Roberto & Me (9 page)

Roberto pulled a card out of his pocket.

“This is what guides me,” he said, handing me the card. There was handwriting on it:

 

If you have a chance to accomplish something that will make things better for people coming behind you, and you don't do that, you are wasting your time on this earth.

 

“I like to work with kids,” Roberto continued. “I'd like to work with kids all the time if I live long enough. When I was your age, we couldn't afford to buy a baseball. So we hit empty soup cans. My first glove was a coffee-bean sack. Someday, I want to build a sports city for the poor kids of Puerto Rico. There will be ballfields, a swimming pool, and a lake. The kids will get involved with sports instead of drinking and drugs. They'll learn about being good citizens and respecting their parents. That is my dream.”

Roberto filled our plates with food and then his own.

“What about donating money?” Sunrise suggested. “Instead of flying to Nicaragua, you could give money to the Red Cross or some other organization,
and they could deliver the food and medicine to the earthquake victims.”

“Money is pieces of paper,” Roberto said. “It is paying someone to do the dirty work so you don't have to.”

He stopped talking and dug into his food. I tried the pork chops and crabs. They were really good. I didn't want to try the fried banana, but Sunrise said it was tasty and insisted that I have a bite. It was okay, but a little strange. Too sweet for me. The milk shake was great, though.

I thought about what Roberto had said. It was hard to argue with him. He was determined to use his celebrity to help people and make the world a better place. But I was determined too. And I knew that if he got on that plane, he would die.

“You won't be able to help
anybody
if you're not alive,” I told him. “You won't be able to start a sports city for kids. You can do so much more good for people if you don't go to Nicaragua.”

Roberto stopped eating and looked at me.

“You are stubborn,” he said. “Like me. You went through a lot to deliver this message to me. I respect that.” Roberto paused before adding, “Okay, Stosh. I will do as you say.”

I let go a breath of air that I must have been holding in for an hour. Sunrise smiled and nodded to me. We finished eating quietly. I didn't want to say anything that might screw up what I had accomplished.

The waiter brought the check. Roberto paid it and
asked if the owner of the restaurant could call him a taxicab. He told us he was tired and had to go back to the hotel. The Pirates were scheduled to fly to Houston in the morning to play the Astros.

“I want to give you something,” he said as we walked outside.

“You've already given us so much,” Sunrise said.

Roberto pulled a hundred-dollar bill out of his wallet and stuffed it in my hand.

“For your doctor bills when you get home,” he said.

“I couldn't possibly—” I started to say, but he pushed my fingers closed around the bill.

“It was because of me that you got hurt,” he said.

“You don't have to do that,” I told him.

“I know.”

Roberto hugged us both. A cab pulled up and he got in. He said something in Spanish to the driver. Before the cab pulled away, Roberto rolled down the window.

“And you,” he said to Sunrise, “go back to your home and family. Family is more important than any game. It is all we have. Family is everything.”

Roberto waved to us as the cab pulled away.

I DIDN'T FEEL SAD WHEN ROBERTO LEFT. JUST THE OPPOSITE
. Such a feeling of satisfaction came over me. I had done what I had set out to do. Once we found our way to Cincinnati, it had all been fairly easy, really. I was lucky enough to meet Roberto Clemente. He didn't think I was a crackpot. He saw that what I was saying made sense. And he agreed not to get on the plane. So I had accomplished my mission. Now it was time to go home.

There was just one problem: Sunrise.

We were sitting on a bench in front of El Cochinito. It was dark out and probably close to midnight. The streets were almost empty. It was quiet. The lights went out inside the restaurant. It had been some night. Sunrise and I would be going our separate ways. We both knew it. She put her arms around me.

I know I'm too young to fall in love with anybody. But I liked Sunrise a lot. We had fun together. I felt completely at ease with her. I didn't have to wonder if I was saying the right thing all the time or what she was trying to tell me.

I don't have a lot of friends at home in Louisville. If I met somebody like Sunrise back home, she would definitely be my best friend. I didn't want to leave her, especially after all we had been through together.

“That would be so amazing if you actually changed history tonight,” she said.

“I hope I did,” I replied. “I guess I'll find out when I get home.”

“It must be exciting, being able to do what you do,” she said quietly. “Does anybody else in the future have the power to travel through time with baseball cards?”

“Not that I know of.”

“I guess you can take stuff with you, huh?” she asked. “Your backpack, your clothes, and all. It would be pretty funny if you went back in time and your clothes didn't go with you.”

“It would be,” I said, imagining it. “I don't know if there's a weight limit. Like on an airplane when they weigh your suitcase.”

“Is it possible to take a person with you?” Sunrise asked.

