Abner & Me (8 page)

But the fun was about to end.

Suddenly I heard a high-pitched whistling sound from above. I looked up instinctively, just in time to see something flying over the trees and arching down toward our field.

“Sakes alive!” somebody screamed.

Whatever it was, it landed about twenty yards to the right of me, between third base and home plate. A huge ball of fire shot out of the ground, and the boom of the explosion echoed off the trees. Dirt and grass and stuff went flying everywhere. I dove for the dirt.

“Looks like our fun is over, boys,” one of the players shouted. “Time to start fightin' again.”

A FEW SECONDS AFTER THE SHELL EXPLODED NEAR THE
third-base line, a second one hit the ground near first base, sending up another shower of dirt and mud and grass.

“Run for it!” one of the players yelled. My new friends ran for the cover of the woods.

“Joey, we've got to get out of here!” my mother shouted from the little ridge where she was sitting.

“You ain't kidding!” I screamed.

But by now, shells were falling all around the field. I couldn't imagine that anyone was aiming for this empty field. Why waste the ammunition? Probably the Confederates were trying to hit Cemetery Ridge, but their artillery overshot the mark.

I was afraid to run in any direction, because if I
went left and one of those shells landed to the left of me, I might get hurt in a big way—like dead.

The safest strategy, I decided, was to zigzag across the grass. That's what I did, cutting back and forth like a football running back. But instead of dodging tacklers, I was dodging bombs.

Finally I reached Mom, and we hugged each other with relief, fear, and, okay, affection even. I pulled the pack of baseball cards out of my pocket and ripped it open as quickly as I could. The shells were still exploding in the field in front of us. It was getting dark out now. It looked like a fireworks display, except that we were sitting a
bit
too close.

“Hurry, Joey!” Mom said.

I pulled out one of the baseball cards. Mom held my hand. I waited for the tingling sensation to buzz my fingertips.

Then I realized I forgot something. I dropped the card on the grass.

“What is it?” Mom asked.

“My baseball!” I said. “I forgot the baseball that Abner Doubleday signed for me!”

We looked out at the field. The baseball was still lying there on the grass, midway between first and second base.

“Forget about the baseball!” Mom said. “It's not important!”

“It's important to
me
!” I said.

Mom tried to hold me back, but there was no stopping me. I ran back out to the field again. It
would only take me a few seconds to grab the ball and run back to Mom.

I was about twenty feet from the ball when a shell landed between first and second base. There was a tremendous explosion of sound and fire. I dove for the ground. Dirt and rocks rained down on me. I looked up to see where the baseball was.

In the exact spot where the ball had been a few seconds earlier, there was now a crater in the ground about the size of a Volkswagen. Maybe getting that ball wasn't so important after all.

“Joey, come back!” hollered Mom.

The baseball was gone. There was no point in searching for it. It probably didn't exist anymore. My dad would be mad that I hadn't brought back an authentic Abner Doubleday–signed baseball, but I had done the best I could.

I sat back down on the grass next to Mom, picked up the baseball card again, and held my mom's hand. I closed my eyes and thought about going home to Louisville.

“Do you feel anything?” Mom asked. “That tingling sensation?”

“Not yet,” I replied.

Shells were still falling in the field in front of us. If one of those guys aiming the cannons moved the barrel just one or two degrees up or down, I realized, Mom and I would be dead.

“Hurry up!” Mom said urgently. “They're getting closer!”

“It's hard to concentrate,” I said. “There's so much noise. I can't focus.”

And then, suddenly, the shelling stopped. All was quiet. I opened my eyes and looked up in the sky just to make sure. It was dark now, except for a big full moon and more stars than I had ever seen in my life. It was beautiful.

There were no city lights to obscure the view of the stars. The electric light hadn't been invented yet, I realized. Neither had the automobile. There was no pollution to get in the way of the stars. I had never seen a sky like this one.

I closed my eyes again and thought about how nice it would be to go back home to Louisville. Riding my bike along the banks of the Ohio River to Waterfront Park and looking across the river to Indiana. Going to the Louisville Slugger Museum. Hanging out at Flip's Fan Club and listening to Flip tell his old baseball stories.

