When Alonzo Encarnacion relieved himself, he passed an arc of yellow ice that broke into two-foot lengths when it came in contact with the earth. The pencil-thin rods of ice lay like lightning on the Courteguayan grasses, melted with a sigh in the humid summer heat, but left behind black scars on the grass where the cold had taken its toll.
“Encarnacion cannot stand too long on one spot or he leaves his footprints on the earth,” the other players said, mystified. The first baseman, who was a carpenter, built a 3×3 square of fresh lumber and set it in right field for Encarnacion to stand on. Two ragged urchins with ill-fitting baseball caps covering their eyes were paid ten centavos a game to carry the square of lumber on and off the field.
In the shower a crust of ice formed around Encarnacion’s knees, slivers of ice, like shards of glass gathered like an aura. Encarnacion showered alone.
Alonzo Encarnacion combed his black hair back in a sleek pompadour until he looked like the villain in a melodrama. Women, thrilled by the danger implied by his dashing presence, arrived in record numbers at the baseball grounds. The wealthy arrived in limousines, driven by chauffeurs, the peasant girls arrived on foot, all gathered along the right field line, giggling, acting the fool, hoisting their skirts, sometimes with one hand, sometimes with two.
With his baseball salary Alonzo Encarnacion bought himself a scarlet velvet jacket, dark trousers, patent leather shoes, a ruffled shirt.
After he handled a bat the batboy would claim the instrument was frozen through and through, and take it out of service in case it would explode.
“He has the coldest lips I have ever tasted,” one of the girls exclaimed. After that he became even more desirable.
“That is all?” asked the Gringo Journalist, noting that the Wizard was taking a drink of mango juice and that his eyelids were drooping, indicating that he finished his story.
“What do you want? The rest of his life story is not very interesting. I only want to tell you interesting stories. When his unexceptional baseball career was over, after he had fucked perhaps five thousand groupies, he opened an ice cream store, which seemed a logical choice for him. He continued to piss ice until the day he died. Now, weren’t you happier not knowing that?”
“You are right, as always,” said the Gringo Journalist. “Still I have a concern.”
“And that would be?”
“You tell me stories, but the time frame seems more than just a movement forward or backward in time. Some events appear non-chronological, out of order as it were.”
“So. This is Courteguay,” replied the Wizard. “The word chronological is not in our language, neither is sequence. Things happen. That is all there is to it.”
“I need more of an explanation.”
“I thought such expansions and contractions of time would be obvious to you by now. You are a very slow learner, though I’m sure you’ve been told that often.”
“I’m not stupid.”
“Really? Where you come from and in many other places, maybe most other places, time is like a long highway with you standing in the middle of a straightaway while the highway dissolves in the distance in both directions, past and future. In Courteguay, if you picture the same scene, time occasionally runs crossways so that something that will happen in the future might already be behind you, slowly receding, while something from the past may not yet have happened.”
The Wizard smiled. “Pass the mango juice, please.”
FIFTY-SEVEN
THE WIZARD
The second time Esteban was murdered, Fernandella insisted that the body be cremated. A woman named Mme. Luzon had in recent months done many tarot readings for Fernandella. One of the cards had something to do with fire.
“If you cremate Esteban you will have to stuff me into the furnace with the corpse,” said Julio, his cheeks sunken, his eyes wild with grief.
“He is not only my brother but my catcher,” he went on. “He will be buried, and not even in a cemetery but on the lower lawn of our house, and in the manner I prescribe,” and Julio banged his fist on the glass-topped coffee table in the rose garden, where Fernandella took her morning coffee, making the delicate china cups jump and chatter like ghostly teeth.
“If you feel so strongly,” said Fernandella, “I will not stand in your way. All I want to know is does the Wizard have anything to do with your decision?”
Within hours of the announcement of Esteban’s murder, the Wizard, who now had sixteen first names in his self-appointed capacity as Grand Defender of the long-defunct One True Church of God’s Redemption and Reaffirmation, appointed Esteban Pimental Bishop of Courteguay, posthumously of course.
“The pension of a deceased bishop is even larger than that of a retired baseball player,” said the Wizard, smiling benevolently.
In the days after the murder, the Wizard was everywhere, lurking like a spy on the grounds of the Courteguayan White House, appearing from behind a wing-back chair or by parting a set of silken curtains.
Hector was devastated that nothing was required of him. Julio took over funeral arrangements. The Wizard sent out invitations to world leaders and religious dignitaries. The Pope, while he declined to attend the service personally, issued a broadly worded statement condemning violence, and in favor of tolerance, understanding, tithing, and opposing family planning.
Julio, once he had frightened off Fernandella, took complete charge of the burial plans. Esteban was to be buried in a Plexiglas coffin, in his favorite baseball uniform, wearing his glove, and in his accustomed position, the catcher’s crouch.
The coffin had to be custom manufactured in Atlanta, and the funeral had to be delayed twice, once for two days, and once for three, because of its late arrival. Some dignitaries grew tired of waiting for the funeral and returned home, the Canadian prime minister among them.
