The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop

by Robert Coover

  Paul Trench is Hardy's age, but already looks and acts like an old man. A company man, a loyal Damonite, at home in the world, incurious and doltish. His old man was a Damonite, so is he. All there is to it. Well, it'd be nice to have it so simple. Attractive ideas, though, Hardy has to admit. Not easy to love the establishment, but on the other hand, if he'd been born back in the days of the Damonite origins, he'd have probably joined them. Return to the simplistic and pious view of Damon as Good and Jock as Evil. Seems silly now, but back then, the Caseyites having turned despotic and fractious, and the Association at the tag-end of two bleak decades of unalleviated mediocrity, it all must have made some sense. And something about Damon the man, legend or no, always excites Hardy. Genius. Yep, he'd have joined.

  And the Damonites didn't lift an arm and still they got their way. Plain simple-minded faith in the ultimate power of justice and truth. Must have excited the hell out of them to see it happen like they said it would. Of course, once they got in, they grew a little muscle. Lot of different ways to get what you wanted, but only one to keep what you had.

  Hardy hauls on socks, watching his teammates-for-a-day head out on the field to warm up, nodding back when they nod to him, reading their numbers ... Stan Patterson ... Gram-mercy Locke ... Hatrack Hines. The strange resonance those names have! well, the childhood programing, the catechism, all the mythic residue hidden away in daily life. Still: hard not to feel it. Squire Flint shuffles by looking cast down— whose ...? oh yes, Drew McDermott. Well, understandable. He has to relieve Halifax, suffer an humiliating shelling, then get his finger busted by Casey's line drive. Squire, like most failures, is in love with Casey—he's one of the new breed of radical Caseyites, heretical sect attempting to bring back the golden age of Patrick Monday, celebrate the mystery of Casey's uniqueness, his essential freedom, God active in man, and, as Cuss McCamish would say, all that shit. Hardy has noticed these guys have a way of using "must" pretty often. "Man must achieve authentic transcendence .. . Casey must be made relevant to our times ... Man must have inferiority ... We must support human aspirations that cry out for fulfillment" ... and who don't like it, bust his balls. Of course, Hardy has to admit, there's something exceptional and appealing about Gawky Jock the Mad Killer, too, something fascinating about the way he altered the entire course of UBA history. With one pitch. Hardy feels a tingling just behind his left ear.

  So the Squire Flint types are saying that Damonism is a perversion and a tyranny, while others say the original Damonites had the truth, but have been betrayed by opportunists; others—like Paul Trench and his dad—hold that power itself is proof they are still in the right, that the continuing strength of this story through time is evidence that it is somehow essentially true, while guys like Cuss McCamish think everybody concerned should just go diddle themselves and leave the league in peace. Amen to that, thinks Hardy, but feels burnt by a wave of guilt. How is it that a goddamn renegade like himself got Damon Rutherford's part to play today? How does Trench feel about that? Ironic? Or just a proper victim? Don't think about it, man. Just remember how you love the guy, that second son who pitched such great ball and died so young, and do him justice.

  Book he's been reading lately. The Doubter. One of the flood of centennial Bancroft biographies out this year. Author tries to show that Bamey Bancroft, not Rutherford or Casey or Hardy's own progenitor Royce Ingram, was actually the central figure, the real heart and point of the Parable of the Duel, as they call it now. Rutherford and Casey seem to be giants, this guy claims, but are really only subhuman masks, predesigned roles, while Bancroft is the only one wholly rounded and thus truly human participant in that incredible drama. Maybe the only real one. Skepticism, doubt, fear: yet the ability to act, to participate. Cute idea: old-fashioned humanism founded on abiding ignorance and despair, but who says man's condition is, eternally, dread and doubt? Funny how you can play that game so many ways. Other theories have Brock Rutherford, Sycamore Flynn, Fennimore McCaffree, Chauncey O'Shea, even Flynn's or McCaffree's daughters at the center. Can't even be sure about the simple facts. Some writers even argue that Rutherford and Casey never existed—nothing more than another of the ancient myths of the sun, symbolized as a victim slaughtered by the monster or force of darkness. History: in the end, you can never prove a thing.

