The Great American Novel (10 page)

*   *   *

That very afternoon, refusing to heed the advice of his wise manager to take in a picture show, Gamesh turned up at Greenback Stadium just as the game was getting underway, and still buttoning up his uniform shirt, ran out and yanked the baseball from the hand of the Greenback pitcher who was preparing to pitch to the first Aceldama hitter of the day—and nobody tried to stop him. The regularly scheduled pitcher just walked off the field like a good fellow (cursing under his breath) and the Old Philosopher, as they called the Greenback manager of that era, pulled his tired old bones out of the dugout and ambled over to the umpire back of home plate. In his early years, the Old Philosopher had worn his seat out sliding up and down the bench, but after a lifetime of managing in the majors, he wasn't about to be riled by anything.

“Change in the line-up, Mike. That big apple knocker out there on the mound is batting ninth now on my card.”

To which Mike Masterson, master of scruple and decorum, replied, “Name?”

“Boy named Gamesh,” he shouted, to make himself heard above the pandemonium rising from the stands.

“Spell it.”

“Awww come on now, Michael.”

“Spell it.”

“G-a-m-e-s-h.”

“First name?”

“Gil. G as in Gorgeous. I as in Illustrious. L as in Larger-than-life.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Mike the Mouth, and donning his mask, called, “Play!”

(“In the beginning was the word, and the word was ‘Play!'” Thus began the tribute to Mike Masterson, written the day the season ended in tragedy, in the column called “One Man's Opinion.”)

The first Aceldama batsman stepped in. Without even taking the time to insult him, to mock him, to tease and to taunt him, without so much as half a snarl or the crooked smile, Gamesh pitched the ball, which was what they paid him to do.

“Strike-ah-one!” roared Mike.

The catcher returned the ball to Gamesh, and again, impersonal as a machine and noiseless as a snake, Gamesh did his chorus girl kick, and in no time at all the second pitch passed through what might have been a tunnel drilled for it by the first.

“Strike-ah-two!”

On the third pitch, the batter (who appeared to have no more idea where the ball might be than some fellow who wasn't even at the ball park) swung and wound up on his face in the dust. “Musta dropped,” he told the worms.

“Strike-ah-three—you're-out!”

“Next!” Gamesh called, and the second man in a Butcher uniform stepped up.

“Strike-ah-one!”

“Strike-ah-two!”

“Strike-ah-three—you're out!”

So life went—cruelly, but swiftly—for the Aceldama hitters for eight full innings. “Next!” called Gamesh, and gave each the fastest shave and haircut on record. Then with a man out on strikes in the top of the ninth, and 0 and 2 on the hitter—and the fans so delirious that after each Aceldama batter left the chair, they gave off an otherworldly, practically celestial sound, as though together they constituted a human harp that had just been plucked—Gamesh threw the ball too low. Or so said the umpire behind the plate, who supposedly was in a position to know.

“That's one!”

Yes, Gil Gamesh was alleged by Mike the Mouth Masterson to have thrown a ball—after seventy-seven consecutive strikes.

“Well,” sighed the Old Philosopher, down in the Greenback dugout, “here comes the end of the world.” He pulled out his pocket watch, seemingly taking some comfort in its precision. “Yep, at 2:59
P.M.
on Wednesday, June 16, 1933. Right on time.”

Out on the diamond, Gil Gamesh was fifteen feet forward from the rubber, still in the ape-like crouch with which he completed his big sidearm motion. In their seats the fans surged upwards as though in anticipation of Gil's bounding into the air and landing in one enormous leap on Mike the Mouth's blue back. Instead, he straightened up like a man—a million years of primate evolution passing instantaneously before their eyes—and there was that smile, that famous crooked smile. “Okay,” he called down to his catcher, Pineapple Tawhaki, “throw it here.”

“But—holy aloha!” cried Pineapple, who hailed from Honolulu, “he call ball, Gilly!”

Gamesh spat high and far and watched the tobacco juice raise the white dust on the first-base foul line. He could hit anything with anything, that boy. “Was a ball.”

“Was?”
Pineapple cried.

“Yep. Low by the hair off a little girl's slit, but low.” And spat again, this time raising chalk along third. “Done it on purpose, Pineapple. Done it deliberate.”

“Holy aloha!” the mystified catcher groaned—and fired the ball back to Gil. “How-why-ee?”

