Underworld

by Don DeLillo

  Thomson in his bent stance, chin tucked, waiting.

  Russ says, “One out, last of the ninth.”

  He says, “Branca pitches, Thomson takes a strike called on the inside corner.”

  He lays a heavy decibel on the word strike. He pauses to let the crowd reaction build. Do not talk against the crowd. Let the drama come from them.

  Those big rich pages airing down from the upper deck.

  Lockman stands near second and tries to wish a hit onto Thom son’s bat. That may have been the pitch he wanted. Belt-high, a shade inside—won’t see one that good again.

  Russ says, “Bobby hitting at two ninety-two. He’s had a single and a double and he drove in the Giants’ first run with a long fly to center.”

  Lockman looks across the diamond at home. The double he hit is still a presence in his chest, it’s chugging away in there, a body-memory that plays the moment over. He is peering into the deltoid opening between the catcher’s knees. He sees the fingers dip, the blunt hand make a flapping action up and left. They’ll give him the fastball high and tight and come back with the curve away. A pretty two-part scheme. Seems easy and sweet from here.

  Russ says, “Brooklyn leads it four to two.”

  He says, “Runner down the line at third. Not taking any chances.”

  Thomson thinking it’s all happening too fast. Thinking quick hands, see the ball, give yourself a chance.

  Russ says, “Lockman without too big of a lead at second but he’ll be running like the wind if Thomson hits one.”

  In the box seats J. Edgar Hoover plucks a magazine page off his shoulder, where the thing has lighted and stuck. At first he’s annoyed that the object has come in contact with his body. Then his eyes fall upon the page. It is a color reproduction of a painting crowded with medieval figures who are dying or dead—a landscape of visionary havoc and ruin. Edgar has never seen a painting quite like this. It covers the page completely and must surely dominate the magazine. Across the red-brown earth, skeleton armies on the march. Men impaled on lances, hung from gibbets, drawn on spoked wheels fixed to the tops of bare trees, bodies open to the crows. Legions of the dead forming up behind shields made of coffin lids. Death himself astride a slat-ribbed hack, he is peaked for blood, his scythe held ready as he presses people in haunted swarms toward the entrance of some helltrap, an oddly modern construction that could be a subway tunnel or office corridor. A background of ash skies and burning ships. It is clear to Edgar that the page is from Life and he tries to work up an anger, he asks himself why a magazine called Life would want to reproduce a painting of such lurid and dreadful dimensions. But he can’t take his eyes off the page.

  Russ Hodges says, “Branca throws.”

  Gleason makes a noise that is halfway between a sigh and a moan. It is probably a sough, as of rustling surf in some palmy place. Edgar recalls the earlier blowout, Jackie’s minor choking fit. He sees a deeper engagement here. He goes out into the aisle and up two steps, separating himself from the imminent discharge of animal, vegetable and mineral matter.

  Not a good pitch to hit, up and in, but Thomson swings and tomahawks the ball and everybody, everybody watches. Except for Gleason who is bent over in his seat, hands locked behind his neck, a creamy strand of slime swinging from his lips.

  Russ says, “There’s a long drive.”

  His voice has a burst in it, a charge of expectation.

  He says, “It’s gonna be.”

  There’s a pause all around him. Pafko racing toward the left-field corner.

  He says, “I believe.”

  Pafko at the wall. Then he’s looking up. People thinking where’s the ball. The scant delay, the stay in time that lasts a hairsbreadth. And Cotter standing in section 35 watching the ball come in his direction. He feels his body turn to smoke. He loses sight of the ball when it climbs above the overhang and he thinks it will land in the upper deck. But before he can smile or shout or bash his neighbor on the arm. Before the moment can overwhelm him, the ball appears again, stitches visibly spinning, that’s how near it hits, banging at an angle off a pillar—hands flashing everywhere.

  Russ feels the crowd around him, a shudder passing through the stands, and then he is shouting into the mike and there is a surge of color and motion, a crash that occurs upward, stadium-wide, hands and faces and shirts, bands of rippling men, and he is outright shouting, his voice has a power he’d thought long gone—it may lift the top of his head like a cartoon rocket.

