Ray & Me (4 page)

I
WAS FLOATING ON A CLOUD
,
AND MY ENTIRE BODY WAS
made of thin glass. I could see right through myself. It felt so real. I had a bat in my hands, waiting for a pitch.

There was just one other person up there on the cloud with me. It was Hammerin' Cameron, and he was the pitcher. He went into a big, exaggerated, cartoony windup.

The pitch was coming right at me. I tried to back away, but I couldn't move. I was frozen in place, like a statue. The ball crashed into my head.

Millions of tiny pieces of me exploded off in all directions, reflecting sunlight in slow motion. I was hollow. There was nothing left of me.

When I opened my eyes, I realized it had been a nightmare. That never happened before. Hopefully, it would never happen again.

I looked around to see that I was surrounded by about a million people. But I wasn't home, and I wasn't at the Polo Grounds—or at any other ballpark. I was in the middle of a city street.

Why does this always happen to me? Why is it that I never end up where I
want
to be? Where I
need
to be? Just once, I wish it would be easy.

Whenever they show time travel in the movies or on TV, some guy just steps into a booth and twists a few knobs; and the next thing you know, he's sharing a cup of tea with Napoleon or George Washington or somebody like that. But with baseball cards, I discovered, you never know where you're gonna wind up. It's not fair.

People were pushing and shoving. It looked like I might be in the right town at least—New York City. I had been there before. Maybe this was Times Square on New Year's Eve, I thought. Nah, that couldn't be right. It was daytime, and it was too hot and muggy to be December.

I slipped the Carl Mays card into my pocket. Mays was probably somewhere in this crowd. But how would I find him? All the men looked the same, wearing those goofy, old-time straw hats.

Everybody was looking up in the air; and when I looked up, I saw one of the strangest sights I'd ever seen.

There was a guy dangling upside down high above the street. His ankles were tied together with thick rope, which extended up to a crane. His body
appeared to be wrapped in some kind of cloth too.

It was one of the strangest sights I had ever seen.

He was wriggling around like a worm up there, and people below were pointing and
ooh
ing and
ahh
ing. A gust of wind came along, and the guy hanging from the rope swayed one way, then the other. It looked like he was going to bang into the side of a building.

“Ooooooooooh!”
moaned the crowd.

There was a little girl standing near me. She looked about nine years old.

“Excuse me,” I asked. “What's that guy doing up there?”

“Jeepers creepers!” the girl replied. “Didn'tja ever hear of the Great Houdini?”

Well, sure I'd heard of Houdini. He was probably the most famous magician ever. I just didn't know he would hang himself upside down in public.

Squinting into the sun, I could see that Houdini was struggling to get out of the cloth that was wrapped around him. I guessed it was a straitjacket, one of those things they used to put on crazy people so they couldn't escape.

Houdini was twisting and turning and grunting while the crowd below cheered him on. I couldn't take my eyes off him. Nobody could.

“He's nutty as a fruitcake,” said one man.

“He's swell!” a lady said.

The performance, if you can call it that, went on for about 15 minutes. Gradually, Houdini managed to loosen the cloth that was binding him. He got one
arm free, then the other. Finally, he extended his arms out to his sides dramatically and threw off the straitjacket. It fell to the street below.

The crowd exploded in cheers.

“Come see the Great Houdini perform his complete act at the Orpheum Theatre tonight at eight o'clock sharp!” hollered some guy with a megaphone. “The Great Houdini will do his famous Chinese Water Torture Cell Escape. No shackles can bind the Great Houdini! Tonight at eight o'clock sharp! The Orpheum Theatre.”

The crowd let out another cheer; and then, quite suddenly, everybody started walking off in different directions. They were like roaches when you turn on the light. Within a minute, the crowd was gone and this looked like any other city street.

If Carl Mays was in that crowd, he was gone now too. I had blown my chance. I'd never find him in all the millions of people in New York City.

I thought about calling it quits and going home.

A newspaper was lying on a bench. I picked it up.

Nina Wallace

Aha! Monday, August 16, 1920. That was the date Ray Chapman was killed. Well, at least I showed up on the right day.

The newspaper cost two cents, I noticed. It had only 24 pages, and it wasn't separated into different sections. I flipped through until I found the sports pages.

The Indians had a slim lead over the White Sox and Yankees.

