BOTTOM half of the seventh, Brock's boy had made it through another inning unscratched, one! two! three! Twenty-one down and just six outs to go! and Henry's heart was racing, he was sweating with relief and tension all at once, unable to sit, unable to think, in there, with them! Oh yes, boys, it was on! He was sure of it! More than just another ball game now: history! And Damon Rutherford was making it. Ho ho! too good to be true! And yes, the stands were charged with it, turned on, it was the old days all over again, and with one voice they rent the air as the Haymaker Star Hamilton Craft spun himself right off his feet in a futile cut at Damon's third strike — zing! whoosh! zap! OUT! Henry laughed, watched the hometown Pioneer fans cheer the boy, cry out his name, then stretch — not just stretch—leap up for luck. He saw beers bought and drunk, hot dogs eaten, timeless gestures passed. Yes, yes, they nodded, and crossed their fingers and knocked on wood and rubbed their palms and kissed their fingertips and clapped their hands, and laughed how they were all caught up in it, witnessing it, how he was all caught up in it, this great ball game, event of the first order, tremendous moment: Rookie pitcher Damon Rutherford, son of the incomparable Brock Rutherford, was two innings — six outs — from a perfect game! Henry, licking his lips, dry from excitement, squinted at the sun high over the Pioneer Park, then at his watch: nearly eleven, Diskin's closing hours. So he took the occasion of this seventh-inning hometown stretch to hurry downstairs to the delicatessen to get a couple sandwiches. Might be a long night: the Pioneers hadn't scored off old Swanee Law yet either.

A small warm bulb, unfrosted, its little sallow arc so remote from its fathering force as to seem more akin to the glowworm than lightning, gleamed outside his door and showed where the landing ended; the steps themselves were dark, but Henry, through long usage, knew them all by heart. Cold bluish streetlight lit the bottom, intruding damply, seeming to hover unrelated to the floor, but Henry hardly noticed: his eye was on the game, on the great new Rookie pitcher Damon Rutherford, seeking this afternoon his sixth straight win. . and maybe more. Maybe: immortality. And now, as Henry skipped out onto the sidewalk, then turned into the front door of Diskin's Delicatessen, he saw the opposing pitcher, Ace Swanee Law of the hard-bitten Haymakers, taking the mound, tossing warm-up pitches, and he knew he had to hurry. "Two pastrami, Benny," he said to the boy sweeping up, Mr. Diskin's son — third or fourth, though, not the second. "And a cold six-pack."

"Aw, I just put everything away, Mr. Waugh," the boy whined, but he went to get the pastrami anyway.

Now Swanee Law was tough, an ace, seven-year veteran* top rookie himself in his own day, one of the main reasons Rag Rooney's Rubes had finished no worse than third from Year L through Year LIV. Ninety-nine wins, sixty-one losses, fast ball that got faster every year, most consistent, most imperturbable, and most vociferous of the Haymaker moundsmen. Big man who just reared back and hummed her in. Phenomenal staying power, the kind old Brock used to have. But he didn't have Brock Rutherford's class, that sweet smooth delivery, that virile calm. Mean man to beat, just the same, and to be sure he still had a shutout going for him this afternoon, and after all, it was a big day for him, too, going for that milestone hundredth win. Of course, he had a Rookie catcher in there to throw to, young Bingham Hill, and who knows? maybe they weren't getting along too well; could be. Law was never an easy man to get along with, too pushy, too much steam, and Hill was said to be excitable. Maybe Rooney had better send in reliable old Maggie Everts, Law's favorite battery mate. What about it? Haymaker manager Rag (Pappy) Rooney stroked his lean grizzly jaw, gave the nod to Everts.

"How's that, Mr. Waugh?"

"Did you put the pickle?"

"We're all out, sold the last one about thirty minutes ago."

A lie. Henry sighed. He'd considered using the name Ben Diskin, solid name for an outfielder, there was a certain power in it, but Benny spoiled it. A good boy, but nothing there. "That's okay, Benny. I'll take two next time."

"Working hard tonight, Mr. Waugh?" Benny rang up the sale, gave change.

"As always."

"Better take it easy. You been looking a little run-down lately."

Henry winced impatiently, forced a smile. "Never felt better," he said, and exited.

It was true: the work, or what he called his work, though it was more than that, much more, was good for him. Thing was, nobody realized he was just four years shy of sixty. They were always shocked when he told them. It was his Association that kept him young.

Mounting the stairs, Henry heard the roar of the crowd, saw them take their seats. Bowlegged old Maggie Everts trundled out of the Haymaker dugout to replace Hill. That gave cause for a few more warm-up pitches, so Henry slowed, took the top steps one at a time. Law grinned, nodded at old Maggie, stuffed a chaw of gum into his cheek. In the kitchen, he tore open the six-pack of beer, punched a can, slid the others into the refrigerator, took a long greedy drink of what the boys used to call German tea. Then, while Law tossed to Everts, Henry chewed his pastrami and studied the line-ups. Gram-mercy Locke up for the Pioneers, followed by three Star batters. Locke had been rapping the ball well lately, but Pioneer manager Barney Bancroft pulled him out, playing percentages, called in pinch-hitter Tuck Wilson, a great Star in his prime, now nearing the end of his career. Wilson selected a couple bats, exercised them, chose one, tugged his hat, and stepped in.

Henry sat down, picked up the dice, approved Everts' signal. "Wilson batting for Locke!" he announced over the loudspeaker, and they gave the old hero a big hometown hand. Henry rolled, bit into pastrami. Wilson swung at the first pitch, in across the knuckles, pulling it down the line. Haymaker third-sacker Hamilton Craft hopped to his right, fielded the ball, spun, threw to first—wide! Wilson: safe on first! Henry marked the error, flashed it on the scoreboard. Craft, one of the best, kicked the bag at third sullenly, scrubbed his nose, stared hard at Hatrack Hines, stepping now into the box. Bancroft sent speedster Hillyer Bryan in to run for Wilson.

"Awright! now come on, you guys! a little action!" Henry shouted, Bancroft shouted, clapping his hands, and the Pioneers kept the pepper up, they hollered in the stands.

"Got them Rubes rattled, boys! Let's bat around!"

"Lean into it, Hatrack, baby! Swanee's done for the day!"

"Send him down the river!"

"Dee-ee-eep water, Swanee boy!"

"Hey, Hatrack! Just slap it down to Craft there, he's all butter!"

The dice rattled in Henry's fist, tumbled out on the kitchen table: crack! hard grounder. Craft jumped on it this time, whipped the ball to second, one out — but young Bryan broke up the double play by flying in heels high! Still in there! Bancroft took a calculated risk: sent Hatrack scampering for second on Law's second pitch to Witness York—safe! Finishing his sandwich, Henry wondered: Would the Rookie Bingham Hill, pulled for inexperience, have nailed Hines at second? Maybe he would have. Pappy Rooney, the graybeard Haymaker boss, spat disdainfully. He knew what he was doing. Who knows? Hill might have thrown wild.

Anyway, it didn't matter. Pioneer Star center-fielder Witness York stepped back in, squeezed his bat for luck, swung, and whaled out his eleventh home run of the season, scoring Hines in front of him, and before Law had got his wind back, big Stan Patterson, Star right fielder, had followed with his ninth. Wham! bam! thank you, ma'am! And finally that was how the seventh inning ended: Pioneers 3, Haymakers 0. And now it was up to Damon Rutherford.

Henry stood, drank beer, joined in spirit with the Pioneer fans in their heated cries. Could the boy do it? All knew what, but none named it. The bullish roar of the crowd sounded like a single hoarse monosyllable, yet within it, Henry could pick out the ripple of Damon's famous surname, not so glorified in this stadium in over twenty years. Then it was for the boy's father, the all-time great Brock Rutherford, one of the game's most illustrious Aces back in what seemed now like the foundling days of the Universal Baseball Association, even-tempered fireballing no-pitches-wasted right-handed bellwether of the Pioneers who led them to nine pennants in a span of fourteen years. The Glorious XX's! Celebrated Era of the Pioneers! Barney Bancroft himself was there; he knew, he remembered! One of the fastest men the UBA had ever seen, out there guarding center. Barney the Old Philosopher, flanked by Willie O'Leary and Surrey Moss, and around «the infield: Mose Stanford, Frosty Young, Jonathan Noon, and Gabe Bur-dette, timid Holly Tibbett behind the plate. Toothbrush Terri-gan pitched, and Birdie Deaton and Chadbourne Collins. . and Brock. Brock had come up as a Rookie in Year XX — no, XIX, that's right, it would have to be (Henry paused to look it up; yes, correct: XIX), just a kid off the farm, seemed happy-go-lucky and even lackadaisacal, but he had powered his way to an Ace position that first year, winning six straight ball games at the end of the season, three of them shutouts, lifting the long-suffering Pioneers out of second division into second place. A great year! great teams! and next year the pennant! Brock the Great! maybe the greatest of them all! He had stayed up in the Association for seventeen years before giving way to age and a troublesome shoulder. Still held the record to this day for total lifetime wins: 311. 311! Brock Rutherford. . well, well, time gets on. Henry felt a tightness in his chest, shook it off. Foolish. He sighed, picked up the dice. Brock the Great. Hall of Fame, of course.

And now: now it was his boy who stood there on the mound. Tall, lithe, wirier build than his dad's, but just as fast, just as smooth. Smoother. More serious somehow. Yes, there was something more pensive about Damon, a meditative calm, a gentle brooding concern. The calm they shared, Rutherford gene, but where in Brock it had taken on the color of a kind of cocky, almost rustic power, in Damon it was self-assurance ennobled with a sense of. . what? Responsibility maybe. Accountability. Brock was a public phenomenon, Damon a self-enclosed yet participating mystery. His own man, yet at home in the world, part of it, involved, every inch of him a participant, maybe that was all it was: his total involvement, his oneness with the UBA. Henry mused, fingering the dice. The Pioneer infielders tossed the ball around. Catcher Royce Ingram talked quietly with Damon out on the mound.

Of course, Pappy Rooney cared little for the peculiar aesthetics of the moment. It was his job not only to break up the no-hitter, but to beat the kid. Anyway, old Pappy had no love for the Rutherfords. Already a Haymaker Star and veteran of two world championships, four times the all-star first baseman of the Association, when Dad Rutherford first laced on a pair of cleats for the Pioneers, Rag Rooney had suffered through season after season of Haymaker failure to break the Pioneer grip on the UBA leadership, had gone down swinging futilely at Brock's fireball as often as the next man. So maybe that was why it was that, when the Haymaker right fielder, due to lead off in the top of the eighth, remarked that the Rutherford kid sure was tough today, Rooney snapped back: "Ya don't say. Well, mister, take your goddamn seat." And called in a pinch hitter.

Not that it did any good. Henry was convinced it was Damon's day, and nothing the uncanny Rooney came up with today could break the young Pioneer's spell. He laughed, and almost carelessly, with that easy abandon of old man Brock, pitched the dice, watched Damon Rutherford mow them down. One! Two! Three! And then nonchalantly, but not arrogantly, just casually, part of any working day, walk to the dugout. As though nothing were happening. Nothing! Henry found himself hopping up and down. One more inning! He drank beer, reared back, fired the empty can at the plastic garbage bucket near the sink. In there! Zap! "Go get 'em!" he cried.

