If I Never Get Back

by Darryl Brock

  During the applause that followed, Cait drew me near and whispered, “Perhaps I should have sewn for you instead of—”

  “Mascara?” I said.

  She blushed again.

  When the baggage was loaded, the locomotive’s bell sounded a heart-wrenching peal.

  “Let’s board!” Harry shouted.

  “Whooooeeee!” Andy yelled, lifting Timmy high. “Here we go West!”

  We looked at each other. Cait’s eyes were unnaturally bright. My chest felt like it was being squeezed. In the swirl of humanity on the dock, it was as if we stood on an island swiftly washing away.

  “I don’t care what the others may think,” she said, tilting her head. “Please kiss me, Samuel.” After I did she took the silver ring from her finger. I thought she meant to hand it to me. Instead she put it to her mouth, kissed it, then slowly turned it and replaced it on her finger. “When you’re far from here and thinking of me,” she said, “ask Andy the meaning of it.”

  The train’s whistle shrilled and a blast of steam erupted. The cars inched along the platform.

  “Go quickly,” she said, tears rimming her eyes.

  “You’n Andy are my heroes!” Timmy exclaimed as I hugged him.

  “I’ll bring you Indian stuff,” I managed to say.

  “Wow, Sam!”

  From a window I waved, and they waved back. I love you, Cait. I burned into my memory a final image of her standing silently among the cheering people, dark and regal in her long yellow dress, one arm around Timmy, the other lifted to me.

  It would remain with me all the days to come.

  We discovered that our itinerary had been widely advertised. At Indianapolis and smaller stations all along the route, people gathered and rubbernecked to catch a glimpse of the famous Red Stockings. If any of us had previously doubted, now we could see clearly the power and extent of the sports legend we were fashioning. In my mind we were this era’s ’27 Yankees—already legendary, utterly invincible. It was heady stuff. I enjoyed it, although my thoughts were filled with Cait.

  That night in our sleeping car, I asked Andy about the ring.

  “She turned it?” He looked startled. “Colm’s Claddaugh ring?”

  “Hands holding a crowned heart,” I said. “She said you’d explain.”

  “Well, Claddaugh rings are made in Galway. Irish girls wear ’em on their right hands with the heart pointing out to show their own hearts aren’t taken. If the heart’s turned in, it signifies a love is being considered.”

  “But Cait’s is on her left.”

  “She’s worn it like a wedding band,” he said. “It was about the only thing of Colm’s she had—’cept Timmy. You say she turned the crown, heart pointing in?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “That means,” he said slowly, “two loves have become one and can’t be separated.”

  I was far distant from words.

  “Say, maybe we’ll end up brothers after all,” he said, laughing. “Wouldn’t that be a dinger?”

  We pulled into East St. Louis at eight the next morning. A crowd practically bowled us over in the station. “Where’s George Wright?” “Isn’t the older one Harry?” “That’s Brainard!” With magazines spreading their images across the country, the Stockings were recognized stars.

  We coached to the Laclede Hotel, at Fifth and Chestnut, and had crayfish for breakfast. That afternoon, in gorgeous weather, we demolished the Unions at a park crammed to capacity.

  “Clockwork fielding and steam-powered batting” was how the local Democrat described our play, and that about said it. We pulled off three double plays. George, Waterman, and Brainard each had eight hits.

  Stockings 70, Unions 9.

  That night at the Olympia Theater we saw an interminable farce called Chiron and Chloe in the Back Room. I left at intermission, anxious to get back to the hotel to write to Cait. Posting the letter early in the morning, I realized it wouldn’t reach her for days. So I also sent a telegram: “Samuel loves Caitlin.”

  We played the Empires on the same grounds. The crowd held considerably more women than the previous day’s. Word must have gotten out. The Stockings were young, suntanned, muscular, famous, well paid, and wore sexy uniforms. What else did it take?

  Allison’s hands were sore again, and he allowed a number of passed balls. The Empires fielded fairly well and their pitcher wasn’t bad, holding us to thirty-one runs on an equal number of hits. In the field we made eight muffs, but the outcome was never in doubt. Our record stood at 45—0. We would next play in San Francisco.