“Yeah,” I told her. “I took my mom with me one time. My dad too. Oh, and my baseball coach, Flip Valentini.”

I finally realized that Sunrise was dropping hints. She wanted to go home with me. Maybe she liked me as much as I liked her. Or maybe she just wanted to see the future. I couldn't blame her. I always wanted to travel to the future too. But that's impossible, of course. I would need to have a future baseball card, and they haven't been printed yet.

“I wish I could see one of those VD players you were telling me about,” she said.

“That's DVD,” I corrected her.

“Yeah, one of those. They sound cool.”

There were so many reasons why it would be a big mistake to take Sunrise to the twenty-first century with me. She would never see her friends or family again. That would be the biggest reason. They would report her as missing, if they hadn't already. It would be all over the news. People would think she had been kidnapped. The police would waste a lot of time and money searching for her. As time went by, her parents would assume she was dead. That would be a terrible thing to do to them.

I also had to consider how jumping to the twenty-first century would change Sunrise's life. She wouldn't finish her education. She would miss four decades of history that she should have lived through. And what if she was going to have children of her own someday? They would never be born. Or they would be born 50 years later. It would be very risky to take her along.

On the other hand, she was
really
pretty.

“Do you…want to come with me?” I finally asked.

“You would take me?” she said, looking up with those great eyes of hers.

I opened my backpack and took out my new baseball cards. I tore off the wrapper and picked a card out of the stack.

“Hold my hand,” I said, “and close your eyes.”

I explained to Sunrise that nothing would happen for a minute or two. And then, gradually, she would begin to feel a tingling sensation in her fingertips. That was the signal that we would be going to the year on the card.

“And then what happens?” she asked. “We…
vanish
? Just like that?”

“Yeah, just like that.”

“Okay,” she said, taking a deep breath, “let's go.”

I felt a tingling sensation right away. But that was only because I still wasn't used to holding hands with a pretty girl. Soon that feeling was replaced by the other tingling sensation, the one I was used to. It tickled my fingernails.

“Do you feel anything yet?” Sunrise whispered.

“Yeah,” I said. “Just relax. Think of the future. The twenty-first century. Think of Louisville, Kentucky.”

That's what I was doing. The vibrations were getting more powerful, moving up my arm, across my chest, and down my other arm to the hand Sunrise was holding.

“I feel something!” she said suddenly.

“Shhhhh!”

My whole body was starting to vibrate. We were approaching the point of no return. And then…

I pulled my hand away and let go of the card.

“What?” she asked. “Did something go wrong?”

“I can't do it,” I told her.

“Why not?”

“Roberto was right,” I said. “You should be home with your family. It would be wrong to just rip somebody out of their world like this.”

Sunrise sighed. It looked like her eyes were moist.

“I don't want to go home to my parents,” she said softly. “And school starts in a few weeks. I want to get out of here. I want to go with you.”

“Do you love your parents?” I asked.

Sunrise took a moment to think it over. Then she nodded her head.

“My mom and I fight all the time,” I told her. “It's even worse with my dad. Everybody has problems getting along with their parents. It's, like, part of growing up.”

“I know, I know,” she said.

“Look, in a few years, you'll be finished with high school and off to college,” I told her. “You've got your whole life ahead of you. And you know what? You're gonna see DVDs and all that other stuff for yourself. You're 14 now. So you'll be 24 in 1979, 34 in 1989, 44 in 1999, and 54 in 2009. You can get a DVD player
then. And a flat-screen TV that just about fills a whole wall. Hey, maybe you can invite me over and we'll watch movies together.”

“But I'll be old,” she said, “and you'll be a teenager.”

“We can still be friends.”

“Okay,” she said with a sigh. “But will you do one favor for me?”

“What?” I asked.

“Let me watch?”

I don't usually let people watch me travel through time. It would be weird to see somebody disappear before your eyes. But this was special. I told her it would be okay.

“I'll miss you,” she said.

“I'll miss you too.”

After Sunrise assured me she would be able to take a cab home, I picked up the baseball card again. I closed my eyes and concentrated on going home. It didn't take long for the tingling sensation to come back. It was like it had just been interrupted.

“Is it happening?” Sunrise whispered. I felt her breath on my ear.

“Yeah,” I said, “it's happening.”

The vibrations washed over me as if I was lying at the edge of the beach and a wave came in.

“Good-bye, Stosh,” I heard Sunrise say.

And just before I disappeared, I felt her lips press against mine.

Then I was gone.

I CAME FLYING INTO THE LIVING ROOM. MY FOOT HIT THE
floor at a strange angle. I reached out to grab something to steady myself, but there was nothing there. I tripped over the coffee table and did an X Games–quality face plant at the foot of the stairs just as Mom was coming down from the second floor with a basket of laundry. She stared at me for a second with a funny look on her face, like I was wearing a clown nose or something.