  Crowd noise over his head following a rhythmic pattern now. Speeches. Awards. Eulogies. Special ceremonies this year for the man who coached Damon Rutherford. HOF Barney Bancroft. The Old Philosopher. The Man Who Couldn't Quit. Real tear-jerker. Interesting guy, just the same. UBA in the Balance was the first book Hardy read, and he's never quite got over it. And Bancroft's assassination does bring that story full circle, when you think about it. But whether it makes it more or less human is hard to say. Who killed him? Doesn't really matter. They hanged Long Lew Lydell for it, but nobody really believed he did it. Part of the parable. Cuss McCamish's parody of the Long Lew and Fanny ballad in which Long Lew uses his fabulous dong as a life* saving crutch while on the rope—Fanny comes to tell him she's pregnant again: it goes soft and that's the end of Long Lew. Damonites like to claim it was Patrick Monday who killed Bancroft in a plain power grab. To be sure, given the collapse of the familiar patterns and the emotions aroused, it was easy for Monday and his Universalists to take over. On the other hand, Squire Flint is sure Barney killed himself. Remorse. But the point is, Bancroft's death was a kind of synthesis for the Duel, no matter who you think Rutherford and Casey really were or stood for, no matter who finally did the job. Must have been a poet who shot him. Sandy Shaw maybe. Good stuff for another song. Or maybe it just happened. Weirdly, independently, meaninglessly. Another accident in a chain of accidents: worse even than invention. Invention, even by a Monday or a Trench, implies a need and need implies >purpose; accident implies nothing, nothing at all, and nothing is the one thing that scares Hardy Ingram.

  "Well, as I live and breathe! Hang down your heads, old pricks, and pee, it's the boy with the matchstick arm!" A familiar voice: his friend Costen McCamish, dressed as Tuck Wilson.

  With him is his drinking buddy Gringo Greene, who sings: "The corpse it stinks most lov-huh-ly!" Greene is in the togs of Goodman James. Soft jobs; they've both lucked out.

  "I think you guys got your dates mixed up," Hardy says. "The Holly and Molly Show is next week." They're pretty drunk and for some reason that irritates him today.

  "Say, tell us, glorious hero," says Cuss, "is it true what they say about the Virgin Daughter?"

  "I don't know, what do they say?"

  "Why, that:

  Anyone could get in

  To Harriet Flynn,

  The problem was how to get out!

  When she got you pinned,

  Her daddy'd come in,

  And give you one hell of a clout!"

  Hardy has to grin at that one, but feels that tingle behind his ear again. "You drunken irreverent bastards! How you malign our common mother!"

  "On the sack in the back of Jake's!" sings Gringo. Then, in a hush, leaning forward: "Hey, I just got the word, men, this game is fixed!"

  "That, my boy," declaims Cuss McCamish, "is the immortal parable's very message!"

  "What?" asks Hardy. "That the game is fixed, or that Gringo gets the word?"

  "The only thing I'm getting outa this," grumbles Gringo, "is a pain in the ass."

  "Which is more than you deserve," says Cuss.

  "Deserve!" croaks Gringo. "I deserve love, truth, beauty, meaning, and eternal life . . . but I'll settle for a fuckin' drink."

  They start to move away, but first Costen turns back to say: "Now, you know the rules, Hardy: no intentional wild pitches thrown at the Chancellor, no soiling of the immortal skivvies at the moment of truth, leave all your unconsumed liquid assets to your old buddy Cuss, and remember: you've got first crack at the Kill—"

  "Get outa here, you sonsabitches!" hollers Hardy, "before I bust a few immortal skulls myself!" He looks for a ball to throw but before he can find one
, they've staggered out in a drunken gallop, whooping and snorting as they go.

  His roommate Skeeter Parson, dressed for the role of rookie Toby Ramsey, wanders over. He and Skeeter get along fine, play hard, accept everything with a grain of salt, josh each other out of the dumps, and when in doubt, go chasing tail together. Skeeter is wearing his usual one-sided grin, but doesn't look his old happy-go-lucky self. Hardy bends over his laces. Looking at his right hand, he thinks suddenly: by God, I've got something there today, all right. . . something different. He flexes his fingers.

