“I’m freezin’ for hash!” he said. “How about it?”
“What?”
“Sorry, you got to remind me for a spell that you’re . . . you know. What I said was I’m hungry. Want some breakfast?”
I realized suddenly that I was ravenous. I also realized that I had qualms about venturing from that room.
“Is there time to clean up?”
He lent me his straight-edged razor, first honing it on a leather strap, and produced a basin of water from one of the commode’s compartments. I saw in a mirror that the blood had been cleaned from my face and a bandage plastered to my cheek. I soaked it; off and stared at an angry-looking gash, thinking it odd that I remembered no pain from it.
Ring’s Verbena Cream reeked of perfume and produced a thin, bubbly lather. Handling the long blade clumsily, I nicked the edge of the gash and looked around for a styptic pencil. Andy handed me alum to stem the bleeding. Maybe I’d like to splash on some witch hazel, he said, and started out to borrow Brainard’s. “You want Acey’s macassar oil?” he called from the doorway. “For your hair?”
“Uh, no, I’ll pass.”
When he was gone I tried to take stock of my situation. Was this another dream? Was I hallucinating? It didn’t seem plausible. Andy was real. It all felt real. But if I had actually jumped backward in time, why? And how? Was my old body still on that station dock? Had I died and somehow been reborn here? I recalled the shadowy, beckoning form I’d glimpsed just before passing out. Had that meant something? There must be a rationale to all this, a purpose. If I looked for clues surely I’d figure it out. But the whole thing was scary, like plunging into a void. Even with Andy’s help, how was I going to cope?
As I gingerly scraped the razor over my face, I puzzled over a strange sense of familiarity—then remembered Grandpa attacking his whiskers with his old ivory-handled razor while singing his World War I songs. I felt closer to him and Grandma than I had in years. Why? The dreams? But if this were actually happening, then I’d landed in a time before Grandma and Grandpa were born. Was it possible for me to exist before they had?
I rinsed the lather away and stared at my image. Apart from the gash and considerable puffiness around my eyes, I didn’t look different. The eyes actually seemed clearer. More than forty-eight hours without booze. When was the last time that happened? So far my brain was free of the milkiness.
Free . . . was I? Had I jettisoned everything, even my daughters? Had I been catapulted into another existence?
A train whistle sounded in the distance. Stepping to the window, I looked out into an air shaft topped by a rectangle of overcast sky. I heard a jumble of indistinguishable sounds. Could it really be 1869 outside? The Civil War, I remembered, had ended in 1865. Lincoln was dead, Reconstruction in progress. Who would be in office now? Grant? And in England, Victoria?
Incredible.
I sat in an upholstered chair on which flowers competed with the denser floral designs on the wallpaper. In the past—the future—I’d enjoyed novels and films about time travel. I looked around the room. Somehow I’d imagined the light of an earlier time as being softer, tinted perhaps, as in old photographs. But this looked like any other. How could a June morning in 1869 be so . . . ordinary? I took out my watch and opened it, wondering how late I’d slept—and saw with sorrow that the glass face was cracked and the key missing.
Andy burst in. “Here!” he said, thrusting a bottle at me. “Hurry! They’ll eat everything!”
The witch hazel stung my face, its sharp aroma reminding me of the barbershop where Grandpa used to get his hair trimmed.
“You looked like the blue devils had you when I came in,” Andy said.
“My watch key’s missing. It must have fallen out on that station dock.”
“Outside of Mansfield?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“Hmm, that’s curious, Sam. Happens I found one on the ball grounds in Mansfield that very day, in the grass behind home plate. Stuck it in my uniform for luck, on account of it being my birthday an’ all.” He pulled his white uniform pants from a traveling bag and unbuttoned a small pocket. “I believe it accounted for my home run yesterday—only one we got against the Niagras. I knocked that ball damn near into Lake Erie!” He laughed. “Harry was on third. You should’ve seen his eyes bug. Here, see if this’ll work in your timepiece.”
It was small and silver, and its oval grip felt good. It fit the winding knob easily. After a few turns the watch begin to tick. I slid the key snugly into the hole on top.
“Looks like you got your missing part,” Andy said. “If it ain’t the original, it’s a close match.”
I held it out. “I can’t keep your lucky piece.”
He pushed my hand away. “Don’t it strike you queer that you’d have the watch and I’d have the key?” He looked at me quizzically. “Tell the truth.”
“Yes, it is queer,” I agreed. “Trouble is, everything’s queer.”
He put his hand on my shoulder. “It’s awful how things stand for you, Sam. Look, you hold on to that key. It’ll bring me luck, long as you’re around.” He scratched an ear, reflecting. “Want to know somethin’ else curious? I had a notion even back on that train that you ‘n’ me were drawn together special—that you were supposed to help me out of that fix, same as I was to look out for you. Ain’t that a dinger? D’you feel it too?”
I hesitated, embarrassed again. “When I first woke up, I thought you were my brother. Which is weird, since I never had one.”
“I’ve got sisters,” he said.
