Timely hits by Harry, Waterman, and Hurley sparked a prolonged rally that saw us score nine runs. One out still to go in the bottom of the seventh, nine runs in, and we’d retaken the lead, 32-29.
Andy nudged me. “You’re the striker, Sam. Lay into it.”
Trying to hide my nervousness, I popped a wad of “gum” in my mouth. Earlier I’d tried to buy chewing gum only to learn that it didn’t exist. All I’d found was a commercially sold blend of spruce gum and chicle that tasted like tree sap. Now I chewed furiously.
At the plate I dug in, waved Gould’s black Becky menacingly, and took a deep breath. Fisher regarded me with no visible affection. Craver spat at my shoes. “Here’s a prime-sized gump,” he growled. “He’ll buy the rabbit, Cherokee.”
I tried to concentrate on Fisher. Gump? Rabbit?
“You callin’ it?” asked the ump.
Shit, I’d forgotten. “Low.”
I scarcely saw the ball as it darted from an upsweep of hand, arm, and shoulder; it flashed suddenly in the sunlight like a rippling fish. I’d intended to look at one. Instead I swung—and missed by a foot.
Craver laughed scornfully. “Give the gump another, he’s narrow gauge.”
I worked my gum, trying to concentrate. Fisher’s speed was overwhelming. Could I get around on him? I checked the defense and saw Mart King playing deep at third base. Hmmm . . .
As Fisher wound I squared around and slid my right hand up the bat, cradling it with thumb and forefinger, extending it like an offering. The ball’s sharp impact drove it back against the cushion of my palm. The ball trickled down the third-base line.
I dug for first, sure that I could beat it out. Awareness quickly came that I was the only one moving. Even the Stocking base runners stood staring at the ball as it died halfway to third. Then hell broke loose again as the Haymakers stormed the field, claiming I was out.
“What’s wrong?” I asked Harry as he ran past. “That was a perfect bunt.”
“Is that what you call it?”
I realized then that not only had I executed a bunt, I’d invented it.
The ump finally compromised, agreeing to count it a strike. The afternoon’s cumulative strain showed on Harry’s face. “That was a singular maneuver,” he told me. “Don’t ever use it again.”
Craver shared a number of personal observations with me as I stepped in again. Least offensive was his reference to me as a “milk boy.” He seemed to harbor doubts about my masculinity.
“Chill out, Godzilla,” I suggested. It shut him up temporarily.
I swung hard at the next pitch, but the result was a slow bouncer taken easily by the first baseman. I kicked a rock halfway across the diamond. Why couldn’t it have been storybook? Knock the ball halfway out of the galaxy, get carried off the field by my teammates, tumble into bed with that sensational blonde.
At our bench I secured the sponge under my belt, pulled Allison’s glove from my pocket, and started for my position.
Andy grabbed my arm. “Sam, you’re not truly gonna use that!”
“The glove?” I said. “Sure, why not?”
“Oh, lord.”
I understood moments later. The Haymakers pointed and guffawed, a reaction which spread through the crowd. Flynn minced in dainty circles, fitting his hand into an imaginary glove. Craver roared, “First the milksop—what’d he call it?—bunts the ball. Now he’s turned out like some Nancy boy with his little pinkies in a . . . glove! ” It was too much for them; several actually rolled on the ground.
I went out to the box to check signals with Brainard. It didn’t take long. One finger for the “chain lightning,” two for the “snake ball” delivered with surreptitious lateral spin. It was so noisy that we could scarcely hear one another. The jibes were taking a decided tone:
“WHERE’S YOUR BONNET, MARY?”
“AIN’T YOU THE SIZABLE PEACH!”
Brainard shook his head in disgust. “These country reubens’re even lower than I thought.”
“What are they saying, that I’m gay?”
He looked at me incredulously. “I guess not!”
I realized my mistake. “You know, homosexual . . . queer?”
To my surprise his cheeks turned hot pink. A topic clearly beyond discussion.
“CUT THE JAW MUSIC, GIRLS!” Craver’s voice boomed, bringing waves of laughter.
