by Henry Clark
Frankie played a final note—a hippo after eating refried beans—and everything around me blurred. I couldn’t focus, and colors whirled around me like a tornado hitting a paint store.
I felt my body turn to powder, blow away, and reassemble itself somewhere else. My supper came halfway up, made a left turn, then dropped back into my stomach.
And I fell on my butt in bright green grass beneath a noonday sun.
McNamara, the band room, and all of Ambrose Bierce Middle School had vanished and been replaced by a tree-lined meadow on a warm summer’s day.
CHAPTER 7
Bold as Brass
I was still clutching the trombone case. The lid fell shut on my fingers, and I didn’t even notice. Tom was sitting in the grass next to me, holding his flashlight over his head like he was about to hit somebody with it.
“The trick to staying upright is to plant your feet well apart, with the rear foot at a ninety-degree angle to the front. It takes practice.” Frankie was standing, legs positioned like she was riding a surfboard. She shook herself like a dog after a bath, then looked at me and my friend.
“Both of you, huh?” she said quizzically. “I was expecting Rose. Tom is a surprise. I was pretty sure he was going to be left behind.”
“What. Just. Happened?” I sputtered.
“We escaped from those horrible people. I can’t believe you go to school in that place. It’s like a prison.”
“How did we escape?” I felt myself relaxing the tiniest bit. I eased my fingers out from under the lid, put the case aside, and got shakily to my feet.
“We traveled back in time. And, if my eyes aren’t playing tricks, about a half mile to the east. This isn’t where I wanted us to be.” Frankie frowned. “You’ll notice it’s daylight, so don’t argue with me about the time-travel part. And I know we’re half a mile to the east because of that.” She pointed behind us.
I turned, cautiously, to discover Nellie’s Erratic looming over us. There was no mistaking Gustimuck Park’s signature boulder: It was twelve feet tall and looked like one of the frozen trolls from The Hobbit. A gentle breeze rippled the grass around it.
“Where’s the graffiti?” asked Tom, slowly getting to his feet. Nellie’s Erratic appeared untouched by human hands.
“Most of it’s waiting for the invention of spray paint,” Frankie said, still frowning. “If you look closely, though, there are a few things scratched into the base.”
I took a step closer and made out the words:
JAKE SMITH
LEAVING FOR CALIFORNY
JUNE 10, 1849
“Is that the date? You’ve brought us to 1849?” Tom squeaked.
“I was aiming for March 1852,” Frankie admitted. “But that inscription is weathered; it might be about three years old. This could be fifty-two.”
“But it doesn’t feel like March,” I said, looking up at the blazing sun.
“No,” agreed Frankie. “It feels more like July or August. And I was hoping we’d be on Fourteenth Street in New York City.”
“The Camlo Shagbolt did this,” I said.
“Mostly. But each of us played a part.”
“It’s a time trombone.”
“Oh, some people call it the Time Trombone, but I hate that. It makes it sound like something from a kids’ book. I much prefer ‘Shagbolt.’ Trombone, in French, means ‘paper clip.’ It’s obviously not a paper clip. Whoever heard of a time-traveling paper clip?”
“Whoever heard of a time-traveling trombone?” I shot back.
“I grew up with one. It’s been in my family for generations. It’s how we escape from people who don’t like us. And I’d like to thank you two for helping me find it. Where would you prefer to be dropped off? Outside the school or near the carnival?”
She raised the trombone to her lips.
“You’re taking us back?” Tom whirled with his fists clenched.
“No choice, really—it’s going to have to be the school,” Frankie said, giving the slide a wiggle. “We left the golf cart there, and I have to get it back to the carnival. All three of us should concentrate on the place where we parked it. And try to imagine a time about an hour after we first found the Shagbolt. That should be safe. I’ll play the area code and we’ll pop right back. Are we ready?”
Tom grabbed the slide and wouldn’t let her move it.
“No!” he said. “Are you kidding? All my life I’ve wanted something like this to happen! I’ve always wanted to travel back in time! And now that I’ve done it, you’re saying all I’m going to see is this stupid rock? That’s, that’s—bicameral!”
