The Last Western (15 page)

There was no doubt now: the light shining from the field clearly showed the face of Robert ‘Bob’ Regent, looking older somehow and quite tired.

He was dressed in a somber blue suit. He looked as if he had just completed a long journey.

“How happy the people,” said Robert ‘Bob’ Regent. “See how they sit without care, without fear. At peace.”

“Mr. Regent, I—”

“Peace. A lovely word. And you, my boy, have brought that peace to the people of the country. Your pitch has returned millions to the great game of baseball—a game that had nearly died. Does it mean so little to you, this miraculous gift, that gives delight and release to a troubled nation?”

Here Robert ‘Bob’ Regent turned his lined face to Willie.

“And would you give that up, all of it, just for the sake of meddling?”

“Meddling?”

“Mixing in my affairs.”

“Mr. Regent—”

“Bob, my boy,
Bob
,” said Robert ‘Bob’ Regent with an air of infinite patience.

“Bob, we—I haven’t meddled. That girl we met in New Orleans. Clio wants to help her—and so do I. That’s all we wanted to do, not meddle.”

“How can you help, pitiful child,” said Robert ‘Bob’ Regent in his melancholy way. “What can you do but throw a baseball? What are you after all but a property of the New York Hawks Ball Club?”

Willie said nothing. He did not know how to begin to answer that question. It was too big to answer.

Now Robert ‘Bob’ Regent moved to the other side of the office and Willie followed.

Before them lay the city, a tangle of shapes with a million green eyes staring up through the mist.

“The world needs to forget,” said Robert ‘Bob’ Regent.

“And you could help it to forget if only you would. But instead you choose to meddle.”

“We can clear this up, Mr. Reg—that is, Bob. If you’ll help Martha in her trouble, then—”

“See?” said Regent. “You meddle right now without even noticing it.”

“She is from a poor family. She is unhappy in her work. Why can’t you help her?”

“The poor you shall always have with you,” said Robert ‘Bob’ Regent. “But if you would serve the great team of which you are a part, the Marthas of the world would be taken care of.”

“Is that what you told Clio?”

“It is what I
tried
to tell him.”

“What did he say?”

“He was a fool. He would not obey.”

“What did you want him to do?”

“What I shall ask—indeed demand—that you do. As a member of the team I own.”

“Tell me,” Willie whispered, afraid of the words that would come now.

“Throw the straight pitches as Mr. Essinger and Mr. Peters suggested in Boston.”

“How did you know that? I didn’t tell that to anyone.”

“Who are you to ask that I should explain my ways?” said Regent, his voice suddenly loud.

“They must have told you.”

Regent’s hand moved to the underside of a small table; he pressed a switch.

Instantly a six-foot television screen came to life at a corner of the room.

There was the Hawks dugout—voices perfectly audible.

“Where’s Willie?” Mr. Grayson was asking. “Anybody seen the boys?”

Regent pushed another switch, and a far more startling picture appeared on the screen.

It was Clio packing his suitcase. He was still wearing his Hawks uniform.

“What’s he doing? How—”

“He’s left,” Regent snapped. “He preferred meddling to playing ball. I offered him all the candied yams in the world and he preferred to meddle. So… .”

Willie’s mouth fell wide open.

“But it does not matter,” said Robert ‘Bob’ Regent. “After all, you’re the prince of the diamond, not Clio. I am sure we can settle this unpleasantness, that our friendship is strong enough to survive this little storm.”

Willie stood there on heavy legs as Regent came toward him, holding out his hand.

“For a few interesting games, then some perfect ones, I offer you—everything.”

Willie finally moved.

It was hard getting his legs to work.

It was even harder getting his mind to think—to decide where to go and what to do.

But he did move finally, just as Robert ‘Bob’ Regent’s hand fell on his arm.

“Where are you going, my boy?”

“To Clio.”

“Oh no you’re not,” Regent said. “You’re pitching this game.”

“I’m going,” said Willie, pulling away.

“You have a contract. I demand that you pitch. I absolutely forbid you to leave the Complex!”

