Sixteen
Young Angus McDunn
Had never seen one;
He was anxious, of course, just a bit;
But it scared him to death,
It had fish on its breath,
And it looked like an old catcher’s mitt.
Monroe D. Underwood
There was a different desk clerk on duty that evening, a bespectacled, owlish-looking little fellow in a rumpled, tight-fitting brown suit. He yawned and told Kirby that his suitcase had been sent up to his room.
Kirby said, “By the way, what room is that?”
The clerk yawned, checked the register, and glanced up quickly. “Room 221, sir—you must be the new bullpen catcher.”
“That’s right. I’d like to move to a first floor room—great heights mess up my equilibrium.”
“Impossible, sir—all bullpen catchers are assigned to 221—strict orders from No Sox general manager Matilda Richwell—something to do with the filing of nightly reports, sir.”
Kirby shrugged and the desk clerk mumbled something under his breath.
Kirby said, “Sorry, I didn’t quite catch that.”
“It was just an old saying, sir—‘Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.’”
Kirby said, “Alexander Pope.”
The desk clerk peered at his big book. “Not registered, sir—he may have checked out.” He slid Kirby’s key across the counter and made the sign of the cross.
Kirby said, “Catholic?”
“No, sir, Jehovah’s Witness. Would you care for a copy of Watch Tower?”
When Kirby reached room 221, the lobby grandfather’s clock was bonging out midnight and Kirby thought of Edgar Allan Poe, which was unusual, because Kirby hardly ever thought of Edgar Allan Poe. There was a note taped to his door. It had been printed in flaming red lipstick: “Don’t forget nightly report—knock three times—Matty—XXXXXXXOOOOOOO!” Kirby didn’t disturb it. He tiptoed stealthily into 221 and closed the door with a barely audible click. The telephone rang and Kirby grabbed it. Dixie Benton said, “Everything okay on your end, Kirby?”
Kirby said, “Not exactly—the No Sox got stomped 26-4.”
“But no pertinent information?”
“Yeah, we got a shortstop who reads Shakespeare in the dugout, and Nitro Droofik is forever scratching his balls.”
“Items of no importance.”
“I wouldn’t go quite that far—they’re probably important to Droofik.”
“But that’s all you have?”
“There was something about purple six-foot-seven tarantula spiders, but I doubt that you’d be interested.”
“Six-foot-seven, did you say?”
“Yep, two feet taller than Alexander Pope.”
“All right, Kirby, enough aimless chatter. I talked to Langley earlier this evening and I’ve been given to understand that the KGB’s three hotshots are probably in Grizzly Gulch at this very moment!”
“Who were those guys again?”
“Caviar, Kisarze, and Tofchitsky. Langley is of the opinion that Caviar is running this operation, and that Kisarze and Tofchitsky are here to provide assistance. We’ll have to watch out for Tofchitsky—he isn’t as clever as Caviar or Kisarze, but he’s a terribly violent man, likely to go off the deep end when under stress—extremely dangerous!”
“You got mug shots?”
“Mug shots? My God, Kirby, to the best of our knowledge we’ve never laid eyes on any of the three! More than that, they’re probably incognito.”
“Well, if Langley doesn’t know what they look like, how does it know they’re in Grizzly Gulch?”
“Wire-taps, primarily—their voices have never been heard but they’ve been referred to by small-fry in the Communist network.”
“Okay, so arrest the small-fry and make ’em talk.”
“We can’t do that—we’d be shutting off valuable spigots! They don’t know that they’re tapped and one of these days they’ll make a serious mistake—a false sense of security is the curse of this field!”
“All right, what do we do now?”
“Nothing, until we know more. Tomorrow you’re to go out for a walk. Go through Grizzly Gulch’s residential areas and keep an eye open for a camouflaged radio antenna, possibly on a water tower or in a tall tree. The odds will be against you but it just may be worth another shot. We’ve had thirty people down here since April and they can’t find it.”
“Thirty people? Who?”
“No matter—I don’t know all of them myself.”
“Thirty people with triangulation equipment should have located that transmitter in nothing flat.”
