Roberto & Me

by Dan Gutman

  How did I end up at Woodstock? I asked myself. The baseball card was supposed to take me to Roberto Clemente. Something must have blown me off course. Or maybe because the card was damaged, it didn’t work as well as a card in mint condition would have.

  Or maybe…could Roberto Clemente be at Woodstock? There were thousands of people spread all across this field. How would I be able to find Clemente even if he was here?

  It’s never easy. I wish just once I could travel through time and land right next to the player instead of having to go find him. Just once.

  I’m not a huge music lover, to tell you the truth. I listen to the radio and watch VH1 with my mom sometimes. But most of the groups my friends like seem to be lame interchangeable boy bands and teenybopper girls who pretty much all sound the same. I didn’t so much like the sound that Jimi Hendrix was making; but I had to admit, it was different.

  That didn’t mean I had to stand there listening to it. If Roberto Clemente was here, I would have to go find him.

  “Excuse me,” I yelled into the ear of a girl with frizzy blond hair, “do you know if Roberto Clemente is here?”

  “What band is he in?” she replied. “Santana?”

  She was useless. I asked somebody else, a guy wearing a cowboy hat and holding a flute in his hand.

  “You mean Roberto Clemente the baseball player?” he said. “Man, I don’t know. Just groove on the music, brother. Hendrix is a genius.”

  Huh! That’s what my mother said too. Hendrix is a genius. I remembered she’d said what a tragedy it was that he died so young of a drug overdose in 1970. If this was 1969, Jimi Hendrix would be dead within a year.

  That’s when it hit me. There would be plenty of time to talk to Roberto Clemente. He won’t die until 1972. While I was here in 1969, I could save Jimi Hendrix’s life too!

  Wait a minute. Who was I kidding? There were thousands of people between me and the stage. There would be no way for me to get anywhere near Jimi Hendrix. And even if I could, what would I say to him: “Just say no to drugs, Jimi”? If he was addicted, he wasn’t about to stop taking drugs just because some strange kid told him they would kill him. He would laugh at me. What a dumb idea.

  Hendrix finished the song he was playing and got a standing ovation. He must have been the final act of the Woodstock Festival, because as soon as he was done, all the hippies started gathering up their stuff. People began making their way out from the stage area. Suddenly, there was a narrow open path between me and the stage.

  Hendrix was still up there, unplugging his guitar and chatting with his drummer. I thought for a second or two and made a snap decision. I had to give it a try. If I could pull it off, my mother would be so happy.

  “Jimi!” I shouted as I pushed my way forward. “Mr. Hendrix! I need to tell you something!”

  The hippies looked at me like I was crazy, but I didn’t care. When you’re trying to save somebody’s life, you can’t worry about what people think. I was about 30 yards from the stage when somebody started shouting.

  “Hey! That kid is trying to get at Jimi!”

  “No!” I yelled. “I’m just trying to save his life!”

  “The kid is crazy!” someone else shouted.

  A bunch of hippies started chasing me as I got closer to the stage.

  “Jimi!” I yelled. “You’re gonna die!”

  “That kid must be high on something!” somebody hollered. “He’s gonna kill Jimi! Stop him!”

  For a moment—when I was about ten yards from the stage—I saw Jimi look at me. Then, the next thing I knew, a bunch of hippies grabbed me and threw me to the ground in front of the stage.

  “Hey, knock it off!” I yelled as they started kicking and punching me. “I thought you people were all about peace and love!”

  That’s when somebody picked up a big peace sign and hit me over the head with it.

  8

  Sunrise

  I DON’T KNOW HOW LONG I WAS OUT. PROBABLY ONLY A FEW minutes. When I came to, I staggered away, thankful those peaceniks hadn’t killed me. What had I been thinking? Trying to save Jimi Hendrix from himself was probably the stupidest idea I ever came up with.

  Suddenly, a guy with stringy blond hair walked over to me and stuck his face in front of mine.

  “Hey, man,” he said, “if life is a grapefruit, then what’s a cantaloupe?”

