A Mound Over Hell

by Gary Morgenstein

  “You ain’t gonna add to the family like this. I want some kissing. I want some loving.” Mooshie hopped on a table as if levitated. “I said kissing, bitches.”

  The two girls shyly kissed.

  “I said kissing, not wiping away lipstick.”

  The girls opened their mouths and the crowd whooped.

  “That’s right. You. You and you and all of you. I want to see some tongue.”

  Around the bar, couples kissed. Mooshie stared expectantly at Puppy and Zelda, who kissed lightly and broke away, embarrassed.

  “You too, White Grampas.” Mooshie singled out Mickey and Ty, running away to hide in the back amid good-natured laughter. “You ain’t never too old for a new kind of loving. Ever, darlings.”

  The piano cued her back into the song.

  “There’s no excuse to be sad,

  If you gotta heart, then baby baby baby.”

  She pouted, hips rocking back and forth, milking the beat.

  “Give it a launching pad,

  And let that goddamn lovin’ in.”

  The bar roared. Zelda and Puppy brushed away tears.

  Mooshie played two long sets. In between there was a lot of alcohol. When Puppy woke up on the kitchen floor the next morning, Zelda was crawling out the door holding her shoes and dry heaving. Ty and Mick were sprawled on opposite ends of the couch, legs crisscrossed. Puppy shook them awake and stumbled into the shower as they fell back asleep, snoring. Soap, water, shampoo, nothing helped once his mind remembered and sent his body into mild hysteria.

  Seven thirty AM. He pitched in ninety minutes.

  He staggered past his bedroom, drawn back by Mooshie’s empty bed. Worry about pitching hungover or worry about where you lost Mooshie. Good choices. Mick and Ty stumbled into the bathroom making all sorts of unnatural body sounds.

  “Where’s Mooshie?”

  Mick squatted on the toilet, yawning; Ty carefully shaved.

  “Who?” Mantle asked.

  Lopez stood in the doorway, the black dress a little looser, as if it’d been peeled off a few times without regard for zippers. Hand on her right hip, she shook her head at the two old naked men. “That is some awfully ugly white shit.”

  Ty threw a towel. “Feast.”

  Mooshie gagged and strolled into the kitchen, Puppy trailing.

  “Where’ve you been?”

  “What?” she glared.

  “It’s seven-forty.” He pointed at the clock, yelling into the bathroom. “We gotta game, hurry up. I was worried.”

  “Don’t be. I make friends.” Mooshie shook the empty Edison’s Crackers box. “We’re out already? Least we got coffee.” She kept twisting the stove knobs. “You forget to pay the gas?”

  Chimes tingled throughout the apartment.

  It took Puppy a few moments to recognize the cue. Oh no. Not today.

  The vidnews wobbled slightly from the effort of the first Grandma Story since 2085. Puppy and Annette had just finished sex for the second time that morning when Grandma’s kind, warming expression had circled the room. Annette had burrowed under the bed in case Grandma figured out she’d faked an orgasm.

  On that day, Grandma had told the Story of food, its nutrients and the effect of radiation from the Allah attacks, reminding everyone just how much worse it would’ve been if America had retaliated with nuclear weapons. Instead, she could tell the Story of new farms opening in the Middle West, wheat and corn crops flourishing. Not just nature, not just the regeneration of the soil, but the advances in food engineering.

  The days of the SC and AG foods had begun, a quiet mocking of a hungry, grateful nation who, watching while sitting stuck in trains and buses with engines shut down, one long red light for traffic stretching just west of the Las Vegas radiation belt, had probably skipped over Grandma’s vow that someday America would once again feed the world. Their bellies were the priority.

  Now another Story would freeze the nation. Mooshie wasn’t the only one who couldn’t cook breakfast. Ovens and stoves went cold. All mass transit stopped. No cars could move. All meetings in businesses halted. Elevators stalled. Factories, cash registers, stacking canned goods on the shelf, morning exercise, showers, flushing toilets, anything that anyone could possibly do to distract them from watching was forbidden. Even breeding was against the law; no fiery orgasms when Grandma settled in next to vidnews host Etsy Valdez on the daily morning show Wake Up My Darlings.

