by Mike Rich
I know that look. Tryin’ to make it seem like she’s not even interested. She wants to see it for herself!
He jumped at the chance.
“Well, we, uh . . . we need to place a telephone call to 1804,” Henry answered her. “Those are the numbers, ma’am. Just . . . those four.”
He could feel Jack’s silence telling him to quit. Now.
Unfortunately, the gleam in Aunt Hazel’s eyes faded as quickly as it had appeared. “Well,” she told them, “at least you won’t waste as much time as last year.”
“But . . . what do you mean, ma’am? Why not?” Jack wasn’t sure if good or bad news was about to follow.
“Because, Jackson, there is no 1804 in New York,” she answered him evenly. “They added new lines this spring, but they only go up to 1500.”
Hazel pulled out any and all cables that weren’t being used for a telephone call at that moment, which gave Jack more than enough time to glare daggers into Henry.
“I need to get back to work, Ernest,” she said to her nephew, wrapping up the conversation. “We have room for you anytime you’d like, and I do mean anytime. Now if you could please show yourself out, I would appreciate it.”
Ernie simply nodded at first, before deciding to quietly say, “Yes, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am.” He tipped his head toward the exit to let the boys know it was time to go.
Jack nodded, then delivered a look to Henry that told him that while the conversation might be over here, it would sure as heck be starting up again once they got outside.
Henry figured that was good enough reason as any to stay exactly where he was for as long as possible, but it wasn’t the only reason.
We can’t just leave. No! We gotta at least give it a try.
“Ma’am, if you could please just try to make the call,” Henry asked. Even Jack looked surprised that he’d decided to speak up.
Hazel sighed and looked at Henry with a small amount of sympathy. “What did I just tell you, Henry Babbitt?”
“Yes, I know.” He nodded. “But . . . just one try. That’s all we’re asking. Just one.”
The steady hum of voices in the telephone exchange grew louder as a sudden rush of phone calls rolled in.
“Good afternoon, ma’am, how may I help you?”
“Yes, sir, five more minutes.”
“Hold, please, I’ll connect you.”
For a long moment, Aunt Hazel said nothing, instead choosing to organize her cables for the wave of calls Henry figured would likely spill over to her board any second now.
“It’ll only take a minute, ma’am. Please?” Henry knew his voice was dangerously closing in on the annoying sound of pleading. Just as he feared, a new telephone call popped up on Aunt Hazel’s board, followed by another right after that.
Cable in, cable out. Cable in, cable out.
The boys waited—and hoped.
Hazel Samuel’s steady indifference, though, continued—lasting through the connection of Manhattan 1201 until finally coming to an end when she nonchalantly asked, “1804 what? Manhattan? The Bronx?”
Henry didn’t have the faintest, but apparently Jack did.
“Which one’s farthest west?” he asked Ernie. “That’s the direction those Lewis and Clark guys were goin’, yeah?”
“Right.” Ernie’s eyes widened. “Right, right, right.”
Hazel, though, kept things firmly in check. “Staten Island is farthest west,” she answered. “But they don’t make any calls there yet.”
“All right, so it’s Brooklyn then,” Jack seemed to know. “The 1804 that’s the farthest west.”
“Of course!” Ernie grinned from ear to ear, tapping his aunt on the shoulder and pointing at the connection board. “Aunt Hazel, where’s that button that lets us all hear?”
Hazel had already pushed the switch allowing her to hear a call through the tiny speaker. She tapped the blue button for Brooklyn, then pushed the presumably dead buttons of 1 − 8 − 0 and . . .
4.
Silence followed.
For way too long, it seemed to Henry, as the growing murmur of late-afternoon calls surrounded them. There was no sound of a ring, no sound of a connection—only a quiet humming that confirmed Aunt Hazel’s earlier suspicion.
There’s nothing there. Nothing.
“Sorry, boys,” she said with what sounded like genuine disappointment. “At least we gave it a ch—”
The small speaker rumbled with a distant, wavering ring.
