Time Travelers Never Die - Jack McDevitt [105]
But the evening began a tradition of meeting presidents well before they’d become political forces.
A twenty-year-old Andrew Jackson actually unnerved Shel. They were in Salisbury, North Carolina, in 1787. Jackson had recently been admitted to the bar. Shel and Dave, pretending to have just learned about his accomplishment, were helping him celebrate when a couple of oversized roughnecks made lascivious comments to a passing woman. Jackson directed them to leave.
When they challenged him, he took off his jacket and invited either, or both, to try their luck. He glanced at Shel, and smiled. Shel realized, with horror, he was being invited into the fight. Fortunately, it wasn’t necessary: Both thugs backed off.
They located Herbert Hoover at twenty-six in China during the Boxer Rebellion. He introduced himself as “Herb,” and said he was glad to see some fellow Americans. Shel was in the middle of explaining why they were there, how they were on a round-the-world tour, when gun-fire and explosions interrupted the conversation. Several nearby houses exploded. Others erupted in flames. Hoover charged into one of them and began carrying out wounded kids. Shel and Dave hesitated briefly, then followed his lead.
They interviewed Woodrow Wilson in Atlanta, in January 1883, allegedly for an article to appear in Georgia Law. During the interview, Wilson discussed his political ambitions. “Of course I’d like to be president,” he said. “The country needs to change its direction.”
“In what way, Mr. Wilson?”
“The government, as it is presently constituted, invites corruption. We need to rewrite the Constitution. Bring it into the modern age.”
“You think the Constitution is obsolete?”
“It’s hopelessly eighteenth-century, sir. Hopelessly.”
THEY stopped by the Grant & Perkins leather shop in Galena, Illinois, on the brink of the Civil War, to talk with Ulysses Grant about saddles and incidentally his feelings on the tension with the Southern states. “Eventually,” he said, “it’s going to come to a shoot-out.” He shook his head. “Far as I’m concerned, we might as well get it over with.”
They tried on hats at the Truman & Jacobson haberdashery in Kansas City in the summer of 1920. In 1833, they left clothing to be repaired at Andrew Johnson’s tailor shop in Greenville, Tennessee.
Expecting to get away from politics for a time, they traveled to the Lamplight, a restaurant in 1937 Durham, N.C., to encounter, accidentally, Aldous Huxley, who would be there that evening with friends. While they waited, the piano player took a break, and a young dark-haired guy, who was one of a group of students seated in back, came forward at their urging and sat down on the bench. He rippled through the keys, and it became immediately evident that he was quite good. While his friends cheered, he played “These Foolish Things.” Huxley came in during the rendition, and Shel got up, started across the room, and stopped abruptly, pretending shock at recognizing, as he put it, the writer he admired most in the world. “You are Aldous Huxley, aren’t you?”
Huxley smiled uncomfortably. Nodded. “Yes, I am.” And: “Hello.”
“I love your work,” Shel said.
Dave, meantime, recognized something familiar about the piano player.
“Brave New World is brilliant,” Shel continued. “I wish I had my copy with me so I could have you sign it. Would it be all right if I took a picture?”
“Well—” Huxley hesitated. Looked at his three companions. “Sure.”
“Dave? We need the camera.”
The pianist finished and started