Culpepper's Cannon (5 page)

“This,” the man said in a voice that sounded like gravel being swished around in a bucket, “is an historic day. This is a day for celebration!”

Amos looked at the man. He had a long black moustache that curled up to tickle each side of his nose and a big smile on his face. He looked like he wanted to celebrate. Amos didn't feel like celebrating. After spending the night sleeping on a coil of rope under a smelly horse blanket to try to keep warm, no one would feel like celebrating.

The man climbed on top of a crate and
raised his hands to quiet the tittering of the crowd, “Ladies and gentlemen, please!” The crowd quieted itself down. Some of the women had parasols and closed them so the people behind them could see better. Others looked at Amos and whispered among themselves before they turned to face the man.
It's because I'm ugly
, he thought,
and my mother dresses me funny
.

The man raised his hands again and then dropped them to his sides. “You are here to witness an historic event,” he said. The crowd started tittering again, and a few of the more enthusiastic members started to clap and cheer.

“An historic event,” the man repeated, “that will change the course of the war!” Now there was a general round of applause. A few members of a brass band that waited impatiently off to one side started playing “Dixie,” but the band conductor cut them off.

“An historic event,” the man said for the third time, “that will break this blockade that is choking the life out of your sons and daughters, that is choking the life out of our
very city, that is choking the life out of our dear Confederacy!” The applause was louder and Amos joined in, partly so he would not look too conspicuous and partly because he was getting caught up in the fervor of it all.

“And this grand ship,” the man said, motioning with his arm, “is what is going to do it!” Everyone was cheering now, and try as he might, the conductor couldn't keep the band from breaking out in an impromptu run of “Dixie.” The crowd started singing the words, and Amos cheered just because he didn't know what else to do.

He looked through his clapping hands at the ship. It was a strange-looking vessel, all flat and metal and low, with what looked like a huge iron pup tent staked out on its deck and barrels of cannons peering out of the tent like open-mouthed Cub Scouts. It was the
Merrimack
, or as the southerners preferred, the
Virginia
. Today was the day that they thought it would sail out into the harbor and break the blockade. Today was the day it would actually sail out into the harbor and come back after fighting the
Monitor
, no worse for the battle but with the blockade still intact. All the cheering was for nothing. Amos stopped cheering, not only because the historic day the gravel-voiced man had been promising wouldn't happen, but also because it suddenly occurred to him that Dunc had promised to be here but was nowhere to be seen.

A steam whistle on the ship tooted once, and the crowd went wild as the ship started to pull slowly away from the pier. Amos searched frantically for Dunc but found him nowhere. As he searched, he saw a big man in front of him with a parrot on his shoulder. The parrot turned around and looked at Amos, belched, and went to the bathroom all down the back of the man's coat. The man said a word that Amos had once thought of but had never used—even when he got his thumb caught in the spokes of his bicycle—and the bird said, “Treasure map.” Amos stopped searching for a moment and looked at the bird. It looked so familiar.…

The ship tooted again, and Amos realized he didn't have time to try and figure
out how he remembered the parrot. He began searching again. As he looked, a pretty girl with long dark hair flowing out from beneath a pink bonnet turned her head to look at him. She smiled. Right at him. Amos froze.

The girl was Melissa.

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Melissa smiled at him again and leaned her head toward another girl who was standing next to her. She watched him with big blue eyes, and even through the crowd Amos could hear her speak.

“Look at that strange-looking boy over there,” she said. “Isn't he ever so cute?” The other girl looked, and together they giggled. Amos reached down to pick his jaw up off the ground.

“She must have been looking for me when I went through the hole,” he whispered to himself. “She must have seen how I
did it and gone through after me. She must really love me if she's willing to travel through time to be with me.” Melissa waved, and he raised his hand to wave back. His hand was shaking so hard, he didn't have to wave it. It waved itself.
All these years, all this time she's loved me
.

“Be cool now,” he said to himself, “just be cool. They like it when you're cool.” He lowered his hand and put on his cool expression. Melissa looked at him and said something to her friend that he didn't hear.

“All right, you're cool,” he said, as if he were trying to convince himself. “Now go over and talk to her.” He didn't know what he would say. He had never spoken to her before, and Melissa had only said six words to him in his whole life. He had been standing next to her in the lunch line at school, and she had turned to him and said, “Hey, you're standing on my foot.”

Now Amos's shoes were untied, and when he tried to take a step forward, he found that he was standing on his shoelaces. He started falling down.
Great
, he had time to think—
she finally loves me, and
I'm going to make a complete dork out of myself
.

He fell forward into an elderly woman who shrieked and started beating him with her parasol. He took a step back and raised his arms to fend off the blows. He took another step back, and on the third step back his heel caught on a mooring line, and he fell off the pier head over heels into the water.

Dork
, he thought—
classic dork
. Just before his head went under, he saw, upside down, the aft part of the
Merrimack
. There was a white piece of notebook paper wedged between two plates of armor.

The water was cold. He came up sputtering, with dirt and mud running from his hair into his eyes. Two overhand reaches brought him to the
Merrimack
. As he reached for the gunwale, strong hands grabbed his shoulders and started to pull him up. He clawed the paper note and shoved it into his pocket before they had him on the deck.

