When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not; but my faculties are decaying now and soon I shall be so I cannot remember any but the things that never happened.
MARK TWAIN, Autobiography
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them . . .
T. S. ELIOT, Four Quartets
The rumbling came from earth and sky, broken by a rhythmic beeping. My eyes focused on an ant moving across blacktop. I tried to raise my head. My face was stuck. Fearing I’d melted into the blacktop, I raised an arm and triggered a spasm of pain in my chest. Then I remembered the wind-raked bluff, O’Donovan’s maniacal eyes, the flame from his gun.
I inched my hand upward. My beard was matted to the asphalt. I worked it loose with my fingertips. Things were gooey farther in. I raised my head a few millimeters and shuddered.
The sickening pain and gashed cheek, yes, the station outside Mansfield . . . but beeping? . . . the black locomotive had rumbled and hissed. . . .
A fearsome noise split the universe. I turned my head a few degrees and saw a vapor trail white against the azure sky. At its point sped a dart with tiny swept-back feathers.
Navy jet, I thought, heading for Alameda.
And then I thought: Oh, no. Oh . . . no.
The shock lifted me. The ground swam. In awkward stages I climbed to my feet. I noticed the breast pocket of my coat bulging oddly, then saw a small, blood-crusted hole in the fabric. Jesus. I tried to think . . . nothing. Breathe. Don’t give in.
Shaky steps along the blacktop path stirred sediments of pain. I couldn’t lift my head. Pine boughs swayed beyond the ivy, a faint whispering in the pervasive rumble. I stood before what looked like a bronze plaque. The words came slowly into focus.
INA COOLBRITH
First Poet Laureate of California
1841-1928
I thought it was a coded message. I stared at the 1928 and decided I couldn’t decode it just then.
I tried a few steps uphill to my left. Too hard. I turned around. The beeping—shrill spikes of sound—drove into my brain.
Just do it, I urged myself. Lift your head.
I looked up, very slowly.
The asphalt path skirted a rocky outcropping. I was on Russian Hill. But the dirt bluff had been transformed—terraced now with beds of blooms. A flowering hedge stood where O’Donovan had plummeted.
I lifted my eyes all the way. Above a curtain of conifers rose the Transamerica pyramid. In the distance to its left, the Bay Bridge stretched eastward into a sprawl of glistening cities. Coit Tower stood once again on Telegraph Hill.
A roar below. A motorcycle streaking past at terrifying speed. A gridwork of streets. Traffic lights winking. Cars and pedestrians alternately moving and stopping. All bewilderingly fast. Wedged between the streets were masses of stucco and metal that hid the lines of the hills. The wooden buildings I could see were gaudy with bright paintwork; they looked tacky, It all looked tacky. The rumbling, I realized, was merely the city’s normal commerce. A knot of emotions twisted in me. I couldn’t have begun to sort them out.
I moved laboriously to a wire fence and looked northward. Where there had been forests of them, only the Balclutha’s yellow masts were visible. A tanker from Richmond moved sluggishly past Alcatraz, where the prison stood again. The rest of my view was blocked by a glass-and-aluminum apartment complex. A cement truck backed slowly at its base; the source of the beeping.
Too loud. Too fast.
I had come back. All the way back.
My chest aching with the effort, I reached the top of the Vallejo Steps, where elderly Chinese in gymsuits did t’ai chi exercises far below. Their slow, graceful motions were dizzying. I looked down the steep flights. No way I could make the long descent. Try for the street above.
I stooped over a drinking fountain on the walk but couldn’t get my head low enough to drink. I wet my face with one palm, a welcome coolness. My hand came away pink with blood.
Nearby stood a grocery cart heaped with clothes and bottles and metal and cardboard. I came upon its owner several yards beyond, supine and snoring in juniper bushes, a wine bottle protruding from a paper bag beside him. He was unremarkable in every respect. Except one: Cait’s quilt was wrapped around him.
I prodded him with my foot. Again, harder. He groaned and rolled onto one side. I bent and tried to pull the quilt away—and nearly blacked out from the effort.
“Wake up,” I growled.
He groaned and looked up blearily, did a startled second take.
“I want my quilt.”
His watery eyes shifted from my face to the hole in my coat. “You’re dead.”
“Hand it over,” I said, with all the menace I could muster. “And help me up to the street.”
The double message didn’t threaten him. Even if it had, I realized, he could have escaped me easily.
“I’ll pay,” I said. “Ten bucks.”
“You don’t have . . .” Looking guilty, he stopped.
