Tesla's Time Travelers (2 page)

“Victor!” his mother shouted. “Your breakfast is getting cold.”

“Coming mother,” he replied, but he was wondering what Thomas Jefferson was having for breakfast. And shoot, Mr. Greene was taking them back to July 2
nd
, 1776, not July 4
th
. Didn’t John Adams write Abigail that July 2
nd
would be celebrated from then on? Right idea, Mr. Adams, just two days off. But July 2
nd
was the vote, and in his mind July 2
nd
was the proper Independence Day. So why did we celebrate the 4
th
? Because of Mr. Jefferson’s rewrite? He’d have to remember to ask Mr. Greene.

“Victor!”

“Coming, mother!”

He tugged up his breeches and buckled his shoes. Where his zipper should have been there were buttons to cover his fly. That was one of the drawbacks of being a History Channeler—no zippers. A good fit though. The community theater was good enough to lend costumes to the Channelers when the students needed them.

Z and J, as Victor thought of his parents -Zelda and John- were at the kitchen table. Zelda was sipping coffee and John was half-hidden behind the
Orlando Sentinel’s
sports section. The University of Florida had a tough football game scheduled for the following day, the annual tussle with Tennessee, and the Tennessee Volunteers were a touchdown favorite even though the game was scheduled to be played in Gainesville, Florida. Victor’s dad, who’d had a brief football career, had managed to play in one game as a senior at UF—just like Rudy the Runt had at Notre Dame—when the Gators rolled up the score against Vanderbilt, but he could still talk nostalgically about the touchdown saving tackle that preserved the 63–0 shutout against the Commodores. John Jr., Victor’s older brother and senior quarterback of the Cassadaga Area High School Fighting Phantoms football team, wore his black and red number three jersey on this game day. John Jr. was busy devouring a stack of pancakes when his younger brother Victor entered the kitchen in his colonial era costume; but with acute hearing acquired from sensing blindside blitzes, he pivoted his head to catch his costumed sibling, reflexively spitting out a mouthful of pancakes as he began laughing.

“What are you laughing at, helmet head?” Victor said, annoyed by his brother. Victor may have been a nerd, but he was just as large and just as strong as his athlete-brother, having grown up wrestling with John Jr. since he was a toddler.

“What a nerd,” Junior replied, returning to his pancakes.

“Better nerd than turd, Junior,” Victor replied.

“Want to fight, nerdling?” Junior needled. “What are you supposed to be anyway, like George Washington?”

Victor ignored his older brother’s taunt. He wanted to wrestle him, but he didn’t want to get his costume soiled. He certainly didn’t want to have dirty breeches for Thomas Jefferson
or
Minerva Messinger, he admitted to himself.

“Mom, would you sign this permission slip?” Victor said as he placed the form in front of her.

Zelda smiled at Victor. He was her favorite, the sensitive one, the child who should have been a daughter she would have named Kathleen. She glanced at the form and mumbled:

“Mr. Greene is so clever. Such imagination. Getting permission to attend the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. John,” she said to her husband, still behind the newspaper. “Mr. Greene is so creative.”

“Uh huh,” John Sr. replied, lowering his paper. “How’s the arm, son?” he said, ignoring Victor’s outfit and speaking directly to his first-born son, the fulfillment of his own childhood dreams of athletic prowess. “Going to beat Jensen Beach tonight?”

“Sure, Dad, piece of cake,” John Jr. replied.

“Atta boy,” John Sr. said and returned behind a wall of newsprint.

