"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:
Anyone could get in
To Harriet Flynn,
The problem was how to get out!
When she got you pinned,
Her daddy'd come in,
And give you one hell of a clout!"
Hardy has to grin at that one, but feels that tingle behind his ear again. "You drunken irreverent bastards! How you malign our common mother!"
"On the sack in the back of Jake's!" sings Gringo. Then, in a hush, leaning forward: "Hey, I just got the word, men, this game is fixed!"
"That, my boy," declaims Cuss McCamish, "is the immortal parable's very message!"
"What?" asks Hardy. "That the game is fixed, or that Gringo gets the word?"
"The only thing I'm getting outa this," grumbles Gringo, "is a pain in the ass."
"Which is more than you deserve," says Cuss.
"Deserve!" croaks Gringo. "I deserve love, truth, beauty, meaning, and eternal life. . but I'll settle for a fuckin' drink."
They start to move away, but first Costen turns back to say: "Now, you know the rules, Hardy: no intentional wild pitches thrown at the Chancellor, no soiling of the immortal skivvies at the moment of truth, leave all your unconsumed liquid assets to your old buddy Cuss, and remember: you've got first crack at the Kill—"
"Get outa here, you sonsabitches!" hollers Hardy, "before I bust a few immortal skulls myself!" He looks for a ball to throw but before he can find one, they've staggered out in a drunken gallop, whooping and snorting as they go.
His roommate Skeeter Parson, dressed for the role of rookie Toby Ramsey, wanders over. He and Skeeter get along fine, play hard, accept everything with a grain of salt, josh each other out of the dumps, and when in doubt, go chasing tail together. Skeeter is wearing his usual one-sided grin, but doesn't look his old happy-go-lucky self. Hardy bends over his laces. Looking at his right hand, he thinks suddenly: by God, I've got something there today, all right. . something different. He flexes his fingers.
"I don't see why we can't reenact 'Long Lew and Fanny* instead of this old doggerel," Skeeter complains. Hardy straightens up, half smiling. The grin on Skeeter's face fades. Something peculiar crosses his expression, like aWe, something Hardy hasn't seen before. "Hardy… is that you?"
"Sure!" laughs Hardy, taken aback. He notices now that he and Skeeter are alone down here. "What's" the matter?"
"I don't know." Skeeter's color conies back, makings of a grin again, but he keeps eyeing Hardy in a funny way. "For a minute there…"
"You thought I was Fanny McCaffree herself."
Skeeter laughs, but that funny look doesn't leave his face. "Do me a favor, roomie."
"Name it."
"When that pitch comes today, step back."
"You kidding?"
"No, Hardy, I'm dead serious." The grin is gone and Skeeter's gaze is fixed on him. But can he trust even Skeeter? Isn't this just another trick, another prearranged ploy to see if he'll break? Cuss hinting he should deck Casey when he pitches to him in the top of the third, Skeeter tempting him with cowardice. Won't know for sure until the initiation is over. "Seeing you there just now, I don't know, I got the idea suddenly that maybe this whole goddamn Association has got some kind of screw loose, Hardy."
"You just finding that out?"
"No, wait, Hardy, I'm not joking. Maybe… maybe, Hardy, they're really gonna kill you out there today!"
Hardy feels a cold chill rattle through him, tingling that patch behind his ear, pulverizing his organs and unhitching his joints, but outwardly he laughs: "Bullshit, Skeeter. The old-timers just build it up this way to give the rookies a little scare each year. They'd have to be crazy to—" He's sorry the minute he's said it.
"Exactly!" Skeeter cries. "Crazy! Why have we been assuming all along they weren't? Listen!"
Above them, the crowd growls spasmodically. Do sound a little mad at that. Like a big blind beast. "Well, if that's what they want," he says, troubled, and tucking a glove in his armpit, clops out of the locker room.
Skeeter trails, sighing. He's still trying to tell Hardy something, but the autograph hunters in the passageway are making so much noise he can't hear him. Mostly kids, sprouting girls, a few women who can always be found outside locker rooms. Hardy grins, pauses to sign a few scorecards, and Skeeter does, too. Going by the rules, they sign the names they are playing under today. Hardy notices that Skeeter is leaving the "e" out of "Ramsey." Rebellious streak. Get him in trouble someday. Lot of these cards will end up in the Chancellor's office.
They push forward, through the young bodies, crowd roars egging them on. Time soon. Have to warm up. Sun slicing through open bleachers on to the ramp ahead. Brilliant day. Always like that on Damonsday. Or so they say. Signing a baseball, he notices it already has a lot of autographs. He looks closer. They're all Damon Rutherfords! He swallows, looks up uneasily: Yes, by God, that same kid! Who the hell are you, he wants to ask, but something holds him back. He adds his version of the signature — not all that different from the others, he notices — and hands the ball back. A girl, grabbing at his fly, distracts him — by the time he's got her hand out of there, the kid has disappeared.
"Come on, let's get up there!" he snaps at Skeeter Parsons — but where is Skeeter? There, way up ahead, alone on the ramp, looking back, oddly aloof. Hardy plunges ahead, but they're all over him now. Excited, all right, he's never seen anything like it. "Damon!" they're screaming, and "Damon!" and "Damon!" Excites him, too, damn it. Their hands and mouths are all over him. He realizes he is walking on some of them. Looks down, but they swarm so thickly over him, all he can see is an occasional thigh or face down there. They groan under his cleats and praise his name. He struggles: "Come on! For God's sake, let me go!" Suddenly he is in sunlight and breaking free. He staggers forward, propelled by his own thrust, blinded by the sun, dragging the more desperate with him — and a tremendous stunning roar brings him up short! As one, the fans in the stadium stand and cheer, stand and cry the magic name: "RUTHERFORD! RUTHERFORD! RUTHERFORD!" Appalled, in pain, terrified, he wrenches one kid off his shoulder, kicks free of another, pries loose the fingers of the girl who hangs on between his legs, her poor face cleat-battered, pulls up his shorts and his knickers, and marches, suffering more than he'd ever guessed possible, to the bull pen. "RUTHERFORD! RUTHERFORD!"