First, of course, the Pioneers had their own eighth round at the plate, and there was no reason not to use it to stretch their lead, fatten averages a little, rub old Swanee's nose in it. Even if the Haymakers got lucky in the ninth and spoiled Damon's no-hitter, there was no reason to lose the ball game. After all, Damon was short some 300-and-some wins if he wanted to top his old man, which meant he needed every one he could get. Henry laughed irreverently.

Goodman James, young Pioneer first baseman making his second try for a permanent place in the line-up after a couple years back in the minors, picked out a bat, stepped lean-legged into the batter's box. Swanee fed him the old Law Special, a sizzling sinker in at the knees, and James bounced it down the line to first base: easy out. Damon Rutherford received a tremendous ovation when he came out — his dad would have acknowledged it with an open grin up at the stands; Damon knocked dirt from his cleats, seemed not to hear it. Wasn't pride. It was just that he understood it, accepted it, but was too modest, too knowing, to insist on any uniqueness of his own apart from it. He took a couple casual swings with his bat, moved up to the plate, waited Law out, but finally popped up: not much of a hitter. But to hear the crowd cheer as he trotted back to the dugout (one of the coaches met him halfway with a jacket), one would have thought he'd at least homered. Henry smiled. Lead-off man Toby Ramsey grounded out, short to first. Three up, three down. Those back-to-back homers had only made Law tougher than ever. "It's when Ah got baseballs flyin' round mah ears, that's when Ah'm really at mah meanest!"

Top of the ninth.

This was it.

Odds against him, of course. Had to remember that; be prepared for the lucky hit that really wouldn't be lucky at all, but merely in the course of things. Exceedingly rare, no-hitters; much more so, perfect games. How many in history? two, three. And a Rookie: no, it had never been done. In seventeen matchless years, his dad had pitched only two no-hitters, never had a perfect game. Henry paced the kitchen, drinking beer, trying to calm himself, to prepare himself, but he couldn't get it out of his head: it was on!

The afternoon sun waned, cast a golden glint off the mowed grass that haloed the infield. No sound in the stands now: breathless. Of course, no matter what happened, even if he lost the game, they'd cheer him, fabulous game regardless; yes, they'd love him, they'd let him know it… but still they wanted it. Oh yes, how they wanted it! Damon warmed up, throwing loosely to catcher Ingram. Henry watched him, felt the boy's inner excitement, shook his head in amazement at his outer serenity. "Nothing like this before." Yes, there was a soft murmur pulsing through the stands: nothing like it, electrifying, new, a new thing, happening here and now! Henry paused to urinate.

Manager Barney Bancroft watched from the Pioneer dugout, leaning on a pillar, thinking about Damon's father, about the years they played together, the games fought, the races won, the celebrations and the sufferings, roommates when on the road several of those years. Brock was great and this kid was great, but he was no carbon copy. Brock had raised his two sons to be more than ballplayers, or maybe it wasn't Brock's work, maybe it was just the name that had ennobled them, for in a way, they were — Bancroft smiled at the idea, but it was largely true — they were, in a way, the Association's first real aristocrats. There were already some fourth-generation boys playing ball in the league — the Keystones' Kester Flint, for example, and Jock Casey and Paddy Sullivan — but there'd been none before like the Rutherford boys. Even Brock Jr., though failing as a ballplayer, had had this quality, this poise, a gently ironic grace on him that his dad had never had, for all his raw jubilant power. Ingram threw the ball to second-baseman Ramsey, who flipped it to shortstop Wilder, who underhanded it to third-baseman Hines, now halfway to the mound, who in turn tossed it to Damon. Here we go.

Bancroft watched Haymaker backstop Maggie Everts move toward the plate, wielding a thick stubby bat. Rookie Rodney Holt crouched in the on-deck circle, working a pair of bats menacingly between his legs. Everts tipped his hat out toward the mound, then stepped into the box: dangerous. Yes, he was. The old man could bring the kid down. Still able to come through with the clutch hit. Lovable guy, old Maggie, great heart, Bancroft was fond of him, but that counted for nothing in the ninth inning of a history-making ball game. Rooney, of course, would send a pinch hitter in for Law. Bancroft knew he should order a couple relief pitchers to the bull pen just in case, but something held him back. Bancroft thought it was on, too.

Rooney noticed the empty bullpen. Bancroft was overconfident, was ripe for a surprise, but what could he do about it? He had no goddamn hitters. Even Ham Craft was in a bad slump. Should pull him out, cool his ass on the bench awhile, but, hell, he had nobody else. Pappy was in his fifteenth year as Haymaker manager, the old man of the Association's coaching staffs, and he just wasn't too sure, way things were going, that he and his ulcer were going to see a sixteenth. Two pennants, six times the league runner-up, never out of first division until last year when they dropped to fifth. . and that was where his Rubes were now, with things looking like they were apt to get worse before they got better. He watched Everts, with a count of two and two on him, stand flatfooted as a third strike shot by so fast he hardly even saw it. That young bastard out there on the rubber was good, all right, fast as lightning — but what was it? Rooney couldn't quite put his finger on it… a little too narrow in the shoulders maybe, slight in the chest, too much a thoroughbred, not enough of the old man's big-boned stamina. And then he thought: shit, I can still beat this kid! And turning his scowl on the Haymaker bench, he hollered at Abernathy to pinch-hit for Holt.

Henry realized he had another beer in his hand and didn't remember having opened it. Now he was saying it out loud: "It's on! Come on, boy!" For the first time in this long game, the odds were with Damon: roughly 4-to-3 that he'd get both Abernathy and — who? Horvath, Rooney was sending in Hard John Horvath to bat for Law. Get them both and rack it up: the perfect game!

Henry hadn't been so excited in weeks. Months. That was the way it was, some days seemed to pass almost without being seen, games lived through, decisions made, averages rising or dipping, and all of it happening in a kind of fog, until one day that astonishing event would occur that brought sudden life and immediacy to the Association, and everybody would suddenly wake up and wonder at the time that had got by them, go back to the box scores, try to find out what had happened.

During those dull-minded stretches, even a home run was nothing more than an HR penned into the box score; sure, there was a fence and a ball sailing over it, but Henry didn't see them — oh, he heard the shouting of the faithful, yes, they stayed with it, they had to, but to him it was just a distant echo, static that let you know it was still going on. But then, contrarily, when someone like Damon Rutherford came along to flip the switch, turn things on, why, even a pop-up to the pitcher took on excitement, a certain dimension, color. The magic of excellence. Under its charm, he threw the dice: Abernathy struck out. Two down, one to go! It could happen, it could happen! Henry reeled around his chair a couple times, laughing out loud, went to urinate again.

Royce Ingram walked out to the mound. Ten-year veteran, generally acknowledged the best catcher in the UBA. He didn't go out to calm the kid down, but just because it was what everybody expected him to do at such a moment. Besides, Damon was the only sonuvabitch on the whole field not about to crap his pants from excitement. Even the Haymakers, screaming for me spoiler, were out of their seats, and to the man, hanging on his every pitch. The kid really had it, okay. Not just control either, but stuff, too. Ingram had never caught anybody so good, and he'd caught some pretty good ones. Just twenty years old, what's more: plenty of time to get even better. If it's possible. Royce tipped up his mask, grinned. "Ever hear the one about the farmer who stuck corks in his pigs' assholes to make them grow?" he asked.

"Yes, I heard that one, Royce," Damon said and grinned back. "What made you think of that one — you having cramps?"

Ingram laughed. "How'd you guess?"

"Me too," the kid confessed, and toed a pebble off the rubber. Ingram felt an inexplicable relief flood through him, and he took a deep breath. We're gonna make it, he thought. They listened to the loudspeaker announcing Horvath batting for Law. "Where does he like it?"

"Keep it in tight and tit-high, and the old man won't even see it," Ingram said. He found he couldn't even grin, so he pulled his mask down. "Plenty of stuff," he added meaninglessly. Damon nodded. Ingram expected him to reach for the rosin bag or wipe his hands on his shirt or tug at his cap or something, but he didn't: he just stood there waiting. Ingram wheeled around, hustled back behind the plate, asked Horvath what he was sweating about, underwear too tight on him or something? which made Hard John give an uneasy tug at his balls, and when, in his squat behind the plate, he looked back out at Rutherford, he saw that the kid still hadn't moved, still poised there on the rise, coolly waiting, ball resting solidly in one hand, both hands at his sides, head tilted slightly to the right, face expressionless but eyes alert. Ingram laughed. "You're dead, man," he told Horvath. Henry zipped up.

Of course, it was just the occasion for the storybook spoiler. Yes, too obvious. Perfect game, two down in the ninth, and a pinch hitter scratches out a history-shriveling single. How many times it had already happened! The epochal event reduced to a commonplace by something or someone even less than commonplace, a mediocrity, a blooper worth forgetting, a utility ballplayer never worth much and out of the league a year later. All the No-Hit Nealys that Sandy sang about…

8 a.m. Oh that boy. He did it. Yes, he did. Saw his own hand open, the dice fall, Hard John swing. Out! Unbelievable. The boy with the magic arm. Couldn't happen. But it did. And will happen again. And again. A new day. A new age. Glorious, goddamn it, glorious!

9 a.m. Awake again. More or less. Daylight filtering opaquely through the sheet over his head. Thoughts of phoning Zifferblatt at the office. Won't be in, dad. Yes, a little Under the weather. Flu maybe. Chapped lips. Double entry fatigue. Cancer of the old intangibles, Ziff baby. Wasting assets. All washed up. But, no, feeling great. Just great. Still under the spell. Zifferblatt would hear the health, smell the secret laughter. Don't kid me, Waugh. You're finished. Thumb up, out of the game, off the team, out of the majors. You can't do that, Ziff. No vested authority. Waugh, we are amortizing you, wiping out your book value, man, closing the ledger: OUT! But then the boys trot out on the field. Ingram. York. Tuck Wilson. McCamish. Patterson. Hard John. They don't say anything. They just give old Zifferblatt the eye and—PFFFT! — he disappears.

