The Key to the Past. He closed his eyes and let his mind float a bit. And that’s when the idea came to him: that the present is just a flimsy door between the past and future, and how quickly the future is pulled through that door to become the past. His father would be watching over him at midnight. But after midnight? The key, he thought, I can use the key to meet the Pooka once that moment is in the past. Is that what Auntie Gormley had meant when she’d signed that he would need the key, and looked at him so seriously?
He leaned over the edge of his pallet and looked down through the ceiling knotholes; and just as he expected, she was poised there, her chin up, her eyes waiting to meet his. She gave a smile. He smiled back.
She signed with her eyes: “You will come back to us in one piece. You’re going to save us.”
So she knew.
Now he could roll over and sleep.
Oscar woke up to the tinny sound of a phone ringing. He was on a nocturnal body clock now like everyone else here. It was evening. He’d slept the day away.
His father was downstairs, calling him. “It’s your mother! Hurry up!”
Oscar crawled quickly to the ladder and jumped most of the rungs. She hadn’t forgotten his birthday after all. He ran to the receiver his father was holding out to him. It was an old, red, rotary phone. He’d never noticed it before. He supposed it might have been a dugout phone a couple decades back.
“Hello?”
“Happy birthday!” his mother said. “I’m so sorry I missed the day. I was working. I got a job here helping Marty out in the office. It’s exciting. Real estate! So much more exciting than handling someone’s delicates. How are you?”
“I’m fine,” Oscar said. He felt shy suddenly, not sure where to start. He didn’t talk on phones much.
“Did you have a good birthday?”
“Yes.”
“Do you like it there?”
Oscar scanned the room—the row of aunties in their toe-curled cleats, eating their breakfast at dinnertime; the floor tiled in home plates; the newspaper clippings taped to the walls; the stacks of radios. “Mhmm. Yeah.”
“Do you miss me?”
“Mhmm,” he said, but it wasn’t a hearty response. He was still mad at her for leaving him like that. He wasn’t sure how to tell her. He didn’t want her to cry, and she sounded happy enough. Why ruin it?
“Things are looking really good here. I think I’ll be sending for you sooner than I thought.”
“Sending for me?” Oscar whispered. His father was lingering in the kitchen not far off, reading the newspaper. Oscar hadn’t known that being “sent for” was part of the plan. Not that his mother even had a plan.
“Yes! I mean, it’s great here! You want to be with me, don’t you?”
He was stuck here. He couldn’t go to Baltimore. And even if he broke the Curse, he didn’t want to go to Baltimore. He felt a flash of anger. It wasn’t fair for her to jerk him around from one place to the next. “Why?” Oscar said. “So I can become an Orioles fan?”
She hesitated. “No, no, you can stay a Sox fan if that’s important to you. Let’s not talk about it. The future is the future. Let’s live in the present.”
“I don’t understand how you can live in the present,” Oscar said. He wanted to know the past. He wanted to have hope in the future.
His mother sighed, and she sounded suddenly worn out.
Oscar changed the subject. He really wanted to tell her about the Curse, the Pooka, all of it; but instead he said, “The Red Sox play tonight. They could turn the playoffs around.”
“I hope they do,” she said, sounding as if she was going to cry. And then Oscar wondered whether things were as good as she’d been saying.
“Gotta go, hon,” she said.
“Okay.”
“I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
Oscar hung up. His father lowered the newspaper. “Wasn’t it good to hear her voice,” he said, though it was more of a statement than a question.
“I guess so,” he said.
His father leaned toward him. “Looks like rain. The Sox might not play tonight. It would give us more time to find that baseball.” He gave a big smile. “I’m going to chart a new course. Make a new plan. Divvy up the park so that we can hunt most effectively. What do you say?”
