Roberto & Me

by Dan Gutman

  When the other team was up, I borrowed a glove and they put me at shortstop—I mean, lowstop. When the first grounder came my way, I threw the ball to first base out of instinct. Everybody fell all over themselves laughing again. But after an inning or two, I got used to the new rules. I didn’t get any hits, but I made a couple of nice plays at “low,” and we were winning by three runs when some of the guys said they had to go home. So we ended the game there.

  Everybody said good-bye and walked or rode their bikes down the dirt road leading away from the field. Nobody’s parents came to pick them up, I noticed. Bernard gave me a rag to wipe the sweat off my face.

  “Come on,” he said when everybody was gone. “I’ll show you around.”

  At last! Finally, I would get to see Bernard’s cool future stuff. I figured that his cell phone was probably the size of a fingernail and his iPod held every song ever recorded.

  “So, how come the Cubs and the White Sox became one team?” I asked as we walked down the dirt road toward Bernard’s house.

  “There was a tornado,” he explained. “A big one. It pretty much picked Wrigley Field up off the ground and dumped it into Lake Michigan. A lot of people died that day.”

  “When was that?” I asked.

  “Around 2055,” he said. “There have been other changes too. The Florida Marlins are gone. Tampa Bay Rays too. And the Cubs and the Sox weren’t the only teams to merge. The Mets and the Yankees became one team in 2066.”

  “Don’t tell me,” I said. “They became the New York Mankees.”

  “How did you know?” he asked.

  “Lucky guess.”

  We approached a field where a man was walking alongside a plow that was being pulled by two horses. Bernard waved to him and told me it was his father.

  The future wasn’t at all what I expected.

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  Bernard’s house was small, and it wasn’t in great shape. Some of the shingles were missing from the roof, and there were boards over a few of the windows. I guess his family was poor. Before he pulled open the screen door, Bernard took me aside on the porch, putting a hand on my shoulder.

  “I need to tell you something. My parents don’t know what you and I can do with baseball cards,” he said quietly. “And I’m not going to tell them who you are.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “Well, for one thing, I didn’t know if the baseball card was going to work,” he said. “And I didn’t know if I would even be able to find you in Louisville or bring you back here with me. The other thing is, well, my dad is your grandson.”

  “Yeah, it might be a little weird,” I agreed. Grownups sometimes freak out when the world they’ve become used to is suddenly turned upside down. Kids are more adaptable.

  We entered through the kitchen door, and Bernard’s mom was in there, slicing carrots at the sink. She smiled. Bernard’s dad—my grandson—came in though the other door.

  “Mom, Dad,” Bernard said, “I just met this kid. His name is Joe.”

  I couldn’t help but stare at my grandson. He was about my dad’s age, but he had long hair tied in a ponytail. His face was wrinkled and tanned, as if he spent a lot of time out in the sun. He looked tired.

  “Nice to meet you,” he said, wiping his hands on a rag before he shook mine. “Joe, huh? My grandfather’s name was Joe. I don’t remember him, though. He died when I was little.”

  I gulped.

  “Nice to meet you too,” I mumbled awkwardly.

  “Will you join us for dinner, Joe?” Bernard’s mom asked. “We’re having spaghetti.”

  I looked at Bernard, and he nodded.

  “Uh, sure,” I said. “I guess so.”

  “You boys be ready in a half hour,” she told us. “And wash your hands. You’re filthy!”

  “C’mon,” Bernard said, pulling me through the kitchen, “I want to show you some stuff.”

  Bernard gave me a tour of the house. What a disappointment! There was no cool futuristic stuff at all. In fact, they didn’t even have the stuff I have in my house. There was no TV or DVD, no computer, no electric lights or telephones. In the kitchen, there was no microwave, no dishwasher, no toaster. They didn’t even have air-conditioning. I was astonished. So much for science fiction.

