Angel of the Battlefield (10 page)

“That does sound good,” Felix said. “I'll have to get it when I get home,” he added to be kind. He doubted a book that old was still in print.

“What are your favorite kinds of stories?” Clara asked him.

“I like just about everything. Spy stories and science fiction and
Harry Potter
.” He stopped when he saw that confused look cross her face again. “All kinds of stories,” he said.

“It's your turn to tell me a story now,” Clara said. She adjusted her long dress and leaned back, her face expectant.

“I can't really think of any,” Felix said.

“Do you know any war stories?” she asked. “You must.”

“Well,” he said slowly, “once I read about a war where Americans fought other Americans.”

“Like the Loyalists and the Rebels?” Clara said.

“Uh, I don't think so,” Felix said. Was there still another war he'd never heard of? Here he was, an American, and all these soldiers had died, and he didn't know what they had been fighting for.

“So, not a Revolutionary War story?”

Bingo! He knew about
that
war. “No,” Felix said. “This isn't a real war.”
Not yet, anyway
, he thought.

“So it's just a story. Like
The Lady of the Lake
.”

“Sort of. In this story, people who live in the South want to start their own country. They want their own laws and their own president and everything.”

“That's silly, isn't it?”

“No, Clara,” Felix said. “It's very serious. They call it the bloodiest war of all time. And states are forced to take sides, to be either Union or Confederates.” Like all historical facts, the details were a bit fuzzy to Felix. He hoped he was getting it mostly right.

“Which side does Massachusetts choose in this story?”

“Union,” Felix said. “They want to keep the country unified.”

“Good old Massachusetts,” Clara said. “Then what?”

“Well, one of the things they're fighting over is whether it should be legal to have slaves—”

“They had a war over that?” Clara said, surprised. “Does it end happily?”

Felix thought about that. “Yes, I think it does. Ultimately. But only after a lot of people die.”

“That's what happens in war, though, isn't it?” Clara said matter-of-factly. She sighed. “Even so, I wish I could be a soldier.”

“No, you don't, Clara. You don't want to be on a battlefield.”

“Don't look so worried,” she said, laughing at him. “Girls can't be soldiers, either, can they?”

She lifted the poultice from his arm. “How is your arm feeling now?”

He moved it cautiously. The sharp pain had subsided to a dull ache. “A little better,” he said.

Clara placed the poultice back on his arm.

“Thanks,” Felix said.

“Ugh! What's that awful smell?” Maisie asked. She was standing in the doorway of the barn, scowling.

“It's my poultice,” Felix said.

“What's it made out of? Onions?” Maisie said, holding her hand over her nose as she walked toward him.

“Did you find your—?” Clara asked politely.

“Oh, no,” Maisie said, looking directly at Felix. “There are no phones here.”

“No kidding,” Felix said.

“I mean, we traveled a long, long way from home,” Maisie said.

“I know.”

“No, Felix, I mean a
long, long, long
way.”

“Maisie?” Felix said. “You'd better sit down.” He'd always wanted to say that to somebody like they do in movies, and this seemed like the perfect time.

“You know, then?” she said, unable to hide her disappointment over not being the one to figure it out first.

“Maisie,” Felix said, “it's September fifth—”

“Okay . . . ,” she said.

“1836.”

Felix and Maisie looked at each other for a long time. They could feel Clara watching them.

“1836,” Maisie finally managed to say. “That's, like, after the Revolutionary War?”

“And before the Civil War,” Felix said.

Clara had gotten to her feet and now loomed over them. “I don't mean to be rude,” she said, “but what ever are you two talking about? And you never did tell me why you are in my barn.”

“I know how we got here,” Maisie said to Felix. “But I have no idea how in the world we're ever going to get back.”

The Baseball Game

“Clara,” Felix said, “where exactly are we?”

“On Captain Stephen Barton's farm,” she answered tentatively.

“And where is Captain Stephen Barton's farm?” Maisie said, pacing in front of them.

“Oxford,” Clara said. Then she added, “Massachusetts.”

Maisie paused in her pacing just long enough to say, “I have no idea where Oxford is. I don't have any idea where anything in Massachusetts is.”

“What does it matter?” Felix said miserably. “
Where
we are isn't quite as important as
when
we are, is it?”

His sister broke into a grin as if he had said something wonderful. “That's right, bro,” she said, suddenly cheerful.

“Huh?” Felix said. He certainly didn't feel any better. In fact, all he wanted was to be back in Newport, in his bed with his iPod on, and listening to the playlist his father had made for him before he'd gone off to Qatar.

“Well,” Maisie said, her eyes twinkling, “we're here, right? We might as well make the most of it. I mean, we'll never have an opportunity like this again, will we?”