10 A.M. Up from the depths. Hoo boy, best night's sleep in several epochs, though maybe a little hung over. Dreams forgotten but a vague remembrance of massive and exhausting heroics. Reluctantly, he cracked the shell, broke out, slippered his feet, smiled at Hettie's mumbling protest, staggered to the bathroom to cancel accumulated liquid assets, wash up, gargle, assess resources and liabilities in the glass, and stir the cosmos with a creative wind or two. Then back in the egg to dream awake awhile, replay that whole impossible beatifical game, feeling goosey with the grace of it. Damon Rutherford. Yes, it was on, the great new thing. You could feel it with that first pitch. He laughed at old Pappy Rooney kneading his tortured stomach; sooner or later, Rooney, there's some things you gotta accept. Ahhh, shee-ft. It'd cure that stomach trouble. I can live with it. Incorrigible bastard. What're ya gigglin' about, Hettie muttered. All those perfections and connections, he said. She grunted and grinned, then slipped away again with a soft snore. A new Rutherford era. On the brink of a new Rutherford Era in the UBA. What about it, Barney? I don't know. Maybe. Wait and see. Right now, we've got the flag to think about. Bancroft was always cautious. But perceptive, too, and open, even if he was a born pessimist. He thought about things. A new Rutherford Era. It could be, it could happen. Maybe it was the extra drive that second sons seemed to have. The first son, Brock II, had come up in Year XLIX looking great, but after a fair start, he petered out. Brock's boys had to be pitchers, of course. Nevertheless, Bancroft had sent young Brock back to the minors, had trained him to play first base. There was glory in being a first baseman, too. But when he returned in Year LII, after hitting three home runs in his first two games, he faded away to a.147, made seven errors in a half season of play. What's the main difference between them, Barney? I don't know. I had the same initial feeling about both of them: you know, chips off the old block. You mean chips off the old Brock, don't you, Barney? Yeah, heh heh, chuckles around. And they both had something extra the old man didn't have, a kind of elegance, you might almost call it. No offense to Brock, but he was always more open, more one of the boys. Sure of himself, but as though he'd had to prove it somewhere along the way. A kind of self-made man, you mean? Mmm, something like that. The boys were different. But, Barney, what has Damon got that young Brock lacked? Well, you know how second sons are. When they're still kids, they always have to try a little harder. And something else: you can't say Damon's brighter, but there's something up there that's, well, different; he's more responsive somehow. Yeah, I think I know what you mean, Barney — it's like some guy said up in the press box, all he said was: He knows, and everybody seemed to know just what he was talking about. Barney Bancroft nodded in understanding, gazed thoughtfully off.

11 a.m. Hettie came around at last, lit up a smoke: mingling of aromas generally pleasing to his nostrils. Old Mom looking a bit haggard in the honest morning light, but a freshening was taking place, or so she said and said she was grateful. And it was probably true, he knew how she felt. Didn't seem to come from live coals, that smoke curling up, more like from old ashes, but there was still a lot of life there, a lot of possibility. They laughed about the night's games. Doubleheader. Doubleheader, hell, that was a world series! Chortling, she padded off for a moment, leaving a chill in the sheets. In the interim, he tried considering Hard John Horvath striding to the plate once more, two down, Damon one out from grandeur, but Zifferblatt's fat frown again intruded, making Henry restless. What was it doing out? Terrible storm maybe. No public transportation. Millions dying. Image of himself trapped on flooding streets. Hettie turned on faucets, making suitable water noises. Cities crumbling, whole populations getting washed out to sea. Zifferblatt apologetic: Didn't mean for you to get out in that, Henry; sorry. Too late to be sorry, Ziff, you can't apologize to a drowning man, we're through, I've had it. Hettie returned, slipping in with fresh odors and comforting warmth, though her feet were cold. He suggested going out for breakfast. But she was afraid, didn't want the separation, not yet, pulled him over on top of her. No pitches left, he protested, arsenal all cleaned out. Didn't matter, she said, just stay like that. They talked about time and people and history and how everything seemed to flow confusedly together. Here they were warm, two bugs in a rug, two fish in a blanket, and it was peaceful. Her body made subtle liquid shifts under him, seeking total attachment. Baseball was a lot better game than she'd ever guessed, she admitted. All those wild pitches. What'd he call that surprise one? Oh yeah, a sinker. Hee hee! a real beauty! Well, that's right, the kid had a bag of tricks, all right. Secret, though, was control. Power and control, that was Pappy Rooney's theory. Drive one on the fists, then throw one outside, mix 'em up, but always right where you want 'em. Control. A batter don't go up and swing from his butt on a pitcher like that. You take a short stroke, you don't swing a yard on him. In and out, speed, now and then a curve, change-up, in and out. Oh yeah, said Hettie. In and out. Pitch and catch. Great game. Of course, that wasn't really the truth about baseball. She made it sound easier than it really was. Mom in a protected crouch, holding up her big padded womb, Dad delivering the pitch, winging it in there, time after time. Looked easy. But she forgot about the batter, not to mention all his brothers. Standing there in the box. Frustrating old Dad by poking his own stick out there in the way. Of course, the old man wasn't alone: the other seven were in their places, out there behind him, backing him up, protecting Mom's chastity and the way things were, putting down that rambunctious boy with the big rebellious bat. But they don't always hold him off. Junior explodes one off his piece of lumber and the whole shebang is in trouble; can send the old man to the showers and upend the whole damn system. Of course, just getting his bat on it isn't enough, he's still got to make the full circuit, and it's a long run around there, lot of ground to cover, and a lot can happen on the way, but he hopes, and the minute he leaves it that old home plate starts exerting a tremendous pull on him, and the good ones, on the good days, they do get around there, they do make it back. But how, Henry, what kind of pull, you mean like this? That's right, and he's gotta keep driving, keep moving, stay awake, stay alive, no letting up, stealing what he can, digging in, grabbing for every inch, around and around, and maybe, Hettie, just maybe — but they say he can't do it, and damn it, he must, he will! Oh, come on, come on, Henry, here, come on home! Yes, and they're pulling for him, Hettie, and he rounds second, he's trying to stretch it to third, but I don't know, it's still a long ways to the plate, no, he just can't make it, not this time, and the second baseman, he's got the ball, and he's gonna — No, no, I got it, Henry, I got it! come on! come on! keep it up! Behind his butt, she clapped her cold soles to cheer him on. Yes, he's pushing toward third now, yes! and he's picking up, yes, that's it! he's hard to stop now, he's churning, he's pouring it on, and he's around third! on his way home! but they've got him in a hotbox! wow! third to catch! back to third! hah! to catch! to pitch! catch! pitch! catch! pitch! Home, Henry, home! And here he comes, Hettie! He's past 'em! past 'em! past 'em! he's bolting for home, spurting past, sliding in—POW! Oh, pow, Henry! pow pow pow pow POW! They laughed softly, hysterically, flowing together. She let go her grip on the ball. He slipped off, unmingling their sweat. Oh, that's a game, Henry! That's really a great old game!

So that was how and why it was that Henry showed up that Wednesday at the offices of Dunkelmann, Zauber & Zifferblatt, Licensed Tax & General Accountants, Specializing in Small Firms, Bookkeeping Services & Systems, Payrolls & Payroll Taxes, Monthly, Quarterly & Annual Audits, Enter Without Knocking, somewhat after the lunch hour, and there was just no doubt that the third-named and last-surviving of the firm's partners, Mr. Horace (n) Zifferblatt, Fiduciary Expert and Adjutant of Minor Industry, had his dander up. Of course, he had his reasons. Zifferblatt was a militant clockwatcher, and Henry's record of late had been none too good. And then there'd been that disturbance back during the last pennant scramble when Henry, distracted, worrying about injuries on the Keystone pitching staff, had posted to the general and subsidiary ledgers of one firm the journal entries of another. Whole quarter's worth. So: might as well expect the worst. Still, in spite of his lifelong reverence for hard work and dependability, and that letting-the-team-down guilt he'd always suffered after such lapses, today he found he just didn't care. No, Henry walked today in a perfect vault of well-being, crystalline and impenetrable, and there was nothing the wrath of Zifferblatt could do to crack it.

Following ablutions and purifications, he and Hettie had hustled out for noontime breakfast, full-blown $2.25 platters, big No. 7 on the coffee-shop menu, the kind of farmer's breakfast that pasture-keepers like Stan Patterson and Witness York liked to put away, with extra cups of coffee along the way. Odd day outside: clear one minute, pouring the next— they'd had to sprint the last block under a sudden cloudburst, had piled into the coffee shop laughingly wheezing and snorting like a pair of. ruttish nags, hot for the feedbag. Hettie had played old-time country music on the juke to accompany their celebrations, and one of them had caught his imagination; like the cloudburst outside, a whole new Sandy Shaw ballad for the UBA had poured suddenly out of him. Nothing to it. Everything came easy today. He'd explained to a curious Hettie that songwriting was a kind of hobby. No, no luck so far, he'd lied. In the UBA, after all, they all sang Sandy's songs. Funny thing about both country music and baseball with its "village greens": they weren't really country, not since they got their new names anyway, but urban. Kid stuff, dreams of heroism and innocence, staged by pros and turned into big business. The "New York Game" they called the old town-ball version, and borough born and bred it was and is…

HE went out. Feeling sour. Undiscoverable sun at four o'clock in the hazy sky. But a kind of glow in the streets, mocking him. Later, he'd have it rain.

Neck and back stiff from dozing all night on the tabletop. Strange dreams there. Some high hill with ruins on it. They were playing ball up there, bunch of kids, and the ball kept disappearing over the side of the hill. He chased one, had to, thinking all the time: I'll never make it back up. There was something awful down below, but he didn't know what it was. Grabbed up the ball, but it kept slithering out of his hands. Holding it tight to his chest, climbing up with it, he discovered one leg was shorter than the other. The short one was spindly and weak and threatened to buckle under him; the long one, the left one, was thick as an elephant's leg and had to be dragged up. He was crying. They were calling him Greasy-fingers and pushing the ruins down the hill at him. Catch this, Greasyfingers! they hollered. The stones they threw had strange markings on them which they tried to read as they hurtled by.

Later they wrote on his face and rolled him up in newspapers. His tears spoiled his notebooks and a teacher pushed his face in them. The teacher looked like Zifferblatt, but had a sunburned neck like Rag Rooney. And on and on through the early morning. Not once did he dream of the dead boy.

At seven, he'd stood. Shakily. He hadn't entirely forgotten about work, it was there in the back of his mind all the time, just at seven especially, but he'd stumbled on his two odd legs directly into the bedroom, freeing himself of shirt and pants on the way, had collapsed on his rumpled bed and slept until midafternoon. Later, he'd discovered he'd torn all the buttons off his shirt.

It was a long walk to Lou's but he had a lot of time; Lou wouldn't be home until well after five. They'd all be coming, he supposed, the old and the young, all the survivors. By car, train, plane. Lot of them already in town, the old-timers anyway, because of the special ceremonies for Brock. Lot of special ceremonies for Brock. That poor old guy. Still, damn it, that's what he got for fathering more ballplayers. Rutherford couldn't be just one of the passing boys, no, he'd had to try and sanctify his own goddamn blood and name. If he'd been blessed with a name like Rag Rooney, maybe he'd have had fewer illusions. His gut ached with a surfeit of glory and history, and somehow he felt it was Brock's fault.

Well, Rooney was sorry the kid had got killed — who wasn't — but it had given him a day off, time to think, so perversely, coldly, he was grateful, too. He'd got locked in the season's pace and rituals, gone mindless in the midsummer heat, and now suddenly he'd waked up. He had to shake his boys up, shuffle the line-up, make them move, make them run, get them back into the fight. Yesterday's game with Melbourne Trench's Excelsiors had got underway before Rooney had even realized it. He'd been sure there was something he'd meant to do before, but there was the goddamn ump, hollering to get the game going, and he hadn't been able to think what it was. He'd wondered if he was getting too old maybe. Addled. His stomach had griped. He'd put one calloused hand through his flannel shirt to squeeze and soothe it, watching his Haymakers pile out onto the field.

Yes, feeling rotten. Need to eat something. Can't eat.