Victor never could impress his father. He had rebelled early in his life against his father’s obsession with football, quitting Pop Warner and never again putting on shoulder pads after that. He preferred the world of books, although he did enjoy running alone Victor was faster than anyone on the Bulldog track team. But track practice conflicted with History Channelers after school, and nothing, not one thing, came before “H.C.,” as he’d nicknamed his group. “H.C.” was his raison d’être. How he could he tell his father that he ran so fast he’d nearly caught up with John Wilkes Booth’s horse in the alley after Lincoln’s assassin escaped? Heck, he’d almost caught Booth after Booth yelled the Latin phrase “Sic Semper Tyrannus,” but the assassin had hit him with the hilt end of his knife, knocking Victor off balance. Boy, had Mr. Greene been mad at him for chasing Booth. Had he stopped Booth from limping across the Ford’s Theater stage, he might have changed history and the Mudd family wouldn’t have anything to whine about, and no one would wish performers “break a leg” before they went on stage. The sad part was that Victor knew better, but it was just an impulsive act in the heat of the moment, or, as he later rationalized, a subconscious belief that Booth was part of a wider Confederate Government conspiracy to kill Abraham Lincoln, and if Booth were captured before he escaped, Jefferson Davis would have been implicated. Or maybe his pursuit of Booth was the result of seeing too many Nicolas Cage
National Treasure
movies. Heck, Mr. Greene said Nicolas Cage did as much to glorify historians as Indiana Jones did for “dirt diggers,” as Mr. Greene called archeologists. But whatever Victor’s true motivation, he had nearly violated his oath not to change history and unleash “the butterfly effect.” Victor looked at his family; they would never believe what he and The History Channelers did on their field trips. Certainly not his brother John, who had finished breakfast, grabbed his books and was headed out the door to drive to school.

“Hey!” Victor shouted to his brother from the kitchen. “Wait for me!”

“Catch a ride with the nerd herd,” John Jr. shouted in reply.

Victor looked to his parents for support. “Dad, Junior left without me,” he said to the man behind the paper.

“Uh huh,” said his father.

“John, Junior left without Victor,” Zelda said to her husband.

“Uh huh,” John Sr. replied.

“What should he do?”

“Take the bus. I pay school taxes, he can take the bus,” John Sr. said without lowering his newspaper.

Some days, Victor felt like a Hogwarts wannabe living among the Muggles, but these “Muggles” were his nuclear family and he felt like the electron of the group. Even his mother was no help; the best she could manage was a sympathetic smile as she handed him a sack lunch for his “field trip.” He would have to ride with the “nerd herd”: the students who took the bus to Cassadaga Area High School. It wasn’t that his brother Junior hadn’t left him before, but this day, wearing colonial era regalia, Victor really didn’t want to subject himself to the teasing that his appearance on the bus was bound to elicit. Even at the bus stop, two blocks from his house, Victor stood away from the group of students as if he were a pariah and not a Patriot. He was the last to enter the bus, and the obese woman driver, whose blue uniform included the stitched in cursive name
Doris Newkirk
and whose posterior seemed to pour over the sides of her seat, looked at Victor and smiled:

“Who you supposed to be, boy?” she asked.

“An 18
th
century American Patriot,” Victor replied, trying not to blush, but failing miserably.

“Well then, Mr. Patriot,” she said, shutting the doors behind him. “Take a seat.” She turned her head to the seated students. “Say hello to George Washington, students,” she joked.

The laughter that followed mortified Victor. As he walked down the gauntlet-like aisle, one freshman stood up on his seat and tried to snag Victor’s tri-corner hat. Victor glared at the smaller boy and the freshman retracted his hand quickly.

“Hey, George,” another boy said. “Where’s your cherry tree?”

“Cherry tree, heck,” said another. “He’s the cherry.”

And proud of it, Victor thought. He sensed this was not the proper time to correct the students’ belief in the George Washington and the cherry tree myth invented by Mason Weems in the first post-mortem biography of George Washington. No, not with these Neanderthals. There never was a hatchet or a cherry tree or “I cannot tell a lie.” It was just a story concocted by “Parson Weems” to inculcate morality upon America’s school children. Besides, Victor had been burned by that story once before, in the second grade when Miss Tripolitis told his class the Weems’ whopper and Victor raised his hand to correct her, resulting in a visit to the principal’s office. The following week, he’d corrected Miss Tripolitis on the fabrication of the Betsy Ross legend, and Miss Tripolitis, a native Philadelphian, had not only sent Victor to the principal’s office, but sent a note home to his parents as well, causing his father to react by signing Victor up for Pop Warner football. His father, who always wore his American flag lapel pin to Rotary, refused to believe Victor’s explanation that the Ross legend was created by her descendants to help pique interest in the nation’s centennial, which was being held in Philadelphia in 1876. Part of American history, Victor reasoned, was actually mythology, perpetuated by elementary school teachers who really knew no better. But he wasn’t about to stop and lecture the students on the bus—it would only be a waste of time. Thankfully, due to the short attention span of Victor’s peers, their laughter and teasing remained only until the next bus stop. But Victor sat alone in the back of the bus by the emergency exit, his thoughts on Thomas Jefferson…and Minerva Messinger.

