Two in the Field Read online

  An hour before the game I sat behind first base staring out at artificial turf. Amplified rockabilly music battered my ears. The visiting Pirates finished warming up and were replaced by men garbed in old-time uniforms. Some of them sported dickeys of the kind I’d worn when I played with the Stockings. I stared hard at the burgundy and white of the Brooklyn Atlantics, our old rivals. In 1870 they’d ended the Stockings’ win streak.

  What the hell was going on?

  These individuals bore little resemblance to my erstwhile teammates. They came in all shapes and sizes, and several looked near retirement age. Wearing no gloves, they spread out and began tossing brown leather baseballs around. The stadium announcer boomed that this would be a two-inning exhibition staged by the Ohio Vintage Base Ball Association. These “picked nines” would play according to 1860 rules.

  A few muted jeers sounded as the first “striker” stepped to the plate and waved a long, skinny bat at the pitcher, only forty-five feet away, who lobbed the ball underhand. The hurler possessed none of Red Stocking ace Asa Brainard’s speed or deception. Nonetheless, the batter fouled the pitch off. The catcher, twenty feet behind the plate, took it on the bounce, and the next hitter stepped in.

  “One pitch and he’s out?” said a man nearby.

  “Catcher got it on the first bounce,” I explained. “It’s called the ‘foul bound’ rule.”

  He gave me a long look. “It’s stupid, is what it is.”

  The two-inning exhibition was laughable except for one moment: On a ground ball up the middle, the shortstop on one of the teams crossed in front of second looking for all the world like George Wright, the Stockings’ Hall of Famer. He snatched the ball barehanded and in the same motion threw a laser to the tall first baseman, who stretched and took it as stolidly as Charley Gould, the Stockings’ “human bushel basket,” whose uniform I’d borrowed for my “tryout” one fateful afternoon.

  That sequence stayed in my mind during the regular contest that followed, a slugfest won by the Reds, 9-7, in which half a dozen jacked-up balls sailed over the walls for homers. The succession of relief pitchers seemed endless. I couldn’t help but remember the pro game’s beginnings here, when we’d sung corny club songs while riding to the grounds in pennant-decked carriages. The players received salaries, true, but everything hadn’t been so damned business-like.

  The city was shrouded in mist when I walked out of the stadium. Lights from buildings on the Kentucky shore winked across the river. Prowling the near-deserted downtown streets, I tried to conjure gaslights hissing on the corners.

  There must be a passageway.…

  I turned on to Eighth and stopped in front of Arnold’s, a restaurant advertising that it had been in business since 1861. A different name back then? Leininger’s? No, that had been our favorite hangout, an oyster bar on Fourth. I couldn’t come up with it, but it seemed that I’d been here with Andy Leonard, the Stockings’ left fielder, who also happened to be Cait’s little brother and my best friend.

  Inside, the bar was open. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Christian Moerlein beer still existed, and ordered a bottle. We used to drink it by the foaming tub. Earlier, I’d passed the brewery’s old location on Elm, now a lamp factory. After a second bottle I went upstairs to ease my bladder.

  Through a tiny window in the so-called “water closet,” I stared at the soot-blackened brick walls lining the alley. Had they been here in 1869? Maybe we’d come here after the gala banquet welcoming us home from the triumphant eastern tour. I could almost hear the brassy strains of Currie’s Zouave Band leading the Grand Reception Parade. Like conquering heroes we’d waved to the throngs from our open carriages, banners and streamers and crepe paper pouring down on us. The whole city dressed in red. A homecoming game had followed the politicians’ speeches. I’d tripled on a pitch Brainard laid in for me.

  Some things you don’t forget.

  I buttoned my pants. Down the alley a woman’s head emerged from one of the lighted windows. A mass of curly hair. A sliver of cheek, amber in the yellow light. I stared at her, my heart stopping. It took all my strength to wrench the paint-sealed window open a few inches.

  “Cait!”

  She turned. Not Cait but a moon-faced older woman. Seeing me, she yanked down her shade.

  The night held one final irony. Near my motel, a heavyset woman leaned from a narrow sidestreet and seemed to peer at me. Clara Antonia, I thought. Popping up like she had in San Francisco. I moved forward.

