Jim & Me (13 page)

JIM LOOKED LIKE HE MIGHT BE DEAD
.
HIS FACE WAS
buried in the pillow and his arm hung off the side of the bed. He was so still. “Is he alive?” I asked Bobby.

“Relax, Stoshack,” Bobby replied. “Can't you see him breathing? He went on a bender and he's sleeping it off. Didn't you ever get drunk?”

“No, I didn't.”

It didn't surprise me to hear that Bobby had been drunk before. If he was addicted to something as dangerous as heroin, he
must
have used alcohol. Me, I took a sip of my dad's beer once and almost threw up. I don't know how anybody can drink that stuff.

Suddenly, Jim started mumbling in his sleep. It was hard to understand what he was saying. It sounded like, “I miss you, Charlie”—or something
like that.

“Who's Charlie?” Bobby whispered.

“Beats me.”

“I won those medals, Charlie,” Jim mumbled. “Won 'em fair and square. You believe me, don't you?”

Jim rolled over and thrashed around, muttering something unintelligible.

“We can leave the money on the night table with a note,” Bobby said.

“I gotta use the can first,” I told Bobby.

I found my way to the bathroom, and was happy to see it had a regular toilet that flushed.

While I was doing my business, it occurred to me that since we'd been in 1913, Bobby hardly had any opportunity to use the syringe he was hiding in his backpack. That movie they showed us at school said junkies had to get a fix every few hours.

Right now would be the perfect time for him to shoot up,
I realized.
Jim was asleep. I was in the bathroom. Bobby was alone.

Flushing the toilet would tell him I was finished. Instead, I tiptoed out of the bathroom, sneaking back down the hall into Jim's bedroom. I fully expected to see Bobby with the syringe in his hand.

Well, he had the syringe in his hand all right. But he wasn't injecting himself with it.

He was about to stick it into
Jim
!

“What are you doing?!” I demanded.

“Shhhhh!”
Bobby whispered. “You'll wake him.”

“What are you doing?!” I repeated.

“None of your business.”

Now, I don't know anything about wrestling, but I remembered the move Jim did on that big guy, Tesreau, in the Giants' locker room. I grabbed Bobby from behind, crossing one of my legs over his leg. Then I yanked up his hand that was holding the syringe and twisted the other one behind his back.

“Let
go
of me, Stoshack!” Bobby begged. “This is very dangerous!”

“I know,” I grunted. “That's why I'm doing it. Drop the syringe.”

Bobby tried one last time to break the hold, but I had him locked up.

“I call this the Armbreaker,” I said.

“Okay, okay,” he said, letting the syringe fall to the floor.

Jim, amazingly, slept through the whole thing. He really
did
sleep like a log.

“I can't
believe
this,” I whispered. “You're trying to shoot him up with heroin?”

Bobby looked at me like I was nuts.

“Heroin?” he said. “I wasn't giving him heroin. Why would I do a crazy thing like that?”

“Because you're addicted,” I said. “You're a junkie.”

“Are you nuts?! What makes you think I'm a junkie?”

“You didn't want me looking in your backpack,” I explained, “so I went in there while you were asleep outside the Polo Grounds. You had the syringe and two unmarked bottles.”

“It's not heroin, you moron!” Bobby said.

“Then what
is
it?”

Bobby took a few seconds, then sighed.

“It's steroids,” he said.

Steroids?!

In case you don't know, steroids are these really powerful drugs that some athletes use to build muscles. Steroids are banned in just about all sports. Some players have gotten caught using them and were fined, suspended, or even banned for years. It has become a huge issue in cycling, track, football, and baseball.

The fact that Bobby wanted to give Jim steroids floored me. I had been dead wrong. Bobby wasn't a junkie. He was a pusher! And he was pushing steroids!

“Where did you get that stuff?” I asked.

“A guy I know on the high-school football team takes 'em,” Bobby said. “He sold me some.”

“Are you out of your mind?” I asked him. “Steroids are dangerous! You don't know what the side effects might be! You probably don't even know how much to give him. He could have an overdose!”

“Will you lighten up, Stoshack?” Bobby said, his eyes flashing with anger. “Lots of athletes take
steroids. It's not that big of a deal. And think about it.
Nobody
has them here. They haven't been invented yet. Jim Thorpe is the greatest athlete in the world. If he was the only guy in his time who had steroids, he would be better than Ruth, Aaron, DiMaggio—all of them put together! We would go back home and find the record books rewritten. Most home runs: Jim Thorpe. Most RBIs: Jim Thorpe. Highest slugging average—”

“That's insane!” I shouted. “You think injecting something into him is going to help him hit a curveball? He's a great athlete, but he's just not a great baseball player. That's all there is to it. Steroids
aren't
going to make him great.”

“Wouldn't hurt,” Bobby said.

Suddenly it all made sense to me. I relaxed my grip on Bobby. Now I knew the
real
reason he had showed up at my door that day.

