The Great American Novel (49 page)

(
Laughter.
)

GENERAL OAKHART
: And, Mr. Dies, I am equally sure that if in August either of our great political parties had nominated for the presidency a candidate who had seen at first hand how the Communists work, a man who knew from hard and tragic experience what an unscrupulous, ruthless, and murderous gang they are, if the American people had been given the opportunity by either the Democrat or the Republican parties to vote for a man who was equipped to fight and to defeat the Communist enemy in our midst, then they might not be roused to display such enthusiasm for my words. But the fact of the matter is, sir, that the people will be silent no longer. Their eyes have been opened—they know the struggle that America will face in the postwar years with those who now pose as her friends. And so do I. And if Mr. Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Democrat Party do not know—and Mr. Roosevelt does not!—and if Mr. Thomas E. Dewey and the Republican Party do not know—and Mr. Dewey does not!—then the American people will look elsewhere for leadership. They will look to one who is not afraid to speak the unspeakable and to do the undoable, to one who is not afraid to call an enemy an enemy, at whatever cost and peril to himself! To one whose party is his country and whose platform is the law of the land!

(
Loud applause.
)

It was a warm and hospitable welcome that Gil Gamesh received when General Oakhart announced to the members of the press assembled in his Tri-City office on St. Patrick's Day 1944 that the former Greenback pitching ace standing beside him, whom he himself had banished a decade earlier, was now to be reinstated in the league, as manager of the Ruppert Mundys. With one notable exception, the writers broke into spontaneous applause as the ghostly Gamesh (bewigged, as he would be henceforth, in a raven-black hairpiece, and wearing his old Number 19) stepped to the microphone, removed his spectacles (the General's idea—adds seriousness) to wipe at an eye with the back of his big left paw, and then proceeded to express his gratitude, first to General Oakhart, for granting him amnesty and a chance to begin life anew; then to Mrs. Trust, for going to bat for him with the General; and then to the American people, who by giving him a second chance, attested to nothing less than their faith in mankind itself … Then he told them what he had seen and what he had learned in his ten years of exile. It was not the story he had told to the General and Mrs. Trust, but one devised for public consumption by the three of them. It had mostly to do with “our greatest natural resource, the kids of America, this country's future and its hope.” In his guilt and his shame, said Gamesh, he had wandered the length and breadth of the land under a number of aliases—Bill Smith, Bob White, Jim Adams—working for weeks and months at a time as dishwasher, handyman, grocery clerk, and farmhand; he had lived beneath forty-watt bulbs in rooming houses in each of the forty-eight states, lonely as a man could be, without a friend in the world, except, except for “the kids.” At the end of the work day, having downed his bowl of chili at the counter of the local greasy spoon, he would step out into the street and listen. For what? For the sound of the ball striking the bat, or landing with a whack in the pocket of a catcher's mitt. On many a night he had walked a mile just to watch a bunch of kids batting a taped-up ball around. Was he even alive in those years, other than during those twilight hours on the sandlots of America? Did his heart stir otherwise? No, no—the remaining twenty-three hours of the day and night he was a corpse embalmed in shame. “Hey, mister,” they'd call over to him as he stood on the sidelines smoking his two-cent after-dinner cigar, “wanna ump?” “Hey, mister, fungo some out to us, hey?” “Hey, mister, ain't that right? Ain't Gil Gamesh the greatest that ever lived?” “Walter Johnson!” “Gil Gamesh!” “Rube Waddell!” “Gil Gamesh!” “Grover Alexander!” “No, Gamesh! Gamesh! Gamesh!” Dangerous as it was for this man who wished to be forgotten by America to come anywhere near a pitcher's mound, it was simply beyond him sometimes not to give a youngster in need a little advice. “Here, boy, do it this way,” and taking the ball from the little pitcher's hand, he'd show him how to set the curveball spinning. Oh, there were idyllic summer nights in small Middle Western towns when he just couldn't resist, when he would rear back with that taped-up lopsided ball and hurl a perfect strike into the mitt of the twelve-year-old catcher—in the process (Gil added, with a tender laugh) knocking him onto his twelve-year-old fanny. Oh, the mouths of those youngsters sure hung open then! “Hey, who are you anyway, mister?” “Nobody,” Gil answers, “Bob White, Bill Smith, Jim Adams…” “Hey, know who he looks a little like, guys? Hey, guys, know who he
is?
” But by then Gil would be shambling off to the sidelines, headed for his rooming house, there to pack up and move on out to some place new, a strange town where he could live another day, another week, another month, as an anonymous drifter … Then, said Gil, the war came. He went around after Pearl Harbor trying to enlist, but always they would ask to see his birth certificate and always he would refuse to show it; oh, he had one all right, only it did not say Bob or Bill or Jim—it said, for all the world to see, this here is Gil Gamesh, the man who hated his fellow man. Then one day down in Winesburg, Ohio, unable to bear any longer his life as a lonely grotesque, he turned that self-incriminating document over to the recruiting sergeant. “Yep, he's me,” he finally admitted—and the fellow turned red, white, and blue and immediately ran back to show the thing to his commanding officer. For over an hour Gil sat in that office, praying that his exile had ended—instead, the sergeant came back with a captain and a major at his side and handed Gil a little card stamped U, meaning that as far as the U.S. government was concerned he was and forever would be an “Undesirable.” The major warned him that if he did not present the card to his draft board whenever they might call him up for induction, he would be liable for arrest and imprisonment. Then the officers withdrew, and while the Undesirable stood there wondering where he might steal a belt to hang himself with, the sergeant, in a whisper, asked if he might have his autograph.