The Homemakers, the sportswriters were starting to call them, and Pappy's Pantywaists, Rooney's Boobies. He'd scanned the bench, trying to remember what the hell…? He'd seen Swanee Law sitting there, tensed forward, not his day to pitch, but dressed just the same, popping gum and whooping it up. A pro, all right Goddamn it, he'd be the greatest in the league if he had guys like York and Patterson to back him up. Power and control: Rag Rooney's kind of pitcher. In fact, if he had to choose between Law and the Rutherford kid, Rooney'd still take Law over the long haul. And that was what he'd been thinking about when the dugout phone rang, bringing him the news. He'd turned to Law and said: "Rutherford's dead." Why tell Law first? Rooney wasn't sure. Maybe because he'd sensed Swanee's resentment at getting beat by the kid, thought he might — but no, Law had turned white as a sheet. Rooney had called his ballplayers back in off the field to wait there in the dugout then for the official announcement before going to the showers.

Street of shops, and the one he was now passing sold flowers. For All Occasions. B. Valentine, Floriculturist & Modeler. In the window, mostly asters, chrysanthemums, and cornflowers, Indian corn in bunches, funeral wreaths. Golden-banded lilies: Chancellor McCaffree's idea. Bancroft plumped for plain old marigolds. And bittersweet. Why not? Heliotropes and night-shades. Bancroft smiled wryly, brushed his eyes. Above the heaped flowers, a conical vase of red and white carnations, disarranged, all leaning to one side as though blown by a wind. Inside the shop, in a humid showcase, there were arrangements of roses, fuchsia, blue flags, hyacinths, gladioli, and calla lilies, set off against sprays of maidenhair ferns. A few orchids. Dense vegetable atmosphere.

An old man emerged from a back room, wizened, peering dimly over bifocals, smiling faintly, gray apron down his front, holding his hands out limply in front of him. A silvery substance glittered on his fingertips. In the back room, there seemed to be something cooking. "A bouquet," he said; it was hardly a question.

"Well, I was just sort of looking," Henry said.

The old man stood beside him, looking too, peeking over the rimless spectacles into the rich damp display case. "An orchid," he said softly.

"Well, actually—"

"Extraordinary development," the florist whispered. "Highest point of monocotyledon evolution. Perfection of the imperfect."

"How's that?" Henry asked. He realized that he, too, was whispering.

"Unisexual. Utterly impotent without insects. A loner. Exquisite." Mr. Valentine plucked an aster from a counter vase. "Perfection," he explained, roughing its bright head with a sharp-nailed thumb, "is bisexual."

"Hmm," said Henry.

"Dull? Perhaps, but multifarious," the florist said with a smile. "I have some pretty comos, if you like. Zinnias, marigolds, and bachelor's-buttons. Quite cheerful in big bunches."

"I was thinking about a wreath," Henry said.

"Ah!" Mr. Valentine sorrowed. "I didn't realize." He stepped behind the counter, brought forth a prickly wreath sprayed with silver, black-ribboned. "A popular item."

Henry took it in his hands. "Why, it's plastic!" he exclaimed.

"Yes," the florist smiled, "my own work."

Now Henry noticed the flowers all over the walls. Foxglove, lilies of the valley, primrose, violets, nasturtiums, buttercups, jonquils, sweet peas, streamers of ivy, morning glories, tulips: all plastic. He fingered the wreath. "Really, what I had in mind—"

*"It will last forever," the old man whispered.

"But… well, that's not the point, is it?"

The florist crushed the aster in his blue-veined silvery hand. "We must keep searching, we must carry on the work, we must resist to the end!" he whispered hoarsely.

"I'll take a white carnation," Henry said.

In the street once more, wearing the carnation in his lapel, he passed a newsstand.

FLYNN had his back to the mound and was staring probably out toward his bull pen where he had two relievers working and at the same time watching Matt Garrison shift over there toward first as the Pioneer pinch runner came down the line to take his — but who was that? who'd those guys have? Tuck Wilson maybe: Bancroft sent Wilson in to run for Rutherford, okay. Henry stared woozily down upon those three ones on his kitchen table, trying to put all that scene back together again, get some order in this damn operation, men, and he was Old Fennimore McCaffree in his black suit giving orders and Barney Bancroft urging the boys how they had to win this game and all the old Elders sitting like a panel of enraged titans up on the Elders Bench and the catcher Chauncey O'Shea blubbering there behind the plate all broken up by this thing and he was the umpire Frosty Young hollering out they had to play ball no matter what and thinking how hard it was going to be to call them straight though he had to and he was also each of the old-time Pioneers who'd come there for Brock Rutherford Day at Pioneer Park and now a little awestruck but back there to see this thing out… but mostly he was only J. Henry Waugh, pooped and plastered Prop., thinking that this was sure a helluva thing for a grown man to be doing at dawn on a working day, and how was he going to face up to old Zifferblatt two hours from now?

But Flynn finally turned to Jock Casey and asked him: "You sure you feel like staying in this game?"

And Casey said, "Yeah, why not?"

"Because I can always—"

"Forget it." Casey was impatient. "Let's just get going."

Well, old Flynn shook his head, as though to say it was out of his hands, and he left the field, Casey being essentially right: finish it out. See what happened. The stands were dead still. Jammed, though. They had all come back. They wanted to be there. Who could tell? might be the last game in the UBA.

Henry wrote in Wilson pinch-running for the hit-and-now-buried batsman, R.I.P., but his gloves made his fingers so clumsy he could hardly read it afterwards, so he pulled them off and threw them over on the shelves, then traced over what he'd written; it was still pretty hard to read. Henry considered the situation, that it was the bottom of the third, Pioneers batting, Wilson on first, no outs, Ramsey swinging against Casey on the Rookie-to-Rookie chart, and even managed a dim picture of how it was down there to start this game up again, how it must be, no matter what anybody was saying out loud; then he picked up the dice, scrambling the bean ball in his fist, and rolled for Toby Ramsey, and things were moving again: GO 1B/R Adv 1 if F, which meant that Garrison took the play unassisted at first, Ramsey out, but Wilson now down on second, and it suddenly occurred to Henry, now thinking like Bancroft, or maybe like one of the old Pioneers, Willie O'Leary perhaps, that Ramsey should have been ordered to bunt, but it really didn't matter, came out the same way anyhow, and also: why did Bancroft send an old tub like Tuck Wilson in as a pinch runner? he must have meant to use one of the younger boys, and in the confusion — but, hell, that was no damn way to run a ball game. Henry, feeling oddly suffocated, realized then he still had his coat on, so he took it off and dropped it over the back of the chair. So now it was Grammercy Locke, one out and a man on second, which meant Casey should give Locke an intentional pass and try for the double play, and even though Henry personally wanted to see Locke swing away, wanted to see them all swing away, he gave in to the logic of it, and that put Locke on first, Wilson on second, and Hatrack Hines at the plate: action on the Rookie-to-Star chart now for four straight Pioneer batters. He supposed there was probably a little chin music down there now around the base paths and in the dugouts, and maybe even some gathering hoopla up in the stands, but he couldn't hear it He rolled for Hines, who got a walk, loading up the bases, with home-run champ Witness York coming to the plate, and finally he was able to smile, and, scratching his head, he wondered where he had left his hat. He rolled: FO RF/R Adv 1. Well, a fly-out to right, pretty disappointing, but at least it brought old Tuck Wilson waddling in from third after the catch, put runners in scoring position on second and third, two outs, Star hitter Stan Patterson at the plate, but Patterson, trying too hard maybe, struck out, and that was all. Struck out! Henry was standing, curved over his table, supported by both stiffened arms, gazing despondently down upon his Universal Baseball Association. It was as though nothing had happened, Casey was still burning them in, and even though it was now Pioneers 1 and Knicks 0, nobody had got a hit yet.

Henry tugged off his scarf, tossed it over on the drainboard by the sink, and sat down heavily. Should go to bed. No, then he'd never get up and he'd be out of a job. Today was Friday. If he could just get through the day somehow, there was the weekend to recover. All right, who was up? oh wait, that's right, the Pioneers needed a pitcher in there, and who was it going to be? better use their ace, Mickey Halifax: they had to win this one, didn't they? they did. And so he sat there, leaning on one elbow, fighting sleep, vaguely worried about Zifferblatt, one of Sandy's tunes wandering through his sodden head, rolling the dice, and not much happened for a couple innings except that Chauncey O'Shea, the Knicks' rookie catcher who was supposed to be blind with tears of remorse, tripled in the fifth to spoil the Rutherford-Halifax no-hitter. Luckily, Halifax got the side out, O'Shea dying on base, but meanwhile the Pioneers were doing just nothing at all.

Okay, so now the sixth, the game was officially a complete one, even if it got called, and as of now the Pioneers would be the winners, 1-to-O, so surely it was a temptation for Frosty Young to see clouds in the sky, but on the other hand, Casey still had a no-hitter, and there would be a lot of resentment if they didn't let the Pioneers have another chance or two at busting that up, and besides, it still wasn't time to go to work, and he had to do something. Henry put fire on under the day-old coffee sitting on the stove and tried to talk himself into a little of the old excitement. He even said out loud: "All right, fellas, a little pepper now, let's wake up!" — but he heard himself talking to a wooden kitchen table all too plainly, and he thought: what a drunken loony old goat you are, they oughta lock you up.

But he sat down anyway, just to see what the dice would bring, because it was clearly on his mind, either something happened — something in short remedial—or into the garbage hag with the whole works, and with that the Knicks started laying into Halifax. It was Killer Casey who started it appropriately enough with a line-drive single, and then after a couple outs, Garrison doubled, Baldwin singled, and McCamish homered, and so suddenly it was a 4-to-1 ball game, the Mad Jock and his Knicks out in front. There was still time for the Pioneers to fight back, and Henry barked irritably at them, or maybe just at the dice, as he threw for them in the bottom of the sixth, but grim Casey cut them down, one-two-three. A hard-bitten cold-blooded sonuvabitch. And then the seventh, the old lucky seventh, there was Crybaby O'Shea kicking things off for the Knicks with a double off the left-field wall and Musgraves walking and Casey doubling them both home and Batkin singling to score Casey. And were they laughing about it, for god's sake? Weeks struck out, but Garrison singled and Baldwin got a base on balls, loading up the bags. "Aw, get your Ace's ass to the showers!" Henry grumped disgustedly at Halifax, and called in Drew McDermott in relief. And so McCamish knocked the ball down to Hatrack Hines at third, who fumbled it, and a run scored, and Maverly singled and a run scored, and O'Shea singled, his third hit of the ball game, and a run scored. Henry, chin in his right hand and rolling with his left, watched them prance around the bases, having a damn picnic. Musgraves, the only Knick in the whole line-up so far without a hit, singled home McCamish, which brought Jock the Jerk to the plate for the second time this inning, and now with the bases loaded and the game a goddamn rout. Henry supposed, in his morass of gloom and nausea, that Casey would probably tear the cover off the ball, but he didn't. Against every rule in the book and contrary to Flynn's signals, he bunted, a squeeze bunt under the awesome circumstances, and Maverly scored from third; Pioneer catcher Royce Ingram's throw to first was wild, Casey was safe, and on the error O'Shea came sliding in for yet another run. Insane, but there it was. Nor was it all. Batkin popped up to Hines, but Weeks singled home Musgraves and Matt Garrison doubled, scoring Casey, before Biff Baldwin finally lined out to center to end the massacre. Knicks 15, Pioneers 1. Henry couldn't see much down there in Pioneer Park, but he did notice that just about all the fans had got up and walked out.

