The Great American Novel (32 page)

“Poor Buddy!”

“Poor Bud!”

While this exchange took place in the Mundy locker room, Bud continued to separate out of his locker what belonged to the Mundys and what belonged to him. Earlier in the day he had wondered just how unhappy he would be when the time to leave his old teammates rolled around. He was a sentimental sucker from way back, and he knew it. But as it turned out, he found he was just too damn happy about going to be sad. Why, if anything it was the other players who looked to be on the brink of tears, as they watched him pack his cardboard suitcase with his few things, and render unto Ruppert what was the team's.

“Poor Buddy,” they said, “I don't envy him if he winds up with a bunch of blooches to have to sit down next to in the dugout on a hundred degree day. Pee-
you!
”

Oh, but did they envy him! With the exception perhaps of John Baal, who considered a home a joke, there was hardly a Mundy who wouldn't have given his right arm to have been Big Bud Parusha, the new Kakoola Reaper.

“Well, fellas,” said Bud, “that's it, I guess.” He waited a moment to see if he might stop being so damn happy and start in being just a little sad, if only for auld lang syne. But it was not for him to be miserable that day—not quite yet. “Well, I won't forget you fellers, don't worry,” said Bud, and suitcase in hand, he left the Mundy clubhouse, never to wear that uniform again.

O.K. Ockatur arrived shortly thereafter to take his place; no observations about niggers from the Mundys, either, not a word in fact about anything in this whole wide world, while the misshapen midget stripped out of his little street clothes and climbed into the scarlet and gray.

*   *   *

Frank Mazuma, having already designated the opener of the Mundy-Reaper series “Welcome Bud Parusha Day,” held one of his press conferences before the game, this one to introduce Buddy to the Kakoola newspapermen, and even more important, “to squelch at the outset a most detestable rumor that,” said Mazuma, “reflects not simply upon that doormat known as Frank Mazuma's integrity, or upon the integrity of this fine young man bearing the honored baseball name of Parusha, but what is of far greater moment, upon the integrity of the wife of the President of the United States, and, by extension, of the Commander-in-Chief himself, the leader of the world's greatest democracy in its do-or-die battle against the forces of evil.”

Bud, standing sheepishly beside the Reaper owner, wore a Reaper home uniform of creamy white flannel, bearing on its back the orange numeral 1½. The fraction, of course, had come off O.K. Ockatur's uniform; as Mazuma explained to the reporters, it was not intended to suggest that Bud was missing anything (“the empty right sleeve of his uniform, gentlemen, tells that story eloquently enough”) but rather that he was endowed with about fifty per cent more courage than the ordinary mortal.

“Why not go all the way then, Frank,” asked one reporter, “and give him 1–5–0 for a number?”

“Well, the fact is, Len, I talked that over with Bud here, but he said he thought it might seem to the other ballplayers that he was trying to lord it over them, if he had three numbers to their two. So we settled on the half. In fact, I said to him, ‘Bud, do you think you can restore this fraction to a place of dignity in the baseball world?' and Buddy here said in reply, ‘I sure can try, Mr. Mazuma.'”

Then a reporter asked, “How the hell does he tie his shoelaces, Frank!”

“Good question, Red, but if you don't mind, we're going to save those exhibitions for the pregame ceremonies. Right now I want, for everyone's sake, to turn to that rumor that has swept the league ever since I purchased Buddy from the Mundys late yesterday afternoon. I needn't tell you gentlemen that over the years I have grown somewhat accustomed to having my motives maligned by the self-styled protectors of this game—the people I call (and I'm not mincing initials here either) the s.o.b.s of O.B. But I really must confess that I was not prepared for their latest smear campaign. I simply did not believe that they could sink to such depths as to claim that this fine young ballplayer whom you see before you, who only yesterday struck the first four-bagger ever hit in the majors by a one-armed player, is not in fact one-armed at all, but that beneath his uniform he has a perfectly good second arm tied down to his left side.”

“They
didn't!
” someone cried (someone perhaps in Mazuma's employ?).