“Certainly, if the transmissions were on a schedule, or if they were of reasonable duration, but they’re sporadic and they consume less than five seconds! By the time our people realize that the station’s on the air, it’s off the air! They simply don’t have time to get a fix on the source!”
“All right, I’ll look around tomorrow afternoon.”
“Now, for God’s sake, Kirby, don’t draw attention! You’re our ace-in-the-hole and we can’t afford to have you blow your cover!”
“No sweat. How did your belly-dancing debut work out?”
“Just fine! I was propositioned by two dozen farmers and El Kruncho, the Strong Man. Please be careful, Kirby—this one’s for a lot of marbles!”
“Don’t get uptight—I’ve been around the block a few times.”
“Well, dammit, Kirby, you worry me! Last night at the motel, you fell out of bed!”
“Well, what’s your beef? It was me who landed on the bottom! All three times!”
“Not those times—I’m talking about when you were sleeping!”
“I don’t remember.”
“Well, I do! When you crawled back in, you were muttering something about a ‘Bougainville’! Who the hell is ‘Bougainville’?”
“It’s an island in the Solomons group. What did I say about it?”
“I’m not sure—most of it was unintelligible—at one point I believe you were hollering for a stretcher-bearer, at another you were demanding supporting artillery fire or something. Kirby, it’s a long-established fact that people who fall out of bed are accident-prone and we aren’t in the market for any damn-fool accidents!”
“Stow it, Dixie—I’m not accident-prone.”
“Don’t count on that! You’d be the very last to realize it! Why, there are people who can get seriously injured at a church service!”
“I’m aware of that. I had an aunt who got trampled to death during an altar call at a Pentecostal camp meeting.”
“So there you are! I hope to Christ it doesn’t run in your family!”
“No, Aunt Lucy was the only Pentecostal we ever had. The Kirbys are mostly Methodists.”
There was a long silence before Dixie hung up. Kirby headed for the bathroom, tripping and falling flat on his face. He sat up dazedly and looked around until he found the obstacle, apparently abandoned in considerable haste—an old catcher’s mitt.
Seventeen
The previous evening’s bullpen chores had drained Birch Kirby. He’d strained muscles that he didn’t know he had, his shoulders ached, the palm of his left hand was swollen and throbbing, his legs were killing him, and the soles of his feet felt like they were going up in flames.
Kirby’s miseries didn’t end there—there were others within him, wrenching his guts and wringing his soul. He was a man going through the motions, bereft of virtually all but the will to survive, and there were moments when even that flickered feebly. When the world had been green he’d responded to the lures of alcohol and female flesh and found both to be good, he’d become locked in the unyielding grip of a strange inertia, remaining at rest on barstools and in motion in bedrooms, the best of his talents and energies had been spent lavishly in pursuit of these pastimes, and there’d been precious little time or desire for anything else. He was dimly cognizant of his worsening situation, knowing that there had to be
another road somewhere beyond his sexaholic jungle, and he blundered blindly through the tangled perplexities of his befuddled existence, seeking that new thoroughfare without sense of direction or the slightest idea of what it would look like if ever he managed to locate the damned thing.
He was tired, he was always tired, it seemed, but on this particular occasion he was tapping the very dregs of his physical reserves. Despite the rigors of the No Sox bullpen, he hadn’t slept well, the good dreams hadn’t come, and Hope, that golden-haired, silver-gowned damsel whose face he’d never seen, had failed to make her nightly appearance at his bedside. Now the midwest sun was hot on his back and he’d worked up a lather pounding the red-brick sidewalks of Grizzly Gulch’s quiet, maple-lined streets for more than two hours, covering most of the village, studying trees, flagpoles, chimneys, rooftops, telephone poles, any and all erections that might serve to support and conceal an antenna capable of punching a shortwave radio signal all the way from southern Illinois to Moscow. He’d learned nothing but he stayed with the task, pausing as surreptitiously as it is possible to pause in broad daylight, adjusting his belt, stooping to tie a shoelace, employing any ruse that would grant him ample opportunity to peer at those few things arousing his curiosity, then hiking on, discouraged, feeling about as inconspicuous as a giraffe on an ice floe. He’d spent the morning and a chunk of the early afternoon drinking Javorsky’s Pilsner and chatting with the bartender at Brady’s Corncrib; he’d left there shortly after one o’clock, and he was grimly aware of a rapidly increasing urge to find a bathroom. None being readily available, he looked for other havens suited to the accommodation of his need, a signboard or a clump of trees, and saw nothing likely to suffice, at least not at three twenty-five in the afternoon, so he plodded along, his back teeth floating, as they say here and occasionally there. With four blocks to go, Kirby turned the last corner, picking up the pace on his way back to Main Street and the Grizzly Gulch Hotel, hoping that he’d be able to make it through the lobby before catastrophe struck.
