The Book That Proves Time Travel Happens
Page 7
There was a ragged chorus of agreement. I knew enough from movies and TV not to argue with anybody who used expressions like “Ain’t that right, boys?” but I argued anyway.
“We’re not slaves! Why would you think we’re slaves?”
Something clobbered me on the side of the head with enough force to knock me to my knees. Then somebody grabbed me by the shoulder and hauled me to my feet.
“There’ll be no more talkin’ ’til we get to where we’re goin’,” our captor cheerfully announced. To his men he said, “Chester, you head up town way, see if you can get a lead on them other runners. Bert, you an’ Zack take these three to the Hole. I’ll meet ya there in half an hour!”
The horse galloped off, the sound of its hooves fading in the distance. Our captors shoved us forward.
We had been captured by slave catchers.
And we no longer had the Time Trombone.
CHAPTER 8
The Ghost Candle and the Real Smart Pencil
Let’s jus’ say I’m a naturally curious cuss, so I would like to know whose house it was you broke into, an’ why, of all the swag you coulda taken, you stole a slide horn and some gutta-percha pitcher frames.”
It was about ninety minutes later. Frankie, Tom, and I were sitting on the threshing floor of what appeared to be an abandoned barn. Each of us had our back to a post, our arms pulled behind us, and our hands bound on the post’s far side. The posts supported a hayloft from which dust occasionally drifted, as if small, frightened creatures might be hiding in the hay above us.
The man who had been on the horse sat on a rickety-looking chair a few feet from us, his booted feet crossed on the bench in front of him. Next to his feet was the Time Trombone’s case, with the trombone half out of it, along with two cell phones, Tom’s flashlight, the I-Ching book, Frankie’s charm bracelet, and her backpack. The backpack, looking flat and empty, had not been opened; no one had guessed how the zipper worked.
“Gutta-percha?” asked Tom.
“Is that a Chinese word? Sounds kinda Chinese to me. Gutta-percha pitcher frames”—he nudged the cell phones with his heel, then grabbed the flashlight and mimed hitting someone over the head with it—“gutta-percha cudgel. Cudgel’s jus’ a guess; I don’t quite get the li’l glass window in the end.”
Gutta-percha, I decided, was some sort of early plastic. It could have been a lyric from one of Kan Sa$s’s hip-hop songs.
He turned the flashlight toward himself and squinted at the bulb. His hand inadvertently slid the switch and he blinded himself, tossing the flashlight away and falling backward off his chair. He scrambled to his feet, snatched a pistol from a holster on his hip, and fired a frantic, unaimed shot that splintered wood an inch above my head. He fired again, this time more accurately, hitting the flashlight as it rolled across the floor and sending it flying against the wall, where it flickered and went out. He stayed in a crouched position with his gun aimed at it until he was certain it was dead.
“This is not going well,” murmured Frankie.
A door at the opposite end of the barn flew open, and the man who had lassoed Tom ran in, gun drawn, ready to fire if he needed to. “You okay, Kill?” he asked the guy who had murdered the flashlight.
Kill straightened up and holstered his gun. “I’m fine, Bert. Better ’n fine. Jus’ showin’ these runners why it’s no good to run. Bullets fly faster ’n they can. Chester back yet?”
“Not yet.”
They were both dressed like shabby Abe Lincolns, in long coats, black vests, and stringy neckties, Bert in a derby-type hat and Kill bareheaded with his blond hair parted in the middle. There was something familiar about Kill.
“Lemme know the minute he shows up,” Kill told Bert. “We ain’t lingerin’ here any longer than we need ta.”
“Right,” said Bert. “You decided what to do with the China boy yet?”
“Gonna sell ’im down the river with the other two.” Kill picked up his fallen chair and set it upright. He settled back into it.
“They ain’t using Chinese down there, boss.”
“They should be. Why shouldn’t they? Chinese ain’t us; that makes ’em fair game in my book.”
Bert nodded and left. Kill turned his attention back to us.
“Your name is Kill?” I asked.
