A new moon limned the trees but seemed to penetrate no lower. We bumped and jolted over a road that looked like a channel of ink. The boy’s name was Seth. He’d evidently been thinking.
“Ye’re robbin’ a grave, aint’cher, mister?”
Since the road went past the cemetery, and since we carried shovels and a lantern, and since I’d given him twenty dollars to keep mum about our night’s work, it wasn’t exactly a brainstorm on his part.
“We are salvaging” I corrected.
He sniffed. “Paw guessed it, soon’s you hired the wagon team this time of night.”
“Did he tell anybody?”
“Paw’s closemouthed when it comes to others’ business. That’s ’cause he’s a businessman.”
It was too dark to see the boy’s expression. Was he being subtle? “There could be a little something for your pop too, in that case,” I told him.
“Paw’d like that.”
We drove through the cemetery gate. It was about one-thirty. I’d come out an hour earlier to make sure the guards had gone. Now I had Seth stop the wagon while I climbed down and listened. Crickets chirped. An owl suddenly said, “Hoo-hoo, ho-hoo,” sounding like, “Who cooks for you?” It startled me, even as my mind framed the answer: Nobody. Few lights still shone in the town below. I was deliberately jumping the gun on Costigan.
There was a bad moment when we reached the graves and lit the lantern. I was convinced that everybody for miles could see it. The owl hooted again, mocking. I saw lurking shapes in surrounding shrubbery and trees.
“You gettin’ nerves, mister?”
I took a breath and commanded myself to relax. Weren’t the guards’ lights visible each night? Why should ours cause suspicion?
“No way,” I said. “Let’s do the job.”
We dug at opposite ends of the plot. The sod came up easily. Mounds of black loam began to encircle us. The blade of my shovel cut into the earth with a “shoosh,” then dumped the soil with a “plup.” I tried not to think about the blade going through into the corpse, maybe its face. Christ, what a thing we were doing. I thought of the fortune lying only inches away. I dug faster, my labored breathing mixing with the boy’s. I began to sweat, a clammy sensation in the coolness.
Seth’s shovel made a dull “plunk” against something solid several feet down. We worked harder. In a few minutes we had exposed the top of a long wooden box.
“Okay,” I said, “let’s pry it off.”
But the badly rotted lid crumbled. We had to scrape it away. Underneath lay more dirt.
“I don’t fancy this part, mister,” said Seth. “What is it yer looking fer?”
“I’m not paying you to fancy anything,” I snapped. “Dig around the edges—and be careful.”
We exposed rotted fragments of canvas. Had everything been wrapped in a tarp, or just the body? We scraped gingerly. Once my shovel went too deep, and a fragment of something that might have been discolored bone appeared in the lantern glow. “Damn,” I breathed, and covered it up. Seth swallowed nervously and said nothing.
Then there was a clink. My blade hit something that sounded like glass. At almost the same instant a shrill cry sounded overhead.
Seth jumped backward, whispered, “What’s that?”
“Owl, I guess. C’mon, this is it!”
“Weren’t no owl.”
I bent low and scooped dirt with my hands. I pulled up a dirt-encrusted jar, roughly quart-sized. Rubbing it hard, I cleared a small area and brought the lantern close. Visible were the dark notched edges of coins. I restrained an urge to leap up and yell.
“This is it,” I told Seth, still looking uneasily overhead. “Let’s get ’em all.”
We found twenty-two jars intact, one broken. Seth’s eyes widened as he watched me pick bills and coins from among the glass shards. Since he knew, I went ahead and emptied the others into the two large canvas bags I’d brought for the purpose. Even without the jars, each weighed at least fifty pounds. How much would a hundred pounds of money buy? I wondered. We began filling the excavation.