“I’m leaving,” said Willie, at the panel now and pushing the “open” button.

“You can’t!” shouted Regent, lunging towards him. “Who do you think you are?”

That stopped Willie.

He turned back once more and said, “I don’t know—a person.”

“I’ll tell you what you are,” Regent shrieked. “You’re a nigger! A filthy little nigger!”

The words hit Willie like rocks.

A bolt of lightning flashed across Regent’s face. The rage and madness Willie saw there terrified him. The eyes protruded from the skull-like mask, the veins stood out, the mouth twisted horribly as that ancient, acceptable obscenity formed on it once more.

Willie was in the hallway.

“A
retarded
nigger! With a whore for a mother!”

Willie froze. Then quickly, like a swung stick, he moved back into the office.

“A whore,” said Regent distinctly, slowly.

Willie slapped him across the face. Regent fell back. He slapped him again, harder.

Regent fell down on one knee, moaning something.

Willie stood over him for a moment, then went back to the hallway.

“Nigger!” Regent called.

Willie was boarding the elevator.

“You’ll never play ball again. Anywhere. Filthy chink wetback nigger!”

Those were the last words Willie heard as the elevator door closed.

The words brought tears to his eyes, stirring feelings and memories he could not name.

The horror followed him into the street, making him tremble as he hailed a taxi.

But the real horror was yet to come.

Clio had checked out
of the hotel. Willie found a note on his bed.

Maybe you can live that way. Not me. I’ve gone to New Orleans. Maybe we could play in South America. Hope you’re OK. Your pal. Clio.

Willie changed his clothes, packed his suitcase and took a cab to Kennedy Airport.

The cab driver, recognizing him, turned on the radio, which was broadcasting the game.

“How come you left?” the cabbie asked. “A fight.”

“You going back?”

“No.”

“You must be crazy,” the cabbie said. “Why, all that money. …”

We’re in the third inning
, the announcer was saying,
and Essinger is struggling. Chicago has four runs, and we can only wonder what the Hawks must be thinking at this moment with the young miracle pitcher disappearing just before game time along with his catcher. No word from the Hawks management
… .

At the airport the cabbie said, “Tell me one thing, will you?”

“If I can,” said Willie.

“What do you really want?”

“Sir?”

“You coloreds. What do you want? Here we give you everything. All my life we been bending over backwards and still—still it isn’t enough. Don’t you have any gratitude? I mean, look at this money that has been offered you. What are you eighteen, twenty years old? I mean, what is it you want?”

Willie had had too many hard questions that night so he said good-bye and good luck to the cabbie and hurried into the airport to find Clio.

But the New Orleans flight had just taken off, and there wouldn’t be another for two hours.

As he idled at the counter, trying to decide what to do, a figure robed in white approached from behind, a tall man, haggard and red of eye. He wore a trench coat of bright white cloth and carried a strange device of blue metal and iridescent glass.

Willie turned around, lost in his thoughts.

He looked up then and saw the man, the blue device wriggling in his hands, opening itself up and exposing something like the barrel of a gun.

“Don’t!” Willie cried and held up his hands.

Laughter from the man. “Only a camera… .”

The glittering device purred softly.

Willie froze, then ran.

A crowd began to gather. Half the people were staring at the camera. The others peered at the figure retreating down the crowded corridor.

“That’s the camera,” someone said. “The world’s most expensive camera.”

The man in white drifted away.

Willie found a novelty shop at the end of the corridor. He went into the shop and bought a fishing cap. He pulled the cap down over his red hair. He bought dark glasses and put them on. Then he went to the men’s room to check his disguise.

It was hard to tell who he was now, but as he looked at himself in the mirror, he had the feeling he was being watched, hunted. Under the fishing cap, under the red hair, the hideous voice went on:
Never play again… . Never
… .

He waited a half hour before heading back to the ticket counter. Then he thought of his family in Houston.

They would have heard the news of his leaving on the radio, and he didn’t want them to worry. He went to a booth to place a long distance call.

“The circuits are out,” said the operator.

This was the fourth straight night the circuits had been out.

“What’s the trouble?” Willie asked.

