Saving Houdini

by Michael Redhill

  “Yessir, Mr. Houdini,” said Walt. “I have a baby sister. That’s it.”

  “And I’m an only child,” said Dash.

  “Who won’t be born for another … seventy-four years.” For some reason, Dash felt he had to look away. “Well, how lucky you are to have found each other, then.”

  “This is what the paper’s gonna look like tomorrow morning,” Dash said, stabbing the newspaper with his index finger. “That’s Mr. Hopkins’ picture. He’s developing it right now, probably.”

  “And thus the future arrives,” said Houdini, leaning toward them.

  Afterwards, the bellman led them up the stairs beside the hotel desk and brought them to their room. Jacobson was waiting for them there, in the hallway outside number 508. The bellman opened the door and Dash and Walter walked through and stopped dead in their tracks.

  It was an enormous room, with a wall-to-wall window overlooking downtown. White plumes rose from chimneys high into the cold, star-filled night.

  “Oh my goodness,” Walt whispered, moving farther into the room. “It’s a palace!”

  “I trust the room meets with your approval,” said the bellman. Jacobson was putting a coin into his hand. “Thank you, sir,” he said.

  Jacobson looked around the room. “You’re not to leave here until morning.”

  “Yes, sir,” the boys replied.

  “You will be woken at nine and given some breakfast. Harry will send for you when he is ready. Now, let us get on to other business.” He turned smartly to Walt. “Master Gibson, your mother has given clear instructions on certain vitamins.”

  “Oh no,” muttered Walt.

  “She is concerned you may have insulted your constitution with such a long and unexpected train ride, and seeing as your sister is just recovering from a cold, she has instructed me to give you a proper dose of cod liver oil. Good thing given your sneezing, I’d say.”

  “This far, and she still reaches out to me with that cod liver oil.”

  “What is it?” asked Dash.

  “Cod liver oil?” Jacobson removed a small, brown bottle from his suit jacket. “It is a miracle remedy for all manner of complaints. Ricketts, scoliosis, brittle hair and nails, anxious mothers …”

  “It tastes like the inside of a shoe,” said Walt. “I’d rather eat a plate of snails.”

  Jacobson looked amused. “Made from the steamed livers of codfish and then fermented in a barrel for a year. Served at room temperature from a spoon.” He kissed his fingertips. “Delightful.”

  “I’m not having it,” said Walt.

  “Oh, you most certainly are,” said Jacobson. “Your mother insists, and frankly, I wouldn’t miss the opportunity.”

  He produced a spoon and unscrewed the cap of the bottle. Immediately, pungent waves of fishy-stink rose into the air. Jacobson poured a good dose of it into the spoon and held it out to Walt.

  “You first,” Walt said to him. “If you choke it down, I will.”

  Jacobson considered the spoon. Then, with a swift gesture, he plunged it into his mouth and swallowed. He gave no reaction at first, but then his right eyelid shuddered as if a small explosion had gone off in his brain. “Mmm,” he said. “Yummy.”

  He refilled the spoon and held it out to Walt, who drank the oil with a look of unimpressed resignation. He was used to it.

  “I’ll have some,” said Dash, and they both looked at him.

  “Really?”

  “Shouldn’t I?”

  “It is an occupational hazard of childhood,” Jacobson said, refilling the spoon.

  Dash put his head forward and drank the oil. It was warm and slippery. It had smelled pretty powerful, but going down, the taste wasn’t all that bad. Then something that tasted old and sweaty and bitter rose into his throat. He put his hand over his mouth and ran into the washroom, gagging. It took six handfuls of water from the tap just to get rid of the urge to hurl. When he came out of the bathroom, Jacobson and Walt were doubled over laughing. There was a tear running down Jacobson’s face.

  “Oh, that is priceless,” he said, snorting into his hand. “Well, if you need anything else, boys, use that bell there. And Harry’s down the hall in 501.”

  “Okay!” said Dash, still waving his hand in front of his mouth. “Thank you very much, Mr. Jacobson.”