  "I don't see why we can't reenact 'Long Lew and Fanny* instead of this old doggerel," Skeeter complains. Hardy straightens up, half smiling. The grin on Skeeter's face fades. Something peculiar crosses his expression, like aWe, something Hardy hasn't seen before. "Hardy... is that you?"

  "Sure!" laughs Hardy, taken aback. He notices now that he and Skeeter are alone down here. "What's" the matter?"

  "I don't know." Skeeter's color conies back, makings of a grin again, but he keeps eyeing Hardy in a funny way. "For a minute there..."

  "You thought I was Fanny McCaffree herself."

  Skeeter laughs, but that funny look doesn't leave his face. "Do me a favor, roomie."

  "Name it."

  "When that pitch comes today, step back."

  "You kidding?"

  "No, Hardy, I'm dead serious." The grin is gone and Skeeter's gaze is fixed on him. But can he trust even Skeeter? Isn't this just another trick, another prearranged ploy to see if he'll break? Cuss hinting he should deck Casey when he pitches to him in the top of the third, Skeeter tempting him with cowardice. Won't know for sure until the initiation is over. "Seeing you there just now, I don't know, I got the idea suddenly that maybe this whole goddamn Association has got some kind of screw loose, Hardy."

  "You just finding that out?"

  "No, wait, Hardy, I'm not joking. Maybe... maybe, Hardy, they're really gonna kill you out there today!"

  Hardy feels a cold chill rattle through him, tingling that patch behind his ear, pulverizing his organs and unhitching his joints, but outwardly he laughs: "Bullshit, Skeeter. The old-timers just build it up this way to give the rookies a little scare each year. They'd have to be crazy to—" He's sorry the minute he's said it.

  "Exactly!" Skeeter cries. "Crazy! Why have we been assuming all along they weren't? Listen!"

  Above them, the crowd growls spasmodically. Do sound a little mad at that. Like a big blind beast. "Well, if that's what they want," he says, troubled, and tucking a glove in his armpit, clops out of the locker room.

  Skeeter trails, sighing. He's still trying to tell Hardy something, but the autograph hunters in the passageway are making so much noise he can't hear him. Mostly kids, sprouting girls, a few women who can always be found outside locker rooms. Hardy grins, pauses to sign a few scorecards, and Skeeter does, too. Going by the rules, they sign the names they are playing under today. Hardy notices that Skeeter is leaving the "e" out of "Ramsey." Rebellious streak. Get him in trouble someday. Lot of these cards will end up in the Chancellor's office.

  They push forward, through the young bodies, crowd roars egging them on. Time soon. Have to warm up. Sun slicing through open bleachers on to the ramp ahead. Brilliant day. Always like that on Damonsday. Or so they say. Signing a baseball, he notices it already has a lot of autographs. He looks closer. They're all Damon Rutherfords! He swallows, looks up uneasily: Yes, by God, that same kid! Who the hell are you, he wants to ask, but something holds him back. He adds his version of the signature—not all that different from the others, he notices—and hands the ball back. A girl, grabbing at his fly, distracts him—by the time he's got her hand out of there, the kid has disappeared.

  "Come on, let's get up there!" he snaps at Skeeter Parsons —but where is Skeeter? There, way up ahead, alone on the ramp, looking back, oddly aloof. Hardy plunges ahead, but they're all over him now. Excited, all right, he's never seen anything like it. "Damon!" they're screaming, and "Damon!" and "Damon!" Excites him, too, damn it. Their hands and mouths are all over him. He realizes he is walking on some of them. Looks down, but they swarm so thickly over him, all he can see is an occasional thigh or face down there. They groan under his cleats and praise his name. He struggles: "Come on! For God's sake, let me go!" Suddenly he is in sunlight and breaking free. He staggers forward, propelled by his own thrust, blinded by the sun, dragging the more desperate with him—and a tremendous stunning roar brings him up short! As one, the fans in the stadium stand and cheer, stand and cry the magic name: "RUTHERFORD! RUTHERFORD! RUTHERFORD!" Appalled, in pain, terrified, he wrenches one kid off his shoulder, kicks free of another, pries loose the fingers of the girl who hangs on between his legs, her poor face cleat-battered, pulls up his shorts and his knickers, and marches, suffering more than he'd ever guessed possible, to the bull pen. "RUTHERFORD! RUTHERFORD!"