A hunt with his father for a missing baseball through Fenway Park—today it made perfect sense, but it was something Oscar couldn’t have even dreamed of a few days before. He felt lucky to be here with his father, finally, in his home. It was like some old ache had lifted away, and something in Oscar’s chest rippled like a pennant caught by a sudden wind.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The Door to the Past
THE RAIN STARTED TO COME down hard, bouncing off of the tarp covering the field. The dugouts were full. Both teams were there, waiting for it to ease up, and the fans were still pouring in. Oscar could feel the quaking energy overhead. He imagined them all in slickers, huddled under umbrellas.
There was no piped-in organ music. Smoker had given up the .406 Club to Josh Kantor. The Bobs and Stickler had abandoned the broadcast booth. The Pooka had disappeared from the scorekeeper’s room by now, surely, and had burrowed in his dugout home under the Monster. Oscar and his father joined the aunties stationed in the living room among the radios, all tuned to the same station—the AM talk radio sports station—for news on whether the game would be called off or not. The aunties sat in their bleacher seats, and Oscar was sitting on the edge of one of the hammocks made of netting, trying to look casual; but he shifted restlessly, jiggling his knees. His father was laboring over a sketch of a map of the underbelly of Fenway Park. It was on a large piece of paper stretched out on the floor.
At one point Oscar leaned forward and whispered, “And we have to get Smoker and the Bobs to play their positions. Don’t forget.”
“I’ll get to that,” his father said. “I will.”
But that was about all Oscar could help with at this point. He was fixed on the game. Brown was supposed to pitch for the Yankees. Oscar thought of Brown’s pitching hand. He’d broken it by punching a wall in September. He wondered if it would ache in the rain. He thought of Schilling, too, who, according to the AM talk radio sports station, had shown up in the Sox bull pen for a fifteen-minute warm-up wearing a high-top sneaker on the foot with his bad ankle. He wasn’t pitching at top speed, but he was there; and Oscar felt a jolt of joy. We can win, he thought, but the momentum came and went. Fourteen minutes before the game was to start, it was canceled. The tarp would stay in place.
There was nothing between Oscar and his meeting with the Pooka now but time. And Oscar’s plan was to let the time go. He didn’t need the present. He had the Key to the Past. He wished that Auntie Gormley would glance at him, give him an encouraging sign; but she was dozing in her bleacher seat: her lids heavy, her cheeks slack, her breathing punctuated by little rattling snores.
Oscar was listening to the broadcaster drone on. His father was scribbling and erasing and muttering under his breath. Auntie Oonagh was knitting. But Auntie Fedelma was growing squirrelly. Her eyes started to do some mad twitching. She kept staring at the clock and then at Oscar.
As the night ticked slowly closer to midnight, the room took on a new antsiness. Auntie Oonagh’s knitting needles clicked more rapidly. Oscar’s father scribbled more fiercely. Even Auntie Gormley’s snores picked up speed. Everyone knew that the Pooka would be lumbering to the meeting place, that he’d be waiting, that he’d grow angry. Would he come after Oscar? Would he take it out on someone else? Oscar would have to be patient. By midnight Auntie Fedelma was fuming. She couldn’t take it anymore.
“The Pooka will be after us but good now. Won’t be surprised if he sets fire to this place with a glance of his fire eyes. We’re doomed. All because of that boy.”
“My name is Oscar,” Oscar said.
His father shouted, “You wrote to the Pooka and got him involved in the first pl
ace! This is your fault!”
“Oh, dear me, I can’t take it, can’t hear another word,” Auntie Oonagh said, sitting back and humming to herself.
Auntie Fedelma screeched and fussed and fumed and hissed and pouted and stomped her cleats on the floor. Auntie Gormley slept through it all.
At around ten minutes after twelve, Oscar’s father said, “Well, that’s over. I’m going up to the crawl space, work on my new plan.” He rolled up his map and clomped toward the ladder.
“I could make popcorn,” Oscar said. “I’m hungry.”
“Okay, then,” Oscar’s father said. “Bring it on up when it’s ready.”