  Even after the trees died and the sun’s rays weakened through the war-scarred atmosphere, Grandma still refused to move her My Darlings talks inside. Stubborness or hopefulness were two sides of a confident mind. Massive planting in the 70s and into the 80s, along with the diffusion of the tainted clouds, brought back some green; the scientists insisted that was all to be expected, considering.

  In this reality she permitted, hunks of dead trees comprised America’s forests. So came the HGs: birds, animals, bright trees flourished. The foods they mocked as So-Called and AlleGedly fed her children. Rain was on schedule and every so often real downpours drenched an area. Snow was coming back to the mountains. Those indomitable fish survived; she thought the likes of Saul Ribe and Pops Tai were supernatural, summoning versions of salmon and tuna from the oceans.

  Slowly the world would return and then the HGs would disappear along with Disappointment Villages. No more entrance exams from DV children saddled by the failures of a generation which had committed the worst failure of all: fear.

  Once the fake, and Grandma shuddered at that word but it was true and truth couldn’t be denied even by the single-minded, but once the fake and the false were gone, they had to deal with reality again. No magic other than their minds and their courage. They’d survived their own stupidity and that’s what the war was, as most if not all wars were, anger unleashed until pride took over, permitting no turning back.

  Except there was nothing behind the pride except bravado. The men and women maimed and killed so a flag could be waved sickened her. A flag representing what? What was the vision except causing death in the name of an idea?

  “If you could move over just slightly, please.” The frazzled cameraperson apologetically motioned Grandma to the right.

  “Of course, Patty. You’re making us all look good.”

  All of us together. For nearly thirty years it’d worked. Grumblings and bickering were to be expected from a Family. Defined a Family, didn’t it?

  Tomas had darkened at the notion, roiling up slowly that we weren’t ready, the country wouldn’t accept this Story. The country or him? Lenora sighed wearily. And Albert, dear dear Albert, her comrade, former lover, trusted right and left hand, he didn’t believe in this either. She attuned to doubts all around, even from the crew, edgy at setting up a visit inside the House. A vase had already been broken, Lenora gluing back the pieces so the shaken grip didn’t faint. Coffee spilled and cookies dropped, ground into the purple rug.

  Grandma’s Bedroom was a terrifying place. She fluffed up a pillow.

  “Grandmother, please.” The diminutive director Ian Schrage darted forward, hands prayerfully at his chest. “Don’t move. The light was so perfect.”

  “I don’t want perfect, Ian.” She smiled.

  “But I do.”

  “And your wishes overrule mine?”

  The room went very quiet. Ian hopped onto the bed, his bare feet gripping the purple quilt.

  “Yes,” he said defiantly.

  “Then I must defer to your superior wisdom.”

  “That would be nice.” He managed a wry smile and hopped back behind the camera, the crew glancing at him with anxious admiration.

  This was the America she wanted. Grandma muffled a grin so Ian wouldn’t get completely carried away, although with his ego, how could anyone tell the difference. This is what she had to get across tonight. How they’ve come of age. How they’re ready.

  “Everyone quiet please.” Ian squirmed in his chair and cleared his throat. “Three, two, and one.”

&nbs
p; Lenora sat up ramrod straight, eyes clear, shining, feeling like seventy again.

  “Good morning, Grandma.” The stunningly beautiful Etsy flashed her dazzling white teeth. “A big day, today.”

  “For everyone.” Grandma beckoned two children to sit beside her on the long purple couch. “I don’t do this very often.”

  “It’s only the third time.” Valdez held up three fingers.

  “Yes, the Food Story was the last one. Very important, right, R’hin?” Grandma snuggled a chubby little girl who looked like a Zelda clone, if clones hadn’t been outlawed as a capital offense.

  “Yes,” the girl said shyly.

  “And, of course, the Surrender Story,” Etsy said solemnly.

  “The sad and the happy,” Grandma said quickly. “We can laugh and cry in the same day, don’t we, Gil?” She tousled the thick hair of a thin boy with oversized black glasses. “Today, I want to tell everyone about something that happened long before the Surrender. Before the War. R’hin, do you know what happened before the War?”

  The little girl blinked. Half an hour ago she was on a school bus heading to third grade on East 181st Street before a smiling Blue Shirt took her in a car to this big studio.

  “I didn’t do my homework.” Her lower lip trembled.