“An’ don’t you furget it!” he snapped. “Short for Killbreath. Born an’ raised in Cincinnati!”
And I knew why he looked familiar. There was a family resemblance. Kill had to be Lenny Killbreath’s great-great-grandfather. Or maybe great-great-great. I wasn’t sure how many greats into the past we had gone.
“We’re not runaway slaves,” said Frankie.
“Don’t matter if you is or not.” Kill shook his head. “Fugitive Slave Law says I can take you back and collect my fee for findin’ ya. Slave catcher is a honorable trade. Didn’t always think so, but then I saw the light.”
“Did you shoot it out when you saw it?” I asked.
“This ain’t no minstrel show,” Kill said, drawing his gun and waving it casually in the air. “Don’t need no jokes. I got papers in my pocket say you property of certain owners. All I gotta do is fill your names inta the blanks. Owners ain’t gonna argue if they don’t zackly recollect you. Happens all the time. Or, if I wanna take the trouble, I kin take you farther down the river and sell you myself in Louisville. They’s always somebody willin’ to buy in Louisville. So now”—he cocked the gun and aimed it in Frankie’s direction—“what names do I put on my papers?”
Frankie looked at him steadily and, after only a moment’s hesitation, said, “Dorothy Gale.”
“Uh-huh.” Kill nodded approvingly. He pointed the gun at Tom.
“Atticus Finch,” said Tom.
“Good.” He aimed the muzzle at me.
“Marty McFly.”
“Fine. See how nice we gettin’ along? Like ol’ friends.” He put his gun away and pulled papers from the inside of his coat. He fished in both pockets of his vest and when he didn’t find what he was looking for, he pulled Tom’s pencil stub out from between the pages of the I-Ching book. He held the pencil in front of his face and frowned.
“Now, just what in tarnation is this little pink thing? Looks like a itty-bitty piece o’ hog’s tongue!”
“It’s an eraser,” volunteered Tom.
“Stuck on the pencil? That there’s an idea gonna make somebody a whole pot o’ money!” He drew a line on one of his papers and promptly erased it. “Hoo-wee!” He did it again, to see if the experiment was repeatable. Somewhere in his tiny mind, there was a scientist trying to get out. “Dang! Works! So, again I gotta ask—where’dja all steal this stuff from?”
“It’s ours,” I said defiantly.
“You can’t have possessions. You is possessions.” He pulled his gun out once again. “Where’dja get it all? The fancy slide horn an’ the ghost candle and the real smart pencil? You break inta the house of some crazy inventor fella? I got a friend in the patent office; all I need’s some big brain who invents. Where’s the house you got this stuff from?”
He leveled the pistol at me for the third time.
“Ubiquitous!” Tom cursed.
“Whadya jus’ call me?” Kill went red in the face. “You call me a bickwidus? NOBODY calls me a bickwidus!”
He swung the gun in Tom’s direction. But before he could pull the trigger, the barn door flew open and Bert bustled back in.
“Chester’s back! He says those runners that slipped by us yesterday are heading for the cooper’s. We gotta move if we’re gonna catch ’em!”
“Man alive!” said Kill, holstering his weapon. “Nothin’ I like better ’n derailin’ the beneath-the-ground railroad! Busybody conductors should all be lynched!” To us he said, “Looks like you three’s gonna have some company! Make the trip worth it!” To Tom he added, “We’ll see who’s a bickwidus!”
He started for the door, then turned and came back. He poked the Time Trombone into its case, dr
opped the lid, and tucked the case under his arm. “There’s a guy I know ’tween here and the cooper’s that’ll pay good money fer somethin’ like this!” he said, throwing us a wolfish grin. “You three jus’ sit tight ’til we get back!”
And he was gone, the door banging shut behind him.
“This is, possibly,” said Frankie, “why my father is so against unauthorized use of the Shagbolt.”
“Really?” I said. “You think? We’re stuck here over a century in the past, we’ve just lost our only way to get back, and we’re about to be sold into slavery because some idiot doesn’t like the color of our skin! I’m on your father’s side!”