Again the shrill cry sounded above, very close. It was a chilling blend of ferocity and terror—like the scream of a predator bird intermixed with human wails. My heart froze for a split second. Then I heard a more terrible sound: a branch snapping behind us. I smashed the lantern and dove into the grave, yanking Seth down with me. I snatched the derringer from my breast pocket. Beside me, the boy shook violently and moaned, “Lord! Lord! Lord!” A glowing light appeared in the maples bordering the road. “Stay out!” I yelled. “U.S. government property!”
“Douse that, you damn fool!” came an urgent voice, and the light vanished.
We waited, ears straining. After what seemed a long interval I heard crackling sounds to our left. I raised the derringer and snapped a shot off overhead. A pathetically feeble splat.
“You’re trespassing!” I yelled. “Proceed farther and my men will open fire!”
“By authority of the Irish Army,” a gruff voice shouted, “you’re under arrest!”
That blanked me for a second. Who was bluffing here? I realized they must be Fenians.
“Whose authority?” I yelled, trying to think. One thing was clear: Costigan had set me up.
“We’re armed, Snider!” the voice said. “You can’t escape.”
Seth loosed a quavering high-pitched moan. I clamped my hand over his mouth—and had a sudden desperate idea.
“Come after me, and I finish the stable boy!” I yelled, keeping my grip over Seth’s mouth, pressing his head hard against my chest as he struggled.
“Shh,” I whispered. “Your best chance is if they think we’re not connected, understand?” After a moment he nodded; I removed my hand. “I’m making a run for the wagon. You tell ’em I headed that way.” I poked his right arm urgently. “Got it?”
He nodded, trembling. I smelled his fear, a sharp, sourish, cheesy odor.
I stood cautiously and slung the bags over my shoulders. They were very heavy. I pocketed the derringer and picked up one of the empty jars. Bending low, moving as silently as possible, I started for the wagon. After a few steps I turned and hurled the jar as far as I could in the opposite direction. It smashed against a distant tree. Immediately I heard yelling and the thud of feet. A lantern flared, then torches. I was running, pumping frantically in the darkness, tearing and crashing along the row of maples.
“He’s headin’ fer the wagon!” Seth’s voice shrilled over the noise of my passage. Christ! First Costigan, now the kid. Whatever happened to thieves’ honor?
A bullet whizzed overhead, spattering twigs and leaves around me. I heard the bird cry out again, terrifyingly loud, and felt a feathery rush. I ducked instinctively, certain it was striking at my head. At the same instant a group of dark figures rose from around the wagon, and I realized they had been waiting for me. Frantically I tried to change course, reaching reflexively for the derringer. But I knew it was too late. With sickening clarity I saw the rifles leveling on me.
What happened in the next seconds is almost impossible to describe. A roar—not exactly a roar, but a sound, an emanation, a suggestion of a massed and horrible cry—came from the maples behind the riflemen. A figure appeared there. A figure in dark blue uniform with rows of brass buttons. It was stationary, but it emerged with the force of onrushing cavalry. Even in my agitated mental state I recognized it at once: the figure I had seen, its arm raised, when I collapsed on the station dock. It brandished a weapon now, a long gun—or was it a tree branch?—that threatened swift and certain annihilation. The arm holding it pointed directly at the group near the wagon.
They saw it too. “Holy Mother!” came a cry in high tones of terror. “They’re comin’ from the rear! Shoot ’em! Shoot the blasted thing!”
A volley of flame erupted into and through the figure. It didn’t waver, its momentum seeming to gather instead. It advanced on the frantic riflemen, and yet the figure itself was unmoving as bullets tore into it. And that was all I saw. For the bird again screamed overhead. A warning. An imperative. The sound galvanized me.
I turned and ran the opposite way along the maples, the bags banging against my ribs and back, their weight slowing me maddeningly. As I exhausted the limits of my legs and lungs, I reached the mare I’d tethered in a thicket on the other side of the graveyard, a quarter mile from the wagon. I’d dubbed her “Plan B” as I walked back to the livery stable for the wagon team. Now Plan B would have to save my ass. I knotted the bags together, slung them over the saddle, and mounted. My face pressed into her mane, I urged her forward and tried not to imagine bullets crashing into me from the darkness.
