Spondulix: A Romance of Hoboken

by Di Filippo, Paul

  The warped notes of the song eventually cohered themselves into tune Rory recognized as Sousa’s “Liberty Bell March.” Otherwise known as “The Monty Python Theme.”

  Behind the band marched the opposing team. Uniformed in new silver suits with gold piping, they presented a motley yet somehow familiar aspect.

  A little light-skinned black boy appeared from his hat’s insignia to hold the post of captain. He held aloft the hand of a pretty Oriental girl in a premature victory clasp. A fat lad, a Hasidic kid, and two introverted nerds playing Game- boys formed the second rank. A pair of tough-looking girls followed with arms defiantly linked in tomboyish bravado. Paying no attention to his feet, the last kid stumbled along scribbling in a notebook.

  Bringing up the rear, the supporters of the visiting team, relatives and friends, exhibited varying degrees of sheepishness at being thus co-opted, although a few had fallen into the madcap spirit of the parade, bowing and waving to the spectators.

  The procession diverged from the straightest path, winding in and among the trees to prolong the spectacle. Finally they came to a rousing halt at home plate. With a final flourish of his baton Erlkonig brought the music to a ragged end. One of the Beer Nuts handed Erlkonig a megaphone; others were staking umbrellas into the ground and setting up chairs and tables of refreshments, all unloaded from a Stahl Soap panel-truck driven by Harry Lieberman.

  Erlkonig activated his loudspeaker. “Fellow citizens of Hoboken, allow me to introduce our fair city’s newest Little League team—the Near-Beer Nuts.’” Loud dutiful applause arose from the fans of the visitors. “We’re getting a late start on the season, but we expect to catch up fast and eventually take the championship. Someday you’ll be able to boast to your grandchildren that you were here today. So sit back, relax, and get ready to enjoy some major-league ball-playing!”

  Erlkonig hung the speaker from his belt. Approaching Umpire Prignano, Erlkonig shook hands enthusiastically with the old man. Rory thought to see a wink flash between the two.

  “Call ’em as you see ’em, Ump!” Erlkonig admonished.

  “Atsa my style!” Prignano turned to the crowd and, shouting “Play ball!”, he signaled the start of the game in his customary manner: clasping one biceps and making a pumping motion.

  Spann wore a hangdog expression. “I told you, Rory, I told you so.”

  “Hey, the game hasn’t even started yet, Otis. Just give it your best shot.”

  “I’ll try.”

  Erlkonig approached Addie and Rory with sly and oily deference. “How you folks doing? I assume you’re both fully recovered from the Oh Pee last week?”

  Rory tried to moderate his residual anger at Erlkonig. “No thanks to you! Only luck allowed us to escape without a sparkler up our tails. You behaved like an irresponsible idiot, Earl.”

  Erlkonig placatingly held up his empty hands, displaying parchment-colored palms. “No fun without risk, moll. You can’t go through life wrapped in a six-foot condom.”

  The absurd image conjured up by Erlkonig made Rory laugh despite himself. Along with the audacious entrance arranged by Erlkonig, the metaphor went a long way toward dissolving the anger lodged in the basically easy-going bosom of Rory Honeyman. Nostalgically, he recalled his initial fascination with the Nuts. The world would definitely lose some of its edge without Erlkonig and his kind. In the end, here under the benevolent sun with Addie by his side, Rory discovered he could not hold or even further express his grudge.

  Sensing this capitulation, Erlkonig smiled and clapped Rory on the back. “Where are you guys sitting? I don’t see no chairs for you.”

  “I usually stand,” said Rory.

  “Screw that, moll! You gonna make your fine-looking lady stand too? Where’s your head at? Look, come sit with us. Plenty of extra seats, lots of goodies. This is a friendly game, right? No hostilities, just good clean fun.”

  “Addie, what do you say?”

  “Whatever you decide, Rory.”

  “Okay, why not?”

  “Swell, shell! C’mon.”

  The three walked over to the Beer Nuts bivouac. Under the umbrellas webbed lawn chairs—backrests and feetrests angled for comfort—clustered like feeding dinosaurs around a swamp. Five chairs stood apart from the others. Two of the five chairs had occupants. In the leftmost seat sat Suki Netsuke, perusing a copy of Swank, taken from a stack of bottom-feeder skin magazines on the ground beside her. Presumably she was studying the sleazy publication for art-related reasons, and not sexual stimulation. From time to time she would rip a page out for future folding. In any case, the real or faux allure of the magazine offered a rude pretext for her not greeting them.

