The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop

by Robert Coover

  The voice stopped them, had stopped them all. Didn't touch him. Ingram, his arm cocked for that first blow, heard it. He held back. They turned. Brock stood over his son's body and his quiet mournful gaze shamed them all. "No," he said again.

  No. The Proprietor of the Universal Baseball Association, utterly brought down, brought utterly to grief, buried his face in the heap of papers on his kitchen table and cried for a long bad time.

  HE went out. Feeling sour. Undiscoverable sun at four o'clock in the hazy sky. But a kind of glow in the streets, mocking him. Later, he'd have it rain.

  Neck and back stiff from dozing all night on the tabletop. Strange dreams there. Some high hill with ruins on it. They were playing ball up there, bunch of kids, and the ball kept disappearing over the side of the hill. He chased one, had to, thinking all the time: I'll never make it back up. There was something awful down below, but he didn't know what it was. Grabbed up the ball, but it kept slithering out of his hands. Holding it tight to his chest, climbing up with it, he discovered one leg was shorter than the other. The short one was spindly and weak and threatened to buckle under him; the long one, the left one, was thick as an elephant's leg and had to be dragged up. He was crying. They were calling him Greasy-fingers and pushing the ruins down the hill at him. Catch this, Greasyfingers! they hollered. The stones they threw had strange markings on them which they tried to read as they hurtled by.

  Later they wrote on his face and rolled him up in newspapers. His tears spoiled his notebooks and a teacher pushed his face in them. The teacher looked like Zifferblatt, but had a sunburned neck like Rag Rooney. And on and on through the early morning. Not once did he dream of the dead boy.

  At seven, he'd stood. Shakily. He hadn't entirely forgotten about work, it was there in the back of his mind all the time, just at seven especially, but he'd stumbled on his two odd legs directly into the bedroom, freeing himself of shirt and pants on the way, had collapsed on his rumpled bed and slept until midafternoon. Later, he'd discovered he'd torn all the buttons off his shirt.

  It was a long walk to Lou's but he had a lot of time; Lou wouldn't be home until well after five. They'd all be coming, he supposed, the old and the young, all the survivors. By car, train, plane. Lot of them already in town, the old-timers anyway, because of the special ceremonies for Brock. Lot of special ceremonies for Brock. That poor old guy. Still, damn it, that's what he got for fathering more ballplayers. Rutherford couldn't be just one of the passing boys, no, he'd had to try and sanctify his own goddamn blood and name. If he'd been blessed with a name like Rag Rooney, maybe he'd have had fewer illusions. His gut ached with a surfeit of glory and history, and somehow he felt it was Brock's fault.

  Well, Rooney was sorry the kid had got killed—who wasn't —but it had given him a day off, time to think, so perversely, coldly, he was grateful, too. He'd got locked in the season's pace and rituals, gone mindless in the midsummer heat, and now suddenly he'd waked up. He had to shake his boys up, shuffle the line-up, make them move, make them run, get them back into the fight. Yesterday's game with Melbourne Trench's Excelsiors had got underway before Rooney had even realized it. He'd been sure there was something he'd meant to do before, but there was the goddamn ump, hollering to get the game going, and he hadn't been able to think what it was. He'd wondered if he was getting too old maybe. Addled. His stomach had griped. He'd put one calloused hand through his flannel shirt to squeeze and soothe it, watching his Haymakers pile out onto the field.

  Yes, feeling rotten. Need to eat something. Can't eat.

  The Homemakers, the sportswriters were starting to call them, and Pappy's Pantywaists, Rooney's Boobies. He'd scanned the bench, trying to remember what the hell... ? He'd seen Swanee Law sitting there, tensed forward, not his day to pitch, but dressed just the same, popping gum and whooping it up. A pro, all right Goddamn it, he'd be the greatest in the league if he had guys like York and Patterson to back him up. Power and control: Rag Rooney's kind of pitcher. In fact, if he had to choose between Law and the Rutherford kid, Rooney'd still take Law over the long haul. And that was what he'd been thinking about when the dugout phone rang, bringing him the news. He'd turned to Law and said: "Rutherford's dead." Why tell Law first? Rooney wasn't sure. Maybe because he'd sensed Swanee's resentment at getting beat by the kid, thought he might—but no, Law had turned white as a sheet. Rooney had called his ballplayers back in off the field to wait there in the dugout then for the official announcement before going to the showers.

  Street of shops, and the one he was now passing sold flowers. For All Occasions. B. Valentine, Floriculturist & Modeler. In the window, mostly asters, chrysanthemums, and cornflowers, Indian corn in bunches, funeral wreaths. Golden-banded lilies: Chancellor McCaffree's idea. Bancroft plumped for plain old marigolds. And bittersweet. Why not? Heliotropes and night-shades. Bancroft smiled wryly, brushed his eyes. Above the heaped flowers, a conical vase of red and white carnations, disarranged, all leaning to one side as though blown by a wind. Inside the shop, in a humid showcase, there were arrangements of roses, fuchsia, blue flags, hyacinths, gladioli, and calla lilies, set off against sprays of maidenhair ferns. A few orchids. Dense vegetable atmosphere.

  An old man emerged from a back room, wizened, peering dimly over bifocals, smiling faintly, gray apron down his front, holding his hands out limply in front of him. A silvery substance glittered on his fingertips. In the back room, there seemed to be something cooking. "A bouquet," he said; it was hardly a question.

  "Well, I was just sort of looking," Henry said.

  The old man stood beside him, looking too, peeking over the rimless spectacles into the rich damp display case. "An orchid," he said softly.

  "Well, actually—"

  "Extraordinary development," the florist whispered. "Highest point of monocotyledon evolution. Perfection of the imperfect."

  "How's that?" Henry asked. He realized that he, too, was whispering.

  "Unisexual. Utterly impotent without insects. A loner. Exquisite." Mr. Valentine plucked an aster from a counter vase. "Perfection," he explained, roughing its bright head with a sharp-nailed thumb, "is bisexual."

  "Hmm," said Henry.

  "Dull? Perhaps, but multifarious," the florist said with a smile. "I have some pretty comos, if you like. Zinnias, marigolds, and bachelor's-buttons. Quite cheerful in big bunches."

  "I was thinking about a wreath," Henry said.

  "Ah!" Mr. Valentine sorrowed. "I didn't realize." He stepped behind the counter, brought forth a prickly wreath sprayed with silver, black-ribboned. "A popular item."

  Henry took it in his hands. "Why, it's plastic!" he exclaimed.

  "Yes," the florist smiled, "my own work."

  Now Henry noticed the flowers all over the walls. Foxglove, lilies of the valley, primrose, violets, nasturtiums, buttercups, jonquils, sweet peas, streamers of ivy, morning glories, tulips: all plastic. He fingered the wreath. "Really, what I had in mind—"

  *"It will last forever," the old man whispered.

  "But... well, that's not the point, is it?"

  The florist crushed the aster in his blue-veined silvery hand. "We must keep searching, we must carry on the work, we must resist to the end!" he whispered hoarsely.

  "I'll take a white carnation," Henry said.

  In the street once more, wearing the carnation in his lapel, he passed a newsstand.

  DAMON RUTHERFORD DEAD!

  Tragically Felled On

  Brock Rutherford Day

  Pioneer Park, LVI:49—(Urgent) A high inside fast ball thrown by Knickerbocker rookie Jock Casey struck and crushed the skull of Pioneer rookie pitcher Damon Rutherford today, killing him instantly, the first such death in UBA history. In the bottom of the third inning, young Rutherford, already one of the game's immortals . . .

  Rooney snorted. A dead immortal! Who thought up that crap? Of course, you had to feel it: the sudden loss. Even Law felt that. As for the rest of it, the great promise unfulfilled, the history-maker deh
istorified, the record-breaker busted, that was the kind of sentimental claptrap that singed Rooney's weary ass. Oh, yes, he was sick of it! He saw those news guys writing it all down, eyes crossing over their own noses, and saw them for what they were—a pack of goddamn leeches, inventing time and place, scared shitless by the way things really were. History my god. An incurable diarrhea of dead immortals. It was the one thing he and Law didn't see eye to eye on. Law knew all the records in the book by heart, thought everybody else should know them, too. To that extent, he was stupid.

  Soot settled sullenly on the residential section through which Henry walked. The day's glow was gone, and a deep bitter gloom was on him. He looked out, not to sink in. A dog barked at a window. Cars passed. A child smashed ants on the sidewalk with an egg-shaped stone. No, not a stone. Plastic again. Had they finally found it after all these centuries of search? That Stone of great virtue, called a Stone and not a stone? Next thing, they'd be going off the gold standard, filling Fort Knox with plastics. The quintessence, huantan, the sacred stuff, though the ants might disagree. He was early; just five.

  "'I hear they went for Casey after," one of the boys was saying, just killing time on the train.

  "Did they rough him up? The papers don't say anything—"

  "Brockheld them off."

  "Well, that's right, it wouldn't have . . . changed things. I wonder if he... you know, threw it on purpose?"

  Now Swanee Law joined them, leaning his big seriocomic head into their midst, whispering as though hatching some plot: "Ah called up old Fenn. Don't say nothin', but he figgers it's purty sure. Case shook Chaunce off twice."

  "What'd O'Sheacall?"

  "He ain't talkin'. But he and ole Case was roomies, and they say Chaunce's moved out. Like as how he's skeered or somethin'."

  Rooney grinned to watch the studied pucker on Law's big face. You couldn't love a sick bastard like that, but you had to admit: he was one helluva ballplayer. Rooney recalled the game against the Pioneers four days ago, when, humiliated in the eighth by those two homers and not a prayer of a chance to win, Law had come back in the ninth tougher than ever, could have pitched another fifteen, twenty, thirty innings. Nothing ever bothered the sonuvabitch for longer than an inning. He brooded sometimes, but not really about anything, it was just one of those mood shifts of his. Organic. He wasn't exactly stupid either, but there were some connections most people made, Law didn't make.

  "Whaddaya mean, Swanee?" somebody asked. "You think Casey's a little... off?"

  Law turned on his holy/concemed/studious/fatherly/ moralizing pan and whispered: "We don't know yet."

  "Ahh sheeeittt!" griped Rooney. "You ladies are making me sick! Pitcher throws a duster, the batter don't duck. Well, hell, that's his tough luck."

  "Behind the ear, Pappy. That's pretty far inside."

  "Ole Fenn he's purty sure he's got a case," Law insisted.

  "Got a case is right," said Rooney. "He's got a case of political buboes, that's what he's got." They all grinned, but Law's heart wasn't in it; that boy had real ambitions, all right. Rooney truly hated McCaffree and all his pious Legalists, and it bugged him that Law was one of them. In love with his own silly name probably. "Why, I'm surprised at you, Law. After as many guys as you've dropped to their butts!"

  Law leaned back, lifting his hands in mock protest, expression of abused innocence crossed with collusive irony on his big face: "Ah pitches 'em close, Rag, but Ah don't aim tuh hurt nobody."

  "Well, you're not as good a shot as Casey, that's all."

  "Aw, Rag," said Law, but it was still more than an off-balance filling of shocked silence: Rooney saw by their expressions he'd got to them all with that one.

  Raglan Rooney. Ragbag, they called him his rookie year, Year X. And then it was Rag. The Ragger. Coined some of the most famous obscenities in UBA history. Now in his forty-seventh consecutive year with the Haymakers. Forty-seven. Henry trembled. Played first base, coached under Gus Maloney when he got too old to play, took over the team when Gus quit to grab control of the Bogglers Party, been at the Haymaker helm ever since. And not a ball game in those forty-seven years he didn't try to win. He was the worst loser the UBA had ever known, and he was goddamn proud of it The old Haymakers he played for won three different pennants and were always in the running—in spite of Crock Rubberturd and his goddamn Era. Oh boy, Rooney had to laugh at that one! How could guys like McCaffree and Flynn and Bancroft come up with such a dumb idea? Had they forgot how it was? Immortal deadheads.

  He wondered what Flynn was going to do now. Probably ought to get rid of Casey. Otherwise, the whole damn team was in for it. Besides, Casey probably wouldn't be much good now anyhow. "Killer," they were already calling him. But Rooney knew Sycamore Flynn well enough to know he'd never do what was smart. Hell, he'd probably even start feeling sorry for that young sonuvabitch.

  They pulled in. Through the window as they unloaded, he could see that Lew and Fanny Lydell had come to meet the train; darkly wrapped, somber faces, pious tilt to their heads, carrying umbrellas. Long Lew was even beginning to look like his father-in-law—silly bastard was forgetting bis own immortality, wanted to be Chancellor instead. Fanny McCaffree was her daddy's girl, all right. Hadn't plumped out at all. Must be pushing fifty, and she still had that long stringy spinsterish frame she had back in XLIII when Long Lew split it for her in the Knick dugout to win a bet with Jaybird "Wall. Her butt hadn't even spread much, for all the action. Not a peep out of her that day, no thrashing about, just an imbecile loll of her head off the players' bench, eyes bulging on that birdy face, and something like a soft gurgle in her long white throat. They had all laughed to watch it rip. The Knicks really packed them in for a while after that, and there were always clusters of the curious nosing around the dugout after games, hoping for a rerun. If Rooney'd had any daughters or even a wife, he would have tried to work up something like it in the Haymakers' ball park. No imitators of that boy, though. Long Lew humbled them all. Now, in an unflattering droop, he extended his hand and said: "We're glad you've come."

  "Henry!" cried Lou. "Gee, I been looking for you! I just come from your place, it was all dark and I thought—Henry, is there something . . . ? I mean, Mr. Zifferblatt nearly— what's the matter, Henry?"

  "I'd like to listen to some music, Lou. Would you mind?"

  "Music! Well, no, but—Henry! why, what's—you look awful!"

  "Nothing. A... a death. I—"

  "Oh!" Lou's round weight sagged softly. He stared at the white flower. "I'm... I'm sorry, Henry. Who... ?"

  "I don't feel like talking about it, Lou. I just thought, well, I dropped by, I thought maybe some music might..."

  "Why, sure, Henry!" Lou squeaked, truly concerned. He fumbled in the bulge of his coat, panting lightly, came up with the keys, dropped them, stooped for them with a tender grunt, tried three or four in the lock before he found the right one. "Mr. Zifferblatt was in a, not a very good mood, but I explained something was wrong, that it was just, you know, seemed like something was on your mind, and—it'll be all right, Henry, you'll see, he's not inhuman, he'll—" They went in.

  Dark vaults. Shhh. Musty Gothic odors. Candles. The transepts ablaze with innumerable waxlights. That's it. Stop fighting it. You loved him. You don't have to be ashamed about that. Let the ballplayers come in now. Let them fill the cathedral. Pioneers, regulars and old veterans alike, the first to enter, to pass by—

  Lights: Lou switched on the overhead, bringing muss and clutter to view. Not a disorder so much as a clumsy order, everything bumped out of place, but its proper place still plainly evident. Henry closed his eyes against it, sought the dark and higher spaces.

  "I'm sorry, things are kind of a mess," Lou said, his welcome ritual. "Can... can I take your hat, Henry?"

  Henry looked up at his friend. Moonface abloom with pity. Wrong emotions. One day, he realized, they would grow apart. He gave Lou his hat. Lou plodded with it and his own hat to the middle of the room, hesitated, seemed not t
o know what to do with them. "Do you mind?" Henry asked, reaching for the switch of a floor lamp nearby. Get that damn overhead off.

  "No!" cried Lou, then clambered anxiously forward, hat in each hand, to help: with Henry's he batted the shade askew. "I'm all thumbs," he complained, putting Henry's hat on his own head and reaching forward again. Henry backed away, but almost miraculously, the light came on and the shade was righted. Lou turned toward him, grinning sheepishly under the hat two sizes too small for him. Henry switched off the overhead.

  While Lou wandered absently around the room with the hats, Henry turned to the shelves, thumbed thoughtfully through the recordings. Have to be careful, no woeful threnodes, he cautioned himself broadly, no cheap sentiment. It was welling up in him; he needed something with precision, discipline, control. Like the kid himself. Harmonious, though. Nothing cacaphonic. Just damp cool concrete, a floor—his eye fell on the Archduke. The aristocrat. Third movement: bottom of the third. McCaffree wanted a full orchestra, something not just for the boy but for the whole Association, but no, Bancroft had his way. It was right. He put it on.