Gould wasn’t too happy about it. “’Lo, Fowler,” he’d said, his gravelly voice amiable at first. We shook hands. I said I’d heard that he was the only native Cincinnatian on the nine. He beamed. Then Andy told him what Harry wanted—and he nearly crushed my hand. As if the grip weren’t enough, his fingers seemed coated with iron.
“You put something on those things?” I asked, prying myself loose.
“Benzoin.”
“Charlie’s our human bushel basket,” Andy said. “Holds any ball he can reach.”
“I saw him today.”
Gould’s pomaded mustache bristled. “Harry’s lookin’ for a change player?” He sized me up. At six three, I had him by a couple of inches.
“Don’t have a clue,” I said.
Gould’s gray eyes were set a fraction too close, giving him a perpetually worried look. Flaxen ringlets curled over his temples, and below his curved blond mustache was an elongated Vandyke. He stood with military stiffness, frowning. With obvious reluctance he handed over his spare uniform. I’d have empathized with him if my hand weren’t still smarting.
Andy introduced me to the other two players I hadn’t met. Cal McVey, the youngest Stocking at nineteen, glanced up and mumbled, “Hi’dy.” His short-cropped sandy hair complemented long-lashed brown eyes and peach-fuzzed cheeks. His father made pianos in Indianapolis, where young Mac’s baseball skills had first caught Harry’s attention. Andy claimed Mac could coax music out of anything. He seemed a nice, shy kid, but I wouldn’t have wanted to wrestle him: his torso looked powerful; rolled-up sleeves revealed massive forearms. He and Gould—and Sweasy on a smaller scale—formed the club’s muscle contingent.
The final Stocking was Doug Allison, the catcher I had marveled at during the game. Up close he looked like a hayseed, with coarse auburn hair standing up in cowlicks. He had apple cheeks, a lopsided grin, and nearly as many freckles as Andy. I stuck out my hand.
“Cain’t just now,” he said in a high nasal twang, shaking his head mournfully. He held a hand up. The fingers were gnarled, the joints huge and red, the palms swollen purple.
“Don’t you ever wear a mitt?” I said.
“To practice sometimes lately,” he replied, a bit shamefacedly, “Here, could you pass over that arnica?”
Andy handed him a bottle of bitter-smelling yellow oil. I watched in fascination as Allison peeled off his shirt and oozed the stuff over a multicolored mass of welts and bruises covering his chest and arms.
“Ouch,” he said.
Ouch indeed, I thought.
Framed in the windows of our parlor car, the sun was an amber ball plunging behind low, wheat-covered hills as we rolled out of Rochester on the New York Central. I sat playing whist, quite the dandy in my new pleated frock coat and ruffle-front silk shirt with green stripes—the latter a gift from Brainard. A high starched collar squeezed my neck. Knee-cramping stirrups stretched from tapered trouser bottoms under my insteps.
“Deuce of trumps’ll do,” Sweasy chortled, slapping down a card. “You boys don’t win much.”
In two hours’ time and half the distance to Syracuse, I’d lost every bid I attempted. Waterman, my partner, an intense competitor, shuffled the deck with a sharp crackle. “I’d have a thought before studyin’ the tiger with Fowler in some faro joint,” he said sourly.
“Come again?” I said.
Waterman grunted.
“Freddy thinks you’d be advised not to visit a gaming house,” Sweasy translated, grinning maliciously. “Leastways, not with him.”
A few seats ahead, the rookie McVey blew “Camptown Races” on a harmonica. Andy was right, he was pretty good. Next to him, George Wright started to sing, off-key.
“Appears you owe us four thousand dollars,” Brainard said, studying the point totals.
“Add it to our bill,” I said.
Sweasy studied me. “As a card operator you’re a piece of work.”
“Piece of something,” Waterman muttered.
I yawned and smiled. Since my encounter with Le Caron they’d begun to include me in their “sizzling.” A tacit form of acceptance—except from Sweasy, whose barbs verged on outright insults.
George finished warbling and flashed his toothy grin. Earlier I’d heard Millar ask him about his game-ending play. George just shrugged and said, “I could always throw with either arm.”