“Is it Halloween already?” she asked.

I looked at myself. The love beads were still around my neck. I pulled off the headband.

“Mom! You won't believe it! I was at Woodstock!” I exclaimed. “It was
so
cool! And I went to Cincinnati in a Volkswagen van with some hippies. And I saw Jimi Hendrix play!”

“No way!” she gushed.

“Yes way!” I insisted. “He played ‘The Star-Spangled Banner' and ‘Purple Haze'!”

“I
knew
I should have gone with you!” my mother said. “You didn't tell me you were going to Woodstock. You just said you were going to save Roberto Clemente.”

“I was. I mean, I did!” I said. “Or I think I did, anyway. I got kind of blown off course somehow. Did you see anything on the news about Clemente?”

“No,” she said. “Like what?”

Well, of course she hadn't seen anything on the news about Clemente. The news only reports on planes that crash, not on ones that land safely. They report when people die tragically, not when they live peacefully.

“I'll be right back,” I said, rushing past her upstairs, taking two steps at a time.

It would be a simple matter to go on the Internet and find out whether or not I had changed history.

I was feeling optimistic when I turned on my computer. For once, I had accomplished my mission. Roberto was only 38 years old when he died. If he didn't get on that plane in 1972, he probably would have played a few more seasons and padded his statistics, which were already so impressive.

He may even still be alive, it occurred to me. I did the arithmetic in my head. Roberto was born in 1934. So if he lived into the millennium, he would have been 66 at that time. It was entirely possible that he was still living, now an old man. And it would be because of me.

The more hurried I am, the slower my computer runs. What's up with that? Finally I got online and googled
ROBERTO CLEMENTE
. There were over four million websites that mentioned his name. I clicked on the first one, and there it was:

 

Born: August 18, 1934
Died: December 31, 1972

 

No! It couldn't be! He shouldn't have died in 1972! I saved him! He said he wouldn't get on the plane!

I clicked down to the second website.

 

Died: December 31, 1972

 

And the third.

 

Died: December 31, 1972

 

It was the same for every one I tried. Nothing was different. I didn't change history. Despite everything I went through, Roberto
still
died in that plane crash. I cursed as I smashed my fist against the desk.

I couldn't help but be angry. I was angry with Roberto. He deceived me. He ignored my warning that the plane was going to crash. He went ahead and got on it, anyway.

My mother came rushing upstairs.

“Are you okay?” she asked. “I heard a bang.”

“Roberto lied to me!” I told her. “He said he wouldn't
go to Nicaragua! But he got on the plane anyway; and now he's dead. He should have listened to me!”

“Joey…”

“And what good did it do?” I continued. “He didn't help the victims of that earthquake. All the medicine and stuff he was going to deliver to them must have ended up in the ocean. Roberto sacrificed his life for nothing.”

My mother leaned over from behind and wrapped her arms around me.

“It wasn't for nothing,” she said. “I bet he inspired a lot of people to do good things. Just like he inspired you. That's the only positive thing about tragedy, Joey. It makes the survivors better people. This just shows how good a man he must have been; he would go help strangers even though he knew he would most likely die doing it.”

“You think so?” I asked.

“Either that,” she said, laughing, “or maybe he just figured you were nuts. That's what I would think if some kid with love beads told me he comes from the future and knows when I'm going to die.”

“Yeah,” I said. “He probably figured I was just a crazy hippie kid.”

“A
tired
crazy hippie kid,” my mother said, kissing the top of my head. “You can save the world another day, Joey. Go to sleep. Flip called, by the way. You've got a game tomorrow night, you know. And be sure to put your dirty clothes in the hamper. I'm in the middle of doing the laundry.”

Mom closed the door, and I put my computer to sleep. I was still a little upset. What was the use? I tried to do something good for the world, and this was the result.

Maybe it never happened, it suddenly occurred to me. Maybe I never even went back to 1969. What if it was all a dream? What if I really
am
crazy?

It had been a long day, a long couple of days. I needed a shower.

I pulled off my jeans and put them in the hamper. Then I remembered that I needed to go through the pockets carefully. One time I left a pen in my pocket; and when my mom washed the clothes, there was blue ink all over the dryer. She was pretty mad.

The first three pockets of my jeans were empty, but the back right pocket had some pieces of paper in it. I pulled them out. One of the papers had this on it:

 

If you have a chance to accomplish something that will make things better for people coming behind you, and you don't do that, you are wasting your time on this earth.

 

The other paper looked like this:

So it wasn't a dream. It really happened.