Chapter 2

Minerva Messinger had misgivings. Should she have agreed to join The History Channelers? What a dumb name for a club. Did they name the group after The History Channel? Maybe she could come up with a better name. There were six members, if she included herself, and only one other girl, Bette Kromer—Minerva’s academic rival, whom Minerva cattily assumed to have been born with her hand in the raised position, because Bette was always ready to answer a question in every class. No matter the subject, no matter the question, Bette’s mitt was in the air. But Minerva smiled because the
B
had Bette Kromer earned in freshman P.E. for not “dressing out” was her only G.P.A. blemish; Unless Minerva faltered and didn’t make all
A’
s, Bette would be forever known as salutatorian, or, as Minerva said, “just second best.” Minerva’s only academic worry was Mr. Greene’s Advanced Placement class, because in Mr. Greene’s class a student didn’t put her name on essay exams, but rather the last four digits of her Social Security number, which Minerva thought was totally unfair, as teachers were favorably prejudiced when they saw
her
name on the top of a paper to give it an automatic “A.” There was no getting around Mr. Greene, no cutting corners, and because of Mr. Greene’s demanding curriculum it was a small A.P. class. But Mr. Greene had earned the grudging respect of Minerva Messinger, a respect that she gave to very few of her teachers—especially not the ones who fawned over her as if she were truly the Roman goddess of wisdom instead of a mere namesake. Still, Minerva had stitched and sewn her own period low-necked blue gown which she wore over a petticoat. After a Google search of dress patterns of 1776, she had, with her mother’s help, made the replica in the faint hope of extra credit and in a general repulsion of wearing hand-me-down costumes from the community theater. She did not go quite so far as to add a corset, the close fitting undergarment that was often reinforced by whalebone stays and was worn to support and shape the female’s waistline, hips and breasts, but she was proud of the bodice, the fitted part of the dress that extended from the waist to the shoulder. Since the bodice was open in the front she added a decorative stomacher with red embroidery. She was also proud of the tight elbow-length sleeves that were trimmed with frills and ruffles, and the separate under-ruffles called engageantes that she had made of linen. Her neckline was trimmed with a lace ruffle and she felt as authentic as a Google search could get. A hand-me-down costume might be good enough for boys, but not for her. Her late grandmother had taught her to make dresses, and she thought “Nana” would be proud of the dress she’d made. She only hoped they’d have a dress contest.

Minerva also intended to carry a “reticule”—a small string purse in a floral pattern, which more properly belonged to the 1790s, but she thought she could get away with it. The dresses of ’76 actually had a pair of pockets tied on a string around a woman’s waist, concealed beneath the gown. Access to the pockets was through pocket slits in the gowns themselves. Minerva marveled at the ingenuity of 18
th
century women and included the pockets for historical correctness should Mr. Greene ask her about her dress. Let’s see Bette Kromer match that! she said to the face in her bedroom mirror as she finished braiding her long blond hair. Minerva had read about “calling cards” for young women, and she’d bought some card stock at Office Depot and manufactured a dozen “calling cards” using a Bookman Old Style font from her computer. She turned to scan the Princeton pennant pinned to her bedroom wall. “I’m doing this nonsense for you, Princeton,” she said. Minerva had once thought only of Harvard, until a
Newsweek
survey ranked the Tigers ahead of both the Crimson and the Eli of Yale. Harvard was now her “backup school” should she not be accepted to Princeton.

When Minerva arrived in the kitchen, Vesta, her mother, handed her a glass of orange juice and nodded for Minerva to sit down. Her physician father was already off to make rounds at the hospital. Minerva was thankful that her father’s name wasn’t Apollo, as there were enough Romans in the family, even though she was an only child. The choice of “Minerva” as her moniker had been decided by her mother in some sort of odd sibling rivalry with Aunt Rhea, who named her children after Greek gods and goddesses. Minerva always felt sorry for her cousin Hermes, who was invariably saddled with the nickname of an STD. But there were her female cousins Persephone, Demeter and Athena as well, and Minerva referred to her family as the Roman wing and the Athenian wing.