“Gentlemen of the press, I have asked you here to help me scotch this despicable lie of theirs before this boy goes out on the field today to have bestowed upon him the honors he earned yesterday with one mighty swing of his bat, and I remind you, against my own ball club. I am going to ask my little daughter, Doubloon, to come out here to assist Bud in removing his new Reaper shirt. She's been clamoring all summer for a job out at the ball park, and I thought maybe this would be as good a time as any. Honey? Doubloon?”

Here a voluptuous young woman in brief white shorts and a clinging orange blouse (and the word “Over” stitched across her back, just above the number “21”) rushed in a clatter of high heels up to the microphone, kissed her daddy on the mouth, and then, to the applause and catcalls of the assembled reporters, began to fumble with the buttons of Bud's uniform shirt.

“By the way,” ad-libbed Mazuma, “‘Doubloon' doesn't mean what some of you fellas think it does. Strange to say, it has nothing to do with things that come in pairs.”

The newspapermen had to chuckle at the famous Mazuma humor which he could direct even at the members of his own family.

“I'm all thumbs,” giggled Doubloon, as she loosened Bud's belt so as to extract his shirttails from his trousers. “Oh what a stupid thing to say to
you!
” she cried, fluttering her eyelids at the new Kakoola Reaper.

“Nor,” said Mazuma, lighting up a cigar, “is ‘Doubloon' a mispronunciation of the capital of Ireland, for all that this kid could get anybody's Irish up, if you know what I mean by ‘Irish.'”

By now Bud's shirt had been removed and Doubloon was drawing his orange sweatshirt out of his shorts.

“Actually,” said Mazuma, continuing with the witty patter, “‘Doubloon' is just another way of saying ‘Do-re-mi.' Tell the boys the names of your brothers and sisters, sweetheart.”

Turning momentarily from her task, she wiped the perspiration from her upper lip with a raised shoulder (“Oh baby!” cried one of the reporters, oddly moved by the gesture) and in her whispery voice, said, “Jack, Buck, Gelt, and Dinero.”

Then, with a little jump into the air, Doubloon yanked the sweatshirt over Bud's head and the athlete was nude to the waist.

“Ucch,” cried Doubloon, unable to suppress a shiver of revulsion.

“Well,” said Mazuma, gravely now, “there it is, gentlemen. The truth for all to behold. Not a trace of a left arm. Not a
suggestion
of a left arm.”

Here, at a nod from Mazuma, the photographers surged forward and the room was incandescent with flashbulbs.

“How about from the back, Bud!”

“Smile, Bud, cheer up! This is your day, boy!”

“Make a muscle, Bud, with the one you got!”

“Cheese, Bud, cheese!
Thatta
boy!”

When the photographers receded—with a promise from Mazuma that there was more to come—one of the reporters said, “Frank, you may not like this, but how do we know that this isn't some kind of trick make-up job such as they do in the movies? How do we know that Bud's missing arm isn't in fact hidden away under a phony layer of skin made out of wax or some such substance?”

“Doubloon,” said Mazuma, “would you do Daddy a favor? To assure the reporters that there's no arm hidden away inside a false covering of skin, would you just pass your hand up and down Bud's side?”

“Do
what?
”

“Just press lightly up and down his left side, so they see that it is really and truly him. Well, come on now, honey.”

“Oh,
Daddy.
”

“Now, Dubby, you're the one who wanted a summer job, you know that. You're the one who wanted to wear the number ‘Over 21,' remember? You're a big girl now and sometimes big people have to do things they don't necessarily like to do. Touch his side, sweetheart.”

“Oh, Daddy, I
can't.
It's so
uccchy.
”

“Look, young lady, either you touch him as I tell you to, or I am going to put you over my knee! You may be over twenty-one, you know, but you're still not too old for your daddy to give you a good old-fashioned spanking, press conference or no press conference!”

Here the photographers came surging forward again, cameras in the air.

“What a clown,” mumbled a reporter known to be no great admirer of Mazuma's.

“Clown my ass, Smitty!” snapped the Reaper owner. “Do you think I want you boys leaving here half-believing that you've been had?
Do
you? Do you think I want the people of this country to suspect that the wife of the President of the United States, the First Lady of the Land, has asked somebody to be honorary co-chairman of the March of Dimes who has been disguised by me, Frank Mazuma, for reasons of publicity or profit, to look like some kind of freak, when in fact he isn't? Do you think I want our brave allies to harbor the slightest suspicion that this is a country run by con-men and crooks? Do you boys know what Tokyo Rose could do with a little tidbit like this? Do
you,
Doubloon, my innocent daughter? Do you realize the kind of venom that Jap bitch could pour into the ears of—?”

