Leapholes

Chapter 13

Ryan followed Hezekiah up and down the stairs in the library. Every now and then, the old man would stop, pull a book down from the shelf, and tuck it under his arm. When he had collected all the books he could carry, he looked at Ryan and said, "This way."

"Where are we going?"

He smiled and patted his stack of books. "Wherever we want."

Hezekiah led him to a conference room, and he laid the books on the table, one next to the other. It was an assortment of law books, some so old that the bindings cracked when Hezekiah opened them. Others were not quite so old. When he had each book opened to the selected page, he stepped back to make sure that everything was in order. He seemed satisfied. Then he went to a large closet in the back of the conference room and brought out a helmet. It looked a lot like the protective headgear that Ryan wore in his BMX races. It had a big plastic shell that covered the entire head. A dark reflective visor covered the face.

"You'll need to wear this," said Hezekiah. "It creates your virtual legal environment."

Ryan had seen gizmos like this in game rooms, so it made sense. "You want me to put this on now?"

"No, not yet." Hezekiah went to the other side of the room. There was a large glass jar on the very top shelf. He reached up and brought it down with great care. Gently, he placed the jar on the table amidst the open books.

"What's that?" asked Ryan.

Without saying a word, Hezekiah opened the jar and laid the lid aside. He reached inside and removed something that looked like a metal bracelet. It was just the right size to fit around a person's wrist, except that it wouldn't have been very comfortable to wear. It had a certain thickness to it, but it was perfectly flat, as if a steamroller had gone over it. If anyone tried to wear it, the edges would dig into the wrist bones.

Hezekiah held it before Ryan's eyes and said, "This is a leaphole."

"Looks more like jewelry for my baby sister's Woodkin dolls," said Ryan.

Hezekiah took, aim at one of the open books on the table. He held the leaphole in his right hand, directly above the book. Then he let go. It dropped onto the open page below, landing with a thud.

Ryan's gaze was fixed on the leaphole, partly because he was curious, but mostly because Hezekiah was staring at it so intently that Ryan had to watch. He was expecting something exciting to happen. Instead, the leaphole just lay there, flat, like a bookmark. Finally, Ryan said, "I don't see anything happening."

"Put on your helmet," said Hezekiah.

Ryan slipped the helmet on over his head. The instant he flipped down the visor, he did a complete double take. "Wow, cool!"

"Told you," said Hezekiah.

Ryan was watching the very same leaphole, but the helmet allowed him to see something entirely different. An orange halo had formed above the leaphole. It began to swirl, slowly at first, then faster and faster. Within seconds, the printed words on the open page began to rise into the air. They were caught up in the orange swirl like a miniature hurricane. Ryan's eyes widened with amazement. As the words continued to swirl, he began to feel a pull on his body. It was as if someone was trying to draw him into the book with a giant vacuum cleaner.

"This is amazing!" shouted Ryan.

"It's just the beginning," said Hezekiah.

The swirling intensified, and the pull on Ryan's body became stronger. It took every ounce of his strength to keep his feet planted firmly on the floor. It was an unnerving sensation, the feeling of being on the verge of losing control over his own body. He was tempted to pull the helmet off, but it was as if Hezekiah could read his mind.

"Stay with it, Ryan!" he heard the old man shout.

Ryan resisted his impulse to bail out. He kept the helmet in place. The spinning orange swirl rose higher above the book. As it rose, it expanded. At first, it was no bigger than the book, itself. Then it was as large as the table. Then, in another flash of orange, the swirling took over the entire room. At that moment, Ryan felt his feet go out from under him.

"What's happening?" he shouted.

There was no reply, but somehow Ryan knew the answer. In the blink of an eye, it seemed that time was speeding past him. Ryan knew that he was moving, but it wasn't the feeling of moving from Point A to Point B in a car or a bus or even by airplane. He was moving along another plane, another dimension. He was surrounded by something. He was in some kind of tube. Not a tube of metal or glass. It was just an opening through which he could pass safely. Everything else that was out there, everything that was caught up in the orange swirl of confusion, would allow him to pass. It was exactly the way Hezekiah had promised it would be. The laws of nature had suddenly been rewritten to allow Ryan Coolidge to travel wherever he needed or wanted to go. Time was no longer a boundary.

He was entering the leaphole.

It would have been difficult for Ryan to pinpoint the exact moment, but in one inexplicable flash, the orange swirl was gone. The next thing Ryan knew, he and Hezekiah were speeding down a racetrack on the backs of thoroughbred racehorses. Flecks of mud from the clay track were flying up around them. Ryan was hanging on tightly, fearful that he might fall off. It took Ryan a minute or so to get his bearings, but he was in the middle of a tight pack of horses peeling around the final turn and entering the homestretch. The crowd in the grandstands was going wild. Jockeys in brightly colored uniforms were high in the saddles, giving their horses the whip. All except for one jockey-the one right beside Ryan. He was low in the saddle, doing nothing to encourage his horse to run faster.