  At that very moment Rory realized why Netsuke had been so frosty with him, commencing with the Outlaw Party. She was jealous! Addie irked her! Rory felt a mixture of pride at his new status and sadness for what had been lost.

  The empty chair next to Netsuke lured Erlkonig, who dropped extravagantly down into it, kissing Netsuke on the cheek. In the middle chair rested Lewis Sterling, financier and investor. Suitless today, he wore khaki shorts, huaraches, and a pearl-buttoned, embroidered cattle-baron shirt. Rory did not care to sit next to this fellow, but Addie, with feminine diplomacy, had already taken the chair farthest from Netsuke, leaving Rory no choice.

  Rory lowered himself into the lounger. Beaming, Sterling reached over to shake his hand. Rory took it reluctantly.

  “Honeyman! Mighty fine to see y’all again! Maybe today we’ll get to have our little confab that was cut short t’other night.”

  “I don’t know—” temporized Rory.

  Erlkonig reached across Sterling to stick a cold beer in Rory’s hand, an already opened bottle drawn from a handy cooler. Rory mindlessly accepted.

  “Thanks, Earl.”

  “Plenty more where that came from. Man, this is the life, isn’t it? When I was freezing my skinny ass on the mean streets of Manhattan, I would have blown a goat for a deal like this. Just goes to show: you never know when Lady Luck will get her panties wet for you.”

  Rory started to caution Erlkonig about his lewd language when more music drew his attention away. Hy Rez had popped a CD into a boombox. The unmistakable guitar work of Eric Clapton playing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” heralded the start of the game. (The subsequent hours would reveal that this home-burnt CD held approximately one hundred and fifty cover versions of this immemorial song, by everyone from Enrico Caruso to Madonna.)

  Out on the field Umpire Prignano was just flipping a coin to decide who would bat first. The Near-Beer Nuts’ captain called heads and won. Honeyman’s Heroes took to the outfield. As Prignano was pocketing his coin, Rory was struck by its odd size and gleaming newness. Must be a Sacajawea dollar.

  Rory contemplated the condensation-slicked beer he held. Rather early for a drink, but his hangover still lingered, and a little hair of the dog certainly wouldn’t hurt. He lifted the bottle toward Addie in mute entreaty to join him. “No, thanks,” she said, her lips primly compressed and her eyeglasses riding low on the tip of her nose like a censorious librarian’s. Rory got nervous. What was her sudden problem? She had put away her share of booze last night. Did she find the Beer Nuts so uncongenial? Was Netsuke freaking her out with the open-air porn perusal?

  Rory hardly knew what he himself felt about the Beer Nuts anymore. True, they were crafty, amoral and merciless. But they were also honest, unaffected and authentic. Would he want them to act plastic and unimaginative like the majority of the people he met every day? The world had gotten a lot harsher since the wild and idealistic days of his youth. Fringe folks like the Beer Nuts represented some dwindling ecological reservoir of fuck-it-all, slack-worshipping rebels. Everybody today wanted life to be utterly safe. Where had twenty years of safety gotten him? Just that much closer to a penniless old age and the grave. No, he had grown tired of illusory security, tired of worrying about every little bump in the road, tired of vainly seeking comfort and reassurance by playing acco
rding to everyone else’s rules. The Beer Nuts were his only friends in the world, aside from Addie. They might not be perfect—who was?—but he would continue to associate with them proudly, despite anything contemning glances from the World and his Wife.

  Still, he certainly didn’t want to alienate Addie. He reached over to squeeze her hand reassuringly. “Don’t worry about anything, hon. Okay?”

  She squeezed back and smiled gamely. Rory felt he had been given permission to enjoy himself, and so took his first swig of beer. The swallowed brew left a metallic taste behind, and Rory studied the label. Good old New Amsterdam. Hmmm, must be his Tyvek-coated palate acting up. He took another chug, and this gulp tasted better.

  The first batter for the Near-Beer Nuts had positioned himself at the plate, and the Heroes’ pitcher—in point of fact, Tiran Porter’s wiry daughter, Japonica—was winding up for the pitch. Tongue protruding slightly from the corner of her mouth, Japonica Porter finally hurled the ball with force and precision. The spheroid sailed right through the strike zone and into the catcher’s mitt.