Halfway down the first block he stopped in his tracks. To his right was a half-acre lot smothered under a three foot sea of weeds, and there was a sixty foot pin-oak well back on the property where a desperate man might go to his knees, flood the countryside undetected, and resume his journey at a less hectic pace. Kirby crossed the street, stepped over a dilapidated three foot wire fence, and reached the pin-oak without incident. During the subsequent blissful interlude his urine-impaired vision cleared to the point where he could make out a small gray house at the rear of the lot, a low structure in a poor state of repair, its steps sagging, its windows boarded, obviously uninhabited. From his kneeling position Kirby’s gaze drifted upward through the pin-oak’s foliage and a thought ripped across the gray screen of his mind like a bolt of Burma lightning. It was Kirby’s very first brush with genius and his neckhairs prickled instantly to attention. His course was clear—if he could manage to get to the top of the tree, he’d be able to see all over Grizzly Gulch, he’d have a bird’s-eye view, and if that damned elusive antenna was anywhere within the horizons, he’d spot it! He rose to his feet, glancing around. The Grizzly Gulch afternoon was dreamy, no breeze rippled its motionless air, no sound disturbed it, the area seemed suspended in a giant vacuum, and Kirby noted these conditions with approval. He circled the pin-oak, sizing it up. He’d climbed taller trees in his day. His discomforts were swept away by a wave of adrenaline, his arms encircled the pin-oak’s girth, his knees gripped its rough bark, and the laborious ascent was underway. The process was painful but one long minute later saw Kirby perched on the first branch, puffing, sweating, and feeling quite pleased with himself. From that point on it’d be duck soup. He went from branch to branch with care, checking his footing, making certain of his grip, and from a height of thirty or so feet, he looked down. There was a woman standing at the foot of the pin-oak. She had straight, dark hair, resentful flashing gray eyes, a resolute jaw, and wide, bulging buttocks. That wasn’t all. She had a double-barreled Gratz & McFarland 10 gauge shotgun, and sunlight glinted on the weapon as she pointed it in Kirby’s direction. She said, “Hey, who the hell you?” Her voice was low-pitched with the texture of gravel.
Kirby gulped. “I’m a salesman, ma’am—just a salesman.”
“What you sell?”
“What you want?”
“What you got?”
“Oh, spices, extracts, costume jewelry, magazine subscriptions, razor blades, hard candies, Christmas tree ornaments—like that.”
“No used cars?”
“Oh, sure—how’s a six-year-old black Ford 2-door sedan—AM-FM radio with cassette player, heater, air, fog lights, needs a little body work but runs like a sixty dollar watch!”
“How rubber?”
“Just so-so, but she don’t burn a drop of oil.”
“Hey, what you do in tree?”
“It’s the latest craze, ma’am—jogging is out, tree climbing is in—you haven’t heard?”
She cocked her Gratz & McFarland shotgun. “You full shit. Come down here, we talk—maybe long talk, maybe short talk—maybe very short talk.”
Unnerved by this unexpected development and its ominous potential, Kirby began the long descent only to lose his grip and plummet like a four-pointed pinwheel into a sudden black void choked with nine hundred and fifty-two quadrillion exploding multi-colored stars. He clambered from the pit to peer through a reddish haze at the unconscious husky woman sprawled under him and at the two men standing over him. Both men wore dark-hued business suits and concerned expressions. One carried a Luger, the other a Colt .45 automatic pistol. They assisted Kirby to his feet and dusted him off. The man with the Luger said, “Beautiful, Kirby, beautiful! Talk about guts—man, you dropped thirty feet with absolutely no guarantee that your target wouldn’t avoid you! That’s something they don’t teach at Langley—raw courage!”
