If I Never Get Back

by Darryl Brock

  Following the conventions of the time, we took our last ups, even though we’d won 32-31. Hits by George, Gould, and Waterman, plus halfhearted fielding by the Haymakers, gave us five more runs.

  Knots of silent spectators dotted the field, staring as if we were alien creatures. It gave me the willies. For one frightening instant I thought I glimpsed the dark figure of Le Caron near the grandstand; then I realized it was only a cluster of shadows.

  No songs or cheers followed this game. The Haymakers departed quickly. While Mac, looking no worse for his tangle with the behemoth Mart King, packed our two dozen bats into their huge sail-cloth bag—the rookie’s traditional chore—I pulled Millar’s sweater on over my jersey and headed for the booths, shoved in at the head of a line, and showed my betting slip.

  “There’s a problem, chum,” said the pool seller, a thin-faced, fast-talking man.

  “No problem,” I said. “Fork over two hundred.”

  “Wait, you see—” He stopped and peered at me. “Ain’t you him that whipped Will Craver?”

  “Yeah, and if you don’t—”

  “You circled him like a cooper ’round a barrel, hammering his every side.” He flicked jabs at an imaginary opponent. “Why, it’s an honor to serve him who took Bull Craver’s measure.” He extended a wad of bills. “Him that’s wrecked every grogshop hereabouts, and most men in them too.”

  I counted the money.

  “If’n I was you Ohio boys,” he confided, “I’d keep a sharp eye out.”

  “The crowd gets nasty?”

  “Naw, they’re sheep. It’s the wolves I’d fear.”

  I pocketed the money. “Gamblers?”

  He winked slyly. “Red Jim was here at the commence of each inning, laying down three thousand without fail—a thousand for each Red Stocking out, he boasted.”

  “So he lost . . .”

  “Twenty-seven thousand.”

  “Good God.”

  “Word is it warn’t all his, neither. Some’s from John Morrissey--there’s one unlikely to stand for losing—and some straight from the Fenian treasury. If either part’s true, ol’ Red Jim’s on the anxious seat right now.”

  “Thanks.” I reflected that I’d be on it too if I didn’t make myself scarce. “By the way, who was the woman with Morrissey?”

  “Name’s Elise Holt.” He looked wistful. “Leg-show queen, one of them British Blondes.”

  Leg-show queen?

  “Somethin’ to nibble, ain’t she? Here’s my advice: Don’t trouble yourself thinkin’ about her.”

  “Why not?”

  “’Cause she’d fix your flint ’fore you could begin to spark her.”

  The fight boosted my status considerably. To Harry I was now Sam instead of Fowler; George sought me out to share his choice stereopticon views; Mac and Gould, the team’s enforcers, let me know they’d accept my assistance in a pinch; Waterman allowed as how he might be willing to play cards with me again sometime; Brainard, wearing a shiner, insisted we begin his boxing instruction at once; Sweasy was relatively inoffensive; and of course Andy was proud beyond all measure. “Ain’t Sam a dinger?” he demanded repeatedly. Hurley topped them all by coming up with a dandy quote from Pilgrim’s Progress:

  “How doth the Fowler seek to catch his Game

  By divers means, all which one cannot name?”

  It was all very warm and flattering, although I felt guilty about the fight. An old pattern. At Berkeley, even winning the 190-division Pac-Ten title, I’d had to work myself into a rage to perform, as against Craver (or, for that matter, Stephanie’s parents’ TV). But when the rage passed I felt only shame. Victorious, I’d exploited sick emotions. Defeated, I’d unleashed them for nothing.

  My coaches said I lacked a killer instinct; at some level I had to want to put opponents away. But I could never really get into it. And so I put out of mind that Craver was a bullying animal, even that he’d injured Andy and Allison. I dwelt instead on his lack of training, thinking I’d had a huge advantage. Stupid, I know, and probably self-defeating as hell.