At first I was amused, thinking that in more ways than one I’d come a long way backward from San Francisco of the 1980s. But as it continued for long minutes, my anger began to rise. I resisted an urge to raise my offending glove hand and flip off the entire place. But it would only stir them more. As Harry’d said, why descend to their level?
Tension built sharply in the eighth. Down by three, the Haymakers knew time was running short. When Flynn led off with the predictable walk, every soul in the park knew he would challenge me with his speed: stealing second, he would put himself in scoring position and out of double-play danger. Harry came in for a consultation. We’d try to discourage their running game by showcasing my arm at once. Harry would play shallow in center—a calculated risk with Craver up—to provide a backup in case I overthrew.
The powerful catcher stepped in, waggling his ass and digging his spikes deep. I crouched behind the plate, keeping a wary eye on Flynn on first.
“Don’t get too near, sissy boy,” Craver warned in falsetto. From the side, where the ump stood, came a muffled laugh. I focused on my tasks in the next seconds.
As Harry had instructed, Brainard’s first pitch zoomed well outside. I stepped out for it quickly. We’d guessed right: Flynn was off, sprinting for second. Craver threw his bat to distract me. It missed the ball, which smacked into my hands only an instant before Craver’s shoulder bumped me. I swore and shoved past him, set my feet, and threw to second. Flynn slid headfirst. The ball came low and hard—a hell of a throw, everything considered—and Sweasy plunged it savagely into the small of Flynn’s back.
The ump, dashing out near the pitching box, spread his arms. “Safe!”
Flynn bounced up, face contorted, hair flying, and said something to Sweasy, who sprang at him; they tumbled to the turf, clawing like cats.
My shoulder suddenly felt as if a boulder had fallen on it. Bull Craver spun me around, his livid face inches from mine. “You goddamn sissy bastard,” he sputtered, spit flying into my face. “You push me like that, you’ll—”
I didn’t wait for the rest, but thrust my arms out, jolting the heels of my hands against his chest. He stumbled backward. With a high incredulous howl he communicated the joy he’d have in dismantling me. He gathered himself to leap, only to be enfolded in the burly arms of Mart King.
“Not now, Will!” King yelled. “After the match!”
“I’ll bury ’im!”
“Grand—but after!”
While I waited for Craver to stop foaming I took in the formidable torso, the hamlike fists, the brutal face.
“I’m going to say this once.” I put all the authority I could muster into my voice. “I’ve been in the ring. I know how to fight. If you force me to prove it, you’re going to get hurt.”
They both stared at me. “What ring?” said King.
“In college.”
“College!” Craver snorted. “You milk-sucking whoreson! Soon’s we whip you tit suckers, I’ll cave your goddamn homely face in.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
“You’ll wish you’d hid in a shithole.”
“You lay a hand on any of us,” I told him, “I’m gonna knock your fucking head off.”
It felt delicious to say it.
Sweasy and Flynn had been separated and were glowering at each other near second base. Craver picked up his bat and gave me one more homicidal stare. I set up on the inside, hoping Brainard’s fastball would drive him off the plate. But Craver was not to be intimidated; whipping his bat with vicious precision, he powered a drive just inside third that Hurley, in left, played perfectly, holding him to a single. Flynn scored. The Haymakers trailed by only two.
Steve King popped up for the first out. The next hitter grounded to Sweasy, who flipped to George at second. Craver bore down on him. George vaulted over the searching spikes and sidearmed the ball to Gould. Double play! We’d held them off. I jogged from the diamond, thinking I hadn’t done badly. Now maybe we could cushion our slim lead and salt the contest away.
It didn’t happen. Frenzied eruptions from the crowd followed each of our meager offensive thrusts: Harry down on an infield trickier; Hurley a foul bound to Craver; Brainard an easy fly to Flynn.
One, two, three. How they loved it!
Stockings 32, Haymakers 30.
I could feel the game’s momentum swinging to them. All of us felt it. We took the field grimly in the ninth, knowing we had to hold them.
Brainard stared at the ball for a long moment and then called us to his box. Picking at the stitches, he said, “They switched the damn ball on us!”