Oscar said, “Sure,” and headed into the kitchen. He turned on the popcorn machine, filling the metal canister with kernels. Once the popping racket set in, he checked on the aunties. He wanted Auntie Gormley to give him another sign, but she was snoring softly. Auntie Oonagh was still knitting, more calmly now. Auntie Fedelma was listening to the latest theory of the Curse on the radio. But when Oscar spied on her, she could sense it. Her head snapped to the kitchen doorway, but Oscar dodged away; and with her bad eyesight, he didn’t think she saw him.
He pulled the key from his pocket, already feeling sick with guilt. He was breaking his father’s trust, and they’d just begun to get along so well together: the way they’d handled Stickler in the broadcast booth, the shiny mitt that his father had worked so hard for, the new map his father was making to go with his new plan. He even thought of the way his father had said that it was nice to hear his mother’s voice.
But he had to meet the Pooka. He had to do what he had to do. And Auntie Gormley understood.
He squatted down in front of the cabinet, slipped the key into the hole, and unlocked the door. It was cold inside. Oscar could feel a draft. His puffy yellow vest was slung over the back of one of the kitchen chairs; and since he didn’t know where he’d end up tonight—on the back of the Pooka or worse—he put it on. He got down on his knees and looked through the door to a small passageway, unlit, earthen. He crawled in and shut the door behind him, making sure it was locked.
He crawled quickly. The dirt was a little moist. He could feel the wetness seep through the knees of his pants. This tunnel had as many twists as the passageways full of nettles and barbed ivy. He was trying to think of the perfect rhyme to describe whatever was beneath home plate and something about midnight. He thought and thought, but his mind always wandered to the power he had. He could say anything about any time and place. Where did he really want to go? What did he really want to see? The past would always be in the past. He could always catch up with the Pooka, couldn’t he?
He slowed down. What would it hurt if he went to just one place first? Just one? This was such a huge gift. Finally he blurted out the one thing that was on his mind: “To tell the truth, I want to meet Babe Ruth.”
And it rhymed. He hadn’t said it very loudly. In fact, his voice sounded small and weak in the tight tunnel, muffled by the earth all around him.
There was no grand transformation. Nothing. Maybe this was just another passageway. Maybe this didn’t lead anywhere. Or not for him. Maybe it only worked for those with fairy blood. He thought about turning around. He’d probably get in trouble, big trouble, for sneaking out like this. He already felt horrible about it. And he was going to turn back—he was just about to—when he saw a long, rectangular window of light in the distance.
When he reached the window, he slipped his hand into what seemed like a closet. There he found jerseys. Red Sox jerseys—old-fashioned ones. They were coarse. He pulled one, stretching the back of it wide. It was a broad jersey—no name, no number. It buttoned down the front and had RED SOX stitched on it.
There was a space to climb down, and Oscar did—into a narrow closet. No, Oscar corrected himself, a locker. It was wooden and doorless. He recognized the fungal stink.
He stepped out of it into a large, dark room.
But then ceiling lights flipped on overhead and a voice said, “Hey, kid, what are you doing in here?”
The man was tall and broad and ruddy. He was wearing a suit and a long coat and a hat with a black band. He was holding a cigar, but it wasn’t lit. His face was wide, and his nose, too. He had shiny black eyes. He was, of course, Babe Ruth, but so much bigger than Oscar had ever imagined. He said, “You one of Bossy’s kids?”
“Bossy?”
“You lost?”
Oscar looked around the locker room—at the wooden benches, the old overhead lights, the players’ lockers with wool uniforms on hangers, the potbellied stove in the middle of the room. “No,” he said. “I’m not lost.”
“What you got on there? A life jacket?”
Oscar looked down at his puffy yellow vest. He wasn’t sure what to say. “It’s a costume.”
“Close enough to Halloween, I guess.”
“What year is it?”
“What year, kid? Don’t you know? You bang your head or something?” Ruth had a big, wide smile.
“I’d just like you to tell me. That’s all.”
“C’mon, kid. It’s 1919.”
“And you’re still here with the Red Sox?”
“Where else would I be?”
“Nowhere,” Oscar said. “It’s just…”
“Just what?”
“Frazee.”
“You don’t know what year it is, and you want to talk management all of a sudden?”
