Don DeLillo - Underworld

He goes the last four blocks with his head turned away from the wind and the wind is whipping off the Hudson and Manx is walking like a horse with a spooked head.

But how different once you step inside the bar. The warm buzz, the easy breathing, the rumps happy on their stools. The buzz in Tally's is special tonight, more bodies than the usual midweek slump and more static in the air-and then he remembers. There's a tone, a telling rustle in the room and he pats the side of his jacket and feels the baseball and understands that they're talking about the game.

He waves to Phil, who's behind the bar, Tally's brother, in his plain shirt and fancy suspenders, and he gestures a question where -and Phil nods toward the far corner and there is Antoine Cooper sitting with a drink in front of him and two tall shovels leaned on the wall behind.

Manx sits across from Antoine, sits sideways in his chair so he doesn't have to look at the shovels.

"I seen Franzo standing in the dark."

"I know it. He wants my car. But he can't have it."

"What's that you're drinking?"

"He's looking to make some chick he's better off avoiding. Trust me. I already done her."

Manx looks around the room, takes in the buzz, hears half a sentence fly up out of shared laughter and he decides not to mention the shovels. He is aghast at the shovels. The shovels should not be here in any manner, way, shape or form. But he decides for now he won't say a word.

"What was that riot in forty-three? I'm trying to recall how it started. They filled so many holding cells in so many station houses they had to open an armory."

"Forty-three. I'm in the army, man."

"They had bleeding men carrying their loot under armed guard. Put them in an armory on Park Avenue."

"We had our own riot," Antoine says.

Manx goes to the bar and gets a Seagram's from Phil-he likes his rye in a short glass with a single ice cube.

Phil says, "What's happening?"

"I hear they played a ball game today."

"Goddamn it was something."

Manx carries the drink back to the table with one hand clutching the glass in the usual manner and the palm of the other hand under the glass, supporting it like some polished object in a church.

The ice cube is mainly scenery.

Antoine says, "How the boys doing?"

"The boys. The boys spread far and wide," Manx says. "Randall's in the South somewhere, bivouacking, you know, training in the field. And Vernon."

"I know where Vernon 's at."

" Yemen 's on the front line is where he's at. They got a quarter million troops they're looking at across the line. Them Chinese."

"What division he's with?"

"What division."

"Second Infantry's in Korea," Antoine says.

"I don't know what division."

"You don't follow the war?"

"What's that you're drinking?"

"I like to follow the war. They plot their strategies."

"They blow horns and whistles, that's their strategy, them Chinese. They come charging down in swoops."

"This here's brandy, my man. Drinking imported tonight."

"It's sitting there a little potent," Manx says.

"Only in the glass. Goes down the hatch real smooth."

"They come in swoops. That's their strategy."

"You say a prayer now and then. That's what you do."

"Sure, Antoine. I kneel by the bedside."

"You done okay with your kids."

"Sure, Antoine. They take care of me in my old age."

"You got some work?"

"They come visit me in the old folks. Slip me a bottle through the gate."

"You done okay, considering."

"Rosie's the one. That's a great girl. That's the only one that shows respect."

"You need some work. Change your temperament around. You're walking on eggs lately."

"They're laying off. They're not hiring. They're laying off."

"You need to get into long-distance moving."

"They bring me a cake on my birthday," Manx says.

"Long-distance, that's the ticket. I got a cousin in Alabama, which he's based in Birmingham, gets plenty of work long-hauling furniture and whatnot."

"I keep that in mind."

"Yellow yams from Birmingham."

"I place that on my list of things I need to think about."

"Greenest greens you ever seen," Antoine says a little croony.

Manx decides he can't contain it any longer. But he doesn't look at Antoine. He looks across the room at one of those wall lamps, the old-fashioned-type lamp bracketed to the wall where the sleeves that hold the bulbs have fake candle wax running down the sides.

And he says, "Shit man you got those shovels in plain sight."

Antoine has a long slick head and narrow neck, a man of schemes and contrivances, called Snake when he was younger, and he determines it is necessary to turn his upper body to the wall behind him so he can identify the objects in question. Oh yeah, these things, for shoveling off the patio after a white Christmas.

And he turns back to Manx real low in his chair so he's peering out confidentially over his drink.

"I don't think there's an FBI bulletin circulating tristate. What do you think?"

"I think they belong in your car, like we stated."

"The point is you got to raise your sights. Because these things don't bring no return."

"We stated beforehand, Antoine."

"Not worth arguing. Ibu're right, I'm wrong. But you got to raise your sights."

They sit drinking a while and Manx thinks about leaving but he doesn't move off the chair. He thinks about taking his shovels and leaving but he sits there because once he gets up and takes the shovels off the wall he is committed to walking the full length of the barroom with two large snow shovels in early October, and no place sensible to take them, and the thought of it, and the sight of it, keeps his ass in the chair.

Instead he takes out the baseball and sets it on the table. Then he waits for Antoine to take some time out of his busy day so he can notice.

"My kid brought it home from the game, my youngest, says it's the home run that won the game."

"That game they played today?"

"That's right," Manx says.

"I seen people on Seventh Avenue hollering up and down. Hands pressed on their horns, hollering out the windows. I said to Willie Mabrey. You know Willie? I said, They must be opening the vaults. The banks opening up their vaults. First come first serve. I said, Let's go get ours."

"My youngest. He come home with the ball. This is the ball what's-his-name hit in the stands. The game winner. Win the pennant."

Manx feels uneasy, he feels separated from what he's saying-it comes out of his mouth like a lie, the way a lie hangs in the air independent of right and wrong, making you feel you're not responsible.

He feels an urge to take the ball off the table and put it back in his pocket.

"This is the ball what's-his-name? What you saying exactly?"

"I'm saying it could be worth something."

"And I'm saying raise your sights. Because the circumstantial fact, you can't prove nothing. And who do you sell it to anyway?"

"I sell it to the ball club. They want it for a trophy. They make a display."

"Let me look at this thing. This thing's all smudged up."

Manx realizes he doesn't want Antoine to touch the ball. Antoine will look at the ball and say something that's a bringdown, something that gets Manx riley and griped, and he is already feeling tense enough, with his stomach acting up.

He takes the ball and puts it in his pocket.

Antoine leans back, hands up and palms facing out, showing his old snakehead smile, cool and mean.

"Tell you something. Maybe you sell the thing somewhere. But I don't think you be buying a sofa from Ludwig Bauman's," he says. "Or a pretty di-nette ."

Manx goes to the bar to drink in peace. After a while Phil comes over and they talk a while. The place is quieter now, down to serious drinkers, they talk about the game. Phil is a straight-up guy, barn-sized, looks you in the eye. He talks about the game and Manx listens carefully, hoping for an angle, something to go on. The Dodgers are finished for the year. Dead and buried. The Giants play in the World Series starting tomorrow-starting today, Phil says, checking his watch, because it's past midnight now.