Clara got to her feet and swept her hand over her dress, wiping off the straw that clung to it. “You two are just the oddest people I've ever come across,” she said.

“You have no idea what it's like here,” Felix told Maisie. “They don't even have baseball yet.”

Maisie grinned. “That's where we'll start then,” she said. “We'll teach Clara Barton here how to play baseball.”

“They probably don't even have balls,” Felix mumbled.

Clara put her hands on her hips. “We most certainly do,” she said. “And I can throw one with an under swing better than any boy's and make it go exactly where I intend it to.”

“We'll see about that,” Maisie said. She couldn't help but think that a girl who had never heard of baseball couldn't play better than two kids whose father had spent countless warm Saturday afternoons in the park teaching them to throw and hit balls.

Clara laughed. “You've never had my brother David teach you anything.”

Maisie started to look for something to use as a bat. She picked up and then rejected a pitchfork, a hoe, and a shovel. All too heavy or misshapen.

“Clara,” Felix said softly. “I think you're going to be a good baseball player. There's one player called a pitcher whose job is just to throw the ball, and it sounds like you'd be perfect for that.”

“But how can you play with that arm of yours?” Clara said, kneeling beside him.

“I forgot all about it!” Felix said, surprised. “This thing must really be working.”

He watched Clara carefully remove the poultice from his arm.

“I had quite a skating accident myself a couple of years ago,” Clara said as she poked and prodded his arm.

“You really are a tomboy,” Felix said, unable to hide his admiration.

“There you go again with your funny words,” Clara said. “A tomboy?”

“A girl who can do things like throw underhanded and skate superfast,” Felix said.

“That's me, all right!” Clara said, blushing. “I felt so proud when I heard the surgeon say to my father, ‘That was a hard case, Captain, but she stood it like a soldier.'” Clara patted Felix's arm. “And I can say the same to you, Felix. You stood it like a soldier.”

Felix bent his arm carefully. “I think I'm good to go,” he said.

From one corner of the barn came a loud clattering of metal and then a triumphant “aha!” from Maisie.

She appeared in front of Felix and Clara wielding a wooden stick.

“Baseball, anyone?” she said.

For the first time since he'd landed in the Barton's barn, Felix stepped outside. It was a bright, sunny day, and the smell of grass and flowers was strong. Though not stronger than the smell of farm animals. Felix wrinkled his nose.

“Do you have cows or something?” he said.

“Twenty-five milk cows,” Clara said proudly.

“Watch where you step,” Maisie said.

“And Highlanders, Virginians, and Morgans,” Clara added.

When she saw the blank looks on Maisie's and Felix's faces, she said, “Horses! My father raises them.”

Felix looked around. The farm was enormous, with two barns in addition to the one they'd been in, rolling hills in the distance, a pond, and a large house with porches and a balcony.

“We moved here when I was eight, after my uncle died,” Clara explained. “It's three hundred acres with lots of grassland for the horses and room for my cousins to come and stay during the summer. They just left a few days ago, which is too bad. They would have liked to learn this baseball, too.”

Maisie gave a low whistle. “Central Park is eight hundred acres,” she said. “Two hundred and fifty of that is lawns, which means you live on a farm about as big as all the grass in Central Park.” She patted her fleece vest.

“Maisie likes numbers,” Felix explained. “She likes math, and I like reading.”

“I'm the one who keeps all the stats for the Mets every season,” Maisie said. “Well, usually.”

The truth was she did it with her father, carefully filling in all the blanks in the Mets record book they got every opening day. Except this year.

“Our father moved to Qatar,” Felix blurted out. “Nothing is the same anymore.”

Maisie took in all of the things around them: the barn, the rolling hills, Clara herself. She smiled.
Nothing is the same anymore at all,
she thought excitedly. She walked ahead of them up a hill in search of a flat area to play baseball.

Felix watched his sister disappear over the crest.

“Your father moved away?” Clara asked. “Without you?”

Felix sighed. Being in 1836 was hard enough without having to explain his parents' divorce.

“It's complicated,” he said.

“Over here!” Maisie called to them.

Relieved, Felix ran toward her voice. Clara ran alongside him, then hitched up her skirt and took off ahead of him.

“Hurry up,” she said, glancing over her shoulder before she, too, disappeared over the crest of the hill.

“Maybe you guys can find something to use for bases!” Maisie said.

She watched as Felix and Clara ran around the fields searching for things to use as bases and home plate. Why, she wondered, did Felix always manage to make friends so easily while she seemed to offend people? Even in a different century he was able to connect with someone who he didn't—couldn't!—have anything in common with.