“Oh, I’m sure he’d appreciate that,” Frankie replied icily. “And I’m on your father’s side, so there!”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I would have no problem whatsoever with a parent who dresses for other time periods. That’s downright dull compared to—”
“Compared to what?”
She turned her face away and didn’t answer.
“Anybody’s ropes the least little bit loose?” Tom asked.
“Mine are so tight, my hands are all pins and needles,” said Frankie.
“Same here,” I agreed grudgingly. “There’s no way we’re getting untied.”
“One of the charms on my bracelet is a glass cutter,” Frankie informed us.
We all looked at the bracelet. It was on the bench ten feet away from us. It might as well have been a mile.
“What?” I asked. “You’ve got Batman’s charm bracelet?”
“It actually belonged to my grandmother. She had some unusual hobbies. If I had the bracelet, I could probably cut through my ropes.”
I stretched my legs as far as I could toward the bench. I wasn’t even close.
“Where is Harriet Tubman when you really need her?” I muttered.
“We should try standing up,” Tom suggested. “There might be a nail or something sticking out of the back of one of these posts that we could saw through the ropes with!”
We struggled to our feet. The posts turned out to be annoyingly smooth.
“Any other ideas?” I asked.
“What if we whistled the area code?” said Tom.
“What?”
“You know. The area code you would have played on the Shagbolt to return us to our own time. What if we whistled it? Or sang it, or something?”
“It would help if one of us was a musical instrument made from an alloy containing meteoric iron,” said Frankie. “There’s no way the notes are going to work by themselves.”
“Time travel only works for people who have a psychic talent, right?” I said. “Maybe one of us has a talent for time travel.”
“What? Time travel without the trombone? If such a talent exists, I’ve never heard of it,” Frankie said dismissively. “Here are the notes, though. Listen very closely. If either of you vanishes, I’ll know I was wrong!”
She whistled the seven notes she had played earlier on the Shagbolt. They sounded almost as awful as they had before, but a little less fart-like. “The last note is the tricky one. Played sharp, it takes us back to the decade we came from. Played flat, it takes us three thousand years further into the past.”
“Let’s hear the whole thing over,” I said.
She whistled the notes again. Then I whistled them, and Tom tried it. Nothing happened. If anything, the posts we were tied to felt more solid.
“If we think those guys have gotten far enough away by now, it’s time to start screaming,” said Tom. He inhaled, filling his lungs for a long, loud bellow.
“Not yet!” Frankie snapped. “Screaming is a last resort! I’m sure those creeps didn’t pick a hideout near anybody who might be helpful. We have to be quiet awhile longer.”
Tom deflated.
“Why?” I asked.
“Shh!” replied Frankie. “I’m concentrating!”
I thought I heard a small sound from the direction of the bench. I glanced over but saw nothing. Frankie muttered something under her breath.
Tom whispered, “Why did you want to go to Fourteenth Street on March 20, 1852?”
“You two couldn’t be more distracting if you tried!” Frankie hissed.
“Sorry!”
The head of a mouse popped out of a knothole at the foot of the bench. His whiskers twitched, then he wiggled all the way out and scampered up one of the bench legs. After sniffing our cell phones and nibbling a tiny bite from one corner of the I-Ching book, he ambled over to Frankie’s bracelet and started nudging it toward the edge of the bench with his nose.
“Hey—” I started to say, but Frankie shushed me.
The mouse flattened himself against the bench and quivered, the bracelet forgotten.
“Can either of you do anything about the cat?” Frankie murmured.
“What cat?”
Frankie tossed her head in the direction of a rusted piece of farm equipment. As we watched, a lean and hungry-looking black cat oozed out from beneath it and began stalking the bench. I realized our lives might depend on a mouse who was only seconds away from being eaten.
I rubbed my feet together frantically until one of my shoes came off. Then I hooked the shoe with my toes and tossed it. I was aiming for the cat, but the shoe did a high pop-up and hit Frankie in the head. The mouse squeaked and dodged behind a nearby coil of rope.