Oscar could hear voices off in the distance. He didn’t have much time. “Frazee might say some mean things about you one day, but you’ll go down in history as the best of the best. No one will ever forgive him for the bad things he’s going to do and say to you.”
“You think he’s a bad guy, huh?”
“I do.”
Ruth stared at Oscar then, taking a step forward, tilting his head. “Do you know something about bad guys? Bullies and stuff like that?”
Oscar nodded.
“You know, when I was little, I lived in a place called St. Mary’s—it was a school for wayward boys, no-goods, like me. And you know what the kids called me at that place?”
Oscar shook his head.
“They called me Nigger Lips.”
Oscar didn’t move. He just looked at Ruth, and it seemed as if Ruth knew what it was to be Oscar in a way that no other adult had ever seemed to.
“You think people still call me things like that?” Ruth asked.
“No,” Oscar said. “You’re famous.”
“You’re wrong. They still do. The difference is that when I was a kid, like you, I thought it was because there was something wrong with me. But now I know it’s that something is wrong with them.”
Oscar nodded.
“No matter what Frazee says, I’ll keep on swinging with everything I’ve got. I’ll sometimes hit them big, and I’ll sometimes miss them big. But I’ll always be living as big as I possibly can. You can’t beat the person who never gives up.”
“I won’t give up then,” Oscar said.
Someone down the hall shouted for Ruth. “I gotta go,” he said. “You sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah, I’m just waiting for my dad. He’ll be here soon.”
“You look kinda familiar. We met before, you and me?”
Oscar shook his head.
Babe walked over then and held up a piece of hard yellow candy wrapped in plastic. “Here,” he said. “A little early for Halloween, but I like your costume. You’re a survivor, right? Of a shipwreck? Like the Titanic?”
Oscar nodded and took the candy. “Um, and one more thing,” Oscar said.
“What is it?”
“You were talking about swinging big and hitting big. I know you’re a pitcher now, mostly, but maybe…” He suddenly felt flustered. This was Babe Ruth. His cheeks felt flushed.
“Go on,” Ruth said. “Go on, kid.”
“Um, well, maybe you should hit more. I mean, pitchers only get up to bat once every five or so games, but hitters can get up to bat
five times in one game.”
Babe looked at him seriously and then smiled. “I’ll keep that in mind, kid,” he said; then he looked at his vest one more time. “A survivor. I like it.” And he walked to the door of the locker room and tipped his hat, then he was gone.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Meeting the Pooka—Face-to-Face, Eye to Glowing Eye
BACK IN THE SMALL TUNNEL, Oscar heard distant voices, muffled by the locked door, echoing dimly through the small tunnel.
“Is he in there?” It was Auntie Oonagh.
“I told you that boy couldn’t be trusted!” Auntie Fedelma said victoriously. “Do you believe me now?”
“I just don’t think he’d do this,” his father said.
“I really don’t.”
His father’s faith in him made Oscar feel awful. He’d disobeyed, and on something pretty important too. Oscar knew he should probably turn back, confess, not go to the Pooka. But he wanted to do what Babe had suggested—either hit big or miss big—and he at least needed to really try. He didn’t have much time to think. He kept crawling as quickly as he could. He whispered, “I need to meet the Pooka at this past midnight and I can’t be late. Take me to the tunnels that will lead me just below home plate.”
This time the change took place quickly, so quickly that the floor disappeared and Oscar landed with a thud in the larger tunnels. Looking around, it dawned on him how very much the tunnels all looked the same: ivy, barbed nettles, cement, wires. They all smelled the same too: burned coffee, buttered popcorn, hot dogs, mouse turds, and the oily fur of weasels. He realized pretty quickly that he was lost. He didn’t know how to get to the space beneath home plate or back home. He broke into a run, hoping to get to one or the other faster. But panicking would only get him more lost.
And so he stopped and told himself to calm down and think.
That’s when he heard the panting behind him and the scrabble of nails skidding to a stop. He looked back, and there was a weasel, all by herself. She looked frightened, caught.