Damon Knight - Orbit 14

“Yes, you still have your same fund of stories,” the Licorice Man agreed. “And you still have your great name. But there are restorations needed. Your voice is cracked and broken. Your eyesight is about gone. You are stooped and old and toothless and hairless and deaf, and you smell like a goat. As you are, you just don’t inspire confidence.”

“Have I aged? Is it true that I have aged?” old Ex asked.

“It’s true. Now, what I can do is . . .”

“How much?”

“Yours is a hard case. Nothing short of a big jug will do it. One dollar.”

“Have you figured excise tax in that? Ex-Presidents are exempt from excise taxes, you know. I had that regulation passed myself.”

“Seventy-one cents then.”

Old Ex fished out the seventy-one cents from somewhere. He took a jolt from the jug; then another; then another. He began to fill out to the size of the great cowboy hat and the sharkskin boots. He began to talk in the high manner.

The horse Peegosh was restive. So horse, man, and wagon took their bumpy farewell. Behind them the apostolic voice of Hiram Andrew Clayborne rose in cracked and broken thunder. And then the cracks were healed by the miracle of Royal Licorice Youth Restorer and Clock Retarder.

The strength and timbre came back to that voice. The power came back. It was a restoration, a resurrection. It was a new manifestation in all its former glory. It was itself again: the Golden Guff. Country, look out!

And there were other persons restored and reyouthified in those crisp late winter days. But if all that happened was told, there’d not be paper enough in the world to record it all.

For both, the year bloomed pulsy red:

Contraries and compliants.

A springtime of the ghosts, they said;

A springtime of the giants.

-Boomer Flats Ballads

The wonder colt Red Licorice seemed ready to sweep the big four that year, from his bruited reputation. And this was when the public had not yet seen him run. There was a big noise about him from the men who knew these things. No unknown was ever so widely known so quickly.

He was possibly the last colt ever sired by that grand old champion Black Red. And Black Red, full of years and honors, had died only a short time before this, according to his owner. He had been buried at a private ceremony, very private; but an imposing stone, red granite with black obsidian inset, had been erected over the grave. There were now several hundred visitors a day who came to that grave, and these visitors were told that the horse buried there now lived again in his son.

Red Licorice was the absolute image of his great sire. Early films of Black Red as a colt were run, and you would almost swear that this was the same animal that now trained daily at the Red Hills Farm. The long low gallop, the laid-back ears, the rhythmic hooved thunder, the snorting that sounded half horse and half wolf, the red-black mahogany gleam, the bowed neck that was almost bulllike, the very long and large (and, some said, empty) head, the flowing tail and streaming mane, these were all identical in the father and the son.

But Red Licorice had sheared three seconds off the mile-and-a-half time of Black Red, on the same practice track, under the same almost-perfect conditions.

Then Red Licorice won four warmup mile-and-a-quarter races, and he won them easily—this against the best colts in the world in what was billed as the Year of the Great Colts. Red Licorice set four new track records in doing this, and three of them had been held by his father.

Derby time came, too soon, too soon. The steep interest in the affair was still climbing. But it would be a Derby to be remembered as long as Men and Derbies last. Red Licorice took the Derby in really sensational fashion, and now this magic colt had taken the fancy of all racedom. As rock-headed as his father had been, he also had his father’s outrageous talent as a ham actor. How that big colt could cavort about a track!

Here were memories being made as one watched. Big bluestem grass of the pastures where the colts were raised; black loam and red clay mixed and mingled and managed into the fine straightaways; smell of hot horses in the springtime and the summer (smell compounded of clover and green oats and manure) ; weathered grandstands and the blue-green infields at the tracks; winged money flying with the winged horses; the sign of Equus and the summer solstice: these were ever the hinges of the year for millions of fine folks. And one magic colt could always turn it into a magic year.

Cyrus X. Slocum the Third had shown up in training camp at Phoenix, unsolicited, uncontracted, unknown.

Yes, he was the grandson of the original Cy Slocum, he said. “You can’t trade on even a great name,” the manager told him. “You would have to make it entirely on your own.” “I know it, I know it,” young Cy said. “Just let me pitch. Let me pitch and I’ll show everyone.” Well, he did look and move like an athlete. He did look very much like those old pictures of his grandfather. He had a strong personality, a strong arm, and outrageous confidence. “And it never hurts things for a player to have a great name,” the club’s publicity man said. So young Cy was given a tryout in the training camp.

They always kept the wraps on the pitchers for a couple of days at first, but Cy was ready to blast loose.

“Shape up my arm slowly?” he asked. “Man, my arm is always in shape. Haven’t we any heftier catchers than those? I’d blow them clear out of the park. You don’t have a steel backstop here? I like to warm up with a sixteen-pound shot at regulation distance, but hard as I throw it, it’d go right through anything here.”

Cy was scolded somewhat for standing against the Centerfield fence and throwing half a dozen balls clear over the grandstand, very high above home plate and still rising till they went out of sight.

“Not only will you throw your arm away with that showboating,” one of the coaches told him, “but balls are too expensive to toss half a dozen of them away like that.”

“Nah,” Cy said. “The balls aren’t gone. I was throwing my famous return ball then. I put a little twist on it when I throw it, and it comes back to me.”

A small dot appeared in the sky far above and beyond the grandstand. The dot grew, it came as fast as a bullet, it grew to baseball size and it zanged into Cy’s glove there by the Centerfield fence. And the other five balls followed it quickly.

“A long time ago I—uh, I mean my grandfather—used to lob the ball up to the batters,” Cy said. “It would come almost all the way to a batsman, near enough to draw his swing most of the time. Then it would zoom back to my glove, I mean to my grandfather’s glove. I finally quit throwing it though. The umpires got together and decided to call them balks instead of strikes whenever I threw my return ball even if the batter took a full swing at it.”

“The old-timers say that your grandfather told tall stories too,” the coach commented.

Cy pitched in intersquad games, three innings one day, six the next, nine the day after that. The batters couldn’t even touch him. He pitched about fifty intersquad innings and never gave up a hit. The reporters were making a great to-do about this bright new rookie with the bright old name.

The team played the Giants, who also trained in Phoenix then. They threw Cy at them in the first game and he no-hit them. Three days later he did it again.

He burned his way through all those exhibition games. He had a great collection of pitches of his own; and every good pitch that he saw he mastered instantly and added to his repertoire. He had the strength and speed of youth. He also had, from somewhere, such maturity and wisdom and judgment as could hardly be acquired in less than a lifetime.