By now the coffee had been boiling for some time and the kitchen stank of it. Henry pushed himself up out of his chair, turned off the burner, dumped pot and all into the sink. Outside, the sky, starless, was graying toward day. A few neon signs burned in the half light, proclaiming names and wonders: the new and wearisome order. He looked at his watch: still more than an hour before he had to,confront the old man. What could he tell him? This was probably the end, all right: got the axe, boys, got the aches. The most he could hope for was a terrific chewing out, and bad as he was feeling this morning, that was really nothing to hope for at all. It was autumn, but Henry felt plunged into the deepest of winters. But no, it was the middle of a baseball season, remember? Green fields and hot suns and shirtsleeved fanatics out on the bleaching boards, last to give it up and go home: he turned back to the table.

Who was up? Ingram. Damon's old battery mate. Damon's old battery mate struck out — for the third straight goddamn time. Then Wilder singled to spoil — at last — Mad Jock's no-hitter (and oddly he felt regret, because not even punishment then was total), but Goodman James bounced into a double play. Why am I murdering myself like this? he wondered, but he went on pitching the dice, and in the top of the eighth, the Knicks' Walt McCamish drew a base on balls, Maverly whacked a fly ball out to Witness York, who dropped it, and Shook-up O'Shea belted out his fourth hit of the game, bringing in McCamish. Musgraves walked to fill the bags, and Casey knocked a ball out to the mound, busting McDermott's finger, two runs scoring on the error. That was too much. Henry threw the dice across the kitchen, took a cold shower, put on fresh clothes, pulled the chain on the lamp over the kitchen table, and went out for breakfast.

His bus was already overloaded when it arrived at his stop, and Henry was tempted to walk, getting out in the air was already doing him some good, but he couldn't risk arriving late, not today, so he squeezed on with the others, joining the sour community on its morning pilgrimage. Din of coughing and snuffling, here and there a sneeze exploding from a buffed nose: assailed by microbes, his head uncovered, he felt anything but invulnerable. He pressed rearward, pushed out a couple stops early, the bus exhaling as though with profound relief, and bought a newspaper at a stand on the corner there, obeying some old impulse which, he realized, he'd nearly forgotten, the giving of the coin, the snapping up of the paper, taking the world to heart and mind, or some world anyway.

In the coffee shop, he looked around for Lou: not here yet. He waited for one of the small tables in front of the counter to clear, glancing the while at the headlines. Some priest who quit and got married. Gold and silver shortages. Orgy that the cops broke up. Rapes and murders. Makings of another large war. A table opened up: Henry claimed it, looping his scarf over the second chair. War seemed to be a must for every generation. A pageant to fortify the tribal spirit. A columnist plumped for bloodless war through the space race. Henry sympathized with the man, but it could never work. Mere abstraction.

People needed casualty lists, territory footage won and lost, bounded sets with strategies and payoff functions, supply and communication routes disrupted or restored, tonnage totals, and deaths, downed planes, and prisoners socked away like a hoard of calculable runs scored. Besides, war was available to everybody, the space race to few: war was a kind of whorehouse for mass release of moonlust. Lunacy: anyway, he sure wasn't inventing it. The dishes on his table were cleared with a hard clap and rattle that hammered on the bare raw lobes of his brain and made him wince with pain. Don't give up, he cautioned himself. The waitress sponged the table with a rag that smelled like something between an old goat and a dead fish. He ordered a muffin and coffee, hoping he could keep it down.

New customers wheezed in, questioned the scarfed chair: "Sorry, taken." Henry ducked from their scowls into his paper, sipping the hot coffee, and thankful for it.

Finally, Lou showed up, spare hat — Henry's gray felt — in hand. "Henry!" He huffed and puffed excitedly down the aisle between the counter and the tables, smashing toes and jogging elbows, brandishing the hat on high, flushed face openly smiling: man without disguises. "You left your hat yesterday, Henry!"

Henry cleared the spare chair of his scarf, accepted the hat —"Thanks, Lou" — and held on to his coffee and the table until Lou could come to complete rest across from him.

"I was worried, I mean, I didn't know where you'd— what're you gonna do today about…?"

"I don't know. I suppose I'll just have to—"

"I went by last night, thought you'd be home, I asked down in the delicatessen, I was afraid you might have, I don't know, left town, or. ."

"I went out for a drink." "A drink? Oh."

"Your order?"

"Anyway, I went by again this morning, just in case. I thought you'd need your hat, and I thought I'd maybe go up just to, well, I mean, I didn't know what you might have, how you might have — but Mr. Diskin told me he'd seen you leave this morning, so—"

"Lou, the girl's waiting."

"Hunh? Oh! Uh, number four, please, easy over, and tea. And a Danish on the side." He glanced at his watch, tongue between his lips.

"Four over tea'n Danish!"

"Oh, uh, Miss. ." Lou blushed when she turned back on him, then smiled shyly. "Could you make that… two number fours?"

"Double up that four!"

"Say, he certainly has wonderful pastrami!"

"Who'sthat?"

"Mr. Diskin." Lou smiled. Well, anyway he didn't waste his trip. Holly Tibbett himself.

"You know, Lou, I was just thinking, what if we divided up the world into eight clubs, split the wealth more or less among them, and let them, taking turns, choose space teams from all the present available talent—"

"What're you talking about, Henry?"

"The space race. See, I was thinking, if you could just work it out so that statistically it was more exciting — and see, you might make a rule where the teams could buy, sell, and trade personnel, and then for rule infractions, you could bench key scientists and pilots—"

"Henry, are you. .?" Lou leaned forward, studying Henry's face quizzically, as though discovering something horrible there. "Do you feel okay? You look, I don't know… changed."

"Just a little tired, Lou. I didn't get much sleep."

"Oh." Food arrived, several platters of it, erasing some of the anguish on Lou's big round face, and making him wonder: "Say, Henry, are you sure you've had enough to eat?"

"Sure, plenty." Lou eyed the empty muffin plate disdainfully, then stared again at Henry's face, while scooping the eggs in. Well, Henry thought, I have changed. "Don't worry, Lou, it'll be all right." He was very tired, and it was making him restless. He shifted in his chair, took a couple deep breaths. "Anyway, it doesn't matter." It was amazing to watch Lou when he got really attuned to his eating. All clumsiness vanished and his fingers played over the food as upon a musical instrument, his face flushing with pleasure and mild exertion. And yet there was something demonic about it, too, something destructive: as though, if given the chance, his mountainous bulk could consume all there was. "I figure the best thing is just to go tell Ziff I was sick and hope he buys that."

Lou looked up from his eggs in shock. "But" — he dabbed yolk from his mouth with a paper napkin—"why don't you tell him the truth?"

*The truth?"

"The, you know, your… I mean, the relative, the one who, the funeral. ."

"Oh, that!" Inwardly, he smiled. True, he could… "I don't know, I guess I didn't feel that. ."

"Nobody goes to work when there's a death in the family, Henry. I'm sure Mr. Zifferblatt will understand that, he's not inhuman, you know."

"I suppose not."

"Is it that you're, that you don't want to, you know, talk about it?"

"Something like that, I guess."

Lou smiled broadly around a jowlful of half-chewed pastry and pointed at himself. The advocate. "I'll go up first," were his Danish-muffled words of amity.

And true, two's opposition, three's a coalition, for after Lou's preparing of the way, Horace Zifferblatt's welcome on behalf of the firm of Dunkelmann, Zauber & Zifferblatt was perhaps still something less than open-armed, but he twitched his old head in what was no doubt intended as a commiserating nod, and paid his respects to the deceased with an embarrassed grunt and floorward scowl, glancing then at the clock which showed that he recognized Henry had arrived not only on time, but five minutes early; then returned to his glassed-in office to clock the rest of the arrivals.

Of course, Henry, in his condition, had only one available strategy for the day, and that was to bluff with his empty hand. He had nothing left but will power, and was running short of that. He pursued methodically each ritual, the hanging up of his coat and hat, the gathering and sorting of ledgers, the sharpening of pencils and filling of pens, the shuffling of drawers, clearing of throat, opening of books, search for eraser, stroking of jaw, loosening of collar, adjusting of self in chair, inspection of faulty penpoint, replacement thereof: all for a gain of seventeen minutes out of a total day's play of seven-and-a-half hours. You're not going to make it, boy, he advised himself and winced as though trying to read an illegible entry in the book open before him… and it was illegible, he couldn't see a thing.

He opened the drawer to search for his magnifying glass, came upon his horseracing game in a set of manila file folders. When last he'd played it, there'd been a three-year-old named Ramshorn causing a sensation, though the big horses were still Saturday's Exile and Portent. Yes, and there was Muffin and Saddlepoint and Annie Oakley: he flicked hastily through the folders, waking up a little. Jacinto Abril, who'd tried and failed as a UBA ballplayer, was developing into one of the greatest jockeys of all time. Henry glanced around: heads down and working. Well, it was a temptation. But no, not yet. Had to get some work done first. Ziff would be watching him this morning. Save it for the afternoon. Need it more then anyway.

He turned back to the journal he'd opened. Who was it? Meo Roth's Skylight Protection Company: Repairs, Waterproofing, Replacement, and Screening. A sad case, because the firm was dying. Purchases had dwindled to almost nothing; inventory was constant, but through obsolescence, had become a storage liability rather than an asset; gross trading profit had sunk below selling, administrative, and general expenses; and, on top of it all, there were rents, mortgage payments, and taxes to be paid out. Old Meo Roth was reeling toward the ruin level. "Join the company," Henry said, then glanced up guiltily; a head or two turned his way briefly. He cleared his throat and lipped a few numbers to cover what was becoming an incurable and stupid habit.

Exit from competition: true, that was both his prospect and his problem. Roth had a bin full of glass and junk that was only costing him money to keep; Henry had a kitchen full of heroes and history, and after heavy investment, his corporate account had suddenly sunk to zero. Accretion of wasting assets. No flexibility. Roth had blundered in his inventory scheduling: if he could dump that glass and steal a load of plastic or fiberglass skydomes, he still might, with drive and imagination, make it. But what was Henry's solution? There must be a way, he thought — but then he remembered that absurd ball game back on the table that the bad guys were winning, 18-to—1. What did he mean, "bad guys"? Because, damn it, they killed the kid. And it was the kid who'd brought new interest, new value, a sense of profit, to the game. You mean, things were sort of running down before…? Yes, that was probably true: he'd already been slowly buckling under to a kind of long-run market vulnerability, the kind that had killed off complex games of his in the past. What had happened the last four or five league years? Not much. And then Damon had come along to light things up again. And maybe that was it: Casey had put out the light and everybody was playing in the dark. An 18-to-1 ball game, they must be playing in the dark! He watched them down there, playing in the dark, running around, tripping over bases, there in the dark, wallowing around in heaps of paper, spilling off the table edge—

He jerked his head up so fast, he got a crick in his neck. He rubbed it, peeking around at the others, but afraid to look over toward Zifferblatt's office. He took some deep gulps of air, flexed his fingers, stretched his legs under the desk, con-centrated on the figures. The clock on the wall, which somehow in its fat white roundness and hard black numbers always reminded Henry of Horace Zifferblatt himself, told him: thirty minutes down, seven hours to go. He sighed. Don't think about the whole day, that'll kill you, just try to make it to lunch break. One inning at a time. But he was beginning to get pretty nauseous, which the idea of lunch only aggravated. He rubbed his neck, and with extreme concentration, managed to post his first entry of the day. Shaky, but legible. In the right place, too, he was sure of it. He smiled at his victory.