  We went outside and headed for the barn. I didn’t want to hurt Bernard’s feelings by saying how poor his family seemed to be. But I was genuinely perplexed. Even poor people in my time lived better than this.

  “So, what’s a typical day like for you?” I asked, trying to be diplomatic.

  “Well,” he said, “I get up in the morning to feed the horses and milk the cows. Then I gather the eggs and feed the chickens before school. After school, there are chores, of course. In the early spring, we prepare the field for planting. In the summer, we tend the crops and make hay. Late summer and fall is harvesttime. And in the winter, we do canning—y’know, fruits and vegetables.”

  The clop-clop of hooves interrupted him. Somebody went past the window on a horse.

  “I know this isn’t what you expected,” Bernard continued. “I’m sorry to let you down.”

  “No, it’s fine,” I said. “I just thought you would have…a lot of cool stuff.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Bernard said with a sigh. “But when you get something new—like a present—you’re really happy for an hour, maybe. After that, it doesn’t mean much. You start thinking about the next new thing you want to get. And it just goes on and on like that. I decided that stuff doesn’t make you happy. People make you happy.”

  I’m sure he was right. There were certain advantages to living this way, I tried to convince myself. Sometimes all the cell phones and emails and text messaging we have to communicate with one another prevents us from ever talking face-to-face. It was peaceful in Bernard’s world. With no air-conditioning and no constant hum of machines, you could hear birds chirping. You could hear the silence. It was nice, in a way.

  But I wouldn’t want to live that way, and I couldn’t help but feel disappointed. This wasn’t what the future was supposed to be like. It was almost as if I had traveled to the past instead.

  “Can I ask you a personal question?” I asked Bernard.

  “Ask away.”

  “Are you…Amish?” I said.

  “No,” he replied, laughing.

  “So does that mean everybody lives like this?”

  “Pretty much,” he said.

  “What happened?” I asked. “It’s like everything went backward. And why did you bring me here? It seemed like it was pretty important when you were in my room.”

  “It is,” he said. “It’s very important. Let’s talk in the barn. We’ll need some privacy.”

  20

  Bernard’s Mission

  “I NEED TO SHOW YOU SOMETHING,” BERNARD SAID AFTER A long walk to the barn. He closed the door behind us.

  A couple of horses looked up when we came in but went right back to eating their hay. In the corner of the barn was an old wooden desk. Bernard opened a drawer and took out a large, rolled-up piece of paper. He slid off the rubber band and unrolled the paper on top of the desk. I leaned over to look at it.

  At first I thought he was joking.

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  “What happened to Florida?” I asked.

  “Oh, it’s still there,” Bernard said. “But it’s submerged.”

  “That’s a joke, right?” I asked.

  “No, it’s not,” he replied seriously.

  “Disney World too?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Submerged.”

  “Is that why you said the Marlins and Rays are no longer in the majors?” I asked.

  “It’s hard to play baseball underwater,” Bernard told me.

  Wow. That must be thousands of square miles—gone. Houses. Schools. People. When I was little, we took a family trip to Florida. Disney World was one of my first memories.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “You’d better
sit down, Grandpa,” Bernard said, pulling over a chair for each of us. “When you were young, there were these things called polar ice caps.”

  “I know what polar ice caps are,” I said. “I learned about them in school.”

  “Well, they’re not there anymore,” Bernard informed me. “The temperature of the ocean kept getting higher and higher until the ice caps melted. It was a long time ago. Anyway, when they melted, the level of the oceans rose. A lot of places got flooded. Most of Florida disappeared. Some islands in the Pacific disappeared entirely. Millions of people had to move to higher ground. A lot of them died.”

  “Why did the temperature go up?” I asked.

  “You mean you really don’t know?” Bernard asked.

  “Not exactly,” I replied honestly. “Something to do with global warming?”

  Bernard sighed as he rolled the map back up and slipped the rubber band around it.