“So's to make sure,” said Gil, his voice rising to a piercing pitch, “so's to make sure the old geezer standin' behind you hadn't fell asleep at the switch! JUST TO KEEP THE OLD SON OF A BITCH HONEST!”

“One and two,” Mike roared. “Play!”

“JUST SO AS TO MAKE CLEAR ALL THE REST WAS EARNED!”

“Play!”

“BECAUSE I DON'T WANT NOTHIN' FOR NOTHIN' FROM YOUSE! I DON'T NEED IT! I'M GIL GAMESH! I'M AN IMMORTAL, WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT!”

“PLAY BAWWWWWWWWWW!”

Had he ever been more heroic? More gloriously contemptuous of the powers-that-be? Not to those fans of his he hadn't. They loved him even more for that bad pitch, deliberately thrown a fraction of a fraction of an inch too low, than for the seventy-seven dazzling strikes that had preceded it. The wickedly accurate pitching machine wasn't a machine at all—no, he was a human being, made of piss and vinegar, like other human beings. The arm of a god, but the disposition of the Common Man: petty, grudging, vengeful, gloating, selfish, narrow, and mean. How could they
not
adore him?

His next pitch was smacked three hundred and sixty-five feet off the wall in left-center field for a double.

Much as he hated to move his rheumatism to and fro like this, the Old Philosopher figured it was in the interest of the United States of America, of which he had been a lifelong citizen, for him to trek out to the mound and offer his condolences to the boy.

“Those things happen, lad; settle down.”

“That robber! That thief! That pickpocket!”

“Mike Masterson didn't hit it off you—you just dished up a fat pitch. It could happen to anyone.”

“But not to me! It was on account of my rhythm bein' broke! On account of my fine edge bein' off!”

“That wasn't his doin' either, boy. Throwin' that low one was your own smart idea. See this fella comin' up? He can strong-back that pelota right outta here. I want for you to put him on.”

“No!”

“Now do like I tell you, Gil. Put him on. It'll calm you down, for one, and set up the d.p. for two. Let's get out of this inning the smart way.”

But when the Old Philosopher departed the mound, and Pineapple stepped to the side of the plate to give Gamesh a target for the intentional pass, the rookie sensation growled, “Get back where you belong, you Hawaiian hick.”

“But,” warned the burly catcher, running halfway to the mound, “he say put him on, Gilly!”

“Don't you worry, Oahu, I'll put him on all right.”

“How?”

Gil grinned.

The first pitch was a fastball aimed right at the batter's mandible. In the stands, a woman screamed—“He's a goner!” but down went the Aceldama player just in the nick of time.

“That's one!” roared Mike.

The second pitch was a second fastball aimed at the occipital. “My God,” screamed the woman, “it killed him!” But miracle of miracles, the batter in the dust was seen to move.

“That's two!” roared Mike, and calling time, came around to do some tidying up around home plate. And to chat awhile. “Ball get away from you?” he asked Gamesh, while sweeping away with his broom.

Gamesh spat high in the air back over his shoulder, a wad that landed smack in the middle of second base, right between the feet of the Aceldama runner standing up on the bag. “Nope.”

“Then, if you don't mind my asking, how do you explain nearly taking this man's head off two times in a row?”

“Ain't you never heard of the intentional pass?”

“Oh no. Oh no, not that way, son,” said Mike the Mouth. “Not in the Big Time, I'm afraid.”

“Play!” screeched Gamesh, mocking the umpire's foghorn, and motioned him back behind the plate where he belonged. “Ump, Masterson, that's what they pay you to do.”

“Now listen to me, Gil,” said Mike. “If you want to put this man on intentionally, then pitch out to him, in the time-honored manner. But don't make him go down again. We're not barbarians in this league. We're men, trying to get along.”

“Speak for yourself, Mouth. I'm me.”

The crowd shrieked as at a horror movie when the third pitch left Gil's hand, earmarked for the zygomatic arch. And Mike the Mouth, even before making his call, rushed to kneel beside the man spread across the plate, to touch his wrist and see if he was still alive. Barely, barely.

“That's three!” Mike roared to the stands. And to Gamesh—“And that's it!”

“What's
it?” howled Gamesh. “He ducked, didn't he? He got out of the way, didn't he? You can't give me the thumb—I didn't even
nick
him!”