  “For the time being, you may call me Sol,” he said. “But if you turn out not to be Harry’s friends …” He didn’t need to finish his sentence.

  He put the key on one of the dressers and left.

  “That was horrible,” Dash said.

  “Welcome to my world.”

  “You can keep it. Most of it. Not this room, though!” He looked around. “I’d like to keep being Houdini’s guest for a night in 1926!”

  “Me too!” said Walter. He ran and locked the door. Then he kicked off his shoes, jumped on the bed, and started bouncing. “Come on!” he called. “No one’ll stop us!” He was jumping just high enough to get his hair to graze the ceiling.

  Dash picked up a pillow and swung at Walter’s ankles until he whacked him out of the air and Walter pinwheeled to the mattress. He lay there gasping with laughter.

  “Oh yeah,” he said, “you gotta try that.”

  Dash took his shoes off and jumped on the bed. Walter knocked him out of the air a few times with the pillow, and then they jumped around trying to navigate the room without touching the floor, moving from the mattress to a cushy chair to the couch, across the top of the dresser, and back to the bed. Finally they sat there, trying to catch their breath.

  “Walter?” Dash said.

  “What.”

  “You know this has already happened.”

  “Whaddya mean?”

  “In my life, what’s happening right now has already happened. And yet it is happening right now and it’s never happened before. As far as I know.”

  Walt lay down and stared at the ceiling. “What if there are a lot of people out there from other times? Maybe you should find one of them and ask them what the heck to do!”

  “It’s possible, you know,” Dash said. “That there would be others. Why would it only work for me?”

  “I bet they’re out there. People from the year four thousand and nine. Lookin’ around. Hey, do you still have Amazing Wonder Stories in 2011?”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a magazine. Jeez. You don’t have magazines?”

  “We don’t have Amazing Wonder Stories.”

  “Too bad. They had these spacemen time-travellers in one issue? They came in a rocket that was shaped like a butterfly.”

  “I didn’t get here in a rocket ship. I was sent back against my will in a soap bubble.”

  “Right. Against your will, but for a reason.” He turned over and looked up, lacing his fingers on his chest. “Maybe you’re sapposta do something here.”

  “Yeah. Get home,” Dash said, wanting the subject to be closed.

  “Maybe it’s something else.”

  Dash got off the bed and walked away. “Hey, where you going?” Walt said.

  “Nowhere.”

  “Whaddid I say?”

  Dash looked back at Walter. You could try not to think about something, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there. Just like he’d been ignoring everything having to do with Alex leaving but still somehow thinking about it all the time. So it was with the nagging thought that he wasn’t here just to get a magic trick invented.

  “Remember I was telling you about the night of the vanish in 2011?” he asked.

  “Yeah, what about it?”

  “It was a special occasion. An anniversary.” Walt sat at the edge of the bed now. “It was the eighty-fifth anniversary of Harry Houdini’s death, is what it was.”

  There was an expectant look on Walt’s face, like he was waiting to see where Dash was leading. And then he said, “Oh.”

  “On Halloween. Eleven days from now.”

  Walt looked down at the floor. “I wish you hadnta told
me that.”

  “But I know how it happens,” Dash said. “So maybe you’re right. Maybe the reason we’re here is to do something about it.”

  “You think we’re here to save Harry Houdini?”

  “No. Maybe. I don’t know!”

  “But can you do that?” Walt asked. “Is it even safe? What if you wreck time?”

  “I saw a show once where a guy stepped on a bug in the past and everyone in the present turned into lizards. But maybe we can change one little thing without affecting anyone but Houdini. We wouldn’t have to step on any bugs or anything.”

  “So what’s the one little thing?”

  “A punch in the stomach,” said Dash, and then he explained.

  17

  Dash opened only one eye. The ceiling was made of panels of embossed tin. He looked to the left and saw a window looking out onto a city of buildings. White smoke came off the chimney pots atop a number of them. The sun was just rising.

  He opened the other eye. He was still in the hotel room, and Walt was in the other bed, the covers pulled up over his shoulder. He was breathing softly. It was 1926. Although maybe he was in a coma somewhere. Maybe he was dead and this was some version of heaven.

