Abner & Me (9 page)

MAYBE THERE WAS SOMETHING WRONG WITH MY HEARING
, I thought. My ears were clogged with wax or something.

Nah, that couldn't be it.

Maybe I had entered a parallel universe. You know, one of those sci-fi worlds where everything that happens is opposite from the universe we live in.

Nah, that couldn't be it either.

There was only one possible explanation for what Mom had just said to me.

My mother had gone insane.

After getting shot at, covered with blood, and very nearly killed at the Battle of Gettysburg, my mother wanted to go back in time with me
again
to stop a bullet before it got to Abraham Lincoln? This, from a woman who won't even let me ride my bike into downtown Louisville by myself.

It was crazy. It was impossible.

On the other hand, maybe Mom just wanted to go back in time so she could pick up that Medal of Honor that Abner Doubleday said he was going to recommend her for!

In any case, my mother had a look in her eye that I hadn't seen in years, not since before she and my dad broke up. It was the gleam of energy and excitement. She even looked younger to me.

“I had a brainstorm when we were back at Gettysburg,” she told me, gesturing with her hands. “It came to me while you were playing baseball with those Union soldiers. The idea popped into my head that we could go back in time together and prevent President Lincoln from being assassinated!”

“Mom—”

“Hear me out, Joey,” she said, opening one of the library books in front of her. “Almost two years after the Battle of Gettysburg, on April 14, 1865, Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theatre in Washington. All we have to do is get a photograph that was taken in Washington that day. Then we can go back and stop Booth before he gets to Lincoln!”

“
This
is what you've been doing all day?” I asked. Every book on the table was about Abraham Lincoln, I could see now. Up on the computer screen was a website called thedaylincolndied.com.

“I couldn't sleep last night,” Mom said. “I was up until four o'clock in the morning figuring everything out. I couldn't go to work today. This is more important.”

“Mom, you're obsessed!”

“Look at this,” she said, pointing to a timeline on the screen. “All the facts are here. At exactly 8:30
P.M
., the president and his wife, Mary, arrived at Ford's Theatre to see a play called
Our American Cousin
. John Wilkes Booth arrived at 9:30
P.M
.—one hour later. He had a single-shot derringer pistol and a hunting knife with him. Booth tied up his horse in an alley behind the theater, and then he went to the Star Saloon next door. He had a drink in the saloon. At 10:07, he entered the theater. Eight minutes later, he shot the president. Lincoln clung to life through the night and died at 7:22
A.M
. the next morning. It's all here, Joey.”

“And your plan is?” I was almost afraid to hear what scheme she was cooking up.

“When Booth is in the saloon, it will be the perfect opportunity to nail him,” she said.

I still couldn't believe it. Before Gettysburg my mother had been the most cautious person in the world. She never did
anything
risky or dangerous. She would take a first aid kit with her when she went grocery shopping. One of the biggest problems she ever had with my dad was that he liked to gamble. And now she comes up with this wacky plan to prevent the Lincoln assassination? It was crazy.

“What are you going to do,
shoot
John Wilkes Booth?” I asked, knowing full well that my mother was passionately antiviolence and had never fired a gun in her life.

“No,” she said. “I don't need to
kill
him. I just
need to stop him.”

My mother pulled out a little gadget from the desk drawer. It looked sort of like that electric razor the barber uses to trim the hair on the back of your neck.

“It's a stun gun,” she said. “It doesn't shoot bullets. It shoots a high-voltage electrical charge. See?”

She pushed a button, and a scary-looking blue spark flicked across the top of the stun gun. It made a crackling noise too. It was like something out of
Star Trek
.

“That's cool!” I said. “Can I borrow it? There are some kids at school I'd like to try it out on.”

“Very funny,” Mom said. “We keep a few of them at the hospital just in case a patient goes crazy and we have to subdue him.”

“How's it work?”

“You touch it against somebody and it sends two hundred thousand volts of electricity through their skin. Their muscles and nerves are immobilized for a few minutes. They're confused and imbalanced. You zap somebody with one of these and believe me, they'll be in no condition to assassinate anybody. It even works through clothing.”

“I have one question.” I asked, “Have you lost your marbles?”

Uncle Wilbur wheeled himself into the kitchen, opened up the refrigerator door, and peered inside. His hearing isn't very good, but Mom lowered her voice anyway.

“It will be a simple operation,” my mother whis
pered. “In and out. We zap Booth with the stun gun, turn him over to the police, and then we come home. It won't be at all like Gettysburg.”

Uncle Wilbur closed the refrigerator door without taking anything and wheeled himself back to the living room.

“You make it sound like
Mission: Impossible
, Mom,” I said. “It's never simple. Time travel doesn't always work out the way you think it will.”

“But it's worth the risk,” she said. “Think of what we can accomplish! Lincoln was probably America's greatest president. Who knows what would have happened if he had lived. We can change the entire course of American history!”

“There's the chance that we could make things worse, too, you know,” I countered. “There's no way to know for sure if things would have been better with Lincoln alive.”

My mother paused for a moment, letting out a sigh.

“Joey, before we went to Gettysburg, I never did anything outrageous in my life. Let's face it, my life is pretty ordinary. But being at Gettysburg was an amazing experience. It made me feel so
alive
. I want to do it again. I want to do some good in the world.”

