If I Never Get Back

by Darryl Brock

Cait sat very still beside me. I knew she was fixated on the photos. What was Colm’s unfinished business? I wondered.

  I was startled when somebody asked, “Can a spirit be photographed?”

  “Only if it so desires,” Clara Antonia replied, drawing a laugh, and added that she had heard of it, but it lay outside her direct experience. It would require enormous effort for a spirit to make itself visible to a camera.

  “Are spirit photographers charlatans, in your opinion?” the questioner persisted.

  “There are those in every human activity,” she replied calmly. “Just as there are those guided by the truth. To test what is true, you must listen to your heart, your inner voice, for that is where the spiritual world is usually manifested.”

  She bowed and walked from the stage to enthusiastic applause. When the hall emptied, Cait and I were ushered backstage by a sallow-skinned youth who turned out to be Clara Antonia’s son. We entered a plain dressing room, where she sat facing us. Up close she looked much older, her face creased with wrinkles and her hair streaked with gray. The strange pale eyes fixed on Cait as she beckoned us to sit.

  “Hello, child,” she said gently. “Your mother’s spirit is reunited with your father’s. Her crossing over was eased by returning to her homeland.”

  “She knew, then,” Cait said. “You’ve talked with her?”

  “You might phrase it so,” she replied. “She is most thankful.”

  “Samuel made it possible.”

  Clara Antonia’s eyes found me. Seconds passed. I experienced a queer vibrating sensation.

  “Are you all right?” Cait said anxiously.

  “I . . . I think so.”

  There was a puzzled expression on Clara Antonia’s face. Her eyes bored into me. She brought her hand up to where the beard covered my wound, not quite touching me. I felt a pleasant warmth there. She closed her eyes finally, and it was as if I had been released.

  “You’ve come a very long distance, haven’t you?”

  I did not answer.

  “God in Heaven!” said Cait. “What are you saying?”

  Clara Antonia seemed to be formulating a complicated question in her mind. She looked at Cait and appeared to reach a decision. “Child, you are afflicted by painful questions,” she said. “What is their nature?”

  “You remember, Colm . . . returned . . .” Cait said.

  “When you first came to me,” she said with a nod. “The dove spirit departed, assured that you were safe.”

  “Yes, but now he’s returned.” Cait described our portrait sitting and produced the prints.

  Clara Antonia gazed at them for a long moment, passing her hand over Colm’s image in one of the prints. “So,” she mused, “that is why that photography question was asked tonight.”

  “Someone had the same experience?” I said.

  She shook her head. “Sometimes when no questions arise my assistants provide them. Often what come to them are emanations from audience members.”

  There was a pause while we digested that. I was quickly losing the last shreds of skepticism. I was willing to believe—hell, I wanted to believe—that she could provide some answers.

  “You wish to communicate with Colm?” she asked. “I sense his presence strongly.”

  Cait’s hands twisted nervously. “I . . . don’t know,” she said, surprising me.

  “Yes, we do,” I said.

  “Yes,” she echoed.

  “Very well.” Clara Antonia nodded to her son standing quietly in one corner. He dimmed the gas jets until the room was nearly dark. I thought I saw a subtle luminosity around Cait.

  “He is here,” Clara Antonia said softly.

  A chill ascended my back, and goose bumps stippled my skin. I couldn’t make out Clara Antonia’s face. She sat very still, a black bulk in the dimness. Beside me Cait was trembling. I reached for her, then hesitated with Colm on the scene.

  “Yes, take his hand,” said Clara Antonia, her voice strange and even higher pitched than before. For an instant I thought she was talking to me. Then I felt Cait’s cold fingers slip into mine and realized that Clara Antonia must have been picking up on Cait’s thoughts.

  “What do you wish of him?” her high voice said.

  “Is he all right?” Cait’s voice held a tenderness that opened a vein of jealousy in me.

  There was a pause.

  “He lives now in a happier world. His spirit longs to be free of this one. But it is not. He hopes that what he has done is right.”

  What has he done? I wondered.