Brrrrrrt brrrrrrt.
Aunt Hazel gasped.
The phone rang through the tiny speaker, which was no larger than a poker chip. All four huddled closely around the speaker to listen. Before there was a third ring, a crackling sound came from the other end.
For a second, Henry thought it sounded like the old recordings of the space missions Dr. Riggins had played during his lecture on the moon landings. Right before Neil Armstrong had said to the world: “That’s one small step for man . . .”
“Congratulations.”
The voice that had just pierced through the crackling telephone connection wasn’t the first man to walk on the moon. It was distant, yes, and somewhat hard to make out, but Henry knew it was the same voice he’d heard that same morning.
Skavenger.
“Congratulations to you for solving the first riddle of my greatest hunt ever.”
In an instant, Aunt Hazel turned down the volume to keep the conversation as private as possible. Her hand trembled as Hunter Skavenger’s voice scratched through the small speaker.
Except it wasn’t a conversation. It was a recording.
“I’m speaking to you now courtesy of my good friend Thomas Edison—on his talking machine, the so-called phonograph,” the charismatic businessman’s voice intoned.
One of Riggins’s Three Big E’s! Henry thought with excitement. Thomas Alva Edison!
Hazel turned the speaker down a notch more, apparently still worried someone else in the room might overhear. Fortunately, the stations on each side of her were empty.
“Now, for the NEXT step in your quest,” Skavenger’s recording continued.
“Ernie!” Jack snapped his fingers and Ernie nodded, flipping open the journal to scrawl out whatever words were about to follow.
“The GRANDEST of times awaits the man who follows the track to his own heart,” the steady voice of Skavenger slowly revealed.
The telephone recording then paused as if to let Ernie catch up with his writing.
“Once there, seek out the very greatest of these. There your journey shall be unlocked, but only by a second. And only before midnight. Congratulations again, and the very best of luck to you,” his recorded voice wished them as the connection dropped.
“Mr. Skavenger?” Henry tried getting his attention, despite knowing there really wasn’t anyone on the other end—just a hum of nothingness warbling through the tiny speaker.
Nobody said a word for a long moment.
Henry didn’t know what the last minute had meant to the others surrounding the small speaker, but it was starting to sink in for him.
I just helped solve one of Skavenger’s clues.
We’re in this thing!
I’m in this thing!
Henry’s hand plunged into his pocket to make sure the ledger was still there. It was, and wisely he let it stay there, resting among the lint. He just wanted to feel the only other link he had to Skavenger besides the scratchy connection they’d just heard on an 1885 telephone line.
Holy smokes, what would Chief think right now? What would Dad have thought? I solved one of the clues they wanted to solve but never could!
Aunt Hazel was the first to finally speak up, almost whispering with a tone of wonder in her voice, “I guess there’s an 1804 after all.”
Henry glanced over and saw that Ernie was already counting out the words of the puzzle.
“One . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . five . . . six . . . seven . . . eight. WHO!” he quickl
y deciphered. His pencil tapped along, finding the next word, and then the word after that, until he was able to reveal the sentence in its glorious entirety.
“Who once these only!” Ernie triumphantly declared, followed by the not-so-triumphant follow-up question, “Who once these only? What the heck’s that mean?”
“Means the eighth word doesn’t work every time, scrooch-brain.” Jack rolled his eyes. “Read it again, the whole riddle.”
Ernie cleared his throat and slowly read it out loud. Though not too loud.
“The grandest of times awaits the man who follows the track to his own heart. Once there, seek out the very greatest of these. There your journey shall be unlocked, but only by a second. And only before midnight.”
Henry was already thinking, but the only thing he knew for sure was that he could feel Jack’s eyes on him.
“All right, fellow Babbitt, I’d say you’ve earned your keep,” Jack grudgingly acknowledged. “For now at least.”
He took a step closer, his thumbs in prime suspender-snapping position. “Whatta ya think?”
