Chapter 12: Sammy with a Twist

We finished the baseball season at 13 and 5. The season included some good, quality wins against tough opponents, but we had trouble with every big city team we faced, and we wound up not making it out of our own league tournament in the post season. It was a big disappointment for the seniors, especially Chuck Nileson, who had really hoped we would have the firepower to advance.

We were better than the year before though, even Chuck was willing to say so. In fact, Chuck went out of his way to make sure the new guys knew that. Chuck had been the quiet leader of our team during the season, and sure showed it then.

After that first game where I'd struggled to get hits early on, I hit consistently and well, with a home run in seven of the next eight games, including three multi-homer games. I finished the season with only a single fielding error, a bad reaction to a funny hop on a line drive down the third base line, twenty one home runs, twelve doubles and three triples. I stole nine bases and got caught stealing five times. Joe Porter had a higher on-base percentage and batting average than I did, and, despite playing shortstop, the hot spot, he finished the season with only one error as well. Nick Ingersoll was still going to be a project, but he was much more patient at the plate by the end of the season, raising his average a good fifty points from the previous season, and dropping the number of strikeouts considerably.

I felt good about that season, and wondered if there'd be another. The uncertainty about the predicted and impending near doom which might or might not wipe out most of the inhabitants of Earth did tend to be a damper on my enthusiasm. A damper that got noticed by Carrie. She might be the future and present unrealized former love of my life, but she was still the person who had known me the longest amongst my friends. She stopped by the house Sunday after church, and she was there with questions.

"Somethings bothering you Sammy," she said once I'd closed the door and turned to face her after she steamed through it and into the living room. "You're distant and distracted. You are out there having fun with the rest of us, but you're not enjoying it as much as you should, and I want to know why, before the others notice it, and especially before Greta notices it and thinks its her fault!"

"You're right, of course," I said immediately. "I knew that you knew me too well to keep fooled, but I was hoping to make it until the end of school."

"Well!" she huffed, for lack of anything better to say at the moment. She had been expecting a lot more resistance and my apparent total capitulation threw her completely. "Of course you couldn't fool me."

My confession of sorts had disarmed her some, and derailed her charge down the warpath, as I'd hoped it would.

"I can't say anything more for now," I said in a conspiratorial tone. "It'll have to wait until school's out for the summer. Will you back me up on that if Greta or the others notice anything between now and then?"

There were only a few more weeks of school left, and I struggled to think of what I knew about the coming months that could convince Carrie, or anyone else, of the truth of my story. There was little I remembered about 1962 that I could use, and I wracked my brain trying to find something.

It finally came to me a week later when Greta returned 'The Agony and the Ecstasy' to me. She'd borrowed the book over the winter, looking for something to read when she was stuck at home with nothing to do. I had been thinking of sports and politics and disasters that I remembered, when there were other things I did remember that really stood out for the old me.

I may have ruined my life in many ways during my high school years, by as a social self-reject and recluse, I read a lot, and during those years I developed some lifelong fascinations. Two of my favorite authors were going to die this summer, a month apart. William Faulkner would die on July the seventh, and Herman Hesse a month later on August ninth. Steppenwolf, the Hesse novel that would have a huge impact on me wasn't going to even be published until next year.

Carrie was the one that this information would convince, and she would convince the others. I would have to start small.

I let Mom and Dad know at dinner that night.

"Carrie was here today. She's noticed I'm acting differently, and wants to know what's up."

Mom drew in a sharp breath, "Oh my! What did you tell her?"

"I stalled her," I told them. "I admitted that yes, something was up, but that I couldn't say more until school was out."

"Do you think she'll accept that?" Dad asked.

"For now. I've asked her to back me up until then with the others, and she's agreed."

"You made her a partner in crime," Dad observed. "Clever."

"Perhaps lucky too," I added. "There's little I remember about the coming summer, but the two things I do remember will strike her more closely than anyone else."

So I explained about Faulkner and Hesse, and started to explain about the only other thing I really remembered, the Cuban missile crisis, when I suddenly remembered Marilyn Monroe. It came back to me so suddenly that I caught my breath.

"What?" Mom asked. "Did you remember something else?"

"Yeah," I answered, shaking my head. "I can't believe I almost forgot this one, because I'd already remembered it once since I've been back. Marilyn Monroe is going to be found dead on August fifth, four days before Hesse dies. It'll be called a drug overdose, and she'll be found nude."

I wasn't going to tell either of them that the reason that particular date stuck so clearly in my mind was because in my first life, I'd said something truly horrible to my Mom that day, and she'd slapped me, hard. No connection really, just those two things happened on the same day, and I had always remembered the date because of it.