  “His uncle . . . there is much . . .” She paused. “I think he does not want his uncle to take Caitlin.”

  Cait’s hand stiffened.

  “There is another . . . he hates and fears . . . who wants her.”

  It was my turn to stiffen.

  “Ask him why he was in our picture,” Cait said. “Did he mean to frighten me?”

  The longest pause yet followed.

  “It is not clear. He was . . . happy. . . .”

  He hadn’t looked it, I thought.

  “He departs now,” she said in more her usual speaking tone. “The effort has been beyond our imagining. He returns to the spirit world.”

  “I’ve got to know,” I blurted. “Did he bring me here?”

  The words reverberated in the small room.

  “He’s gone,” said Clara Antonia.

  The gas jets illuminated the room. Her opaque eyes fixed on me. “The answer to that question does not lie within you?”

  “If so, I don’t know how to find it. Do you know the answer?”

  She looked put off by my bluntness. “What comes to me,” she said, “is that he did not bring you here. Not in the sense that you mean.”

  I didn’t know whether to feel relieved or disappointed.

  “But,” she said, “I think it likely that he made it possible for you to come. If you so chose. As of course you did.”

  Cait turned and stared at me.

  “I believe making that choice possible to you,” Clara Antonia said, “is what Colm wonders whether it was right for him to have done.”

  “Samuel, hold me.”

  I put my arms around her. We stood in the darkened foyer of her boardinghouse. She clutched my shoulders and pulled herself tightly against me. I stroked her hair, tried to ease her trembling.

  “I know that you love me,” she said. “I feel it from you.”

  I said nothing, waiting.

  “I don’t know if I can love again. Not the way I loved Colm. When he died, I felt he took all within me that had loved him so completely.”

  It hurt to hear, but at the same time I felt a lessening of responsibility, a small relief.

  “I think I understand,” I said. “It’s all right.”

  She pressed her face into my neck for a moment and then tilted her head back. “You’re good to me, Samuel,” she whispered.

  She leaned upward. I brought my mouth down on hers. She kissed me with an urgency I hadn’t felt before. Her arms wrapped around my neck. I wanted her. But first I wanted her to stop trembling.After a long moment she drew back. “Will you tell me where you have come from? When it is right to tell?”

  “Yes,” I told her. “When it is right.”

  “Aw, you fellers didn’t need to do this,” Gould said, blushing with pleasure. We could scarcely hear him over the cackling and clucking of twenty-two chickens. They were our present to him, one for each of his years.

  “Here’s to Charlie Gobble-Gould!” proposed George, raising his beer stein.

  We drank, then gave him three cheers. He wiped foam from his blond mustache and looked ridiculously happy. He said it was the best celebration he’d ever had.

  “‘Happy birthday to you,’” I began singing. None of them had heard it before. What was with this era? To their credit, they did think it a catchy little tune.

  The New Orleans Southerns came in to test us two days before the Haymakers would arrive. Attending to t
he Louisiana players was a relief for me. I was already jittery as the vanguard of the eastern sporting crowd began to trickle into Cincinnati. I imagined eyes on me, even in downtown streets. I didn’t tarry in the Gibson’s lobby now. And I carried my gun.

  The Southerns, a solid amateur team, were the first Dixie organization ever to tour northward. They had won all six of their road games in Memphis, St. Louis, and Louisville. On the diamond we eyed each other curiously. The notion of salaried ball players evidently jarred their sensibilities. In thick accents almost incomprehensible to us, they asked about our contracts, pay, and practice schedule.

  “So, y’all make a business of pleasure,” one drawled skeptically, doubtless thinking, How like Yankees.

  From them we learned that the national game was relatively new to the South, introduced by returning soldiers and prisoners. But it already enjoyed huge popularity; everybody down there, they assured us, knew of the famous Red Stockings.

  We played in choking ninety-eight-degree heat. Instead of spikes the Southerns wore light moccasins and consequently had trouble with their footing all afternoon. We kept them hopping, too, with wicked liners and daisy cutters.