Months of wandering followed, months too desperate to describe—Black Hawk, Nebraska; Zenith, Minnesota; up in Michigan; Jefferson, Mississippi; Lycurgus, New York; Walden, Massachusetts … One night he found himself in Tri-City—it had taken a decade to wend his way back to the scene of the crime. There he waited outside Tycoon Park for a glimpse of the great lady of baseball, Angela Whittling Trust. It was she whom he begged to intercede in his behalf. “For I knew then,” said Gil, “that if I could not regain my esteem and my honor in the world whose rules I had broken and whose traditions I had spat upon, I would be condemned to wander forever, a stranger and an outcast, in this, my own, my native land. Of course I knew my pitching days were over, but what with the war raging and so many major leaguers gone, I thought perhaps I might be taken on as a bullpen catcher, as someone to throw batting practice, as a batboy perhaps … Gentlemen, I did not dream, I did not dare to dream—” et cetera and so forth, until he came around again to the kids of America, who were his inspiration, strength, salvation, and hope. To them he owed his redemption—to them he now committed heart and soul.

ONE MAN'S OPINION

by Smitty

Talking to Myself

“And not a word about Mike the Mouth. Has anyone happened to notice!”

Look, that was a decade ago. Isn't it a sign of human goodness and mercy to be able to forget about what happened to the other guy ten years back? Besides, Mike the Mouth is dead by now anyway. Or else out there still in the boondocks, demanding some nutcake's version of Justice. Be reasonable, Smitty. So Gamesh robbed him of his voice—the old geezer happened to rob Gil of something too, remember? A
perfect
perfect game. Look, Smitty, don't you believe in people changing for the better? Don't you believe in human progress? Why don't you see the good in people sometimes, instead of always seeing the bad?

“I'm not talking about good men or bad men,” said Smitty, signaling for another round for the two of them. “I'm talking about madmen.”

Oh sure, everybody in this world is cracked, except you know who.

“Not everybody,” said Smitty. “Just the crackpots who run it. Crackpots, crooks, cretins, creeps, and criminals.”

You left out cranks—how come? Cranks who write columns and cry crocodile tears. Maybe you scribblers worry too much.

“If we don't, who will?”

What the h. do you think you are, anyway? The unacknowledged legislator of mankind?

“Well, that was one man's opinion.”

Whose, Smith? Yours?

“No. Fella name a' Percy Shelley.”

Never heard of him.

“Well, he said it.”

Well, don't believe everything you hear.

“I don't. But what about what I don't hear?”

What's that?