But five minutes later, he was snoring on the books. So loud he could hear himself. When Zifferblatt woke him by a violent shaking of the ledgers under his face, he was dreaming he had just signed a contract with old Meo Roth that would save the firm and his own as well, and Roth/Ziff had tears of gratitude in his eyes. "That's all right," Henry said, rearing up, "think nothing of it."

Bulging above Henry's desk, thick thumbs rammed in his belt, face white with astonishment and rage, and this time it was no act, certainly not, choking as though he'd just swallowed something big and heavy as a headstone, Zifferblatt was able only to open his mouth and close it. He jerked his jowls in the general direction of his office. Henry rose and followed. Watched by all.

Even in his office, Zifferblatt could not find his voice. He sat down abruptly behind his desk, glared once at Henry, then pulled out the company checkbook, proceeded to write out a check, his dewlaps and chins aquiver with energy and conviction.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Zifferblatt," Henry said. "I haven't been getting much sleep."

"I can understand personal problems," Zifferblatt sputtered, "but — but to disturb an entire office!"

"I know. It's inexcusable. I shouldn't have come today."

Zifferblatt grunted, worked his soft mouth back and forth, stared down at the check he had just written out, then dropped it on the desk in front of him and leaned back in his swivel chair. "Sit down, Mr. Waugh." Books with blood-red or pale green backs lined every wall but the one behind Zifferblatt's head. That one was hung with diplomas, certificates, photographs, mottos, clippings, charts, clocks, travel souvenirs, and a map of the city on which a red blot pierced by a green arrow indicated the house of DZ&Z. Under black-bordered photos of the late lamented Abe Zauber and Marty Dunkelmann, the inscription: They are with us still. "A young man, Mr. Engel said."

"Yes."

"An athlete."

"Yes, a baseball pitcher."

"Oh yes, baseball." Zifferblatt pressed bis stiff spatulate thumbs together over his round belly and pursed his lips as though to blow a kiss or spit. "The great American game." He paused, smiled — or perhaps it was only a gas pain, a tic just below the nose: "After business, of course." The pictures of his children were all taken in infancy… as though he hadn't let them live past that. "And, tell me, what do both baseball and business need, Mr. Waugh?"

"Somebody to keep the books."

"Well, humph, yes, but I was going to say hard playing, and above all, teamwork!" He socked his padded palm with a rolled fist, then squeaked forward in his chair. His eye fell on the check; he tore it up, saying: "One member not pulling his share, and the whole operation can be forced to liquidate. A lot of individual stars aren't enough, you've got to have organization and discipline, as well. You do see that, don't you, Mr. Waugh?" Henry nodded, though the movement intensified his headache and the crick in his neck. Ziff stood to make a point: "You're a man now of mature years, forty, fifty—"

"Fifty-six."

"Fifty-six! Nine years from retirement! And I'm asking you, do you wish to keep your job here, or do you not?"

"I do, but—"

"Well, then, accept a little advice, my friend. Accounting like baseball is an art and a science and a rough competitive business. Some make it and some don't. The ones who make it keep their heads up, their eyes open, their minds on their job, and pull their part without belly-aching. Wages are based on performance, Mr. Waugh, and what we want around here at DZ&Z is professionals!" He paced the room, getting worked up. "What we expect, we give. This is the American way, Mr. Waugh! Why, old Marty Dunkelmann here never quit till the moment he died! I can still remember how I came to the office that morning and found him in here, bolt upright in his chair, eyes rolled back, and one finger on an error in a column of accounts receivable. He'd showed me that mistake just the night before, the only one I've made in fifty years of accounting; we were partners but we expected just as much out of each other as we did from any employee; he must've died while I was walking out the door! I'd been sitting right where you— Waugh! Mr. Waugh! Wake up!"

Henry's head jerked up, but it was all he could do to open his eyes. "I'm sorry, Mr. Dunkelmann — Zifferblatt. I'd better—"

"I'll tell you what you'd better, Waugh, you'd better be here at 8:30 sharp on Monday morning and every morning hereafter, not one minute later, and not one single exception, and prepared to put in a full day's work, or your position with us is terminated! Have I made myself clear?"

Henry nodded and stood. Woozily. "Yes, sir."

"All right, you can go now. You're no good to anybody here today anyway — though I hardly need mention, you can't expect us to pay you for not working."

"I understand."

Ziff softened, lower lip fluttering forward in a kind of senile pout. "Now, get rested up, Mr. Waugh, and try to get over this other thing. We all suffer losses, but we must learn to live with them. Let's see if we can't make a fresh start next week. You used to be a great asset to our team here at DZ&Z, and I would like to believe you soon will be again."

"Yes, sir."

At his desk, putting away his books and materials, Henry realized his hands were shaking, his knees weak. Not anger really, just felt shot down. Ziff was right: he was getting disorganized. The old menace.

Lou in a passing whisper: "Henry! Is everything, are you…?"

"Yes. I'll be back Monday. Going home now to sleep. Thanks, Lou."

"Oh." Lou watched him close things up. "I was thinking maybe about, well, like I been saying about your eating, Henry, maybe Mitch's…?"

Lou's cure-all. "I don't know, I—"

"I was planning to go there tomorrow night… **

"Well, all right"

"Shall I come by?"

"I'll meet you there. About nine."

"Do you know where it…?"

"I'll find it."

"Monday morning!" lipped Horace Zifferblatt from his glass office, shaking his stubby index finger, then aiming it clockward, as Henry left.

Some people would look on his game, Henry realized, as a kind of running away. Lou, for instance, could not understand why he didn't see more movies or visit museums or join an interesting club or something, and though he could accept the idea of taking on outside work for extra money, he'd probably be astonished to learn about the game. But descending in the building elevator, urethra of his world prison, dropping dejectedly into a kind of private sinkhole, having to return to all that commitment and all that emptiness, Henry was aware that you could see it both ways: Roth's skylighting problems were, in a way, a diversion for him from his own. Sometimes, true, in the heat of a pennant chase, for example, his daytime job could be a nuisance, but over the long haul he needed that balance, that rhythmic shift from house to house, and he knew that total one-sided participation in the league would soon grow even more oppressive than his job at Dunkelmann, Zauber & Zifferblatt.

The elevator door yawned open, discharging him into the lobby, and thence, past the building directories and signs, into the street. A bright day, after all, though the sun's light was hard and cold. The streets, as always, were full of moving people, going going going, the endless jostling flow. They gave him somehow a vague and somber sense of fatality and closed circuits. Motion. The American scene. The rovin' gambler. Cowpoke and trainman. A travelin' man always longs for a home, cause a travelin' man is always alone. Out of the east into the north, push out to the west, then march through the south back home again: like a baserunner on the paths, alone in a hostile cosmos, the stars out there in their places, and him trying to dominate the world by stepping on it all. Probably suffered a sense of confinement there in the batter's box, felt the need to strike forth on a meaningful quest of some kind. Balls hurled down to him off the magic mound, regularly as the seasons: his limited chances. Or rather: not to him, but just to earth, passive, faintly hostile, deprecatory, masked— while he interposed himself heroically to defy the holy condition. . not knowing his defiance was merely a part of it.

So what were his possible strategies? He could quit the game. Burn it. But what would that do to him? Odd thing about an operation like this league: once you set it in motion, you were yourself somehow launched into the same orbit; there was growth in the making of it, development, but there was also a denning of the outer edges. Moreover, the urge to annihilate — he'd felt it before — seemed somehow alien to him, and he didn't trust it. And yet: what else could he do? That 18-to-1 deformity waiting for him on his kitchen table was like a special message for him, a self-revelation, the clang of an alarm: wake up! get out! shuck it off! insane! Traffic zim-zoomed through die sunny streets. Of course, there might be more alternatives than just two.

Passing a newsstand on his way to the bus stop, he bought another newspaper. What am I buying all these damn papers for? he asked himself. Different paper, different headlines, different stories, even different horoscopes. Must be some other world. Reflecting on his Space Race League, he realized it was no solution to war, but only an enhancement of it. Like Zifferblatt said, professionals earn their pay on performance in a competitive milieu, and you couldn't expect them to abide by any gentlemen's agreement. And what code could hold in an association of total power? No, you'd have to expect bribes, double-crosses, coalitions, information exchanges, and, sooner or later, a bomb or two. The old McGraw-Cobb syndrome: cut 'em up! If you're the only one left standing, you just gotta be the winner — the way Rag Rooney and Frosty Young played ball, and it got them into the Hall of Fame, didn't it?

Waiting for the bus, he saw that storefront across the street — Thornton's. Well, that's right, Barney surely had the right to bring up a replacement for Damon. Injuries were one thing, but a dead ballplayer was another. Unprecedented, but the Association was bound to approve it So why not Thornton Shadwell? The thought cheered him some, and then on the bus, he had other ideas. First of all, that the circuit wasn't closed, his or any other: there were patterns, but they were shifting and ambiguous and you had a lot of room inside them. Secondly, that the game on his table was not a message, but an event: the only signs he had were his own reactions; if these worsened, it might be best, after all, to close down the Association, maybe invent some new game, or in fact go join some club or other. But first he should finish out this season. He had this weekend to get it done. Then he'd be free to do as he wished. Maybe some kid pitcher would pick up where Damon left off. It was possible. And besides, it was irrational, but in spite of that game on the table, he felt certain the Pioneers were going to take the pennant. Why not? First, though, he thought, alighting from the bus, let's hit the sack, team.

POWER and control. In and out. The old eagle, Swanee Law, just reared back and burned them in. In across the knuckles: zip! Zap: skimming the outer edge! Now winging in across the letters, then plunging past the knees: the Law Special. Pappy Rooney was again using nearly everybody he had today, even pinch-hitting a couple pitchers. All his Haymakers got out of all the going in and coming out was one run, but it was enough: Law gave up just two scratch singles to the Bridegrooms and struck out fourteen to win, 1-to-0, Swanee's sixth straight victory. Pappy clapped them in, ragging them about the puny bitting, but they all felt good: it was their thirteenth win in the last fifteen games, and eight of them had been by one run. As for Swanee, not only was it his sixteenth win of the season and his fourth shutout, but the fourteen strikeouts brought his season total up to 219, giving him an outside chance still to hit the magic mark of 300, attained by only five pitchers in UBA history. Law knew what he had going for himself: whenever sportswriters interviewed him, they were shown large charts he kept tacked to his wall, indicating his own game-by-game progress in comparison with that of the five men in history — Hokey Lancaster, Fancy Dan Casey, Timothy Shadwell, Brock Rutherford, and Edgar Bath — he was challenging. Brock had the record: 341, set in Year XXVII. Rooney had to laugh at Law's prostrating himself before the tired and filthy feet of history, but as long as it helped win ball games he couldn't care less. The newsboys, bored, troubled, or revolted by what was happening — or not happening — in the rest of the league, fed on Law as the last hope for revival. You were pretty mean out there today, Swanee. Yuh, he'd say, gazing thoughtfully up at his charts, but we kin be meaner. Gotta be. Photos of him: narrow eyes reflecting concern, determination, square jaw solidly set… a tough old boy.