The younger Wright was something. Supremely self-confident, he was, at age twenty-two, probably the highest-paid player in the nation. Even when his cocksureness bordered on arrogance, it was impossible not to like him. How easily things came to a select few, I reflected. Things maddeningly beyond the reach of the rest of us. There was a time when I’d have given anything to possess half the raw talent of a George Wright. I’d had to work my ass off to be just a notch above average. Some boyhood dreams die hard. Maybe I still wanted to be a baseball hero.
Millar appeared among us. “Asa? Mr. Champion asks you to lead off the singing.”
Brainard rolled his eyes.
“He requests his favorite.”
“I guessed it,” said Brainard. “Sent his messenger boy to whistle me up like a low hound.”
“Woof, woof!” barked Sweasy.
Brainard stood in the aisle beside McVey and sang “The Man on the Flying Trapeze.” I realized his was the tenor voice I’d heard before. The stylish pitcher was a man of several talents.
“That song new?” I asked Sweasy.
He nodded. “Just come out last year. Sheet music’s selling like johnnycakes—in the hundreds of thousands.”
I couldn’t resist. “Climbing to solid platinum?”
Sweasy blinked and scowled. “How’s that?”
“Never mind.” I felt perverse satisfaction.
Most of the Stockings, aside from Brainard and Andy, proved to be wretched vocalists. But that didn’t stop them from harmonizing fiercely on choruses and turning the whole thing into a sort of competition.
Brainard finished and pointed to Gould, who rose with ramrod stiffness and, to my astonishment, affected a Chinese accent and sang a song in pidgin, the chorus of which began, “Oh ching chong opium, taffy on a stick . . .”
“Ever hear the like?” Andy asked from across the aisle.
“Never,” I replied.
Things did not improve. Doug Allison twanged out a racist minstrel piece called “Nancy Fat,” then Sweasy hissed his way through “The Girl That Keeps the Peanut Stand,” distorting maudlin lyrics with suggestive winks and leers. Harry then sang “Captain Jinks” in a pleasant baritone; I finally knew the words to a chorus. Harry then pointed to Andy.
“The Emerald Isle!” called Dick Hurley. “A hundred verses of ‘The Blarney Rose’!”
Andy laughed, shook his head, and sang, Jersey accents giving way to a broad, comical brogue.
“Mike Finnigan, a patriot,
He swore that he would raise
A mighty corps of musketeers,
That all the world would daze.
At the chorus, Mac, Sweasy, and Hurley stood up and they all joined arms.
“To see us march as stiff as starch
And listen to the cheers.
Fairer boys yez niver saw
Than Finnigans Musketeers.”
I noticed that not all of the Stockings were joining in with equal enthusiasm. “Those guys always stand up like that?” I asked Waterman.
“Micks, the lot,” he said dryly. “Andy was born in County Cavan.”
“That so?” I said, and suppressed a yawn. The day was catching up with me. The kerosene globes hissed faintly overhead, swaying beneath the vaulted enameled ceiling, splashing pools of yellow on walnut-paneled walls and burgundy seats. Rhythmical clacking underlay all sound. Next to my head rattled a steamy window. The darkness outside seemed remote. The voices comforted me. I realized that nobody here had heard a radio or recording. Music came to them directly, only from others. Why didn’t people sing together in my time?
“Sam’s my pick!”
My eyes jerked open. Andy was pointing at me. “No,” I said. “I can’t.” They shouted me down. I stood, my mind a blank.
“Something from the West,” prompted Andy.
I stood dumbly next to McVey and finally blurted out the first song that came to mind:
“From this valley they say you are going;
We will miss your bright eyes and sweet smile. . . .”
I beckoned for them to join, but they didn’t. When I reached the chorus they were leaning forward, listening intently.
“Come and sit by my side if you love me,
Do not hasten to bid me adieu,
But remember the Red River Valley
And the boy that has loved you so true.”
There was silence—then ringing applause. “More!” yelled Andy. Others echoed him. They seemed to mean it.
“But that’s all I know.”
They insisted that I sing it again. McVey played softly behind me, and they sang harmony on the chorus.
“That’s quite lovely,” Champion murmured, astonishing me by dabbing at his eyes with a lace-edged handkerchief. “Won’t you give us just one more Western tune?”
I racked my brain. “Okay, but this time one we all know,”
“Oh give me a home where the buffalo roam,
Where the deer and the antelope play . . .”
Again they were silent. In the hush that followed, Andy remarked that it was the noblest song he’d ever heard.