  Nobody was there.

  At that moment I decided that being in Cincinnati was too painful.

  I’d had enough.

  I did make one final stop. Charley Gould had been the only Cincinnati-born player on the Stockings. In 1951 the National League, recognizing him as one of baseball’s pioneer professionals, had provided a fitting headstone at Spring Grove Cemetery. With the caretaker’s help I found it. The surrounding evergreens dripped with mist. Monuments of the city’s wealthy families stood nearby; among them I recognized a few names of Stockings supporters. Lost in time, I communed with Charley about the days we’d spent together.

  Late that morning I sped out of Ohio across Indiana and into Illinois, eyes locked on the blacktop as I tried to get a handle on things. Why had I been plunged back in time, if not to meet Cait? Had it amounted to nothing more than a sadistic trick designed to spoil this life?

  My allergies to spring pollens were kicking up. That night I dosed myself with prescription medicine I’d brought along, and slept heavily in a roadside motel outside Peoria. In the morning, realizing that I’d been blindly retracing the Stockings’ route when we’d crossed the country on the new transcontinental railroad, I left the interstate and drove more slowly on back roads. I followed signs toward Nauvoo, which according to my road atlas lay near the Mississippi River. Nauvoo. I liked the name. Might as well go there.

  Crossing the Mississippi, I thought of Twain. My grandfather had named me for the famed humorist and read his books aloud to me. In J-school at Cal I’d done my thesis on Twain’s reporting style. I knew the contours of his life as well as those of my own. He would be blissful now, married to Olivia Langdon, the woman of his dreams.

  Blissful then, I could hear Sjoberg correcting.

  On the Iowa side I stopped in Keokuk, where a youthful Twain had spent several years in the 1850s before becoming a river pilot.

  The morning was overcast and muggy, the sky swollen with rainclouds. I strolled around the “historic” riverfront, spruced up by the Lee County Historical Society. The paint seemed too bright on the High Street house Twain had purchased for his mother. A paddle wheeler built in the 1920s as part of an attempt to revive river transportation now housed a museum. I’d hoped that coming here would help me feel closer to where I wanted to go, but the distance only seemed greater.

  I headed west out of Keokuk. The weather worsened to match my mood as the clouds opened and torrents of rain fell, driven almost horizontal by headwinds that rocked the car. Visibility had shrunk to mere feet, except for when lightning punctuated the gloom. Heavy-headed from the allergy medicine and lulled by the clicking wipers, I nearly nodded off several times.

  It happened as I rounded a curve.

  My eyes snapped wide as a massive shape loomed directly ahead. Lightning flashed. In that instant I saw the drenched, white-faced driver who’d let his enormous tractor drift out of its lane. I yanked my wheel to the right and stomped on the accelerator. The car surged crazily ahead and somehow missed the tractor’s forward wheel. Then it shot up the embankment and went airborne. I glimpsed the milky surface of a water-filled ditch below me an instant before hitting it, my body going rigid as I braced for impact. I was slammed against the steering wheel and then thrown back again as the hood nosed skyward. The front wheels must had gotten some traction on the far bank; the car seemed to climb again for an instant before turtling backward on its roof. Upside down and rocking wildly, held in place by my seat belt, I became aware of a sloosh
ing sound from the doors. Water was coming in.

  The car bobbed less violently as it began to sink.

  Fighting against panic, I managed to get the seatbelt loose. My neck was wedged against an armrest, my feet braced against the roof. I tried to force a door open but in that position I couldn’t get much leverage, and the pressure outside was too great. I punched the window button. Amazingly, the electronics worked and the glass began to lower. Water shot in as if from a pressure hose. Mistake! I pushed the “up” button but the window kept lowering. Then I was blasted sideways as the glass gave way. I grabbed for the wheel. I tried to pull myself toward the opening. I took a gasping breath and my mouth filled with water. Panic seized me then. I thrashed around like a great fish, trying to climb to the open window, trying not to breathe the cold water that enveloped me.