What do I think? Like . . . ten seconds after hearing Skavenger’s riddle, what-do-I-think?
“Ummmm, well . . .” Henry hesitated, apparently much too long for Jack’s liking.
“Well . . . what?” Jack demanded, snapping his left suspender and then his right. “You figured the last one out, let’s see if you can get this one too.”
“He doesn’t have to,” Ernie said, his eyes twinkling as they looked up from the journal in his hands. “I think I already have.”
NINE
Grand
WHEN ERNIE TOLD them where he thought the next clue might be, it took Jack no time to rattle off directions. His memorized directions, of course—which weren’t the same as those Henry’s phone would have offered if he’d actually:
had his phone,
it worked, and
had access to GPS.
None of these things were available, though. Not in 1885.
Instead, they cut through two alleys, worked their way over a fence, climbed the next fence after that, then went down 49th Street a few blocks to a really short shortcut.
“Now all we gotta do is head south along the train tracks,” Jack told the boys as they turned a corner leading to what Henry knew would be . . .
Park Avenue? With big ol’ train tracks? Not a chance.
Sure enough, though, when they turned onto Park Avenue and started walking, there were railroad tracks right smack-dab in the middle of the avenue.
Henry had walked this same street with his mom just a couple of days before Christmas Eve. He’d seen about a million cars and cabs, storefronts loaded up with decorations, and about a hundred streetside trees glowing with white holiday lights.
Buuuuut lemme think. Nope. No train tracks down the middle of Park Avenue.
That, he was pretty sure, he would have remembered.
During the walk, the three boys had nibbled on some of Uncle Phil’s leftovers. Ernie was right; they’d have enough food for a day or two. That was the good news. The not-so-good news was what they’d have enough of: meat that seemed to be a loose version of roast beef, a few squishy apples, and a couple loaves of moldy sourdough bread.
Now that they were getting closer to their destination, Henry could see Jack watching for other hunters who might be following the same path. If a pedestrian unknowingly walked past Jack, the suspender-snapper would immediately lengthen his own stride, which forced Ernie and Henry to follow suit.
Fortunately, the aroma of Old New York was a little closer to present-day New York in this part of town, Henry noticed. Not like the stench-fest he’d encountered in Hell’s Kitchen.
He loved this aroma. This aroma actually was an aroma. Not an odor.
It was the kind of aroma he remembered from—
“Henry?”
He felt a tight, pained smile grow on his face.
“Henry? Do you know where we are right now?”
Clear as the morning sky on so many of those countless walks, the sound of his father’s youthful voice surged back to Henry. No echo to it. Just . . . there.
“Mad Hatter!” Henry’s five-year-old self answered.
His father looked down, shooting him a wink. “Mad Hatter, Manhattan. You got it. But do you know where in Mad Hatter, Manhattan, we are?”
“Ummmmm,” young Henry shook his head.
“Y’know something? For just a second there, neither did I. How great is that?” his dad replied. “The minute you don’t know where you are? That’s when the adventure begins. The real adventure.”
Still clear as could be, Henry remembered his father, who would be gone only a few years later, reaching for his hand.
“Let’s go find that adventure, Henry. Whatta ya say?”
A jolting shove in the back of his shoulder brought a sudden stop to the memory.
“Hey, Molasses,” Ernie chided him. “Little faster wouldn’t be a problem.”
Henry picked up his step a bit, his thoughts now drifting for a moment to the family he still had—the family he’d left on Christmas Eve night. A sick feeling started to percolate in his stomach.
What’s Mom even thinking right now? Loses Dad not even two years ago, wakes up on Christmas morning and discovers her only son’s . . .
Gone.
He swallowed back the emotion, as he already had a few times that day.
She’s gotta be a wreck. Gigi too, and Chief.
“What’s on your mind there, Babbitt?” he heard Ernie ask. “Ya been kinda quiet. Got a funny look on your face too.”
“Nothing,” Henry replied. “I was just thinking about someone.”
“Yeah? Who?”
