Revolution #9

by Peter Abrahams

  “Some limo,” Svenson said, confirming Charlie’s guess.

  “Get used to it,” Mr. G told him.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “This is the limousine of the American future,” Mr. G answered.

  “Huh?”

  Mr. G did not elaborate.

  The limo of the American future swayed on its heavy suspension as it climbed into hills that Charlie had not seen in twenty-two years. Had anything changed? Not that Charlie could see—all around lay nature green and undegraded. The difference was one of perspective. Twenty-two years ago these hills had been scenery, the backdrop of college life. Now Charlie was aware of their enduring power, and wondered at the way that he and Rebecca and Malik and so many others had behaved like giants in what they took to be a stage set built just for them.

  “Tripping down Memory Lane?” asked Svenson.

  Charlie ignored him. The limo topped the last rise and dipped down toward the valley. The first thing Charlie saw was the stone campanile of the chapel. Bong, bong, bong, bong. Four peals of the brass bell, and the fifth that never came. Tripping down Memory Lane was a crude way to put it, but not untrue. Charlie was moving back in space and time, all the way back to the Big Bang. Hadn’t the universe begun with an explosion, and hadn’t its character been determined by the nature of that explosion? Most people couldn’t trace themselves back to a personal Big Bang, but Charlie Ochs could. Bong, bong, bong, bong—the sinful start of his own universe. With memory, as with a powerful telescope, you could see all the way back to the beginning, but you couldn’t do anything about it.

  “I believe he’s waxing nostalgic,” said Svenson.

  Charlie turned to Mr. G. Mr. G’s eyes were closed and his face shiny with sweat. “Don’t you ever get bored with him?” Charlie asked.

  Mr. G opened his eyes, turned them on Charlie and said: “You don’t seem sufficiently impressed with Buzz.”

  “Mad bombers are hard to impress,” Charlie said.

  Silence. Charlie felt their gazes on him. Then Mr. G decided he’d made a joke, and laughed. It was a harsh, dry laugh that threatened to turn to coughing and blood at any moment. Mr. G cut it off before it could.

  “What’s so funny?” asked Svenson.

  The temperature rose as they descended into the valley. In the backseat Charlie, Mr. G, and Svenson grew clammy together. “How about opening the windows?” Svenson said.

  “No breeze,” Mr. G answered quickly. The windows stayed closed.

  Outside, the town rolled by like a mural: wooden houses, the new ones with decks and hot tubs; the businesses of College Street, Campus Cleaners, 99 Cent Cinema, Catamount Bar and Grille, For the Love of Books; the campus itself, buildings of stone, brick, and wood, none topping the tallest trees, all harmonized by time and clever architects. Again it seemed to Charlie that nothing had changed. This Rip van Winkle effect was reinforced by the absence of people on the streets, a complete absence, making it more like a ghost town than a college town the week after finals. Then a young woman flashed by on a mountain bike, sweat staining her jersey, head tilted up to drink from a water bottle on the fly. She broke the spell, and with it the conceit that nothing had changed. Women like that hadn’t been around twenty years ago; they’d still been in the development stage. Charlie thought of Emily, at the top of some evolutionary tree. How had he begun his little speech on the pond? I’m a lucky guy.

  The limo entered a long leafy drive and stopped at the end. “This all right?” asked Mr. G.

  Charlie looked out. He saw a simple white building with the words “Morgan College Admissions Office” on the door. He didn’t remember it; hadn’t the admissions office been more imposing? “Yeah,” said Charlie.

  Svenson opened the door and got out. Mr. G turned to Charlie and showed him a card with a phone number on it. “Memorize this,” he said. It was an 800 number ending in 1212, easy to remember. “Just call when you’re ready,” Mr. G said. “Twenty-four hours a day.” He handed Charlie an envelope. “Expenses.” He put a hand on Charlie’s knee. A bony hand, and trembling. He looked into Charlie’s eyes. “Be smart,” he said. It wasn’t a warning or a command; much more like a plea. Charlie drew away, slid across the seat, climbed out of the car. Svenson was gazing at the scenery.

  “Hicksville,” he said.