Gradually, the first tingles began to buzz my fingertips.

Out beyond the trees, I could hear music very faintly. There were bugles and fifes and harmonicas playing, but mostly it was just men singing. “When Johnny Comes Marching Home.” “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

It was all quite soothing. I started to feel a little drowsy, but the tingles were getting stronger now, and they kept me awake as they traveled up my arms.

In the distance all the music stopped, except for one lone bugler playing “Taps” very slowly. I knew the tune well, because ever since I was a baby my mother used to sing it to me each night after she put me to bed and turned off the light. The real words were…

But my mom always sang…

Then she would say good night and close the door.

The tingling sensation swept across my chest now and was moving down my stomach toward my legs. I'm sure Mom felt it too. There was no turning back.

I heard footsteps approaching and then a voice, but I kept my eyes closed.

“What are you doing here?” a man asked. “Get your gun! Take shelter! If we're going to win this war, we're going to need every man.”

“No, you won't,” I said.

And with that, we faded away.

I WAS PLAYING THIRD BASE
.
THE MAIN STREET
Ophthalmologists had runners on first and second, and there was only one out. Last inning. Their biggest guy was coming up to the plate, holding that huge bat he swings around like a toothpick just to intimidate pitchers. If he got an extra base hit and the two base runners scored, that would tie it up and Flip's Fan Club would have blown a four-run lead. And if he hit one out of the park, well, that would be the ball game.

But I really didn't care.

Well, I wanted us to win and all, but I just couldn't keep my mind on the game.

After all, it was just a silly baseball game. The night before, I had been a witness to one of the most important events in American history. I had seen men kill. I had seen men die! I had seen things I
would never forget for the rest of my life. A Little League game between Flip's Fan Club and the Main Street Ophthalmologists just didn't seem all that important anymore.

“Come on, Johnny!” Flip Valentini called from the dugout. “Strike this guy out!”

I hadn't made any really stupid errors or anything. But I'd missed the chance to complete a double play in the third inning. That had cost us a run. And in my three chances at bat, I had fouled out, popped out, and struck out. I wasn't helping the team.

Johnny struck out the big guy. Two outs. Good. One more out and we could go home.

I scanned the bleachers for my mother, but she wasn't around. Where was she? This was the second game in a row that Mom had missed. I was starting to worry about her. What if something had happened to her?

I never used to worry about my mother. She was always the one who had to worry about
me
. But when I scooped her up at Gettysburg and carried her across Cemetery Ridge, something changed. It was the first time I had to protect her instead of the other way around. Someday, when I'm a grown-up and Mom is an old lady, I might have to take care of her all the time, the same way she takes care of Uncle Wilbur.

Why was I thinking about that
now
? I just about slapped myself in the face with my glove. We were in danger of losing this game, and here I was, day-
dreaming about such weird stuff.

“Two outs!” the coach of the Ophthalmologists hollered. “Run on anything.”

Johnny went into his windup, and the batter cracked a sharp grounder down the third-base line. Somehow, my instincts took over. I dove for the ball and managed to get in front of it. The ball bounced off my chest and I scrambled to grab it.

Usually, before every pitch, I mentally rehearse exactly what I'll do if the ball is hit to me. But for the moment, I had forgotten the situation. I had been daydreaming. I didn't remember where the base runners were. I could always throw the ball to first, but it was a long throw and I didn't know if I could get the ball there in time to beat the runner.

“Touch third, Stosh!” everybody was screaming. “Touch third!”

Of course! There were runners at first and second. There was a force play at third.

I rolled over and stabbed at the third-base bag with the ball. I got my hand in there just before the runner from second slid in.

“Yer out!” shouted the umpire.

We won the game, but I had nothing to do with it. The other guys carried the team. I was lucky I had stopped that grounder. If it had gotten past me, both runners would have scored. I was lucky the guys told me what to do with the ball too. I was out of it.

“Are you okay, Stosh?” Flip Valentini asked me
as he drove me home after the game.

“Yeah, sure,” I said. “Why?”

“Your head didn't seem to be in the game today.”

“It wasn't,” I admitted.