She sighed and dropped onto the warm grass, unzipping her fleece and using it as a pillow beneath her head. The sun shone high in the sky now, directly overhead. Noon. Her mother was probably breaking for lunch in her office on Thames Street back in Newport. Maisie could imagine her turning off her computer and taking out her egg salad sandwich and banana from her lunch bag.

Felix's laughter floated around Maisie, mixing in with the lazy buzz of a bee.
Fine,
she thought.
Be friends with a person who's, like, two hundred years old, technically.
Thinking how old Clara would be felt too creepy. Maisie sat up quickly. What would Clara think about computers? She'd never heard of anything like them, that was for sure. Maybe she'd never even heard of egg salad sandwiches. Even sandwiches had to get invented, right?

Clara had her arms full of leaves, and she and Felix were running toward Maisie now.

No baseball,
Maisie thought as she watched them.
No phones. No divorce.
Deep inside, Maisie's chest fluttered. An idea was taking shape, an incredible idea. A brilliant idea.
What if we didn't go back?
Maisie wondered.
What if we stayed right here on Captain Stephen Barton's farm in 1836?

As Felix explained the game to Clara, he was impressed with how quickly she caught on.
Back home,
he thought, and then he caught himself and changed to
back
in New York
, he'd played on a Little League team, the Knights, made up of boys and girls. Charlotte Weinberg was the team's best player. Once she even pitched a no-hitter. Maisie liked to tease him and call Charlotte his girlfriend. Deep down, Felix didn't mind that at all. Every time he stood close to Charlotte, even when she
was all sweaty from running, he felt a little dizzy. She had strawberry-blond hair that practically shined in the sunlight and just enough freckles
to make her perfect.

“So,” Clara was saying, “I throw the ball to Maisie, aiming so she thinks she can hit it, but hoping she misses. And that's called a strike. Three strikes and her turn is finished.”

“Three strikes and she's out,” Felix corrected her. “Which is the same as being finished.”

“Three outs and we change places,” Clara said.

“Right,” Felix said. “Really baseball teams have nine people, of course,” he said, suddenly crabby. He would probably never see Charlotte Weinberg again. Or any of the Knights, for that matter. Even if they did manage to get back to the twenty-first century.

“It's a pity my cousins have all left,” Clara said. “They're always ready for adventures.”

Felix saw something in Clara's face then. Something he recognized. She was lonely.

“Who needs them?” he said, marking off first base with a pile of leaves. “We'll do just fine.”

Clara grinned at him. “Yes, we will,” she said. “How does that arm feel?”

He rubbed the spot that still vaguely hurt. “Sore, but better,” he said. Felix grinned at her. “I didn't want you coming at me with those leeches,” he said.

By the time they were finished laying out the bases, they still had more leaves left over. Felix couldn't resist. He took a big handful from Clara and tossed them right at her. They landed in her hair and on her shoulders.

“Oh!” she cried, startled.

But then something gleamed in her dark eyes, and Felix knew to run, fast. He wasn't fast enough for Clara, though. She caught him easily and knocked him to the ground, where she held him down by his good arm and deposited the rest of the leaves and twigs right in his face.

“You win!” Felix said, laughing and spitting out bits of grass.

“See?” Clara said, releasing him. “Wouldn't I make a very good soldier?”

“I think you would, Clara,” Felix said seriously.

His stomach felt all caught up in knots as he realized that Clara Barton would go on to live an entire life, a life that began and ended long before he was even born. Maybe she actually did become a soldier. Maybe she . . . he stopped himself from thinking any more on the topic.

“Don't look so glum,” Clara said, tossing a few leaves back at him.

Felix surprised himself by grabbing her and giving her a good, hard hug. He surprised Clara, too. She squirmed out of his arms and stepped back awkwardly.

“Whatever was that for?”

“I . . . I . . .” But how could he explain his feelings to her when
he
couldn't even understand them?

“It's just that,” he began, “that being a soldier is so dangerous.”

Clara laughed. “
Pshaw!
It's exciting. And noble.”

“Like your knights in
The Lady of the Lake
?” Felix said.

“Yes! Like that. And like my father, of course.” She studied his face a moment. “Wasn't your father in the war?” she asked.

Felix shook his head.

“Hey!” Maisie shouted. “Are we ever going to play ball? Or are you two running off to get married or something?”

Clara looked horrified.

“No, no,” Felix told Clara quickly. “She's just teasing me. She does that all the time.”

“I don't think it's funny,” Clara said, stomping away from him toward what they'd marked as the pitcher's mound. “Not at all.”

“Play ball!” Felix called from the outfield.

Clara turned on the pitcher's mound to face him.