The Brothers K

by David James Duncan

  When you get right down to it, it’s a great family I got. But then it’s easy to love everybody the same amount when they’re your family. It’s not nearly so easy when they’re weird Yankees like Roger Maris or total bideeps like Meredith Starr. At times it seems to me like it might have been more practical of God to make everybody in the world blood relatives with the same last name. Everett says that if God had done that, though, brothers would have had to marry their sisters and the kids would’ve turned out to be mutants. So maybe it’s for the best the way things are. Then again, it might be all right being some sort of mutant, lolloping down the street doffing your hat at all the other lolloping mutants, all of whom you knew loved you like a brother or sister, and all of whom you loved. Then again, it might not be so great. I don’t know. Some things you can’t figure out until you do them.

  Roger Maris takes a ball, then a strike, then poles one of his typical boring high fly balls out into right. Harvey Kuenn gathers it in. One out.

  I open Everett’s letter:

  Dear Everybody but Gomorrah,

  My counsellor is making us write to say we’re fine and dandy and learning oodles of wholesome Adventist propaganda, but the fact of the matter is a terrible thing has occurred to us. Our beloved Irwin was killed and eaten this morning by a cougar this morning, and is with Jesus now, unless he is in “Heck.” Oh well. No big loss, except sizewise. But we’re all pretty concerned about the cougar.

  Wolverton Lake is pretty. Pretty lousy fishing, that is. I would of took canoeing but can’t paddle with this stupid arm which by the way itches like a dirty bottom (ask the twins if you can’t understand what I’m saying here, guys), so I took Trekking. So did Pete. We’re learning to read maps and compasses today, and how to follow the ol’ Drinkin’ Gourd if our compass busts (provided it’s night and not raining and we’re stupid enough to hike in the dark, which our counsellor definitely is). We’ve found two secret lakes already though, and will be climbing a mountain 9,383′ high (big deal).

  The food is the usual vegetarian dog-doodoo, especially the “meat,” which is fake of course. But the loss of Irwin more than makes up for a few inconveniences.

  That’s it for now. Until next week, I remain your lovely son (or brother where applicable),

  Everett

  Mama isn’t going to like Everett’s letter. She believes Jesus and “Heck” are not joking matters. I pass it to Papa, but he just sticks it in his shirt pocket. “In a minute,” he says. “One out, nobody on. The Yanks have just about had it …”

  For some reason, I blurt, “No they haven’t.”

  Papa looks at me. “Huh?”

  I feel almost embarrassed about it, but all of a sudden I have this odd feeling. “The Yankees will win,” I say calmly.

  Papa smiles. I’ve never predicted anything before and he knows it. But I’ve never felt like this before, either. It’s weird. I’ll bet Mama felt just like this the day she said Yum! about the yak butter. “Is that so?” Papa says.

  “It’s so,” I say—and my yak butter feeling agrees. “It’s in the bag.”

  Then I glance at the TV, see Tony Kubek coming to bat, and start having doubts right on top of my certainty. The TV says he’s 0 for 3, and hitting .258. If in doubt, Everett says, act tough. “Wanna bet on it?” I snarl at Papa.

  “You’re so sure,” he says, “I’d just be throwing away good money.”

  “Darn tootin’,” I tell him.

  Kubek takes a slider. The ump calls it a strike. Papa says it’s the exact same pitch Mudcat threw Mantle earlier, but Kubek’s not Mantle so now it’s a strike. I shrug, acting tough.

  Peter’s postcard is of a mountain called Three-fingered Jack, though I only see one finger. All the card says is, “HIYA. LOVE, P.A.C.E.” P.A.C.E. stands for Peter Arthur Chance Esquire. Pete likes to put on the dog a little sometimes.

  Kubek takes a fastball high and inside. One and one. Everett calls him The Kube. He says The Kube is from outer space, same as Roger the Martian. Everett’s odd that way. Anybody he doesn’t like, he says they’re from outer space and makes up a planet that explains them. The Kube’s from a planet where everybody’s head is made out of a block of wood, he says. He says if Kubek ever gets beaned he’ll probably get a base hit out of it. He’s got planets for all the more famous Yankees except Mickey Mantle, who he can’t help but like, and Yogi Bear, who he says is from earth but of course isn’t human. Stengel he calls Spacey Tangle. He says that Tangle’s planet is just a big briar patch, and so is his brain, and that every time Spacey opens his mouth he proves it. Papa says Stengel’s got a great baseball mind, though, and Papa’s usually right about people. Everett’s just more fun to listen to.