  After totaling the score-book columns, I worked up my first dispatch lead for the Enquirer. “St. Louis fans turned out in brilliant weather to witness an exhibition of less-than-flawless baseball as the Red Stockings coasted to a 31—14 win over the hometown Empires.” Mundane but serviceable, I thought.

  Millar didn’t. When I asked him to critique it, he immediately crossed out “fans”—as yet fan or crank or rooter had not appeared; no single identifying term for a sports fanatic existed. He made “baseball” two words. Then he tossed away the whole thing and wrote, “The match this afternoon on the St. Louis grounds, captured by our stalwart lads with thirty-one runs to the Missourians’ fourteen, was viewed by a fair audience, there being probably two thousand people present, including many ladies.”

  Hopelessly cumbersome. “Why do you make a point of women?” I asked.

  “So as to elevate the sport,” he said, the pedant in his glory. “You do want that, don’t you, Fowler?”

  “Oh, more than life itself.”

  Again that night we went to the theater, this time as guests of Edwin Adams, the famed actor, who performed the title role of Narcisse the Vagrant: The Great Tragedy in Five Parts. To me the acting, with its posturing and overblown sentiment, was hard to take seriously. Hurley would have enjoyed it, I thought, and wondered how he was doing; he must feel wretched every time he heard of us.

  A telegram arrived for me at the hotel.

  SAMUEL STOP TERRIBLY ALARMED STOP FEARGHUS RETURNED STOP RAGING SAYING MCDERMOTT PURSUE STOP BE MOST WATCHFUL STOP YOUR CAIT

  My mind flooded with anxious thoughts. Had Cait taken risks to warn me? Had O’Donovan discovered I’d withdrawn the money from the bank? He must think I was running away. I stared at the yellow paper. Raging saying McDermott pursue. . . . So they’d be coming after me again. Would they try for me in San Francisco? Or set a trap earlier, along the train route? These two days in St. Louis gave them that much time to gain on me. Shit.

  I touched the words Your Cait with my fingertips. Then I went up and loaded the derringer. Restlessly I walked out in the dark streets. The air was warm and velvety. When I reached the river I aimed at a spot in the water, looked around briefly—nobody was in view—and squeezed the trigger. There was a brittle pop! Concentric circles rippled the black water.

  Chapter 24

  We razzed Mac hard as we pulled out of town on the Northern Missouri line. The big kid looked sheepish. He and Allison had sneaked out to a beer hall the previous night. Mac had made advances on one of the Pretty Waiter Girls—the generic sisters of dance-hall women, with their plump arms, short boots, and skirts displaying a few prurient inches of pale tights and flesh—and promptly landed in a fight and then in jail. Harry had had to vouch for him. Fortunately the St. Louis cops were ball fans.

  The passing countryside began to take on a different look: more grazing land, with fewer farmhouses and haystacks; rolling hills with clouds piled high behind; tree rows stretching in dark lines across paler land; wildflowers—golds and purples and blues—along the embankments, their smells, with those of grasses and nettles, drifting to us at the country stations where we stopped for water and coal.

  Sweasy conducted a seminar on Indians in our car, recounting a succession of lurid stories: A Swedish settlement on the Saline River had been overrun only two months ago by marauding Si
oux. A soldier had taken the scalp of a live Indian prisoner after witnessing the same done to a white settler. A copper-skinned killer named Red Cloud, who stood taller than Gould, was even now roaming the plains with two thousand bloodthirsty painted horsemen.

  “Truly, Sweaze?” said Andy. “I mean, out where we’re goin’?”

  “Listen to this.” Sweasy opened a copy of the St. Louis Republican. “‘We have received particulars of the Indian massacre: The tongues and hearts were cut out of the dead bodies; the calves of their legs were slit down and tied under their shoes; pieces of flesh were cut from their back; pieces of telegraph wire were stuck into the bodies; the ears were cut off and heads scalped. The Indians boiled the hearts of their victims for medicine.’”

  He looked grimly pleased at the shock it produced.

  “Where’s the damn army?” said Gould.

  “‘Companies A and D of the Seventh Cavalry, under Colonels Weir and Custer,’” Sweasy read, “‘are to be sent after the depredators.’”

  “Seems they’re a mite late,” Waterman said. “Answer what Andy asked, Sweaze—these things happening close by or ain’t they?”

