Wrong! "No, it's all wrong!" Barney cried to himself. His mind bolted ahead, racing through Mozart's creative operations, the way he chased flies, fielded grounders, threw to first, swung, ran. . smooth, faultless, but something was wrong. Not just the words, but the music too. "Artifice! Arrogance!'* The bogus hell's-better-than-nothing comfort. He realized suddenly that he hated the thing, hated the shabby neatness, the trumped-up despair, he wanted to lay into the whole damn outfit, kick them while they played, make them sing while running the basepaths until they dropped! "I hate it!" he cried out. "Stop it!"
Lou, lurching, sent his drink flying — needle shrieked insanely across the record, knocked against the center post with a resounding clock! heard through all the many-speakered system, bounced back to report one "lux aeterna!" then rejected itself.
"I… I'm sorry, Lou." What was happening to him?
"Is… is there something else you'd. .?" His friend watched him, wide-eyed. Calm down. Funny, after all. See poor Lou. His gloom runneth over. Seeping darkly into the rug's earth-brown nap. Stunned, Fenn and Barney stunned. Rooney winked.
Henry grinned. "Put on the Purcell."
"You mean the… the funeral. .?" Lou in a state of total and mournful perplexity. For the day, it would seem, was dark and troubled. "Are you sure, Henry? That's kind of…" He wrinkled his nose.
"I don't care, put it on." Confusion and emptiness, teehee and boohoo, get it straight from the master's whinny!
"Well… all right, if. . it's really what you'd like," Lou said, and revolved irresolutely, poor old tub in an unexpected weather, to search out the record.
Henry stood, poured more sherry, drank it off at a dispreciative gulp. The sepulchral dew: ha ha! He switched to bourbon. Corn liquor, the really basic stuff. Yes, let's have a little fire, boys! And feet on the ground! The fatal hour comes on apace!
Ruefully, the sackbuts poop-poop-dee-pooped, discreetly distant. In bitter cold, through streets draped in black, slowly advanced the pallbearers. Hop, skip, and a long cold shuffle. The frozen corpse rocked in the hollow box: whump! tum-tum-tum clump! Long live the dead queen! Yes, it took a leering toper to lay it on the line! Ho ho! who left this life, and is gone to that blessed place where only his harmony can be exceeded — whump! Henry drank whiskey and laughed aloud.
Lou stuffed himself, shrinkingly, in a shadow. "Henry…?" he whimpered from darkness.
Trompetta! blaa-aa-att! and a mocking rumble of the tympanic gut! Man that is born of woman, woman that is laid by man! Blaa-aa-att! He cometh out! He goeth in! Raunchy giggle of trumpets. Pallbearer Rooney is giggling. Giggling hysterically. It infects them all. Oh that goddamn Rooney! Hee hee! Spare us, Lord!
"Shall I… take it off, Henry, or…?"
"Oh no! he is much lamented!" Tee hee hee hee hee hee, boo hoo hoo hoo, tee hee hee hee, boo hoo hoo hoo, ha ha ha ha— oops! the body bounces out! they pop it in again! out! in! it's one-old-cat, boys, with the earthly remains! Hee hee ha ha ha ho ho hee haa haaa!
"Oh, Lou!" he cried, holding his sides, "why do we go on?"
Suddenly inspired, he turned to the machine, flipped it up to a higher speed. "Thou knowest, Lord!" they piped. Yes! he knew it! A tavern song, after all! The secrets of our hearts! "Tonight!" whispered Rooney, jigging along under the burden.
"Jake's!" The Hole in the Wall. Tweet-tweet-tootle and a rattle of tin spoons on a hollow hilarious bouncing skull!
He left, hatless, cold wind on his wet face, his funeral a shambles.
Play resumed. It always resumes, every dying old bastard's despair. But first, the night before, a troupe of the old-timers gathered in Jake's Bar behind the Patsies' Park. Brock wasn't there, of course, and McCaffree stayed away, but Pioneers Gabe Burdette and Frosty Young were present, and Willie O'Leary and Jonathan Noon and doleful Barney Bancroft. And there was beer-bellied Surrey Moss and Mose Stanford and Chad Collins and Toothbrush Terrigan. Young Brock Jr. was among the absent: he'd bolted for home the minute the burial was over, dragging his missus behind him, and there, pressed by an inexplicable urgency, had heisted her black skirts, and without even taking time to drop his pants, had shot her full of seed: yes, caught it! she said, and even he felt that germ strike home.
It was Rag Rooney's idea, this gathering of the grieving, and he was of course on hand, salting his ulcer with bourbonic acid, and with him came his old boss and crony Gus Maloney, blowing smoke and stoking his political machine with good humor and an occasional round of drinks. Some of the boys on the inside, too, Seemly Sam Tucker and Big Bill McGonagil, a dozen or more. Hometown Pastimer boss Cash Bailey showed up, though his Patsies were on the road, faced the Beaneaters in their park the next day, but the Beans' manager Winslow Beaver was there, too, so it was even up. The other managers came, too, why not? The Excelsiors' Melbourne Trench and the Bridegrooms' Wally Wickersham and Timothy Shadwell of the Keystones, last year's Manager of the Year but this year's most promising goat: he needed a drink. Even Sycamore Flynn. It was funny about Sic'em: they all loved the bastard, pure gold the man's heart, yet this night they couldn't get close to him. Wasn't his fault Yet something was happening. They all felt it: his Knicks were gonna get it. Things had to get evened up. Gawky Jock had jinxed them all. Flynn set them up and left early, a relief to everyone.
Sandy Shaw brought his guitar and Long Lew Lydell his reputation. Jason (Jaybird) Wall was on the scene, dropping rubber bugs in drinks, passing out explosive cigars, and slipping whoopee cushions under couching hunkers, the only consolation being that, fairly soon, Jaybird would pass out, bringing a sodden peace to the place, the more appreciated for its contrast to the persecutions preceding. And two great player-coaches from the Golden Age of the XX's turned up: the Knicks' Whipper Will Andersen and the Bridegrooms' Puritan Ballou, both Hall of Famers. And Yip Yick Ping, the Chinese lefty, and Prince Hal Scarlet and Chin-Chin Chicker-ing and Cueball McAuliffe and Agapito Bacigamupo. And there came Bruiser Brusatti and No-Hit Nealy and Birdie Deaton and Jumpin' Joe Gallagher and a bunch of their old teammates with them.
Intense, brilliant, but isolate Patrick Monday looked in, but Pat didn't stay long: Monday, it was remarked by all, had aspirations above and beyond the temporal kingdom of elbow-benders. No love for old Maloney either, and matters might have got touchy had Monday stuck around. Gus had squandered a lifetime building up his Bogglers Party, and knocking off McCaffree's Legalist gang was almost a sure bet, if not this year, then in LX, and now, just when the old man had a chance at last, along came Monday to chew him up. Monday was starting his new party from scratch, after all, he had to get his followers from somewhere, and where he was getting them from mostly, it seemed, was from the ranks of Boggier soreheads. Especially the young ones. Patience, young fellas, we all die, you'll get your chance. At a corner table, Gus puffed, laughed loud at jokes, and bought rounds, while Monday, with that maddening self-assurance of his, stood coolly at the bar and dropped the now-familiar phrases: the imperative of excellence, freedom through constancy, the contagion of confusion, pilgrimage back to majesty — Maloney's laughter boomed, the coins rang, but his ears quivered with attention. He slipped Jaybird Wall a buck. "The intransigent will of history!" Monday declaimed, and sat back: blaa-aat! moistly. He smiled faintly at the bar-wide rhubarb and pulled out.