  Grandma hugged her. “That’s okay, sweetheart. We’re not perfect.”

  “People are like countries, right?” Valdez asked her one pre-arranged question.

  “Yes.” Grandma pursed her lips. “Sometimes we make mistakes. The Allahs who wanted to kill us were bad. But not all the Allahs were bad. We know how religion and God makes people hate.”

  You couldn’t wait until tomorrow, Puppy sighed, listening in the clogged streets to the audio from huge speakers mounted overnight on the side of buildings.

  “But we were very angry at the Allahs. Innocent people got hurt.” Grandma sat the children on each knee. In the control booth, Cheng glared openly with no respect. She took a deep breath.

  “We sent all the Allahs away because we couldn’t trust them. They didn’t behave like real Americans. We protected their mosques, places of worship like churches, and made sure no one hurt them as they went onto the boats back to Arabia. There were a few injuries, but, of course, nothing compared to what they did to us.”

  Cheng shook his head minutely, opening his thoughts, begging Lenora to stop.

  “As we didn’t trust the Allahs, they didn’t trust us. So they sent a lot of Europeans to us. One hundred and eighteen boats. More than a hundred thousand from France and Germany, remember now, the Allahs were elected in those two countries. A number of countries in Europe actually. They didn’t just invade everyone. Anyway, lots of boats. Lots of people. Lots of children. Lots.”

  Grandma stared at Cheng, his eyes watering.

  “We didn’t let them in. We worried it was a trick. This was just after the Allahs attacked Manhattan and the Grand Mufti, he is their leader,” she addressed R’hin and Gil, squirming in boredom, “insisted those were terrorists and he had nothing to do with it and honestly, why would we believe him? Look what terrorists did to Los Angeles. Terrorists and their government had the same goals. Surely among more than a hundred thousand people there would be Europeans who were secretly Allahs. That had happened before. I couldn’t risk that, losing another city, more of my Family.”

  The First Cousin slipped out of the control booth, Grandma’s voice echoing down the hall.

  “We made the ships stay at sea. We airlifted food and water and medicine until we could figure out how to make sure everyone who came in was one of us. Then the storm hit. It was a very bad storm. Worse than a hurricane, it came out of nowhere and sank all the boats. All the children.” She paused. “We couldn’t do anything and, after that, the Allahs destroyed Washington and the war was truly on.”

  Grandma took a long sip of tea.

  “We told everyone the Allahs had sunk the ships, but they didn’t. It was a lie. We didn’t think the Family was ready for the truth. I think you are, now.”

  Grandma folded her hands. Etsy looked frantically at the director.

  “Thank her and you’re done,” Ian hissed into her earpiece.

  “Really?” Valdez blurted.

  “Yes.” Lenora patted her arm. “That’s the end of this Story. Soon they’ll be a new one.”

  21

  For several minutes, no one moved, finally milling about like spilled sand; they didn’t know what to make of Grandma’s Story. Puppy had hoped the speech, which he didn’t understand, in part because he hadn’t paid complete attention, throwing up twice from nerves, would trigger a national emergency. BT ‘copters would plunge out of the sky, armored vehicles would race down the Grand Concourse, the sun would really disappear and torrential rain would wash everyone down East 161st Street.

  But the game wasn’t cancelled.

  Frecklie gave him a big smile and thumbs up as he rushed through Gate Six and down Section 116, hopping over the fence and through the dugout into the clubhouse, pausing to dry heave into a dissipated wall.

  The team slumped lazily before their lockers. When Puppy came in, the whole clubhouse went mute. He wandered down each row until he came to his locker, flagged with a lopsided sign: PUPPY, each letter in a different handwriting. The team watched him lovingly open the door. A big pile of shit, clearly contributed by each member of the Bronx Hawks, sat in a bag. Everyone broke up.

  “Welcome.” Mickey rubbed his hair. “Now don’t make me chase any balls near those skulls.”

  Once Puppy finished dressing in the too small white t-shirt and too large blue uniform pants, Ty beckoned him into the office.

  “How you feeling?”

  “Great.”

  “So glad to hear that. Think getting polluted the night before a game was smart?” Puppy’s head ached from the reminder; he slowly shook his head. “Mantle can drink and play. You can’t. You ain’t gifted. You gonna emulate anyone, it’s me.”