  “‘Warming,’” he said with a snort. “I hate that word. It sounds like a good thing. Do you know what carbon dioxide is, Grandpa?”

  “Sure,” I replied.

  “Well,” he said, “when you burn oil, coal, or natural gas, it gives off carbon dioxide. It took nature millions of years to create all the fossil fuels that were buried under the surface of the earth. And in about one century, humans burned most of it. Back home in your time, they pump 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the air each year.”

  “And that heats up the atmosphere and the oceans,” I said.

  “Right,” said Bernard. “You asked me about flying cars. Grandpa, we don’t even have regular cars anymore! The oil ran out years ago. World War III was fought over what was left of it.”

  “There was a world war fought over oil?” I asked.

  “In the forties,” he said, “before I was born. Grandpa, the reason why you don’t see airplanes in the sky here is because we don’t have any fuel for them. The reason why you don’t see anything made from plastic here is because plastic was made from oil. All those plastic bags, plastic toys, plastic junk…”

  “I didn’t know that plastic is made out of oil,” I admitted.

  “When the oil was gone,” he continued, “they burned coal and wood for fuel. But that gave off carbon dioxide too. All that carbon dioxide was trapped, and the earth’s atmosphere eventually heated up to the point that the ice caps melted and the air was virtually unbreathable.”

  “I know global warming is a problem,” I said, “but I didn’t know it was that bad.”

  “Grandpa, do you know what month it is right now?” Bernard asked me.

  “July?” I guessed.

  “It’s December,” he told me. “It’s 90 degrees out, and it’s December. Grandpa, I have never seen snow in my life. Can you imagine how hot it gets here in July?”

  “A hundred and ten?” I said.

  “Hotter,” said Bernard. “You see, everything is connected. Oil was burned, which heated the atmosphere and the oceans. The ice caps melted, which made the sea level rise and cause flooding. Temperatures went up, which forced plants and animals to move, adapt, or become extinct. Food became scarce. Weather became more extreme. We have a tornado here just about every week.”

  “What happened to downtown Chicago?” I asked. “Was it destroyed by a tornado?”

  “There are no cities left, Grandpa!” Bernard exclaimed. “Since your time, people have died by the millions from starvation, disease, and dehydration. We’re the lucky ones. My folks knew how to farm. At least we’re alive. Grandpa, there’s the possibility that we might not make it to the year 2100.”

  “You mean our family?” I asked.

  “I mean the human race,” Bernard replied seriously. “Civilization is dying, Grandpa. Human life on Earth is dying.”

  “I…I didn’t know,” I began.

  “Grandpa, in school they told us that people knew about this problem around the turn of the century. Is that right?”

  “Well, yeah,” I told him. “It’s all over the news. They always talk about going green and saving energy. Stuff like that.”

  Bernard threw up his hands.

  “So why aren’t you doing anything about it?” he asked.

  “We are,” I told him, a little defensively. “I turn off the lights when I leave a room. I take shorter showers. My mom and I reuse our water bottles. We separate our garbage.”

  “You separate your garbage?” Bernard said with a snort. He shook his head sadly.

  “That’s not enough?” I asked.

  “Not by a long shot,” he replied.

  “So that’s why you brought me here,” I said.

  “Grandpa,” Bernard told me, “we’re desperate now. Look around. This is what’s going to happen if the people in your time don’t do something. The world that you know is going to come to an end.”

  “What do you want me to do?” I asked.

  “It’s simple,” he replied. “You have to stop burning fossil fuels for energy.”

  He kept saying you. As if I personally was responsible for ruining the world.

  “Look, I don’t burn anything,” I said. “I’m just a kid. I can’t—”

  “Listen,” he interrupted. “In my social studies book, it says that in 1961, President Kennedy vowed to send a man to the moon within ten years. And in 1969, we did it. And my book says that in 1939, America started a program called the Manhattan Project to build an atomic bomb before the Nazis could build one. And in 1945, we did it.”

  “So?”