Henry tried not to say anything that might get him into trouble. Something that wouldn’t fit in 1885. He didn’t want Jack threatening his collar again.
“My father, for one,” he answered, figuring that couldn’t raise any suspicions.
“What about him?”
Henry held back for a second before answering. “He would’ve liked this. The hunt. Trying to figure all this stuff out.”
Jack was close enough that he’d overheard, even though he was preoccupied with directing the sun’s reflection from his suspender clasp onto the train track below.
“What do you mean, would have?” Jack said as he walked along, starting to lag behind a little bit.
“He died a few years ago,” Henry replied. The words usually had a way of stopping most conversations.
Not this one, though.
“Hmmph, figures,” Jack said. “Looks like no fathers all the way around here.”
For a moment, the three of them just walked and said nothing, following the uneven rail line splitting the avenue into fourths.
“Yeah, well, ya wanna know what I think?” Ernie yelled out with fresh hope. “Who better to win Skavenger’s Hunt! Come on, think about it. The smartest people in the world are at the Dakota right now, and you know what they’re gonna find? Huh?” He raised his arms into the air, victorious. “NUTHIN’, that’s what!”
“Slow down, Chuckaboo. We got a lonnnnnng way to go,” Jack shot back.
A horse-drawn carriage rolled past, faster than most, and Jack ran over to see if a would-be hunter was inside. The passenger, a woman holding her sleeping child, saw Jack approach and a suddenly fearful expression spilled over her face.
“Faster please, William!” Henry could hear her urging the carriage driver, who promptly snapped the reins.
Burning humiliation on his face, Jack shouted at the fleeing carriage, “Hey! HEYYY! I wasn’t gonna do anything, lady!”
He made a rude gesture with his hands. “Go ahead!” he yelled for good measure. “Think what ya want!” He kicked the ground in frustration.
Ernie used the moment to quietly tell Henry, “Jack hates that. Folks take one look at him—at us—just like that lady did right there? All they see are the scruffy clothes, hats falling apart, no money. Th
ey always think the worst. Like we’re gonna attack ’em or somethin’. Bet you’ve seen it before too.”
“Yeah, sure.” Henry thought it best to agree.
For the first time since they’d hit Park Avenue, he noticed the aroma slowly becoming an odor again. A smoky stench that he guessed came from the trains that used the very tracks they were walking on.
“Y’know somethin’? My father woulda liked this too,” Ernie said to him. “Not Jack’s yellin’ so much, but the lookin’ for everything.”
“What happened to him?” Henry asked. “I mean, if you don’t mind me asking.”
“Nah, I don’t mind,” he said with a shrug. “He and my mother . . . they walked into Five Points one day hopin’ to spread the word of God.” He looked down at the tracks. “They didn’t spread it for too long.”
Five Points. Chief told me about that place. Big-time gangs, a boatload of crime, all the . . . how’d he say it? Oh. The “unsavory business practices.” That was it.
Henry cautiously pushed a little further, trying his best to remember the exact details of Chief’s history lesson. “I thought all the problems in Five Points were over.”
Ernie held his tongue for a few strides. “Nope, just ask my folks,” he finally answered, then shook his head. “Only thing they wanted to do was talk to people about God. Me and Him ain’t exactly been on the best of terms since.”
Ernie pulled out his journal and opened it. For the first time, Henry noticed it was loaded with words on nearly every page.
“All those pages are just from the hunt?” he asked.
“Well, not all of ’em,” Ernie answered, fanning the pages from front to back. “A big part is this book my mother was writin’ ’fore she couldn’t no more.” He tucked the journal back inside his tattered coat, before bitterly adding, “It’s a piece of crap.”
Ernie looked up and nodded toward the massive building now coming into view.
“There it is!”
The first thing that struck Henry about Grand Central Depot was that it wasn’t Grand Central Station.
Grand Central Station, which he’d been in more times than he could count, was almost a palace. It was enormous. Huge. Whatever word you had for “big” would work just fine.