Harry examined it, then summoned the ump. Brainard figured they’d made the switch in the eighth, pitching a dead ball to us while removing the original ball’s cover and inserting a Bounding Rock, then restitching it in time for their ups. If Brainard hadn’t spotted shiny threads on the discolored surface, it would have worked.
The Haymakers denied everything. A confusion of arguments ensued, each club claiming a forfeit on the grounds of unsporting conduct. The crowd stamped and whistled and booed. Finally a new ball was agreed upon and play resumed.
To our dismay their leadoff man—in this case the speed-burning Bellan—again walked on four pitches. Brainard stalked around the box angrily. I went out to steady him. He had almost nothing on his pitches now.
“How do you feel?” I asked.
“Like a double play!” he snapped. “Get the hell out of here!”
Fisher fouled off several pitches and finally sent one spinning high behind the plate. I wheeled and dug hard, saw the ball bounce far ahead, dove anyway, and before it bounced again managed to thrust my gloved hand—let them savor it!—between the ball and the grass; my fingers clutched it for the out. Remembering the stupid foul rule, I threw quickly and nearly doubled Bellan off before he could dive back to first.
“That’s the ginger, Sam!” yelled Harry. Praise poured in from the others.
But my satisfaction vanished on the very next pitch—a bouncer in the dirt that got by me so far that Bellan stood on third by the time I retrieved it. Shit!
The tying run strode arrogantly to the plate in the person of Clipper Flynn. He swung viciously and pulled a mammoth drive that hooked foul just before clearing the outfield carriages. Then he lined a shot that nearly tore Waterman in half. The scrappy third baseman somehow clutched the ball to his stomach for the out. We took a collective breath. Two down. One more and the game was ours. Just one more. The crowd was growing silent.
Up to the plate stalked Craver, bat twitching in his hand. His face was set in grim lines. We said nothing to each other now.
Remembering that he’d drilled a tight pitch last time, Brainard teased him with one six inches outside. Craver watched it pass. The ump issued his usual warning. We faced a tough decision: work Craver cautiously and risk putting the tying run on; or challenge him, taking our chances against his powerful bat. We decided to come at him. Brainard loosed a beauty that danced along the outside corner.
It was the wrong choice. Craver’s upper body swelled as he whipped the bat like a toy. The ball exploded and climbed the sky, soaring over the outfield. Harry and Mac turned and gave chase into the crowd of carriages and spectators. Mac shouldered desperately among them. He emerged with the ball and heaved it in with all his might to the cutoff. Craver, rounding third, abruptly retreated to the bag.
The tying run stood only ninety feet away.
Steve King strode to the plate. I called time and went to the pitching box. “What now?” Brainard demanded. I waved for Harry to join us.
“Let’s walk him,” I said.
Harry’s eyes widened. “On purpose?”
I nodded.
He shook his head. “It isn’t done.”
His propriety irritated me. “So what? Let’s do it anyway. Their shortstop’s on deck; he hasn’t hit anything all afternoon.”
Harry pulled at his whiskers, his soft eyes probing mine. “But that would set up the two-stage steal again. Even if Craver held third while the other advanced, they’d be in position to score the tying and lead runs with a single strike.”
“But Craver will try to score,” I argued. “He’s done it all day—and I want him to once more. I have a way to get that last out we need.” I told them what I had in mind. Brainard shook his head in increasing wonder.
“The rules don’t provide for it,” Harry said, his face troubled.
“Do they forbid it?” I said. “And do they provide for Craver knocking us around whenever he wants?”
After a moment Harry turned and jogged toward his position.
“That means we’re on our own.” A smile glinted in Brainard’s eyes. “I say let’s give ’em a stir, Sam.”
We walked King on four lobs far outside the striker’s box. The crowd bellowed. I was showered with new abuse, not all of it verbal: ripe fruit and several bottles thudded nearby. I had outraged their notions of how the game should be played. First the bunt. Then the glove. Now an intentional walk. Too much.
King edged off first. Craver moved down the line from third and called, “Now I’ll see what you’re made of, milk boy!”
You will indeed, I thought.