  “Ball one.’” hollered Prignano.

  Coach Spann and a dozen parents instantly avalanched down on Prignano like ugly on an ape. The desiccated old man, arms folded across his bony chest, simply let them shout themselves hoarse, as imperturbable as a cigar-store Indian. When the tumult had lessened, he said, “If you don’t like-a my call, you complain to the commissioners. But right now we’re gonna get on-a with the game.”

  The crowd fell back, defeated. Japonica Porter limbered up. Her next pitch rocketed through space. This time the batter—that pudgy mini-Nerfball—connected solidly. Rory watched in astonishment as the ball soared high and far. Its curving flight ended at the window of an apartment building with the sound of smashing glass.

  The batter seemed as astonished as the crowd. He stood stock still for a moment, then tossed his bat aside and began to huff and puff around the bases to the cheers of his teammates.

  The discarded wooden bat had landed close to Rory’s chair. He retrieved it. A hairline circle at the top of the bat outlined a plug.

  “This—this bat’s been corked!” the horrified Rory said.

  Erlkonig snatched the bat away. “Don’t get your undies in a twist, moll. Ain’t nothing you can do about these minor enhancements. Just sit down and watch the game.”

  “No, this isn’t fair. I’m going to stop this farce.”

  “Forget it. Prignano won’t let you. Once he’s bought, he stays bought. You’ll just disappoint all the parents and kids.”

  “What about the disappointment my guys will feel when they lose to a bunch of damned cheaters?”

  “We’re not talking about real disappointment in that case, man. Just a valuable lesson in the basic unfairness of life.”

  Rory stood in outrage a minute longer. The Near-Beer runner came trotting heavily around third base and into home. Loud applause from his teammates greeted the completion of his circuit.

  The clapping triggered an involuntary flashback in Rory. Suddenly he was sitting in the stands in Mexico City, watching the Olympic track events. Smith and Carlos were running their hearts out. They won their medals, made their political gestures, got expelled from future competitions. Then nearly the same thing had happened to Rory himself. Had the system delivered justice then? Why was he supporting it so heartily now? Just because his own ox was getting gored? Shouldn’t subversion of the system be encouraged? Yet what about fair play?

  Rory felt the energy and indignation drain oddly out of him, leaving him dizzy. The ethical and practical issues confused him suddenly He couldn’t see straight. What was happening to him? Wearily he sank back into his seat, and automatically took another swig of his beer.

  Erlkonig smiled at Rory’s sudden complicity in the cheating. “Glad to see you waking up and smelling the coffee, shell.”

  Next to swagger to the plate: one of the tough-looking little girls. Prignano called four balls on her, and she advanced to first base. As soon as the pitcher turned her back, the girl on base stole second.

  Little League rules allowed stealing only during the second half of each game. Another mass protest ensued. Prignano endured the verbal assaults as stoically as he had the earlier round. Coach Spann’s face shone floridly, streaked with sweat. The game continued.

  League rules offered two ways to retire a side during play. The team at bat must rack up either three outs or fifteen runs.

  Honeyman’s Heroes, hot, thirsty, demoralized, stumbled in from the field with the score fifteen to zero in favor of the Near-Beer Nuts. Half an inning of a scheduled double-header had passed. So had thirty minutes. The audience settled in for a long day.

  While Coach Spann poured Gatorade down the throats of his weary warriors and tried to boost his team’s spirits, two things occurred. Erlkonig claimed Rory’s empty bottle and stuck another beer in his hand, and Sterling commenced to speechify.

  Sterling’s glib voice washed over a hazy-brained Rory like the concentrated essence of all the spiels of all the salesmen who had ever lived. Sterling’s pitch contained all the slick promises of all the snake-oil promoters who had ever hawked ten cents’ worth of sugarwater for a hard-earned dollar. Vinyl siding, swampy real estate, salted gold mines, lemon autos, termite-ridden homes, two-dollar Rolexes, cardboard condominiums, vacations to nowheresville, imitation designer-label luggage, outdated encyclopedias, G-rated strip shows, Grade-Z movies, vacuous bestsellers, overpriced restaurant meals, forty-piece sets of cheap cookware, miracle knives, shares of stock in defunct companies—the ghosts of these products floated through Sterling’s words. And somehow they had never sounded so attractive.

