What?”
“Sorry, you got to remind me for a spell that you’re . . . you know. What I said was I’m hungry. Want some breakfast?”
I realized suddenly that I was ravenous. I also realized that I had qualms about venturing from that room.
“Is there time to clean up?”
He lent me his straight-edged razor, first honing it on a leather strap, and produced a basin of water from one of the commode’s compartments. I saw in a mirror that the blood had been cleaned from my face and a bandage plastered to my cheek. I soaked it;
off and stared at an angry-looking gash, thinking it odd that I remembered no pain from it.
Ring’s Verbena Cream reeked of perfume and produced a thin, bubbly lather. Handling the long blade clumsily, I nicked the edge of the gash and looked around for a styptic pencil. Andy handed me alum to stem the bleeding. Maybe I’d like to splash on some witch hazel, he said, and started out to borrow Brainard’s. “You want Acey’s macassar oil?” he called from the doorway. “For your hair?”
“Uh, no, I’ll pass.”
When he was gone I tried to take stock of my situation. Was this another dream? Was I hallucinating? It didn’t seem plausible. Andy was real. It all felt real. But if I had actually jumped backward in time, why? And how? Was my old body still on that station dock? Had I died and somehow been reborn here? I recalled the shadowy, beckoning form I’d glimpsed just before passing out. Had that meant something? There must be a rationale to all this, a purpose. If I looked for clues surely I’d figure it out. But the whole thing was scary, like plunging into a void. Even with Andy’s help, how was I going to cope?
As I gingerly scraped the razor over my face, I puzzled over a strange sense of familiarity—then remembered Grandpa attacking his whiskers with his old ivory-handled razor while singing his World War I songs. I felt closer to him and Grandma than I had in years. Why? The dreams? But if this were actually happening, then I’d landed in a time before Grandma and Grandpa were born. Was it possible for me to exist before they had?
I rinsed the lather away and stared at my image. Apart from the gash and considerable puffiness around my eyes, I didn’t look different. The eyes actually seemed clearer. More than forty-eight hours without booze. When was the last time that happened? So far my brain was free of the milkiness.
Free . . . was I? Had I jettisoned everything, even my daughters? Had I been catapulted into another existence?
A train whistle sounded in the distance. Stepping to the window, I looked out into an air shaft topped by a rectangle of overcast sky. I heard a jumble of indistinguishable sounds. Could it really be 1869 outside? The Civil War, I remembered, had ended in 1865. Lincoln was dead, Reconstruction in progress. Who would be in office now? Grant? And in England, Victoria?