  Of course Irwin adores the Yankees. But whereas most Yankee fans only adore them so they can yell I won! I won! Irwin adores them because of Everett—because what Irwin really adores are science fiction movies, and watching the Yankees dismantle somebody on TV with Everett in the room is like watching the earth being invaded and destroyed by a gang of inhuman bozos. It’s a pretty great show.

  The Kube hacks at a sinker that almost bounces off home plate. Strike two. Some Yankees start yelling at the ump about a greaseball, but Papa says it wasn’t, and he’s right apparently: the ump checks the ball and finds nothing.

  I ask Papa if he ever doctored pitches. He says no. Then he says, “Well …” Then he says he may have taken advantage of a drop of sweat or a nick now and again, but that sweat and nicks are okay because they’re part of nature. “I was a nature-type pitcher,” Papa says, more than a little lamely.

  “So spit’s part of nature too?” I ask.

  “Just watch the game,” he says.

  Mudcat is fooling with his mitt and belt and armpits and back pocket and shirt and hat now, trying to make Kubek worry about grease. Papa calls this Psychiatric Work. Kubek tries stepping out of the batter’s box and fooling with a resin bag, but compared to Mudcat’s mitt, belt, pits, pocket, shirt and hat, The Kube’s little resin bag is just pathetic. He looks doomed. Mudcat throws another sinker, and Kubek knows he can’t hit it after getting psychiatrized like that, so he just watches it. Low. Barely. Ball two.

  Pee Wee wonders aloud whether baseballs really get doctored much. Dizzy snorts and says the question is whether they ever don’t. Pee Wee acts shocked. Then Dizzy calms him down by admitting he was exaggerating. The true immortals, he says—himself for instance—don’t need nicks and grease and spit. “So you never doctored the ball?” Pee Wee asks. No sir I did not, says Dizzy. But once, he says, when he was playing for the Cards, he did pitch a game with a godawful cold, ran out of poop in the fourth inning, started getting shelled, and pretty soon got so upset by the whole experience that his nose started running like a faucet …

  The Kube fouls off a curve.

  Well, sir, Dizzy says, he was wearing short sleeves that day, so he had nothing to wipe the nose with but his mitt, and he had to catch the ball, didn’t he? So even though he is a man of principle and had no such intention, he started throwing snotballs by accident …

  Papa rolls his eyes. Pee Wee says, “Uh-huh.” I start laughing. The Kube fouls off a fastball.

  For a couple innings, Dizzy says, he just mowed ’em down. But the ump got suspicious when he threw a slow snot curve that completely reversed direction three times …

  Pee Wee says, “Uh-huh.” Papa grins. Kubek fouls off a junk pitch. For a man who’s doomed, he’s hanging tough.

  The ump finally canned him, Diz says, when he noticed the ball had turned green. Dizzy argued that it was grass stain, but the ump wouldn’t listen because his mitt was green too, and slimy. Okay okay, Dizzy told the ump, I’ll level with you. There’s thousands of tiny snails in the St. Louis outfield here, and they leave these gooey little trails of green slime. Ump claimed the ball hadn’t been in the outfield. They’re in the infield too, said Dizzy. Get out! said the ump. Hold your horses and the boys and me’ll catch you some, Dizzy said. OUT! screamed the ump. T
hey’re good eatin’, Dizzy told him. Ump looked tempted, but still gave him the boot. “Anyhow we won,” says Diz.

  “Uh-huh,” says Pee Wee. Papa smiles.

  Then Kubek sees another perfect fake-grease sinker coming at him, and he feels so helpless that he just gives up the ghost—but his ghost does something brilliant: it bunts. It’s not a very good bunt, way too short, but with two strikes against him he caught the Indians flat-footed, and for a wooden-headed fellow The Kube is not slow. Romana, the catcher, has to fire a snap throw. It arrives in time. It also arrives an inch or so over the top of Vic Power’s big first baseman’s glove, and sails way out into right field.

  Papa roars and starts pounding my back. Kubek pounds for second. Harvey Kuenn runs the ball down in right, but there’s no play at second. Kubek stands beaming like Pinocchio on the bag. “That could hurt ’em!” Pee Wee says. “That error was a mistake! Mistakes at this stage could hurt these Indians bad!”

  Papa is looking at me like I’m some kind of terrifyingly tricky guy. “You’re not Riverboat Sloan the gambler, are you?”

  “Nope.”

  “Starvation Whitey, the famous pool hustler and all-round man of chance?”

  “Nope.”

  “How ’bout a prophet, then? The next Ellen G. White maybe?”

  I can tell by his face that he thinks this is funny, but I don’t get it. All I know about Ellen G. White is that she was this super-religious 1800s lady who resembled our bulldog Gomorrah and wrote a book called The Gift of Prophecy, and the Adventists liked her book so much they hang her picture all over their churches, making it look like it’s always Halloween. All I know about Ellen G. White is she isn’t funny. Peter read her book once, and discovered she was the culprit who talked Adventists into banning meat-eating and makeup and jewelry and such. He said she also laid down the law about not going out on the town on Friday nights, but Everett argued that, judging by her face, it’d be a snowy Friday night in hell before anybody ever asked her. Everett said Sister White wasted her life as a prophetess, because she could’ve struck it rich as a bookie. But Peter told Everett no way. All Ellen G. White knew, Pete said, was how to hornswoggle religious people—who are the most hornswogglable people on earth—whereas a good bookie knows how to hornswoggle gamblers, who are nothing but a bunch of hornswogglers themselves. Find yourself a prophet with the gifts of a good bookie, Pete says, like Krishna in the Bog of Vod Geeta, and maybe you got something. Otherwise, he says, forget it.

  But Papa’s still looking at me, waiting for an answer …

  “I’d rather be a bookie than a prophet,” I tell him.

  He frowns at me a second, then laughs so hard you’d think I was Bob Hope.

  I still don’t get it. “Concentrate!” I tell him. “Concentrate on the ballgame!”

  · · · ·

  Cletis Boyer should be up next. Everett calls him Foetus Boyer, but luckily I forget why. Papa says Boyer usually bats about last, but he was red-hot last week so Stengel juggled his whole lineup to move him up to sixth—and today he has popped out, hit into a double play, and gawked at a called third strike. Stengel jerks him and sends in Elston Howard.

  Elston Howard is the Yanks’ normal catcher now that Yogi’s getting old, but I guess he needed rest, or else the Bear was feeling frisky today. Howard’s planet is exactly like ours, Everett says, except the first and last names are all reversed: Howard Elston, his name should be.

  The fans are giving Mudcat Grant a standing ovation. They just figured out that except for Maris’s solo homer he’s been pitching a two-hit shutout against the best team in baseball—because the public address announcer just told them so. They go on cheering so long that Howard Elston has plenty of time to loosen up, while Mudcat just stands there getting tight and nervous. I take a look at Irwin’s postcard. It’s a picture of a cougar. It says:

  Dear All, Here’s the cat that ate me. Nice of it to mail this cute pix of us, huh? I’m the one on the inside. I’m healthy as ever, just a bit dead and chewed up is all. Miss you guys, specially the babies.

  XOOX, Winnie

  Mudcat tips his hat a few times to try and shut the fans up, which makes them scream all the louder. “Patience, folks,” Dizzy mutters. “There’s not much else to cheer about in lovely downtown Cleveland.”

  Mudcat gets so fidgety he finally steps onto the rubber despite the noise, winds up, throws as hard as he can—and almost takes Howard Elston’s head off. The fans cheer even louder, thinking it was a knockdown, but Papa says the pitch got away from him. The TV screen flashes from Mudcat looking jittery to Howard Elston getting up, his face furious, his big white pinstriped butt all filthy.

  “Nice camera work,” says Dizzy.

  “Takes you right on down there,” says Pee Wee.

  Then Howard Elston grabs his crotch in his hand and pulls on it like he’s trying to yank it clear off. The camera veers wildly up into the fans. “No stoppin’ them Yanks,” says Dizzy in a perfect deadpan.

  The screen flashes to Pee Wee, who’s covering his eyes with one hand, struggling not to laugh. “This is some kinda ballgame we got goin’ here in sunny Ohio,” he says, I think by accident.

  Howard Elston takes a big blooping change-up for a strike. Mudcat calms down and throws the wicked slider next, for strike two. Then he shakes off his catcher’s signal, shakes him off again, throws a fastball, and Howard takes one of those big angry swings that look like the ball somehow goes right through the bat. All it hits is mitt, though. Strike three. Out number two.

  “Nobody left,” says Pee Wee, “but Mr. William Skowron.”

  And here he comes. Moose Skowron. Hefting four bats, then three, then two, then one, overworking the poor fat batboy traipsing along behind him. Kubek hops up and down on second base, looking like he’s got to piss bad. The fans start giving Mudcat another endless ovation. “Home, home on the range,” Dizzy croons, “where the Mooses and the Indians play …”

  Pee Wee groans.

  “Where seldom is heard an encouragin’ word, but them Yanks just won’t give up no way.”

  “Very nice,” sighs Pee Wee.

  “In-prom-two,” drawls the Diz. “In-prom-two’s my four-tay.”

  “That and French,” Pee Wee says.

  Moose Skowron looks nothing like a Moose. He’s just big, like Irwin. He’s also a lefty like Irwin, and Irwin’s usually lucky, so maybe Moose will be too. Then again, Papa is a lefty … I decide to beef up my prediction. I reach in my pocket, pull out the roll of lucky Bazooka, nip off a chaw—and yum! I can taste it clear down in my toes: yak butter!

  “It’s the Moose!” I tell Papa. “He’s gonna tie it up, right now!”

  Papa scowls. “Home run?”

  “Nope! No, it won’t be a homer!” And for an instant I can see it: a cloud of dust, a swarm of sprawled bodies … No, it can’t be. I’m going nuts. Let’s go fishing.

  Mudcat throws Skowron the same low slider Papa keeps calling a strike. Once again the ump agrees. Kubek takes a gigantic lead off second, but the Indian shortstop and second baseman ignore him and stay deep, figuring to make Moose the final out.

  Mudcat throws the slider again, Moose takes it again, the ump calls it a strike again, and Stengel charges out of the dugout, showing the ump in jerky, violent sign language that the pitch didn’t reach Moose’s knees, which is true. But the ump pays no attention, and the fans all scream at Stengel. He scrinches up his face, sticks his middle finger in his ear, starts cleaning things furiously, and strolls back to his burrow. The count stands at 0 and 2. Skowron’s face is grim. But I still taste the yak butter—and the next pitch (Papa says it was that same good slider) Moose smashes so low and hard you can’t even see the ball till it’s in right field and Kubek is clear to third base. The ball skims the grass once. Kuenn fields it cleanly and wings it home. It was hit so hard that the play should be close. Romana, the catcher, is blocking the plate. The throw is a bull’s eye. But Kubek fakes right, hook-slides left, and Romana doesn’
t get a mitt on him till his feet have already swept the plate. “SAFE!” Pee Wee yells, beating the ump to the punch for once. “And it’s a one-run ballgame!”

  “But what’s got into that Moose?” says Dizzy.

  Papa leans forward, and slams his chair arms. All the stupid TV is showing us is Kubek dusting dirt off his rear. “Come on!” Papa hollers. The screen finally flashes.

  “Uh-oh,” says Pee Wee.

  And there is Moose Skowron, galumphing along in the no-man’s-land between second and third. He must have expected The Kube to knock Romana down rather than slide around him, so he kept right on running. But when Romana fires the ball down to Phillips at third they’ve got Moose by twenty-five feet. “Hot-box!” says Papa. So much for me and my yak butter.

  But wait. Phillips is crouched, the ball in his bare hand, ready for the cat-and-mouse feints and tosses of the hot-box. But Skowron is not a mouse by a long shot. Phillips wastes a full second figuring out that the Moose’s only plan in life is to keep on charging, then wastes another half second looking amazed by what he’s figured out. He still has a half second to sidestep, like a bullfighter, but instead he uses it to brace himself like a skunk with a pair of headlights streaking toward it on a night highway. He gets the exact same results: “Eeeeeeeugh!” goes Dizzy as the bodies collide. About eight feet later Phillips lands mostly on his head. Skowron lands on his belly, which lands on third base. And the ball bounds into shallow left and dribbles off toward the fans.