by David Teague
“I want to find it more than anything in the universe,” said Oscar, “but I don’t even know where to start. Can you help me, Mr. Veeder?”
“The story of that watch is classified. Top secret,” said Mr. Veeder. “Only highly placed government officials, special investigators, and certain museum directors are supposed to know about it. So no. I can’t tell you.”
“Mr. Veeder,” said Oscar, “the fate of the universe is at stake. I know I look like just a kid to you, and I am, but the thing is, I’m the kid who made a cosmic mistake last night, and I’m also the kid who is going to fix that mistake.”
Mr. Veeder silently contemplated Oscar’s declaration. After a long pause, he said, “These are extraordinary circumstances, and I believe they justify breaking the rules. Oscar, that watch is one of the most powerful scientific devices ever invented. You must know that, if you’ve already spoken to Professor Smiley. The watch is so powerful, it is dangerous. So dangerous, it was banished to an uncrackable vault in this very museum in this very obscure town where nobody would ever think to look for it. And it’s stayed here ever since, in the Veeder-Klamm Thimble and Handheld Timepiece Museum.”
“Who would make such a powerful and dangerous watch?” asked Oscar.
“A man who wanted to save the world,” said Mr. Veeder. “A brilliant one. His name was Hector Smiley.”
“Is he related to T. Buffington Smiley?” asked Oscar.
“Indeed, he was T. Buffington Smiley’s great-uncle,” said Mr. Veeder.
“No wonder Professor Smiley is so smart,” said Oscar. “But if this Smiley guy was so brilliant, why did he make such a watch?”
“Well, let me tell you, the smartest ideas don’t always lead to the best results.” Here Mr. Veeder looked pointedly at Oscar and Oscar shifted uncomfortably, thinking about his homer. Mr. Veeder continued, “The watch began as a wonderful idea. An idea meant to save the world. . . .”
The Story of the Watch, as told by Mr. Veeder
April 7, 1935
After years of intently observing the secrets of the universe and studying the discoveries of Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, and Ludwig Boltzmann, Hector Smiley invented an ingenious contraption of wires and switches that could freeze time completely, while leaving him to move freely outside of it.
He managed to fit his invention into a standard gold railroad watch, though he replaced the gold button on top with one that glittered red for stop, green for go.
He theorized that his discovery might turn out to be the ultimate force for good, a means of halting any menace that might threaten, a way of stopping catastrophes before they started, a tool for reversing calamity in its tracks.
He started off with very small experiments to prove his theory, because he was cautious and he didn’t know what the cosmic side effects of stopping time might be.
He prevented a bee from stinging his pet golden retriever on the nose by freezing time for three-tenths of a second and flicking the insect into a nearby rosebush.
He stood outside his local elementary school and saved a second grader from running into traffic. Which only took two seconds.
He felt very encouraged until it occurred to him that if his invention ever fell into the hands of an unscrupulous person, it could be used for evil. Undetectable cheating at sports. Unsolvable bank robberies. Or worse, nations might use it to attack one another clandestinely.
So he kept his invention secret, telling only a few family members, a friendly museum director, and the president of the United States, with whom he was personally acquainted. In those days, the president liked to stay in touch with his country’s geniuses at all times, and had given Hector his personal phone number.
Meanwhile, Hector carried his watch in his pocket, still testing it in small, unspectacular ways. He rescued a kitten from a trolley track. He snatched a lost balloon before it floated too high. The snippets of frozen time hardly seemed to add up at all, and since he did nothing but good deeds, he felt his work was ultimately for the best.
Until the afternoon when Hector Smiley spotted a pterodactyl perched in a tree outside his laboratory. At that moment, he knew his experiment was a failure. He knew the pterodactyl didn’t belong in his era. He knew that an unlikely but entirely plausible side effect had occurred: his experiments had knocked time out of joint and allowed the creature to appear in a time where it shouldn’t. He watched the pterodactyl until it leaped off the branch and soared away above the trees. Then he picked up the telephone and called President Roosevelt and admitted that his grand idea, as it turned out, contained a very serious flaw.
