Revolution Number 9

Also by Peter Abrahams:

Novels of Suspense

L
IGHTS
O
UT
^*

L
AST
O
F
T
HE
D
IXIE
H
EROES
^*

C
RYING
W
OLF
^*

A P
ERFECT
C
RIME
^*

T
HE
F
AN
^*

P
RESSURE
D
ROP

H
ARD
R
AIN

R
ED
M
ESSAGE

T
ONGUES
O
F
F
IRE

T
HE
F
URY
O
F
R
ACHEL
M
ONETTE

Nonfiction

*
Published by Ballantine Books

Golden lads and girls all must,
as chimney-sweepers, come to dust.
—
Cymbeline

T
he boy was named Ronnie. The only surviving photograph shows him in his batting stance. What can we tell from it? That he hit from the left side. That he wore his hair long, in the style of the time. That he had a solid-looking body, and a reliable-looking face. That there was nothing particularly cute about him—Norman Rockwell would never have put him in the front of a picture. But Ronnie might have appeared in the background, diving into the old fishing hole. And he might have grown up to be quite handsome. Going beyond that would be pure speculation. How much character can be read in the face of an eleven-year-old boy?

· · ·

Ronnie awoke before dawn at the end of a warm May night. He checked the bedside clock. The time must have been between four-thirty and five. The bus for the all-star tournament left at six. Ronnie was too keyed up to sleep any longer. He switched on the light and donned his uniform: white pants that stopped high up the calf for the look he liked, sanitaries, navy blue stirrups, worn cleats, and the navy blue shirt that buttoned down the front and had “All-Stars” written on the front and his surname, “Pleasance,” and number, “9,” on the back. He put on his cap, picked up his bat, which was leaning against the wall, and took a few practice swings in front of the mirror. Boom. Kapow.
That ball is going, going, it is … out of here, ladies and gentlemen! Ronnie Pleasance has done it again!

Then he realized he didn’t have his mitt.

Ronnie’s mitt was a Rawlings trapper with Willie “Stretch” McCovey’s autograph on the inside. Ronnie had rubbed it
with neatsfoot oil and smacked balls into the pocket so many times that it felt like part of him, a flypaper extension that stuck to every baseball that came near. He hunted for it in the pile of yesterday’s clothes on the floor, in the closet, under the bed. Then he walked softly down the hall, past his parents’ bedroom and downstairs, where he searched the rest of the house. No glove. Ronnie was getting a little nervous now, but he didn’t panic. He was a methodical boy, not flashy, but determined: a born catcher, if he hadn’t been left-handed. He tried to remember the last time he’d seen his mitt. Certainly he’d had it at practice the afternoon before. And after practice, what had he done? He’d walked to his father’s office on campus. Sometimes they threw the ball around after work, but yesterday his father had been in a meeting. Ta-da. Ronnie suddenly pictured the mitt lying on the visitor’s chair opposite his father’s desk.

Ronnie, in his all-star uniform, left the house, closing the door quietly behind him, and walked into the predawn darkness. The town was quiet, the air mild. The darkness didn’t bother Ronnie. He knew the neighborhood like an Indian scout. Besides, it was only a few hundred feet down the lane to the campus and onto the crushed-brick path. Perhaps because it was night and he was still a boy, he whistled. Ronnie went by the labs, the silent dorms, the chapel, and into the old wood building that housed his father’s office.

The office was on the second floor. Ronnie climbed the stairs and opened the door. He switched on the light. There was his mitt, just as he’d thought. He put it on, smacked his fist into it a few times. Perhaps he glanced at the picture of his parents, walking under an archway of crossed swords on their wedding day. Then he turned, shut off the light, closed the door, and started down the stairs. The chapel bell began to strike five o’clock. The fourth ring was the last sound Ronnie heard.

· · ·

That is a logical assumption, because the vibration dislodged the clapper from the bell in the stone campanile of the late-eighteenth-century chapel, preventing the fifth ring from sounding. Not long after, Ronnie was found at the foot of what
remained of the stairs. Perhaps it was just an accidental result of the way he fell, but the Willie “Stretch” McCovey model first baseman’s trapper was clutched to his chest. That’s what gave them the idea to bury him with it.

T
he door opened and Svenson looked in. “They’re coming back,” he said.

So soon?
thought Goodnow; and knew the verdict at once. He rose from the state-issue swivel chair of whatever midlevel bureaucrat whose office he had borrowed for the trial—rose slowly, but not slowly enough to keep the pain from reawakening. Lately, like a colicky baby, his pain rarely slept, and when it did, jerked awake at the slightest disturbance. This was physical pain, not metaphorical or spiritual, although some had advised him to fight it with spirits and metaphors—imaging, specifically. For a few weeks Goodnow had attended an imaging clinic, but all he’d been able to imagine was mutant cells, beaky, hairy, rampant, devouring his insides.

“You all right, Mr. Goodnow?” Svenson was watching him, perhaps with concern, perhaps not. It was impossible to tell with Svenson: those eyes, pale as a frozen lake, set deep in the harsh white landscape of his face.

Goodnow released his grip on the chair back. “Just fine,” he replied, and tightened the knot on his tie. He could never seem to get it tight anymore, and the collars of his Brooks Brothers shirts grew bigger and bigger. “You’ve lost weight,” said acquaintances he saw infrequently, who never added, “You look great.” Goodnow followed the big man out of the office, down the corridor, into the courtroom.

Goodnow and Svenson sat at the back. The court buzzed,
like a theater before the curtain. Except for the jury, everyone was in place: the judge, a mediocrity whose appointment had been a bargaining chip in a budget negotiation during the Carter administration; the two prosecutors, who hadn’t made a mistake that Goodnow saw, not after jury selection; the defendants, the Santa Clara Five, as they called themselves, whose lives would not be changed one way or the other; their supporters, stern as Puritans, ready to be outraged. All these were without interest to Goodnow. His eyes were on the defense table, where the lead counsel sat, head turned slightly toward a female assistant who whispered in his ear. It was a head that Rodin would have loved to sculpt: big, elongated, with prominent features and long silver hair swept back in two wings. Victor Hugo Klein looked like a hero of the Romantic Age, and a hero was what he had been to a lot of people for almost forty years, fighting the hegemonic brute that others called the good ol’ U.S.A. Hugo Klein fought for the little guy—the little union guy, the little McCarthy victim guy, the little sixties radical guy, the little truculent feminist guy, the little tree-spiking eco-lover guy. The details of the cant changed, thought Goodnow, but Klein endured. That his biggest cases almost always seemed to end in long prison sentences diminished his reputation not at all. Everyone knew the system was rigged. Klein rose higher and higher on a stack of fist-clenching martyrs.

Klein smiled at something his assistant had said and turned to look around the courtroom. His glance swept over Goodnow, showing no recognition. Naturally not; Klein had been editor of the
Law Review
during Goodnow’s first year. Goodnow, despite his hard work, had not made
Law Review
, graduating in the middle of his class. And after, he had not practiced but had disappeared into the shadows of his chosen field. It was not surprising that their paths had never crossed, that Klein did not know him. But Goodnow knew Klein, probably knew more about him than anyone on earth. Whole megabytes on the VAX were devoted to Hugo Klein.