Visiting newspaper reporters, tired of recounting the details of the murder, began to explore the political situation in Courteguay, some even dared to comment on human rights.
Those dispatches were seized by the Freedom Censors, but each reporter received a case of imported liquor. Male reporters were given vouchers good for the services of any prostitute in Courteguay.
The offending material was replaced by press releases from the Courteguayan National Tourist Service, headed Courteguay, Land of Enchantment, and sent out under each reporter’s byline.
JULIO HIRED AN AMERICAN, a feng shui expert who was an immigrant from China, a man who specialized in the design of baseball stadiums, to pick the exact spot for Esteban’s burial. A home plate was installed four feet in front of Esteban’s head, and pitching rubbers were sunk in the lush grass, eight of them, all exactly 60′ 6″ from the plate, but at such angles that none of the eight proposed hurlers would strike any of his compatriots when the ball was hurled over the single plate. The intricate geometrical patterns were such that there could be eight catchers crowded in an appropriate circle about the plate, each receiving pitched baseballs, without interfering with any of the other pitchers or catchers.
The reason the coffin, if it could be called that, had taken so long to prepare—actually it was done in a very reasonable amount of time considering its complexity—was that the Plexiglas container, which allowed the corpse to remain in its preferred position, was equipped with a refrigeration unit complete with a thirty-day supply of energy. There was a huge, forklift-like contraption beneath the container, capable of raising the top of the coffin from three feet below the earth’s surface to four feet above, at the push of a button.
Another button would then release the front wall of the container, allowing it to fall forward. The buttons were on the front inside wall of the container, within easy reach of Esteban’s throwing hand, should he suddenly regain the ability to use it. Instructions for the use of the buttons were in red lettering on the wall, in English, Courteguayan, Spanish, Latin, and French.
When Julio took Fernandella to look at Esteban’s coffin at the Armadillo of Navaronne Fu
neral Parlor in San Cristobel, Julio felt the tingle from wrist to elbow that he used to experience in the moments before a game as he warmed up lazily with Esteban, throwing softly, his arm aware, like a third person, anxious to begin laboring.
Julio shook his right arm vigorously.
“What are you doing?” demanded Fernandella, who was dressed in black, her hair pulled back until she was bug-eyed, looking as if she were a hundred years old.
“He looks just as he did when we played in America,” Julio said. “In fact, he doesn’t look much different than when he was inside your belly so many years ago. My arm wants to toss the ball to him.”
“Mfffft,” said Fernandella. She had never really believed her sons’ stories that they had played catch in her womb.
“He looks exactly as he did on the packet of baseball cards you sent,” Fernandella said. “But why have you done this to him? Can’t you let him find peace in death?”
“His body arrived from America in this position,” replied Julio. “A catcher is what he was before he came to this earth, and what he will be in the next life as well.”
“Then why not let him get on to the next life?”
“I’m not sure his time has come. He was killed by mistake. I think that counts for something.”
Julio put his arm around Fernandella’s crepe-covered shoulder. She felt fragile as a spiderweb.
“Mama, I love him very much. I can’t let him go without giving my best effort. There! Did you feel my arm? It flexed by itself. It wants to pitch. It could only want to pitch if Esteban were nearby—his spirit, I mean. His life force.”
“The Lord works in mysterious ways,” said Fernandella, “but Esteban is dead. He should be allowed to rest in peace.”
The day of the funeral was clear and white. A few thumb-sized bees buzzed lazily over the emerald grass.
“Beautifully symbolic,” was how the Wizard described the burial plot—the pitcher’s rubbers in a circle about the bone-white home plate. The pit, rectangular and black, gaped deep.
The Wizard shielded his eyes from the sun and gazed into the pit. He was eventually able to discern the blue-and-silver workings of the contraption Julio had installed in the bowels of the lawn. The excess dirt had been hauled away, only enough to fill the space from the top of the coffin to the edge of the lawn was left, resting benignly on a carpet of artificial turf.
Julio, dressed in a dark business suit and sunglasses, kept scanning the sky, looking for a sign. For the first time in years he had dreamed of herons, endless rows of them needling the sky, and he ached for Quita Garza, and wondered if Esteban were not the lucky one. The dream made Julio question what he was planning.
“Esteban’s death will unite our people in grief,” said the Wizard, his own eyes slitted against the burning sky. “We will revere Esteban Pimental in death as he was never revered in life. In death he will become larger than life, if you will pardon the contradiction.
“There are only two real powers in our society, baseball and the church. Drawing from both worlds the way he did will make Esteban an idol. And a country without idols is nothing. Politicians make poor idols as Dr. Noir and his many predecessors discovered, always too late.”
“I intend to bring him back to life,” said Julio. “I don’t wish to offend you. But even if the idea does offend you, I intend to do it anyway.”
“How soon?” the Wizard asked. He was wearing a full-length, pure white, silk caftan with scarlet fingers of flames blooming on each sleeve. A few small, mysterious symbols decorated the back of the caftan.
The Wizard who usually favored stars and crescents had never worn these particular signs before. Julio recognized them as being several of the mysterious code signs baseball fans used on their scorecards to record outs, hits, and the advance of base runners.
