He crossed the street and passed through the gate and approached one of the prone men. The glass shield over the man’s face was obscured by blood. He looked at another. It was the same. He stopped looking.
What am I doing? he wondered. What am I looking for?
He couldn’t remember exactly. He was looking for something or someone, it started with, he could almost remember, it was a letter that he . . . perhaps R? But what did that tell him? It didn’t tell him anything at all.
He turned around and looked over his shoulder at the building across the street. It was an apartment complex, ten or twelve stories tall, its door shattered.
He stood staring at it for a long time. Something about it struck him as significant. Familiar? What, he wondered again, was he looking for, and who was he exactly, again? What was the name?
He kept staring, feeling a slow panic welling through him.
He took a step forward without looking, almost fell over one of the bodies. He kicked it softly, then stepped around it.
I am looking for something, he tried to tell himself, or someone. Probably, he tried to tell himself, I’ll know it when I find it.
He looked back again at the building across the street, then turned toward it.
Probably as good a place to start as any, he thought. He crossed the street, opened the door to the building. Who knows what I will find? he thought.
Another instant and he was gone.
W. P. KINSELLA
Reports Concerning the Death of the Seattle Albatross Are Somewhat Exaggerated
W. P. Kinsella is the author of Shoeless Joe, famously adapted into the film Field of Dreams. His other novels include The Iowa Baseball Confederacy, Box Socials, and Butterfly Winter. He has also published more than a dozen-anda-half collections of his short fiction, most recently The Essential W. P. Kinsella. Kinsella, widely considered one of the greatest fiction writers about baseball, is as well known in his native Canada for his award-winning and controversial First Nation stories, humorous and gritty tales of the complex lives of indigenous Canadians. He has won the Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship, the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour, and the George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award. Kinsella has been celebrated with many other honors, including the designation of the Orders of Canada and British Columbia. He currently lives near Vancouver.
“Reports Concerning the Death of the Seattle Albatross Are Somewhat Exaggerated” is a very rare feat, a first-contact story about baseball. The story first appeared in Rosebud.
The five p.m. news is doing a feature story on me. Jean Enersen, the beautiful Channel Five anchorwoman, is reading from her TelePrompTer.
“Mike Street, the man inside the Seattle Albatross costume for the past five years, has announced his retirement,” she is saying.
“Albatross flies the coop” was how the headline of the Post-Intelligencer sports section read.
The camera cuts to the smiling but vacuous face of Buzz Hinkman, the Seattle Mariners’ coordinator of public relations.
“The only reason we’re making a statement at all is because of the bizarre rumors that have been circulating,” says Buzz. “Mike joked that it was time for him to seek visible employment. He’s left Seattle and is taking a long holiday while he mulls over a number of employment offers.”
In that way of news broadcasters, Buzz goes on talking, mouthing his pompous platitudes while the voice of Jean Enersen lists a few highlights of my career and wishes me well. The final word, however, belongs to Buzz: “I want to assure the press, our own Seattle Mariners fans, and the baseball world at large that reports concerning the death of the Seattle Albatross are somewhat exaggerated.” Here Buzz smiles his empty but winning smile for at least the tenth time, and Channel Five moves on to a story about a baby orangutan.
Buzz probably believes what he has just said. And if he doesn’t believe it he’s not a bad actor. I’m sure the word has been passed down to him from the general manager, perhaps even the owners, who in turn have been briefed by higher powers as to what to say.
The first thing I have to admit is that our people did not understand the civilization of Earth very well. I’m afraid the bureaucrats on our planet aren’t very bright, which shouldn’t come as any surprise, except that everyone here on Earth accepts as fact that other civilizations are far more intelligent. About the only advantage I have over people on Earth is a built-in ability to engage, with considerable help, in teleportative space travel. If our politicians and military bureaucrats had been smarter, they would have investigated conditions much more thoroughly before packing me off to Earth.
One of the first things we saw when we began intercepting television signals from Earth was the San Diego Chicken.
“Look! Look!” our prime minister chortled. “They have an integrated society. It appears that fifty thousand people on Earth are gathered together to worship one of our own.” I have to admit that that is what it looked like.
As the TV signals became clearer, the prime minister and the joint chiefs of staff spent a great deal of time watching baseball, not that they understood the game. I’ve been here for five years and I barely understand it. But what they did understand was popularity, and mascots were popular. The San Diego Chicken was most like one of our own, but B. J. Bird from Toronto, Fredbird the Redbird from St. Louis, and even the Phillie Phanatic could walk down the street in any of our major cities without being stared at.
“They even have economically disadvantaged segments of the population,” enthused the prime minister, after viewing the bedraggled set of mascots fielded by the Chicago White Sox.
I have to admit I was a natural for the job. I am a bit of an exhibitionist; I had also studied theater, where I majored in pantomime and clowning. Unfortunately, for once the bureaucrats decided to move with extreme haste. Almost before I knew it, I was teletransported to New York City, where, I was informed, there was a school for mascots.