“Thanks to his own superhuman effort. His pulse is just about beating. It's a wonder he isn't lying there dead.”

“Well,” answered Gamesh, with a grin, “that's his lookout.”

“No, son, no, it is mine.”

“Yeah—and what about line drives back at the pitcher! More pitchers get hit in the head with liners than batters get beaned in the noggin—and do you throw out the guy what hit the line drive? No! Never! And the reason why is because they ain't Gil Gamesh! Because they ain't me!”

“Son,” asked Mike the Mouth, grimacing as though in pain, “just what in the world do you think I have against you?”

“I'm too great, that's what!”

Donning his protective mask, Mike the Mouth replied, “We are only human beings, Gamesh, trying to get along. That's the last time I'll remind you.”

“Boy, I sure hope so,” muttered Gil, and then to the batter, he called, “All right, bud, let's try to stay up on our feet this time. All that fallin' down in there, people gonna think you're pickled.”

With such speed did that fourth pitch travel the sixty feet and six inches to the plate, that the batsman, had he been Man o'War himself, could still not have moved from its path in time. He never had a chance … Aimed, however, just above the nasal bone, the fastball clipped the bill of his blue and gray Aceldama cap and spun it completely around on his head. Gamesh's idea of a joke, to see the smile he was sporting way down there in that crouch.

“That's no good,” thundered Mike, “take your base!”

“If he can,” commented Gil, watching the shell-shocked hitter trying to collect himself enough to figure out which way to go, up the third- or the first-base line.

“And you,” said Mike softly, “can take off too, son.” And here he hiked that gnarled pickle of a thumb into the air, and announced, “You're out of the game!”

The pitcher's glove went skyward; as though Mike had hit his jackpot, the green eyes began spinning in Gil's head. “No!”

“Yes, oh yes. Or I forfeit this one too. I'll give you to the letter C for Chastised, son. A. B.…”

“NO!” screamed Gil, but before Mike could bring down the guillotine, he was into the Greenback dugout, headed straight on to the showers, for that he should be credited with a
second
loss was more than the nineteen-year-old immortal could endure.

And thereafter, through that sizzling July and August, and down through the dog days of September, he behaved himself. No improvement in his disposition, of course, but it wasn't to turn him into Little Boy Blue that General Oakhart had put Mike the Mouth on his tail—it was to make him obedient to the Rules and the Regulations, and that Mike did. On his third outing with Mike behind the plate, Gamesh pitched a nineteen-inning three-hitter, and the only time he was anywhere near being ejected from the game, he restrained himself by sinking his prominent incisors into his glove, rather than into Mike's ear, which was actually closer at that moment to his teeth.

The General was in the stands that day, and immediately after the last out went around to the umpires' dressing room to congratulate his iron-willed arbiter. He found him teetering on a bench before his locker, his blue shirt so soaked with perspiration that it looked as though it would have to be removed from his massive torso by a surgeon. He seemed barely to have strength enough to suck his soda pop up through the straw in the bottle.

General Oakhart clapped him on the shoulder—and felt it give beneath him. “Congratulations, Mike. You have done it. You have civilized the boy. Baseball will be eternally grateful.”

Mike blinked his eyes to bring the General's face into focus. “No. Not civilized. Never will be. Too great. He's right.”

“Speak up, Mike, I can't hear you.”

“I said—”

“Sip some soda, Mike. Your voice is a little gone.”

He sipped, he sighed, he began to hiccup. “I oop said he's oop too great.”

“Meaning what?”

“It's like looking in oop to a steel furnace. It's like being a tiny oop farm oop boy again, when the trans oop con oop tinental train oop goes by. It's like being trampled oop trampled oop under a herd of wild oop oop. Elephants. After an inning the ball doesn't even look like a oop anymore. Sometimes it seems to be coming in end oop over end oop. And thin as an ice oop pick. Or it comes in bent and ee oop long oop ated like a boomerang oop. Or it flattens out like an aspirin oop tab oop let. Even his oop change-up oop hisses. He throws with every muscle in his body, and yet at oop the end of nineteen oop nineteen oop innings like today, he is fresh oop as oop a daisy. General, if he gets any faster, I oop don't know if even the best eyes in the business will be able to determine the close oop ones. And close oop ones are all he throws oop.”