One day an old man calling himself Kasgoolik appeared in our village. He had journeyed many difficult leagues by dog sledge to tell me something. At length I realised that he was the husband of my former consort, Kariak.
Kariak, he said, had died.
Inconsolable in his reemergent grief, he wept to relay this message, which struck me with the accreting weight of an avalanche. I, too, wished to weep-to pound my head on the frozen earth, to rend my garments like a Hebrew. Instead, I sought to console Kasgoolik, who, knowing that I had loved Kariak unflaggingly, with a devotion equal to his own, had travelled all this way to share his grief.
How strange, he observed, that over forty-five years had passed since Kariak had shared a household with me here in Oongpek. Why, their own first son had vanished nearly thirteen winters ago, carried out to sea on an ice floe and never seen anywhere near his village again.
This intelligence also desolated me, as if a child of my own loins had disappeared.
A month later I abandoned Oongpek. If I could not die, then I had “world enough and time” to drink the indilute elixir of life. After one brief stop, I directed my steps southwards, slowly but inexorably out of the Alaskan mists.
32
After reading Jumbo’s story, I couldn’t much concentrate on baseball. No, that’s wrong. I dived into baseball like a guy with money worries dives into suicide, to escape what’s about to overwhelm him. I played pretty good in our next five games, but their details come back to me only if I check a box score. On the afternoon of our second game against the Seminoles, I tried to return Jumbo his log. I’d had all the lousy copying work I wanted for a while.
“Keep it, Daniel.” He stuck his log into the hold of my school desk. “Learn all you can about me.”
I shook my head, but Jumbo leaned his knuckles on my desk and held its lid in place. Meanwhile, I thought: I don’t want to know any more about you, I already know too much.
“Copy out the rest of my memoir,” Jumbo said. “Gradually, over our remaining season.”
Jumbo wanted me for a confessor as well as a friend. A dummy, after all, has a few things in common with a priest-for starters, you can tell either one the worst about yourself with no fear they’ll yak it all over town.
Anyway, we beat Marble Springs that Thursday and then again on the Friday evening Jumbo gave me his “resurrection memoir.” The box scores say I played fine: no errors in either game, five hits in eight at bats, six RBIs. The same box scores say Jumbo, although a defensive hero, went aught for seven, with a rally-killing roller to the Seminole first baseman on Thursday and a base-running blunder on Friday after reaching first on a walk. Fortunately, Heggie, Snow, Muscles, and I took up the hitting slack. Maybe Jumbo’s uncertainty about what to expect of me, now I knew his amazing personal history, had nagged him, a blackberry seed under the gum.
After Friday’s game-the better of my two sockdolager nights-I was supposed to go to Miss LaRaina and Phoebe’s for dinner. In front of every rabbit-eared Hellbender aboard the Brown Bomber, Phoebe had invited me. In a way, it qualified as a date, a real date-unlike the dinner at the Royal Hotel with Mister JayMac and the Pharram women.
Anyway, as soon as I’d showered, Curriden, Manani, and a couple of others-none known to me as an enemy-congratulated me on my game. Curriden had a brown paper sack in one hand and a grin on his handsome kisser. As I knotted my tie, he pushed me down onto a bench and eased in beside me.
“Know what this is, Boles?” He wagged his paper sack under my nose. I shook my head. “Well, have a look.” He peeled the sides of the sack down to reveal a flask-sized bottle of sloe gin. “And have you a drink too.”
“He’s underage,” Mariani said.
“Yeah and Rita Hayworth’s a Campfire Girl.” Curriden pressed his ruby-colored liquor on me again. “Didn’t you see how he played?”
I took the sack, but twisted the top closed around its neck. Mister JayMac allowed only rubbing alcohol in the locker room.
“Country’s in a whiskey drought,” Curriden said. “You almost got to be wearing khaki to find a goddamn beer. This stuff’s rare as radium. Take a swig.”
“You deserve it,” Charlie Snow said. “It aint cheap stuff either, like Old Spud or hanky-filtered Vitalis.”
Snow’s good word did it for me. If he thought I deserved a snort, I probably did. I peeled the paper down, twisted the cap off, and sipped. My lips began to tingle, but I liked the stuff well enough to take an even bigger hit, which made even the doubtful Mariani say, “Atta way to do er, kid!”
I recrimped the sack and gave the bottle back to Curriden, my mouth still atingle with the furry bittersweetness of sloe berries. A fire ran from my tongue to my gut.
“You’re eating with the Pharram ladies tonight, right? Yeah, well,” Curriden said, “you’ve got to give em an hour or so to get set. Meantime, come along with Quip and Vito and me on a little victory jaunt.”
Phoebe’d said to meet her under the grandstand after the game so Curriden’s plans seemed wrong to me-but maybe he knew something I didn’t.
“It’s okay, Dum-uh, Danny. We’ll get you to the Pharram place in a hour. Drop you right at their door. Taxi ride’s on me-my gift for what you’ve helped us do, kid.” He looked at the eight or nine Hellbenders still in the locker room. “We’re four games over.500!” he shouted. “Thanks to Dumbo and his hustlin rookie pals!”
I blushed and took another slug of Curriden’s contraband firewater.
“Look, Reese,” Parris said. “Same damn color as your gin.”
My color stayed high. The furry tingle in my mouth caught an elevator and rode to my brain. I wasn’t drunk, but I was already close to tipsy. Even so, when Curriden, Parris, and Mariani whisked me out to the parking lot, skirting the area where Phoebe’d planned to meet me, it felt WRONG. Sure, Curriden’d never had it in for me, and it did seem logical Phoebe’d need some time after the game to get ready. But these rascals had kidnapped me.
Parris and Mariani had me wedged between them in the back seat of a red-and-white taxi. Curriden sat up front, playing fingertip drumrolls on the dash and giving directions. “The Strip,” I heard him say. “The Wing and Thigh.” The stadium sank away behind us like a three-masted ship going under the concealing arc of the world.
The streets boogie-woogied with energy. News of our win had run through tony white and run-down colored neighborhoods alike. Our driver, a horse-faced black man, yelled out the window at some of his friends on a street corner: “Gang way! Got me some mighty Hellbenders hyeah! Gang way, yall!”