“Brilliant!” Frankie snarled.
The cat slunk under the bench and looked up at the spot where the mouse was hiding. I ripped off my other shoe, got a better grip on it, and launched it toward the bench. It came down in front of the cat. The cat looked at it calmly, glanced at me, and yawned.
“Puss puss puss,” said Tom in a sweet little voice, and when the cat tilted its head toward him, Tom spat something out of his mouth that looked like a bullet and caught the cat right between the eyes. The cat did a somersault, sputtered and hissed in ten different cat languages, and raced to the back of the barn.
“Not bad,” admitted Frankie, and then went into something that looked like a trance, her eyes focused on the bench in front of her.
The mouse crept cautiously from behind the rope and tippy-toed back to the bracelet. He dragged it to the edge; three charms went over the side, and their weight caused the bracelet to drop to the floor. The mouse followed it, scurrying down one of the bench legs. He looked at the bracelet like he was afraid of it. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Frankie nodding encouragement.
The mouse hunkered down inside the bracelet’s loop, took a section between two charms in his mouth, and made a few hesitant steps toward Frankie, like a tiny horse with a bit between its teeth. Frankie closed her eyes and her head lolled, as though she had fallen asleep. The mouse scurried behind the post she was tied to, disentangled himself from the bracelet, and ran for the wall of the barn like someone was chasing him with a broom.
Frankie’s head snapped up. She slid down to the base of the post, and the bracelet was in her hands.
CHAPTER 9
First Folio, Now This
You gotta be kidding,” I said.
“You never told us what your psychic talent is,” said Tom.
“You can talk to animals,” I guessed.
“I can sometimes get simple minds to think things they wouldn’t ordinarily think,” explained Frankie as the sound of a blade sawing into rope came from behind her. The bracelet jangled a bit as she cut. “It helps if the mind is already inclined to do what I want. Melvin, there, was a mouse just aching to have an adventure.”
“His name is Melvin?”
“Possibly. Why shouldn’t it be?”
“Couldn’t you control the cat?” asked Tom.
“The cat was too intent on dinner. There was no reasoning with it. Once you hit it with… whatever it was you hit it with… I was able to increase its terror enough to send it on its way.”
“What was that, exactly?” I asked Tom. “That you had in your mouth?”
It took Frankie ten minutes of concentrated sawing before the strands snapped and she could pull the rope off her wrists. She massaged her hands, and then she untied Tom and me.
“We have to get the Shagbolt back,” she declared, reattaching the bracelet to her wrist. “Otherwise, we’re stuck here!”
I tucked my phone in my pocket and handed Tom his. As I put my shoes back on, Tom searched the floor and found his quarter.
“Leave nothing!” Frankie commanded, retrieving the assassinated flashlight from its resting place and gathering up all its shattered pieces of plastic. “We have to be very careful we don’t change history. Even a broken flashlight could make a mess of future events.”
Tom picked up Frankie’s backpack. He curiously unzipped it, and a handful of resealable plastic bags fluttered out.
“Those hydrostatic hoodlums stole your sandwiches!” Tom declared, bending to pick them up.
“What?”
“The bags are empty!”
“I didn’t bring sandwiches. Those are acid-neutral archival bags. Good for protecting books.”
“They are?” Tom brightened. “Can I have one?”
“Take as many as you want. Just so long as you leave me two.”
“I only need one,” Tom said gratefully.
I eased the barn door open an inch and looked out. There was no one around, and the three of us slipped into late-afternoon sun.
From outside, the barn had a visible lean to it, like it might fall over at any moment. Not too far away was the stone foundation and half-toppled chimney of a house that had apparently burned down. Killbreath had mentioned a place called the Hole. That pretty well described it.
“If slave catching is a legal profession,” I asked no one in particular, “why do these guys need a hideout?”
“Because Ohio is the Grand Central Station of the Underground Railroad,” Tom answered. “There are enough abolitionists around who want to help escaped slaves get safely north to Canada that Killbreath and his boys could find themselves in a real fight if they did what they’re doing openly.”