“You warble like a bullfrog in heat,” Brainard said, leaning in close as I sat down. “But those’re prize ballads. We’d make a pile if we printed ’em.”
I looked to see if he was joking. He wasn’t. “But I didn’t write them.”
“Who did?”
“Haven’t the foggiest.”
“How’d you come by ’em?”
“They’ve been around for—” I paused. “Well, they’re not original with me.”
“They are hereabouts.” He examined the gold rings on his fingers. “How you calculate the odds of their bein’ entered with the government?”
“Copyrighted? I suppose if nobody’s heard them, they aren’t . . . yet.”
He looked at me. “There’s our chance.”
He was entirely serious. “I could use some cash,” I said. “But stealing songs isn’t my idea of how to get it.”
“Sure as sin somebody’s gonna cash ’em in. Why not us? Besides, how’s it stealin’ if nobody’s laid claim?”
I didn’t have a ready answer. Viewed from his standpoint, the future glittered like a treasure vault. By tapping my foreknowledge, wouldn’t I merely be nudging things along predestined channels? In this Darwinistic age would a Vanderbilt or Rockefeller or Carnegie hesitate in my shoes? Was the Gilded Age ready for Scott Joplin? Gershwin? The Beatles?
S. C. Fowler, Sheet Music Czar.
It had a certain ring.
But actually, wouldn’t I be changing the past instead of merely retracing it?
Then a more bizarre idea occurred to me: What if I’d passed this way before? What if I’d already created the songs myself—and possessed no recollection of doing it?
Time as overlapping circles, then, not a line.
“You thinking about it?” Brainard demanded.
“I most certainly am.”
“And . . .?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Hell, Sam, it couldn’t be simpler.” He snorted. “You’re thinkin’ too damn hard.”
Maybe he had a point. Things were already complicated enough.
We reached Syracuse after midnight. The air was clear and cold, the dark sky strewn with pale blue stars. Inside our hotel on Clinton Square the feather beds were thick and soft. I sank into mine, drew up the quilt (Andy called it a “bedrug”), and said good night.
“Your first day awake with us was some sockdolager,” Andy said. “You handled them sharps slick as grease. I’ve heard a thing or two about McDermott. He’s a rough customer. Lucky for us you were along.”
I was exhausted but pleased. Some sockdolager indeed. God, what a day. Just before plummeting into sleep I wondered if I would wake up in the twentieth century. I suspected not. Did I want to?
Just then I couldn’t have said.
Saturday, June 5, exploded into my consciousness. A thundering crash sent us bounding from bed. Naked, shivering in the morning chill, we peered from our window at a chaotic scene. A four-horse brewer’s wagon had smashed into a butcher’s cart, overturning both vehicles. Carcasses from the cart lay strewn in grisly lumps. Horses screamed and struggled in their traces as the drivers cursed. Some beer barrels had burst on impact; others rumbled cavernously over the cobblestones.
Andy turned away. “Wisht we hadn’t looked. Seein’ empty barrels on a beer wagon always brings good luck, but this here . . .”
I yawned and scratched. “You believe in that stuff?”
He shrugged. “Like the tinker said of the wee folk, you don’t have to believe in ’em to know they’re there.”
Gray skies and cloudbursts had pursued us. Later that morning, between showers, Andy and I boarded a mule-drawn omnibus with Cal McVey, the muscular rookie, and the Wrights. We headed up Salina Street. Bells on the mules’ collars jingled cheerily as we clopped through the gloom toward the city’s northern edge.
George displayed stereopticon cards he’d purchased at the hotel. They pictured several of the mineral springs that lent Syracuse the nickname Salt City. George said he collected the views everywhere he traveled. I realized suddenly that picture postcards didn’t yet exist.
As we rode I noted how different George Wright was from his older brother: cocky and gregarious where Harry was self-effacing, even shy; wisecracking where Harry was sober. There was no strong physical resemblance either. George’s shock of dark curls and large hooked nose contrasted with Harry’s lighter coloring and regular features. Though twelve years younger, George stood nearly an inch taller and weighed ten pounds more. What they shared, I decided, was a quality of alert tolerance in their eyes and unmistakable authority in their manner. Harry was more a leader, but George too had powerful presence. I’d learned from Andy that their father was the resident professional at a posh Staten Island cricket club. He had coached Harry as a boy, who in turn coached George. The brothers were true rarities in America—second-generation pro athletes.