  “How should I know?” I said, pushing the guy away.

  I cleared my head. I had to get back to the reason why I came here in the first place. Roberto Clemente. He wasn’t at Woodstock. He wasn’t anywhere near Woodstock. Something had gone terribly wrong. Something always goes wrong. Time travel is simply not an exact science.

  Think, I told myself. It was hot out. It was baseball season. Roberto Clemente had to be playing ball somewhere. The question was, where?

  The only thing I could do was follow the hippies as they started to pack up their stuff and make their way toward the exits. The field was a huge mess. There was mud and garbage everywhere. It must have rained a lot during the festival. People left behind tons of soggy clothes and blankets.

  Some people were in no rush to leave. They were hanging around, sleeping, doing yoga exercises, or tending campfires made of burning garbage. A few were running around with no clothes on. It looked like one of those movies where an atomic bomb went off and a small group of human survivors were left to live off the land.

  I spotted a newspaper on the ground, and I picked it up.

  Okay, I knew when it was. Obviously, it was too late to help the Yankees win the 1960 World Series. My dad would have to deal with that. But it wasn’t too late to help Roberto Clemente. He would be alive until December 31, 1972.

  I flipped through the paper until I found the sports section.

  Okay. The Pittsburgh Pirates were playing the Cincinnati Reds tonight. At 8:05. The Reds were the home team. So Roberto Clemente must be in Cincinnati.

  That’s where I had to go.

  Getting a huge crowd of people out of a large field at the same time isn’t easy. Some of the hippies had cars; but they weren’t going anywhere, because the road was one huge traffic jam. Other people had bikes, motorcycles, or roller skates. Many were on foot.

  Lots of kids were looking to catch a ride with somebody else who was heading in the same direction. People were holding up hand-lettered signs: NEW YORK CITY. FLORIDA. CHICAGO. And so on. One guy held up a sign that simply read ANYWHERE USA.

  Then I spotted a small sign that said CINCY on it.

  It was held by a pretty girl in a flowered dress. She had long, straight brown hair; a white headband; and a string of beads around her neck. She didn’t look much older than me. I wondered why her parents would let her come all the way to New York by herself.

  “Do you live in Cincinnati?” I asked her.

  “Yeah,” she replied. “You?”

  “No, but I need to get there tonight.”

  “What’s the rush?” she asked me.

  “It’s a long story,” I told her. I didn’t feel like going into all the details unless I really had to.

  “What’s your name?” she asked.

  “Joe Stoshack,” I said. “But you can call me Stosh. Everybody does.”

  “You look kinda straight, Stosh,” she said.

  “Straight?” I said. “Would it be better if I was crooked?”

  She laughed, and then I realized what she meant. I didn’t look like a hippie. I didn’t have bell bottoms, flowers, love beads, or any of that other hippie gear.

  “I guess I am,” I admitted.

  “That’s cool,” she said. “You’re doing your own thing. Different strokes for different folks. My name is Sunrise.”

  Sunrise? I’d never heard of anybody named Sunrise.

  “Is that your real name?” I asked.

  “No,” she said, giggling.

  “What’s your real name?”

  “I hate my name!” she said.

  “It must be pretty horrible,”
I said, “What is it, Barbara Hitler or something?”

  She giggled again. She had a nice smile.

  “It’s Sarah Simpson,” she said.

  “Ugh! Disgusting!” I said. “No wonder you changed it. How could anybody go through life with a name like Sarah Simpson?”

  She knew I was teasing her, and she hit me playfully with her CINCY sign.

  “I like Sunrise better,” she said. “It means a new day, y’know? Whatever mistakes you made yesterday are forgotten. You get to start all over again. That’s what I’m trying to do.”

  “Well, I think Sarah Simpson is a perfectly nice name,” I told her. “But I’ll call you Sunrise if you want.”

  She giggled again and took my hand.

