More than eight thousand paid fifty cents apiece to crowd the Union Grounds. The new posters and ribbons and rosettes sold like crazy; the concession booth was mobbed, and our vendors—we’d rigged a few kids with baskets—did a. brisk trade in hot dogs and pretzels among the carriages. Champion, glowing, promised to raise my salary ten dollars a week. Mr. Generous.
“Gentlemen,” Champion announced after the game. He was standing on a chair in the clubhouse waving a piece of paper. “Yet another opponent, not convinced by previous defeat, has challenged us. They propose to come here and expose us as frauds before the entire nation!”
Champion smiled benignly as we hooted, until Waterman said crisply, “Horseshit.”
“Who?” George yelled.
“None other than our. old friends,” Champion replied, “the Troy Haymakers!”
While the others roared, my stomach bounced on the floor.
“I gather,” Champion said, milking the moment, “we accept?”
“Bring ’em on!”
I stood there thinking. Thinking quite hard. In my guts I knew beyond doubt who would show up with the Haymakers: McDermott and Le Caron.
Cait waited at the Laurel Street gate. I moved forward eagerly, thinking she had come to the game after all, despite Timmy being ill. Then I saw her expression.
“What’s the matter?”
Biting her lip, she held out a flat packet stamped Daviscourt Photography Studio.
“The shots of us?”
She nodded, her eyes wild.
“Hey, they can’t be that bad.”
“Look at them,” she said.
There were five five-by-seven-inch prints. In each one, hovering over the painted stream, was a face. A muted face, not nearly as defined as our three, but quite distinct. An aquiline nose, dark hair, dark, softly staring eyes, lips pressed together. Below the strong jaw was what appeared to be a uniform collar.
I knew who I was looking at. I had seen him before, although in the other photograph he was infinitely younger and unburdened. It was Colm’s face.
Chapter 19
10 AUGUST 1869
ELMIRA
Dear Sam’l,
As the man said, it was ever so different before it all changed. Tiring of me moping about in mortal dread of the lecture circuit, Mr. Langdon finally took pity & sent me shopping for a newspaper with about as much care as bed give to Livy’s purchasing new gloves. Well, a hat, maybe. I had a good-sized nibble in Cleveland & if it had stayed on my line you & I would be Ohio neighbors.
I found a sweeter deal in Buffalo, however, well inside Mr. Langdon’s coal kingdom & close enough to Elmira to be less uprooting for Livy after the wedding—which is in February, by the way, & which you must attend. Anyhow, Saturday week (the 21st) I take one-third possession of the Buffalo Courier and commence work as chief editor of my own sheet. 1 wish you, my ever-silent partner, could have seen Mr. Lang-don’s face when I said that instead of him covering the entire $15,000 I’d pick up half—in cash! My stock in the futures market soared tolerably with him.
It’s a tame prospect partly—like coming off the river to open a dry-goods store—but I’ve navigated alone for too long & I’m eager now to settle with the dearest woman on this planet. No trip to California now, & I confess to a certain amount of relief on that score. But I’ll miss witnessing Freddy’s Avitor, of which I am sure you have read, & no longer hold doubts. I saw where the English established an Aeronautical Society three years back & already have exhibited likely models at the Crystal Palace. We should be in on the “ground floor” of this, don’t you think? Since our first venture was so lucrative, why not pursue another?
Enjoyed your letter of last month. Porkopolis must be nigh delirious over your club. I can’t visit anywhere now without having my head pounded by talk of Brown Stockings, Green Stockings, Ivory Socks, Maroon Hose, & on & on through rainbows of leggings till my ears sag. Couldn’t you boys lose, just once, so the National Game could go back to being a game & stop being pure bunkum religion?
Must post this now. Regards.
Cordially,
SLC
P.S. The Fenian uproar has died down & a high fence now circles the military cemetery. Your work has spawned a whole generation of ghost tales, however, and 1 suspect folks hereby are privately thankful for your livening their drab lives. You’ve taken on a sort of immortality.
Immortality. I liked that. I thought about Twain on the verge of the emotional security and social respectability he wanted so badly. Soon he would enjoy the stable pleasures of family life. I envied him that. But I also remembered that Jervis Langdon, after buying the newlyweds a mansion in Buffalo, would die within the year. Livy’s sister would also die during their Buffalo residence, and they would lose their own firstborn, an infant son. Stunned with grief, Twain would sell his share in the paper at a loss, sell the house as well, depart from Buffalo.
He was blissfully unaware. My foreknowledge made me feel old and weary. I wondered about my own life. I’d been thinking of my daughters again, and, by extension, of the world I had left. I missed the oddest things: the taste of pizza, the sounds of aircraft, late-night TV movies, driving a car, paperbacks, electric lights, and innumerable other things that blipped unexpectedly into sense-memory. Pizza was the most nagging.
I’d been back in time for two and a half months. What must my daughters be feeling? Was it that long for them too? If so, they’d think I deserted them. Shades of my father. Maybe it was possible, on the other hand, that I was still there, living simultaneously in two dimensions. Maybe it had always been that way, my consciousness simply shifting from there to here. But I didn’t like the idea. And I couldn’t see what to do about it anyway.
Daviscourt had tried to comfort Cait—she nearly fainted when she’d first seen the prints—with vigorous assurances that there was simply no explaining the extra face, or why