President Roosevelt summoned Hector Smiley to the White House to hear more about what had happened. Hector Smiley explained that by stopping time to perform his experiments, he’d disrupted the structure of the universe, sending a pterodactyl winging into a time and place it didn’t belong.
The watch worked; it stopped time. But at too great a cost.
President Roosevelt thanked Hector Smiley for his efforts, and he ordered Hector to secure the watch in an obscure, untraceable, and utterly safe location, for even though its ability to freeze time might have been a huge benefit to the human race, the danger of using it far outweighed the advantages. The location Hector Smiley chose was the Veeder-Klamm Thimble and Handheld Timepiece Museum.
The Twelve-Year-Old Who Struck Out Babe Ruth
“I don’t suppose anybody knows how Hector Smiley fixed the disruptions his watch caused,” said Oscar when the story was done.
“Sadly, his techniques are lost to history,” confirmed Mr. Veeder.
“So I’ll have to figure that part out on my own,” said Oscar to himself. “Do you know anything else about the watch, Mr. Veeder?” he pressed.
“Just a little,” Mr. Veeder said as he retrieved a lockbox from the bottom drawer of a display cabinet. “I have the packing material it came in. The thief left that behind.”
From the lockbox, Mr. Veeder extracted a sealed plastic freezer bag. Inside the bag was a crumbling crayon box. “This is the box it was stored in,” he said. Humdinger School Crayons read the label. Eight colors. Apex of Quality. From the box, he extracted a handful of crumpled newspaper, brittle and yellow. “And this is the paper it was wrapped in.”
Gently, Oscar took it. The folds and creases left over from when it had swaddled the watch were now soft, fibrous, faded, and in a few places torn.
The Mt. Etna Evening Eagle, it read. April 11, 1935. There were stories in the paper about the dustbowl in Oklahoma and about a shark somebody had caught in Florida. There was one about the fire department rescuing a cat from a tree. And then a tattered column proclaimed: Local Sixth Grader Strikes out Babe Ruth!
This article about baseball grabbed Oscar’s attention. He scanned what was left of the text:
As the barnstorming Boston Braves completed their preseason tour with a game against the minor league Mt. Etna Mountaineers, Mr. George Herman Ruth, the Bambino, the Sultan of Swat, the Babe, received one of the biggest surprises of his career when Mt. Etna’s favorite pitcher, twelve-year-old
Here, a swatch of mailing tape obscured the rest of story. Oscar stuck his fingernail underneath to peel it back. The paper began to rip.
“Believe me,” said Mr. Veeder, “the museum staff has tried everything. It won’t come off. Since the rest of the story is hidden under there, there’s nothing anybody can do.”
“But—” said Oscar.
“However,” continued Mr. Veeder, “if you look at the bottom, you can read the last half of the last sentence.”
after the strikeout, never pitched again.
“Interesting,” said Oscar. “I guess.”
“As a museum curator, I think every single detail connected to every object in my collection is extremely interesting!” said Mr. Veeder.
“What do you think it means, then?” asked Oscar.
“I think it means Hector Smiley must have been in Mt. Etna around the time that game was played,”
said Mr. Veeder. “Otherwise, how would he have gotten the local newspaper?”
“What was he doing in Mt. Etna?” wondered Oscar.
“Dropping off the watch at the museum, is my guess,” said Mr. Veeder.
“But we already knew that watch got dropped off at the museum. So this doesn’t really get us anywhere, does it?” mused Oscar.
“You’d have to ask someone who’s been around longer than I have,” said Mr. Veeder.
“Thank you, Mr. Veeder,” said Oscar.
Oscar hopped onto his bike. He knew just the person to ask. The person who had gotten him into this mess to begin with.
Little Big Man
Oscar pedaled back to his neighborhood as fast as he could. After what Mr. Veeder had told him about Hector Smiley, Oscar had more questions than ever. And he figured the one person who could help him was the person who’d been in the middle of this mess since the beginning: Miss Ellington. Why had she given him a watch so powerful that President Roosevelt had ordered it locked up? How had she ended up with it in the first place? Had she seen who took it from safekeeping in the museum while she was pedaling by on her tricycle?
Had she taken it?
