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did make one final stop. Charley Gould had been the only Cincinnati-born player on the Stockings. In 1951 the National League, recognizing him as one of baseball’s pioneer professionals, had provided a fitting headstone at Spring Grove Cemetery. With the caretaker’s help I found it. The surrounding evergreens dripped with mist. Monuments of the city’s wealthy families stood nearby; among them I recognized a few names of Stockings supporters. Lost in time, I communed with Charley about the days we’d spent together.

    Late that morning I sped out of Ohio across Indiana and into Illinois, eyes locked on the blacktop as I tried to get a handle on things. Why had I been plunged back in time, if not to meet Cait? Had it amounted to nothing more than a sadistic trick designed to spoil
this
life?
    My allergies to spring pollens were kicking up. That night I dosed myself with prescription medicine I’d brought along, and slept heavily in a roadside motel outside Peoria. In the morning,realizing that I’d been blindly retracing the Stockings’ route when we’d crossed the country on the new transcontinental railroad, I left the interstate and drove more slowly on back roads. I followed signs toward Nauvoo, which according to my road atlas lay near the Mississippi River.
Nauvoo
. I liked the name. Might as well go there.
    Crossing the Mississippi, I thought of Twain. My grandfather had named me for the famed humorist and read his books aloud to me. In J-school at Cal I’d done my thesis on Twain’s reporting style. I knew the contours of his life as well as those of my own. He would be blissful now, married to Olivia Langdon, the woman of his dreams.
    Blissful
then
, I could hear Sjoberg correcting.
    On the Iowa side I stopped in Keokuk, where a youthful Twain had spent several years in the 1850s before becoming a river pilot.
    The morning was overcast and muggy, the sky swollen with rainclouds. I strolled around the “historic” riverfront, spruced up by the Lee County Historical Society. The paint seemed too bright on the High Street house Twain had purchased for his mother. A paddle wheeler built in the 1920s as part of an attempt to revive river transportation now housed a museum. I’d hoped that coming here would help me feel closer to where I wanted to go, but the distance only seemed greater.
    I headed west out of Keokuk. The weather worsened to match my mood as the clouds opened and torrents of rain fell, driven almost horizontal by headwinds that rocked the car. Visibility had shrunk to mere feet, except for when lightning punctuated the gloom. Heavy-headed from the allergy medicine and lulled by the clicking wipers, I nearly nodded off several times.
    It happened as I rounded a curve.
    My eyes snapped wide as a massive shape loomed directlyahead. Lightning flashed. In that instant I saw the drenched, white-faced driver who’d let his enormous tractor drift out of its lane. I yanked my wheel to the right and stomped on the accelerator. The car surged crazily ahead and somehow missed the tractor’s forward wheel. Then it shot up the embankment and went airborne. I glimpsed the milky surface of a water-filled ditch below me an instant before hitting it, my body going rigid as I braced for impact. I was slammed against the steering wheel and then thrown back again as the hood nosed skyward. The front wheels must had gotten some traction on the far bank; the car seemed to climb again for an instant before turtling backward on its roof. Upside down and rocking wildly, held in place by my seat belt, I became aware of a slooshing sound from the doors. Water was coming in.
    The car bobbed less violently as it began to sink.
    Fighting against panic, I managed to get the seatbelt loose. My neck was wedged against an armrest, my feet braced against the roof. I tried to force a door open but in that position I couldn’t get much leverage, and the pressure outside was too great. I punched the window button. Amazingly, the