Elsewhere, the action in the UBA was confused and bewildering. Moreover, Law was a false hope; they'd need more than he could give. In his private offices, high above the day's play, Chancellor Fennimore McCaflree sat with vexed spirit watching it on four television sets going at once, aware that his Association was undergoing a radical transformation, the kind sprung only from situations of crisis, extremity; his worries now were no longer merely political, but ones even of survival. With him sat his old coach and mentor and only surviving ex-Chancellor, Woodrow Winthrop. Squawk boxes, receiving from ball-park spotters, computer rooms, and special agents, chattered out their several messages, creating a low-keyed cacophony, and McCaffree missed none of it; his phenomenal powers of concentration were already a league legend. Used to be, in his day, the quality Woody Winthrop was best known for, though age had loosened his wits some in recent years. He sat now, studying Fenn, amazed as always, wondering who was the protege of whom.

"You see, Woody, it's one thing to say that each of these players and each of these teams is interested in maximizing its expected utility, and another to know — even for them to know — what that utility really is."

"How's that, Fenn?" Went right by him. Conversations with Fenn McCaffree these days got pretty one-sided. He was forever yakking about distribution functions, the canonical form of M, compound decision problems, relations of dominance; like Fenn had somehow forgot the game was baseball.

"Law shouldn't have pitched today."

"Oh." That Woody could understand. Rooney was pitching Law too much, wouldn't have anything left for the stretch.

In his trademark swivel chair! — party symbol for the coming campaign — Fenn pivoted from set to set, his long legs crossed, spine curved, left elbow sharply out-thrust and hand gripping the chair-arm where his intercom buttons were rigged; blacksuited, string bow tie in the high collar, pants cuffs hiked high above the bony ankles and exceedingly long and narrow shoes; high-domed bespectacled head dipped forward, leaning against the pipe held clamped between under-slung jaw and right fist, as an old man might lean on a cane. On the Haymaker-Bridegroom screen, the game was over, and Law and Rooney were being interviewed by reporters; on the other three, the Knickerbocker-Pastimer, Excelsior-Keystone, and Beaneater-Pioneer games were in their final innings. Beaneater left-fielder Bartholomew Egan poled a homer into the center-field bleachers off the Pioneers' Thornton Shad well, and Fenn punched a button: "What did Ingram call for?"

"Low and outside." One crackly report muddled with all the others. Woody heard it because it came in over his own right shoulder.

"Where did he get it?"

"Down the slot."

"Feed it in."

"Check."

Watching his own hand-picked successor in office, Woody realized that he himself had probably been the last of his kind. He'd thought of himself as a rebel, but in reality he'd only brought the old ways to consummation. Under McCaffree, politics, the Chancellorship, even the game had changed. Fenn fooled you. He looked old-fashioned, but he had an abiding passion for innovation. He was the most relentless activist ever to take office, yet he never seemed to move a muscle. He was coldly calculating, yet supremely loyal to old comrades, and what else was it but sentiment that was making him, against all logic and advice, support his son-in-law as the next chief of the party? "You mean," Woody ventured, "Rooney oughta be giving Law a little more rest between games."

"No, I mean he shouldn't be using his best pitcher against inconsequential teams like the Bridegrooms."

"Well, Fenn, it don't matter much who you beat, what Rooney wants is to win ball games—"

Fennimore McCaffree pivoted slightly, almost imperceptibly, to glower witheringly upon the only surviving ex-Chancellor of the UBA, and said acidly: "Well, goddamn it, Mr. Winthrop, I know he wants to win ball games, that's just the point!" Then he turned back to his TV sets, where the Cels had a rally going in the ninth: a long belt up against the screen in right, scoring two runs, and that was the game, Cels 4, Keystones 3. Poor old Tim.

"I'm sorry, Fenn. I don't get you."

McCaffree sighed impatiently. "What if, Woody, we have passed, without knowing it, from a situation of sequential compounding into one of basic and finite yes-or-no survival, causing a shift of what you might call the equilibrium point, such that the old strategies, like winning ball games, sensible and proper within the old stochastic or recursive sets, are, under the new circumstances, insane!"

"Hmmm," said Woody Winthrop. Only word he was sure of was the last one. Above the television sets, electronic score boards, hooked directly to those of the separate ball parks, recorded the surface data of the games, blinking their messages in a slow burn, left to right. Partridge was throwing gopher balls and his Pastimer teammates were fielding like a bunch of bush-leaguers, turning what was supposed to be the game of the day, if not of the year — Knicks vs.the Patsies, with both teams once again tied for the league lead, Jock Casey pitching against Sam Partridge — into a circus. The Patsies' infield, supposed to be the UBA's greatest, had made four errors so far, and the Knicks were winning, 5-to-1, with another rally going in the eighth. The Pioneers had just lost to the Bean-eaters, 8-to-4. Young Thornton Shadwell's third loss; Tim's boy just wasn't going to make it. Woody didn't know exactly why, but he felt things were not going well in the Association. Ever since that boy's death. Like the soul had gone out of it or something, as if Sycamore Flynn's Knicks had stolen it somehow and wouldn't give it back, or couldn't, and the whole balance of things had got thrown off. Feeling antiquated and stupid and disconnected, Woody sighed and said: "I don't know, Fenn. Maybe you're probably right."

But Fenn was talking to somebody on one of the squawk boxes and wasn't listening to Woody. In adjoining rooms, machinery, looking like big eyeless monsters conjured up from the depths, hummed and clicked, sucking up the information being fed to them from scorekeepers, scouts, official monitors, and even a set of special camera devices that Mc-Caffree had invented to time runners, spy out jittery fielders, register variations between what the catchers called for and what the pitchers really threw, million different things. Made Woodrow Winthrop's old head spin. "You see, given this shift and the fact that it seems to be out of our hands, some built-in flaw or gap which doesn't allow us to cope with it directly," Fenn continued, apparently speaking to Woody again, though still studying the TV sets, "it would almost be better for the whole league if the players were all incompetent and irrational."

"Is that so?" said Woody.

"Mmm. The way things are going, we're apt to get a payoff nobody wants." Young Chauncey O'Shea was at the plate for the Knicks with runners on base. Fenn asked for a close-up of O'Shea, then leaned forward to study his batting stance, grip on the handle. Whenever Fenn did something like that, it made Woody wince, and he winced now, feeling instinctively sorry for O'Shea under that kind of scrutiny, though in fact he didn't even know the boy, only knew he was the one calling the pitches when young Rutherford got killed, and so had no reason certainly to feel any special warmth for the man. But Woody suffered the intrusion of all this machinery, this detailed information gathering, the dossiers, the intense pattern studies and close-ups, the projections, the cumulative files which Fenn called CUMS — in Woody's day that was a dirty word — didn't like it at all, found it suffocating and unfriendly, thought there were too many people playing a functional part without asking themselves what they were doing there. And now Fenn was even using the same methods to gauge and manipulate the political picture. Of course, even if people did start asking themselves about the roles they played, that wouldn't necessarily change things. And as Fenn always said: people'll get used to it in a few years and wonder how they ever got along without. "Besides, people are narcissistic: they like being studied and stared at." And you certainly had to hand it to Old Fenn, he never missed a trick. Agents operating inside the other two parties and at least one on every ball club, filing the data that Long Lew Lydell and the computers tabulated. He wondered what the payoff Fennimore was talking about could be, but he didn't worry too much about it, since he figured it couldn't concern him, and above all, he didn't want to risk getting put down again.

O'Shea doubled, scoring two runs. Fenn leaned back. Casey knocked the Patsies off, one-two-three, in the ninth, giving the Knicks a lopsided 7-to-1 win. "And there's not a goddamn thing I can do about it," Fennimore McCaffree said softly. Glumly, the seventh and eighth Chancellors of the Universal Baseball Association watched the League Standings Board suffer its daily transmutation.

NOT once, in the Universal Baseball Association's fifty-six long seasons of play, had its proprietor plunged so close to self-disgust, felt so much like giving it up, a life misused, an old man playing with a child's toy; he felt somehow like an adolescent caught masturbating. Year LVI, in spite of its new crop of rookies, in spite of the excitement of a new team's imminent rise to power, in spite of the records being set and the giants being toppled and that boy being killed, was a complete bore. Or so it seemed as he stared out his kitchen window on a world going to winter that Sunday afternoon. Lou was coming soon. He was afraid, but he was glad, too. Lou could save it. Or him from the game. He felt waterlogged with it. He'd played too much, too hard, since Damon died. Have to ease up. He considered writing in the Book for a while, but the weariness of it paralyzed him. So he just stood and stared.

Bad start that morning. Awake to a bed full of Hettie's odors, broken dreams about a zoo or a circus or something, all too pertinent. 'That Swanee's really a good old guy," she said, getting up with an old lady's grunt, then commenced a whinnying laugh that mutated into a phlegmy cough. But he didn't feel like Swanee Law, felt more like old Woody Winthrop, senile and gravebent, or luckless Mel Trench, down in the cellar and fat in the head. Hettie padded out and into the bathroom. She'd be in there a while, he knew, so he allowed himself to doze off again. Dreamt he was in some far-off impossible place. Italy, maybe. Or Spain. It seemed like he'd been telling Lou about Hettie, how good she was, the old brag, but now they were only admiring the countryside. Soft rolling hills, vineyards, wooded valleys, blue river trickling by, stone farmhouses, almond trees in blossom. You're only kidding yourself, somebody said, didn't seem to be Lou, but might have been. Anyway, he ignored it. Distantly, a mule hitched to a two-wheeled cart creaked up a hillside, a man walking beside. It was steep, and sometimes the mule slipped backwards or stopped altogether. Then Henry and whoever was with him, if somebody still was, were helping to push. It was hard work and they were getting nowhere. If only I had an ass, the farmer said. It was true, there wasn't any animal, he'd been mistaken. If you can't find one, Henry told him, make one. He'd meant it as a dirty joke, but the man didn't get it, just stared at him blankly. Henry tried to explain, he changed it to: Did you say an ass or some ass? but there was no communication. Language problem. He felt crude and stupid, like a beast himself. A great weight pressed down on him and he was thinking, as Hettie reached under the blankets to pinch his butt a lot harder than she needed to, that today would be the hardest day of all.

He dressed and went out for sweet rolls, while Hettie made coffee. Returning, he opened the door just in time to catch her in the middle of an enormous bovine yawn, soft neck flesh folded and teeth showing their gaps. Her face wrinkled into the agony of suppressing it, and she asked: "Cold out?"