  He says, “The Giants win the pennant.”

  A topspin line drive. He tomahawked the pitch and the ball had topspin and dipped into the lower deck and there is Pafko at the 315 sign looking straight up with his right arm braced at the wall and a spate of paper coming down.

  He says, “The Giants win the pennant.”

  Yes, the voice is excessive with a little tickle of hysteria in the upper register. But it is mainly wham and whomp. He sees Thomson capering around first. The hat of the first-base coach—the first-base coach has flung his hat straight up. He went for a chin-high pitch and cold-cocked it good. The ball started up high and then sank, missing the facade of the upper deck and dipping into the seats below—pulled in, swallowed up—and the Dodger players stand looking, already separated from the event, staring flat into the shadows between the decks.

  He says, “The Giants win the pennant.”

  The crew is whooping. They are answering the roof bangers by beating on the walls and ceiling of the booth. People climbing the dugout roofs and the crowd shaking in its own noise. Branca on the mound in his tormented slouch. He came with a fastball up, a pitch that’s tailing in, and the guy’s supposed to take it for a ball. Russ is shouting himself right out of his sore throat, out of every malady and pathology and complaint and all the pangs of growing up and every memory that is not tender.

  He says, “The Giants win the pennant.”

  Four times. Branca turns and picks up the rosin bag and throws it down, heading toward the clubhouse now, his shoulders aligned at a slant—he begins the long dead trudge. Paper falling everywhere. Russ knows he ought to settle down and let the mike pick up the sound of the swelling bedlam around him. But he can’t stop shouting, there’s nothing left of him but shout.

  He says, “Bobby Thomson hits into the lower deck of the left-field stands.”

  He says, “The Giants win the pennant and they’re going crazy.”

  He says, “They’re going crazy.”

  Then he raises a pure shout, wordless, a holler from the old days—it is fiddlin’ time, it is mountain music on WCKY at five-thirty in the morning. The thing comes jumping right out of him, a jubilation, it might be heyyy-ho or it might be oh-boyyy shouted backwards or it might be something else entirely—hard to tell when they don’t use words. And Thomson’s teammates gathering at home plate and Thomson circling the bases in gamesome leaps, buckjumping—he is forever Bobby now, a romping boy lost to time, and his breath comes so fast he doesn’t know if he can handle all the air that’s pouring in. He sees men in a helter-skelter line waiting at the plate to pummel him—his teammates, no better fellows in the world, and there’s a look in their faces, they are stunned by a happiness that has collapsed on them, bright-eyed under their caps.

  He tomahawked the pitch, he hit on top of it and now his ears are ringing and there’s a numbing buzz in his hands and feet. And Robinson stands behind second, hands on hips, making sure Thomson touches every base. You can almost see brave Jack grow old.

  Look at Durocher spinning. Russ pauses for the first time to catch the full impact of the noise around him. Leo spinning in the coach’s box. The manager stands and spins, he is spinning with his arms spread wide—maybe it’s an ascetic rapture, a thing they do in mosques in Anatolia.

  People make it a point to register the time.

  Edgar stands with arms crossed and a level eye on Gleason folded over. Pages dropping all around them, it is a fairly thick issue—laxatives and antacids, sanitary napkins and
corn plasters and dandruff removers. Jackie utters an aquatic bark, it is loud and crude, the hoarse call of some mammal in distress. Then the surge of flannel matter. He seems to be vomiting someone’s taupe pajamas. The waste is liquidy smooth in the lingo of adland and it is splashing freely on Frank’s stout oxford shoes and fine lisle hose and on the soft woven wool of his town-and-country trousers.

  The clock atop the clubhouse reads 3:58.

  Russ has got his face back into the mike. He shouts, “I don’t believe it.” He shouts, “I don’t believe it.” He shouts, “I do not believe it.”