  THREE

  A resonant caooooooo, hoo, hoo. Then a deep rolling cadence, like distant thunder, a rhythmic booming that built to a fast climax.

  Tom tom tom tom tom tom tomtomtomtom!

  After a pause it started up again. Underlying it was a sort of cooing, like pigeons, but more staccato. My head reverberated to it, pain licking behind my eyes and temples.

  Christ, I hadn’t felt this bad since …

  Could it be?

  Raising my head with an effort, I discovered that I was lying in high grass. Its gentle swaying and rustling increased my vertigo. The circle of sky above me was the grainy pearl of dawn. My clothes were damp and I was shivering. My arms and legs seemed to work okay, but when I tried to stand up my balance failed and I toppled back. I tried to take stock. My brain was on fire, my eyes swollen nearly shut, my sinuses a clogged mass. But at least I was breathing air, not water.

  How had I escaped?

  A new burst of booming. I crawled in the sound’s direction but managed only a few feet when my arms sank into muddy ooze. I pulled free with a slurp and fell back into the grass, exhausted.

  Next thing I knew, the daylight was brighter. The booming came again, startlingly close, and this time I made it to my feet and peered through the tips of the stalks. A dozen birds the size of chickens were gathered on a nearby rise. They were yellowish brown and spotted with black. As I watched, one abruptly broke into the strangest dance I’d ever seen. It began as a soft-shoe routine: he executed clever little foot pats while ducking and circling and bobbing. Suddenly he stood erect as plum-colored sacs inflated like balloons from his neck. Tail fanning wide, wings drooping, he bobbed maniacally.

  Tom tom tom tom tom tom tomtomtomtom!

  By the time it finished, his sacs were deflated. He let out some chicken-like cackling, sprang high in the air, spun around like he was having an epileptic fit, then strutted and preened as if winding up a Vegas lounge act.

  TOM TOM TOM TOM TOM TOM TOMTOMTOMTOM!

  The sounds threatened to fragment my skull.

  I was looking for a rock to scatter them with when the shadow of some larger creature—hawk or hunting owl—passed over. The birds on the knoll became feathery mounds that blended with the trampled-down grasses. I caught a glimpse of a distant winged shape just as it dipped from sight. Staring at its vanishing point, I felt a strange tug. My previous journey in time had begun with a bird that faded before my eyes; another had led the way to Mark Twain; yet another had saved my life in the Elmira graveyard, and on Russian Hill I’d heard drumming wings while staring down the barrel of O’Donovan’s pistol.

  Was this bird pointing the way?

  Had I come back again?

  Trying not to be carried away by wild hopes, I looked around for portents. The day promised to be a scorcher. Did this sunlight and warming air belong to the nineteenth century? The dew was gone from the grass, and my jeans and cotton shirt were dry. One of my running shoes had vanished, doubtless jerked from my foot in the car. I stepped gingerly over the grass and hopped on the remaining shoe through patches of thistles. Exhausted by the effort, I reached the edge of a swampy pond ringed by cattails and bulrushes. Ducks and mud hens moved on the turgid surface. The relentless drone of locusts added to my sense of displacement. A poplar at water’s edge offered the only shade on this side, and I headed for it, needing to lie down. Mosquitoes swarmed in dense spirals, so I packed mud on my arms and face before curling up beneath the tree.

  When I awoke again the sun was high overhead. My face was puffed from bites—the mud hadn’t worked—and my throat was parched. I risked a few handfuls of water from the pond, then set out around it. I made it to a clump of scraggly cottonwoods on the opposite side. The ground was higher there and as far as I could see stretched a rolling prairie dotted with wildflowers. No trees. No houses. No people.

  Where was I? When was I?

  Ravenous, I gobbled down a handful of berries and some roots that tasted vaguely like onions. I felt better. The throbbing in my head was nearly gone, but there was no way I would venture out on the baking prairie. The mosquitoes weren’t so thick here. I settled down in the warm shade of the cottonwoods and lost myself in a meadowlark’s song that trilled above the insect drone.

  “Wha—” My shoulder was being shaken.

  A man’s creased, leathery face shaded by a broad-brimmed hat. “I asked if ye’re sloughed down, feller.”