“You all right, son?” A sailor with sunburned
skin and creases around his eyes was looking at him.

“Yeah, I'm fine. I just tripped.”

“I'll say you did.” The ship had stopped and was slowly backing up toward the pier. Amos looked at the sailor, then at the people in the crowd. Some where laughing, and some looked concerned. Melissa looked concerned.

“Where'd you get these funny clothes, son?” the sailor asked.

“I got them … my mom made them.”

“She's not much for making clothes, is she?” They were at the pier now, and the sailor helped him off the ship. “Tell your mom to get you some dry, less funny clothes,” he said.

“I will.”

“Good.” The sailor waved toward the iron tent, and the boat started back out to the bay. The crowd cheered again, and the band started playing.

Amos stood shivering and watched the
Merrimack
move away from the pier. He remembered the note and reached into his
pocket. He felt a hand on his shoulder. When he turned around he saw Melissa.

“Land sakes,” Melissa said, “are you all right?”

“Fine. A little cold.” He stood there shivering and watched a puddle form around his feet. “Melissa, why did you follow me?”

“Follow you?” She looked puzzled.

“Do you know where the time hole is? I can't remember. If you do, we've got to find Dunc and—”

“You are a strange boy, aren't you? I just don't know what you are talking about.”

“Melissa, we don't have time for this. We—”

“Melissa? Who is this Melissa?”

“Aren't you Melissa?”

“I think that cold water has addled your brain. There's no Melissa here. My name's Maggie.”

“Maggie? You're not Melissa?”

“My name is Maggie Hansen, and I've never heard of a Melissa. What's your name?”

“Amos. Amos Binder.”

“Well, Amos Binder,” she said, “you are a very strange boy, and you're going to be a very sick boy if we don't get you home and out of these wet clothes.”

“You can't take me home.”

“And why not?”

“It's a long story. I live a long way from here.”

“Then we'll take you to my house.” She held him by the arm and started leading him off the pier. “You can borrow some of my brother's clothes until yours are dry.” Amos let her lead him.
I've dreamt of this all my life
, he thought.
She loves me. She really loves me. Dunc will never believe this
.…

He took his hand out of his pocket but left the note inside.

Maggie led him down the waterfront and up a street leading away from the bay toward a long row of large, stately mansions. The air was cold, and the water had soaked to his skin, and he was shivering violently.

“Don't worry,” she said, “it won't be long.” She squeezed his arm tight and started to hug it to her side, but backed off a
second later. “You're so wet,” she said, “I can't even hug you. And you're such a cute boy.”

Amos didn't say anything. He was never very good at accepting compliments—probably because he didn't get very many—and he'd never had any experience accepting them from Melissa Hansen, or even from girls who looked like Melissa Hansen, for that matter.

“So,” she said, “you're not from around here?”

“No,” Amos said. He thought for a moment. “Yes.”

“No or yes? Which is it?”

“No and yes. I mean, I don't live here, but I spend a lot of time here, I guess.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. With an uncle.”

“Do I know him?”

“Probably not.”

“What's his name?”

Amos thought quickly. “Bremish. Sergeant Bremish. He's in the Army.”

“I don't know him.”

“That's good.” He said it out loud, but his
teeth-chattering distorted it too much for her to understand.

“Well, here we are,” Maggie said. She swung him around and headed him up a walk to a large white house with green shutters. “Mummy will be so glad to see you. Mummy simply loves helping people. And she loves funny stories. She'll love to hear about the cute boy in the funny clothes who fell off the pier. And she'll tell everyone in town. The whole town will be talking about you.”

“Great, that's just great,” he said, not too enthusiastically.
I am the dork
, he thought,
and everybody will talk about
me.
Super dork
. She opened the door and led him inside.

Amos found himself standing in an elegant foyer with a brass chandelier overhead and an ornate mirror on the wall. He looked in the mirror and saw how shabby he looked. He felt like a half-drowned rat waiting at the entrance to Buckingham Palace to see the queen.

“Now you wait here,” Maggie said, “and I'll go fetch you some dry clothes, then we'll
sit down and have lunch and make a party of it. It will be such fun! Mummy!” She left the foyer and disappeared around a corner.

As soon as he was alone, Amos reached into his pocket and took out the note. It was soaking wet and began to tear as he tried to unfold it. When he finally did get it unfolded, it was in three pieces, and most of the ink had run so badly, he couldn't read it. “… quickly … time … trapped here … going through … directions for portal … next note at plaza … Bremish watching …” was all he could make out. He put the note back in his pocket and debated if having lunch with a girl who looked just like Melissa was worth the risk of missing the hole.

The decision wasn't easy—Maggie was such a perfect copy of Melissa, and he had waited so long—but before Maggie came back with the clothes, he had left the house and was running, his shoes squelching with every step, back toward the plaza.

Love was great, but being a hundred and thirty years in the past wouldn't work. They didn't have anything he liked—except Maggie.
No hamburgers, no video games, no tennis shoes, no skateboards, no sidewalks, no television. Well, that wasn't so bad. But no anything else. And of course, no Dunc.

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