“A word, a single word.” said Smitty, “about Mike the Mouth,” and called sharply this time to the waiter for drinks for himself and his friend.

Said Frank Mazuma: “Gamesh? Great gimmick. Why don't I think of things like that? Who'd they get to coach at first, Babyface Nelson?”

F
IRST
D
AY
B
ACK IN THE
B
IG
T
IME

Gentlemen, the name is Gil Gamesh. I am the manager who is replacing the gentle Jolly Cholly Tuminikar, who himself replaced the saintly Ulysses S. Fairsmith. My lecture for today is the first in our spring training series on the subject of Hatred and Loathing. Today's talk is entitled “Ha Ha.”

Let me begin by telling you that I think you gentlemen are vermin, cowards, weaklings, milksops, toadies, fools, and jellyfish. You are the scum of baseball and the slaves of your league. And why? Because you finished last by fifty games? Hardly.
You are scum because you do not hate your oppressors. You are slaves and fools and jellyfish because you do not loathe your enemies.

And
why
don't you? They certainly loathe
you.
They mock you, they ridicule you, they taunt you; your suffering moves them not to tears, but to laughter. You are a joke, gentlemen, in case you haven't heard. They laugh at you. To your face, behind your back, they laugh and they laugh and they laugh.

And what do you do about it? You take it. You try not to hear. You pretend it isn't happening. You shrug your shoulders and tell yourself, “It's fate.” You say, “What difference does it make, no skin off my nose,” and other such philosophical remarks. No wonder they laugh. A team not of baseball players, but philosophers! Stoics and fatalists instead of hitters and fielders! Of
course
they laugh. Gentlemen,
I
laugh! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Hear me, Mundys? I am laughing,
at you.
Along with the rest of America! At your resignation! At your fatalism! At your jellyfish philosophy of life! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

S
ECOND
D
AY
B
ACK

Welcome, Mundys, to another in our spring lecture series on Hatred and Loathing. Before I begin I have to tell you that you surely did outdo yourselves yesterday on the playing field in being laughable. What a wonderful comedy show that was! A regular
Hellzapoppin'!
I near wet my pants watching you standing out there on the field with your heads hanging like the old tried and true victims you are, while those high school lads (or were they lasses?) scored those eight runs in the first inning. What got you down so, “men”? I figured you were going to go out there and really start hating and loathing your enemies and oppressors, and instead you were the jellyfish and cowards and vermin of old, if not more so. Maybe you are ready for our second lecture then, entitled “How To Hate, and Whom.”

Boys, it's easy. Just think of all the things you haven't got that other people have. Shall I name a few just to get you going? The obvious first. Other people have all their limbs. Other people have all their hair. Other people have all their teeth and twenty-twenty vision in both eyes. Other people have admiration, luck, fun, something to look forward to. Other people—and this may come as a surprise—have something to be
proud
of: self-respect, love, riches, peace of mind, friends—why, other people have sirloin for breakfast, champagne for lunch, and dancing girls for dinner. And more!

Now you may ask, “Okay, I ain't got none of that and they got all of that—where's the hatred come in?” Mundys, that you can ask such a question is the measure of just how ruthlessly oppressed you have been. Don't you
understand,
boys? It isn't
fair!
It isn't
just!
It isn't
right!
Why should those who have have and those who have not have not? For what reason do they have everything and you nothing? In the name of what and whom? It makes my blood boil just talking about it! I feel the hatred for those haves coursing through my veins just thinking about all that you boys live without that other people have more of than they know what to do with! Brains! Strength! Self-confidence! Courage! Fortitude! Wit! Charm! Good looks! Perfect health! Wisdom! Why,
even Common Sense!
Oh, I could go on forever naming the things that other people have in excess, but that you Mundys haven't a trace of, singly, or taken all together. Talk about being deprived! My cowards, my jellyfish, my fools, you have absolutely
nothing
to recommend you—and on top of that,
you haven't even got a home!
A
home,
such as every little birdie has in a tree, such as every little mole has in the ground, such as every major league team in creation has,
excepting you!
Talentless, witless, luckless, and as if all that wasn't unfair and unjust enough,
homeless too!