At a commercial spa near Onondaga Lake, we soaked ourselves in hot, salty baths for five cents apiece. I stood shoulder-deep in the steaming water, face dripping, muscles relaxing.
McVey stared at my cheek when I removed the soaked bandage. “That don’t appear to be healing normal.”
“Afraid you’re right, Mac.” I winced at the sting of salt. That morning the gash had shown yellow and purple on its edges, dark pink in the center. The translucent scab that had formed didn’t seem to be thickening. Had exotic nineteenth-century microorganisms infiltrated my system? If so, I was in trouble. Antibiotics were over fifty years away.
The sky was clearing when we returned to the hotel. It looked like the game would be played, though no word had come from our opponents, Syracuse’s Central City club. Concerned, Harry and Champion went to investigate. I left Andy to his nap and tagged along. So did Millar. We climbed into in a small hackney coach that Champion flagged.
“Where’s the field?” I asked.
“Fairgrounds,” Harry replied.
Arriving, we saw that there’d been a major foul-up. Grass waved knee high in the outfield. Sections of the fence had collapsed. A pigeon shoot was in progress. Nobody knew of a baseball game.
Champion’s face darkened. From Millar I’d learned he was a formidable trial lawyer in Cincinnati. Just then he looked like he wanted to indict the whole city.
“I’ll conduct a practice,” Harry said with forced heartiness. “It’ll sharpen our mettle for Troy.”
“Won’t sharpen our finances,” Champion said.
Harry turned to me. “Dick Hurley’s our single replacement. Should misfortune strike in Troy, Fowler, we may need help.” He smiled grimly. “Against the Haymakers, injuries aren’t exactly rare. We’ll see your goods this afternoon.”
Great, I thought. Cannon fodder. How nice to be wanted. But I felt a flicker of excitement. Rec-league softball had been a tame substitute in recent years. Baseball, the real game, carried a quotient of fear. I’d almost forgotten that.
Hours later, in baggy sweats and calfskin shoes borrowed from Mac, I tramped around the damp practice lot, a long, weed-stubbled expanse sandwiched between a smelly gypsum plant and a fenced-off cow pasture. Dwindling energy had narrowed my fears to a single focus: avoid total humiliation.
“You’re gettin’ it back,” said Andy, standing on first base beside me. A low throw from Waterman had just glanced off my fingers. “It’s easy to tell you’ve played.”
“Right,” I muttered. My hands throbbed. My legs were dead. My throwing arm ached when I raised it. “If I survive.”
In Captain Harry’s workout, each regular played his normal position except when hitting. Hurley and I worked our way around filling vacant spots. At the plate everybody got a dozen swings and ran out the last hit. Harry called situations—“runner on second, no outs”—and we played accordingly.
Very little escaped Harry Wright. He halted practice frequently to give pointers on individual plays. If he suspected somebody of slacking, he’d comment, “You need to show a little ginger.” That was all. Andy claimed that Harry had never been heard to utter even the mildest profanity. I tried to imagine it in a twentieth-century manager.
Harry was not impressed when I showed off by throwing overhand curves and knucklers in warm-ups. In fact, he put an emphatic end to it when Andy and George wanted to learn. But he seemed to appreciate the fact that I knew my way around a ball field. For my part, I quickly realized that the Stockings were damned good—by far the best I’d ever been on a diamond with.
Harry drilled us endlessly on defensive covers and backups. His system was as complex as any I’d experienced. Basically, he employed two field captains: Allison flashed hand signals to position the basemen, while Harry, in center, directed outfield traffic as well as brother George, who galloped far and wide from shortstop. On a high fly Harry called not only who should attempt the catch, but who should crouch nearby to pounce should the ball be muffed—a very real possibility, I soon discovered.
The ball itself, while only a fraction larger than the modern regulation version I was used to, was remarkably more elastic. Manufacturers produced two general types: lively and dead. Harry practiced with a lively ball and reserved the others for games. His idea was to increase batting confidence in practice, at the same time honing defensive skills. He was doubtless right—where his veteran players were concerned.
With me it was another story.