I withdrew the sponge from my belt and squeezed it into my gloved hand. As Brainard twisted into his windup, I watched King at first. Sure enough, he was off with the pitch. The ball came in hard and high; the batter made no attempt to swing. I caught it cleanly and rose to throw. From the corner of my eye I saw Craver poised to sprint. I plucked the sponge from under the ball and hurled it as hard as I could toward second, having trimmed it to the approximate circumference of a baseball. Brainard sprawled flat in the pitching box as though to get out of its way.
At the instant it left my hand Craver lowered his head and charged. “No!” the hitter yelled. Craver kept coming. I concealed the ball in my gloved hand, my heart pounding, and forced myself to look straight ahead until he was only a few strides away. I’d moved slightly up the line toward third inside the baseline. Craver could have passed with no contact. But I could tell that wasn’t what he had in mind: his forearm swung upward as he barreled straight for me. I stepped away and with a right hook planted the ball against the side of his head. The solid impact was very satisfying. Craver grunted, lurched sideways, toppled to one knee.
I showed the ball to the ump. He looked perplexed. “Runner’s out,” I prompted, and tossed it to him.
Then Craver was up and charging, his eyes crazy. Concentrate, I told myself, trying to resurrect basics from more than a decade before: chin tucked on shoulder, weight distributed on balls of feet, rocker steps. I could almost hear my coach’s litany: “Hands up! Chin down! Breathe!”
I stepped inside Craver’s wild charge, rocked forward and jabbed sharply, exhaling with a snort as I punched. There was a popping sound and blood gushed from Craver’s nose. He stopped and stared stupidly at droplets spattering to the ground. A hand clutched at my shoulder. I shook it off. There was shouting, a sudden confusion of straining bodies. I glimpsed Mac and Mart King struggling on the ground; Brainard and Fisher flailing at each other; Sweasy astride Flynn, clutching handfuls of long hair.
Craver came at me again. He brushed aside a parrying jab and jolted me with a right that exploded on my cheekbone, his fist slamming squarely into my unhealed cut. It felt as if my face had split like fruit.
I staggered back. Darkness hovered at the edges of my vision. Andy appeared suddenly, incongruously, on Craver’s back. The big man tore him loose, backhanded him, tossed him roughly. It afforded me precious seconds. I backpedaled and shook off my wooziness as Craver advanced, managing to halt him with another jab to his nose. Eyes glazed with pain, he reached out blindly. I crossed a right over his outstretched hands. He raised them reflexively when my fist thudded against his eye. I drove a left into his gut. His hands sagged again. Balanced, breathing in exaggerated puffs, I hooked him twice, then got my shoulder behind a straight right that staggered him and almost sent him down. Looking as if he couldn’t believe what was happening, he glared at me, one eye already swelling shut.
“Had enough, asshole?”
He crumpled to one knee and said nothing.
I moved closer and asked him again.
He’d decoyed me. With unbelievable swiftness a boot materialized in his hand and swiped upward at my face. The spikes grazed my chin as I wrenched my head back. I kicked at him wildly and threw everything I had as he came to his feet. I drove fists into his body, neck, face. Blood and sweat sprayed in a pink mist. Snarling, spewing incoherently, he kept coming as I circled him. Finally he stood weaving, his chest heaving with sobbing breaths.
I sent him spinning with a sloping left, then stepped forward to finish him—and my arms were pinned from behind by another Haymaker. Craver lurched forward, punched me on the forehead, then clamped me in a headlock. Even half-conscious, his strength was superhuman. I panicked as I felt my neck giving; desperately I gripped the encircling arm and wrenched it forward. We were so slippery with sweat that I popped free, nearly at the cost of my ears. As he wheeled I crashed a right squarely to his mouth. He fell forward, head sagging, and landed heavily on hands and knees. For a long moment he teetered, spitting blood and fragments of teeth. Then he fell sideways to the sod.
I raised my head wearily and saw a circle of staring players. “Mother of God!” said Hurley. “Where’d you learn to fight like that?”
I shook my head, too exhausted to talk.
The King brothers lugged Craver off the field. The silent crowd looked on disbelievingly. The ump had little choice but to rule Craver out—he’d never touched the plate. The Haymakers’ frantic search of the rules turned up nothing to serve them.