“So
that's
why you wanted to go back in time!” I said. “You didn't want to meet your great-grandfather. You didn't want to help him get his medals back. You just wanted to shoot him full of drugs and turn him into some pumped-up muscle freak who would rewrite the record books!”

“What's so wrong with that?” Bobby protested. “Y'know,
you
gave me the idea, Stoshack. You said that coming here was my chance to right a wrong, remember? You said not many people ever have the power to do that. Well, I'm doing it. I think giving Jim steroids is the right thing to do.”

Suddenly, Bobby reached down and grabbed the syringe off the floor. He was about to jab it into Jim.

So I slugged him. Right in the jaw.

“Owww!” Bobby yelled as he fell over. The syringe sailed across the room. Bobby landed right on top of Jim, who bolted up from his bed. He looked like he had seen a ghost.

“Wh—what are you kids doing here?” he demanded.

Jim couldn't possibly understand what steroids were. This was a man who had never seen television, never surfed the web, never heard of DNA or atomic bombs or space travel.

“Mr. Thorpe,” I said before Bobby could get a word in. “We're really sorry. We thought we might be able to do something that would prevent you from losing. But we messed up.”

“Here,” Bobby said, pulling the bills and coins out of his pocket. “We won this from those guys playing football in the park. We pulled the Dig on them, and it worked.”

“Take it,” I said. “Your bartender says you owe him money.”

“Thanks, boys,” Jim said, accepting the cash.

Before we left, I wanted to ask him one question that had been on my mind ever since I'd talked to my dad.

“After the Olympics, why didn't you just cash in and get rich?” I asked. “You could have been a millionaire. Why did you go back to college and play
football for free?”

“The team needed me,” he said simply.

It was just a different time, I guess. I couldn't imagine anyone in the twenty-first century giving up the chance to make gobs of money. I hear about athletes who already earn ten million dollars a year, and as soon as their contract is up they jump to the first team that offers them eleven million. There's no loyalty anymore. Or maybe there never was. Maybe Jim Thorpe was just a really good guy.

“Jim,” Bobby asked. “Who's Charlie? You were talking in your sleep to somebody named Charlie.”

Jim grimaced and picked up a picture of two little boys from his night table.

“Charlie was my twin brother,” he said.

“You have a twin?” I asked.

“He was my best friend too,” Jim said. “But Charlie died when we were ten. Typhoid.”

“I'm sorry,” I said, as Jim buried his face in his hands.

While Jim wept and Bobby comforted him, I took the opportunity to retrieve the syringe and bottles and bring them down the hall to the bathroom. I squirted the liquid inside the syringe down the sink and poured out the contents of the two bottles. Jim didn't need steroids. Nobody needed steroids. Bobby Fuller could be so stupid sometimes.

When I got back from the bathroom, Bobby and Jim were sitting on the bed next to each other. Jim was listening to Bobby's iPod. His eyes were closed
and he was bobbing his head up and down with the music.

Bobby's eyes were closed too. In one hand, he was holding a baseball card. In the other, he was holding Jim's hand.

BOBBY FULLER HAS DONE SOME TERRIBLE THINGS TO ME
over the years. But this was the ultimate. I couldn't believe he would try to leave me behind. That kid simply had no morals. No sense of right or wrong. No conscience. I could hardly believe what I was seeing.

“What are you doing?” I demanded.

“Nothing,” Bobby said, letting go of Jim's hand. “Jim's rocking out.”

I saw Bobby slip the baseball card behind his back. I reached into my pocket for my new pack of cards. It was there, but it had been opened.

“You're trying to take Jim home with you,” I accused him, “and leave me here!”

“That's ridiculous, Stoshack,” Bobby claimed. “I was just showing him how we do it.”

“We?” I said. “
We? I'm
the one who has the power!
The power isn't in the
card
, you dope! The power is in
me
. You can't use it by yourself.”

“I know that,” he said. “We weren't going anywhere. We were just fooling around.”

Jim's eyes were still closed. He was nodding his head to the music. He couldn't hear us.

“So you're a pickpocket too,” I told Bobby.

“I am not,” he replied. “I…found it.”

I used to be a pretty emotional guy. I used to throw tantrums and lose my temper when somebody got me mad. I had to learn to keep my anger in check.

But this was the last straw. I'd had it with Bobby Fuller.

So I just jumped on him and started punching. I got a few good shots in before Jim realized what was going on.

“Knock it off!” he said, taking out the earbuds. “I thought you boys were friends.”

“He was
never
my friend!” I yelled.

I don't think I've ever been so mad in my life. I was punching Bobby in the face and he was punching me back. It was the way little kids fight. No defense, all offense. I wasn't about to let up. I wanted to inflict more pain on Bobby than he was giving me.

Suddenly, Jim's huge hand grabbed the back of my shirt, pulling me and Bobby apart. I was panting like a dog. Bobby was too. I would have kept fighting anyway, but Jim wouldn't let go of us. He just held
us like that until we calmed down.

“Say you're sorry,” Jim ordered.

Bobby and I made some weak apologies to each other and Jim let us go.

“Stoshack,” Bobby said, “think it over. We should take Jim home with us to Louisville! It would be great!”