But just as he turned onto his street, Oscar saw a gleaming, white sports car parked in his driveway. For a second, he considered rocketing past. Maybe the driver wouldn’t notice. But as he got closer, he realized it was too late. His dad had spotted him; he honked his horn and waved.
And as badly as Oscar wanted to talk to Miss Ellington, he pulled into his own driveway. He almost never got to talk to his father.
Oscar went up to his dad’s open car window, and he saw that his father’s girlfriend, Gina, also sat in the car.
“Sorry I missed your game last night, kid!” cried Oscar’s dad. “But I have a project going. It’s big. Huge. And important. It’s huge, and it’s important! I had to talk to my guys in Asia.”
“Sounds like a fantastic project, Dad,” Oscar said. Even though his father had moved out, and they didn’t see each other very often, they were still alike in a certain way. They both got enthusiastic about things. But lately, Oscar was finding it harder and harder to get excited about his dad’s projects. Since they meant he wasn’t around for Oscar and his mom anymore.
“I’ll tell you all about it when I finish,” said his father a bit more quietly. “How was your game?”
“Oscar hit a home run,” called Gina. “I saw the video. Congratulations, Oscar!”
“Thanks, Gina,” murmured Oscar.
“You’re kidding!” cried his father.
“Oscar for the win!” Gina added. “Look. It’s right here! Some of it’s a little choppy, but you can see it,” Gina waved her cell phone at them.
“A home run! To clinch the game!” exclaimed his father. “How in the Hank Aaron did you manage that? I mean, I played baseball for twelve years and I never hit even one homer! Good going, Little Big Man.”
Little Big Man used to be his nickname for Oscar, when Oscar was five. And at that moment, Oscar’s dad grinned wider than he’d grinned since Oscar was five. “Outstanding.” He reached out of the car and tousled Oscar’s hair. “You’re turning out great!”
“Thanks, Dad,” said Oscar. “Maybe you can . . . come tonight? We’re in the playoffs. We’re playing the Yankees. It’s a three-game series, with two games left.”
“Well,” said his dad, “if there are two games left, I’m sure I’ll catch at least one.” Just then, his cell phone rang, and he fished it out of his pocket. “Be with you in about nineteen seconds,” he said to whoever was on the other end. To Oscar, he said, “Gotta go. Keep up the good work, Slugger.” He started the car. Then he seemed to remember something, and shut the car off again. “By the way, I stopped by because I wanted to tell you I’ve been a little short on cash. Yesterday I placed a bet on a sure thing at the racetrack to make up the difference, but darned if my sure thing didn’t lose by nineteen seconds and cost me my whole bankroll. I was hoping you’d tell your mom she needs to give me a couple more weeks on the check.”
“I’ll tell her,” Oscar replied dejectedly. “Or—come to the game tonight, Dad, and you can tell Mom yourself.”
“Ah,” said his father, doing his best to look regretful. “See. The thing is, I have a Skype with my team in the Philippines at eight p.m. So I have to miss your game. Sorry.”
“Hey! I have a new friend from the Philippines!” persisted Oscar brightly. “Her name is Lourdes! You could meet her. She—”
“That’s great, Oscar,” said his dad. “But you see, the people I’m talking to are twelve time zones away. When it’s eight a.m. there, it’s eight p.m. here, and I need to talk to them first thing in the morning. Their morning. So I have to miss your game.”
Oscar tried not to show his disappointment.
In the car, Gina stared hard at her fingernails.
His dad’s phone rang again. He snatched it out of his pocket again and frowned at the screen. “I really have to go, Oscar,” he said. “I’ll come to the next game, I promise. Don’t forget to tell your mom what I said. See ya.”
“Bye, Dad,” said Oscar as the car rolled down the driveway.
If he hadn’t been so busy trying to save the universe, Oscar might’ve felt a lot sadder as he waved good-bye. But Oscar knew there might not be any more ball games for his dad to miss if he didn’t accomplish his three tasks soon.
As soon as his dad and Gina were gone, he sprinted across the yard to Miss Ellington’s house and pounded on her front door with all his might. And pounded. And pounded. Frustration and panic welled up in Oscar’s chest. Then slowly the door opened to reveal all four feet, eight inches of Eleanor Ethel Ellington, squinting up at him.
