The Great American Novel (31 page)

*   *   *

To fill the right-field slot left vacant by the departure of Bud Parusha, Mister Fairsmith had now to look to his bench, and like schoolchildren who had not done their homework, Mokos, Omara, Skirnir, Terminus, Hunaman, Khovaki, Kronos, and Garuda looked the other way. Said Mister Fairsmith's emissary, Jolly Cholly T., “All right, who wants to play right field?” and the eight, whom he had called together in the visitors' clubhouse, continued studying the scarred floorboards.

“Look,” said Cholly, “you boys are forty and fifty years old. When will you ever get a chance like this again? Don't you want to have somethin' to tell your grandchildren about?” he asked, figuring this last might have some appeal, in that all of the Mundy utility players were proud, doting grandfathers, who passed much of their time on the bench exchanging snapshots of their offsprings' offspring, while their less fortunate teammates were out on the field being beaten to a pulp. “Come on, Mule,” said Cholly to Mokos, a great glove man with the Greenbacks prior to their scandalous demise, “think how proud little Mickey would be to see your name in the box score every day. Think how he could say to his school-chums, ‘That's my Grampa out there!' Now how many kids can do that?”

“Cholly,” said Mokos, sighing, “God knows I'd like to help you. But frankly it's too much standin' on your feet out there to suit me.”

“Suppose I say you can sit down, Mule. Suppose I say you can sit down on the grass and rest up whenever there's an intentional pass or a new pitcher comes in to warm up. Now you know with us that can be as much as two, three times an innin' late in the game, and that's exactly when you'd be needin' it most.”

The old, tired Mule shook his head. “Sorry, Cholly, I'll sit here on the bench for you, and watch these games every afternoon, even though the truth be known, I got me a thousand and one things back home I could do better with my time—but to be perfectly frank with you, I'll be darned if I'm going to
stand
to watch a ballgame, especially when one of the teams is a last-place club fifty games out of first. I gotta be honest with you, Cholly. You and me know each other too many years to start pullin' our punches at a time like this.”

Cholly turned next to Clever Carl Khovaki.

“Can't hear you, Cholly.”

“I said,” shouted the Mundy coach, “how would you like to play right field on a regular basis?”

“Write to who about the bases? I can't but sign my name with a X, you know that.”

“No,
play right field on a regular basis.
”

“Me?” bellowed Carl, and broke into a big smile. “You must be kiddin'. Can't hear.”

“You don't have to hear!” shouted Cholly. “Just field and hit!”

“Can't hear, though. Can't hear the crowd. Can't hear the ball bein' struck. Can't hear Agni if he calls for me to catch it.” Then, with that wonderful ability to laugh at himself that had made him the beloved dunderhead of the fans in years gone by, Clever Carl said, “Can't even hear myself think. That's how come I give it up.”

It was true: even in his heyday with Aceldama, though he could regularly drive a high hard one into the seats, Carl would be as apt to run back to first as on to third, if someone hit a single while he was on second. In the thick of things he seemed to have no more idea as to how the game was played than a Saudi Arabian. Then he went deaf and lost what little contact he had with those who could holler and scream at him what to do next—and then he became a Mundy. “Get a feller can hear, Cholly, that's my advice. That is,” said Carl, “if we got one on the club. Otherwise my advice is buy one, and the hell with the price. Should be one of us ain't hard of hearin' anyway, just in case of some kind of emergency.”

“Now, look,” said Cholly, “somebody has got to play right field on this club, and it ain't me. I am already pitcher, coach, mother, and father around here, and that's enough.”

“Well,” snapped Wally Omara, “it ain't me, either! Let's get that clear. Not with my blood pressure—no, sir! If we had even a shot at seventh, well, that would be a arguin' point, Cholly. But we ain't got a shot at shit as far as I can see, and in the light of that, I really am flabbergasted that you have had the raw nerve, Charles, to even suggest to a feller with my blood pressure—”

“And you?” asked Cholly, turning to Applejack Terminus, who was sitting off by himself, as though nursing some private misery.