  The Dixie batters touched Brainard for only eleven hits and three runs. We pounded thirty hits and scored thirty-five runs. George and Sweasy homered. Andy produced the day’s defensive gem by snagging a drive down the left-field line, then turning and uncorking a powerful throw to double up a runner and earn a standing ovation.

  “Anybody read about the Haymakers?” George said in the clubhouse.

  “Saw they’re in Ohio,” said Allison. “They warmed the Mansfields real good.”

  “Warmed Cleveland, too,” said Mac.

  We were their next stop. I felt like Rome awaiting the barbarians.

  The notices were side by side in the afternoon Gazette. One was headed:

  FENIAN BROTHERHOOD

  The members of the Cincinnati Circle are requested to attend a meeting at the Armory on Fifth Street on THIS (Tuesday) night at nine o’clock. Business of utmost importance from Headquarters and other important matters will be heard. All Fenians attend, by order of the Center.

  The other was in bold type.

  A LECTURE

  MOZART HALL

  Tuesday, August 24, 1869

  Half Past Seven O’Clock

  CAPT. F. J. O’DONOVAN

  Subject: “American Citizens in English Bastilles.”

  Admission: 50 Cents

  Proceeds to aid needy Irish-American citizens

  I had cynical thoughts about what sort of “aid” would go to which “needy” citizens. It might be instructive, I told myself, to venture out that night to hear what O’Donovan had to say.

  It turned out to be quite a lot. Delivered at white heat, in bombastic, inflammatory style. I sat near the door, a slouch cap pulled low over my eyes. The half-filled hall was fairly dim; I didn’t fear being recognized.

  O’Donovan, martial in his green uniform, told hair-raising tales of patriotic Irish-American lads who’d tried to bring supplies to their homeland. Imprisoned unjustly, ignored by their American ambassador, tormented by bestial jail keepers, they still languished in British dungeons.

  At the end he reached a booming crescendo: “Release our citizens or we will war to the knife! The Saxon foe will never relax except by the persuasion of cold lead and steel. Will you echo me with WORDS OF STEEL?”

  The assemblage roared. When they subsided, O’Donovan called for hands to show how many favored immediate war with England. That did it. Time to get out.

  In a hansom outside, I considered the issue. The United States was hardly likely to make war on England, particularly after the recent devastation here. But the degree of anti-English sentiment I’d picked up suggested there might be widespread support for letting the Fenians do their thing, even for helping overtly. Maybe I had underestimated them.

  O’Donovan emerged with another man from a stage door. I closed the hansom’s curtain until they climbed into a vehicle. “Follow that carriage,” I said. I’d always wanted to utter those words.

  The Fifth Street Armory, a forbidding stone structure, was less than a mile away. O’Donovan’s carriage bypassed the front entrance and vanished around the side. I paid my driver and moved in darkness beside the armory. Hearing singing, I pressed my ear to the wall.

  “Many battles we have won,

  Along with the boys in blue.

  Now we’ll go and capture Canada,

  For we’ve nothing else to do.”

  They certainly weren’t shy about making their intentions known, I thought, peeking around the rear corner. The carriage pulled away. O’Donovan, alone now, moved toward a doorway. When he entered it, I sprinted after him.

  “. . . is dark,” I heard a voice say inside the door.

  “As black as heresy!” said O’Donovan. “That’s fine, man! Never let up on the password!”

  “Aye, sir!”

  “Are they ready?”

  “Not yet, sir. And a man is waiting here to see you first.”

  “Oh? Who’s that?”

  I heard a door open. A familiar voice said, “Your old pal Red Jim, that’s who.”

  I hugged the wall hard. McDermott!

  “What do you want?” O’Donovan said coldly.

  “You know what,” said McDermott. “We’re going through with it.”

  There was silence.

  “We’ll talk in the office down the hall,” O’Donovan said.

  “May I be excused, sir?” said the guard. “There’s nothing back here. I’m missing everything.”

  “Hold your post!” O’Donovan snapped.

  Footsteps receded. After a minute I rapped the door smartly. It swung open and a pudgy boy holding a rifle frowned at me suspiciously.