  Under the best conditions I’m hardly a cheery riser. The next morning I set new records in mood foulness. My body felt as if it had been systematically hammered. My hands were mittens of flesh: the knuckles looked like they’d pounded nails; the fingers were too swollen to bend. My forehead was purple. My gashed cheek was seeping again. I’d slept fitfully. I didn’t want any more beefsteak for breakfast—invariably overcooked, with a thin slab of bone in the center, swimming in butter and laden with coarse black pepper. I was fed up with baths in cramped zinc tubs. I wanted a decent shower—which mystified Andy, to whom all bathing except after games was strictly a once-a-week concept. And I was tired of remembering to say “dinner” when I meant “lunch” and “valise” when I meant “suitcase.” I broke my goddamn collar button, too.

  The day’s start, however, was nothing compared with its end.

  We entrained shortly before noon. The sky was clear when we left Troy, but cold winds and showery squalls hit during the short hop to Albany. Crossing the river from Rensselaer—situated, George informed us, directly over the fort where “Yankee Doodle” had been written—we saw a flotilla of enormous side-wheel steamboats working the Hudson. Fulton’s Clermont, the first steam-powered craft—a hundred feet long and twelve and a half feet wide—docked at Albany during its maiden cruise in 1807. Now, George reported enthusiastically, leviathans like the Isaac Newton were four hundred feet long, seventy-five wide, and forty-seven deep, with sleeping accommodations for seven hundred passengers.

  The others looked suitably impressed. Yes, I thought, let’s hurry up and destroy the rivers faster.

  We passed through a patchwork of foundries and shipping yards crammed with cattle and lumber. As the Erie Canal’s eastern terminus, Albany was a major export point by water and rail—George had a card picturing the DeWitt Clinton, one of the nation’s first trains, which had chugged out of the city and into history only thirty-eight years previously.

  It was all so new, yet already happening so fast.

  Albany’s Nationals, our afternoon opponents, took us to their clubhouse on North Pearl, where we suited up. My uniform was still damp and ill smelling. With Andy out and Allison questionable, there was a strong chance I’d play. I chewed gum and concentrated.

  I could have relaxed. The contest was so one-sided that few of the spectators who braved the forbidding weather were around by the end. A solitary pool seller did little business. There was no sign of Morrissey, McDermott, or Le Caron.

  It went only seven innings. Hurley made the most of his chance to play by pulling two homers down the right-field line. Gould smashed another. George and Hurley each banged out seven hits. Harry made a one-handed catch in center, and Sweasy, Waterman, and George stole three bases apiece. Huddled together over the score book, Andy and I managed to keep warm. After the Haymaker game, this was like schoolyard exercise. We won 49-8.

  The Stockings’ record was now a neat 10-0.

  Amid talk of the tough games awaiting us in Brooklyn, we ate a hearty supper at the Delavan House, a noisy establishment at Broadway and Steuben, “junction of all railroad lines.” We would soon board another train, this one for Springfield, Massachusetts, where we’d play the next day, then on to Boston for three contests.

  It happened just after I stepped out the door of the Delavan House. I heard a voice—“Say, there!”—and turned to see a figure beckoning to me with a lantern. He stood in darkness at the end of the long veranda. A slouch hat shadowed his features. “Could you hold this light? I’m trying to fix my horse’s shoe.”

  Something about the voice was vaguely familiar, but I didn’t think about it then. “Sure.” I looked around; the others were still inside. “I’ve got a minute or two.”

  “Much obliged,” he muttered, head down, as I approached the corner of the porch. “Here, you take the lamp and steady her head, I’ll—”

  Then he stepped back. In the lantern�
�s halo I recognized McDermott’s features. A grin curved his mouth; his eyes were shadowy pockets. Behind him a thin dark figure moved quickly. I stood frozen, lantern in one hand, reins in the other. There was a dark glint of metal. Then a bright flash. A terrible sound—something between a crack and a roar—reverberated around me. I was slammed back against the porch, spun around by a sharp impact on my left side.

  They’re killing me!

  Without conscious volition I heaved the lantern. It exploded in flames on the planks midway between the dark figure and me. For an instant I glimpsed Le Caron’s pocked skin and glittering eyes. Then he was gone, and people were swarming around.

  The next hours are confused in my mind. I recall seeing my frock coat drenched with blood and thinking it was ruined. I remember being lifted bodily by Mac and Gould, being examined by a young nervous doctor—gunshots evidently weren’t his thing—and, later, just before the team left, being startled by the sight of tears in Andy’s eyes.

  Jesus, I must be dying. . . .

