Well now, a sight for whore eyes! Those immortal hairy cheeks ablush in the blazing sun, immortal ankles in a bind of antiquarian knickerbockers, the whole immortal creation pirouetting gracelessly bullpenward, and the whore of whores, Dame Society, in all her enmassed immortal fervor, fixes her immortal eyes thereupon, missing not one mote and mentally putting the measure to the royal shillelagh — well, a whit bulkier than last year's, though not so far reaching perhaps, nothing to compare with the Hall of Famer of two years past, to be sure, but 'twill do for a bit of a turn, dearie, 'twill do — and lets fly from the black and cavernous depths of her immortal bosom a lusty approbation: "RUTHERFORD! RUTHERFORD!"
Costen the Rotund Transient McCamish, not to be confused with that lord of old whose musty Pioneer woolies he wears now, nor even with that grand paterfamilias Walter R. F. McCamish (and who was his preterient lodger today? Warwick was it? Or Raspberry Schultz?), only he, Cuss the contemned and contemning, side by side with Gringo Greene, the heavy-lidded atheist, he Cuss remarks this strange scene: the Association of the Stars. "Gringo, I swear by the holy cock of Saint Brock the Great, we've been born in a wondrous world, borne to a wondrous pass!"
"God bless our mothers," is Gringo's yawning reply.
"We have no mothers, Gringo. The ripening of their wombs is nothing more than a ceremonious parable. We are mere ideas, hatched whole and hapless, here to enact old rituals of resistance and rot. And for whom, I ask, for whom? For that old whore?"
Gringo Greene in affectionate accord turns and blows kisses to the old girl, the mass assembled, now crying wet-lipped for Casey (and who is it to be? is it Galen Flynn, as they have rumored? proper response to the immortal lust for sentiment and pattern, and yet…), and "The one true thing!" cries he.
"I can't believe it, Gringo. If all this fuss is just a rash in the old girl's crotch, then pray, where'd she get the rash?" Cuss McCamish, negator even of negations, surrenders to the paradox, surrender facilitated by his conviction that paradox, impossibility, confusion, and emptiness are the natural abode of a mind at rest; and proposes: "Let us hie us to the immortal pen and commend ourselves to yon heroes!"
"So be it fenn mccaffree!" vows Gringo, already in his cups it would seem, and off they go there, the thin and the stout of it, the good man Goodman and fat Tuck, reluctant participants in a classic plot, too wise to fable a future fortune, too distressed ever to invent their childhoods, left with nothing but the spiky imprint of their cleats upon the turf and the passage from envelope to maddening envelope of inscrutable space. Behind them, electronified voices recount the miracles that graced the ruptured but still radiant reign of the lofty Barney Bancroft HOF: well, there have been worse. As a point of fact, Gringo is himself celebrating this greenhorn season the centennial of the founding of his own inglorious line, his patriarch Copper Greene having been the most fabulous fly-by-night in Association history: up in LVII to whale out a record.411 and out of the league a year later with a.138.
"Greetings, personages of large consequence!" hails he of little consequence, Costen McCamish. In company out here with Hardy Ingram cum Damon Rutherford are his diminutive sidekick Skeeter Parsons, the party proselyte and jack-straw Paul Trench, the star-crossed iconoclast dire Squire Flint — and who is that slackbritches in the raiment of the greatest Witness of them all? Why, Raspberry Schultz it is, the gentle folklorist and gamesplayer. Hmmm. So in grand-pop's knickers it's to be Wicked Willie Warwick, after alclass="underline" may he reflect due honor on the happy clan, shy of immortals though it be.
"Where's the bar?" asks Gringo Greene, his emblematic salute.
"Ah, it's Cuss and Gringo!" complains the raspberry-complected Witness York with a turn of his knobby head. "As if things aren't already bad enough!"
"Pull the switch on that thing, man!" Gringo hollers up at the sun. "I can't even find my drink!" And clutches blindly before him, not so blindly punching Squire Flint in the chest. No love there, and feckless Flint flicks the hand away.
"Look up, good man, cast your eye on the Ineffable Name," intones Cuss, "and give praise!"
Gringo stares gapemouthed upward. "Oh yeah!"
"Do you see it?"
"Yeah!"
"What does it say?"
"100 Watt."
"Imagine!" cries Cuss into their laughter. "I always thought it said, 'Sandy lives!' "
"So it's Tuck Wilson, is it?" observes Raspberry Schultz, having orbited to the rear to read the magic number.
"Might have known McCamish would wrangle a deal for himself like that," snipes Squire Flint with a squint of ire. True, of course.
"In the giant's very gear," Cuss says. "Lucky Tuck!"
"Not all that much of a giant," notes Skeeter Parsons. "You appear to be coming out at the seams."
"Yes, Tuckered Son of Will was a bit low on the bone," confesses corpulent Costen, and they admire the parting threads. Hardy Ingram, proud scion of the avenging giant of the bloody past, and Paunch Trench, humble Damonite, do not join them, intent upon their pre-game task. Between pitches, Cuss sees, Hardy flexes his fist, staring curiously at it, probably thinking he's got something special there today, poor fool.
"You mean, long on the bone," cracks good man Greene. "I notice the crotch is holding."
The beast roars, startling them all. Casey has entered the Knickerbocker bull pen. Can't see him.
"If we could only get to whoever's playing Casey," Squire Flint says, half to himself, staring toward that distant figure.
"Awake! Awake!" cries Costen McCamish across the verdant pastures. "Put on strength, o arm of the league! Awake, as in days of old, the generations of long ago! Was it not thou that didst cut Rutherford in pieces, that didst deck the daemon? Was it not—"
"Cut it out!" cries Squire Flint.
"That is going a little too far," says Raspberry Schultz soberly. They all glance guiltily over toward Ingram and Trench, who, undisturbed, are still pitching, pitching, pitching. "I don't believe in just making fun of things you don't understand."
"What's this?" demands Skeeter Parsons. "You been converted, Razz?"
"No," says the Witness, blushing Raspberry, "but, well, legend, I mean the pattern of it, the long history, it seems somehow, you know, a folk truth, a radical truth, all these passed-down mythical—"
"Ahh, your radical mother's mythical cunt!" sniffs Gringo Greene. "It's time we junked the whole beastly business, baby, and moved on."
"I'm afraid, Gringo, I must agree with our distinguished folklorist and foremost witness to the ontological revelations of the patterns of history," intercedes (with a respectful nod to Schultz) Professor Costen Migod McCamish, Doctor of Nostology and Research Specialist in the Etiology of Homo Ludens, "and have come to the conclusion that God exists and he is a nut."
Skeeter Parsons cum Tubby-ass Ram's-Eye laughs: "Why, that's funny, I was just thinking…!"
"I think you better shut up," snaps friar Squire over his shoulder, still facing out toward the Knick bull pen where Casey works.
"Say, you're pretty lucky yourself," quoth Cuss to Squire's numbered back. "I see you drew McDermott."
Flint spins around full wroth. "You trying to be funny, you bastard?" Now what did he say that. .? Well, of course, Flint wanted to be Casey himself.