  He got out of the bed and used the washroom. He felt … heavy was the word. Like there was a weight on him. For the first time, he realized he felt sad. Not just scared and worried, but sad.

  He’d already had his fill of this feeling when Alex left. It wasn’t Alex’s fault he had to go, but it still hadn’t ended well. In the weeks leading up to their parting, the two boys had seen less and less of each other. Dash’s mum had asked why, but all Dash could tell her was that Alex was acting like a jerk. He’d knock on the other boy’s door and Alex’s mother would say he wasn’t feeling well and couldn’t come out and play, but there was a look on her face that made Dash think she wasn’t telling the truth. One of the last times they’d gone to the park, Alex had been a total pain, saying that Dash’s slapshots were too hard, or that he hadn’t scored when he had. He could see the little orange ball at the back of the net, but Alex kept saying it didn’t count. Then he just announced that he had to go home, but it was still light out. Dash had enough money for two jawbreakers, but Alex had said he wasn’t interested. He just scooped his ball up and walked out of the park.

  After that, he wouldn’t hang out. Dash hadn’t seen him at all the last weeks Alex was in Toronto. Then, just before they left, Alex’s mother had come by to drop off a letter from him. As Dash read the short letter, he listened to his mother talk to Alex’s about how these kinds of things were hard for kids their age.

  The letter just said, Work on your slapshot. Have a nice life. Alex.

  “He didn’t want to write anything,” Alex’s mother said to him. “But I didn’t think it was proper. Do you want to send him anything back?”

  “No,” Dash had said. “It’s okay. Tell him thanks.”

  She’d promised they would send an address once they were settled, but she hadn’t yet. He wasn’t sure why Alex had gotten so mad at him, but he was like that. People were like that. Nice one moment, mean the next. It had given him the heavy feeling he was having now, sitting on a toilet with a wooden seat in 1926, and it had taken weeks to go away.

  It was almost nine in the morning. When he went back into the bedroom, Walt was still asleep. Dash went quietly to the door and opened it. There was a copy of the morning Gazette lying on the hallway carpet. He picked it up and sat on his bed with it.

  The story was right where it was supposed to be. And the picture.

  Someone had written at the edge of the paper: There will be a car waiting for you downstairs at ten. Order breakfast. Put on your new clothes. I will see you at the Princess Theatre at 10:30. Harry.

  New clothes? He looked up and saw that there was a large white box on the nightstand. Someone had dropped it off in the night. It contained two days’ change of undergarments and socks, two good pairs of pants, and two white shirts. There were also toothbrushes, tooth “powder,” and a bar of soap.

  “Walt,” he said quietly. “Wake up.”

  Houdini had seen the paper. And now he wanted to see them.

  You don’t visit Harry Houdini in his dressing room wearing pants that have been soiled by snow, freight trains, pigs, and malt foam. The boys bathed and dressed and there was enough time to go down to the dining room and have croissants and orange juice. Honoré knew to put their breakfasts on Houdini’s account.

  They were on the sidewalk in front of the hotel at five to ten. A shiny black car—one without a canvas top—was parked down the street at the corner and as soon as they came out to the curb, the driver backed up to them. Dash opened the rear door and poked his head in.

  “Is this Houdini’s car?”

  “You are Dashiel? And your friend is Walter?”

  “Yes!” Dash gestured to Walter on the sidewalk and the two boys got in.

  The driver smiled at them in the big rear-view mirror. He was wearing sunglasses and a cap. The boys sat and closed the door behind them and they were off.

  For the first time in what felt like forever, Dash relaxed. He watched the city slide by through the back-seat window. He leaned forward and cranked the window down an inch so he could feel the cool air wash over him.

  They’d come up with a simple plan. (For once.) While they were with Houdini, one of them would always be standing or sitting beside him, if possible. To reduce the opportunities Houdini’s puncher would have. Dash knew Houdini’s assailant had attacked him in the dressing room of the Princess Theatre … only he didn’t know when. They’d have to be with him whenever he was in that room.