  Charlie walked toward the admissions office. “She’s not going to be dead,” Svenson called after him. “It won’t be that easy.”

  Charlie turned. Svenson was leaning back against the car, his big hands splayed on the roof. “Do you know that for a fact?” Charlie said.

  Svenson smiled. “It’s all a conspiracy, right?” he said. “You guys love conspiracies.” Charlie didn’t answer. Svenson raised his voice. “I don’t know it for a fact, but I do know how your luck’s running. She’s alive.”

  Charlie walked away. He heard Svenson slam the door, saw the limo go by, turn, and drive down the lane. He could make out nothing through the blackened windows. Mr. G and Svenson might have been exchanging high fives, they might have had their hands around each other’s throats. The limo turned the corner at the end of the lane, flickered through a line of trees, and disappeared.

  Charlie walked around the admissions office, through the yard behind it, and onto the crushed-brick path that crossed the campus. The crunching beneath his feet, and especially the crushed-brick smell, awoke long-dormant memories. His mind bubbled with them: the glittering eyes of the freshman dorm janitor; the high, almost female voice of a fat umpire; dry pork chops with watery applesauce on Tuesdays. He could have named every member of his class.

  It was hot, and silent in a muffled way, silent except for the crunching of crushed brick. Charlie walked all the way to the rear edge of the campus, where the field house stood on a rise overlooking the football and soccer practice fields, the baseball diamond, and beyond them the apple groves that stretched all the way to the mountains. He continued down the rise, across the fields to the diamond. It was in good shape, the mound high and roundly sloped, the infield dirt smooth and reddened with the same crushed brick that was spread on the path, the outfield grass thick and even, if a little long now that the season was over. Charlie, walking into deep center field, had a sudden impulse, the kind of impulse he would have never given into before twenty-six across and Ben Webster. But now he thought, What the hell, and took off his shoes and socks and stood barefoot in the perfect grass.

  · · ·

  The ball sketched a long white arc across the sky before gravity pulled it down sharply and it fell ten feet short of the fence.

  “Top hand, Blake, top hand,” said the coach from behind the batting cage, not yelling or even calling. His tone was conversational.

  By that time Blake Wrightman had played ball for a lot of coaches. This was one of the better ones. Blake scooped up some dirt, rubbed his palms with it, gripped the bat, took his stance. He was still releasing his right hand too early in the swing, a habit that had passed unnoticed through Little League and high school and probably had something to do with getting a longer look at the ball, but it cost him power and was being noticed now. Blake, eyes on the ball in the batting pitcher’s hand as he went into his motion, didn’t think, What the hell’s he talking about? I’m still leading the team in batting and RBIs. He just thought, Keep that hand on the bat. The problem was he’d been thinking that for weeks and it wasn’t helping. Thinking it and making your hand do it were two different things. All at once it occurred to him to pretend his right hand was the only one he had. It’s up to you, hand, he thought as the pitcher’s hip swung, his shoulder turned, his arm whipped forward and the ball was on its way, starting up high and coming down, seams whistling in the air, down, maybe just out of the strike zone—but Blake stepped into it, maybe a shade late, and caught it square; a low liner that a second baseman might have stabbed, had there been a second baseman, but there wasn’t and the ball seemed to gain speed, seemed even to be starting to rise, before banging off
the fence in right center. See, hand?

  Blake sent the next pitch over the fence in dead center, and the next four in a row disappeared in left, the last one landing thirty or forty feet past the fence, somewhere in the rugby practice. That one Blake hadn’t felt at all; the equal and opposite reaction had passed unnoticed through his body, like a grounded electrical charge. He’d never hit a ball that far before. He allowed himself to wonder: How good could I get?

  Somewhere behind him the coach said, “More like it. Laps.” Still conversational.

  Blake ran three laps around the field, ran on feet so light he felt like pure energy, as though his timing was suddenly in tune with the big forces. They were playing for the division championship the next day. I’m ready, he thought, and trotted down into the dugout, toward the watercooler. It was a moment before he grew aware of the strange quiet. After practice was usually a boisterous time, but the team was silent, silent and all looking at him. Had he really hit that well, so well he’d stunned them into silence? Blake tried to think of something to say. Before he could, he saw the two men in uniform—not baseball, but military—standing at the end of the bench. They looked at him with grave faces. It hit Blake almost at once.