“Why,” Oscar cried, “did you give me a watch with the power to break the universe?”
“Heavens to Betsy,” said Miss Ellington, her hand fluttering at her throat. “Did I do that?”
There Must Be Some Mistake
“Miss Ellington,” said Oscar, “the watch you gave me is so powerful, it’s supposed to be stored in a tamperproof, fireproof, bombproof vault in the Veeder-Klamm Museum. It’s not supposed to be handed to your neighbor as a gift for watering tomatoes!”
“Oscar, what are you talking about?” asked Miss Ellington.
“The watch you gave me yesterday,” Oscar said. “It’s wanted by the FBI, the CIA, the Smithsonian, and NASA. Not to mention by two guys in black knocking on doors all over town.”
“There must be some mistake,” insisted Miss Ellington, “because the watch I gave you was a simple pocket watch. It belonged to my late husband, Mr. J. J. Ellington. He wore it in his vest. I found it when I was cleaning out his sock drawer.”
“No,” said Oscar, “the watch you gave me had the ability to stop time.”
“You’re being ridiculous, Oscar,” said Miss Ellington.
“I know,” said Oscar. “But everything I’m saying is true.”
“I’ve had enough of this conversation. You can’t just come over here, knock on my door, and accuse me of giving away powerful watches!” declared Miss Ellington. She glanced at her kitchen clock. “It’s getting late. Shouldn’t you be preparing for your game?” She crossed her arms over her chest. She wasn’t answering any more questions.
Oscar glanced at the clock, too. Only forty-five minutes until warm-ups. Oscar remembered Professor Smiley telling him how important it was for the Wildcats to beat the Yankees. He clearly wasn’t going to get any answers out of Miss Ellington, and he couldn’t be late to the ballpark. “You’re right. I guess I should be going, Miss Ellington,” replied Oscar.
“Before you go,” said Miss Smiley, “there’s something I’d like to give you.”
“Oh, no,” said Oscar, backing toward the door. “You’ve already given me plenty.”
“Sit down. Relax. And don’t start babbling about a magic watch,” she said. Miss Ellington opened her broom closet and pulled out a canvas bag.
“Move
that mail so I can put this down,” she said.
As he scooped up the mail, Oscar noticed that a letter to Sheila Flaherty lay on top, unopened and returned. For a fleeting moment, he wondered how her great-grandson was doing at second base out in Seattle, but he felt like no matter what, the kid was probably having better luck on the diamond than he was.
Miss Ellington was saying, as she pulled a baseball glove from the bag, “This is very old, and very special.”
“It’s beautiful,” said Oscar.
“It belonged to someone I used to know,” said Miss Ellington. “I thought you might want it.”
“Thanks. But Coach never puts me in the game, Miss Ellington,” said Oscar, gazing at the mitt, which was so gorgeous it was almost a work of art. “I don’t need a new glove.”
“He put you in last night, I heard,” said Miss Ellington. “And I know about your home run!” She put her hand briefly on his and squeezed. “Take the mitt. It’s for you.”
The glove gleamed chocolate brown and somehow, insead of reeking of mothballs, smelled like a cross between a Kentucky Derby saddle and a new motorcycle jacket. When Oscar put it on, it fit like magic.
“Thank you, Miss Ellington,” he said.
“If you can spare a minute more, I’ll show you how to take care of it,” Miss Ellington went on, pulling a clean dust rag from the bag in her broom closet and a bottle of something called neat’s-foot oil from a cabinet. “Always use exactly eleven drops,” she instructed. “Like this.” Carefully, she let the oil drip on the rag.
She showed Oscar how to apply the lightest possible layer to the entire surface, making it smooth, even, and so thin it hardly darkened the leather. “Work it in all the way,” instructed Miss Ellington.
With the rag, Oscar rubbed the oil in. Between the fingers, into the webbing, into the stitching.
“The inside of the glove, too,” prompted Miss Ellington. “People forget, but it’s important, because your hand sweats on the leather and dries it out from within.”