Harry initially stationed me in right. When the first ball came lofting out, I moved under it with reasonable assurance, reached up to take it—and was shocked when it caromed off my hands like a tennis ball and bounced six feet in front of me. I then mortified myself and put the others in stitches by kicking it out of reach as I bent for it.
“No muffins here!” Sweasy’s voice pierced the field. “We’re a first-rate nine! Catch the ball!” He looked around with a proprietary air, as if speaking for them all. Andy’s grin faded to a worried frown.
I felt my face redden. Fuck you, Sweasy.
After more embarrassments my hands began to give with the ball. I snagged several flies and uncorked low, one-bounce pegs to the plate; my arm was stronger, if more erratic, than Mac’s. I knew that my lumbering pursuit of drives in the gap impressed nobody.
When Hurley’s turn came to hit, Harry sent me to first and Gould to right. Sweasy turned his back on me and busied himself at second while George and Waterman warmed me up. Their medium-speed throws stung, but I held them and felt a glimmer of confidence.
“Striker’s in,” Harry called from the pitching box. Brainard, ill, had begged off practice, and Harry was handling all batting-practice pitching chores.
Hurley grinned and pointed his bat at me, the club’s only lefty. He sizzled several shots down the line, then deliberately chopped the ball off the turf in front of home so that it bounced high outside the first-base line. I jogged after it, wondering at the strange maneuver. Then I heard Sweasy screaming, “Fair foul!”
I didn’t realize then that a ball hitting in fair territory remained in play even if it went foul before reaching a corner base. Some strikers—Hurley and Waterman on the Stockings—were adept at knocking fair-foul balls beyond the reach of fielders; Which accounted for corner basemen often playing on top of their bags; they had a lot of foul territory to worry about.
“What kind of headwork is that!” Sweasy shrilled. “Look sharp! Get your finger outa your butt!”
I ignored him. Which increased his output. Harry shushed him and briefed me on the rule. Sweasy paced and muttered.
Hurley next topped a roller to the right. I started for it, then retreated to the bag as Sweasy moved in quickly. He short-hopped it neatly between Harry and me, pivoted leisurely—and suddenly whipped the ball with all his strength, exploding it directly at my face.
“Let it go!” yelled Harry.
Let it go! echoed a voice in my brain. I reached for it. The ball slammed through my fingers like a hurricane flattening trees. Pain mushroomed in my left hand. For an instant I stood motionless, teeth clenched. With an effort of will I retrieved the ball, rolled it to the box, and resumed my position. Only then did I glance down. The large joint of my index finger was a bulging red knob, the skin already stretched shiny and smooth.
Sweasy’s act was not lost on the Stockings, who stood silently at their positions, wondering, I supposed, how I would respond. Harry asked if I was okay. Not trusting my voice, I nodded.
Hurley’s last turn came. Harry yelled, “Swift man at first, one out.” Hurley pulled a sharp bouncer along the line. I took it cleanly on the bag and turned to throw out the imaginary runner. Sweasy dashed to cover second. I set myself, strode forward, and rifled the ball from behind my ear, catcher-style, following through with every ounce of my weight. I’d never thrown harder in my life. The ball rocketed from my fingers. I pictured it knocking Sweasy’s head off.
He saw the effort and must have grasped my intent. He looked as if he intended to wave the ball past with a bullfighter’s scorn. But he had badly misjudged. It zoomed in crotch-high, then made a wicked upward break. I saw his eyes widen. In desperation he flipped backward, catapulting as if struck by the ball’s oncoming air cushion. His cap flew off. He hung horizontally in midair. His head and shoulders crashed to the sod, knees flopping wildly behind. The ball streaked over him into the outfield.
He sprawled on his back. The impact must have taken his wind. Waterman and George were doubled over in fits of laughter. “Like a chicken!” Waterman howled, pointing. “Sweaze flew like a chicken!” The laughter spread. Even Harry smiled.
Sweasy climbed to his feet and started toward me, face scarlet. “You son of a bitch!”
I flipped him the finger.
Ignoring Harry’s shouts, he clenched his fists and charged. I set myself, arms braced, waiting. He halted only inches away, stocky body quivering.
“Go ahead,” I said, watching him carefully. “You better make it your best shot.”
Sweasy had to crane his neck to glare at me. Rage had not erased the fact that he gave away half a foot and thirty or forty pounds. He took a ragged breath. Then Harry and Allison reached us.
