Due to new information and a confession from Jean Laroche, brother of victim Henri Laroche, all charges against United States citizen Henry James Wyatt were dismissed on December 5, 1896, three days before he escaped from Leper’s Gate Penal Colony, Dolphin Island. No further action is needed.
Hank read it again, then looked at Harlan. “This is true?”
“Yes.”
“Before I escaped?” Hank stared at the telegram again, and the words were blurring. He swallowed hard and drove a hand through his hair and stood there, unable to move because he couldn’t believe it.
“You’re free, son.” Harlan slid his hand over Hank’s hunched shoulders.
Hank nodded, because his throat was too tight to speak.
“Your family’s waiting.” He pointed to another door. Hank moved toward it, half afraid the door would be locked.
But it wasn’t. He jerked it open.
There was a long, dark hallway. He ran down it, then turned and ran down another hallway, running faster than a forty-year-old ex-ballplayer should have been able to run. Then he saw the open doorway filled with sunlight.
He ran faster than Smitty ever could, down the hall and out the door. Into the daylight. He stopped and blinked for a second, blinded by the light.
And he saw them. Just their silhouettes—a tall woman with a toddler on her hip, a young girl with cockeyed braids, and a small boy who wore a baseball cap backward.
And Hank Wyatt, the man who had run away from almost everything for forty years, ran like hell toward the one thing he believed in. His family.
Epilogue
Somewhere in the Pacific Ocean
The bottle was as old as time.
It floated on the sea, bobbing along as if it were flotsam instead of intricately carved silver. The ornate stopper caught flashes of bright sunlight, which, to the gulls overhead, made the shimmering bottle look like a plump silver herring, a prize for the plucking.
Many a sea bird swooped down only to quickly dart back like reflections into the sky when their bills hit not the soft flesh of glimmering fish scales, but instead hard metal... and jewels.
For there, on that old silver genie bottle, shimmering in the sunlight like a hero’s medal of valor, were five perfect pearls.
Inside, Muddy lay back against his pillows and let the current rock him along. His wishes were granted, his last duty done. But unlike before, he wasn’t worried that anyone would find the bottle. Muddy wasn’t wishing for an innocent of heart who believed in that which they had never seen or known. He had found his dreamers.
He smiled and looked around the cluttered interior of his bottle. It wasn’t quite as cluttered anymore. This time, he’d given away more than he’d brought back.
He looked at his leather shoes and clicked the heels together. No bells on the toes. He laughed, then turned and reached for something more valuable to him than all the inventions he’d ever gathered or all the jewels on his bottle.
A photograph of a family sitting on the bright sunlit beach.
* * *
New Recreation Park, San Francisco, California, 1908
It wasa bright fall day in the two-year-old ballpark. The earthquake had destroyed the old park and much of the city. But San Francisco recovered quickly, rebuilding on the sheer tenacity and spirit of her people, a large number of whom were in the stands, there to see their team, the San Francisco Seals, play Portland.
Hank Wyatt drove his hand through his hair and paced in front of the Seals’ player box. He stopped, and looked at the baseball team he had owned and managed for the last ten years.
The team looked back at him. Every last one of them had their hats on backward. For luck.
They were down five to eight in the last game of the regular season. Whoever won the game would be the champion of the Pacific Coast League and would go on to play the winner of the Central League.
Hank looked at the lineup and swore.
His worst player, Tabasco Reynolds, walked up to bat. The kid hadn’t had a hit in two years. It was two out. The bases were loaded. Hank couldn’t watch this.