  As Sterling continued to pour his honeyed poison into Rory’s ear, the Near-Beer Nuts unleashed their first pitch. On the mound the Hasidic boy blatantly greased his fingers in his hair-oil laden curls. The ball sprayed grease as it flew. Just before crossing the plate it performed some dipsy-doodle aerobatics, forcing the catcher to dive for it,

  “Strike one!” bellowed Prignano.

  “Mister Honeyman,” Sterling was saying, “let me pause a moment to get a good look at you. I didn’t truly satisfy myself during our fiery, whizbang introduction last week. You see, not only do I like to size up the sheer physical heft of any fellow I plan to do major business with, but I also want to feast my eyes on the outward form of the genius who invented spondulix. Mister Honeyman, you are responsible for one of the most exciting, innovative fiduciary instruments yet to grace these go-go years of uninterrupted national prosperity. No, please, don’t protest.”

  Rory had made no motion or gesture. Too stupefied by the strangely addictive beer and the heat of the day and the farce on the field, he could not have responded intelligently if his life had depended on it.

  “I won’t hear any false modesty,” continued Sterling. “Facts are facts, and goddamn the man who tries to deny ’em. You, Mister Honeyman, are a genius. Plain and simple, a ring-tailed, ass-whomping genius! I’d like to shout your name from the rooftops, but you’ll certainly forgive me if I don’t raise my voice louder’n a Galveston mosquito, here in this mixed company of insiders and outsiders. Let me just repeat that wonderful word again, though. Spondulix. In-fucking-credible! Spondulix.

  “Now, I can see, Mister Honeyman, that like most real geniuses, you’re mighty humble. You don’t credit yourself with the actual magnitude of insight that you possess. It all seemed so basic to you, I suppose, this brainstorm of yours. Yet how many folks in your position could have cut through all the crap surrounding our sacred institutions the way you did? It takes a mighty powerful mind to dare to rethink the very foundations of our late-capitalist New Economy And you, Mister Honeyman, are the one-in-a-million guy who could actually do it”

  Rory had continued to drink his second beer while Sterling blabbered. Weirdly, the beer failed to cool him down, but only made the day seem hotter. Still, he drained the bottle and accepted a third from Erlkonig. Addie interrupted for the
first time now, making a monitory noise, but Rory paid no attention to her. He took a gulp from his third beer and tried to focus on Sterling’s speech.

  Meanwhile, out on the field one of the Heroes was rounding second, intent on attaining third while the clumsy Near-Beer outfielders bobbled the ball. The second-baseman tripped the runner and thus gained time to make the tag. “Yer out!” yelled the ump.

  “What am I referring to, Mister Honeyman, when I say you have penetrated to the very core of the way capitalism works? I hardly need tell you, but let me just put it into simple words for those of us who don’t have your rich grasp of the complex dynamics of the situation. You simply realized that the federal government no longer deserves its monopoly on printing currency and distributing it. Mister Honeyman, I call this insight revolutionary, as great a milestone for American independence as the shot fired at Lexington and Concord.

  “Essentially, you’ve followed the federal government’s own recipe in the Microsoft case. You’ve taken the first steps toward breaking up a tyrannical, pernicious monopoly in order to encourage diversity and innovation. Curious that our government devotes itself to dismantling monopolies in every area except the one where Washington itself stands to lose the most power, isn’t it? And yet, by insisting on this exclusivity, the government is restricting and hindering the very capitalistic impulses which have made this country great.

  “Now, I know what you’re going to say, Mister Honeyman.” A good trick on Sterling’s part, since Rory himself had no notion of what might next pop to the surface of his tumultuous mind. “You’re going to stammer aw-shucks and shuffle your feet and try to deny the more far-reaching implications of your invention. ‘Mister Sterling,’ you’ll say, ‘Mister Sterling, sir, I was just a small-time businessman trying to get my head outen the quicksand while the gators was chompin’ my ass when I drafted that first spondulix. I had no idea I was effecting a fiscal revolution the likes of which ain’t been seen since President Roosevelt recalled all the gold from circulation in nineteen-hundred-and-thirty-four.’ Well, Mister Honeyman, to all that poormouth talk I just have to say—pardon the French, ladies—bullshit!