  And then feeling oddly comforted that he cared that much.

  I awoke in a sun-splashed room, sweating and stiff. Pain radiated above my left hipbone.

  “Shit,” I groaned.

  “The eloquent voice of suffering.” Across the room, sitting in a straight-backed chair, Millar regarded me. “The club departed last night,” he said sourly. “I was assigned to stay.”

  “Am I . . . ?”

  “Yes, you’ll certainly survive. The bullet passed through flesh—of which you have a sufficiency—without coming near your organs.” He sounded as if he wanted to add, “Worse luck.”

  In my brain Le Caron’s face flickered again in the lantern’s glow. I felt a jet of fear. “Are we still in Albany?”

  He nodded. “You’re safe enough. The police department’s next door. I alerted the hotel staff not to allow anyone up here.” He stood and stretched. “I’m to put you on a train to New York as soon as you’re fit to travel.”

  I began to shake, a most unpleasant sensation. They’d tried to kill me. My teeth chattered—something I thought happened only in books—and I couldn’t quiet my violent trembling.

  Millar paced irritably and grumbled at not being able to write his dispatches.

  I bent my legs and felt a spasm of pain. The shaking gradually stopped. “I’ll do ’em for you,” I told him. “They’re all the same: ‘Smiling George Wright, striker nonpareil of the Crimson Hose, waved his willow wand and dashed a splendid blow to the outer gardens. Making his third, he showed pluck withal by—’!”

  “What’s lacking in that?” Millar demanded.

  “It’s flowery tripe.”

  “And of course you’re inferring that your own prose—which remains conveniently unseen—is superior?” His eyes were bright behind the steel-rimmed spectacles. “Fowler, my father covered river news around Cincinnati for fifty years. He taught me the profession. My sporting coverage has been commended by Henry Chadwick himself, so I don’t care to hear your rude—”

  “Who the hell’s Henry Chadwick?”

  “Who is he?” He looked incredulous. “Only the country’s foremost sporting writer, the originator of scientific scoring, the most prolific voice—”

  “Okay, okay,” I said wearily. “I believe you. You’re wonderful. I’m sorry.”

  He nursed me, grudgingly but well, for the next day and a half, changing the poultice on my wound, injecting me with quinine, helping me to the commode, ordering meals, bringing newspapers in, and generally keeping me company.

  My body was behaving strangely. My cheek resisted healing, but the bruise on my forehead vanished almost at once. Similarly, the bullet’s passage scarcely pained me the second day; when we changed the bandage I saw the puckered flesh already beginning to congeal. The young doctor marveled at my recovery; finding no sign of infection, he said I could travel as soon as I wanted.

  That afternoon, while Millar purchased train tickets, I walked slowly uptown until I saw an awning bearing the sign firearms. I’d never owned a gun in my life. Forty minutes later I walked out with a snug-barreled Remington derringer. The proprietor, a swarthy war veteran who vaguely resembled Richard Nixon, had shown me how to load its rimfire shells in the twin chambers. My fingers enveloped its rubber-grip handle; I could almost palm the whole weapon. I hefted it. Heavy for such a little thing, maybe three-quarters of a pound. Death at my fingertips. I aimed into a barrel of sawdust and pulled the trigger. A tongue of flame shot from one of the nickel-plated barrels. The sawdust jumped. There was a satisfying recoil as the weapon kicked against my hand.

  “Ain’t accurate more’n a few feet,” the proprietor said disparagingly. “Gambler’s gun, for under the table. You intend on hitting something, you’ll want a long-barreled Colt. Hell, a body could damn near dodge the bullets outen that derringer, they travel so slow.”

  “It’ll be fine,” I told him, wondering if I could actually fire it at anybody. “Where’s the safety?”

  He snorted. “You see one?”

  I didn’t. There wasn’t. I bought it anyway.

  By telegram Harry wished me fast recovery and reported wins over Springfield, 80—5, and the Lowells of Boston, 29—9. In a separate dispatch Andy warned me to stay alert; somebody had been around asking about “the ballist with a bandaged cheek.”

  Late that evening—Thursday, June 10, forty-eight hours after the shooting—Millar walked me to the train station. I tried to appear nonchalant, but couldn’t stop my heart thumping or my eyes darting nervously. When somebody wants you dead, it tends to dampen your faith in humanity.

