The Brothers K (9 page)

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 hits
Moose 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 is tied!

“He’s SAFE!” roars Pee Wee. “This ballgame is all tied up!”

“And for dessert today,” drawls Diz, “how’d ya’ll like a piece of our famous rhubarb pie?”

For a second I don’t know what he’s talking about. Then, sure enough, the Indians pour out of their dugout and in from the field ready to scalp Skowron for squashing their teammates, and Yankees roar up out of their barracks ready to defend Moose’s dead body to the death. Some fans jump down out of the bleachers. Some cops light out after them. Dizzy starts yodeling the Lone Ranger theme song. And Pee Wee explains everything at a full yell:
“But interference terburnippa furniture!”
he explains.
“Either or other buhnerka-buhnerka automaticker Moose debimfus!”
he explains.

ROWRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!
explain the fans.

Papa keeps hooting and whamming my back like there’s no higher compliment in all of baseball than back-whams. Stengel and the Indians’ chief shout at all three umps while the umps shout back. A big gob of Yanks circle Moose, a bigger gob of Indians circle the Yanks, both gobs shrieking and woo-woo-wooing like retarded braves and bluecoats in
some dumb Hollywood rerun. But Moose never moves, and you just can’t kill a guy who’s already dead, because what’s the point?

The woo-woo-wooing starts to lose momentum. Romana somehow staggers to his feet.
“God
, catchers are tough!” Papa says. The cops nab the runaway fans. Phillips is helped from the field by a player and a trainer. A stretcher floats through the circling mobs, lands at Skowron’s side, and two men in white coats carefully load him, hoist him, and start to bear him away.

Then Moose’s eyes open. He sits up, and looks around.

“That man was playin’
possum!”
Pee Wee shouts.

“Like fun he was,” says Dizzy.

“I don’t think so either,” Papa says. “He was out cold.”

The Yankees surround Skowron, jumping up and down, lamming his head and shoulders.
“He figured them Indians’d scalp him!”
Pee Wee screams. “So
he played possum till his calvary arrived!”

“Then his own dang calvary whomped the livin’ kidneys out of him,” says Diz.

The Yankees really
are
pounding on him. Moose doesn’t look very happy, or very healthy either. “That man has got
smarts!”
shouts Pee Wee.

“When he’s coldcocked,” says Diz.

“Professor William Skowron!” hollers Pee Wee.

“Professor P. W. Reese,” mutters Dizzy.

“Kade the Bookie Prophet,” says Papa.

“I’m not either!” I laugh, remembering Krishna.

“What a ballgame!” shouts Pee Wee.

“Extra innings, looks like,” Papa says, still beaming at me.

“I love baseball!” I tell him. “Let’s go fishing!”

He laughs once more, then wipes his face and forehead with his sleeve in that careful way pitchers do, so as not to be accused of throwing spit. He nods. “We can catch the rest on the car radio.”

“What I wanna know,” Dizzy wonders, “is how they’re gonna score that mess.”

“Darn good question,” says Pee Wee. “And we’ll be back with the answer, right after these very fine messages.”

Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ …

—Galatians 6

For
every man shall bear his own burden …

—Galatians 6

Honor thy father and thy mother …

—Mark 7

And call no man your father upon the earth …

—Matthew 11

Love thy neighbor as thyself …

—Matthew 5

Let the dead bury their dead …

—Matthew 8

Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you …

—John 14

Think not that I am come to send peace …

—Matthew 10

Lord, I
believe …

—Mark 9

Help thou my unbelief …

—Mark 9

M
ama is standing on the front porch holding a huge piece of square-pan pie out in front of her like a hymnal. Bet and Freddy are flanking her, each clinging to one of her knees. Irwin is clumping up the sidewalk in the Indian Summer sun, just getting home from school. “It’s a secret!” Bet yells at him.

“Guess who!” hollers Freddy.

“They mean guess what,” Mama says.

Irwin frowns, till he notices the pie: blackberry, a mountain of it, still hot from the oven, with an ice-cream snowcap sending vanilla creeks trickling down steep purple sides. Like a sleepwalker, he gropes two-handedly toward it. Mama whips it away. “You’ve got to guess the secret,” she says.

His face crumbles. “No fair!” he yells, pointing at me. I’m sitting on the steps enjoying the show—and devouring an equally majestic mountain, snow first.

“Kade already figured it out,” Mama says.

I grin as smugly as possible. Mama sits on the steps beside me, knowing we may be here a while. Irwin’s first guess is typical: “UNCLE MARV IS HERE!” he roars, as if extra volume will make stupidity smarter.

Mama rolls her eyes. “You think I’d bake pie in honor of a thing like my brother Marvin?”

Irwin looks disappointed. He’s gaga about the guy, because when Marv isn’t running the Butee Bar (that’s his and Mary Jane’s hair parlor up in Spokane) he’s a part-time farmer, which is what Irwin wants to be full-time someday. I take a noisy bite to get his mind back on business. He starts to salivate. “It’s the pie itself!” he shouts.

Mama shakes her head.

“It’s a new car!”

Mama winces.

“A new house, then!”

She rolls her eyes again.

“A wedding? No! A funeral, yeah! No! Wait! I got it! It’s that, that, that, THAT READER’S DIGEST DREAM CRUISE TO HAWAII!”

His shouts are so loud the twins take cover under Mama’s apron. They’re laughing in there, though. “Shoot!” he says. “I give! I’m stark rarvin’ starvin’!”

“The saying is
stark ravin’ stravin’,”
I tell him.

“It’s rarvin’ starvin’!” he blusters. “It’s my stomach! I ought to know!”

“You’ve got to guess anyhow,” says Mama.

He groans so pitifully that the twins come out from under the apron, thinking he’s actually in pain. Noticing their concern, he smiles his biggest, cuddliest smile at them—which I have to admit is damned big and cuddly. They smile two cuddly little smiles back. “My li’l buddies,” he croons, setting Bet on one knee and Freddy on the other. “My two bestest little friends!” They beam up at him. Unbelievable suckers. “Hey!” he says in an incredibly loud whisper. “How would my buddies like a neat special treat?” Their eyes get big. They nod their heads. “All right!” he says. “Listen. Just tell your big pal Winnie what this silly secret of Mama’s is, and he’ll give you each a nice big juicy bite o’ pie!”

Freddy covers her mouth and scrambles down off his leg. Bet scowls and sticks out her tongue. Irwin looks flummoxed—till he notices Bet’s tongue. It’s bright purple. “They ate already!” he moans.

“They don’t know the secret anyway,” Mama says.

The pie is great. The secret’s better. Irwin’s misery makes both better yet. I lean toward him, stuff in another bite, and tell him, “Yo ife cweam iv melling away to nuffing.” And when he sees it’s true Irwin’s face starts to melt too.

Then something in him snaps—you can almost hear it. He is suddenly serious. He looks almost intelligent. “Uh-oh,” Mama says. “You pushed him too far, Kade.”

She’s right. Irwin likes to avoid thinking, but when he’s forced he’s not half bad at it. “All right, dangit!” he mutters. “It’s got nothing to do with us four, ’cause we’re all too boring to have secrets.”

“Hey now!” Mama protests, but Irwin goes on thinking aloud.

“It can’t be Everett ’cause he’s at school and nothing good happens to Everett at school. Pete? No. When Pete has a secret nobody
ever
finds out. So it’s got to be Papa … except it can’t be, ’cause he’s at the mill. Grandawma? Naw, she’s too—Hey wait!
Papa
. I know! That
thumb
business! That Perry Mason deal! You know, his court suit! his law case! his whatever you call that weird
surgery
deal!”

Mama shakes her head but hands him his pie. “Your father goes to court next Thursday,” she says, unable to hide a smile. “Of course anything could happen, but his lawyer says he’s got a darn good chance of—”

“HOORAW!” Irwin thunders.
“Papa’s gonna win his thumb back!”
He starts whooping like an idiot, stops to stuff in a huge bite of pie, then
goes right on whooping out these awful purple
wahoos
that look like his mouth is full of guts. Bet and Freddy watch, full of admiration.

“Let’s not count our chickens,” Mama says nervously. “He hasn’t won a penny yet. He’s going to need our prayers.”

“It’f not Furvday yet!” Irwin blurts through the pie. “Fenk
povitive
, Mama!” And he goes back to his gory wahooing as he demolishes the entire berry mountain in the time it takes me to eat about three bites.

“We helped,” Freddy brags, swinging on his knee.

“Yeah!” hollers Bet, who takes after Irwin in shouting almost everything she says. “We helped a lot! Mama said!”

“You
helped?” Irwin snarls in a big mean voice. (They love big mean voices.) “How could
you
help? Are you lawyers or what?”

They don’t know what he’s talking about, but grin at him anyway. Then he grabs them by the backs of their homemade overalls and hoists them, one in each hand, clear up in front of his face. “How did
you
help?” he repeats. “I wanna know!”

“They helped with the pie!” Mama says. “Now put them down.”

Irwin pretends to start to drop them, gets a gasp out of Mama, then jerks them back up in his face. “Do you little hemorrhoids expect me to believe you had anything to do with that delicious pie?” he growls. “Ha! Do you hear me? HA!”

Dangling high over the lethal concrete, the twins cover their mouths with fat purple fingers, then emit polite little tea-parlor titters.

“So tell me what
really
happened!” Irwin says. “You just got in her way all day, didn’t you! You just went bummo in your pants and whined
‘Mommy-I-Wanna-This! Mommy-I-Wanna-That!’
all day, didn’t you! DIDN’T YOU!”

“We pin-rolled the dough!” squeaks Freddy.

“And now we wanna airplane!” bellows Bet.

“There will be no airplaning!” Mama says. But the twins look great, hanging just alike in the sun there, arms out like wings, brown hair and skinny legs dangling.

“Contack!” shouts Freddy.

“No contact!” Mama shouts.

“But, Mama honey!” Irwin says in a thick Southern drawl. “They pin-rolled the dough! You
know
what the Good Book says.”

“None of your darned Bible games now!”

“Games?”
Irwin lowers the girls, letting them hang at his knees like a couple of buckets. He looks incredulous. He looks perfectly serious. “And you call yourself a
believer!
Do I have to spell it out? Have you backslid
that far? Very well then. Deuteronomy three, sixteen:
‘And they who pin-roll the dough shall be airplaned. Verily, unto illness shall they be flown about the yard. Unto airsickness, yea, and unto every other type of disaster shall they be propellered. And their poor mama shall watch though it cleaveth her heart in twain to do so!’”