Word Hunters

by Nick Earls

  ‘It’s 30 years after Nantucket.’ She ran her finger over the writing that glowed on the peg. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘1865? The Civil War’s over, or about to be. And it wasn’t, or isn’t, near here anyway. I don’t think this is the one for Nantucket, though. I think we’ll get closer. We’ve got four more pegs and it’s “okay”. The word “okay”. It’s not going to go back to the year 12 in the next step. It’s a very American word.’

  ‘You don’t know that.’ She put the peg back in the bag. ‘After this, we could go straight to Africa 300 years ago. You don’t know any more than I do. What about the 30-year window?’

  ‘It goes for 30 years.’ Al took the bag and put it back on. ‘I hoped we’d get closer than this. He could go anywhere in 30 years. He was a word hunter for a lot longer than we’ve been. He hunted a lot of words. He might know better places to go in the 1860s than Nantucket. It’s not very far from here, but it’s not right next door, either. We don’t know what would happen to the portal – or anything else – if we made a side-trip. And it could take days.’

  ‘The stupid 30-year window was your idea!’ She shouted it at him. She had plenty more to say, but she stopped herself. Thirty years was a long time. ‘“Okay.” We’re waiting for someone to do something relevant to the history of “okay”. And if the next step is Germania and some stupid battle and we’ve overshot by 2,000 years because of you, I am taking the pegs and I’m going home alone.’

  ‘It’s not going to be. We checked. Mursili checked.’ The choice not to go to Nantucket now was a risk and Al knew it – Grandad Al might be there and they mightn’t get a better chance – but going to Nantucket might be a bigger one. Everything was a risk, even when no one was shooting arrows at you.

  A sign beside the path identified the building through the park as City Hall. It seemed like an obvious place to start.

  They followed the path past garden beds to the part of the building that looked most likely to have the front door. There were steps leading up to stone columns that supported a balcony.

  As they got closer, two guards appeared between the columns.

  ‘What’s our excuse for being here?’ Al realised they hadn’t sorted that out yet. ‘What do we say to them?’

  ‘Sorry, folks. Not today,’ one of the guards called out. ‘We’re still shut down after the president’s funeral procession. Not much open around here but the Times.’ He pointed back across the park.

  ‘We’ve just come to pay our respects,’ Al said. He had heard people use the phrase in movies.

  ‘Well, the train’s halfway to Illinois by now, but we have condolence books.’ The guard seemed to be indicating something behind him that they couldn’t see. ‘You’d be welcome to step inside and add your names.’

  They climbed the steps and found that the first set of doors to the building was open, though there were doors closed beyond them. In the alcove were two desks, each with an open leather-bound book and a pen.

  ‘Maybe we’ll find “okay” in them,’ Lexi said as she opened one. ‘Or at least word-hunter initials.’

  Al checked the other book. He flicked through page after page, but there were no ‘okay’s or initials. Each page had a column of names running down its left side and then a wider column for comments. In fine, elegant writing, one New Yorker after another had written about their shock and sense of loss at the death of President Lincoln.

  He turned around to Lexi. ‘I only kind of knew it as a historical event. Not as something that mattered to people. That they took so personally.’

  Lincoln had been alive, and then shot, and then dead. He wasn’t to these people a marble giant in a monument or a face on Mount Rushmore. He wasn’t any part of history. He had lived in their present and worked to change it.

  ‘You were the Washington of our time,’ one visitor had written, starting to find him his place in history. ‘A true leader, who made us a better people of a better country.’

  ‘What’s this?’ Lexi said. She pointed to an entry in her book which read ‘John Buck 13’.

  Al had no idea.

  He took it to the guard, who said, ‘Oh, 13.’ He seemed to be trying to remember John Buck. ‘I think that man was a slave. He’d once been a slave. Now he’s free. We haven’t changed the Constitution in 60 years, but the 13th Amendment will be the one that makes sure no one in this country is ever a slave again. He probably couldn’t write, John Buck. Just his name and numbers. That’s what he’s thanking the president for. Thirteen. The president got it through Congress two months ago.’