  “Just down in Kansas,” Sweasy said ominously. “Near Hays City, where that Hickok feller shot some men just last month. Not more’n a hundred miles from where we’ll pass. Course you gotta keep in mind that Injuns travel all over the countryside. There’s trouble up in Montana, too, so it’s my hunch we’ll pass right through the middle.”

  “But I saw in the paper,” Harry said, “that everything was peaceful along the Pacific Railroad.”

  “I read that,” Sweasy admitted. “But it’s likely temporary.”

  Like the rest, I wanted to see real Indians. Herds of buffalo rolling like thunder over the plains. The Wild West—even now already sensationalized and romanticized.

  “On the Washita River, not three hundred miles due south of here,” Sweasy went on—he’d obviously done his homework—“is where Sheridan took on Black Kettle last November. Sent Custer to surprise ’em in their winter village. Left a hundred savages dead in the snow.”

  “No women or children, of course,” I said.

  “They went in a-shootin’,” he said. “At anything that moved—and some as didn’t.”

  It got a laugh.

  “Are we supposed to cheer about a massacre?”

  He looked at me coolly. “They didn’t stay on their reservations like they’re supposed to.”

  “Like we say they’re supposed to.”

  This produced a general silence.

  “You Quaker?” Sweasy demanded.

  “Why?”

  “You talk like a John Injun-lover.”

  At that point Champion, who seldom participated in our conversations, moved down the aisle. “I’ve studied military tactics,” he said. “I’m certain that Sheridan ordered a winter attack because the Indians’ lighter ponies could outdistance cavalry mounts in summer, laden as they are with weaponry and equipment.”

  Thanks, General, I thought. Go back and play with your toy soldiers. “A tactical consideration,” I said, “but morally—”

  I stopped as Harry touched my arm. “They haven’t developed the land, Sam.” His tone was mollifying, the voice of reason.

  I took a breath, realizing I was up against the century’s dominant ethos: progress—meaning whatever could be profitably exploited.

  “One of the Empires knew California Jack personal,” said Allison, changing the subject.

  It drew immediate interest. Recently a Pennsylvania bank had been relieved of twenty thousand dollars by a robber of that name.

  “Said he lived only a few doors away,” said Allison. “Wife and kids, right there in St. Louis.”

  The notion of a bank robber having a family life stirred discussion. Gould claimed that the country’s first train robbery had happened outside Cincinnati in the spring of ’65, when a gang of roughs derailed a baggage car and looted its safe.

  “Anybody heard of Billy the Kid?” I asked. Nobody had. I tried the Jameses, Youngers, Daltons, Wyatt Earp, Calamity Jane, Joaquin Murietta, Bat Masterson. None got a glimmer of recognition. Either it was too early or the Stockings were abysmally ignorant. “Zorro?” I tried.

  “Sam, you’re talkin’ queer,” said Andy.

  In northern Missouri we crossed level prairies thatched with wild strawberries and freshened by clear streams. For lunch we had catfish—fried, breaded, served with corn fritters—in Hannibal, the town where Twain had grown up. It had doubtless changed a good deal since he left fifteen years ago. The railroad’s arrival had brought a booming lumber business. Sawmills crowded the foot of town, along the river. New buildings stood everywhere.

  I walked to the Mississippi. In the distance kids shouted as they jumped from a half-submerged log, splashing into placid water, which looked leaden on this blazing day. It was weird to think that Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn hadn’t yet been written. I looked around, considering the sluggish river, the drab frame structures and dusty trees, the buzzing flies. Maybe it was idyllic to be a boy here, but for me it would be brain-killing, stifling, a long deadly summer of monotony. Small wonder Twain romanticized but seldom revisited his roots.

  We swapped our spacious sleeping car for a dilapidated Hannibal & St. Joseph coach that swayed and lurched so crazily we could scarcely stand up. Glasses and books and decks of cards were thrown periodically to the floor. Sweating through the heat-blasted Missouri landscape, we were hardly comforted by the evidence of past wrecks along the tracks. In one place seven smashed cars formed a triangular heap, their locomotive nose-down in a swampy hole.