  They are coming down to crowd the railings. They are coming from the far ends of the great rayed configuration and they are moving down the aisles and toward the rails.

  Pafko is out of paper range by now, jogging toward the clubhouse. But the paper keeps falling. If the early paper waves were slightly hostile and mocking, and the middle waves a form of fan commonality, then this last demonstration has a softness, a selfness. It is coming down from all points, laundry tickets, envelopes swiped from the office, there are crushed cigarette packs and sticky wrap from ice-cream sandwiches, pages from memo pads and pocket calendars, they are throwing faded dollar bills, snapshots torn to pieces, ruffled paper swaddles for cupcakes, they are tearing up letters they’ve been carrying around for years pressed into their wallets, the residue of love affairs and college friendships, it is happy garbage now, the fans’ intimate wish to be connected to the event, unendably, in the form of pocket litter, personal waste, a thing that carries a shadow identity—rolls of toilet tissue unbolting lyrically in streamers.

  They are gathered at the netting behind home plate, gripping the tight mesh.

  Russ is still shouting, he is not yet shouted out, he believes he has a thing that’s worth repeating.

  Saying, “Bobby Thomson hit a line drive into the lower deck of the left-field stands and the place is going crazy.”

  Next thing Cotter knows he is sidling into the aisle. The area is congested and intense and he has to pry his way row by row using elbows and shoulders. Nobody much seems to notice. The ball is back there in a mighty pileup of shirts and jackets. The game is way behind him. The crowd can have the game. He’s after the baseball now and there’s no time to ask himself why. They hit it in the stands, you go and get it. It’s the ball they play with, the thing they rub up and scuff and sweat on. He’s going up the aisle through a thousand pounding hearts. He’s prodding and sideswiping. He sees people dipping frantically, it could be apple-bobbing in Indiana, only slightly violent. Then the ball comes free and someone goes after it, the first one out of the pack, a young guy in a scuttling crawl with people reaching for him, trying to grab his jacket, a fistful of trouser-ass. He has wiry reddish hair and a college jacket—you know those athletic jackets where the sleeves are one color and leathery looking and the body is a darker color and probably wool and these are the college colors of the team.

  Cotter takes a guess and edges his way along a row that’s two rows down from the action. He takes a guess, he anticipates, it’s the way you feel something will happen and then you watch it uncannily come to pass, occurring almost in measured stages so you can see the wheel-work of your idea fitting into place.

  He coldcocked the pitch and the ball shot out there and dipped and disappeared. And Thomson bounding down on home plate mobbed by his teammates, who move in shuffled steps with hands extended to keep from spiking each other. And photographers edging near and taking their spread stances and the first of the fans appearing on the field, the first strays standing wary or whirling about to see things from this perspective, astonished to find themselves at field level, or running right at Thomson all floppy and demented, milling into the wedge of players at home plate.

  Frank is looking down at what has transpired. He stands there hands out, palms up, an awe of muted disgust. That this should happen here, in public, in the high revel of event—he feels a puzzled wonder that exceeds his aversion. He looks down at the back of Jackie’s glossy head and he looks at his own trouser cuffs flaked an intimate beige and the spatter across his shoe tops in a strafing pattern and the gumbo puddle nearby that contains a few laggard gobs of pinkoid stuff from deep in Gleason’s gastric sac.

  And he nods his head and says, “My shoes.”

  And Shor feels offended, he feels a look come into his face that carries the sting of a bad shave, those long-ago mornings of razor pull and cold water.

  And he looks at Frank and says, “Did you see the homer at least?”

  “I saw part and missed part.”

  And Shor says, “Do I want to take the time to ask which part you missed so we can talk about it on the phone some day?”

  There are people with their hands in their hair, holding in their brains.

  Frank persists in looking down. He allows one foot to list to port so he can examine the side of his shoe for vomit marks. These are handcrafted shoes from a narrow street with a quaint name in oldest London.

  And Shor says, “We just won unbelievable, they’re ripping up the joint, I don’t know whether to laugh, shit or go blind.”

