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

by Robert Coover

  "Can I fix you something, a drink, coffee, pop . .. ?" Lou had rid himself of the hats, but wore his coat still.

  "No—well, some sherry maybe," Henry said. "If it's not too much trouble."

  "No trouble!" Lou assured him, ricocheting kitchenward off a table and an easy chair, in that heedless spongy way of his.

  Throughout the room, equipment hummed. Henry settled back in a rocker, waited, eyes closed, for the piano's first soft footfalls. And they entered in. The somber throng, the Chancellor and his people, friends and foes, but foes none to the spirit this boy had shown them, the majesty in the mere sweep of a pitching arm, the fulfillment in the mere acceptance of a catcher's signal. Magic, yes, yes it was, had been. Resonant strings filled the air with their solemn dialogue, violin speaking of brilliance and sensitivity, cello of maturity and might. The daily upward struggle and the underlying continuity of the—or did they really say so much, Bancroft wondered. No, no—they said nothing, they simply . . . simply were true.

  Henry sipped the sherry: the moist remnant of passage, sponged from the walls of sepulchres. He smiled gently at that, watching Barney Bancroft, chin in hand, suffer mutely in the cathedral's hollow gloom. Brother to the father, Barney was a father to the son. And beautiful, yes, he was a beautiful ballplayer. Was. Murdered by the past tense and laid in a lonesome grave, the black pit of history: he was. Was beautiful. Take it easy, Barney. Just love. Forget the rest.

  Tick tock tick tock: high percussive pips beat the thin truth off the stained-glass windows, while far below, the strings held long painful plaintive chords, as though trying to hold time itself back. But is it enough, Barney? McCaffree wanted to know. "This is more than one man's funeral." The piano said: "It is done." Descending. "Yes, well, you mean the Requiem, I suppose." McCaffree nodded. The violin objected, rose in protest against the injustice of it, but saw at last it was futile and accepted. The cello, humbly, agreed. "All right," said Barney. In the cathredral: "Amen." Lou put on the Requiem.

  "Did he leave any... family?"

  A son? Yes, he could have, he could have at that, and his name ... ? "No. Only a father. And a brother." And how did Brock Jr. take it, what was on his mind?

  "Henry! Is it your, your... ?"

  Henry hesitated. The question had taken him by surprise. "No," he said finally, "not exactly."

  Their urgent appeal for mercy crashed suddenly in his ears, on all sides of him, the agonized pulsing of hearts clamoring for union with his own, reaching—ahh shee-it now! muttered a familiar voice in the back pew, and Henry grinned sheepishly. He saw by Lou's face it had all been misunderstood.

  "A... a child then?"

  "Nineteen, twenty."

  "Ah!" Lou shook his head, stared down at his feet. He was out of the coat now: it lay heaped on the table like a body. "That's awful, Henry!"

  "You know, Lou, when Jim Creighton died, the boys crowned his grave with a fantastic monument. It had crossed bats on it and a baseball cap and even a base and up on top a giant baseball. Or maybe it was the world. They probably no longer knew the difference."

  "I didn't know he . . . died, too. I'm sorry, Henry. When...?"

  "In 1862." Lou blinked. "And you know what else they put on that monument, Lou? You won't believe it!"

  "No.Wh-what?"

  "A scorebook!"

  Lou's expression remained unchanged. He didn't get it. All he could find to say was: "He ... he was a ballplayer, then."

  "Who, Jim Creighton?"

  "No, your . . . uh . . . " Bastard: that's what Lou was thinking.

  "Yes." And what had Barney ordered? Barney and Brock and the Chancellor?

  ... Oh, when I die, jist bury me

  With my bat and a coupla balls,

  And jist tell 'em Verne struck out, boys,

  If anybody calls...

  Yes, maybe Verne Mackenzie had a big monument like that somewhere. But not Damon. The music tried to tell him what. Simple yet complex. Intricate but harmonious. The light he brought to the league. Yes, a lamp maybe, Aladdin's lamp, the boy with the magic arm...