 

The Indians were in first place—barely, just like Flip had said. Scanning down the page, I saw this:

 

 

Judging by the angle of the sun in the sky, it was probably close to noon. Chapman was going to get hit in the fifth inning. That meant I had around four hours to save his life.

I was about to ask somebody how to get to the Polo Grounds, but something stopped me. Carl Mays
had
to be somewhere near me now. That was the way it always worked.

I looked around, trying to spot Mays. A man stepped out of an unmarked doorway about 25 feet away. I rushed over there, hoping to grab the door before it shut; but I was too late. The wooden door slammed in my face.

I knocked twice. A few seconds went by before a thin slot opened in the door at about eye level. I could hear music and noise inside.

“What's the password?” a man's voice asked gruffly.

“Password?” I said. “I don't know any password.”

“Then whaddaya want?” All I could see were the man's eyes.

“I'm trying to find a guy,” I said. “His name is—”

“Scram!” the voice said. “Put an egg in your shoe and beat it.”

“But I—”

“Go play in the traffic, kid.”

The slot in the door closed. I was about to turn away when it opened again. Another pair of eyes stared at me.

“Don't mind Louie,” a woman's voice said with a giggle. “He's a flat tire. Did you bring the stuff?”

“What stuff?” I asked, but she had already closed the slot and opened the door.

She was pretty, with bright red lips, short wavy hair, and skinny eyebrows that looked like they were drawn on with a pencil. She was holding a rose in her hand. Behind her, there was a party going on. It looked like a nightclub. Happy people were dancing to jazz music. There was a live band playing. The scene looked like one of those old gangster movies my mom likes to watch.

“Hey, you're kinda cute!” the lady said. “Come on in!”

I hesitated. There was a lot of drinking going on in there, and I didn't want to get in trouble. On the other hand, Carl Mays might be in this place. And besides, it wasn't every day that a pretty girl told me I was cute. I stepped through the doorway.

“My name's Adeline,” she said. “Y'know, like in
the song ‘Sweet Adeline'? You can call me Addie.”

“You're kinda cute!' she said. “Come on in!”

I'd never heard of the song before.

“Joe Stoshack,” I said, shaking her hand. “You can call me Stosh.”

“Stosh, I like that,” she said. “Hey, what's with the odd threads? Where ya from, Stoshie?”

I looked down at my jeans and sneakers.

“I'm from…out of town,” I said.

“Way out, looks like to me.”

“Louisville, Kentucky,” I said.

“That how they dress in Louisville?”

“Pretty much.”

“C'mere, Stoshie!”

Addie grabbed my hand and pulled me past some couples who were dancing while swigging from bottles of whiskey. They didn't even bother with glasses. As she dragged me toward the bar, she told me that the password was Woodrow, same as the president's first name.

“Hey, Jimmy!” she yelled to a guy mixing drinks behind a bar. “Where's that zoot suit we had layin' around? I think it would fit my friend Stoshie.”

“Get that ragamuffin outta here, Addie!” the bartender yelled back. “You want the cops to bust in and find a kid in here?”

“Ah, dry up, Jimmy, ya big sap!” Addie yelled at him. “Mind your potatoes.”

“Says you, Addie!”

“Don't mind him,” Addie whispered to me. “He's just steamed because we're gonna get the right to vote.”

“Huh?”

“You ain't heard?” she said. “On Wednesday, Tennessee is gonna vote on women's suffrage, and word is it's gonna pass. They're gonna add an amendment to the Constitution! We'll get to vote in November just like men.”

Women couldn't vote until 1920? That was a new one on me.

Addie rummaged around in a box behind the bar until she found a fancy-looking sports jacket.

“Who does this belong to?” I asked as she helped me put it on.

“Some drunk ran outta here in his underwear,” she told me. “He won't be comin' back. You can have it.”

She stepped back to look me over. “Pretty spiffy! Fits you like a glove. Now you're hip to the jive, Stoshie! So, where's the stuff?”

“I don't have any stuff,” I said.

“C'mon, level with me, Stoshie,” she said. “They told me a kid was bringing the stuff.”

“I don't know what stuff you're talking about,” I told her. She was clearly drunk.

“Then what's a nice young fella like you doing in a juice joint like this?” she asked.

“I'm looking for Carl Mays,” I said. “Do you know where he is?”

Addie burst out laughing.