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

Jake now dropped by to fill them up again, and Henry said: "I don't remember much of what happened the other night, Pete, but I hope I didn't make too big a fool of myself."

"Oh no, Mr. Waugh," said Pete, but his face was momentarily darkened by what could only have been a grim remembrance of it. "We all have to go on a bender from time to time." He hesitated, then smiled. "Enjoyed that song about what's-his-name with the long, you know…"

"Long Lew and Fanny. Was I singing?"

"Oh yes." Again he smiled, winked at Lou. "More or less."

They all laughed together, though Lou clearly had only the merest inkling as to what it was all about, and that inkling was enough to make him give Henry a funny look. Well, now it would be forgotten, Henry supposed. After all, as best he could figure, he'd dropped over a hundred dollars in here that night, so Pete couldn't be too sore about it.

One of Jake's cats curled by Hettie's leg, and she reached down to stroke it. Her suitor leaned away, focusing badly, signaled for another round. A fire-red tie, pinked cheeks, ruby nose, and sparse red hair on a freckly pate made him look like he was about to boil over. Then, as though pulled by some magnetic force, they drew together again, hands in each other's thighs.

Who could do it for him? O'Leary maybe. Or young Thornton Shadwell; still a virgin probably. Or Mighty Mel, the Terrible Truncheon. No, Trench was having a bad time, probably worrying too much to get it up. Flenched Trench. Henry stared into his snifter, saw the bar and all its people squeezed into its amber sphere, lights ablaze on it, and he himself — he looked away. How about Hamilton Craft? Big rebound, must be feeling good. Or maybe. . "Would you like to go with that one over there?"

Jolted Lou at least six inches off his barstool. "Not so loud, Henry!" he choked.

"How about it?"

Lou didn't even look, just stuck his nose in his snifter. "Not, uh, not my type, I guess."

"Not your type! Why, she's everybody's type, Lou!"

Lou sipped cognac oppressedly.

"Then you don't mind if I…?"

"Oh no, no! " Lou squeaked. "Don't mind me!"

The suitor, withdrawing momentarily from her valleys, pitched around and weaved away, heaved hotly past them, bruised a table, and disappeared through a door in the rear. Sack in the back. No, not here, not really, just a font or two; Pete didn't care for the subtler needs.

"Evenin', ma'am! Whatcha say we git us up a bawl game!"

" Henry! Ssshh! Cantcha see I'm busy?"

"Ain't no batter up there, baby. He cain't even find you!"

"Maybe not, but it's you he'd better not find here when he comes back, or he'll pop a rib!"

"Aw, he kin wait. Put him off till tuhmorra, baby. Ah need you tonight! "

She softened, trying to figure his pitch. "That boy come back from the dead, Henry?"

He winced, but was able to bang in there. "More'n one pitcher in this here bawl game, lady." He unfolded a handful of twenties to widen her sleepy eyes, but it was her knees opened apart instead.

"Well, let's get out before he comes back," Hettie hissed.

Henry nodded a farewell to Lou. "Tomorrow night."

He shouldered out behind her, feeling good and mean. Earthy. Crude, in fact Won't be the same, he realized. No magic. But it had its good side. Right to the point, no fancy stuff. In and out, high and low. Just rear back and burn it in.

NOTonce, in the Universal Baseball Association's fifty-six long seasons of play, had its proprietor plunged so close to self-disgust, felt so much like giving it up, a life misused, an old man playing with a child's toy; he felt somehow like an adolescent caught masturbating. Year LVI, in spite of its new crop of rookies, in spite of the excitement of a new team's imminent rise to power, in spite of the records being set and the giants being toppled and that boy being killed, was a complete bore. Or so it seemed as he stared out his kitchen window on a world going to winter that Sunday afternoon. Lou was coming soon. He was afraid, but he was glad, too. Lou could save it. Or him from the game. He felt waterlogged with it. He'd played too much, too hard, since Damon died. Have to ease up. He considered writing in the Book for a while, but the weariness of it paralyzed him. So he just stood and stared.

Bad start that morning. Awake to a bed full of Hettie's odors, broken dreams about a zoo or a circus or something, all too pertinent. 'That Swanee's really a good old guy," she said, getting up with an old lady's grunt, then commenced a whinnying laugh that mutated into a phlegmy cough. But he didn't feel like Swanee Law, felt more like old Woody Winthrop, senile and gravebent, or luckless Mel Trench, down in the cellar and fat in the head. Hettie padded out and into the bathroom. She'd be in there a while, he knew, so he allowed himself to doze off again. Dreamt he was in some far-off impossible place. Italy, maybe. Or Spain. It seemed like he'd been telling Lou about Hettie, how good she was, the old brag, but now they were only admiring the countryside. Soft rolling hills, vineyards, wooded valleys, blue river trickling by, stone farmhouses, almond trees in blossom. You're only kidding yourself, somebody said, didn't seem to be Lou, but might have been. Anyway, he ignored it. Distantly, a mule hitched to a two-wheeled cart creaked up a hillside, a man walking beside. It was steep, and sometimes the mule slipped backwards or stopped altogether. Then Henry and whoever was with him, if somebody still was, were helping to push. It was hard work and they were getting nowhere. If only I had an ass, the farmer said. It was true, there wasn't any animal, he'd been mistaken. If you can't find one, Henry told him, make one. He'd meant it as a dirty joke, but the man didn't get it, just stared at him blankly. Henry tried to explain, he changed it to: Did you say an ass or some ass? but there was no communication. Language problem. He felt crude and stupid, like a beast himself. A great weight pressed down on him and he was thinking, as Hettie reached under the blankets to pinch his butt a lot harder than she needed to, that today would be the hardest day of all.

He dressed and went out for sweet rolls, while Hettie made coffee. Returning, he opened the door just in time to catch her in the middle of an enormous bovine yawn, soft neck flesh folded and teeth showing their gaps. Her face wrinkled into the agony of suppressing it, and she asked: "Cold out?"

He yawned himself, unable to hold back the reflex, and replied: "Pretty cold."

Sometimes she made the bed of a morning and straightened up the room a bit, but a glance in there showed him only the rude disorder of old. He heard himself asking himself: why won't someone help? She poked sleepily into the package he'd brought, and said: "They look good." She shoved back the papers on the kitchen table and put the rolls there.

"Careful! My work…!"

"Just a corner, Henry."

They sat there at the cleared corner, taking rolls and coffee, used to each other and therefore comfortable, but not especially cheered by the other's presence. Conversation openings occurred to him. He projected them out. Some would lead back to the bed, some to the door, some just in circles. On occasion, his eye fell on the Association and he felt depressed, not so much by Hettie's thoughtless rumple of it, as by the dishevel his own haste yesterday had created. Take a good while to get it all straightened out. Couple weeks just to get the data posted. More work than it was worth.

"I think I'll go to church," Hettie announced.

"Which one do you go to?" he asked, hardly caring.

"Don't matter. First one I come to." She sighed, spraying crumbs.

"Absolve your sins?" he asked, feeling a little contentious, but meaning no sarcasm.