  “Lefty O’Doul,” I told him. “Civilian aide to Captain O’Donovan. I have urgent information before he enters the meeting.”

  “The night is dark,” said the boy, the rifle braced across his chest.

  “Black as heresy,” I said. “Where is he?”

  To my astonishment he put his rifle down and brought his right index finger to the tip of his nose while touching his ear with his left index finger.

  “Yes, yes,” I said impatiently, doing the same and hoping I hadn’t botched it. “Now direct me. It’s urgent.”

  He pointed to a door and said, “End of the walkway.”

  The door clicked behind me. A sliver of light shone down the corridor. I took out my gun and tiptoed forward.

  “. . . I tell you, ’twill work!” said McDermott’s voice emphatically.

  “But if it didn’t . . . or did but came to light afterward,” O’Donovan retorted, “we’d have the whole city around our ears. They’re the darlings just now.”

  “How’d it come to light?” McDermott countered. “When he vanishes, it’ll naturally be taken as the work of Haymaker backers—no connection with the brotherhood.”

  Vanishes? I thought. Who?

  “And that’s only if the worst happens—that is, the operation takes longer and word leaks out,” said McDermott. “Most likely Fowler’ll cave in right away from the pressure on him, see? That way the brotherhood gets its money, I clean up on the match, and both of us settle our scores with the son of a bitch.”

  That last part didn’t sound like fun. I kept the derringer trained on the door.

  “So what’s the fault in it?” McDermott demanded.

  “None that I see,” O’Donovan said reluctantly. “But if Caitlin learned I was party to it, or if he came to harm . . .” His voice trailed off.

  That puzzled me. Since when was O’Donovan solicitous of my well-being? Wasn’t harm precisely their intent?

  “She’s the colleen you’ve chased since before the war?” McDermott laughed his braying laugh. “Look, I tell you, he won’t be hurt. It’ll go off just like I laid it out: Soon’s we get the money, I send a message saying where and how much it is. Your boys recover
it, rescue the grateful prisoner, and come away heroes. Bully for Captain O’Donovan!”

  There was a long silence.

  “There’s worse things for her to find out,” McDermott said finally.

  “What does that mean?” O’Donovan snapped.

  “Have you forgotten I’m the one who knows what happened to your precious Colm?”

  Something in the way he said it chilled me.

  O’Donovan muttered something too softly for me to make out. A chair scraped. I edged backward.

  “So, we have our wee understanding,” McDermott said jovially. “It’s my thought we’ll prosper.”

  I left the corridor rapidly. “I informed the captain you’re doing a hell of a job,” I told the guard, who beamed and squared his shoulders. We repeated the nose-and-ear salute, and I was through the door and into the sheltering darkness.

  Walking north to Over the Rhine, I mentally replayed what I had heard. They obviously planned to kidnap me and extort the treasure. Once the Fenians had the money, they’d hand me over to McDermott.

  What that had to do with him winning his bets remained a mystery. As did what he knew about Colm.

  I gave serious consideration to leaving the city until the Haymakers had gone. But if McDermott and O’Donovan were as determined as I thought, they’d simply wait for me to return. I couldn’t stay away from Cait and the Stockings forever.

  So running away was out. But not hiding.

  The Haymakers trooped into the Gibson the next morning. Millar was there with a dozen other reporters. Throngs of well-dressed visitors, many of them gamblers, milled inside the lobby arguing with desk clerks in futile efforts to book rooms. Special trains would bring thousands more in the next twenty-four hours.

  With unfortunate timing I arrived at practically the same moment from Gasthaus zur Rose, where I’d slept in a snug attic room and wakened to sunlight filtering through red geraniums in a window box. I glimpsed Bull Craver’s sullen bulk, the burly King brothers, Clipper Flynn’s hatchet features. I felt my muscles tensing.

  All it took was seeing them again.

  Practice was light and easy, mostly BP and muscle stretching. In the clubhouse afterward Brainard paid me five hundred dollars in crisp new bills.