"That's Guy Contrada," shouted Hezekiah.

"Who?" Ryan shouted back.

"Contrada. He's riding the fastest horse in the race."

"What in the world are we doing here?" Ryan had to shout at the top of his lungs to be heard above the thunder of horse hooves, the noise of the crowd.

"It's in the book!" shouted Hezekiah.

"What book?"

"The law book. This is United States versus Winter, a big federal case back in the early 1970s. Guy Contrada was riding the favorite, a thoroughbred called 'Spread The Word.' The horse was raring to go. But the jockey held back and threw the race so that his gambling buddies could make some money. 'Spread the Word' lost by twenty lengths."

It suddenly made sense to Ryan. Then again, it made no sense at all. The books were filled with cases about real people. But how in the world was Hezekiah bringing those people and those cases to life?

Has to be the computer, thought Ryan.

The horses crossed the finish line, Win, Place, and Show, followed by the "also-rans." Ryan and Hezekiah were somewhere in the middle. Dead last, as Hezekiah had predicted, was Spread The Word, the fastest horse in the race.

The pack began to slow down on the other side of the wire. Ryan and Hezekiah continued forward, faster and faster, sucked down another leaphole. Ryan was suddenly no longer on a horse. He was back in the tube, the orange swirl all around him.

"Where to now?" he shouted.

No answer, but in seconds Ryan was back on his feet. The landing wasn't quite so gentle this time. Ryan still needed to get used to the idea of shooting through leapholes. He was sitting in a field of grass, and he rose slowly. Again, there were grandstands all around him, and they were filled with baseball fans. Ryan turned around and saw a huge green scoreboard behind the centerfield bleachers. The sign at the top read: WRIGLEY FIELD, HOME OF THE CHICAGO CUBS. They had landed in a professional baseball field. And it was Ryan's turn at bat.

Again, it wasn't something that Ryan fully understood. Somehow, however, he knew what he was supposed to do. He grabbed a bat and headed for the batter's box. The crowd cheered. Ryan stepped into the box. Then he noticed that playing catcher-the man behind the mask at home plate-was his friend, Hezekiah.

"Easy out," said Hezekiah, mocking him.

"What are we doing here?" said Ryan.

Hezekiah pounded his catcher's mitt, then squatted behind the plate. "Mr. Wrigley-the wealthy man who makes all that famous chewing gum-used to own the Cubs. He got sued because he wouldn't put lights in the stadium for night games. He believed that baseball should only be played in the daytime, not at night."

It was late in the afternoon, and the sun was setting. Ryan glanced again at the scoreboard and noticed that the game was in the bottom of the thirteenth inning in the second game of a doubleheader. In a matter of minutes, it would be too dark to play. "A few lights would be nice," said Ryan.

"Now you sound like the people who sued old man Wrigley," said Hezekiah.

"Enough chatter," said the umpire. "Play ball!"

Ryan looked toward the pitcher's mound. A lanky ballplayer wearing a Pittsburgh Pirates uniform was staring straight at him, ready to deliver the pitch. Hezekiah gave the pitcher a signal. The pitcher shook it off. He tried another signal. Suddenly, the ball was speeding through the darkness at Ryan, easily exceeding ninety miles per hour.

Ryan swung in desperation at the screeching fastball. To his delight, the bat connected, and the ball was soaring out of the ballpark. For some reason-again, completely inexplicable-he and Hezekiah were pulled right along with it. Together, they sailed clear over the leftfield wall. An excited fan speared his glove into the air to catch the home run ball, and both Ryan and Hezekiah were sucked into the leather, disappearing from sight, back down into the tube.

They were back in the orange swirl, that cocoon of safety. But not for long. Ryan felt another jolt. A splash of Technicolor appeared before his eyes. He and Hezekiah reappeared in a colorful cartoon, in a dusty canyon in some desert.

The Roadrunner sped past them. "Meep, meep/"

Hezekiah and Ryan were stacked inside a cannon, like human cannon balls. A mangy looking coyote suddenly appeared, his pointy ears sticking out of his strange protective helmet.

"That's Wile E. Coyote," said Hezekiah.

"I know who it is," said Ryan. "I've seen the Roadrunner cartoons."

"Yes, but did you know that the coyote sued ACME Manufacturing Company for all those lousy gadgets that blew up in his face every time he tried to catch the Roadrunner?"

"Really?"

"Nah," said Hezekiah. "I made this one up. But it's a fun one, isn't it?"