  It was almost impossible to believe, in this city with wide streets and street lamps and carriages, grand stone buildings and rich Americans, that people had kept slaves – that some people were slaves – in the same country, and very recently. Al didn’t know what to say to the guard, so he just nodded and said, ‘Thanks.’

  He took the book back to the table, picked up the pen and wrote ‘Alastair Hunter’, and in the comments column he put ‘13’. Lexi did the same.

  As they walked out and down the steps, a cool breeze blew down Park Row, caught the new green leaves in the trees and made their branches sway. It was early spring. They didn’t speak until they reached the street.

  ‘The hard thing is,’ Lexi said, ‘that this bit of the past doesn’t look so past. If it was people running round with axes, I guess the idea of slaves – well, it’d never be right, but it’d be less of a shock. But the idea that someone with a fur coat and a watch and books that I’ve read could own people—’

  ‘Not anymore, though.’ Al stopped to watch a carriage go past. ‘It had to change, and this is when it did.’ Doug moved around in his bag and the pegs clanked together. ‘Nothing to do with “okay” over there, though – not that I could see.’

  ‘Not much open around here but the Times.’ Lexi was looking across the road, to the New York Times building. ‘A newspaper worked for us last time. Maybe that’s where we should have gone. We might have missed it. What if we have?’

  ‘We can’t – Don’t even think that. I might be a copy boy again. This could be it.’ Al took another look at Lexi. ‘You’re richer than last time, maybe. I don’t know. I can’t work this one out. My head’s still spinning a bit with the Lincoln stuff. Let’s just go.’

  They crossed the road. There was a security guard in the foyer, so they waited outside. It had been easier in Chicago. They’d just appeared on the top floor of the building and gone nowhere near security. Al figured they had one chance with the guard. They needed a good story – one to get them both into the building, not just him as a copy boy – and they didn’t have it yet.

  Lexi focused on the conversations of men coming in and going out. Most were about Lincoln – the shooting was recent – but others were about baseball and girls. No one said ‘okay’ – not once.

  She kicked a piece of chalk that had been left on the ground, and it skidded across something that looked like a hopscotch game. Some of the lines weren’t where she expected, though. As she tried to work it out, she saw the initials ‘WH’ and ‘TH’ where the numbers 8 and 9 should have been. She grabbed Al’s sleeve and showed him.

  ‘And there’s the chalk,’ she said, pointing to it. ‘It’s like they were just here. Right here, outside the building.’

  Al glanced along the street. No one was watching them. No one he could see was wearing a key badge.

  ‘There’s no “AH”.’ Lexi was still focused on the chalk writing. ‘No Grandad Al.’

  ‘Maybe he didn’t do this one. Or maybe he wasn’t doing initials when he was here. He used a pen, anyway. A blue ballpoint.’ But the chalk was right there. He would have picked it up and added his initials, if he’d been there.

  Lexi picked up the chalk, wiped the 7 away and put ‘LH’ and, next to it, ‘AH’.

  ‘We’re o
n track for the word, though,’ she said as she set the chalk down on the 6. ‘That’s something. The others came through here. I just hope we’re not too late.’

  Two men stopped near them on their way into the building.

  ‘I’m not at all sure about this,’ the older one said. He had a dark coat, and grey hair. ‘People are still buying Pearline and the new soap isn’t doing so well.’

  ‘This’ll change that, Mr Pyle. Another spread in the Times.’ The younger man took a step towards the entrance, but Mr Pyle didn’t move, so he stopped again. ‘I don’t think we pushed it hard enough before. It’s time for the big push now. I think the name is right. It’s a new word. It’s fresh. It’s very American.’

  Lexi and Al looked at each other.

  ‘Perhaps you should try it out on us,’ Lexi called out, before they could go inside.

  The two men stopped and turned.

  ‘Are you talking to me, child?’ Mr Pyle straightened his shoulders and made himself stand taller. ‘What do you mean, try it out on you?’