“You save lives every day,” I reminded her. “That's doing something good.”

“I want to save
Lincoln's
life.”

“Mom, you could get killed! What if Booth pulls out his gun and shoots you? He's an assassin! What if he stabs you with that hunting knife?”

“I'll stun him before he has the chance,” Mom said. “He won't suspect me. His guard won't be up.”

Maybe I
was
in a parallel universe. All the other times, it was me arguing that I wanted to travel through time and it was
Mom
thinking up all the reasons why I shouldn't do it. Now everything was backward.

Every argument I made, she gave me one back. She was determined to do this thing. I was running out of reasons why it was a bad idea.

“You'll never find a photo that was taken in Washington on the same day Lincoln was shot.”

“I can try.”

“Look, Mom,” I said. “Remember when I went back to 1919 and tried to prevent the Black Sox Scandal? I couldn't do it. You won't be able to do this either. It says in all the history books that Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth on that night. There's nothing that you or anyone can do about that now. You can't change history.”

Uncle Wilbur rolled back into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator again.

“When's dinner?” he muttered. “I'm starved.”

Mom looked over at Uncle Wilbur, then looked at me, raising one eyebrow.

“Can't change history, eh?” she asked.

It looked like I would be going to 1865 to try to save the life of Abraham Lincoln.

A COUPLE OF DAYS WENT BY
,
AND MY MOTHER DIDN'T
mention her wacky plan to go back to 1865 and save the life of Abraham Lincoln.

Life returned to normal. I went back to school. Mom went back to work. Uncle Wilbur watched his dopey TV shows. My dad came over to visit. He was a little mad that I hadn't brought him back a baseball signed by Abner Doubleday. But when I told him what we had been through at Gettysburg, he said he understood.

I was beginning to think Mom had forgotten about the Lincoln assassination. But then, I was sitting in social studies on Wednesday afternoon when Mrs. Van Hook came over to me and told me I should report to the office.

Being called down to the office is not usually a good thing. It's not as serious as being called down
to the principal's office, but chances are that if you have to report to
any
school office, it's not good news. I couldn't think of anything I had done that would have gotten me into trouble, at least recently.

“What did I do?” I asked Mrs. Van Hook, but she just shrugged.

I went down to the school office, and Mom was sitting there waiting for me. She had a mischievous grin on her face.

“What is it?” I asked. “Am I in trouble?”

Mom pulled a photo out of a large envelope and showed it to me. She had that wild gleam in her eye.

The unfinished Washington Monument

“I got it from the Library of Congress,” she said.

“So?”

“Joey, it's the Washington Monument…under construction!”

“Mom, I'm in the middle of social studies class.”

“Oh, who cares about social studies?” she said. “The Washington Monument is just six blocks from Ford's Theatre, Joey! This is the picture I've been searching for!”

The school secretary looked up at us from her desk.

“How do you know when this picture was taken?” I said, lowering my voice. “It could have been years after the assassination. Then it's no use.”

Mom flipped the photo over. On the back were these words:

 

WASHINGTON MONUMENT, APRIL 14, 1865

 

“This is it, Joey!” Mom bubbled. “This is our ticket. You can do it. You can save Lincoln's life. Nobody else can do it.”

“Mom, I have a math quiz seventh period,” I moaned.

“Oh, forget about your math quiz!” Mom said. “We have the chance to change American history! Let's go!”

She practically dragged me out of school. There was no getting around it. I was going to go back in time and try to prevent the Lincoln assassination.

“What about Uncle Wilbur?” I asked as Mom
drove—a little too fast—home from school.

“He's taking his afternoon nap,” she said. “I told him to fix himself some dinner when he wakes up. He'll be fine.”

When we got home, all the stuff we would need was already laid out carefully on the coffee table in the living room. Stun gun. First aid kit. Snacks. Map of Washington. Umbrella. Old-time money so Mom could buy a drink at the Star Saloon. She'd gotten a new pack of baseball cards so we would be able to get home. She fit everything into her purse except the umbrella. Mom even got some goofy-looking antique clothes so would could blend in on the streets of Washington. We put them on and sat on the couch together.

“Are you ready?” she said excitedly as she took out the photo of the Washington Monument.

“I'm scared, Mom,” I admitted.

“What are you scared of, Joey?”

“What if something goes wrong?”

“Like what?”

“Well, what if we do save Lincoln?” I said, thinking out loud. “And history is changed? We can't predict how the world will be different if Lincoln had lived. Maybe horrible things will happen. Maybe we'll come back home and find out our house was never built. Or maybe, because of some weird chain of events, we'll come back home and find out America doesn't exist anymore, or everybody is speaking German, or the whole world has been destroyed by atomic bombs. What if we come back
and find out that you were never born? That would mean I was never born. Then what would happen?”

Mom thought it over.

“I'm willing to take that chance if you are,” she said.

I took the photo in one hand and held Mom's hand with the other. I thought about what Washington, D.C., would look like in 1865. I didn't even know if the White House had been built yet.

“Do you really have to bring an umbrella?” I mumbled.

“It might be raining in Washington.”

Soon the tingling sensation started to buzz across my fingertips. It raced up my arms, down my legs, and all over my body. Just as I felt myself starting to fade away, I dropped the photo, grabbed the stupid umbrella out of Mom's hand and tossed it aside.

And then we disappeared.