Most of the officials on our planet understood that on Earth mascots weren’t real, but just as some children believe cartoon characters really exist, a number of politicians and most of the military believed the mascots were really long lost descendants of ours.
“The thing you’re going to have to get used to,” one of the bureaucrats said to me, “is that you never take off your costume.”
“I don’t have a costume,” I said.
I was given some curious looks by the joint chiefs of staff, the head of External Security, and perhaps even the prime minister.
“Need I remind you that on Earth only people in elaborate costumes look like me?”
“Of course,” they said.
My natural colors are blue and white, so it was decided that after I oriented myself to New York and attended mascot school, I’d align myself with the Seattle Mariners, a baseball team that didn’t have a mascot.
New York was a great place to start my life on Earth. In the theater district, where the mascot school was located, no one gave me a second glance as I walked the streets. I was given a more than adequate supply of currency, including one delightful hundred-dollar bill that reproduced itself on command. I was able to live in a comfortable hotel and eat at quality restaurants, although my greatest joy was to go to a fish market, buy a tub of sardines, toss them in the air one at a time, and catch them in my mouth.
At the ballpark, after I officially became the Seattle Albatross, I used to use fish in my act. I’d go down to the Pike Street Market and buy a couple of pounds of smelts, then run around the stands tossing fish in the air and swallowing them. Kids would stop me and ask, “You don’t really swallow those raw fish, do you?” or, “Are those real fish, or are they made of something else?”
“They’re real,” I’d say. “Want me to breathe on you?” The kids would shriek and pretend to be afraid of me as I puffed up my cheeks. Then I’d reach way down into my mouth and pull out a smelt. “Have a fish,” I’d yell, and chase the kids along the aisles, holding a fish by the tai
l.
The only recognizable foreign object I brought to Earth with me was my communicating device, a sophisticated sending-receiving set, which, once I was settled in Seattle, lived under my kitchen sink, mixed in with a bag of potatoes, looking exactly like a potato except that it felt like chamois to the touch.
There must have been sixty people at mascot school.
“I never take off my clothes in public,” I wrote on my application, for I had decided to remain mute until I became acclimatized. “It’s my way of getting into character.” The school officials were more interested in the hundred-dollar bills I produced to pay the tuition than in my idiosyncrasies. The other students thought I was showing off at first. But I was good at what I did and they soon accepted me. The result was that while a roomful of people in jeans, track suits, and leotards practiced pratfalls and somersaults, I performed in full costume.
What did I look like? Picture the soulful expression of the San Diego Chicken, but picture real feathers, sleek, a brilliant white, like sun on hoarfrost, violet tail feathers and bars of violet along my folded blue wings, and sturdy legs the color of ripe corn. I always wore furry shoes, big as pillows, covered in blue velvet, to keep my bird’s feet hidden from the curious.
The thing the Mariners were must interested in was that I would work for free. All they asked me to do was sign a waiver to the effect that if I was injured while performing they would not be liable.
“To what do you attribute your huge success?” the press repeatedly asked me. “You have replaced the San Diego Chicken as the most in-demand performer of your kind in America. What is the secret of the Seattle Albatross?”
“The mystique of the Seattle Albatross is the very elusiveness of my character. None but a select and specific few have ever seen the Mike Street who resides inside this costume. That makes me a mysterious entity and automatically doubles or triples the interest in me.”
“Don’t you ever secretly yearn for the fame and publicity Ted Giannoulas receives as the San Diego Chicken?” asked Steve Kelley of the Seattle Times. “He’s a celebrity even when he appears out of costume.”
“Oh,” and here I would giggle my high-pitched laugh-shriek for which I was famous, “just yesterday I spent a lovely day at the Pike Street Market, and just walked around downtown Seattle, relaxing, being myself, not having to be a celebrity every minute. I enjoy the private side of my life very much. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”
“What about your personal life?”
“I keep my personal and professional life completely separate. My friends guard my privacy with great loyalty and determination.”
What the reporter was trying to establish, in a none too subtle way, was my sexual situation. The rumors about me were legion. The most prevalent, of course, was that I was gay. I do have a high speaking voice and a girlish giggle. Apparently at least two young men in Seattle’s gay community claimed to be me, and since there were never any denials—“The private life of the Seattle Albatross is private” was my final word on the matter—they are to my knowledge still claiming it. What they will do now that I’ve officially left Seattle is not my problem. My problem right now is much more serious than that.
My problem then was acute loneliness. And frustration, both sexual and otherwise. No one on my home planet knew exactly the kind of information they wanted me to channel back to them. One high official had the nerve to ask me to bring back Ronald McDonald’s autograph. Opportunities for sexual contact were everywhere, but I was unable to make even a close friendship for fear of giving away my secret. I kept an apartment on Union Street which I visited once a week to pick up mail. I occasionally invited a friend or reporter there. I kept canned food in the cupboards, kept the closets full of human clothes, left Willie Nelson albums lying about on the carpet. When I was alone I was able to contrast my position to that of a famous television character. There was an alien named Mork who made wonderful, insane jokes and had a very beautiful woman in love with him. The woman knew what he was but loved him anyway. Mork was always in a lot of trouble, but he was never lonely. Except when I was performing, I was utterly lonely.