  Let me admit something right now. I’ve never had a girlfriend. I’ve never been out on a date with a girl. I’ve certainly never kissed a girl. Usually, in school, when I have to talk to a girl, I’m totally tongue-tied and make an idiot of myself. But I felt completely comfortable with this girl. I had known Sarah “Sunrise” Simpson for about 30 seconds, and I was already in love. She told me she was 14, and it didn’t seem to bother her that I was a year younger.

  “Cincinnati!” we yelled as we walked past a long line of cars heading for the main road. “Anybody going to Cincinnati?”

  Sunrise and I walked about a mile down the road. We were looking for Ohio license plates. There were cars from just about every other state, even Alaska. I didn’t mind it so much though, because Sunrise was holding my hand.

  We came upon a Volkswagen van with California plates. It had peace signs and flowers painted all over it. A hippie guy and girl were tying some stuff on to the roof of the van. I was going to pass them by, but Sunrise asked them if they were driving cross-country.

  “San Francisco,” the guy replied. “We gotta get there by Friday.”

  “Could you drop us off in Cincinnati?” Sunrise asked. “It’s on the way.”

  The guy and his girlfriend stopped what they were doing and looked me up and down. I made a halfhearted peace sign with my fingers, hoping that might help me pass the hippie test.

  “What are you, the fuzz?” the girl asked.

  “Huh?” I said.

  “Are you a cop?” asked the guy.

  “A cop?” I said, laughing. “I’m 13 years old!”

  “Then what are you doing here, man?” he asked.

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” I said.

  “Try us,” they both replied.

  I looked at Sunrise, and she nodded encouragingly.

  When in doubt, tell the truth. That’s what Coach Valentini says.

  “Okay, here goes,” I told them, taking a deep breath. “The truth is, I live in the twenty-first century. I can travel through time with baseball cards, and I used a 1969 card to get here.”

  The three of them stared at me for a long time.

  “So, in other words,” the guy said, “you’re saying you, like, come from the future?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Stosh, are you putting us on?” said Sunrise.

  “No,” I told her. “I’m telling you the absolute truth. I swear on my mother’s grave.”

  They all looked at me some more, like they didn’t exactly know what to make of me. Then, finally, all three of them said, “Far-out!” They probably thought I was kidding.

  “No, I mean it!” I said. “I really am from the future.”

  “Groovy,” the girl said. “I can dig that.”

  “We’re all from the future,” said her boyfriend. “The future of our soul.”

  “Here, I’ll prove it to you,” I said as I swung my backpack off my shoulder and pulled open the zipper. “I bet you’ve never seen one of these before.”

  I took out my Nintendo. They gathered around me to look over my shoulder as I turned it on. It must have looked like a little TV to them.

  “You can control what’s happening on the screen?” Sunrise asked.

  “Sure.”

  “Can I try?” the guy asked.

  I handed him the Nintendo to play with. He got killed almost instantly because he didn’t know what to do. I showed him how to move the little joystick.

  “Where can I get one of these?” he asked.

  “It’s future technology,” I explained. “You don’t have it yet. But if you give me and Sunrise a ride, you can play with it all the way to Cincinnati.”

  He stuck out his hand and shook mine.

  “The future is exactly where we’re heading,” he said. “Hop in.”

  9

  A Long, Strange Trip

  SUNRISE AND I PILED INTO THE BACK OF THE VAN. THE TWO hippies got in the front. They introduced themselves as Peter and Wendy, which was easy for me to remember because of Peter Pan.

  Wendy got behind the wheel so Peter could play with my Nintendo. It took a while to maneuver around the other cars, but eventually we were away from the Woodstock madness and driving on a country road. Wendy pulled into the first gas station she came to, and Peter hopped out to pump the gas.

  “Hey,” he called to me through the window, “you got any bread, man?”

  “Bread?” I asked. “Why, do you want to feed some birds or something?”

  Sunrise broke up laughing and punched me in my shoulder.

  “No man, bread!” Peter said. “Dollars. Pesos. Spare change. Dig? Gas costs money, you know. We’re running on empty.”

