Robert Coover - The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop

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 dehistorified, 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 sheee ittt! " 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.