“Cholly,” said Applejack, looking sadly down at the belly bulging over his belt, “Cholly, if I could still go back for 'em the way I did when I come up, I'd be out there for you every afternoon for the rest of the month. But,” said the Apple, closing his eyes against the tears, “them days is gone, Cholly.”

“Suppose I say you don't have to go back, Apple. Suppose I say you can play up against the wall, so you only have to come in.”

“Cholly,” said Terminus, “ain't
nobody
can't catch 'em comin'
in.
Why, that's a insult!”

“But I ain't even sayin'
catch
'em, Apple. Let 'em drop in for singles and take 'em on the hop. And we'll call that playin' right field. What do you say, fella?”

“Cholly,” he moaned, again struggling not to weep, “in my prime, Cholly, when I was playin' center for the Blues, there was times I covered
second
on account of how close in I would play. And you know, 'cause you seen it. You seen where the smart fans used to sit back in them days when I was with the Blues—right out there in the bleachers! And not just paupers either, but millionaires with their chauffeurs. And why? 'Cause they knew. You want to watch a ace outfielder like Apple ply his trade, why, that's the only place
to
sit—right back of him! Yessir! And then watch him go when that ball is hit! Just
watch
him! But then a' course,” said Apple, suddenly bitter, “then a' course they put that rabbit in the ball, didn't they? That's what moved us back a' course—
and ruined the whole gosh darn game!
Hell, I remember the first time this feller struck a triple over my head with that new ball a' theirs. Can't even recall his name no more—I don't think he lasted in the big time but fifteen minutes. Anyhow, he struck this darn triple. It was openin' day of 1920. Know what I did? I was so dang mad, I didn't even bother to throw that ball in from center, nosir; I ran all the way to the infield, holdin' that new ball a' theirs in my hand, see, and I run all the way up to that hoofenpoofer, who was a smilin' away to beat the band on third there, as though he had done somethin' special, you understand, and I said, ‘Listen, you sorry excuse of a whangdoodle, last year you couldn't a hit the ball above your waist if we give it to you to hold in your hand!' ‘Oh no?' says that grinnin' gaboon, ‘then how come I done it just now, Apple?' ‘How
come?
' says I. ‘
Here's
how come!' And I ripped off his cap and stuck that ball right up to his ear: ‘Juss listen, you wampus cat, juss hold that right up to yer ear you tree squeak of a gazook, and you can
hear
that rabbit's heart a-beatin' away in there!'” And on and on went the fat man, fifteen minutes more on the subject that invariably threw him into a tirade—the introduction twenty-odd years earlier of the lively ball. “Nope,” he concluded, spitting on the clubhouse floor to register his vote, “the day I have to rest my fanny on the fence, that is the day I bow out of this game for good. Either you play the outfield shallow, Cholly, like it was meant to be played back before the era of the stitched golf ball,
or you don't play it at all!
”

In the end it was the undernourished six-footer, skinny Specs Skirnir, the Mundy with a year of college education and the least confident of them all, who took the job.

“I just don't want to break my glasses, Cholly.”

“You won't, Specs.”

“I'm not used to them yet, and I'm afraid I'm going to break them.”

“Specs, you've had 'em since '34.”

“I know, Cholly, but I just can't get used to them.”

“Well, it may just be a matter of playin' with 'em regular. That may do it for you, boy.”

“But what happens when they get steamed up?”

“Just take 'em off and clean 'em with your hankie.”

“What if it's in the middle of a play, Cholly?”

“Do it before the play.”

“But they don't get steamed up
before.
They get steamed up
during.
”

“Well, then,” said Cholly, patiently, “do the best you can, and clean 'em after.”

“But
after's
too late! What if because they're steamed up I can't see—and get hit with the ball! Suppose I'm at bat and get hit in the mouth! Suppose a grounder jumps up and breaks my nose! And all because my glasses got steamed up!”

“Ah, come on, Specs, none of that's goin' to happen. It hasn't yet.”