  Sunrise opened a little fringed purse she had and gave Peter a five-dollar bill. It seemed kind of cheap to me. After all, we would be driving hundreds of miles to Cincinnati. But I had forgotten to bring any money with me, so I was in no position to judge.

  Peter finished filling the tank and went to pay the attendant. When he came back, he handed Sunrise four quarters.

  “Your change,” he said.

  “She gets a dollar back from a five-dollar bill?” I asked, amazed. “How much was the gas?”

  “35 cents a gallon!” Peter said. “That’s highway robbery, man. It’s 30 cents in Frisco.”

  Gas for 30 cents a gallon! My mom told me she has paid more than four dollars a gallon! For a minute, I wondered if there might be a way to bring some 1969 gas back home with me.

  Soon we pulled onto a highway and were making good time. We rolled down the windows, and everybody’s hair was blowing in the wind. Everybody’s but mine, of course, because I didn’t have enough hair to blow. Wendy turned on the radio, and there was Jimi Hendrix, singing “Purple Haze” again. The three of them all said how great Woodstock had been despite the rain, the mud, the crowds, and the garbage. I asked Peter and Wendy why they had to get to California by Friday.

  “We’re going to an antiwar rally in San Francisco,” Peter said.

  Antiwar. I had to think for a second. 1969. War. Oh, yeah. Vietnam.

  “Why don’t you two join us?” Wendy asked.

  “I gotta get to Cincinnati,” I said.

  “Me, too,” Sunrise said with a sigh. “I ran away from home.”

  “How come?” we all asked her.

  “My parents,” she said. “Screaming at me all the time. They hate my clothes, my music, my friends. Me.”

  “Your parents don’t hate you,” I told her.

  It was probably the wrong thing to say. I didn’t know her parents. For all I knew, they did hate her.

  In any case, Sunrise clearly didn’t want to talk about it. She just closed her eyes and shook her head, like nobody would ever understand her situation at home.

  “How did you get to Woodstock?” I asked her.

  “Hitched,” she said.

  My mother told me that she hitchhiked a few times when she was younger but said I shouldn’t do it because you never know what kind of psycho might pick you up. Of course, hitching a ride on a baseball card can be pretty dangerous too.

  Peter had been absorbed with my Nintendo but stopped to ask how I got to Woodstock.

  “Did you beam yourself over, like on Star Tr
ek?” he asked. “Beam me up to Woodstock, Scotty!”

  The girls laughed. I had no idea that Star Trek had been around so long. It bothered me a little that Peter was teasing me, but I couldn’t blame him. If somebody walked up to me and said they were from another century, it would be hard to take them seriously.

  I pulled out my Clemente card and passed it around. Peter said he was a baseball fan and seemed genuinely interested in the card.

  “It says in the newspaper that the Pirates are playing in Cincinnati tonight,” I told them. “I need to talk to Roberto Clemente.”

  “About what?” Sunrise asked.

  “Well, this might sound strange,” I said, “but Clemente is going to die in a plane crash on December 31, 1972. Believe me, it’s true. So I need to convince him not to get on that plane.”

  “You are blowing my mind, man,” Peter said. “That’s three years from now.”

  “If he’s going to die in 1972,” Wendy asked, “what are you doing here now? Why didn’t you just go talk to him to 1972?”

  “I didn’t have a 1972 card,” I told them. “I always go to the year on the card. My dad gave me this one. I didn’t even know it was a ’69 until I got here.”

  Nobody said anything for a few minutes. It seemed like they were trying to absorb what I had said. Maybe they thought I was crazy, or on drugs or something.

  It was Peter who finally broke the silence. He put down the Nintendo like it didn’t matter to him anymore.

  “Y’know, I like baseball too,” he said quietly. “I’m a Mets fan. They stink, I know. Last place in ’62, ’63, ’64, ’65, and ’67. Next-to-last place in ’66 and ’68. But listen, man, there are other things in life that are more important than baseball.”

  “Like what?” I asked him.

  “Like ending the war!” he said, turning around to face me.

  “Peter, don’t get started,” Wendy told him. “He’s too young to understand.”