  But then, suddenly, the thin voice of a small boy cried out, a boy in terror, boy gripping a baseball, gift of the slain giant, boys all, hurt, terrified, the emptiness, the confusion— Henry gasped. What kind of a world was this? Cum . . . vix . . . iustus . . . iustus—children! sit securus! He sighed, bowed his head. No, no, even worse than that, much worse. Barney, afraid of giving way, tried to think about something else, the larger picture, the season ahead—how would he get them moving again, their minds off of it? Salva me! Salva me! "It's how Damon would have wanted it, fellows ..." No, he could never do it that way. Maybe Flynn could. Even that old cynic Rooney could probably do it. But Barney Bancroft couldn't. He gazed across the nave toward Sycamore Flynn and his Knickerbockers—that kid catcher Chauncey O'Shea, loosed in tears again, undone by it: how many careers would be wrecked by that bean ball? Something . .. something was changed . . . somehow, inalterably, the entire Association had—Barney tried to think, but the music was too loud. I shouldn't have pitched him, I shouldn't have pitched him! He struggled against the mad crescendo. The perfect game had already sunk away into a kind of unbelievable golden age, long lost, forever inaccessible. Where have I taken us?

  Wrong! "No, it's all wrong!" Barney cried to himself. His mind bolted ahead, racing through Mozart's creative operations, the way he chased flies, fielded grounders, threw to first, swung, ran . . . smooth, faultless, but something was wrong. Not just the words, but the music too. "Artifice! Arrogance!'* The bogus hell's-better-than-nothing comfort. He realized suddenly that he hated the thing, hated the shabby neatness, the trumped-up despair, he wanted to lay into the whole damn outfit, kick them while they played, make them sing while running the basepaths until they dropped! "I hate it!" he cried out. "Stop it!"

  Lou, lurching, sent his drink flying—needle shrieked insanely across the record, knocked against the center post with a resounding clock! heard through all the many-speakered system, bounced back to report one "lux aeterna!" then rejected itself.

  "I... I'm sorry, Lou." What was happening to him?

  "Is ... is there something else you'd . . . ?" His friend watched him, wide-eyed. Calm down. Funny, after all. See poor Lou. His gloom runneth over. Seeping darkly into the rug's earth-brown nap. Stunned, Fenn and Barney stunned. Rooney winked.

  Henry grinned. "Put on the Purcell."

  "You mean the ... the funeral . . . ?" Lou in a state of total and mournful perplexity. For the day, it would seem, was dark and troubled. "Are you sure, Henry? That's kind of..." He wrinkled his nose.

  "I don't care, put it on." Confusion and emptiness, teehee and boohoo, get it straight from the master's whinny!

  "Well ... all right, if . . . it's really what you'd like," Lou said, and revolved irresolutely, poor old tub in an unexpected weather, to search out the record.

  Henry stood, poured more sherry, drank it off at a dispreciative gulp. The sepulchral dew: ha ha! He switched to bourbon. Corn liquor, the really basic stuff. Yes, let's have a little fire, boys! And feet on the ground! The fatal hour comes on apace!

  Ruefully, the sackbuts poop-poop-dee-pooped, discreetly distant. In bitter cold, through streets draped in black, slowly advanced the pallbearers. Hop, skip, and a long cold shuffle. The frozen corpse rocked in the hollow box: whump! tum-tum-tum clump! Long live the dead queen! Yes, it took a leering toper to lay it on the line! Ho ho! who left this life, and is gone to that blessed place where only his harmony can be exceeded —whump! Henry drank whiskey and laughed aloud.

  Lou stuffed himself, shrinkingly, in a shadow. "Henry ... ?" he whimpered from darkness.

  Trompetta! blaa-aa-att! and a mocking rumble of the tympanic gut! Man that is born of woman, woman that is laid by man! Blaa-aa-att! He cometh out! He goeth in! Raunchy giggle of trumpets. Pallbearer Rooney is giggling. Giggling hysterically. It infects them all. Oh that goddamn Rooney! Hee hee! Spare us, Lord!

  "Shall I... take it of
f, Henry, or... ?"

  "Oh no! he is much lamented!" Tee hee hee hee hee hee, boo hoo hoo hoo, tee hee hee hee, boo hoo hoo hoo, ha ha ha ha— oops! the body bounces out! they pop it in again! out! in! it's one-old-cat, boys, with the earthly remains! Hee hee ha ha ha ho ho hee haa haaa!

  "Oh, Lou!" he cried, holding his sides, "why do we go on?"

  Suddenly inspired, he turned to the machine, flipped it up to a higher speed. "Thou knowest, Lord!" they piped. Yes! he knew it! A tavern song, after all! The secrets of our hearts! "Tonight!" whispered Rooney, jigging along under the burden.

