At first, he thought of it as tragic, saw himself as a kind of Damon Rutherford: young, brilliant. . dead. He became suspicious when he realized the idea gave him a certain grim pleasure. He became interested in Jock Casey then, felt the terror and excitement of the Great Confrontation, asserted himself and learned to hate — but discovered that, even here, there was something he was enjoying that seemed wrong, a creature of false pride. It was Barney Bancroft who led him to the final emptiness; at every point in the man's life, he found himself asking: but why go on? Bancroft went on, but gave no reasons. And wasn't that, finally, a kind of cowardice?
The green grass at the edge of the infield feels spongy to their cleats. They walk in silence, beneath the loud blessing of the exalted and exultant populace, onto the diamond itself. A sacred duty, his father said. But "sacred," what is that? The Whore-Mother, Costen calls the people: Is it they, is it she who defines it for them? Is it in her name that he must kill today? Or is it for the record books that we go on, exposing our destinies? "Exposing our destinies" — that book Raspberry gave him, called Equilibrium Through Intransigence. It was Raspberry Schultz one day who told him: "I don't know if there's really a record-keeper up there or not, Paunch. But even if there weren't, I think we'd have to play the game as though there were." Would we? Is that reason enough? Continuance for its own inscrutable sake?
He noticed back there in the bull pen how they all avoided him, how they talked about him, wrong about everything. They think he's a Damonite. He isn't. He has read all he can find on the Association's history, and he knows now he is nothing. He has relived the origins and growths of the Bogglers, the Legalists, the Guildsmen, has examined their aspirations and how they tried to realize them, has suffered the pain and shock of Bancroft's murder, has watched the rescue of the Association by Patrick Monday's Universalists— later called the Caseyites — and their efforts, honest enough, to bring order to the chaos, has cringed under their ultimate tyranny and joined with the first courageous Damonites in their small and secret meetings, then ascended with them, pious and forever amazed, through the long slow years, to power — and has discovered, in the end, his own estrangement from them all. If anything, he is simply a willing accomplice to all heresies, but ultimately a partisan of none — like fat Costen, a negator, without any hope of rediscovering affirmation. Not that Cuss is any help to him. Cuss mocks the regime and everything else, but his mockery encapsulates him, cuts him off from any sense of wonder or mystery, makes life nothing more than getting by with the least pain possible, and somehow, to Paul Trench, such a life seems less than human.
Casey, in his writings, has spoken of a "rising above the rules," an abandonment of all conceptualizations, including scorekeepers, umpires, Gods in any dress, in the heat of total mystic immersion in that essence that includes God and him equally. Of course, some say he never wrote it, it's all apocryphal, inventions of Monday and his Universalists, distorted by redactions without number, but no matter, the idea itself remains. What it leads to, though, is inaction, a terrible passivity: Casey on the mound, shaking Flynn off, waiting — but who is playing Casey today? And will he wait? Trench, alias Ingram the Avenger, squatting dutifully behind the plate to receive the last of Hardy Ingram's warm-up pitches, feels a tingle in his hands, a power there he neither wants nor asked for.
He'd like to trade places with Hardy. Against the rules, of course; Hardy couldn't do it, can't play your own progenitor. No, even better, he'd like to trade with Galen Flynn or whoever it is that's playing Casey. What would he do? He'd burn them in, that's what he'd do, try to strike Ingram out. Or: why not an intentional pass? Or bean him. How about that? Is Flynn-Casey thinking about that? Going for number two? Namely, him? Royce Ingram tries to kindle up an anger, but Paul Trench can't bring it off. I'll strike out.
The idea excites him. A rising above. Yes, why not? He feels better than he's felt for months! Of course, so simple! What will they do to him after? Is he martyrizing himself? It doesn't matter: death is a relative idea, truth absolute! Yes, it was Squire who said that. He understands it now. Or did Squire put it the other way around? Stop and think. But he is too upset to think. He forgets now which is relative and which is absolute. If either. It is all falling apart on him. And either way it's coming. Yes, now, today, here in the blackening sun, on the burning green grass, and the eyes, and the crumbling— they shout. He sweats. Damon's pitches sting his hands. Can't hang on to them. All like a bad dream. And die. They're all going to die. And nothing he can do about it. Foolish things pass through his head. Rooney reaching the age of 143. The mystery of Casey's burial. The Brock Rutherford Era—
"Play ball!" the umpire cries, and he feels a terrific grabbing in the chest.
That dead boy. And the wake. Sandy's songs. The sack in the back of Jake's — cordoned off with a rope now and overseen by a museum guard, just like his ancestor Mel's Circle Bar, so they won't tear it up and carry off the pieces as souvenirs. They! Pieces! He laughs.
He flings the ball to second; then, impulsively, he walks out there, to the mound, not because it's a rule of the game, but because he feels drawn. The ball goes from Ramsey to Wilder to Hines. Hatrack comes in halfway from third, tosses the ball to Paul. He hands it to Damon, standing tall and lean, head tilted slightly to the right, face expressionless but eyes alert.
Paul tries to speak, but he can find no words. It's terrible, he says; or might have said. It's all there is.
And then suddenly Damon sees, must see, because astonishingly he says: "Hey, wait, buddy! you love this game, don't you?"
"Sure, but…"
Damon grins. Lights up the whole goddamn world. "Then don't be afraid, Royce," he says.
And the black clouds break up, and dew springs again to the green grass, and the stands hang on, and his own oppressed heart leaps alive to give it one last try.
And he doesn't know any more whether he's a Damonite or a Caseyite or something else again, a New Heretic or an unregenerate Golden Ager, doesn't even know if he's Paul Trench or Royce Ingram or Pappy Rooney or Long Lew Lydell, it's all irrelevant, it doesn't even matter that he's going to die, all that counts is that he is here and here's The Man and here's the boys and there's the crowd, the sun, the noise.
"It's not a trial," says Damon, glove tucked in his armpit, hands working the new ball. Behind him, he knows, Scat Bat-kin, the batter, is moving toward the plate. "It's not even a lesson. It's just what it is." Damon holds the baseball up between them. It is hard and white and alive in the sun.
He laughs. It's beautiful, that ball. He punches Damon lightly in the ribs with his mitt. "Hang loose," he says, and pulling down his mask, trots back behind home plate.