We galloped from the cemetery, bursting through the maples. Branches clutched at me. I heard shooting in the distance. I pointed Plan B toward the hills to the northwest. She kept a steady pace across open fields and wagon ruts winding through the foothills. It took more than an hour to circle Elmira and approach it again along the Chemung. Plan B’s hooves clopped on the packed dirt of Water Street. She was breathing hard, her flanks foam-lathered. My first impulse had been to make a long dash all the way to Binghamton or Corning, but she clearly wasn’t in shape for it. Still, I felt reasonably safe. If my attackers had escaped the ghost soldier and were still searching for me, I didn’t think they’d look for me in the center of town. We ambled toward Main Street.
My rapping echoed inside in the foyer as I stood outside the Langdons’ front door. After several minutes a sleepy-eyed servant peered through a peephole.
“Emergency,” I told him. “I’ve got to see Mr. Twain.”
“Missuh Twain? There’s no—”
“Clemens,” I said. “Get Clemens here!”
“I don’t ’spect it’s proper to rouse Missuh Clemens just now, suh.”
“Look, this is a crisis!” I tried to contain my frustration. “He’ll never forgive either one of us if my news has to wait for morning! Bring him down and let him decide! Go, quick, and don’t wake the rest!”
The peephole closed. I paced the long veranda in the darkness. At length the door opened. Twain appeared in robe and slippers, smelling of tobacco, hair disheveled, squinting at me.
“Sam? What in thunder are you up to?”
I drew him close. “I’ve got it!”His face changed. “The money?”
I told him what had transpired at the graveyard.
“Holy Jupiter!” he breathed. “They were laying for you. Costigan leaked the scheme, sure as perdition. How’d you get out?”
I told him of the apparition. “Is that place haunted?”
“Wasn’t till now.” He regarded me from hooded eyes. “I’d be some worked up in your shoes, too.”
“No, I really saw it. So’d the Fenians, believe me.”
He nodded, unconvinced, and looked at the street. “This town’ll be on its ear in the morning. Anybody see you come?”
“I don’t think so. Help me with just a couple of things and I’ll be on my way.”
We walked Plan B to the Langdon stable at the far end of the grounds. Twain didn’t seem much more at home with livery tasks than I, but between us we managed to wipe her down, provide her water and a bit of grain, and transfer her saddle to another horse.
Twain said, “I’ll give Robert—he’s the one who answered the door—a princely amount to fetch the nags back here. He’ll let on he found yours in the hills south of here. Robert’ll keep his lips tight.” We shook hands. “You’re cut from different cloth, Sam.”
“That’s what I tried to tell you,” I said, mounting.
“See you in California,” he called softly as I started off, Plan B in tow.
Riding through the darkness I occupied my mind with visions of the uniformed figure. I couldn’t help thinking that it had intervened deliberately, to spare my life.
The station in Chemung, a hamlet fifteen miles north, was little more than a shack. I cinched the horses behind it according to Twain’s instructions and used the money sacks as pillows to bed down in an old wagon. I slept until wakened by sunlight on my face and the chuffing of an approaching locomotive. I edged cautiously around the building. Nobody was in sight. I hoisted the bags and stepped onto the platform. Moments later I was aboard.
Waverly . . . Barton . . . Smith bow . . . Tioga . . . Owego . . . Campville . . . Union . . .
We stopped at every woodpile and water tank. I gazed dully out my window and tried to stay awake. My shoes and pants were caked with mud. The canvas bags clinked provocatively with the car’s movements. A few passengers’ gazes burned into me. My crotch burned too; I was horrendously saddle sore.