“That's because since I got them in 1934 I've been
benched!
And even with
that
they get steamed! Look, look how I chipped my tooth on the water fountain in Independence. My glasses got steamed up on account of the heat, and I went in too close for a drink, and I chipped my tooth on the spout. Look, Cholly, look at my shins, they're all black and blue—tripped over Big Jawn's foot just going down to the clubhouse in Terra Inc. to take a leak. Imagine—just taking a leak is dangerous in these damn things! Cholly, I shouldn't even really be in the
dugout
during the game, let alone on the
field!
Nine innings just on the bench and at the end of the game I'm a wreck! If I don't go in and get a rubdown and a hot shower, I ache in every muscle for a week! Cholly, this is crazy—this is insane! I don't get what's going on around here at all. I've been to school, Cholly, and I can tell you this much—you don't trade away a perfectly decent one-armed outfielder to put in his place a guy who wears
glasses.
What kind of baseball strategy is that? And look what we got in return, Charles—a dwarf! It wasn't bad enough to have Chico with that awful squeak of his, now we got to have a twisted little dwarf coming in out of the bullpen for the grand finale every afternoon! Cholly, I don't like it! Nine years now, Cholly, one way or another, I've managed to stay alive wearing these God damn things—and now suddenly this crazy little dwarf shows up to help us finish last, and I'm supposed to take my life in my hands playing in glasses for a big league team.
Cholly, I'm only forty-three years old!
”

“Specs,” said Cholly, laying a fatherly hand upon the sopping uniform of the terrified utility player on the brink of becoming a regular again, “I have just spent a mornin' here goin' over this club's reserve strength, and if it'll be any comfort to you, I don't believe this here
is
a big league team any more, in the original way that they meant that word.”

“Well, maybe
we
ain't a big league team, but we're playing
against
big league teams—and, Cholly, that's what's scariest of all!”

After a moment's reflection, Cholly said, “I suppose that is what's scariest, come to think of it. Still and all, we gotta do it,” and he entered Specs Skirnir on the line-up card for that day's game. “You're battin' seventh, son. And don't forget your hankie.”

*   *   *

Query:
Who back in Port Ruppert had arranged the trade anyway? As far as the players knew, the paneled, carpeted stadium offices of the Mundy management had been turned over to the Army, along with the beautifully manicured field, and the patriotic Mundy brothers had rented for the duration a nondescript cubbyhole in a rundown office building at the very edge of Port Ruppert's colored section. According to one of the rumors with which the players around the league liked to tease and taunt the Mundys, the office was tended only by an old woolly-haired janitor who came in to raise and lower the blackout shade each day, and to forward whatever mail had accumulated on to the exotic cities of Latin America, where the Mundy brothers were said to be recuperating from the hard winter of negotiation that had landed their ball club on the road.

“Hey,” said Big John, laughing as usual, “maybe the nigger done it. Maybe Mazuma called when he was sweepin' up, and the nigger said, ‘Okay wiff me, boss,' and hung up. What do you say to that, Venus de Milo? Some nigger janitor back in Rupe-it swapped you even up for a fella the size of a mosquito!”

“Hey, would that be legal?” asked Nickname. “If a nigger done it? I mean, ain't they got their own leagues?”

“That depends whether the Mundy brothers give 'im the authority,” said old Wayne Heket. “Why, down home I know a feller signed everythin' over to his dog, then just lay down and died.”

“Could be Nickname's right, though,” said Hot. “I'm gonna look that up. It just could be that if a nigger has done it, that Bud here ain't got no choice but to go over to their leagues—and for life!”

“Now wouldn't that be somethin'! If on top of havin' just one arm for hittin' and throwin' and wipin' his bee-hind, poor Buddy wound up by mistake playin' outfield for a bunch of niggers!”

“Hell, I'druther go on home and shovel hoss manure than have to play ball with jigaboos every day!”

“At least you'd have your self-respect!”

“Poor Buddy! Eatin' all that shit they eat too, instead a' real food!”

“And how's he ever goin' to know what they're sayin' when they're talkin' to him? I hear tell over in them leagues, that instead of havin' signals they just holler out ‘Bunt!', figurin' the other team don't know enough English to guess what's comin' next. Them spades is always scratchin' themselves so much, half the time what you figure for a hit-'n-run sign ain't nothin' but the manager goin' after his cooties.”