  Well now, a sight for whore eyes! Those immortal hairy cheeks ablush in the blazing sun, immortal ankles in a bind of antiquarian knickerbockers, the whole immortal creation pirouetting gracelessly bullpenward, and the whore of whores, Dame Society, in all her enmassed immortal fervor, fixes her immortal eyes thereupon, missing not one mote and mentally putting the measure to the royal shillelagh—well, a whit bulkier than last year's, though not so far reaching perhaps, nothing to compare with the Hall of Famer of two years past, to be sure, but 'twill do for a bit of a turn, dearie, 'twill do—and lets fly from the black and cavernous depths of her immortal bosom a lusty approbation: "RUTHERFORD! RUTHERFORD!"

  Costen the Rotund Transient McCamish, not to be confused with that lord of old whose musty Pioneer woolies he wears now, nor even with that grand paterfamilias Walter R. F. McCamish (and who was his preterient lodger today? Warwick was it? Or Raspberry Schultz?), only he, Cuss the contemned and contemning, side by side with Gringo Greene, the heavy-lidded atheist, he Cuss remarks this strange scene: the Association of the Stars. "Gringo, I swear by the holy cock of Saint Brock the Great, we've been born in a wondrous world, borne to a wondrous pass!"

  "God bless our mothers," is Gringo's yawning reply.

  "We have no mothers, Gringo. The ripening of their wombs is nothing more than a ceremonious parable. We are mere ideas, hatched whole and hapless, here to enact old rituals of resistance and rot. And for whom, I ask, for whom? For that old whore?"

  Gringo Greene in affectionate accord turns and blows kisses to the old girl, the mass assembled, now crying wet-lipped for Casey (and who is it to be? is it Galen Flynn, as they have rumored? proper response to the immortal lust for sentiment and pattern, and yet...), and "The one true thing!" cries he.

  "I can't believe it, Gringo. If all this fuss is just a rash in the old girl's crotch, then pray, where'd she get the rash?" Cuss McCamish, negator even of negations, surrenders to the paradox, surrender facilitated by his conviction that paradox, impossibility, confusion, and emptiness are the natural abode of a mind at rest; and proposes: "Let us hie us to the immortal pen and commend ourselves to yon heroes!"

  "So be it fenn mccaffree!" vows Gringo, already in his cups it would seem, and off they go there, the thin and the stout of it, the good man Goodman and fat Tuck, reluctant participants in a classic plot, too wise to fable a future fortune, too distressed ever to invent their childhoods, left with nothing but the spiky imprint of their cleats upon the turf and the passage from envelope to maddening envelope of inscrutable space. Behind them, electronified voices recount the miracles that graced the ruptured but still radiant reign of the lofty Barney Bancroft HOF: well, there have been worse. As a point of fact, Gringo is himself celebrating this greenhorn season the centennial of the founding of his own inglorious line, his patriarch Copper Greene having been the most fabulous fly-by-night in Association history: up in LVII to whale out a record .411 and out of the league a year later with a .138.

  "Greetings, personages of large consequence!" hails he of little consequence, Costen McCamish. In company out here with Hardy Ingram cum Damon Rutherf
ord are his diminutive sidekick Skeeter Parsons, the party proselyte and jack-straw Paul Trench, the star-crossed iconoclast dire Squire Flint—and who is that slackbritches in the raiment of the greatest Witness of them all? Why, Raspberry Schultz it is, the gentle folklorist and gamesplayer. Hmmm. So in grand-pop's knickers it's to be Wicked Willie Warwick, after all: may he reflect due honor on the happy clan, shy of immortals though it be.

  "Where's the bar?" asks Gringo Greene, his emblematic salute.

  "Ah, it's Cuss and Gringo!" complains the raspberry-complected Witness York with a turn of his knobby head. "As if things aren't already bad enough!"

  "Pull the switch on that thing, man!" Gringo hollers up at the sun. "I can't even find my drink!" And clutches blindly before him, not so blindly punching Squire Flint in the chest. No love there, and feckless Flint flicks the hand away.