And even performing had its risks. The closest call I ever had was on an evening when Phil Bradley, Seattle’s best outfielder, hit a mammoth home run in the bottom of the ninth inning to bring Seattle a come-from-behind victory. The fans were jubilant, raucous, their adrenaline running high. A whole contingent of them were waiting for me as I made my way down a ramp toward the dressing rooms. It had been a difficult evening for me. While children always loved me, were able to accept the fantasy of me, teenagers were wary and distrustful, somehow aware that I was too real. One had snatched a feather from my wing about the sixth inning. Others had, in more than a joking tone, spoken of tearing off my costume and revealing the real Mike Street.
“Let’s get him,” several of them screamed.
“Hit him high and hit him low,” someone else said.
I tried to run, but I’m not very speedy. Those pursuing me were the same ones who had taunted me earlier, sensing my strangeness. They backed me into a corner. I considered flying. I could soar to the roof in an instant. Better to reveal my identity than die.
“Help!” I yelped, my voice high and shrill. I flapped my wings and tried to fly over their heads. My wings made monstrous beating sounds. Some of them retreated. I scraped my back on the sprinklers in the ceiling of the passageway.
One of them grabbed my legs. I shrieked like a macaw. I struck one hard with my left wing, knocking him down. But they overpowered me.
“Twist his head off,” yelled one.
“Wring his neck,” cried another. And they fully intended to.
I was scuffling my feet together, trying to expose one scaly foot with its long, razorlike spur. I was going to do several of those barbarians serious damage.
But at that instant two Kingdome security men appeared and rescued me.
From that day on, whenever there were fans in the Dome, there was a security person somewhere close to me.
In 1981 there was a mascots convention in Cleveland in conjunction with the All-Star Game. The San Diego Chicken and I stood out as the class of the field. The minor-league mascots were there too: a real live dog from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, whose stock in trade was to stand frozen, leg in the air, forever in anticipation, in front of a plastic fireplug. What that act had to do with being the mascot of a baseball team still puzzles me.
There was a character there called the Eel, a very thin man who wore a plastic and rubber suit and a bulletlike helmet with red, blinking eyes. He had batteries of some kind hidden inside his flippers and would pass charges of blue electricity from hand to hand as he stood along the baselines. He was, he explained to me, an electric eel.
The men and boys inside those costumes were a strange lot, furtive and uncomfortable when their disguises were peeled away. Several congratulated me for my fortitude in never taking off my costume. Each intimated that he wished he could do the same. Outside their costumes the other mascots were as pale and sad-eyed as velvet portraits, whispering, gentle men happy only when hidden.
But the women. They were everywhere, bright as freshly cut flowers. They couldn’t keep their hands off us. Room keys and slips of paper emblazoned with lipsticked phone numbers were thrust into our hands, wings, flippers, beaks, mouths. It must be a significant comment on American masculinity that thousands of women are ready, willing, and able, and aggressively pursue the opportunity to go to bed with men whose physical features are perpetually hidden from sight by the costume of a chicken, bear, eel, cardinal, or some other grotesque caricature of a stuffed toy.
I wonder what these girls and women thought when they stripped away the costume of the Birmingham Bear and found a man of fifty-five, an ex-jockey, his face the color of concrete, his mirthless mouth like a crack in a sidewalk.
But we were not all trailed by women. There was a boy in a fish costume, his tail flapping in the dust, who must have given off a
n odor to betray that when, as part of his act, he kissed umpires and third-base coaches, it was because he liked umpires and third-base coaches.
In spite of the numerous temptations to sexual pleasure, I never wavered. Sometimes when I was very lonely I would take one or two of my admirers to dinner, but I always went home alone, turning aside, with as much kindness as I could muster, the invitations. For almost five years I behaved impeccably, denied my sexuality. Until I met Virginia.
Most of the players tolerated me. Some even considered me a good luck charm, good-naturedly rubbing my head for luck before going to the plate. Coaches and managers who had not known mascots in their playing days were less accommodating.
“Stay away from the third-base coach,” the players warned me, my first year with the team. “He has no sense of humor.”
One part of my act was to stand behind the third-base coach’s box and parody the signs he was giving. Eventually he was supposed to turn and hit me with a roundhouse right, whereupon I would fall as if unconscious, legs and wings spread wide.
“Maggie,” as the players called the third-base coach, was surly and uncooperative from the start.
“Listen, shithead,” he said to me, “I only do this because management says I have to,” and he smiled a wicked little smile, showing his snuff-stained teeth. I expected an elaboration, but none was forthcoming, until one evening during a pitching change he stalked to the dugout, returned with a bat, and went for my head as if it were a ball on a batting tee.
Invaders: 22 Tales From the Outer Limits of Literature Page 21