We pulled into Binghamton, the area’s main junction, around ten. Past this point I’d be reasonably safe. With the derringer in my pocket I moved through the station. I remembered the circling bird that had appeared here; I could almost feel again the whistling strafing rush and see the arrowlike flight through the door. It had seemed to lead me to the encounter with Twain. Then there was the horrible-voiced bird in the graveyard, and the other bird at the Mansfield station just before my first vision of the soldier figure. Maybe they worked in tandem to guide me. Or maybe I was just totally fucking crazy.
I bought a Penn Central ticket. Two hours to kill. Nobody seemed to be watching me. I ate breakfast, got shaved and trimmed, and had a bootblack work on my shoes. I purchased a stylish four-dollar Stetson and pulled it low over my eyes. Then I bought a leather gladstone to stow the money sacks in. My right arm felt six inches longer by the time I’d lugged it on board.
It was dark when we pulled into Philadelphia. In a hotel room near the station I bolted my door and counted the loot, a labor of love. A few wads of greenbacks had rotted—moisture in the jars—but who cared? I counted $8,665 in bills and a whopping $14,578 in gold and silver—a total of $23,243. I was still gazing at the lovely piles when I dropped off to sleep.
Philadelphia was baseball crazy. Recent papers lovingly described the Stockings’ 27-18 win over the powerful Athletics, hailing the visitors, especially Allison, for fielding “like Chinese magicians.” A mammoth crowd of twenty thousand had turned out in hundred-degree heat to see it. George Wright’s four hits had included two triples and a homer.
The papers also reprinted several bitter New York columns in which we were denounced as “eclectic.” Only because of Cincinnati’s “imported” eastern ballists, the argument went, was the West coming to “monopolize” the sporting scene. I was happy to read Chadwick’s answer that we were no more eclectic than other clubs—we were just beating the daylights out of them.
I was also glad to see that the Haymakers had been upset by the Eckfords, 22-14. The New York Tribune pointed out: “The large party of blacklegs who accompany the Haymakers for the sole purpose of betting laid their money on the favorites and lost.” Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch. I wondered if McDermott had been among them.
In an adjacent column was an editorial reprinted from the New York Times entitled “Baseball in Danger.” It deplored the “enormous sums” changing hands during games between “a western nine and the champion clubs of New York.” If baseball were subject to the “plunging” of professional gamblers, the “great charm” of the game would be lost and it would sink to the status of “prizefighting, faro saloons, rat killing, cockfighting, and the like,” no longer attracting its “youthful and ardent admirers” to commence “a sporting career.”
It was clear that we were shaking things up. I still had trouble accepting the idea that baseball’s fate was undetermined. But that seemed to be the reality. More than before I appreciated Champion’s concerns regarding his fledgling pros. And Andy’s regarding his own career.
The morning heat was so sticky that occasional tepid showers offered the only relief. My high collar chafed my sweaty neck; my shirt was plastered to my chest. I bought a wooden fan from a street peddler and tried to stir the miasmal air. Such fans were mass-produced like book matches in later times—as much for advertising as practical use.
I toted the gladstone to a bank on Market Street and began what proved to be a lengthy procedure. “My goodness,” said an official, waving his hands over the wads of greenbacks. “We haven’t seen some of these since the war.”
“Finally broke into my cookie jar,” I said, eliciting a glassy stare. Never joke with nineteenth-century bankers. They’re not in it for fun.
At length I received two drafts for $11,620 each. I sent Twain’s to Elmira—I liked the idea of his getting it as he put the finishing touches on Innocents—and mine to a Cincinnati bank. Outside, the gladstone felt wonderfully light. So did I.
Another shower began. I bought an umbrella. Since I hadn’t figured out how to approach Harry and Champion, I didn’t. Instead I strolled down to see the Liberty Bell and visit Independence Hall. I fed the pigeons in Franklin Square. The morning passed pleasurably.
But by midafternoon I couldn’t contain myself. I took a hack to the ballpark at Seventeenth and Columbia, where the Stockings faced the Keystones. The driver pulled in among the carriages and announced that he too would stay for the game. We ate peanuts and looked on from center field. I felt strange watching the action from behind Harry.
My teammates looked weary. That plus the Keystones’ slugging and the damp conditions made for a sloppy game. We took an early lead, then hung on, flailing the Keystones and being flailed like ungainly punchers. The crowd, expecting a close, graceful exhibition, booed both clubs.
Allison didn’t play at all. Hurley started in left and Andy at catcher, but in the first inning a foul tip caught him over the eye; he traded places with George and played a decent shortstop the rest of the game, but I felt guilty for not being available. The game went seven innings before darkness forced a close with us leading, 45-30. Another victory, albeit ugly.
My reunion with the club went surprisingly smoothly. Harry was glad to have his other sub. Champion swallowed my story of a maiden aunt dying and leaving me everything. At least he seemed to. He questioned points of the litigation involved—which I fuzzed with truly inspired vagueness—and he desisted, no doubt deciding it was as well not to know too much. As for the cash box, I claimed I’d been so excited on receiving the telegram that I’d forgotten everything—including telling anybody good-bye or even remembering that I held the team’s receipts—until I’d jumped on a train for Syracuse. When I could finally get back, of course, they’d departed.
Well, it was pathetically thin—but better than confessing that Le Caron had tried to murder me again, and then I’d gone grave-robbing. I said I was sorry for inconveniencing everybody and offered to pay cash on the spot to cover my travel and hotel expenses during the tour. Champion lit up at that. “That’s the true idea,” he said warmly. “Make one’s own way!” As I handed him the money, he extended a telegram.
CHAMPION AND WRIGHT, C.B.B.C.: IMAGINE TWO THOUSAND PEOPLE AT THE GIBSON HOUSE WAITING FOR THE SCORE. EVERY MINUTE ROARS AND YELLS GO UP. OH, HOW IS THIS FOR HIGH?
“That came from home during the Athletic match,” said Champion. “We’re making history. Thousands are sharing our glory, Fowler. You should consider yourself most fortunate to be with us.”
“Oh, I do,” I said. “You have no idea.”
As for the Stockings, I told them how good I felt to be back with the “Eclectics.” George retorted that nobody on the club was half as eclectic as me, and Brainard dubbed me “Gone-Again” Sam. Sweasy glowered; whatever bothered him about me seemed no better. Andy, his eye blackened where the ball had struck, picked at my story skeptically. I didn’t like lying to him, but it was preferable to having him think I’d risked my life to help his mother—an intent I kept to myself.
The Maryland club fed us terrapin, crab cakes, and oysters at the Gilmor House on North Calvert. Hurley drank too much wine, and I saw Harry eyeing him.
We played at the Madison Avenue grounds, a grassy expanse near Druid Lake. With Allison’s and Gould’s hands sore from so many games, Harry told me to be ready. I suited up happily. Things seemed simple now, away from New York. Le Caron was in jail and McDermott’s crowd, Millar assured me, never journeyed this far except to follow a top eastern club.
The Marylands’ clubhouse was festooned with evergreen branches and a banner: WELCOME RED STOCKINGS. Five thousand people—a record crowd here—came out to see the conquerors of the East. Among them were a number of Baltimore’s famed belles—the nation’s comeliest women, Brainard asserted. Leaving the hotel, we saw several coyly lift their hems as they stepped from curbs, revealing shapely ankles encased in red stockings. The players whistled and shouted.
“I’d fancy ’em all, one after t’other,” Sweasy said, keeping his voice low so Harry wouldn’t hear.
“They ain’t cheap waiter girls,” Waterman said. “You wouldn’t stand a chance.”
As we took the field I reflected that my teammates were changing as their fame grew. Only Harry seemed unaffected. The others were taking on the arrogant assurance of proven winners, stars even. Well, I thought, what the hell, they were kids, barely in their twenties. They had the rest of their lives to be sober and mature.
The diamond was superb, the Marylands jaunty in new uniforms with blue-and-white checked caps and jerseys. But the game wasn’t much. Our bats boomed from the start: George and Gould rapped seven hits each; Andy and Harry followed with six, and Brainard baffled the Maryland hitters.
In the eighth, Waterman’s shin was spiked and Allison’s head slashed by a foul. In what I considered a strange series of moves, Harry stationed George behind the plate, took shortstop himself, and, with us leading 40—7, ignored Hurley and waved me out to center.
“Don’t run me down!” Andy cried from left.
“Fine,” I yelled back. “You just take everything out this way!”
As luck had it, the second hitter lofted a fly directly to me. Andy sprinted over. “Mine!” I called, reaching for it. In a replay of my first day at practice, the ball bounced out of my hands. Andy dove under me and with a great sliding belly flop snagged it before it touched the grass. Red-faced, I helped him up.
“Thanks for keepin’ that ball alive,” he said, grinning wickedly. “I might not’ve got it otherwise.”
To a few cries of “Muffin!” I came to bat in the ninth. I hushed my hecklers by driving a low inside pitch that screamed over third and kicked up chalk; I pulled into second with a stand-up double and scored moments later on Harry’s single.
“That’s the goods!” Andy said.
A sequence, I thought, for my personal ’69 highlights film.
It ended 47—7. The belles promenaded as we packed our gear, manipulating fans and parasols with the artfulness of geishas, shooting coquettish glances at us, to the discomfiture of their escorts. It was all a little silly, and yet they were gorgeous and still a bit mysterious to me in their panniered dresses, picture hats, and veils. I felt a pang of horniness remembering my night with Charlotte. Could these Scarlett O’Haras compete in her amatory league? I doubted it.
We left for Washington on the 8:20 train. The journey’s only memorable feature was a discussion of Harry’s batting order, which I’d never understood.
“Why, it’s easy,” said Andy. “He’s got the swift runners striking between the slow, to save force-outs and double plays.”
“So George leads off,” I said, “and with his speed and base-running ability isn’t likely to be forced by Gould, who’s slow, is that it?”
Andy nodded.
“Not slow,” Gould rumbled. “Sure to bring George home with his run.”
I finally had a handle on Harry’s unvarying lineup:
|
G. Wright |
Leonard |
|
Gould |
Brainard |
|
Waterman |
Sweasy |
|
Allison |
McVey |
|
H. Wright |
The team’s leadfoots—Gould, Allison, Brainard, and Mac—were sandwiched between fast, canny runners. On a modern-day team Allison would never hit cleanup, nor Mac ninth. On a piece of paper I wrote their names in the order I’d have them hit and showed it to them.
|
Leonard |
McVey |
|
Sweasy |
Allison |
|
G. Wright |
H. Wright |
|
Waterman |
Brainard |
|
Gould |
I explained that Andy was the perfect leadoff man, Sweasy a push-along spray hitter, George a rare mix of power and consistency ideal for the third slot; Waterman, while not capable of the towering shots powered by George or Gould or occasionally Mac, hit for extra bases consistently and was undaunted by pressure. The bottom three names were virtually interchangeable.
I thought it was pretty convincing, but they didn’t. Sweasy pointedly said nothing. Brainard was offended that I’d slotted him ninth, in rookie McVey’s place. George argued that he wouldn’t score nearly as many runs batting third.
“But,” I countered, “you’d drive in more.”
“It’s making your run that counts,” he said with a grin. “It’s the whole object.”
“Okay, but isn’t maximizing the team’s run production more important?”
‘ I had a sudden and unexpected ally. “George ain’t changed a whit since we were on the Nationals,” Brainard said. “He sulked whenever he didn’t lead the scoring then—and he’d do it now.”
George stared at him, his grin fading. Brainard met his gaze and added, “Course, there’s little chance of that, long as his brother’s captain.”
That produced an uneasy silence. As they looked at each other a moment longer, something seemed to be crystallizing between them.
Oh, shit, I thought, what now?