“What would be so great about it?” I asked, still angry at him.

“Jim would be a superstar if he lived in the twenty-first century,” said Bobby. “Nobody would care that he played baseball before the Olympics. He could make millions of dollars and live in a giant mansion and drive around in a Corvette or whatever car he wanted. Just imagine! They'd be making Jim Thorpe posters and Jim Thorpe bobble heads. He'd be dating supermodels and doing commercials for Coke and McDonald's and—”

“What's a bobble head?” Jim asked.

“It's a little statue that…oh, never mind,” Bobby told him. “You like my iPod? Wait until you see an IMAX movie! We have satellite radio and high-definition TV too!”

“Jim doesn't know what you're talking about,” I told Bobby. “They don't even have
regular
TV or radio here.”

“So what?” Bobby said. “He would
love
the future.”

“Could you really take me with you?” Jim asked.

He looked like he actually wanted to come.
Nobody had ever wanted to before. I met Shoeless Joe Jackson just before he was about to be kicked out of baseball forever. It was all over for him. His life was ruined. He was disgraced. But when I offered to take him home with me, he said no. He wanted to stay in his own time, no matter how terrible it was.

And who could blame him? If some stranger from the next century came and offered to take me away from the world I knew, I'd probably tell him to buzz off.

“You want us to take you to the twenty-first century?” I asked.

“Maybe I wasn't meant for my time,” Jim said. “Maybe I…maybe I was born too soon.”

It never occurred to me that somebody could be born too early or too late for the time they live in. But I suppose a person might not fit into their time period, just like we might not fit into a shirt or a certain social group.

It made me think of Josh Gibson. He was very possibly the greatest power hitter in baseball history. They said he hit 800 home runs in the Negro Leagues. Josh died when he was thirty-five, just ten weeks before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier. If he had been born ten years later, he might have been as famous as Babe Ruth. Maybe even
more
famous.

Jim was looking at me with pleading eyes. I weighed the pros and cons of bringing him home
with us. The pros were obvious. We could make him a superstar. He was a natural athlete. With a smart hitting coach and a patient manager, he might become as good as any baseball player in the world. In the twenty-first century, he would be Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, and Lance Armstrong all rolled into one.

But there were some cons too. What if Jim couldn't handle the shock of living in modern times? Going from a Model T to a Corvette might be too much for him.

For another thing, I've never taken
two
people with me before. It might not work. Maybe there's a limit, like when you fly on an airplane and they only let you take a certain number of suitcases. What if our bodies get ripped apart in the time-travel process?

“I can't do it,” I finally decided. “If anything went wrong, I'd be responsible. It wouldn't be right to play with Jim's life.”

“Stoshack,” Bobby argued, “the whole reason we came here was to play with Jim's life! If we had kept him out of the Olympics,
that
would have changed everything for him.”

He had a point. There was no big difference between changing Jim's life in 1913 or changing his life by taking him away from 1913.

“Excuse me,” Jim said. He looked at Bobby. “You said you're my great-grandson. Is that the truth?”

“Yes,” said Bobby.

“Well, if I went with you boys to your time,” Jim said thoughtfully, “I wouldn't
have
any great-grandchildren there, would I? I wouldn't have any great-grandchildren at all.”

He was right. It was the same reasoning behind our decision to stop Jim from committing suicide. If Jim died
or
if he came with us, he wouldn't get married and have children in his own time. His children obviously wouldn't have children either, so Bobby Fuller would never be born. Jim and I would return to the twenty-first century and Bobby would simply not exist.

“It's your decision, Bobby,” I said.

I could see he was thinking it over. Bobby could sacrifice his own life to save Jim's reputation. Or, he could just save his own skin and leave Jim behind. Honestly, I'm not sure which I would choose if I was in his position. I wouldn't want to be in his shoes.

But Bobby never had to make the decision.

“I'm not going,” Jim said. “I refuse to ruin someone else's life just so I can make mine better.”

It didn't look like he was going to change his mind, so Bobby and I got up to leave. We said good-bye and told Jim we were sorry for the trouble we had caused him. He shook my hand and then held Bobby's for a long time.

“My great-grandson, there's an old Indian saying,” Jim told him. “Bad in good and good in bad. All men have good in them. Let the good show itself.”

“I will,” Bobby said. “Is there anything I can do
for you before we go?”

“Yeah,” Jim said. “Can I have that pod thing?”

Ooooooooh, iPods are expensive. Bobby probably saved up for a long time to buy his. And there would be no way for Jim to charge it up once the battery ran out. He would only get a few hours of music out of it.

“Sure,” Bobby said, handing him the iPod.

We took the stairs down to the lobby and turned right onto Eighth Avenue. It was nighttime. The streets were empty. Most of the stores were closed for the day. I figured we would go back to the park and find a quiet spot where Bobby and I could relax and send ourselves home.

But we hadn't gotten more than 20 feet from the hotel when a hand clapped over my mouth. Another hand grabbed me around the chest.

Somebody was pulling me into an alley.