  “Sloughed …?”

  “Don’t see your rig.” He waved toward the pond. “If it’s down under, I got a length of wire rope.” The words came out in thick, yawly accents, barely understandable. And once I understood, it didn’t help much.

  “Rig?” I asked.

  He squatted beside me, ducked his head and spat a brown tobacco stream between his knees. “Ain’t likely you rode shank’s mare out here.”

  “I had a car.”

  He spat again and fixed his squinted eyes on me. “Nearest cars are ten miles off.”

  “A blue Olds Alero.” Was he really as clueless as he seemed? Had I made it back? “Rental. Sank it here last night in the storm. Thought I was a goner. Air bag must have kept me from getting banged up, but I don’t even remember it going off.”

  He nudged his hat back and scratched where the brim had been, the skin there pale above his weathered face.

  “I’ll let the insurance guys handle it,” I went on breezily, giving in to a welling joy within me.

  A boy’s freckled face materialized from behind the man’s shoulder, a cotton baseball cap snugged over his sandy hair. The cap had a button on top. It belonged to another era. He wasn’t wearing it backward. I laughed out loud and they both backed away warily.

  “Who’s he, Paw?” the boy said in twangy tones.

  The older man shrugged and spat, as if to signify it probably didn’t much matter. The boy promptly turned and loosed a brown stream of his own into the cattails.

  “Sam Fowler,” I said, climbing to my feet. I felt more or less normal again. We shook but Paw didn’t offer his name. His callused hand was as hard as a ridged shell. “Any chance of catching a ride?”

  “Where you headed?”

  Good question. “I guess it depends,” I said slowly, “on where we are.”

  “This here’s Cooley’s Slough,” Paw said.

  “Twelve mile out of Keokuk,” the boy prompted when I showed no recognition. “Iowa.” He said it I-o-way.

  “Are you going to Keokuk?”

  They nodded.

  “I’d appreciate a ride.”

  Paw checked out my mud-caked clothing and seemed to consider it. I took closer note of his homespun hickory shirt and shapeless pants. I was definitely in the deep boondocks. The boy was staring at my running shoe.

  “Ever seen one of these?”

  He shook his head.

  Please, don’t let them be Amish or something.

  “You say your ‘car’ got sunk?” Paw said.

  “Right. During the thunderstorm. I was about to hit something.…” I paused. “That wasn’t you on the tractor, was it?”

  “Tractor?” His eyes narrowed. “One of them Yankee contraptions you pull acros
s your skin for rheumatiz?”

  We stared at each other, foreheads furrowed.

  “You a tramp?” the boy demanded.

  “Nope.”

  “Aeronaut?” The out-of-context word alarmed me until he added, “Balloonist?”

  “No, why?”

  “Well, you said “air bag” and ‘car’—”

  “Twister got him, that’s the sum of it.” Paw pointed at the cottonwoods. “See them limbs ripped off? Twister tore through yesterday like nobody’s business. Swept up livestock, even whole houses, over by Summitville. So don’t fret, mister, if you’re a bit flummoxed. Twisters generally addle folks.” He spat. “Iffen they don’t kill ’em.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Maybe, like Dorothy, I had been yanked from my other life by a storm. Maybe this was my Oz. The boy looked disappointed that I wasn’t an aeronaut.

  “You appear,” Paw said, eyeing me critically, “like you mought got blowed a fair distance.” He turned away. “Anyhow, c’mon up to the road.”

  As we pushed through the grass I described the birds I’d witnessed.

  “Prairie chickens,” the boy said. “This is their courtin’ time.”

  So that’s what they were doing. Sex. No wonder.

  The “road” turned out to be two parallel ruts in the prairie, puddled in places from the recent rain. A flatbed wagon stood hitched to a pair of scrawny mules. Perched on its high seat was a stout woman wearing a bonnet and shawl. Her eyes stayed fixed on me while Paw talked quietly to her.

  “He says he ain’t a tramp,” the boy piped up.

  “Alex, mind your manners!” she said; then, to me, “You been a-pilfering?”

  “What’s there to take out here?” Paw said, waving toward the pond. “ ’Sides, look at him.”