Following the conventions of the time, we took our last ups, even though we’d won 32-31. Hits by George, Gould, and Waterman, plus halfhearted fielding by the Haymakers, gave us five more runs.
Knots of silent spectators dotted the field, staring as if we were alien creatures. It gave me the willies. For one frightening instant I thought I glimpsed the dark figure of Le Caron near the grandstand; then I realized it was only a cluster of shadows.
No songs or cheers followed this game. The Haymakers departed quickly. While Mac, looking no worse for his tangle with the behemoth Mart King, packed our two dozen bats into their huge sail-cloth bag—the rookie’s traditional chore—I pulled Millar’s sweater on over my jersey and headed for the booths, shoved in at the head of a line, and showed my betting slip.
“There’s a problem, chum,” said the pool seller, a thin-faced, fast-talking man.
“No problem,” I said. “Fork over two hundred.”
“Wait, you see—” He stopped and peered at me. “Ain’t you him that whipped Will Craver?”
“Yeah, and if you don’t—”
“You circled him like a cooper ’round a barrel, hammering his every side.” He flicked jabs at an imaginary opponent. “Why, it’s an honor to serve him who took Bull Craver’s measure.” He extended a wad of bills. “Him that’s wrecked every grogshop hereabouts, and most men in them too.”
I counted the money.
“If’n I was you Ohio boys,” he confided, “I’d keep a sharp eye out.”
“The crowd gets nasty?”
“Naw, they’re sheep. It’s the wolves I’d fear.”
I pocketed the money. “Gamblers?”
He winked slyly. “Red Jim was here at the commence of each inning, laying down three thousand without fail—a thousand for each Red Stocking out, he boasted.”
“So he lost . . .”
“Twenty-seven thousand.”
“Good God.”
“Word is it warn’t all his, neither. Some’s from John Morrissey--there’s one unlikely to stand for losing—and some straight from the Fenian treasury. If either part’s true, ol’ Red Jim’s on the anxious seat right now.”
“Thanks.” I reflected that I’d be on it too if I didn’t make myself scarce. “By the way, who was the woman with Morrissey?”
“Name’s Elise Holt.” He looked wistful. “Leg-show queen, one of them British Blondes.”
Leg-show queen?
“Somethin’ to nibble, ain’t she? Here’s my advice: Don’t trouble yourself thinkin’ about her.”
“Why not?”
“’Cause she’d fix your flint ’fore you could begin to spark her.”
The fight boosted my status considerably. To Harry I was now Sam instead of Fowler; George sought me out to share his choice stereopticon views; Mac and Gould, the team’s enforcers, let me know they’d accept my assistance in a pinch; Waterman allowed as how he might be willing to play cards with me again sometime; Brainard, wearing a shiner, insisted we begin his boxing instruction at once; Sweasy was relatively inoffensive; and of course Andy was proud beyond all measure. “Ain’t Sam a dinger?” he demanded repeatedly. Hurley topped them all by coming up with a dandy quote from Pilgrim’s Progress:
“How doth the Fowler seek to catch his Game
By divers means, all which one cannot name?”
It was all very warm and flattering, although I felt guilty about the fight. An old pattern. At Berkeley, even winning the 190-division Pac-Ten title, I’d had to work myself into a rage to perform, as against Craver (or, for that matter, Stephanie’s parents’ TV). But when the rage passed I felt only shame. Victorious, I’d exploited sick emotions. Defeated, I’d unleashed them for nothing.
My coaches said I lacked a killer instinct; at some level I had to want to put opponents away. But I could never really get into it. And so I put out of mind that Craver was a bullying animal, even that he’d injured Andy and Allison. I dwelt instead on his lack of training, thinking I’d had a huge advantage. Stupid, I know, and probably self-defeating as hell.
Under the best conditions I’m hardly a cheery riser. The next morning I set new records in mood foulness. My body felt as if it had been systematically hammered. My hands were mittens of flesh: the knuckles looked like they’d pounded nails; the fingers were too swollen to bend. My forehead was purple. My gashed cheek was seeping again. I’d slept fitfully. I didn’t want any more beefsteak for breakfast—invariably overcooked, with a thin slab of bone in the center, swimming in butter and laden with coarse black pepper. I was fed up with baths in cramped zinc tubs. I wanted a decent shower—which mystified Andy, to whom all bathing except after games was strictly a once-a-week concept. And I was tired of remembering to say “dinner” when I meant “lunch” and “valise” when I meant “suitcase.” I broke my goddamn collar button, too.
