Imagine

by Jill Barnett

  “Get up,” was all the guard said. “Follow me.”

  Hank stumbled to his feet. They felt as numb as he did. He walked down the small hallway to the outer cell. The guard unlocked the door and slid it open, then waited for him to pass through.

  Another guard waited on the other side. The man just turned and walked a few feet. He opened a door to a room Hank hadn’t seen before. He tensed. He looked at the guard holding the door. Neither said anything. Hank slowly went inside.

  He saw his father-in-law across the room. The older man turned and just looked at Hank for a moment, then crossed the room and handed him a telegram.

  Hank’s hand shook as he reached for it.

  This was it.

  He took it and stared down at it, unable to focus for a second.

  To: The California State Justice Department, San Francisco, California

  From: Monsieur Guy De Partain, Laison de Justice, Papeete, Tahiti

  Due to new information and a confession from Jean Laroche, brother of victim Henri Laroche, all charges against United States citizen Henry James Wyatt were dismissed on December 5, 1896, three days before he escaped from Leper’s Gate Penal Colony, Dolphin Island. No further action is needed.

  Hank read it again, then looked at Harlan. “This is true?”

  “Yes.”

  “Before I escaped?” Hank stared at the telegram again, and the words were blurring. He swallowed hard and drove a hand through his hair and stood there, unable to move because he couldn’t believe it.

  “You’re free, son.” Harlan slid his hand over Hank’s hunched shoulders.

  Hank nodded, because his throat was too tight to speak.

  “Your family’s waiting.” He pointed to another door. Hank moved toward it, half afraid the door would be locked.

  But it wasn’t. He jerked it open.

  There was a long, dark hallway. He ran down it, then turned and ran down another hallway, running faster than a forty-year-old ex-ballplayer should have been able to run. Then he saw the open doorway filled with sunlight.

  He ran faster than Smitty ever could, down the hall and out the door. Into the daylight. He stopped and blinked for a second, blinded by the light.

  And he saw them. Just their silhouettes—a tall woman with a toddler on her hip, a young girl with cockeyed braids, and a small boy who wore a baseball cap backward.

  And Hank Wyatt, the man who had run away from almost everything for forty years, ran like hell toward the one thing he believed in. His family.

  Somewhere in the Pacific Ocean

  The bottle was as old as time.

  It floated on the sea, bobbing along as if it were flotsam instead of intricately carved silver. The ornate stopper caught flashes of bright sunlight, which, to the gulls overhead, made the shimmering bottle look like a plump silver herring, a prize for the plucking.

  Many a sea bird swooped down only to quickly dart back like reflections into the sky when their bills hit not the soft flesh of glimmering fish scales, but instead hard metal . . . and jewels.

  For there, on that old silver genie bottle, shimmering in the sunlight like a hero’s medal of valor, were five perfect pearls.

  Inside, Muddy lay back against his pillows and let the current rock him along. His wishes were granted, his last duty done. But unlike before, he wasn’t worried that anyone would find the bottle. Muddy wasn’t wishing for an innocent of heart who believed in that which they had never seen or known. He had found his dreamers.

  He smiled and looked around the cluttered interior of his bottle. It wasn’t quite as cluttered anymore. This time, he’d given away more than he’d brought back.

  He looked at his leather shoes and clicked the heels together. No bells on the toes. He laughed, then turned and reached for something more valuable to him than all the inventions he’d ever gathered or all the jewels on his bottle.

  A photograph of a family sitting on the bright sunlit beach.

  New Recreation Park, San Francisco, California, 1908

  It was a bright fall day in the two-year-old ballpark. The earthquake had destroyed the old park and much of the city. But San Francisco recovered quickly, rebuilding on the sheer tenacity and spirit of her people, a large number of whom were in the stands, there to see their team, the San Francisco Seals, play Portland.

  Hank Wyatt drove his hand through his hair and paced in front of the Seals’ player box. He stopped, and looked at the baseball team he had owned and managed for the last ten years.

  The team looked back at him. Every last one of them had their hats on backward. For luck.

  They were down five to eight in the last game of the regular season. Whoever won the game would be the champion of the Pacific Coast League and would go on to play the winner of the Central League.

  Hank looked at the lineup and swore.

  His worst player, Tabasco Reynolds, walked up to bat. The kid hadn’t had a hit in two years. It was two out. The bases were loaded. Hank couldn’t watch this.

  He turned his gaze up into the stands.

  His son Ted—Theodore—was waving at him. Hank frowned, and Ted turned his cap around a couple of times and pointed at Hank. Hank looked up and saw the brim of his hat. A second later he flicked the hat around, and Ted gave him a thumbs-up.

  He was a good kid who worked out with the team in the summer and had just started Stanford that fall. But to this day, he wouldn’t tell them what that last wish was.

  Hank’s gaze shifted to his wife, the attorney. She hadn’t changed much in twelve years. A few gray hairs, a couple of laugh lines. She was one of the city’s most respected attorneys, but to him, she was still the best-looking woman he’d ever laid eyes on.

  She’d softened in all the right places and was a little fuller in the hips after the birth of three kids. Which was all right by him. It just gave him a little more to grip late at night.

  Smitty had worked hard the last year and a half, helping to right the wrongs in the aftermath of the earthquake. They had been lucky and hadn’t lost their home. Too many others had. And Hank knew his wife would work until every last person got a fair shake.

  His gaze went to his children all sitting in the family box. Lydia sat on the end, smiling and waving, all grown up. She’d graduated from Stanford last June. The cockeyed braids were gone, and when he teased her about them, she told him, “Doctors don’t wear braids, Dad.”

  Annabelle was tossing peanuts in the air and catching them with her mouth just the way he’d taught her. She was a happy girl who always had a smile and hug for anyone, even if she still slipped in a few of Hank’s swear words.

  Johnny and Jake were brothers, kids from the street that they’d found sleeping in a trash bin behind Smitty’s office one winter morning some eight years ago. And Cora was seven, an orphan from the moment she was born. A day later she had a family.

  Billy, Dennis, and Lucy. Well, Smitty had given him those kids, and they were as smart as their mother and just as argumentative.

  Hank grinned. He and Smitty had a helluva good time making them. Not a day went by that he didn’t thank God and fate and even an annoying genie for what he had.

  Nine kids—enough for his own ball team. And every last one of them had managed to remind him that he still didn’t understand them.

  The loud crack of the bat split the air. The crowd roared, and Hank turned.

  He watched the ball fly over the fence with a sense of stunned relief. His gaze shot back to the stands, where Smitty was cheering, waving, and jiggling in all the right places.

  He watched her for a moment because he still had to after all these years. Finally, he turned with a smile and stuck his hands in his pockets as he walked out to the field where the players were, where pennants were waving, and balls and caps were flying. But he stopped for just a moment and looked back at the crowd, his gaze resting on his family.

  And Hank Wyatt knew he had everything.

  Jill Barnett, Imagine