“I think he might have been on a TV series. I know I’ve seen him before.”
Jack Start was having a flashback. “He made me think of Pudge Abercrombie…I mean, you know, what Pudge might have looked like had he lived.”
Old Coach Young smiled, a rueful smile. “Ole Pudge… I haven’t thought about that kid in years.”
“For years I couldn’t stop thinking about him.”
“That’s right, you were on the ship canal that night, weren’t you?”
Jack Start was suddenly drowning in his watery memories. A year earlier he had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. He had lost two wives to divorce, and two jobs to alcohol, but nothing haunted him more than watching his boyhood friend wash out to sea. “Yeah, I was on the canal.”
“Who else was there?”
“Tommy Robek.”
“The skinny kid. What ever happened to him?”
“He was killed in Vietnam.”
The coach shook his head. “That fuckin’ war.” He sucked on his cigarette. “So you’re the only one left alive?”
“Yup, I’m the only one left alive. I should have given the damn ball to Pudge.”
“Say what?”
“Nothing.”
The two men went back to their beer and their baseball, as did the rest of the bar. But a strange feeling had descended over the room. Something of a pall. There seemed to be more thinking going on than talking.
“Are you going to the reunion?” the coach finally asked.
“I didn’t go to the ten. I didn’t go to the twenty. Why the hell would I go to the twenty-five?”
“Because she’s going to be there.”
Jack Start felt his heart stop. After being fired from the only two newspapers in the Twin Cities, and then being diagnosed with MS, he’d had an overwhelming desire to return home. Somewhat of a calling. “How do you know?”
“She’s divorced from the governor, for Christ’s sake. It’s all over town. She’s driving up from St. Paul,” the coach went on. “I think she has one son.”
The veteran reporter exhaled into his beer. “Yeah, that’s what I need in my life right now…a forty-three-year-old ex-cheerleader with the governor’s kid.”
“Maybe that is what you need.”
“I don’t think so, Coach. I’ve got plans.”
The old coach rolled his bloodshot eyes. Snickered in his beer. He looked up at the television set, still a touch of the teacher in his voice. “Do you know how to make God laugh?” he asked. He answered his own question. “Tell him your plans.”
Jack Start, too, looked up at the television set. He could see his reflection staring back. He raised his empty mug of beer in salute. “Here’s to God and all his lovely plans.”
The Red Sox made a pitching change in the eighth inning.
Then the Twins scored two more runs to win the game. The next morning, in a box above the fold, the following article appeared on the front page of the Duluth Newspaper:
In a blatant violation of federal law, a man hijacked the KDUL television signal of the Minnesota Twins game last night and claimed he was God. The man, a white male, approximately forty to fifty years of age, with thin brown hair, took over the signal from 9:10 p.m. to 9:13. His height could not be determined, but he appeared to weigh over 200 pounds. He was wearing a blue jean shirt with a small red Levi’s label visible on the right pocket. About halfway through his talk he lit up a Marlboro cigarette. What was most peculiar about the unauthorized television event was that the man made no attempt to disguise himself…
The Investigation
In the next three weeks God in a blue shirt interrupted two Twins game and the Viking’s home opener. All on KDUL-TV. “Hi, I’m God.” He held up his little nameplate: I’ M G OD . “Relax, the Vikings tie it up in the fourth quarter… but I won’t tell you how it ends.” Sports fans cried foul. Church groups cried blasphemy. In one of the broadcasts he asked, “Where in God’s name are you people getting these Presidents from?” The FCC was not amused. FBI agents were dispatched from St. Paul. A media frenzy followed. The federal task force investigating the case set up operation on the top floor of a downtown office building, with a spectacular view of the lake.
In the reception area, Jack Start stared out the window at the harbor. The sky over the water was still a rich summer blue, but summer was over. The leaves had begun to change and more often than not the morning breeze was out of the north.
“Mr. Start, Inspector Whitehurst will see you now.”
Jack Start took a seat in front of Inspector Whitehurst’s desk. He placed his walking cane across his lap. Special Agents Black and Flannery stood behind him, guarding the door, but the two never spoke.
The inspector remained standing, shuffling files on his desk before finally breaking the tension. “Thank you for coming in, Mr. Start.” He held up a pack of cigarettes. Marlboro in a box. “Smoke?”
“No thanks,” said Jack. “I quit.”
“Recently, I’m guessing. Maybe about the time God showed up on television?”
“So this is about God?”
“No, Mr. Start, he’s all too human. And he’s in a lot of trouble. So is anybody who is helping him. Hijacking a television signal is a serious crime. It hasn’t been done successfully in over twenty years… and that was just a few seconds on a cable channel. This clown is hijacking signals from a network affiliate…and he seems to be doing it at will. Now, he’d have to have an uplink—”
Jack Start couldn’t help but laugh.
Inspector Whitehurst glared down at him. The FBI man was a big man, and an older man, with thin, dark hair combed straight back. He may have been sent up from St. Paul, but the trace of a New York accent still punctuated his lawyerly speech. “Is something funny, Mr. Start?”
The Duluth reporter tried to wipe the smile from his face. “I’m sorry, it was just the thought of God needing an uplink.”
The inspector picked up a file from his desk. Opened it and read, “Lawrence Alden Abercrombie. Also known as Pudge Abercrombie. Do you know him?”
“He’s dead.”
“Actually, his body was never found. He was classified as missing.”
“And seven years later he was declared dead.”
“Then why are you running around town telling people the part of God is being played by Pudge Abercrombie?”
Jack Start explained, carefully enunciating each and every word: “What I’ve said is, he looks like what Pudge might have looked like had Pudge lived.”
The FBI inspector held up a sketch. A computerized sketch. “Our people in Washington put Abercrombie’s high school yearbook picture on their computers and did an age-imaging analysis… what he would look like today. We know that Abercrombie is God.”
“You believe what you want to believe, inspector. Pudge has been dead for years. I saw him die.”
“That’s right, you were his best friend, weren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“What would you say if I told you we traced Abercrombie to a house in Minneapolis, where he’d been living for the past twenty years? Not far from your old place.”
“With all due respect, inspector, I’d say you’re full of shit.”
“Did you two cook this up while you were living down there in Minneapolis?”
“No.”
“So it’s a coincidence that Abercrombie shows up on television just weeks before his high school’s twenty-five year reunion?”
“I don’t know who that is on television, and neither do you.”