“That’s enough, Charles!” said Harry.
Our eyes remained locked.
“You have no quarrel.” Harry’s tone was that of a father lecturing a child. “Fowler returned what you offered full measure.”
Sweasy let out his breath slowly. “I guess it showed sand,” he muttered.
“What the hell does that mean?” I snapped.
“Settle yourself, bub!” Allison stepped before me. “He’s sayin’ you got some grit to you. Here, let’s see that.”
The hand that gripped mine looked like it had been caught in a machine. Allison’s knuckles were grotesquely enlarged, fingers flattened and bent. He probed my injured joint, grinned, said, “Welcome to the national game, bub.”
Thanks. He made it sound like I’d passed some sort of test. Great. The protruding finger hurt like hell. No way I was going to sleep that night. Did aspirin even exist? Too bad Sweasy hadn’t swung. I’d’ve enjoyed popping the little bastard.
Harry was eyeing me. “Go up and strike,” he said.
I borrowed Gould’s heavy black ash bat that he called Becky. I had trouble gripping Becky’s leather-wound handle. I had far more trouble timing Harry’s pitches—Allison called them “dewdrops”—high, arching tosses at variable speeds that seemed to bend in flight. I missed the first ones completely, fouled the next weakly.
“You’re elevating your front shoulder,” Harry said.
On my final swing I connected squarely, getting my weight behind the bat and driving the ball. Shock waves danced up my arms. Andy watched, the ball soar high over him. It hung against the sky, then plummeted into a distant cow pond.
“That was a Joe Darter,” said Allison behind the plate. “Two to one George couldn’t sock it farther.”
“Thirty cents,” Harry called, walking in.
“What?” I said. “Is he betting?”
Allison laughed. “You gotta pay for the ball.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes sirree, Mr. Champion’s orders.”
“I prefer daisy cutters to sky balls,” Harry said, stroking his goatee thoughtfully. “On the other hand, few grounds could have contained your last blow. How are you against swifter pitching?”
I shrugged modestly.
“Fisher of Troy is one of the swiftest. I wish Asa were here to test you.” He looked around. “George!”
I stepped back in and swung hard at three fastballs delivered by George Wright.
Whiff. Whiff. Whiff.
Harry clucked sympathetically.
Having foolishly admitted catching in the past, I agreed to a checkout behind the plate, first requesting a glove and mask. I had to describe the latter.
“Let me hear this square, bub.” Allison cocked his head and grinned. “You want your face inside a bird cage?”
“Okay, forget it,” I said hurriedly as he turned to broadcast it to the others. “But I’ve got to have a mitt.”
“I’d understand better if Asa were tossing.” Harry shook his head, but sent the freckle-faced catcher to fetch his glove.
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when Allison returned. The “glove” he’d confessed to using with such embarrassment was exactly that—a kid-leather glove with the fingers cut off, no thicker than a cyclist’s.
I put it on silently, a matter of principle. Allison proceeded to render a clinic in state-of-the-art catching, 1869-style: how to anticipate the spin on Harry’s twisters when fielding them on the bounce far behind the plate; how to move up close (too damned close, with no protective gear) behind the striker with men on base; how to cup my fingers to minimize sprains and breaks, and to shield my face and neck with my forearms. Allison accepted my squatting position when I showed him I could rise and snap throws off quickly. My arm matched his, but my reflexes were vastly slower. Foul tips whizzed past me before I could begin to react. With visions of my face being caved in, I wasn’t unhappy when Harry finally called an end.
“You better hope everybody stays healthy,” I said. “I’m a wreck.”
“Your instincts are passable,” he said, as gravely as a doctor. “You manifest a great deal of training. Some of your techniques—well, I’ve never seen their like.” He paused. “But, Fowler, you’ve let yourself deteriorate. Slow in the field, tender-handed as a baseman, ill-timed at striking—”
“You always mince words this way, Harry?”
“—but you’ll do in a pinch.”
“Look, I never said I was . . . what?”
“You don’t budge when threatened.” He gave me a look I couldn’t read. “That could prove of worth.”
A suspicion struck. “Did you set Sweasy on me?”
“Not my style.” He sounded weary. “Sometimes Charles gets his back up like a cat.”
“What’s his problem with me?”