“Oh,
please,
” cried Doubloon, “I can't
bear
you, Daddy, when you sound like a minister!”

“And what's wrong with sounding like a minister, may I ask? Since when is religion a dirty word in this country, may I ask?”

“Oh, all right, I'll
touch
him—just stop
lecturing
me!”

“Okay then, okay,” said Mazuma, subsiding, and nodded to the photographers to get ready.

Doubloon meanwhile readied herself. First, she squeezed her eyes shut very tightly like a little girl preparing to swallow a spoonful of cod-liver oil. Then she rose up on tiptoes so that her narrow white heels came popping up out of her orange shoes (“Oh baby!” cried that same reporter, now moved apparently by the sight of her heels); and then, with great reluctance and much wiggling of the can, she extended the finger of one hand very, very slowly in the direction of Bud Parusha's body, which all the while he had been standing shirtless before the crowd, had been turning a deep shade of crimson.

Because of the lightning storm of flashbulbs that accompanied the contact of Doubloon's fingertip with Buddy's flesh, the effect of her gesture upon the former Mundy was not immediately apparent. But when at last everyone's vision was restored, there for all to see was a bulge of substantial proportions in Buddy's new flannel trousers.

“My, my,” laughed the reporters.

Mazuma, never at a loss for words, quipped, “Well, gentlemen, I'll tell you one thing my new right-fielder ain't missin',” and with that, brought the house down.

What a clown indeed. Is it any wonder that when Mazuma beckoned, the reporters came in droves? And is it any wonder that those like General Oakhart, who had struggled all their lives to prevent the great American game from becoming just another cheap form of popular entertainment, wished that Frank Mazuma, and all his kind, might be lined up against the outfield wall and shot?

*   *   *

The jubilant mood in which the press conference ended continued on through the pregame ceremonies of “Welcome Bud Parusha Day”—baseball stunts and feats of skill performed by the visiting Mundys. “Their tribute,” announced Frank Mazuma, to the forty-odd thousand who had of course turned out not to welcome Bud Parusha but to witness the return of Bob Yamm, “their tribute to their former teammate, a great ballplayer and an even greater human being, brother of the great Tycoon Parushas, now serving so gallantly with the United States Marines, Angelo and Tony—” here the fans rose and accorded Angelo and Tony a standing ovation that lasted two full minutes—“Bud Parusha!”

Scattered applause as Bud ran from the Reaper dugout waving his mitt at the stands. From the steps of the visitors' dugout, the Mundys looked on in awe at Buddy all in home team white. How like a bride he seemed to them in their own tattered road uniforms of gray! Jolly Cholly, the kindest coach who ever lived, flashed the V for Victory sign—“Good luck, kid!” he called, and Parusha was all at once washed over with an emotion so strong, so engulfing, that he even felt it in his missing limb.
Take me back,
cried the heart of the bride-to-be,
take me back before it's too late. Maybe you're where I belong!
But what American in his right mind ever wanted to be back with an eighth place team when he could be up with one in seventh? So, instead of bolting for the Mundy dugout, Bud continued on to home plate, to his deliverers, Mazuma and Doubloon.

And now the first of the Mundys who had agreed to perform that afternoon was introduced to the fans. On the sly, Mazuma had approached each of the disgruntled Ruppert players, but in the end only two of the regulars and one of the relief pitchers was so desperate, or so gullible, as to be taken in when the owner promised to make Reapers out of them too if they proved to be “crowd pleasers” in the manner of Buddy P.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Mazuma announced into the mike that had been set up at home plate, “it is a pleasure and an honor to introduce to you the youngest player in the history of the major leagues, Mundy second-sacker, fourteen-year-old Nickname Damur!”

Nickname came charging full-speed from the visiting team's dugout and made a perfect (and he hoped, crowd-pleasing) hook slide around Doubloon's leg and into the plate.