  And Frank says, “I’m rooting for number one or number three.”

  Russ is still manning the microphone and has one last thing to say and barely manages to get it out.

  “The Giants won it. By a score of five to four. And they’re picking Bobby Thomson up. And carrying him off the field.”

  If his voice has an edge of disquiet it’s because he has to get to the clubhouse to do interviews with players and coaches and team officials and the only way to get out there is to cross the length of the field on foot and he’s already out of breath, out of words, and the crowd is growing over the walls. He sees Thomson carried by a phalanx of men, players and others, mostly others—the players have run for it, the players are dashing for the clubhouse—and he sees Thomson riding off-balance on the shoulders of men who might take him right out of the ballpark and into the streets for a block party.

  Gleason is suspended in wreckage, drained and humped, and he has barely the wit to consider what the shouting’s about.

  The field streaked with people, the hat snatchers, the swift kids who imitate banking aircraft, their spread arms steeply raked.

  Look at Cotter under a seat.

  All over the city people are coming out of their houses. This is the nature of Thomson’s homer. It makes people want to be in the streets, joined with others, telling others what has happened, those few who haven’t heard—comparing faces and states of mind.

  And Russ has a hot mike in front of him and has to find someone to take it and talk so he can get down to the field and find a way to pass intact through all that mangle.

  And Cotter is under a seat handfighting someone for the baseball. He is trying to get a firmer grip. He is trying to isolate his rival’s hand so he can prise the ball away finger by finger.

  It is a tight little theater of hands and arms, some martial test with formal rules of grappling.

  The iron seat leg cuts into his back. He hears the earnest breathing of the rival. They are working for advantage, trying to gain position.

  The rival is blocked off by the seat back, he is facedown in the row above with just an arm stuck under the seat.

  People make it a point to read the time on the clock atop the notched facade of the clubhouse, the high battlement—they register the time when the ball went in.

  It is a small tight conflict of fingers and inches, a lifetime of effort compressed into seconds.

  He gets his hands around the rival’s arm just above the wrist. He is working fast, thinking fast—too much time and people take sides.

  The rival, the foe, the ofay, veins stretched and bulged between white knuckles. If people take sides, does Cotter have a chance?

  Two heart attacks, not one. A second man collapses on the field, a well-dressed fellow not exactly falling but letting himself down one knee at a time, slow and controlled, easing down on his right hand
and tumbling dully over. No one takes this for a rollick. The man is not the type to do dog tricks in the dirt.

  And Cotter’s hands around the rival’s arm, twisting in opposite directions, burning the skin—it’s called an Indian burn, remember? One hand grinding one way, the other going the other, twisting hard, working fast.

  There’s a pause in the rival’s breathing. He is pausing to note the pain. He fairly croons his misgivings now and Cotter feels the arm jerk and the fingers lift from the ball.

  Thomson thrusting down off the shoulders of the men who carry him, beating down, pulling away from grabby hands—he sees players watching intently from the clubhouse windows.

  And Cotter holds the rival’s arm with one hand and goes for the ball with the other. He sees it begin to roll past the seat leg, wobbling on the textured surface. He sort of traps it with his eye and sends out a ladling hand.

  The ball rolls in a minutely crooked path into the open.

  The action of his hand is as old as he is. It seems he has been sending out this hand for one thing or another since the minute he shot out of infancy. Everything he knows is contained in the splayed fingers of this one bent hand.

  Heart, my heart.

  The whole business under the seat has taken only seconds. Now he’s backing out, moving posthaste—he’s got the ball, he feels it hot and buzzy in his hand.

  A sense of people grudgingly getting out of his way, making way but not too quickly, dead-eye sidewalk faces.

  The ball is damp with the heat and sweat of the rival’s hand. Cotter’s arm hangs lank at his side and he empties out his face, scareder now than he was when he went over the turnstile but determined to look cool and blank and going down the rows by stepping over seat backs and fitting himself between bodies and walking on seats when it is convenient.