The day’s start, however, was nothing compared with its end.
We entrained shortly before noon. The sky was clear when we left Troy, but cold winds and showery squalls hit during the short hop to Albany. Crossing the river from Rensselaer—situated, George informed us, directly over the fort where “Yankee Doodle” had been written—we saw a flotilla of enormous side-wheel steamboats working the Hudson. Fulton’s Clermont, the first steam-powered craft—a hundred feet long and twelve and a half feet wide—docked at Albany during its maiden cruise in 1807. Now, George reported enthusiastically, leviathans like the Isaac Newton were four hundred feet long, seventy-five wide, and forty-seven deep, with sleeping accommodations for seven hundred passengers.
The others looked suitably impressed. Yes, I thought, let’s hurry up and destroy the rivers faster.
We passed through a patchwork of foundries and shipping yards crammed with cattle and lumber. As the Erie Canal’s eastern terminus, Albany was a major export point by water and rail—George had a card picturing the DeWitt Clinton, one of the nation’s first trains, which had chugged out of the city and into history only thirty-eight years previously.
It was all so new, yet already happening so fast.
Albany’s Nationals, our afternoon opponents, took us to their clubhouse on North Pearl, where we suited up. My uniform was still damp and ill smelling. With Andy out and Allison questionable, there was a strong chance I’d play. I chewed gum and concentrated.
I could have relaxed. The contest was so one-sided that few of the spectators who braved the forbidding weather were around by the end. A solitary pool seller did little business. There was no sign of Morrissey, McDermott, or Le Caron.
It went only seven innings. Hurley made the most of his chance to play by pulling two homers down the right-field line. Gould smashed another. George and Hurley each banged out seven hits. Harry made a one-handed catch in center, and Sweasy, Waterman, and George stole three bases apiece. Huddled together over the score book, Andy and I managed to keep warm. After the Haymaker game, this was like schoolyard exercise. We won 49-8.
The Stockings’ record was now a neat 10-0.
Amid talk of the tough games awaiting us in Brooklyn, we ate a hearty supper at the Delavan House, a noisy establishment at Broadway and Steuben, “junction of all railroad lines.” We would soon board another train, this one for Springfield, Massachusetts, where we’d play the next day, then on to Boston for three contests.
It happened just after I stepped out the door of the Delavan House. I heard a voice—“Say, there!”—and turned to see a figure beckoning to me with a lantern. He stood in darkness at the end of the long veranda. A slouch hat shadowed his features. “Could you hold this light? I’m trying to fix my horse’s shoe.”
Something about the voice was vaguely familiar, but I didn’t think about it then. “Sure.” I looked around; the others were still inside. “I’ve got a minute or two.”
“Much obliged,” he muttered, head down, as I approached the corner of the porch. “Here, you take the lamp and steady her head, I’ll—”
Then he stepped back. In the lantern’s halo I recognized McDermott’s features. A grin curved his mouth; his eyes were shadowy pockets. Behind him a thin dark figure moved quickly. I stood frozen, lantern in one hand, reins in the other. There was a dark glint of metal. Then a bright flash. A terrible sound—something between a crack and a roar—reverberated around me. I was slammed back against the porch, spun around by a sharp impact on my left side.
They’re killing me!
Without conscious volition I heaved the lantern. It exploded in flames on the planks midway between the dark figure and me. For an instant I glimpsed Le Caron’s pocked skin and glittering eyes. Then he was gone, and people were swarming around.
The next hours are confused in my mind. I recall seeing my frock coat drenched with blood and thinking it was ruined. I remember being lifted bodily by Mac and Gould, being examined by a young nervous doctor—gunshots evidently weren’t his thing—and, later, just before the team left, being startled by the sight of tears in Andy’s eyes.
Jesus, I must be dying. . . .
And then feeling oddly comforted that he cared that much.