  “Well,” Bernard said, “if you can put a man on the moon in less than ten years and build an atomic bomb in six years, how long could it take to stop burning fossil fuels and switch to other kinds of energy?”

  “It’s not so easy,” I told him.

  “I know!” Bernard said, raising his voice. “That other stuff wasn’t easy either! But it’s gotta be done! You’ve gotta get solar panels up on every rooftop, on every surface where the sun shines! You’ve gotta get turbines up in every field where the wind blows! There’s hydroelectric power, nuclear power, geothermal power, hydrogen fuel cells—all kinds of power. But you’ve got to go home and convince everybody to stop burning stuff to produce energy. That’s why I brought you here.”

  “A lot of people are gonna be upset when I tell them this,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Bernard said, “well, they’re gonna be pretty upset when they have to live like this too.”

  The horses suddenly became restless in their stalls, stomping the floor and snorting.

  A bell rang outside in the distance. Bernard said it meant dinner was ready.

  When we opened the barn door, there was a welcome chill in the air. The wind had kicked up, and the sky had turned gray.

  “Uh-oh,” Bernard said as we stepped outside.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked. “Do you think your mom will be angry that we didn’t wash up?”

  “No,” he replied. “It looks like a storm is coming. They used to call Chicago the Windy City. They had no idea. We’ve had to rebuild our house twice, but we can’t keep doing it. Come on!”

  The distance from the barn to Bernard’s house was about the length of a football field. We started running, and about halfway there the rain began coming down. It actually felt good to me after being in the heat, but Bernard had a worried look on his face. Then he suddenly stopped, turned around, and pointed behind us.

  I had never seen a tornado before. Well, on the news, of course. And in that old movie Twister. But seeing one in person was an entirely different experience. It was a beautiful thing, in a way. I had to stop and marvel at the huge funnel of swirling blackness. It was probably a few miles away, but I could smell it.

  It was probably a few miles away, but I could smell it.

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  “Mom!” Bernard screamed. “Dad! Everybody! Into the shelter!”

  Before Bernard and I reached the house, we changed direction and headed toward the field where we had been playing ball. His pare
nts came running out of the house, holding hands with two little girls.

  “Who are they?” I yelled to Bernard.

  “My sisters!” he yelled back.

  I had to stop for a moment. I had three great-grandchildren!

  “Hurry, Grandpa!” Bernard screamed, grabbing me.

  The wind was whipping all around us now, as the tornado was clearly moving in our direction. Bernard stopped at a spot where there was a large piece of plywood on the ground. He picked it up to reveal a hole big enough for us to fit into.

  There was a wooden ladder inside the hole. Bernard ordered me to climb down the ladder. He followed, and then helped the rest of his family.

  This was no time for formal introductions and chitchat. Bernard’s mother lit candles while his father pulled the plywood back over the top of the hole. The two girls were huddled in the corner, crying.

  Even with the candles, it was still very dark in there. I could hear the wind howling above us. The tornado was getting closer.

  The shelter was just high enough to stand in, and surprisingly big. There was room in there for shelves full of canned foods, tools, and medical supplies. In fact, there was even a second room. Bernard shoved me in there and closed the door behind us. It was pitch-black until he started turning the crank on an emergency flashlight. The light flickered on.

  “I was afraid this might happen,” Bernard whispered in my ear. “You’ve got to go home, right away.”

  “You mean home to Louisville?” I asked. “Shouldn’t I wait until the storm blows over?”

  “No,” he said. “You’ve got to go now. If something happens to you here and you don’t make it home, well…”

  I knew where he was going. If I got stuck or were to die in 2080, I would never grow up in my own time. I would never have children—or grandchildren. Bernard would never be born.

  “Why don’t you come with me!” I asked as I fumbled through my pockets, searching for my pack of new baseball cards. “You don’t have to live like this. You can grow up in my time. We’ll just say you’re my cousin.”