  But if they stopped the punch …

  The driver was speeding up now, driving away from downtown, Dash thought. “Sir? Where are we going?”

  “Not far now,” said the man.

  Dash leaned against the door. “So you know what to do,” he said to Walt.

  “Yeah … I’ll just watch and make sure no one makes any sudden moves.”

  On his left, through the window, Dash watched the mountain whip past. He was pretty sure the driver was getting lost. He leaned forward from the back seat. “Excuse me?” he asked. “Are you sure this is the way to the theatre?”

  The driver turned in his seat. “What theatre, boys?”

  He removed his sunglasses.

  It was Frick!

  Or Frack!

  The worst kind of trick is one you don’t see coming. This was Dash’s thought when he saw the huge limestone building appear at the end of a curving driveway. It sat on a little hill all its own. A sign on the lawn said: CHILD WELFARE SERVICES—JUVENILE DETENTION.

  “Oh no …” said Dash.

  The driver said, “Mrs. Alphonsine is eager to welcome you.”

  “You have to take us back!” Dash protested. “We’re meeting Houdini at the Princess Theatre.”

  “Sure you are,” he said, grinning.

  “Good grief!” muttered Walt. “Great move, Dash.”

  Frack or Frick put his sunglasses back on. It was turning out to be a beautiful, bright October morning, the kind where the smell of the fall leaves hangs in the air all day long. Dash wondered if they’d be able to smell the leaves from their cell. The driver parked at the top of the long curving driveway and led the boys into the building.

  Inside, they were left in a cold antechamber filled with stone columns. The big wooden doors closed behind him.

  “Don’t worry,” said Dash. “Houdini will figure out what happened.”

  Walt leaned against a pole, glowering. “We’re doomed now.”

  Mrs. Alphonsine appeared out of the stony gloaming. “How nice to see you poor boys again. Come in and get into your uniforms. We’re about to have lunch. You’ll meet everyone properly then.”

  “No way!” said Walt, slapping at her hand. “I wanna call my dad!”

  “Now, now, don’t make me call the Andrés.”

  “Who are the Andrés?
” Walter growled.

  “You met them at that disgusting palace of gluttony we almost rescued you from last night. Now, at least, you are safe.”

  “Can we come back later?” Dash asked hopefully. “This seems like a really nice place. I had it all wrong.”

  “Yeah, we’ll come back later,” Walt said, sauntering to the door. It opened just as he got there and their driver stepped in.

  “Ah, André, here you are. Maybe you will show these boys to the dormitory where they can get changed for lunch.”

  “Oui, madame.” He snatched Dash up under one arm, Walt under the other.

  “You have to let us go!” shouted Dash. “We have to save Harry Houdini!”

  “Mr. Houdini is a grown man. He will have to decide whether he wants to be saved or not. As for you boys, cooperate or André will have to settle you down.”

  They settled down enough to get their feet under them and walk.

  “That’s better,” said Mrs. Alphonsine.

  The boys of the detention centre filed into the cavernous mess hall. Dash and Walt, in their grey cloth uniforms, walked side by side to the table one of the orderlies pointed them to. There was a piano at the front of the room, where a nun sat waiting. Mrs. Alphonsine stepped toward the piano and nodded to her.

  “Let us sing grace,” she said, and the pianist in her dainty wimple began to play. All but two young men in the hall raised their voices in a high, bright note that filled the room and seemed to go on and on.

  Lunch was much worse than anything they’d actually been fearing. Escargots were fine dining, compared to this. Everything was more or less the same colour. It was so dreadful that it will not be spoken of.

  Walt’s mood had declined further by the time they were brought back to the dorm after lunch. He harangued Dash, telling him that if he’d been in charge, he would have found them a nice jalopy to ride in from Toronto to Montreal and there would have been no pigs and no angry rail bull with an apple-shaped bruise on his forehead, and there would certainly be no Mrs. Alphonsina or whatever her name was, serving them gruel on dented tin plates!