“Andy, most likely.” He shrugged; dismissal. “The fact is, he tried to back you down but couldn’t. We’ll need that sort of pluck against the Haymakers on Monday.”
“They’re a rough crowd?”
“You’ll see.”
“Where’d you learn the game?” Andy asked later. “What clubs you been on?”
“High school,” I answered. “A little my first year at college.” I’d nearly said Berkeley.
“You went through all the grades? Course I figured you’d know your letters tip-top, bein’ a newspaperman, but college . . .” His voice trailed off in wonderment.
“Didn’t you finish high school?”
“Hell, Sam, I didn’t even start. Figured I was lucky to pile up six years. So’d my family.” He laughed. “Nobody on the nine’s got more, ’cept Harry and George with eight—and Hurley, of course. Say, when I send off letters will you polish ’em?”
“Sure.”
“What college did you take your course at?”
I rubbed my head as though trying to recall. Berkeley probably didn’t even exist yet. “Yale?” I said tentatively.
“Why, they field crack nines at Yale College!” Excitement brightened his voice. “No wonder you’re up on so many points of the game.”
“Now wait, I’m not sure,” I cautioned.
“Must be, though.” He beamed proudly at me. “Sam Fowler of Yale. Ain’t that a dinger?”
“It certainly is.”
We left Syracuse at midnight, bound for Troy in a close-packed sleeping car. I nursed my finger with arnica and frequent sips from a tall bottle of Mrs. Sloan’s Soothing Sirup. Soothing indeed! The patent medicine blended laudanum—tincture of opium—with a 30 percent alcohol solution; it sent an aggressive glow from my belly to outlying regions. If I couldn’t sleep with this stuff, forget it.
Andy had humored me—I was positive he regarded my injury as trivial—by helping me find a druggist. While he investigated “Proprietary Remedies,” I roamed the rest of the store, boggling at the weirdest bottles, jars, and vials I’d ever seen.
I bent to examine labels, fascinated. Most left specific ingredients to the imagination, but were hardly bashful about promising results. Sufferers of “rheumatism, contracted cords, asthma, deafness, neuralgia, sore throat, piles, and afflictions of the spine” would be “permanently cured” with Dr. Park’s Macedonian Oil—an amazing bargain at fifty cents. Another boasted: “People who vomit at the very thought of pills actually relish Minerva’s Liver and Stomach Lozenges,” which “act like a charm in dyspepsia, bowel complaints, liver diseases, and general debility.” I was startled to see bottles of something called Burnett’s Cocoaine. They turned out to contain “the Best and Cheapest Hairdressing in the World.”
Andy beckoned me to the cash boy’s station. Cash registers didn’t exist; businesses hired kids to spirit payments off to secret niches where cashiers made change. As I pulled out my wallet, my eye fastened on a card tacked to the counter. In Italianate script it read:
CLAIRVOYANT AND PHYSICIAN
Mme Clara Antonia
Business and Medical Clairvoyant
A correct diagnosis given of all diseases, without one question asked of the patient. Consultation in English, French, and German, and has her diploma. Spiritual guidance in sickness and health.
Jesus, I thought, I wouldn’t want medical problems in this century.
“What’re you studyin’?” Andy said.
I showed him. His lips slowly formed the words. “I know her,” he said. “Clara Antonia lectures all around the country. My mother turns out, gives her money.”
“Your mother? Why?”
“You’d say it was like believing in the wee folk,” he said. “An’ you don’t hold with that, remember?”
He was teasing, I think.
Andy stirred in the berth below. I gazed out the window as we churned through the dark city. Unaccountably, the New York Central had put tracks in Syracuse at street level; now we rolled along a main thoroughfare. I stared up at occasional glowing windows that glided by like ornaments in the night. Who lived behind those curtains? Why weren’t they asleep? I pictured Hope and Susy in the illuminated rooms, imagining that I had just turned on the light to look down at their sweet slumbering faces. Oh, lord.
Somewhere inside my drug-induced torpor lay a terrible ache, a void. I desperately missed the world I had left. What was I doing here?
The loneliness of the night seemed limitless. I imagined a woman’s softness touching me, comforting me. A woman to love. I felt even sorrier for myself. Miles farther on into the darkness and into the soporific charms of Mrs. Sloan’s Soothing Sirup, I finally stopped feeling anything.