  Our slow pace worried me. The Pacific Railroad began at Omaha, jumping-off point for all transcontinental traffic. It was a likely place for McDerrnott to intercept me. Was he already there, waiting with Le Caron? We poked through St. Joseph, crossed into Iowa, dragged westward. Twenty-four hours on that wretched line.

  At last the conductor called, “Council Bluffs! All for Omaha change to the stage!”

  We changed with a vengeance, stampeding to omnibuses lined before the station. Andy and George got choice seats inside; Brainard, Gould, and I—the lead foots—had to sit on top with the luggage. For one solid bone-rattling hour we were jolted and tossed as a four-horse team moved over muddy ruts—“defects in the road,” the driver termed them. We climbed down shakily at the ferry landing on the Missouri River. Before us on the opposite shore, set on a hill and crowned by a white-domed capitol, lay Omaha City.

  We crossed Big Muddy’s silt-laden current on a flat-bottomed steamer—it was hard to comprehend these boats journeying two thousand miles up the Missouri, farther than we still had to go to San Francisco—and we duly disembarked in Nebraska, proud new thirty-seventh state.

  The Union Pacific depot was a scene of vast and boisterous confusion. There were dandified easterners in stovepipe hats, their women richly bonneted and shawled, children cavorting on piles of luggage; haggard miners; loudmouthed agents pitching stocks and myriad get-rich-quick schemes; Jewish pack peddlers; soldiers; hucksters who shilled for saloons and gambling houses; hunters carrying long Sharps rifles; German and Irish and Swedish emigrant families.

  That day’s Pacific Express to Sacramento was packed to the last inch of space. Worse yet, nearly a thousand would-be passengers waited to pay higher rates for an express with guaranteed Pullman cars—exactly what we wanted. I felt the old tension in my shoulder blades. We would be stuck here for some time. I pressed close to the others and kept a nervous watch. Le Caron could be anywhere.

  “Hey, Sweaze!” somebody yelled. “Injuns!”

  Sure enough, near some foul-smelling frontier types in greasy animal skins stood a shabby group of Indians in white people’s clothing, wearing feathers in their braids and necklaces of beads and talons, the men’s black eyes glassy—from whiskey, we learned—as they begged from new arrivals by silently holding out their hands; one woman, more aggressive, offered peeks at her baby for ten cen
ts.

  Sweasy, shoved forward by Mac and Gould, forked over fifty cents to actually hold the infant. As he did so, a strange softness came over his face. We watched in amazement as he made cooing sounds and tried to nuzzle the baby. Alarmed, the mother snatched it away. We burst into laughter. From then on she was known as “Sweaze’s squaw.”

  A ragged black huckster emerged from a line of baggage and express wagons and approached us, shouting the merits of the Cozzens House. Brainard finally yelled, “That’s enough! We know about it!”

  The man paused, doffed his hat with comic politeness, and bowed deeply. “Which road does you own, suh, de Union or de Westun?”

  Brainard’s cheeks burned.

  Hatton and Champion decided it would be better to take the next day’s express rather than wait around for a mixed train—freight and passenger—which would stop at every station. I felt relieved when we finally shouldered our bags and set out in search of the Cozzens House. I wasn’t wild about staying overnight in Omaha, but at least I wouldn’t have to feel like a clay pigeon at the station.

  We’d anticipated a woolly frontier town. Instead we found a bustling city of twenty-five thousand. The mud in the broad streets looked rich enough to yield crops, but downtown boasted clusters of four-story brick buildings.

  The Cozzens House turned out to be owned, like much of Omaha, by an eccentric promoter, George Francis Train, who’d had the foresight to buy hundreds of acres of prime land, including the port area now called “Traintown,” at nominal prices. The coming of the transcontinental line made him a multimillionaire. The desk clerk told us that Train expected Omaha to mushroom to one hundred thousand, making it the largest city after New York and a veritable Athens of the West.

  Don’t hold your breath, I thought.

  The local ball clubs quickly found us and took us around in open carnages. We saw dizzying numbers of UP supply yards and storage sheds. I learned more than I ever wanted to know about railroad construction. But I did enjoy seeing the Lincoln Car—the famous coach in which the President’s body had been conveyed from Washington to Springfield—reserved now by the UP for ceremonial occasions.