  "Jake's!" The Hole in the Wall. Tweet-tweet-tootle and a rattle of tin spoons on a hollow hilarious bouncing skull!

  He left, hatless, cold wind on his wet face, his funeral a shambles.

  Play resumed. It always resumes, every dying old bastard's despair. But first, the night before, a troupe of the old-timers gathered in Jake's Bar behind the Patsies' Park. Brock wasn't there, of course, and McCaffree stayed away, but Pioneers Gabe Burdette and Frosty Young were present, and Willie O'Leary and Jonathan Noon and doleful Barney Bancroft. And there was beer-bellied Surrey Moss and Mose Stanford and Chad Collins and Toothbrush Terrigan. Young Brock Jr. was among the absent: he'd bolted for home the minute the burial was over, dragging his missus behind him, and there, pressed by an inexplicable urgency, had heisted her black skirts, and without even taking time to drop his pants, had shot her full of seed: yes, caught it! she said, and even he felt that germ strike home.

  It was Rag Rooney's idea, this gathering of the grieving, and he was of course on hand, salting his ulcer with bourbonic acid, and with him came his old boss and crony Gus Maloney, blowing smoke and stoking his political machine with good humor and an occasional round of drinks. Some of the boys on the inside, too, Seemly Sam Tucker and Big Bill McGonagil, a dozen or more. Hometown Pastimer boss Cash Bailey showed up, though his Patsies were on the road, faced the Beaneaters in their park the next day, but the Beans' manager Winslow Beaver was there, too, so it was even up. The other managers came, too, why not? The Excelsiors' Melbourne Trench and the Bridegrooms' Wally Wickersham and Timothy Shadwell of the Keystones, last year's Manager of the Year but this year's most promising goat: he needed a drink. Even Sycamore Flynn. It was funny about Sic'em: they all loved the bastard, pure gold the man's heart, yet this night they couldn't get close to him. Wasn't his fault Yet something was happening. They all felt it: his Knicks were gonna get it. Things had to get evened up. Gawky Jock had jinxed them all. Flynn set them up and left early, a relief to everyone.

  Sandy Shaw brought his guitar and Long Lew Lydell his reputation. Jason (Jaybird) Wall was on the scene, dropping rubber bugs in drinks, passing out explosive cigars, and slipping whoopee cushions under couching hunkers, the only consolation being that, fairly soon, Jaybird would pass out, bringing a sodden peace to the place, the more appreciated for its contrast to the persecutions preceding. And two great player-coaches from the Golden Age of the XX's turned up: the Knicks' Whipper Will Andersen and the Bridegrooms' Puritan Ballou, both Hall of Famers. And Yip Yick Ping, the Chinese lefty, and Prince Hal Scarlet and Chin-Chin Chicker-ing and Cueball McAuliffe and Agapito Bacigamupo. And there came Bruiser Brusatti and No-Hit Nealy and Birdie Deaton and Jumpin' Joe Gallagher and a bunch of their old teammates with them.

  Intense, brilliant, but isolate Patrick Monday looked in, but Pat didn't stay long: Monday, it was remarked by all, had aspirations above and beyond the temporal kingdom of elbow-benders. No love for old Maloney either, and matters might have got touchy had Monday stuck around. Gus had squandered a lifetime building up his Bogglers Party, and knocking off McCaffree's Legalist gang was almost a sure bet, if not this year, then in LX, and now, just when the old man had a chance at last, along came Monday to chew him up. Monday was starting his new party from scratch, after all, he had to get his followers from somewhere, and where he was getting them from mostly, it seemed, was from the ranks of Boggier soreheads. Especially the young ones. Patience, young fellas, we all die, you'll get your chance. At a corner table, Gus puffed, laughed loud at jokes, and bought rounds, while Monday, with that maddening self-assurance of his, stood coolly at the bar and dropped the now-familiar phrases: the imperative of excellence, freedom through constancy, the contagion of confusion, pilgrimage back to majesty—Maloney's laughter boomed, the coins rang, but his ears quivered with attention. He slipped Jaybird Wall a buck. "The intransigent will of history!" Monday declaimed, and sat back: blaa-aat! moistly. He smiled faintly at the bar-wide rhubarb and pulled out.

  Funny thing about real gloom, Bancroft reasoned; it had a giddy core. Made hard things soft, silly things true, grim things comic. Psyche, up against the wall, had its own defenses. Bancroft, the rationalist, disbelieved in reason. It was the beast's son, after all, not the father, and if it had a way of sometimes getting out of hand, there were always limits: it lacked the old man's cunning. And it had no hands. Re: back again, the primitive condition, the nonreflective operating thing: res. His son: if he couldn't scare the kid into submission, he could always tickle a rib and break all the connections. Rooney, sourest man in Association history, was staggering flop-limbed around the bar in an old man's fit of spittle-chinned cackling. Drunk as a skunk and he shouldn't even be drinking: "Hell, it split open hours ago, I gotta sterilize it!" And a wild rattle of hysterical laughter. The point was: Rooney was afraid to die. Pushing seventy. "Whole digestive tract nothing but one long raw sore. If he stopped to think about it, he couldn't keep going. So the old cerebrum got its switch flipped. But suicide... ?

  Was he intentionally feeding that inner volcano, hoping for the dark? Maybe, maybe not. Plastered, after all, he loosened up. Bile stopped pumping. Bourbon wasn't medicine exactly, but it might be a slower sweeter poison. Barney drank his own, listened to Sandy and the boys, waxed slowly soft and barmy: he received thanks, relayed through the skittish sconce, but sent him by the other fellow . . .

  I been gatherin' blisters in the bull pen,

  Out here where the green grasses grow,

  But you've kept me awaitin' so long, man,

  The grass is all co-huh-vered with snow!

  The grasses was all turnin' yeller

  When our ace he got sent to the show'rs,

  But ya went'n sent in some other feller,

  And left me a-out here apickin' flow'rs!

  I been gatherin' blisters in the bull pen,

  Out here where the ...

  "It was a nice funeral, Barney," Tim Shadwell said, leaning close. Tim was the greatest pitcher in Association history until Brock Rutherford came along to wipe out all his records. How did he feel about that? That it was a nice funeral. "Fenn told me you had a lot to do with it."

  "Not so much," Barney said, smiling faintly. Did rue sit so heavily on him? Tim was the fourth man to pass his bar-end perch, go glum, release a hushed lament. Guilt. The sons banded together. Old man psyche had his hands full, all right. Legalism. Was Tim a Legalist? We all were. McCaffree was in, wasn't he? Whoa, Barney! Slipping your stitches. "Slitching my stipples."

  "Howzat?" Tim leaned closer, drunk, sincerely. Sincerely-drunk. Looked like his eyes might sincerely cross. Not more than a week ago, Barney's pile-driving Pioneers had shattered Shadwell's crumbling Keystones, socking them out of second with a three-game swamping sweep and they were still in a full-tilt tumble. Shattered Shadwell. Tuckered Tim. Didn't he hate? Well, talk instead about the funeral. Community of pain and beauty.

  "I said, can I buy you a drink?"

  "You owe me one," tumbling Tim said flatly, and leaned away.

  I know thet I give a lotta passes,

  I know thet I ain't no more a pup,

  But yer love for me is like these grasses,

  Yer love fo-hor me is all dried up!

  I been gatherin' blisters in the bull pen...

  Barney caught Jake Bradley's eye, and Jake filled them up. Grieved shake of the bald pate: they grievedly shook to ratify. Tough. It was. Poor Br
ock. "You'll pull out," Barney said.

  "I hope so, Barney," Tim replied, sucking in deeply the dark bar air. "The sinking Stones: boy, those news guys really eat you up when you're down." Words of wisdom from the Manager of the Year. Tim reached for his drink, knocked it over. Full-tilt tumble. Clunk of the year. "God, I've had enough," he said sheepishly. As Shadwell righted his glass, Bancroft saw his hand was shaking. Too-tight Tim. Called for Jake again. "Another one, Jake. And a bar rag."

  I wish that you would reconsider

  And let po-hore me back in the game!

  The grasses is brown and they're bitter,

  And you have forgo-hotten my name!

  I been gather in' blisters in the bull pen,

  Out here where the green grasses grow,

  But you've kept me awaitin' so long, man,

  The grass is all co-huh-vered with snow!

  Well, it was some gathering, this wake, bar packed to overflowing, and what was it for? it was hard to tell. It was like they'd all been squeezed into this big retort, Jake's athanor, seeking a transformation, a way of going on with it, some viable essence unaltered by the boy's death that they could start over with, and to be sure, the heat was on.