He yawned himself, unable to hold back the reflex, and replied: "Pretty cold."

Sometimes she made the bed of a morning and straightened up the room a bit, but a glance in there showed him only the rude disorder of old. He heard himself asking himself: why won't someone help? She poked sleepily into the package he'd brought, and said: "They look good." She shoved back the papers on the kitchen table and put the rolls there.

"Careful! My work…!"

"Just a corner, Henry."

They sat there at the cleared corner, taking rolls and coffee, used to each other and therefore comfortable, but not especially cheered by the other's presence. Conversation openings occurred to him. He projected them out. Some would lead back to the bed, some to the door, some just in circles. On occasion, his eye fell on the Association and he felt depressed, not so much by Hettie's thoughtless rumple of it, as by the dishevel his own haste yesterday had created. Take a good while to get it all straightened out. Couple weeks just to get the data posted. More work than it was worth.

"I think I'll go to church," Hettie announced.

"Which one do you go to?" he asked, hardly caring.

"Don't matter. First one I come to." She sighed, spraying crumbs.

"Absolve your sins?" he asked, feeling a little contentious, but meaning no sarcasm.

"Sins? No, I ain't got any feelings about that," she said. "I just want a place where I can go and mope in company without bothering nobody." She stared glumly into her coffee at the brown reflection of herself. "Let's face it, I'm getting old and ugly, Henry."

"Listen, Hettie," he said. He dug in the billfold, found another twenty. "Here. Go buy a new hat or something. Flowers on it"

"Flowers are for spring," she argued.

"Well, old dry leaves then. Anything. A new girdle or some fancy drawers, I don't care. I just want to see you happy."

She smiled, patted his hand gently. "Ain't that easy," she said. "But thanks, Henry. That's nice." She tucked the bill in her handbag. Putting the bag back on the table, her eyes fell on the dice. She stared at them quizzically. She glanced up at the Team Standings Board, at the bronze Hall of Fame plaques, at the bookshelves, adding machine, heap of papers full of names on the table. "What's these for? You a gambler, Henry?"

"Sort of." Caught him by surprise.

"I don't get it. Whadda dice got to do with your work?"

"Well, in a way," he said recklessly, "they're my employer." He realized his hands were sweating.

"I still don't get it." She turned an inquisitive head-tilted pressed-lips stare on him.

He sighed. "It's a game, Hettie. The baseball — not a real job in the plain sense."

She blinked. And then she laughed. Opened her baggy jaws and whooped. "A game!" She looked back at the table, a light dawning. "You mean…? Then that's…! Hey!" She jumped up to paw heedlessly through the papers. "I'll bet old what's his name, Swanee's here, ain't he?" She cackled, rummaging and clawing. "Lookit these names! We can have a orgy, Henry!" Her laughter tore clean through him. She turned on him and tweaked his nose: "Henry, you're a complete nut!'* Laughing, grinning, she looked down on him, sighed. "But you're awful sweet, just the same." She leaned down and deposited a spongy sour-sweet kiss on his forehead.

He watched her pull her wraps on, unable to rise from his chair. "Come on!" she laughed. "Don't take it so hard, I'm only kiddin'!" She tongued a wad of sweet roll out of one of the gaps in her teeth and, standing in her coat, took a final sip of coffee. "Anyway, who ain't crazy? I sure ain't got no sense!" She stared out the window, preparing herself, men turned back to him. "Listen, ain't every man can still please a woman old as you are, Henry." Everything she said was wrong. Just, maybe, but merciless. All he could do was sit there, dumbly taking it. Now she paused thoughtfully, then dredged up from last night's blowzy doubleheader to drop horribly in the morning kitchen: "Ah'm pitchin' to ya, baby!" And, head thrown back, yakyakked doorward.

When she realized he wasn't following her, she turned. "Come on, Henry, say good-bye." He only stared. Ugly and old. She was. They were. Her smile faded. "Don't be a sorehead. We had a good time, didn't we? I don't wanna leave without…" She meant the benedictive slap on her bottom. She always thanked him for it, said if a man didn't give her one on the way out, she always felt somehow she'd failed. "Henry, I'm sorry, I didn't mean. ." He shook his head. Suddenly, astonishingly, she burst into tears. "Ah, go to hell, you loony bastard!" she cried. She dug agitatedly in her purse, pulled out his money, and, hands shaking, threw it into the room, then, still bawling, slammed out the door and down the stairs. He heard her heels smacking down the wooden stairs and scrape-clicking out into the world, and for a long time he just sat there.

Then, mechanically, he cleared the breakfast away, reordered all the papers, and began, once more, to play the game. Now, at sunset, it was four full series, twelve days of play, forty-eight ball games later. He didn't remember the scores or who had played. He knew the Knickerbockers had lost every game but the first one, he'd seen to that, but the rest of it was just so many throws of the dice. He was destroying the Association, he knew that now. He'd kept no records, hadn't even logged a single entry in the Book. Didn't know if all the players had their required at-bats or innings-pitched, didn't know who was hitting and who wasn't, didn't know if any pitchers were running over the legal limit of innings-pitched, didn't even give a damn who was winning the pennant. He'd been obsessed with a single idea: to bring Casey and the Knicks to their knees, see them drop behind the Pioneers in the standings, if only for a day. But, in mocking irony, the more he crushed the Knicks, the more the Pioneers fell away. He tried to reach them, Bancroft especially, tried to find out what was the matter, but it was strangely as though they were running from him, afraid of his plan, seeing it for what it was: the stupid mania of a sentimental old fool. And now they'd run as far as they could run…

STRANGE how that season ended. Some blamed it on the heat, some on the humidity, but they all knew better. Players hit balls, moved around bases, caught flies, but as though at rest, static participants in an ancient yet transformed ritual. Journalists quit writing, just watched. Nobody interviewed anybody. No one sought autographs and no women shrieked or fainted at the feet of heroes. McCaffree swiveled in silence, Wmthrop silent. Umpires jerked thumbs or spread their hands, but no one complained. Good pitchers threw strikes, bad ones gave up hits to good hitters, while bad hitters went hitless. Boys watched grimly, older than old men, and old men hardly watched at all, just closed their eyes and nodded, nodded. Even Pappy Rooney, waterlogged in his own sweat, wrapped a towel around his bony old shoulders and sank back on the Haymaker bench, accepting, accepting, come what may. Sycamore Flynn and the Knickerbocker club-owners went to see Chancellor McCaffree about forfeiting the rest of the schedule. Nobody stood in their way now, but they couldn't seem to win. Just too much, Fenn. McCaffree understood, strange, yes, but what do we know about it all, Sycamore? Do your part, play the game, play it out. So they did and dropped the last nine games in a row. Contrarily, Barney Bancroft's Pioneers, as though released from some inexplicable burden, began to win. Barney ceased all subterfuge, called his plays open-handed, other teams knew perfectly well what was on— and still everything seemed to work. Nothing flashy: he just got men on base and brought them in, while his fielders and pitchers routinely retired the opposition.

The team with the most Stars and Aces, the Pastimers, won the pennant. The final three-game series found the second-place Haymakers, trailing by two games, in the Patsies' ballpark. Rooney, old trouper, stood up, tried gamely to get some life into his boys, but they'd been driven to play over their heads too long, they just collapsed, lost the first game and thus the pennant, so Pappy sank back again. Swanee Law finally did win another game, though, last one of the season, his twentieth, striking out his 303rd man, fifth best mark in UBA history — wonderful, but few cheered, not even when he got named Most Valuable Player. The Pioneers took three at the end from the Keystones to wind up in third, while the Knicks lost all theirs to sink to the cellar. Final Year LVI standings:

DAMONSDAY CLVII. Down in the Pioneer locker room, Knickerbocker rookie Hardy Ingram pulls on the old jersey with its bold antiquated "1." Was it really his? Probably not: too pat. Numerology. Lot of revealing work in that field lately. Made you wonder about a lot of things. Like the idea Damon was killed in Game 49: seven times seven. Third inning. Unbelievable. Or like that guy who's discovered that the whole damn structure from the inning organization up and double entry bookkeeping are virtually identical: just multiply it by twenty-one, the guy claims, and you've got it all. Grim idea. As Hardy tugs the shirt on over his head, there's like a — some said always a sudden chill — the others pause to watch: he gives them no sign. Fakes a yawn. Still, there is something strange — what is it? Fits too well. Coincidence. Or maybe they made it for him, new shirt, not the old one at all. In fact, the original must be in tatters by now.

When he arrived at the ball park a few minutes ago, Hardy was set upon by the usual runty mob of kids wanting autographs, but there was this one, standing at the fringe, just looking on. Peculiar, and it's still bugging him. What to make of it? Nothing, forget it. Trick probably. Get him upset. They all know the story from the catechism. Have a big laugh about it later. Next to him, the Universal Baseball Association's best rookie catcher, Paul Trench, who's to play Hardy's own great-great-great-grandfather, pulls on cleats. Paunch is good, but a Bridegroom, and Hardy isn't used to throwing to him. He hopes it'll come off all right. Paunch doesn't have much to say. Stage fright. Hardy grins at him: HOF Royce Ingram, the Avenger, the man who in remorse sank to the bottom of the UBA, then rose again to be the greatest backstop of them all, the Great Atonement Legend.

Sudden roar! Crowd. Big one. Ceremonies beginning. Take an hour or more, no hurry. Makes his throat catch just the same, though, and he grabs too fast for his pants. Take it easy, plenty of time. Still watching him, the bastards. Hardy Ingram isn't sure what might happen out there today. The annual rookie initiation ceremony, the Damonsday reenactment of the Parable of the Duel, is an Association secret. Lot of rumors, unnerving hearsay, but you can't be certain. Maybe it's like some claim and he won't come back. Doesn't make sense to him to knock off your best young talent every season, but he knows people aren't always rational. And if that's the way they want it, if that's how it's got to be, Hardy Ingram wants to take it like a man. Like the man himself. Poised. Knowing. Cool.

Really got them packed in up there. Not only a holiday and a good show, but in the middle of another centennial year as well — one hundred years since the assassination of HOF Barney Bancroft, the ninth UBA Chancellor, and the subsequent Monday Revolt. Weird times they had back then, all right. Still: ninth Chancellor, nine innings — all just so much bullshit, probably, like Cuss says. Centennial of everything these days. Enough to give a guy the creeps.

"How ya feeling?" Trench asks, standing. He tugs his belt one notch tighter under his belly, clops his cleats a couple times on the cement Boor, picks up his mask and guard.

"Okay, I guess, Paunch." He uses the real name on purpose and grins to see Paunch blink.

"Good boy! Nothing to worry about. See you up on the field. . Damon." He squeezes Hardy's arm, not looking at him, and leaves him. The rest watch this exchange, looking for — for what? some sign. Sign of weakness. Or sign that he knows. . Nothing to worry about: hah! like hell! Hardy yanks on his knickers, feeling suddenly a little sore: why him? Because, goddamn it, you're the greatest, that's why. Rather be a second-rater like Squire? No. Well, then, shape up. Talks to himself like that, keeping his nerve up, hoping the others don't see the cold sweat of doubt starting to prickle his face.

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: