Free The Brothers K by David James Duncan Page B

it’s in right fieldand Kubek is clear to third base. The ball skims the grass once. Kuenn fields it cleanly and wings it home. It was hit so hard that the play should be close. Romana, the catcher, is blocking the plate. The throw is a bull’s eye. But Kubek fakes right, hook-slides left, and Romana doesn’t get a mitt on him till his feet have already swept the plate. “SAFE!” Pee Wee yells, beating the ump to the punch for once. “And it’s a one-run ballgame!”
    “But what’s got into that Moose?” says Dizzy.
    Papa leans forward, and slams his chair arms. All the stupid TV is showing us is Kubek dusting dirt off his rear. “Come on!” Papa hollers. The screen finally flashes.
    “Uh-oh,” says Pee Wee.
    And there is Moose Skowron, galumphing along in the no-man’s-land between second and third. He must have expected The Kube to knock Romana down rather than slide around him, so he kept right on running. But when Romana fires the ball down to Phillips at third they’ve got Moose by twenty-five feet. “Hot-box!” says Papa. So much for me and my yak butter.
    But wait. Phillips is crouched, the ball in his bare hand, ready for the cat-and-mouse feints and tosses of the hot-box. But Skowron is not a mouse by a long shot. Phillips wastes a full second figuring out that the Moose’s only plan in life is to keep on charging, then wastes another half second looking amazed by what he’s figured out. He still has a half second to sidestep, like a bullfighter, but instead he uses it to brace himself like a skunk with a pair of headlights streaking toward it on a night highway. He gets the exact same results:
“Eeeeeeeugh!”
goes Dizzy as the bodies collide. About eight feet later Phillips lands mostly on his head. Skowron lands on his belly, which lands on third base. And the ball bounds into shallow left and dribbles off toward the fans.
    WHAM!
Papa’s right hand slams the middle of my back, and he hoots and cackles as if my yak butter and me are all that’s causing these ridiculous things to happen. Meanwhile Skowron sees that Phillips, his senses, and the baseball have gone three different directions and that Francona, the left fielder, and Held, the shortstop, are a long way from the loose ball. So he jumps up and heads for home. Mudcat Grant and Vic Power do the same, I guess to back up Romana, but they look more like a posse out to get Skowron for splattering Skunk Phillips all over the road.
OOOF!
Papa whams my back and howls again.
    Francona reaches the baseball first, cocks his body like a gun, and fires a blur that crosses the entire TV in a slow blink of an eye. The ball hitsMoose square in the back at the same instant Moose hits Romana:
“Eeeeeeeugh!”
goes Dizzy again.
    And there they are: my sprawled bodies! my cloud of dust! Romana like a beetle on his back, wiggling but unable to get up; Skowron, like a corpse on its face, near home but not on it; Mudcat, Vic Power, the ump, and Hector Lopez, the on-deck Yankee, all gaping down at them, the ump making no sign because there’s no sign to make: Moose’s hand is just inches from the plate, but not a finger of it’s twitching. And something’s missing.
    “Somethin’ ain’t right,” says Dizzy.
    “The baseball!” Pee Wee hollers. “Where’s the golldurn
ball?”
    As if they heard him, Mudcat and Power start scrambling over bodies, looking for it. Lopez drops to his knees and screams in Moose’s ear. Power finds the ball under Romana’s limp shoulder. Lopez screams louder. Moose’s head twitches a little, his half-dead mind going, Hmm.
Them fingers by the plate. Mine maybe? Hmmm. Better touch home with ’em ’fore Casey gets mad
… And as the fingers start moving Power dives for the nearest piece of Moose-meat—
   and the ball in his hand crashes/Moose’s
finger brushes
/onto Moose’s foot/
against home plate
/too close to tell!/
tie goes to the runner?/“
SAFE!” thunders Dizzy. SAFE! signs the ump. And this ballgame