  ‘A fresh new name. Who better to try it out on than someone who’ll give you a fresh new opinion?’ Lexi knew she needed more. Mr Pyle wasn’t going to hang around talking to a random 12-year-old on a street. ‘I’m Alexandra. My father’s one of the editors of the Times.’

  ‘The man who – yet again – wants to sell me space to advertise my soap? I’d hardly call you independent.’

  Mr Pyle laughed. ‘But all right. You can tell me what you think. We’ve got a few minutes to spare.’ He reached into his coat and fumbled around in a deep pocket. ‘Mr Austin, do tell this young lady what you have in mind.’ He pulled out a bar of soap. It was wrapped in paper with its name in red inside a decorative black border.

  ‘OK soap,’ Mr Austin said, hoping she would like it. His job was riding on the success of OK soap, and pitching to the young lady really wasn’t part of his plan. ‘No one used OK as a product name before Mr Pyle started to a couple of years ago. He put it in the Times then – just to test the water – and I’m certain that a full campaign will be all it takes to make it popular. More and more people are taking a liking to soap, and we think OK is where soap is heading in the ’60s.’ The look he gave her was almost pleading. Young ladies could be so hard to please, and his plans could fall apart right here on the steps if she didn’t like the sound of them. ‘Soon enough, when any of us says “OK”, we’ll be thinking soap. This soap.’

  Mr Pyle handed the soap to Lexi. Already the ‘O’ in ‘OK’ had become a glowing gold button.

  ‘Why not?’ she said. ‘I think you’re right. I like the way this looks. I could see my mother buying it tomorrow. I like the idea of OK soap.’ She held it up to her nose and sniffed. She wanted to say something good about the fragrance, but it didn’t smell of much at all. ‘In fact, I like it enough that I don’t want to give it back.’

  Mr Pyle laughed again. ‘Do you do this for everyone your father’s selling column space to? Wait on the steps and win them over, so all he has to do is ink the deal? You’re good, young lady. You’re welcome to keep it. I don’t need two members of the same family holding a block of my soap and telling me what a treasure it is.’ He laughed again. ‘Mr Austin, let’s go buy a piece of the front page.’

  As soon as they were safely around the street corner, Al went to open his backpack, but Lexi stopped him.

  ‘How long have we got, do you think?’ she said. ‘I agree we don’t go to Nantucket now. But, if we were going to go, how long would we have?’

  ‘But we’re not going to go.’ He wasn’t following her point.

  ‘One time, though – maybe next time – we will. And how long will the portal be there? How long do they stay like this? We normally open them in a few seconds, and once they’re open we go. But if we keep this one and don’t open it, how long will it last?’

  ‘Another question for Caractacus.’ Al undid the buckles on his pack and found the activated peg.

  ‘Even if it’s not this time, this word could be our best chance for Nantucket in the late 1830s. There’s no Caractacus between now and then. We’ve got to work this out ourselves, and this is one of those rare times that someone isn’t trying to massacre us with an axe when we’ve got to the portal.’

  ‘Okay.’ His instinct was still to touch the portal and then shove a peg into it. That had always been the thing to do before.

  ‘Mostly, the thing that creates the portal – the thing someone says and that we need to hear – comes along soon after we arrive somewhere. Sometimes it’s just a few minutes. So, if the next step puts us right here 25 years before now, we couldn’t just go straight to Nantucket, because we might miss it. Then we might have nothing. We could be stuck here. I think that, next time, we have to find the word the way we usually do, get the portal and then look for Nantucket. If we know the portal will stay around for long enough.’

  ‘So we don’t touch this one just yet?’ He fiddled with the levers on the peg and then set it down.

  ‘Exactly. But we’ve got to be ready to all the time.

  It takes a few seconds for the glow to fully come on – it should take at least a few seconds to fade. So we have to watch it. And I don’t think we can sit staring at it on some coach to Nantucket.’

  ‘It’s an island,’ he said. ‘Nantucket.’ Sometimes he wished he could fight the urge to have the last word. ‘But a coach’d get us most of the way there, I guess. And it’d be a long trip. And I don’t have Caractacus’s number handy. Yeah. Let’s watch it.’

  As their first day of waiting turned into evening and then a cold night, they watched the streets empty and they grew hungry. They hid in the shadow of a doorway and, through the windows of Delmonico’s across South William Street, they watched diners in suits and dark dresses eating French food and drinking wine. Al followed every mouthful and invented the flavours until his stomach growled too much. They had found half a bag of nuts hours before, but that was all.

  The last customers left and eventually the staff did too, and the restaurant closed.

  ‘They didn’t even finish,’ Al said as the lights went out. ‘Some of those people left food on their plates.’

  Lexi was sitting on the ground, holding her knees and taking her turn to watch the glowing ‘O’ on the soap packet. ‘I know we could get out of here just by touching the portal, but we can’t crack yet.’

  ‘I’m not saying—’ He stopped himself. It wasn’t the time to fight. ‘I’m not cracking. I’m hungry. There’s got to be more food in there.’

  ‘So you’re suggesting we break into a restaurant and steal some food?’ Al was ready for her to tell him how wrong it’d be, and then she said, ‘How would we get in?’

  The front door was never likely to be the answer, and it was bolted shut. The building was a wedge shape, with the door at its point and windows along the sides. Further down the street they found an alley that led somewhere behind the restaurant. Al took out his torch and they made their way past vents and pipes and piles of rubbish to a loading bay.

  There was a big double door that seemed to be bolted on the inside, top and bottom, and a smaller door next to it that rattled but was locked.

  ‘I don’t think anything could get in here,’ Al said. Then he felt a thump in his bag and the scratching of tiny feet. Doug twisted and turned as he poked his head out. ‘Anything except a rat, maybe.’ Doug climbed up to his shoulder and ran down to his hand. Al set him on the ground. ‘Okay, buddy. Think you can get us in there?’

  As Lexi watched them, she couldn’t believe this was their best shot. ‘So he’s, what, Doug the Super Rat now? You’ve been training him in your room? I suppose he also catches bullets in his teeth and drives the getaway car.’

  Doug could smell food over the rubbish stink of the alley – pheasant, duck fat, 18 different kinds of cheese. How many k
inds of cheese could he eat before he was sick? Twelve at least. And he’d keep the other six for later.

  He tracked the waft of food smell to the small door and along the bottom of it. At the hinge end, the base of the door was splintered. He could stick his head through. Cheese, cheese, duck fat, cheese – the smell was powerful now. He wriggled and pushed and breathed all the way out and tumbled through the hole.

  As he fell through, the door rattled and a key slipped from the lock. It clanged like a dropped fork when it landed on the tiles.

  ‘What’s happening?’

  Doug didn’t even notice Al’s voice or see the torchlight under the door. He was halfway to the kitchen with his mind on nothing but food stink – vegetable peelings, crispy fried anything, tubs of lard.

  Al could see the key glinting in the torchlight. He took a wire coat hanger from his bag, twisted it into shape and hooked the key.

  ‘Genius,’ he said as he stood up. ‘Super Rat.’ He unlocked the door and pushed it open. ‘Hand Doug the keys to the getaway car, Lex. I think he’s got it covered. And it looks like the coat hanger was useful after all.’

  ‘Yeah, okay.’ Lexi had argued with him about it, saying she didn’t think they’d get much time to hang clothes. ‘You get credit for the coat hanger, but I’m pretty sure Doug’s role in that was a total fluke.’ She peered down the hallway, but Doug was nowhere to be seen.

  They found him in a kitchen bin rolling on some leftover quail.

  They lit a gas lamp and ate bread from a basket of rolls and loaf-ends, while they worked out what to cook.

  ‘Still totally fresh.’ Al wouldn’t have cared how stale it was – he’d never been so hungry in his life. ‘They probably bake every day.’