Wile E. Coyote lit the fuse on the cannon. The whole contraption exploded in his face, sending Ryan and Hezekiah speeding through the air. They were in another leaphole that carried them across a different plane, through another orange swirl.

Finally, they landed in the back of a bus.

"Where are we?" asked Ryan.

Hezekiah was in the seat beside him. "Montgomery, Alabama. City bus number twenty-eight-fifty-seven."

Ryan looked out the window. People on the sidewalks were wearing warm overcoats, and there were Christmas decorations in the storefronts. It had to be December. Ryan spotted a license plate on a parked car. The year was 1955.

The bus stopped. Ryan watched from the rear of the bus as a black woman boarded and paid the driver. She then got off the bus and re-entered through the rear door. The bus continued down the street.

"That's Rosa Parks," whispered Hezekiah.

Ryan asked, "Why is she coming in through the back door?"

Hezekiah's voice seemed lower, sadder. "Colored people can't enter the bus through the front door. That's the law."

Ryan watched as the woman headed up the aisle and took a seat in the fifth row. Ryan also noticed that that everyone in the first four rows was white. Everyone in the fifth row and farther back was black.

The bus stopped again. The front of the bus (the white section) was now full, nowhere to sit. A white passenger boarded the bus. He walked up to Rosa, who was seated in the fifth row, and demanded that the black woman give up her seat and move farther back in the bus.

Ryan asked, "What's going on?"

Hezekiah said, "Rosa is breaking the law. Colored people have to give up their seat and move farther back in the bus if a white person has no place to sit."

"What the heck kind of law is that?" said Ryan.

"It's 1955, Ryan. That was the law in Montgomery, Alabama."

Rosa shook her head and refused to move. The white passenger complained to the driver. He stopped the bus and walked down the aisle to the fifth row.

"Ma'am, I have to ask you to get up and move."

Again, Rosa refused. The driver seemed exasperated. He. looked at Rosa and said, "Well, I'm going to have you arrested."

Rosa looked at him and said, "You may go on and do so."

The driver went back to the front of the bus, got on the radio, and called for police backup. After a few minutes, a police car pulled up alongside the bus. Two officers came aboard, and the driver explained what had happened. The police came down the aisle.

"They're actually taking her to jail?" said Ryan.

"I told you, Ryan. The law doesn't always prevent bad things from happening to good people."

Again, Ryan thought of his own father in jail, but he was too taken aback by the arrest of Rosa Parks to think about his own situation for very long. One of the police officers had a set of handcuffs with him, and those rings of metal suddenly reminded Ryan of the leapholes he had seen in Hezekiah's jar. Both resembled flat, uncomfortable, metal bracelets. Ryan wasn't sure if the police were going to cuff Rosa or not, but as the light reflected off those shiny metal circles, the swirling sensation resumed. It was as if the leaphole had reemerged before Ryan's eyes. The eye of the miniature hurricane was centered around those handcuffs dangling from the police officer's belt. In a matter of seconds, the spinning was more intense than ever. Ryan had the sensation of being pulled from his seat, pulled through the bus, sucked out the door. His body was turned in such a way that he was facing backwards, yet he could feel the thrust of forward motion. All was a blur, yet he knew that he was headed in the right direction. The power of the leaphole was taking him back to the place where he belonged, back to a place he knew well.

The swirling stopped. His surroundings came into focus. Ryan and Hezekiah bounced onto the floor of Hezekiah's law library.

Ryan pulled off his helmet and looked at Hezekiah with complete disbelief. "That was amazing!"

"You liked that, did you?"

"Totally. This helmet is so cool." Ryan inspected it briefly, then looked quizzically at Hezekiah. "But where's your helmet?"

"I don't need one."

"How come I do and you don't?"

"You don't need one either."

"You're still trying to sell me on that idea of legal magic, aren't you? The secret Society."

"I'm not selling anything, Ryan. When you're ready to step beyond the virtual legal environment of a computer, you will. For now, suit yourself. Grab your helmet, and let's go."

"Where to this time? Do I get to pick?"

Hezekiah shook his head. "Leapholes are not all fun and games. They're not just joyrides or tools to help satisfy our idle curiosity."

"I know, I get it. It's like you said before, these books aren't just a bunch of dusty old pages. These were all real people with real problems."

"And the best lawyers understand people and their problems. No better way to understand a case than with a leaphole."

Ryan was really starting to like Hezekiah, but the old man was suddenly very serious. "Now it's time to prepare for your case," said Hezekiah.

"So, we have to go… where?"

"Back to the William Brown."

"You mean that ship that sank when it hit the iceberg? The case that got you all wet?"

Hezekiah nodded. "For you, that is the most important case in all these books. The judge will use that case to decide whether you are guilty or innocent."

"How can an old case about a sinking ship help the judge decide whether I'm responsible for those people who died from a disease like