  I was to go directly to the Stockings’ hotel and wait for them to arrive three days later. Millar, bound for Boston, had booked me through on the Penn Central. But, fearing that line would be watched, I took a roundabout route.

  By midnight I was cursing my decision. Evasion was one thing, rattling and lurching along an interminable milk run through the Catskills was another. It wasn’t until nearly one a.m. that I got off at Binghamton, the transfer point for the Erie. A long journey to Manhattan still lay ahead.

  I sat glumly in the empty waiting room, debating whether to spend the night in town. It seemed like a good idea. My side was acting up a bit. My head felt a little weird. Then I heard something drumming against one of the high windows and saw some kind of bird thrusting itself almost comically against the glass as if trying to fly through it. Then, to my astonishment, it did seem to fly through, for suddenly it was inside, whooshing and rustling and careening in circles. I watched it make two passes, then I crouched as it dove at me, a light-hued feathery mass, wild eyes staring. Water bird, I thought, but couldn’t be sure; it brushed my collar—or maybe just the air close by—and vanished through the doorway. I stepped there in time to see it winging away over the trees lining the tracks.

  No longer drowsy, I peered up at the window. No opening was evident. How had it gotten in? I played with the idea that it had come for me. A silly and yet compelling notion. Maybe the bird had been lonely and sought company. Its flight had looked almost purposeful. Maybe it was a message. Was I to follow, along the tracks?

  A wheezing, asthmatic porter lugged my bag through the narrow aisles of the sleeping cars. He stopped at my berth—a fold-down shelf with two blankets behind a thin curtain. I fished through my pockets for a tip. Coins spilled to the floor. I handed him a dime and bent to retrieve the others. In doing so I glimpsed a corner of what appeared to be a letter lying against the baseboard, concealed by folds of drapery. I pulled it out. It was a thick packet tied with lavender ribbon and scented like the sachets I remembered in Grandma’s dresser.

  I slipped the ribbon free. Enfolded in half a dozen sheets of stationery was a clipping from the previous week’s Plymouth Pulpit, of Brooklyn. It was the text of a Henry Ward Beecher sermon entitled “Heaven’s Golden Promise.” I set it aside and unfolded the letter. Each sheet was crested with a circular monogram of leafy twigs forming the intertwined letters O and L. Th
e handwriting, in purple ink, was small and neat.

  My Dear Youth, I read, and felt a remote memory stir.

  You entreated me so mercelessly (you are wicked, though I know you never intend it) not to ‘send you away empty in heart and hand,’ as you put it (as if I were capabel of sending you away!) and so I am staying up to write this.

  The salutation, the misspellings, the ink—a preposterous suspicion began to form in me.

  I have realized, as perhaps you have not, that Father has of late come to tolerate your bold glances in my direction, or is perhaps mearly resigned to them. I say this not to scold you, as you are wont to accuse me of in your ‘wicked’ moods, but to indicate how much Father has come to accept you since the beginning of our engagement. In your absense he speaks most proudly of you. Already he has subscribed fifty copies of the book for his friends the moment it is published. Speaking of that, you must not become to critical of Mr. Blish. You have labored so hard, my darling, I know that you will reap the harvest of your effort. Remember, ‘The poet and the beetle, each his task to perform.'

  Succeeding paragraphs dealt with family members, friends, and a cousin marrying in Hartford the following month. I scanned them impatiently, looking for the proof I wanted. At the end of the letter I found it.

  You mustn’t carry out your silly promise! Becoming ill cannot hasten my throat to recover. I scarce know when you are develling me. The idea of you not sleeping in underclothes and going without socks is enough to worry my poor throat sicker! Is that your purpose? You will only succeed in bringing back the cold you had last month—and then you will be low-spirited again! That is more than I could bear. Please carry my loving cautions with you—and write in great detail all that you think of Reverend B’s sermon. (I believe it his finest this year.)

  Your loving Livy

  My hand trembled as I stared at the signature and realized for certain that I held a letter to my namesake from the woman he would marry, Olivia Langdon. What was it doing here? Could Twain himself have dropped it? I felt a giddy rush of excitement. He might have passed through this aisle, stood in exactly this spot.