“Let go!” Frankie demanded.
“Wait,” I said. “You’re going to play the area code? Is that how it works? You play the 1812 Overture and you go to 1812?”
“Area codes are five to ten notes long,” Frankie explained impatiently. “And they have to be notes that no composer in his right mind would ever put together. The 1812 Overture is too long, and it’s too musical, except for maybe the cannon-firing part. A good area code should sound terrible when you play it.”
“The one you played sounded awful.”
“Thank you. The area code takes you to the decade you want. For the actual date and place, the time travelers have to put some thought into it.”
“So,” said Tom, letting go of the horn, “if we don’t think of the same time and place as you, we might go to the wrong place?”
Frankie sighed. “Yes. In fact, I’m pretty sure that’s what just happened. I was thinking of March 20, 1852, New York City. But one of you must have been thinking of this place.”
“That was me,” Tom confessed. “I wanted to be anywhere except inside that locked cage. I was thinking how nice it would be to be back in the park.”
“That explains the wrong location.” Frankie nodded. “But it doesn’t explain why it’s summer when I was aiming for spring.”
“You can’t take us back,” Tom said defiantly. “If you try, I’ll concentrate with all my might on some other date and some other place, and screw it up!”
“It’s obviously past somebody’s bedtime,” Frankie snapped.
“Condescension!” Tom growled.
“What?”
“He likes to use long words as curses,” I explained.
A flock of blackbirds took flight from a tree not too far from us. I should have wondered what spooked them, but I didn’t. I was new to the nineteenth century.
“So what is it you want?” Frankie asked.
“I want to see the town,” said Tom. “I want to see what Freedom Falls looked like in 1852. That would be cool, right?” He looked to me, and I nodded. It wasn’t past my bedtime.
“And after you see it, you’ll cooperate, and let me take you back?”
“Yes! Of course. We both have school tomorrow.”
Tom picked up the trombone case, opened the lid, and held it invitingly in front of her.
“You have no idea how dangerous this is,” she said, nestling the trombone into its formfitting velvet. “I’ve done this before; I know what I’m doing. Neither of you is a Camlo; you’re not even Romani; you’re outsiders. Outsiders always mess things up. If we do this, you talk to nobody—nobody—and if I tell you to hide, you jump behind the nearest tree. Got that?”
We nodded as she snapped the latches on the case and handed it to me. “You dropped your book,” Frankie said crossly to Tom, pointing at his feet. The I-Ching was there in the grass. “That’s exactly the sort of stupid thing we can’t do! We can’t leave stuff from the future behind! Somebody could find it, and it could change the course of history!”
Tom snatched up his book and started to jam it in his pocket, but then got a funny look on his face and opened the book instead.
“Fiduciary!” he exclaimed. “Holy cow!”
“What?” I asked.
“The fifty-sixth hexagram—the one we were working on when the lights at the carnival went out?”
“The one
called Travel?”
“Yeah. Remember, we had only gotten halfway through the Morse?”
He shook out his code sheet and pulled out his pencil. His hand flew as he finished decoding the message. Then he stood trembling as he looked at it. He turned the book so I could see.
“The hexagram called Travel contains the Morse code for times, and we’ve just traveled to different times! You can’t tell me that’s a coincidence! The I-Ching is sending us messages. Us! Specifically! You and me! And maybe her!”
“What is this?” said Frankie, craning her neck to see, and sounding seriously concerned. Tom explained it, and she looked thoughtful.
“And you say there are other hexagrams that contain Morse?”
Tom showed her. She shook her head.
“I’m not going to argue with the I-Ching. Maybe you two are meant to be with me. I wonder…” She trailed off, with a look on her face that said she didn’t like what she was thinking.
In the woods to our right, an owl hooted. It seemed to me to be an awfully sunny, hot time of day for an owl to hoot.
“We’ll take a really quick peek at your town and be on our way,” Frankie said. “Since I can’t convince the two of you to behave sensibly.”