“I noticed that you jumped a little with every crack of the bat too,” he said. “And when that car backfired back on Whitherspoon Street, you just about jumped through my sunroof.”

I guess he was right. Ever since I'd gotten back from Gettysburg, loud sounds had startled me. There had just been so many explosions! Every time I heard a loud noise, it reminded me of the battle. It was crazy, but I almost felt like there were sharpshooters up in the tall buildings of downtown Louisville pointing their rifles at me.

As we got closer to my house, I remembered that Flip was the reason I went to Gettysburg in the first place.

“Hey, guess who I bumped into yesterday,” I teased Flip.

“I give up.”

“Abner Doubleday.”

“Get outta here!” Flip said, driving off the road and stopping the car. Luckily there was just gravel on the shoulder so he could pull over.

“Yup,” I said, “and I asked him if he invented baseball.”

Flip looked at me expectantly. I must admit, it was fun keeping him in suspense for a few seconds.

“So it worked, huh?” Flip asked. “You were able to do it with a photograph?”

“Yup.”

“So?”

“So what?”

“Did Doubleday really invent baseball?” he asked, his eyes twinkling.

It would have been cruel to make him wait any longer.

“Nope,” I told him. “He hardly knew
anything
about baseball. He didn't even know that three strikes made an out!”

I told Flip how Doubleday had showed up at the baseball game. When he heard that I'd struck out “the inventor of baseball” on three soft underhand pitches, Flip threw back his head and laughed until tears were running down his cheeks. He was really enjoying himself.

Soon we got back on the road and drove to my house. Flip popped the latch on the trunk so I could get my duffel bag out. He made me promise to tell him all about Gettysburg on Thursday.

“What's Thursday?” I asked.

“How could you forget?” Flip said. “We're playin' your buddy Bobby Fuller's team. I know how you and Fuller get along real good.”

I pulled my stuff out of the trunk and made a promise to myself that on Thursday my head would be in the game and not worrying about Mom or anything else.

“Hey Flip,” I asked after he rolled down the window. “Do your children take care of you?”

“Never had any kids,” Flip said. “Never found the
right girl to marry. Guess I'll just have to take care of myself.”

As he pulled away from the curb, Flip flipped a pack of baseball cards out the window to me.

“You might want to go meet some of these guys next,” he said with a laugh.

I caught the pack of cards. That's when I realized something. The trip to Gettysburg had been my last. My time-traveling days were over.

I had been fooling my mother for a while, telling her how these trips were nothing more than educational, like school field trips to the past. I never told her about the times I was nearly killed.

But now that Mom had joined me for a trip, the jig was up. There was no way she would ever let me do something so reckless again.

And to be honest about it, I didn't want to travel through time again anyway. Mom was right. The more I did it, the higher the probability that something terrible would happen. Eventually my luck would run out. One of those bullets would find me one day. Or something would happen and I wouldn't be able to get back home.

I may be a little crazy, but I'm not stupid.

When I opened the front door, Uncle Wilbur was watching one of those dopey TV court shows where people argue about dumb stuff and a judge decides who is right. Uncle Wilbur smiled at me and asked me the score of my game.

Mom was in the kitchen, sitting at the computer
table in the corner. Books and papers were scattered around the table.

“Joey!” she said, looking up as if I had surprised her. When she saw me in my uniform, she must have suddenly remembered she missed my game again.

“Are you okay, Mom?” I asked.

“I lost track of the time,” she explained. “I didn't even go to the hospital today. I'm sorry, Joey.”

Wow, my mother
never
takes a day off from work. She must have been working on something really important. Taxes, I figured.

“What are you doing, Mom?” I asked.

“Planning a trip,” she said. There was sudden excitement in her voice.

“Are we going to Disney World?” I asked. My mother had been telling me she would take me to Florida ever since I was little, and now I was almost too old.

“No, we're going to Washington, D.C.”

I leaned over and noticed that one of the papers on the table was a map of Washington.

“Cool,” I said. “Can we go to the Air and Space Museum?”

“No, the Air and Space Museum won't be built yet,” she said.

“Huh?”

“Joey, we're going to Washington in 1865,” she said excitedly. Her eyes were shining. “We're going to save Abraham Lincoln's life!”