  That scared Puppy a little, but not enough to shut up. “Why didn’t you stop me?”

  Ty turned scarlet. “You think I’m your fucking mother.” He shouted into the clubhouse. “Do I look like anyone’s mother?”

  The players gratefully shook their heads. The manager nearly sat on Puppy’s head.

  “If I ever find out you were drinking the night before you pitch, I’m gonna knock out all your teeth.”

  Puppy wouldn’t care what Cobb did as long as he said it a little quieter. He started toward the door when Ty grabbed his left elbow.

  “If the shoulder hurts, you tell me. Or I’ll slide into your ears.”

  As Puppy stumbled onto the field during the Falcons infield practice, Frecklie hopped onto the top of the dugout and very noisily windmilled his arms.

  “What’s wrong?” Puppy whispered.

  “There’s a big line.”

  “Of what?”

  “Fans. There, there, there.” Frecklie pointed.

  “Okay, okay, okay. Calm down.”

  Irritatated, Freckle smacked his chest. Am calm. He made little people with his fingers.

  Puppy shrugged. “Get.”

  Frecklie ran his finger over his throat, pointing at the executive suite on the second level.

  “I don’t have time to argue with them. You have to handle this, kid.”

  Frecklie went so white his freckles looked like HGs. He coldly shoved a paper and a pen at Puppy, who skimmed it as Ty bounded onto the field, glaring at his starting pitcher.

  “I can’t sign any authorizations.”

  “As the baseball historian, you’re an employee of the Sport Commission. I looked it up when I started.”

  “Pretty smart…”

  “Just sign,” Frecklie yelled and raced back up the aisle with the approved work order. Puppy followed Vernon between the first base line and the stands, where about a hundred or so fans were scattered.

  Shit, he blinked.

  Ty spit ‘bacco on their shoes. “Where’s the t
ea, girls? I could bake some crumpets if you like.”

  “We’re gonna warm up now, skip,” Jackson explained, pounding his glove.

  “Oh my.” Cobb delicately put his fingers on his lips. “I didn’t realize this was the bullpen.”

  Jackson swallowed. “You want us going out there?”

  “No, up your ass, you dumb black bastard.” Cobb sputtered. “Get out there. Now.”

  Puppy briefly turned back near second base. Frantic DVs were directing siblings in all directions behind home plate. Officer Brennan was running back and forth, tipping his head in greeting so quickly sparks seemed to flash around his receding hairline. Puppy couldn’t see the crowds swarming the concession stands inside, overwhelming Mr. Ruiz’s taco supply and Mrs. Balinski’s pierogi stash. Forget the congestion by the one entrance, Gate Six, from Aito steadfastly triple-checking each ticket price, while Frecklie and five new DVs ran past the patient, troubled fans who decided against work today, looking for a diversion from Grandma’s Story as they ambled in a messy line back under the El.

  Hundreds and hundreds of fans.

  Puppy crunched over a carpet of shattered glass which stretched before the bullpen in right center field like a glittering moat, guiding Jackson by the hand through the doorless frame. The catcher moaned. Both pitchers’ rubbers were buried beneath piles of rusted debris wrapped in tangled wires fallen from the scoreboard. Their spikes woke rows of rifle shells, which rolled toward a dirt-encrusted home plate.

  Vern pointed to skeletons leaning against the back wall, guns by their feet as if waiting to resume the fight. Puppy carefully toed some mottled orange wigs.

  “Leave them be,” the catcher warned, not moving.

  Imagining, Puppy looked up at the remains of the scoreboard, frozen with Grandma’s smile. “I guess Black Tops were positioned up there. Or maybe these guys were fighting ‘copters. Or just fell.”

  “All that matters is they lost. That’s why they’re bones and we’re not.”

  Puppy grunted and walked back. “Ever seen pictures of the stadium before October 12?”

  Jackson shook his head.

  “The scoreboard went from right to left field. They posted lineups, statistics. Had games, vids, photos, music. Attention, ladies and gentlemen. Now batting. Players had numbers.” Puppy leaned against the wall, disturbing a rat which scurried in search of quieter digs. Jackson almost fainted. “This used to be called Yankee Stadium, before baseball started skidding into the toilet and needed businesses to pay. The whole place was beautiful. All the ballparks were. They had personalities like people.”