I checked my pockets. Empty. Things were getting blurry again. I unfastened my belt, pried loose one of the last gold eagles, held it out. He exchanged the quilt for it, eyeing the belt.
The blacktop spun. My mind was taken suddenly with images of Hope and Susy.
“Fella, about my girls . . .”
“Huh?”
“I’ve come back.”
I don’t know whether he edged away or just looked like he wanted to. By then little was clear. I hugged the quilt to me. Cait, I thought. Oh God, Cait.
“Get me to them,” I muttered.
Beds are bolted to the floor in San Francisco Central’s seclusion rooms. Bedding is minimal—self-strangling being a fairly serious no-no—and I couldn’t have my quilt just yet, though they assured me it was being held. I asked for it each time somebody came to unlock the bathroom.
It wasn’t what you’d call cheery. No windows. No TV. No sharp instruments, including pencils and pens. The walls held only fingernail line drawings: two sketches of genitalia, one perfect swastika. If you weren’t already crazy, the place might nudge you closer.
On the other hand, my daily ten mils of Haldol kept me pretty groggy. With the quilt, everything would have been fine.
The bum evidently had a sense of honor. He’d taken my money belt but left the quilt and called an ambulance. At Medical Intensive Care my behavior—including, apparently, extensive descriptions of nineteenth-century life—was judged to be out of synch with consensus reality. Hence the funny room, with somebody looking in every fifteen minutes.
“What’s the deal?” I asked an orderly.
“Fifty-one fifty, pal,” he said. “Gotta do your time.”
Section 5150 of the Welfare and Institutions Code permitted holding me for psychiatric observation up to seventy-two hours. An evaluation would determine if I were gravely disabled, perhaps a menace.
I waited.
Meanwhile, the big surprise was that although my chest was cut and bruised, there was no entry wound. I sought an explanation. Nurses patronized me and orderlies looked at me like I was, well, crazy.
Finally a guy about my age showed up, a shrink named Sjoberg. His friendly eyes and soft-spoken manner reminded me a little of Harry. That was probably why, like an idiot, I spilled everything. God knew, I needed to talk.
Sjoberg listened intently, nodded encouragingly. I talked and talked—and finally asked what he made of it. He smiled and said he’d defer “deep diagnosis” pending continued observation.
Which brought the abrupt realization that so long as I told the truth I wasn’t going anywhere. Except maybe to the looney ward in a state hospital.
“Look, doc,” I said. “Let’s just say I was out there in fantasyland, okay?”
He looked at me with new interest. “Go on.”
I told him of my daughters, my job at the Chronicle, the divorce. You’ve been through a lot,” he said. I guess so.”
He started to rise.
“Can you tell me what happened to my chest?”
“I’ll check with Medical,” he said, and went off to phone. “Do you own a watch?” he asked when he returned.
“Sure.” I reached instinctively for my breast pocket. “Big pocket watch.”
“It’s still in your coat,” said Sjoberg. “Badly smashed. If a bullet struck there as you claimed, it might have been deflected by the metal casing.” He looked at me. “Which would explain the furrow on your cheek.”
“No, that happened months ago.”
His expression changed. Uh-oh. Three giant steps backward.
“Well, something happened,” Sjoberg said.
Brilliant, I thought. “May I have the watch?”
“In due time.” He chuckled at his pun.
Not funny. It had saved my life. I wanted it repaired. After Sjoberg left I said, “Well, little brother, you paid me back in full.”
I looked at the door. Nobody observing. Which was fortunate. Since I was talking to Andy.
My condition was diagnosed as “adjustment reaction,” a catchall category for inexplicable behavior on the part of accident victims and other traumatized types expected to recover over time. Not bad company, really.
My energy returned as the headaches and vertigo diminished. Sjoberg cut the Haldol and let me read paperbacks, probably testing me with vicarious violence. I devoured John D. MacDonald and Robert Parker. Great stuff, totally unavailable in the previous century. I ran in place, did sit-ups and push-ups, and thought of how I’d approach Hope and Susy. I tried not to think about Cait. Not yet.
I couldn’t phone Stephanie. I wasn’t sure I’d’ve wanted to. But Sjoberg had.
“We’ll see you in three weeks,” he said one afternoon. “I’m releasing you as an outpatient to your family. They’re in the visitors’ room.”
I stared at him. “You mean I’m in my ex-wife’s goddamn custody?”
“They’re simply here to pick you up,” he said. “You wanted to see your daughters, didn’t you?”
“Well, sure.”
He studied me. If it was a test, I was flunking.
“How do I get my quilt?”
I’d pictured it so many times, them laughing and hugging and kissing me. My heart swelled when I glimpsed them in their spotless dresses, hair brushed, faces scrubbed and glowing. Hope had just turned five, Susy three. Killer cute. My little girls. I burst through the doors and slid on my knees before them, calling their names, arms out to enfold them.
Hope hung back shyly. Susy hid behind her.
“Girls,” said Stephanie, from above.
Hope climbed dutifully into my lap. Susy, clinging to her, followed suit.
I pulled them close and kissed them, smelling their freshness. “Glad to see me?”
Hope nodded.
“We got a new daddy too,” said Susy, pointing to a man standing beside Stephanie. “Daddy Dave!”
I glanced up, half expecting Anchorman. But it wasn’t. Daddy Dave was about my age, medium build, rust-colored hair. Three-piece suit—his a darker gray than Stephanie’s—right out of GQ. A polo player. Or should be. He smiled with an appropriate measure of friendliness.
“Daddy Dave wants to ’dopt us,” said Susy.
Jesus Christ.
“The wedding was last month,” said Stephanie. “We mailed you an invitation.”
I saw her gray eyes noting my full beard, registering details of my antique clothing. Very little would escape her, I knew. She looked thinner, cheeks almost gaunt, hair cut short. Streamlined. Best of breed. It was good to be able to look at her without the old anger.
“. . . naturally since we nor anyone else knew how to find you,” she was saying, “or even if you were . . .”
“I was alive,” I said. “Working back East. Sorry about the support. I’ll make it up.”
Contempt flickered in the cool eyes, as if to say, “Who needs your money?” It occurred to me that she was probably enjoying this. Now I was not only an irresponsible, violent drunk but a full-fledged head case.
I didn’t care. Stephanie had her own problems and vulnerabilities. And Hope picked that moment to reduce me to silly putty by creeping close and putting her arms around my neck and kissing my cheek. “We still love you, Daddy,” she whispered.
Susy looked up at me and nodded.
Oh, lord.
Outside on the sidewalk Daddy Dave opened the door of a gleaming German sedan. The girls showed me a menagerie of expensive stuffed animals he had bought them and asked me to ride with them. Daddy Dave nodded neutrally.
“I don’t think I’m up to automobiles yet, thanks.”
Stephanie smirked and stepped in. A swivel of slender hips, a flash of pale stockings.
“I’ll be in touch,” I said.
Her lips curved ironically, eyes hidden behind dark glasses. Then the quilt caught her attention. She lifted the glasses. “Isn’t that your grandmother’s?”
“Almost.” My glance fell on one of the patches from Cait’s dress. The quilt had come through time unchanged: no aging, none of Grandma’s patches. “Almost,” I repeated. “Not quite.”
I rented a place in North Beach. My previous landlord had put my stuff in storage. I retrieved it by paying five months’ fees—easily done, once my credit cards were restored.
The Newspaper Guild prevented the Chronicle from firing me—which I suspect old Salvio would have preferred—but could not avert a major reassignment. I drew obits and nightside cop checks, the most dismal blood-and-gore beat imaginable. I worked four-thirty to midnight, often drawing the overnight shift till 3 a.m. Tuesdays and Wednesdays off.
Everybody was surprised that I didn’t complain. Cubs usually got stuck with the night police beat. It was punishment. I didn’t care. Day or night or what sort of story made little difference. I worked thoroughly, mechanically.
Sjoberg asked repeatedly about my father during our sessions. There wasn’t much I could tell him.
I assumed, as a working hypothesis, that either I had been summoned by Colm, or in fact had once been Colm. That was my best guess and that was how it felt to me during the experience. Why it had happened I didn’t know. That’s what I wanted Sjoberg to help me figure out.
The trouble was that no matter how fascinating he found my accounts, no matter how inexplicably detailed, he could not help viewing them as manifestations of deep-rooted problems. He invariably returned to my father, suggesting that I was sublimating feelings of rage and rejection through complicated fantasies. Once he even hinted that I had abandoned my daughters in retaliation for my father’s abandoning me, and then subconsciously concocted the time-travel stuff to stave off guilt.
It was too deep for me. I knew what I had experienced. And that was all I knew.
After six months I stopped seeing him. We weren’t getting anywhere. And I felt okay, in the sense that I was coping reasonably well, not suicidal, not drinking. Most of all, with each passing month, I knew more clearly that I wanted to go back again.
The watch ran erratically, though it didn’t look bad. Too many makeshift parts, the repairman said. I wound it faithfully each day with Andy’s key, resetting it frequently.
It became clear that although Hope and Susy were central to my new life, I was an adjunct to theirs. Stephanie at first refused to budge on the terms of the custody order: one visit per week, during which she seldom strayed farther than the next room. In time she loosened and let me take the girls out.
It was a losing proposition. I got one day a week; Daddy Dave got them all. By the time I saw their day-care papers, he’d already lavished praise. If I bought dolls, he’d buy a whole damn dollhouse. I had the impression he couldn’t have kids of his own. He loved mine deeply and was a hell of a competitor. It was probably good for the girls—not so good for me.
Or maybe it was. It kept me from feeling guilty over the longings I felt to be with Cait and Timmy.
They listened patiently at Wells Fargo Bank without asking why, lacking receipts, account numbers, any record whatever, I believed deposits had been made in 1869 in the names of Susanne and Hope Fowler. They did ask if I were a descendant. I said I was, sort of—and realized I hadn’t thought this through at all.
They explained that mergers had occurred, that banking laws permitted the transfer of accounts to the state after a lapse of a number of years. I could check with the Superintendent of Banking in Sacramento to see what laws might have applied. But even if the gold pieces had remained in special accounts opened in 1869—similar to placing them in a safe-deposit box—they would have drawn no interest. Their value would lie only in what a coin collector would pay.
So much for that.
Pizza—like TV and a good many other modern cravings—turned out to be not such a big deal. Now I missed the clatter of horse-drawn vehicles; the sight of men wearing tall hats and high collars; women with bustles and parasols; even dirt streets with their raw stinks.
At work I stared out the window at the Old Mint for long minutes, remembering the morning I had walked by and seen its foundation being prepared.
Before long I was spending all my spare hours at the public library poring over 1869 newspapers on microfilm. I discovered what I was looking for in the October 6 San Francisco Call.
IRISH SPEAKER FOUND DEAD
The body of Capt. F. J. O’Donovan, noted Fenian lecturer and organizer, was found at the foot of a precipice near Vallejo Street yesterday. The body bore marks of its fatal descent, the head and neck injured terribly. This tragedy is but another lamentable example of the City failing to provide safety railings in mountainous sections—a needed reform long urged in these columns.
I stared at the smudged gray words. Fatal descent . . . head and neck injured terribly. . . .
It had happened; I hadn’t fantasized it.
But that was all I could find. No hint of foul play or mention of witnesses. Nothing about Johnny or me. No coverage at all in other papers.
Rereading accounts of the Stockings’ San Francisco games made me feel part of it all again. Hungry to know what happened to them, I haunted UC’s Bancroft Library, where I cranked through reel after reel of the Cincinnati Enquirer—jolted by the occasional sight of my own dispatches.
The Stockings had demolished foes as they headed back across the country. At home again, they beat the Philadelphia Athletics and New York Mutuals, each making one last-ditch try at knocking off the unbeaten Stockings. There was wild celebrating in Cincinnati the night they concluded the perfect season: sixty games without a loss. Champion awarded them fifty-dollar bonuses on November 15, the day their contracts ended.
I felt an odd moment of trepidation when I ordered the reels for 1870. Time had gone on. What had the next year brought?
By late January the Stocking regulars were “reengaged without change,” the Enquirer noted. Harry’s lineup would be the same—although the substitute was one Ed Atwater. In April they toured Dixie, winning seven games in New Orleans and Memphis. In May they notched eight victories in Ohio and Kentucky, then in June invaded the East again, taking nine straight in Massachusetts and New York.
Then it finally happened. On June 14 they finished nine innings against the Brooklyn Atlantics with the score 5-5. The rules allowed ties, and the Atlantics, content with their performance, drifted from the field. But the Stockings stayed—I could picture Harry grimly commanding them to hold their positions—until the Atlantics returned from their clubhouse.
With Brainard tiring, Brooklyn got runners on first and second in the tenth. But George snuffed the threat by dropping a pop-up to start a double play. Brainard doubled and scored in the eleventh, and George, coming through in the clutch as ever, singled in another run. The 7-5 lead looked decisive.
But the Atlantics’ leadoff man blooped a hit in front of Andy and took third on Brainard’s wild pitch. The next hitter drove one into the right-field crowd. By the time Mac plowed among them and dug out the ball, the run was home and the hitter stood on third. Waterman took a hot grounder cleanly, held the runner, made the throw. One down. The Brooklyn captain, Ferguson, normally a right-handed batter, hit lefty to keep the ball away from George and managed a dribbler between Gould and Sweasy. The tying run scored. The next Atlantic drove a smash at Gould, who knocked it down to save the run but had no play. Ferguson alertly moved to third. A grounder went to George. He fielded it and threw to Sweasy at second to begin a game-saving double play.
Sweasy dropped the ball!
He scrambled, picked it up, threw desperately to Allison. Too late. Ferguson crossed the plate and was carried from the field by his teammates. Brooklyn went crazy. And an eighty-four-game win streak came to an end.
Eleven innings. 7—8.
Sweasy, you son of a bitch, I thought. But then I felt sorry, knowing how wretched he must have felt. I was sorry for all of them.
Champion sent a telegram home: “Our boys did nobly, but fortune was against us. Though beaten, not disgraced.” The newspaper said that he cried in his room that night.
It wasn’t the same afterward. George hurt his leg and the Stockings dropped more games—including narrow losses to Chicago’s new White Stockings and our old hungry rivals, the Rockford Forest Citys—and ended at 68—6.
A sensational record for anybody else. But not the Stockings. At the end of the season there was mention of discord among the players and even instances of open drinking—it wasn’t hard to figure who—and an alleged conspiracy by the Wrights to force salaries higher. In the end the club decided it was all too wearying and expensive; they voted to return to amateur status. Harry and George went on to Boston with Mac and Gould and, later, Andy. The others played for Washington in the first year of the new Professional Association.
And so it all came apart.
In late May of 1870, the front pages of the Enquirer were filled with the Fenians’ invasion of Canada. Troop movements were reported from dozens of American cities. General O’Neill personally led the assault. I read every syllable of the Cincinnati coverage, praying I wouldn’t see Cait’s name among those killed, assuring myself that a woman wouldn’t have been permitted near the fighting. I wondered what she and Timmy had done . . . were doing.
The unlikely invasion had a comic-opera end. O’Neill’s advance force ran into withering fire from thirteen thousand alerted Canadian militiamen. Grant, disappointing the Fenians’ hopes as he had the gold bulls’, issued a proclamation forbidding American citizens to violate the neutrality laws. When O’Neill regrouped his men and moved back to his own lines, a United States marshal calmly entered his quarters and ordered him at gunpoint into a waiting carriage. O’Neill was driven ignobly through his own army to prison. Within a few days the operation collapsed.
In Leslie’s an engraving depicted the capture. There was O’Neill as I remembered him in Cait’s parlor: round-faced and black-browed, with a drooping mustache; he wore his officer’s tunic, IRA visible on his belt buckle, gleaming spurs fixed to his high boots. All dressed for war—and gazing forlornly into the barrel of his captor’s gun. In several histories I read that the debacle had exhausted the Fenians’ remaining credibility; the organization faded away. Poor Cait, I thought.
“Oh, Daddy,” complained Hope as we crossed Portsmouth Square. “Do we have to go to that old church again?”
“Not for long.” I squeezed her hand and tried to steady Susy, bucking like a pony on my shoulders. Around us Asians gambled and winos sprawled on the grass. A couple in matching polyesters studied a tourist map. I pictured the rows of saloons, the horses at the hitching rings, the old city hall frequented by portly, top-hatted, cigar-smoking men.
“Daddy, I’m talking,” Hope said.
“It’s a good place to go,” I said.
“But we see the same things every week—that mint building near where you work, then here, then the church—”
“Old St. Mary’s!” interjected Susy.
“That’s good, Suse,” I said, bouncing her.
“—then to ride the horse ‘n’ buggy,” Hope finished.“Oh, boy!” Susy bucked vigorously. “Horsey!”
“Why don’t you take us to Great America like other daddies?” Hope said.
“I will, honey.” Only five, I thought, and already she knew how to twist the knife. “But see, there’s this other kind of great America—how things used to be, how people used to live.”
“We know, Daddy,” she responded. “You tell us all the time.”
I bought ice cream cones as we walked along Grant through Chinatown. We ate them sitting on the grass in St. Mary’s Square. Across the street rose the cathedral, once the highest, most massive structure in the city. I told the girls that. They didn’t look impressed.
“What are those words?” asked Susy, pointing up at the inscription below the bell-tower clock.
“‘Son, observe the time and fly from evil,’” I read.
“What does it mean?”
“Sort of a warning,” I said. “For boys.” A row of whorehouses had stood where we were sitting. The Barbary Coast had been only a stone’s throw away.
“See all the bricks?” I said. “They came from New England. And the stones were cut in China and shipped all the way here. Those big crosses—see up on top? They weren’t put there till the church was rebuilt after the earthquake.”
“You know lots about everything, Daddy,” said Susy, her words muffled as I wiped ice cream from her chin.
“How about Marine World?” asked Hope.
“Another day,” I said. “It’s a long way out of town. Right now, let’s wait to hear the bells strike three. Did I tell you how the old bell was so loud that people all over the city told the time by it? And how the neighbors complained? How they switched to this sweet-sounding one after the earthquake?”
Both girls nodded. In a few minutes the bell chimed. I closed my eyes for a moment.
“Okay,” I said briskly. “Now, what say we hit the aquarium in Golden Gate Park. Then a coach ride. Who knows, maybe you’ll be handling one someday. Have you noticed all the drivers are women?”
“Okay, Daddy,” said Hope, resigned.
Later, as sunlight filtered through the trees near the Japanese Tea Garden, another fringe-topped surrey clopped past ours. I caught a momentary glimpse of its driver’s profile and my heart stopped: a pale cheek and a mass of jet hair partially caught up over a high lace collar.
Cait!
I may have yelled it. For an instant I was inside the milky radiance. Then I saw our driver swiveling in the front seat, smiling expectantly at me—she in Victorian costume, standard for the park’s carriages—as I held the girls tightly.
“Did you want something?” she said.
“That driver we just passed—do you know her?”
She leaned out and peered behind. “Sure, my friend Rosie Renard going in for her last fare.”
“Please,” I said, “would you mind . . .?”
“Following her?” The smile was less friendly.
“Yes, I think she looks—”
“Familiar?”
“More than that. Please?”
With visible reluctance she reversed direction in a turnout. The other coach had halted before the tea garden. I saw the driver step down, her booted foot reaching to the pavement from a long skirt. The jet hair was Cait’s, I was certain. She was slender, her movements graceful. Cait . . .
“Daddy, what’s the matter?” said Hope.
The woman turned as our driver called to her. With a plummeting heart I saw that her eyes were blue, her mouth too thin, her face . . . not Cait’s. I couldn’t speak. I waved our driver on.
“Are you acting funny, Daddy?” said Susy.
“Shh,” Hope told her sternly.
“What?” I said.
“Mommy says we must tell her if you start acting funny,” Susy said.
“It’s okay,” I said to Hope, who looked mortified. Disappointment burned in me, but I was surprised that the milkiness had been so close. So attainable. “That would certainly be a very good thing to tell Mommy.”
“Well, are you?” Susy persisted.
I gave her a squeeze. “Daddy’s fine.”
“Not funny?”
“No, not funny.”
I found a history of theater that included early burlesque performers. In a chapter dealing with the British Blondes I found a stagy photo of Elise Holt. She didn’t look nearly so sexy as in person. Maybe my taste had already modernized. What shocked and saddened me were the parenthesized dates beneath her picture: 1847-1873. Twenty-two when I had known her. She died only four years after. No cause was given.
The account mentioned Holt’s feud with the Advertiser. I smiled as I remembered her encounter with Marriott.
On an impulse I looked for material on the Avitor. A thick history of California aviation offered the information that it had made the first lighter-than-air flight in the western hemisphere on July 2, 1869. Despite setbacks with creditors, Marriott and his backers had raised enough money by 1875 to push ahead with plans for an “aeroplane.” Eventually a company was formed to produce a triplane to be called the Leland Stanford. But a crushing blow fell in ’83, when the Patent Office rejected it as an impossibility. Profoundly hurt and discouraged, Marriott died the next year.
I closed the book, depressed. For the first time I realized—emotionally—that they were all dead. They had been dead for a long time. Longer than my grandparents.
Dead.
I phoned the National Baseball Library at Cooperstown and learned that they had biographical files on thousands of ball players.
“What about the early ones?” I said.
“How early?”
“The ’sixty-nine Red Stockings.”
“Oh, well, that’s a famous bunch, you know. I imagine we have more on them than most others from that era. You weren’t kidding, were you? Those are real old-timers.”
“Yeah, I guess so.” I pictured Andy, George, Mac, Allison—young, fresh-faced, exuberant, loving their music and laughter and horseplay. I felt infinitely older than all of them.
“You want copies of anything in particular sent out to you?”
“No,” I said. “I want to come and see it all myself.”
One starlit night I lay with the quilt pulled up around me, looking out my window at the Transamerica pyramid glowing even larger than usual. I remembered the Mongomery Block which had stood there. And I thought of Cait, imagining her arms around me, recalling details of our night at Gasthaus zur Rose. Mustn’t let the sense-memories slip away, I thought. They might have to last a long time.
For the first time I seriously considered writing to Hamilton County. Had a marriage certificate been issued to Caitlin Leonard? Perhaps a death certificate, if she’d remained in Cincinnati. If not, then maybe Newark. And there was Timmy, too. Not to mention the possibility of descendants still living.
I started to cry.
I knew I could never write to those places.
But a month later, taking some earned vacation time, I flew to Cooperstown. It is reputedly a charming village, but I didn’t pay much attention. I headed straight for the Baseball Hall of Fame. And my first disappointments.
The plaques of Harry and George aren’t bad—if you can believe that somebody in bronze bas-relief ever actually lived—and it was nice to discover that they were the first brothers in the Hall of Fame.
But so little remained. A single trophy ball, filthy, naturally, from 1869. Another ball—a sad relic, to me—from the Stockings’ loss to the Atlantics in 70. A few faded club ribbons that players wore on their uniform sleeves. A scattering of ornaments and badges; an Eckford banner that brought to mind the hot June afternoon we’d faced them in Williamsburg.
And that was about it. No bats, no uniforms, no trophies. What had happened to Harry’s cups and medals and plaques? To George’s already-impressive collection of silver inlaid bats and victory cups that must have grown enormous over his career?
All gone, I was told. Dispersed to relatives. Lost in fires. Gone.
I spent only one morning in the library. Apart from Harry’s and George’s files, not much existed in the individual Stockings’ folders. What I did find was more than enough.
I skipped over their baseball careers. Only George and Mac played on into the National League era to any extent, after they, with Andy and Spalding and Ross Barnes—the latter two recruited from the Rockfords—had powered Harry’s Boston Red Stockings to four consecutive Professional Association pennants.
Instead I hunted for clues as to how their lives had gone. The fragmentary information I found held few surprises. George founded a sporting-goods company, grew rich, married well, played tennis and golf and cricket, the perennial sportsman. Andy worked for him in his Boston factory.
Mac migrated west and settled in San Francisco—back home again I would phone every McVey in the book but find none related—where he played ball and married; in the ’06 quake his wife was badly injured; there is a touching 1914 letter in his file, written by Allison, then living in Washington, appealing to the National League for aid and medical care on Mac’s behalf, saying a mine accident had left the former star “down and out.”
Waterman and Brainard each married Cincinnati women and eventually deserted them. Sweasy got into trouble on several ball clubs, developed rheumatism that ended his career, and became a huckster in Newark. Gould and Waterman spent their later days in Cincinnati’s West End, scene of their greatest glory, holding menial jobs for the most part. Hurley—how glad I was to find a clipping about him!—played briefly with the Washington Olympics, then drifted home to Honesdale, Pennsylvania, after “getting in dutch” in pro ball, according to hometown sources, who admitted him to be “quite a boozer.” He taught school for a while, captained the Honesdale ball club, and held down second base for years. He was still alive in 1903, the last mention of him.
My old nemesis, Will Craver, was kicked out of baseball permanently for crooked dealings. I couldn’t muster much sympathy.
In 1919, exactly half a century after the establishment of professional baseball, the Cincinnati Reds hosted the World Series opener at Redland Field. Matched against them were Chicago’s White Sox—soon the infamous Black Sox. Guests of honor were George Wright, Cal McVey, and Oak Taylor: the only surviving Stockings. I thought I could imagine some of what they must have felt that day, proud relics of another time.
And even then, fifty years later, the crowd had stood and roared for Captain Harry’s boys. . . .
Reading of their deaths devastated me.
Brainard went first, of pneumonia, in Denver, where he was a saloon keeper. He died in 1888—year of the Great Blizzard—only forty-seven.
Harry went in 1895, at age sixty, after a long illness; beloved and respected to the end, his passing prompted “Harry Wright Day” in ballparks across the nation.
Champion died within a month of Harry.
Waterman went in ’99.
And then Andy, in 1903, in Roxbury. I held a copy of his death certificate with trembling fingers. Gastric ulcer. Fifty-seven. A Boston Herald obit said he was survived by his wife and several grown children. There was a picture: I stared at a much older Andy, with full mustache, fleshy cheeks, receding hairline. My God.
Sweasy went in 1908.Allison in 1916.
Gould in 1917.
Mac in 1926.
George was the last, passing peacefully in Boston, August 21,1937. Ninety years old. In baseball, Joe DiMaggio was already in his sophomore season. My grandparents were still fairly young, my parents only teenagers. And George had still been living.
I rose and moved blindly toward the door.
“Something wrong?” asked the young assistant who had helped me find what I wanted.
“They’re all dead,” I blurted.
As I pushed through the door she said, “I’m sorry.”
For a long time I was bummed, preoccupied with death and dying. It got so bad that I went back to see Sjoberg. I really thought I was going off the deep end. He told me my morbid period was actually a sign of growing health. Grief represented a stage of acceptance and accommodation following disbelief and anger. I was getting in touch with myself.
And just what was I coming to accept? My friends’ deaths? No, he said, the distinction between that reality and this. His meaning was clear: I was finally distinguishing the here and now as opposed to my time-travel delusion.
What about Cait, then? Why hadn’t I chased down every trace of her?
Still protecting in some areas, he said. To be expected.
Protecting what?
Innocence, ideals, he suggested. The cherished idea of a pure and blameless mother. One I (conveniently) had not known and therefore found easier to love and protect. At a distance. As with Cait.
What the hell was I accepting, then, my father?
Yes, perhaps. Coming to terms with an indifferent universe in which innocents suffered neglect and abandonment—sometimes even violent death.
I told him I thought it was a crock of shit.
He may have been partly right, though. My perception was changing, but not the way he thought. With the passage of time I began to realize that, from this perspective, of course they would all have to be dead now. But it wasn’t from here that I had known them or existed with them. A simple realization. But it felt profound.
And something more dramatic was happening too. On several more occasions I mistook women for Cait. Each time the whitish light broke around me, and each time it seemed more accessible. Discovering it wasn’t Cait became less agonizing with the awareness that the line between that reality and this was blurring, becoming somehow navigable. I didn’t understand the process, but I felt that I was slowly gaining control of it.
What made me surer was seeing Clara Antonia. Not mistaking somebody for her. Seeing her. I was entering the Chronicle building one evening when I heard my name called. I turned and saw her waving to me from in front of the Old Mint. I recognized her instantly, even in conservative wool business suit and running shoes. She looked a bit thinner, though her face was still on the pudgy side and fringed with little ringlets. I grinned and returned her wave. When I took a step toward her she turned and walked around the corner. I didn’t try to follow.
A validation, I thought. And a promise.
As for baseball, I occasionally watched games on TV till I got too bored. Once I went out to Candlestick with guys from work, but the amplified sound bothered me. So did the slow pace, the players’ stylized posturings, the elaborate equipment, the succession of specialists. The professionalization of the sport—a process refined by Harry and Champion—had come too far in my view. Give me teams who sing as they ride to the ballpark in horse-drawn, pennant-bedecked wagons. Who play with spirit and sit down to banquets with opponents afterward.
I get more honest feeling for the sport at the diamonds in Golden Gate Park, where the field is banked like old-time grounds, and where the players show up out of love. I spend quite a bit of time there.
Where the Recreation Grounds stood, at Twenty-fifth and Folsom, is all residential grid. I went there once—and felt nothing. For me it’s mostly the carriages in the park, old St. Mary’s, and Chinatown. And every once in a while I go up to Coolbrith Park and stand in the spot where O’Donovan fell to his death, where Colm saved me. I feel the milky light close by and hear Cait whisper my name.
It’s been almost a year since I returned. I feel pretty good. The job’s okay—not exciting, but it’s enabled me to stash a fair amount of money in an account for Hope and Susy, with very specific legal instructions and protections. I’ve told Stephanie what to do should I vanish. She appreciates my attempt at responsibility. All the while thinking me nuts.
I’ve spotted Clara Antonia twice in recent weeks. There’s no particular cause, no pattern that I can see. She didn’t call out again, but our eyes met. Once she waved, once nodded.
I keep the tiny piece of Cait’s fabric inside my watch. It’s always in my pocket. I take the quilt with me everywhere in a locked carrying case. They tease me at work about it. I don’t care. I’m packed and ready to go.
I see them clearly: Cait and Timmy and Andy and Harry and Johnny and George and Brainard and all the rest.
In the autumn of 1869 the world is younger. And yes, more innocent. They are waiting.
My lovely Cait is waiting for me.
I don’t know when, but I know I’m going back.
I can feel it.