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

"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 off, 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.