I awoke in a sun-splashed room, sweating and stiff. Pain radiated above my left hipbone.
“Shit,” I groaned.
“The eloquent voice of suffering.” Across the room, sitting in a straight-backed chair, Millar regarded me. “The club departed last night,” he said sourly. “I was assigned to stay.”
“Am I . . . ?”
“Yes, you’ll certainly survive. The bullet passed through flesh—of which you have a sufficiency—without coming near your organs.” He sounded as if he wanted to add, “Worse luck.”
In my brain Le Caron’s face flickered again in the lantern’s glow. I felt a jet of fear. “Are we still in Albany?”
He nodded. “You’re safe enough. The police department’s next door. I alerted the hotel staff not to allow anyone up here.” He stood and stretched. “I’m to put you on a train to New York as soon as you’re fit to travel.”
I began to shake, a most unpleasant sensation. They’d tried to kill me. My teeth chattered—something I thought happened only in books—and I couldn’t quiet my violent trembling.
Millar paced irritably and grumbled at not being able to write his dispatches.
I bent my legs and felt a spasm of pain. The shaking gradually stopped. “I’ll do ’em for you,” I told him. “They’re all the same: ‘Smiling George Wright, striker nonpareil of the Crimson Hose, waved his willow wand and dashed a splendid blow to the outer gardens. Making his third, he showed pluck withal by—’!”
“What’s lacking in that?” Millar demanded.
“It’s flowery tripe.”
“And of course you’re inferring that your own prose—which remains conveniently unseen—is superior?” His eyes were bright behind the steel-rimmed spectacles. “Fowler, my father covered river news around Cincinnati for fifty years. He taught me the profession. My sporting coverage has been commended by Henry Chadwick himself, so I don’t care to hear your rude—”
“Who the hell’s Henry Chadwick?”
“Who is he?” He looked incredulous. “Only the country’s foremost sporting writer, the originator of scientific scoring, the most prolific voice—”
“Okay, okay,” I said wearily. “I believe you. You’re wonderful. I’m sorry.”
He nursed me, grudgingly but well, for the next day and a half, changing the poultice on my wound, injecting me with quinine, helping me to the commode, ordering meals, bringing newspapers in, and generally keeping me company.
My body was behaving strangely. My cheek resisted healing, but the bruise on my forehead vanished almost at once. Similarly, the bullet’s passage scarcely pained me the second day; when we changed the bandage I saw the puckered flesh already beginning to congeal. The young doctor marveled at my recovery; finding no sign of infection, he said I could travel as soon as I wanted.
That afternoon, while Millar purchased train tickets, I walked slowly uptown until I saw an awning bearing the sign firearms. I’d never owned a gun in my life. Forty minutes later I walked out with a snug-barreled Remington derringer. The proprietor, a swarthy war veteran who vaguely resembled Richard Nixon, had shown me how to load its rimfire shells in the twin chambers. My fingers enveloped its rubber-grip handle; I could almost palm the whole weapon. I hefted it. Heavy for such a little thing, maybe three-quarters of a pound. Death at my fingertips. I aimed into a barrel of sawdust and pulled the trigger. A tongue of flame shot from one of the nickel-plated barrels. The sawdust jumped. There was a satisfying recoil as the weapon kicked against my hand.
“Ain’t accurate more’n a few feet,” the proprietor said disparagingly. “Gambler’s gun, for under the table. You intend on hitting something, you’ll want a long-barreled Colt. Hell, a body could damn near dodge the bullets outen that derringer, they travel so slow.”
“It’ll be fine,” I told him, wondering if I could actually fire it at anybody. “Where’s the safety?”
He snorted. “You see one?”
I didn’t. There wasn’t. I bought it anyway.
By telegram Harry wished me fast recovery and reported wins over Springfield, 80—5, and the Lowells of Boston, 29—9. In a separate dispatch Andy warned me to stay alert; somebody had been around asking about “the ballist with a bandaged cheek.”
Late that evening—Thursday, June 10, forty-eight hours after the shooting—Millar walked me to the train station. I tried to appear nonchalant, but couldn’t stop my heart thumping or my eyes darting nervously. When somebody wants you dead, it tends to dampen your faith in humanity.