“Don’t worry,” said Julio, “I will allow the nation time to mourn. A good tragedy will make everyone feel better.”
He recognized the last statement as a direct quote from the Wizard.
“Feel free to predict the resurrection,” he said to the Wizard.
“I only predict sure things,” said the Wizard. “I will be as surprised as everyone else if you succeed. Then, I’ll claim to have known about it all along, but that I did not want to raise false hopes. Let other people take the risks. Remember that if you ever decide to become a politician.”
Julio searched the sky above the brown ridge, which rose like the spine of a dinosaur above the white house. The sky was like fresh-hung sheets. Julio’s eyes watered behind his sunglasses.
Before the funeral service began the international press were allowed five minutes to photograph Esteban sitting upright in his Plexiglas coffin, dressed in his baseball regalia, wearing his catcher’s mitt, his clerical collar visible above his baseball shirt.
The Wizard had arranged to have pews moved from the long-defunct San Barnabas Cathedral, the pews so newly varnished they stuck to the clothes of the mourners. The Wizard thought it would be a nice gesture to allow the old priest who had first instructed Esteban in religion to perform the service.
The Wizard visited the priest personally and assured him it was all right to come out from behind the chain-link fence for the occasion.
The priest refused.
“Well,” said the Wizard, “if one cannot bring the priest to the cathedral, then one brings the priest and the chain-link fence to the cathedral.”
The already makeshift communion rail was replaced by an eight-foot-high piece of frost fencing.
“It is about the same size as the wolf cage at the San Barnabas Zoo,” observed Fernandella wryly.
Beyond the infield the newly named Esteban Pimental Memorial Stadium was jammed with mourners. Various services were conducted, some vaguely religious, other full of swirling colors and mysterious winds, beyond Paganism. When the last ritual was finished, Julio and his family led the procession to the funeral cars and the drive to the mansion at San Cristobel.
Though by necessity the crowd was much smaller, there were still more rituals at the burial ground, including a contingent of teenage girls twirling ribbons until the lawn looked like a pink ocean.
Julio himself pressed the button that lowered the coffin into the earth. As the sod closed over the top of it, Julio signaled the mourners to keep their seats. Starting on the far right Julio, after taking off his jacket and rolling up the sleeves of his white-on-white shirt, produced a box of virginal baseballs and indicated that he was planning to throw a baseball from each of the eight pitchers’ rubbers. He did not use a catcher. Earlier, the geometric genius of the design had been demonstrated by eight pitchers pitching to a circle of eight catchers, the balls flying simultaneously but never colliding.
Julio wound up and fired the ball, the fans sighed collectively to see the greatest pitcher in the world throw. The ball hurtled toward the plate, but instead of passing on to the backstop, it vanished as it crossed the plate. Julio moved to the next pitching rubber. He repeated the exercise eight times in all. Each time the ball vanished as if into the glove of an invisible catcher. Again Julio signaled the mourners to stay in their seats. He waited, expectantly watching the spot where his dead brother had been lowered from sight.
There was a gasp from those assembled as the earth twitched, followed by a sigh as it subsided. A moment later there was another gasp as the earth moved even more, then slowly, the coffin emerged from the ground. It seemed to shudder, shaking off the last of the dirt, like a dog shaking off water. Then the Plexiglas front opened outward and Esteban Pimental stepped from the coffin, white baseballs clutched in the crook of his arm like so many mangos.
Fernandella fainted, though only briefly. She had too many questions to ask to remain unconscious for long. Julio and Esteban embraced.
“You always know the right thing to do,” said Esteban.
“I, too, can read minds,” said Julio.
Under her thick, black veil the Gypsy girl, Celestina, smiled redly.
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br /> FIFTY-EIGHT
THE WIZARD
As he walked up the hill toward his mother’s home Julio was suddenly confronted by three soldiers, their uniforms gleaming like colored steam under the reflection of a white moon and a single streetlight. Their gun barrels glowed blue as they backed him up against a wall, issuing short, terse commands, their movements robot-like.
“Beisbol hombre!” one of them said.
“I am on my way home,” Julio said reasonably. Then, as the tallest pointed his rifle at him in a menacing manner Julio reluctantly raised his hands.
“Beisbol,” repeated the other two soldiers as they cocked their rifles.
“Dr. Noir is my friend,” Julio lied. “You know he has issued a directive that none of the men who play baseball in America are to be harmed.”
Julio knew of no such directive.
The soldiers stepped back a few paces, signaling Julio to remain with his back against the white adobe wall. Julio thought he recognized one of them as a childhood playmate.
“Miguel?” he said. “Miguel Figueroa?”
Too late, Julio realized that the encounter was not by chance. The one who had mouthed the words Beisbol hombre was indeed an acquaintance from childhood. He recalled Miguel Figueroa as an aggressive player who hated to lose.
“Attentiona!” cried Miguel.
Julio slowly brought himself to attention.
From the pocket of his tunic Miguel slowly withdrew a baseball. His smile was pure evil as he held it up for Julio to see. The ball glowed in the moonlight like a prize pearl.
Butterfly Winter Page 20