  “No,” he said, feeling absurdly strong and helpless, hands hanging at his sides. No. But he came from a military family, and he knew from the sight of these men that it was yes. The rest—the quiet words about firefights, heroism, recommendations for this medal or that, the condolences, hackneyed in form although there was real sorrow behind them, however briefly felt—was as nothing beside that awful yes.

  “Does my mother know?” Blake asked.

  “We haven’t been able to reach her yet.”

  The army found Mrs. Wrightman that night. She’d gone to Freeport for a couple of days with Ollie.

  Blake’s team played for the division championship the next day. Blake started in center field. It wasn’t that he felt like playing, but neither did he not feel like playing. He felt nothing—or so much that it had the same effect as feeling nothing. He pulled on his uniform—red pinstripes, red stirrups, red cap: almost clownish, he thought—and ran out to his position to start the first.

  The opposing team had the best pitcher in the state. Big league scouts came to his games and stood behind the cage, motionless except for the chewing of their jaws. The pitcher was a tall right-hander with a good fastball and a great curve, the best Blake had ever seen, hard and tight. It started from behind a right-hand batter’s left ear, the way curve balls did, but kept coming, kept coming, until you flinched, or froze, or even bailed out, but at least felt fear, before it snapped down and over the plate. The fastball set up the curve, like the straight man in a comedy team. The curve delivered the punch line. The big righty struck out the side with it through the first four innings, getting Blake looking in the first and swinging in the fourth.

  Blake came up again in the seventh. “Sit on the curve,” he told himself, “just sit on it.” But all he saw were fastballs, the first two for called strikes, then a ball inside, then two fouls, then another ball, and another. Three and two. Blake stepped out, tapped his cleats, dug in. Top hand, it’s up to you. The pitcher wound up and brought it. Straight at his left ear. Blake waited and waited as it came and came, finally picked up the spin, and just as it started to break he turned on it. This time the force did not pass unnoticed through his body: it vibrated through his bones—up his arms, down the spine, all the way to his feet. He had waited long enough, but barely. The ball shot into the blue sky in left, hooking nastily, and was still hooking as it ducked over the fence and out of sight, fair by three or four feet. Blake circled the bases. The scouts behind the cage watched him all the way. The crowd, not very big, made noise. The score was tied, one all.

  It was still one all when Blake batted again with two out and a man on second in the bottom of the ninth. The big righty was throwing as hard as he had in the first, and had given up nothing but an infield single, a walk, and Blake’s home run. Blake’s team was working on its fourth pitcher and had been in trouble almost every inning. They were running out of chances. “This would be a good time,” said the coach, still conversational, as Blake left the dugout.

  Blake dug in. He’d been watching the pitcher from the dugout, learned something of how smart he was, baseball smart, as well as physically skilled: too smart to start with the heater this time. The pitcher looked in for the sign, eyes narrow, then went into his stretch, rocked back and kicked. Blake cocked his bat and waited for the hook.

  It came, sharply defined and pure white against the background of the green center field fence, came high and hard at his left ear. Blake waited, waited to pick up the telltale spin, waited for that wicked, big-league break. And in that split second he saw, peripherally and far away, the flag, the stars and stripes, flying on the pole in center. And in that split second, when he should have been seeing that the ball had backspin instead of topspin, that it was a heater high and in and not a curve, in that split second when he should have been bailing out, Blake Wrightman thought of his father. Then came a sound that everyone in the park heard but him, and unconsciousness.

  12

  Shoes and socks back on, Charlie sat in front of a microfilm viewer in the periodical room of the main library. He had the place to himself; nothing moved except the dust motes drifting through the sunbeams and the microfilm blurring across the screen. Charlie scrolled through May 1969 issues of the Campus Record until he came to one with a photograph of a falling ballplayer on the front page. The caption read: “Star frosh center fielder Blake Wrightman hit by a pitched ball in yesterday’s loss to the Greenmen.” In the picture, taken from the first base side, the batter’s knees were buckling, and the impact of the ball had turned him halfway around, so his number—nine—was visible. With the severe contrapposto of the figure, the arm flung up, too late, in self-defense, the bat flying out of the top frame, it was a dramatic composition, if not in perfect focus.

  The universe started with a Big Bang, but there had been this little bang before it. One triggering the other, Charlie thought suddenly, the way an A-bomb is used to trigger an H-bomb. Had his subconscious self always understood the relationship of the two events? Maybe; and now the knowledge was rising to the surface. In the still, silent room Charlie’s vision grew almost intolerably sharp, sharp and clinical. He had no memory of the moment recorded on film, as though it had happened to someone else. He stared at the dots on the newsprint that shaped the face of the someone else, and thought he saw deep inside him.

  Three days in the infirmary, head wrapped in bandages: the patient cheerful, relaxed, even funny, the way hospitalized people can be when there is nothing seriously wrong with them and the right painkillers are at hand. The editor of the Record sent a writer for a follow-up interview; the photographer who had taken the picture went with him. During the interview the patient was more cheerful, relaxed, funny than ever. Perhaps it was because of the photographer. She had wild black hair, alert brown eyes, flawless skin, even white teeth—a strange, only-in-America combination of both the healthful and the Bohemian ideals.

  “Who won?” the patient asked her.

  “Won what?” said Rebecca Klein.

  The reporter asked a few questions, and the photographer shot a few pictures. They left, the patient slept. He awoke that night, momentarily disoriented, to find the photographer sitting by the bed. She looked down at him. “You saw the picture?” she asked.

  “Picture?”

  “My picture. Of you.”

  “Yeah.”

  Pause. The patient gazed into those dark eyes and saw signs of powerful thoughts and emotions. He was far too young to know what they were.

  “Did it …?”

  “What?”

  “Make you feel used.”

  “Used?”

  “Exploited.”

  The patient shook his head. That hurt, so he stopped. “It happened, didn’t it? It was my own fault.”

  �
��It was?” The photographer’s eyes narrowed; the intensity of her expression, an expression he would see again and come to think of as her Torquemada face, discouraged him from full explanation.

  “I took my eye off the ball,” he said.

  “Oh,” she said, an “oh” that among other things told him she had no interest in baseball. He watched her face relax. She saw him watching and smiled, a wonderful smile that seemed to radiate happiness through the room—a rare smile, he would come to know, seen only when she emerged completely from those thoughts and emotions he had sensed. “I was worried you might be upset about the picture,” she said.

  “That’s why you came here?”

  “Partly.”

  “And the other part?” She didn’t answer.

  “You’re a ball fan?”

  Rebecca laughed.

  Overnight, over that night, Blake Wrightman lost interest in baseball. He never played another game, never had another at-bat. Would it have happened without Rebecca Klein? Would it have happened in 1959 or 1989? Or was it all because of the beaning: did Blake Wrightman, secretly knowing he would never be able to stand in at the plate again, take the first life-changing opportunity that came along? These were questions that Blake never asked himself. They were only now rising up into Charlie’s conscious mind, stirred by the sight of his long-ago self frozen in a fall.

  · · ·

  Blake’s bed, Stu Levine’s bed, and all the beds Blake had seen on campus, were identical: simple primer-painted steel frames with wire springs and thin mattresses. Rebecca’s bed, in her room on the top floor of Cullen House, a neo-Georgian residence for sophomore women, was different; she had brought her childhood bed from home. It was an antique, dating from the reign of some Roman-numbered Louis or other, and had handcarved posts, a headboard with painted putti, a silk canopy, a plump feather mattress. It left room for almost nothing else but the posters on the walls. The posters: Marx, Engels, Che Guevara, Rosa Luxemburg, La Pasionaria, Mao, Malcolm X, Ho Chi Minh, General Giap. Late that spring, the spring of his beaning, lying like a potentate in all that softness for the first time, with Rebecca’s head on his shoulder, Blake asked, “Who’s that?”