The operator hesitated. Then she said, “We are not permitted to talk about the situation.”

“What situation?”

“In Houston.”

“What is the situation you can’t talk about?”

“I’m sorry. The news freeze does not permit us to discuss the situation with anyone other than an official of the Justice Department.”

Willie ran to the Texas Airlines counter.

“I’m sorry,” said the clerk. “No flights to Houston.”

“Why not?”

“The flights are canceled for emergency reasons that we are not permitted to discuss.”

Willie’s head hummed and buzzed; his legs went weak.

“What’s the nearest city in Texas you can get me to?”

“Waynesville.”

“I’ll take a ticket.”

“There’s a plane leaving in fifty minutes.”

Willie spent the fifty minutes in a daze.

Five hours later the plane landed in Waynesville, and Willie rented a car and began the four-hour drive to Houston.

Dear Father… . Dear Father… , he prayed over and over and over and over—until he saw the smoke, the hideous yellow smoke, hanging in a cloud over Houston in the dawn.

There were policemen at the outskirts of the city, directing the traffic away from the fires.

“Where are the fires?” Willie asked one of the troopers.

“All over. What area you interested in, boy?”

“South—in the Custer district.”

In a sickening, quick and automatic way, the trooper said, “That went a week ago.”

“That can’t be true!”

The trooper looked at him.

“Boy,” he said, “you better get some sleep. You look like a beer truck run over you.”

Willie drove his car to a barricade on the north edge of the Custer district.

Then he set out on foot through the rubble, much of it still burning, toward his old neighborhood.

Along the way people sat on piles of rocks, studying bits and pieces of their previous lives.

There were policemen and firemen everywhere, but the riots here had ended.

The fires seemed under control, most of them burned out.

There was nothing now but desolation and ruin.

Willie knew that when he turned the corner to Boone Avenue, he would come into view of the William McKinley Arms and would know the truth one way or the other.

He had been walking fast, with unseeing eyes, through the dust and smoke, with ears that were deaf to the great demolition machines that had already begun to clear away some of the rubble.

But he slowed now as he approached the Boone corner, dreading to look at his old home.

He turned the corner and looked.

Total ruin.

Where the William McKinley Arms had stood, the demolition crews had already cleared the rubble away. The ground was bare.

It was as if everything had been wiped off the face of the earth by the hand of a giant.

Willie, moving like a blind man, walked unsteadily to the place where the old tenement had stood.

There, an hour later, two workmen found him, moaning like an animal.

“He’s flipped,” one of the workmen said. “He’s disarranged.”

“Leave him alone,” the other workman said. “He might have a gun.”

Then a policeman came by.

“What’s the matter, boy?” Officer Harlowe Judge asked.

Willie could not speak. Indeed he did not even hear or see Officer Harlowe Judge.

“Aren’t you—why it’s Sam!”

Willie stared at the policeman.

“You better come along,” Officer Judge said. “They’re blasting in the next block. There’ll be stuff flying all over here.”

Willie allowed Officer Judge to lead him away.

They met a little girl.

She had a drawing she wanted them to look at—a crayon sketch in red and black of some fantastic creature.

“It’s a condor,” she said. “I seen one on TV.”

They went on.

A block later, they met a priest.

Willie looked at the eyes and nose and mouth of the priest and came to his senses a little.

It was Father Simpson.

“My dear son,” the priest said, and held out his hands to Willie.

“My mother and grandmother?”

“Gone,” the priest said. “Lost with the others.”

“Carolyn Sage?”

“Gone, lost and gone with all the rest. We buried them in a mass grave the day after the explosions.”

Willie opened his mouth as if to cry, but nothing came out.

The priest said, “It is God’s will, son. We must accept God’s will.”

Willie stepped back quickly from the priest.

Officer Judge said, “Let’s go to the Red Cross, Sam.”

Willie turned and ran.

“Sam!” Officer Judge shouted.

“Son!” Father Simpson called.

But Willie was already a half block away.

He ran as fast as he knew, and somehow even faster, through the wrecked buildings, down the blasted streets, faster and faster, and faster still.