I was to go directly to the Stockings’ hotel and wait for them to arrive three days later. Millar, bound for Boston, had booked me through on the Penn Central. But, fearing that line would be watched, I took a roundabout route.
By midnight I was cursing my decision. Evasion was one thing, rattling and lurching along an interminable milk run through the Catskills was another. It wasn’t until nearly one a.m. that I got off at Binghamton, the transfer point for the Erie. A long journey to Manhattan still lay ahead.
I sat glumly in the empty waiting room, debating whether to spend the night in town. It seemed like a good idea. My side was acting up a bit. My head felt a little weird. Then I heard something drumming against one of the high windows and saw some kind of bird thrusting itself almost comically against the glass as if trying to fly through it. Then, to my astonishment, it did seem to fly through, for suddenly it was inside, whooshing and rustling and careening in circles. I watched it make two passes, then I crouched as it dove at me, a light-hued feathery mass, wild eyes staring. Water bird, I thought, but couldn’t be sure; it brushed my collar—or maybe just the air close by—and vanished through the doorway. I stepped there in time to see it winging away over the trees lining the tracks.
No longer drowsy, I peered up at the window. No opening was evident. How had it gotten in? I played with the idea that it had come for me. A silly and yet compelling notion. Maybe the bird had been lonely and sought company. Its flight had looked almost purposeful. Maybe it was a message. Was I to follow, along the tracks?
A wheezing, asthmatic porter lugged my bag through the narrow aisles of the sleeping cars. He stopped at my berth—a fold-down shelf with two blankets behind a thin curtain. I fished through my pockets for a tip. Coins spilled to the floor. I handed him a dime and bent to retrieve the others. In doing so I glimpsed a corner of what appeared to be a letter lying against the baseboard, concealed by folds of drapery. I pulled it out. It was a thick packet tied with lavender ribbon and scented like the sachets I remembered in Grandma’s dresser.
I slipped the ribbon free. Enfolded in half a dozen sheets of stationery was a clipping from the previous week’s Plymouth Pulpit, of Brooklyn. It was the text of a Henry Ward Beecher sermon entitled “Heaven’s Golden Promise.” I set it aside and unfolded the letter. Each sheet was crested with a circular monogram of leafy twigs forming the intertwined letters O and L. The handwriting, in purple ink, was small and neat.
My Dear Youth, I read, and felt a remote memory stir.
You entreated me so mercelessly (you are wicked, though I know you never intend it) not to ‘send you away empty in heart and hand,’ as you put it (as if I were capabel of sending you away!) and so I am staying up to write this.
The salutation, the misspellings, the ink—a preposterous suspicion began to form in me.
I have realized, as perhaps you have not, that Father has of late come to tolerate your bold glances in my direction, or is perhaps mearly resigned to them. I say this not to scold you, as you are wont to accuse me of in your ‘wicked’ moods, but to indicate how much Father has come to accept you since the beginning of our engagement. In your absense he speaks most proudly of you. Already he has subscribed fifty copies of the book for his friends the moment it is published. Speaking of that, you must not become to critical of Mr. Blish. You have labored so hard, my darling, I know that you will reap the harvest of your effort. Remember, ‘The poet and the beetle, each his task to perform.'
Succeeding paragraphs dealt with family members, friends, and a cousin marrying in Hartford the following month. I scanned them impatiently, looking for the proof I wanted. At the end of the letter I found it.
You mustn’t carry out your silly promise! Becoming ill cannot hasten my throat to recover. I scarce know when you are develling me. The idea of you not sleeping in underclothes and going without socks is enough to worry my poor throat sicker! Is that your purpose? You will only succeed in bringing back the cold you had last month—and then you will be low-spirited again! That is more than I could bear. Please carry my loving cautions with you—and write in great detail all that you think of Reverend B’s sermon. (I believe it his finest this year.)
Your loving Livy
My hand trembled as I stared at the signature and realized for certain that I held a letter to my namesake from the woman he would marry, Olivia Langdon. What was it doing here? Could Twain himself have dropped it? I felt a giddy rush of excitement. He might have passed through this aisle, stood in exactly this spot.