The fellow with the Colt .45 slapped Kirby on the shoulder. “Jesus Christ, I’m glad you’re on our side—I’d hate to go up against the likes of you!”
The man with the Luger took Kirby by the arm. “You’d better get back to the hotel and let us handle this—we’re trying to keep you under wraps until we smoke the rest of these bastards out.”
Kirby nodded and stumbled uncertainly through the tall weeds toward the street, his left knee paining him—probably his point of contact with Shotgun Annie’s head. The guy with the Colt .45 called after him. “Kirby?”
Kirby turned. “Yeah?”
“Uhh-h-h-h, none of my business, Kirby, but maybe you’d better zip up your fly.” He winked. “You might give Matty Richwell ideas.”
Kirby could hear the men chuckling until he reached the sidewalk. Apparently Matilda Richwell’s voracious sexual appetite was no secret. For the second time since leaving Chicago, Kirby wished that he’d stayed there. The first had been in Matilda Richwell’s hotel room.
Eighteen
A short, light rain drifted through Grizzly Gulch shortly prior to game time, dampening the infield dust but not the spirits of the dozens of fans bearing posters demanding that Roger Hannistan be castrated, shot at sunrise, hanged, boiled in oil, drawn and quartered, and buried alive, simultaneously, of course. There were numerous other proposals, these from a more radical element, and of a nature too macabre to be detailed here. Heading into the top of the eighth inning, Grandpa Earlybeam had allowed Kelly’s Corners one scratchy single and Grizzly Gulch was leading 1-0.
Grandpa Earlybeam was a dour, hard-nosed veteran of more than a thousand ball games. In his dear, dead days beyond recall he’d had a cup of coffee with Cleveland of the American league and a jelly doughnut with Philadelphia of the National. He’d pitched from one end of the country to the other and back, in Mexico and South America, working the tank towns, and developing an amazing capacity for strong drink along with the unfathomable assortment of off-speed breaking pitches that had utterly flabbergasted the Kelly’s Corner’s Shillelaghs since the beginning of the contest. T
he lone No Sox tally had come on a prodigious second-inning Nitro Droofik blast that had landed on the roof of the Grizzly Gulch Post Office, and several wide-eyed bleacherites had insisted that a few minutes after the baseball had gone up, a shower of eagle feathers had floated down. Weary and out of sorts though he was, Kirby had laughed out loud at that. Grizzly Gulch was in last place but it certainly led the league in tall stories.
He sat on the bullpen bench with Nightlife Nesbitt and Barefoot Boyd, swatting mosquitoes and staring disinterestedly into the pocket of his tattered catcher’s mitt. Nightlife Nesbitt was saying, “Grandpa Earlybeam is very sharp tonight.”
Barefoot Boyd nodded matter-of-factly. “Of course, he’s sharp—the old bastard got a gin hangover. He’s a world-beater when he got a gin hangover!”
Nightlife Nesbitt yawned, shaking his head. “As the world’s leading authority on the subject of hangovers, it is my bounden duty to inform you that a hangover is a hangover is a hangover.”
Barefoot Boyd drove his right fist into the palm of his left hand. “Not so! Hangovers differ in density! When Grandpa Earlybeam went against Swamp City, all he had was an ordinary old beer hangover, and Swamp City busted his ass in the second inning!”
Nightlife Nesbitt said, “The difference between a gin hangover and a beer hangover is two dollars and seventy-five cents.”
Barefoot Boyd said, “All right, let’s look at his record—when he had a booze hangover, Dry River belted him out in the third! When he had a rum hangover, Blister Bend chased him in the fifth! When he had a peppermint schnapps hangover, Creepy Hollow lambasted…”
Nightlife Nesbitt held up a silencing hand. He said, “By God, you just might have something there! On a gin hangover he blanked Swamp City!”
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