We found a pair of parallel ruts, each about the width of a wagon wheel, with a Mohawk haircut of weeds growing between them, and we decided it was a road. We took it in the direction of Freedom Falls.
“Great example of a snake fence!” Tom exclaimed, pointing to a jumble of logs to our right.
“That’s supposed to stop snakes?” I said.
“No—it’s called snake because of the way it zigzags. That is so nineteenth century! This is so cool!”
Tom was acting like he had died and gone to archaeology camp.
“So,” I said, catching up with Frankie, “anybody who hears the Shagbolt travels through time?”
“Obviously not,” she snorted. “That McNamara man isn’t deaf, is he? The Shagbolt filters out what we Camlos call oppressor types. OTs always lack the necessary mental component. Most people lack it; oppressors always do. Your Mr. McNamara is definitely an OT.”
“Why were you surprised that I wasn’t left behind?” asked Tom, whiffling through the weeds behind us.
“Because so few people have a psychic talent. That’s the component that oppressor types never have, and very few other people have, either. I know Rose has one, because he saw my father’s face in my mother’s crystal, but I thought the chances of his best friend also having a talent were pretty slim.”
“You were ready to leave me behind? Locked in a cage?”
“It’s not like I invited you along! I’m sure you would have talked your way out of the situation. That man McNamara didn’t seem all that sharp to me. May I ask what your talent is?”
“My talent?” said Tom, proving he was keeping up with the conversation no better than I was.
“My aunt is clairvoyant,” Frankie informed us. “That’s French for ‘clear vision.’ She can sometimes see what people are doing many miles away. My cousin is clairgustant—he can taste what other people are eating.”
“Yes!” said Tom. “That’s me! I do that! Or I try, but I usually get my hand slapped.”
“My cousin can experience the taste without being anywhere near the person who is eating. He sits quietly by himself and smiles whenever there’s a big banquet at the White House.”
“Oh, no.” Tom changed his mind. “That’s not me.”
“I have another cousin who can cause toothpaste to burst into flame just by looking at it.”
“What good is that?” I asked.
“It’s absolutely no good at all. In fact, it’s kept her from brushing her teeth for years. Nobody makes a fireproof toothbrush. But it is a psychic ability. It’s her talent. And my father is a master of glammering.”
“Glammering?” said Tom, as though sizing up the word for curse potential.
“It’s related to the word ‘glamour,’ although I’m sure no one who uses the word ‘glamour’ knows it once meant ‘magic.’”
“Your father is a magician? He sort of dresses like one,” I admitted.
“My father always wears jeans and a T-shirt. And I mean always. But people see him in the black suit, or the sword swallower’s costume, or the security guard’s uniform, or—or however he wants them to see him. That’s what glammering is. It tricks the minds of others into seeing you the way you want to be seen.”
“Monosyllabic!” said Tom, possibly contradicting himself. “That must be really useful!”
“It certainly saves money on wardrobe,” Frankie agreed. “You, Rose, saw my dad in a crystal ball, so either you’re clairvoyant—if what you saw was the present—or you’re precognitive—if what you saw was the future.”
“When I saw him in the ball, all he was doing was smiling and waving a cigar around.”
“A cigar? Really?” She seemed perplexed. “My father doesn’t smoke.”
“Maybe someday he will.”
“Oh. If that’s true”—she didn’t sound like she believed it—“then what you saw was the future. You have precognition. We may have a harder time figuring out Tom’s talent. Sometimes it isn’t obvious.”
“Ack!” Tom stopped, squeezed his eyes shut, and held up his hands like somebody trying hard not to sneeze. Then he blurted, “Phone!”
“Excuse me?” said Frankie.
“Phone!” Tom repeated, relaxing a little. “A phone’s about to ring!”
“That’s impossible,” said Frankie. “The phone hasn’t been invented yet.”
A phone rang.
I jumped. It was mine, in the pocket of my jeans. It rang again, and I fumbled it out of my pocket. I stared at it in disbelief.
“Who is it?” asked Tom.
“It’s me!”
The number on the caller ID was my number, the number of the phone I was holding.
“You butt-dialed yourself,” Tom suggested.
“This can’t be my butt calling! I don’t have myself on speed dial. I can usually get in touch with myself pretty quick.”
The phone had rung twice more as we spoke. It sounded urgent.
“Answer it!” ordered Frankie.
I thumbed the button and brought the phone to my ear. “Hello?”
“Listen to me,” said a voice I found vaguely familiar. For all I knew, it was my butt calling. “Whatever you do, don’t let Dwina drown! You got that?”
“What?”
“Don’t let Dwina drown! Repeat it!”
“Who is this?”
“Repeat what I just said!”
“Uh, don’t…”
“Let Dwina drown!”
“Let Dwina dwown. I mean, drown.”
“Good. Now duck!”
“What?”
“DUCK!”
I dropped. Something whistled through the air above my head. It was a rope lasso, which struck Tom’s shoulder, fell to the grass, and was immediately yanked back by whoever had thrown it. A second lasso flew in from the opposite direction, and this one dropped around Tom like a perfect throw in a game of ringtoss. The rope tightened and pinned Tom’s arms to his sides.
Three men were running at us from three different directions, two of the men with ropes and one waving a club. All three started whooping and shouting “Git! Git! Git!” and making yodeling sounds like they were cheerleaders at a rodeo. The one who had lassoed Tom pulled hard on the rope, and Tom crashed to the ground. Frankie dodged another incoming rope and sprinted for the trees. I ran in the opposite direction, jamming the phone in my pants.
The man with the club changed course to cut me off, swinging the club as if he wouldn’t hesitate to knock in my skull. I tried to run around him, but in the moment I took to change my path, a rope snaked around me. Suddenly I was lassoed as tightly as Tom. The rope yanked me hard and I fell into the weeds. Then I was dragged ten feet.
I struggled to lift my head and saw that Frankie had almost made it
to the woods—until a man on a horse emerged from the trees in front of her. He bent down, caught her by the arm, and threw her across the saddle in front of him, leaning back so her kicking legs missed his face. She screamed things that might have been in Romani, but their meanings couldn’t be misunderstood.
My face was shoved in the dirt, and my hands were pulled behind me and tied together. I had been shouting the word STOP over and over, but since no one was stopping, I tried screaming, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” That only got me hit in the head with somebody’s fist, and I shut up so I could hear my ears ring. A burlap bag that smelled of rotten potatoes was thrown over my head, and I was pulled to my feet. Somebody, somewhere, was sobbing. It might have been me.
I heard the horse gallop to a halt and its rider say, “Tie this ’un up, too, and gag her! I had my doubts, but that must be some African lingo she’s spoutin’.”
“That’s a girl?” asked a different voice. “Wearin’ trousers?”
“Awful, ain’t it?” replied the horseman. “A sure sign she don’t come from no place civilized!”
The commotion next to me was loud and quickly over; I was pretty sure it was Frankie being bound, gagged, and bagged. I staggered as she was thrown against me, and I would have fallen if Tom hadn’t been thrown against me at the same time from the opposite direction. I felt a rope tighten around my waist and realized the three of us were being tied together. Once this was accomplished, a new voice, gruffer than the horseman’s, barked, “March!”
I was prodded forward and I started walking, my friends strung out behind me like the charms on Frankie’s bracelet. I heard the horse do a slow clip-clop beside me, and its rider said, “Bold as brass, you walkin’ down the road in broad daylight. Stupider ’n most, are ya?”
“Who do you think we are?” I asked. It was clear to me it was a case of mistaken identity.
“Who do I think ya are?” I could tell he was grinning from the shape of his words. “I think yer the king an’ queen o’ England, and the king o’ France, to boot! Who do I think ya are? Yer escaped slaves! Make no mistake ’bout that! An’ me ’an my boys are gonna make sure ya get back to wherever it was you escaped from. Ain’t that right, boys?”
