Nobody called for a check. Bogus. Shame.
Waves of grumbles were spreading through the Harpies’ stands but so far no one was going to challenge the umpires.
At this rate we could be toast in two more serves.
Emerald Immanent got the eighth tip. Red Beak rushed at him on his unsteady legs. Emerald Immanent shot over Red Beak’s head. BOK. Red Beak couldn’t get his arm up in time. He just jumped and blocked the shot with his face. There was just this blchufff sound. Something happened that looked like what used to happen in this machine that used to grind up eaten-out coconuts outside the company store on that finca in Livingston. It was like a big dirty blender, and my dad would throw the sucker into the gadget’s eel mouth and one instant it was this solid round thing and the next it was just this gooey pulverulence and strings of yellow pulp. Hun Xoc didn’t break his game, though, he scooped up the loose ball, dribbled once, and took a close, easy shot, turning the Ocelots’ goal vase into a cloud of emerald shardlets.
“Harpy great-goal, 13 Ocelots, 8 Harpies.”
The Harpies weren’t sure whether to cheer or clap-that is, clap their hands against their chests to express their disapproval. We were ahead but we’d lost two players and used up our bench. The Ocelots still had their substitutes intact. Goons. Personally, I guess I should have been more upset about Red Beak but I was so pumped up that I was going to get in the ball game.
They carried Red Beak off the court. Cash in his chips, I thought. He’s as dead as the novel. Yes, we have no more forwards today. I stared pleadingly at Teentsy Bear’s hands. He looked back at me. I felt eight different hormones blasting into my medulla and a huge erection popping against its tortoiseshell cup.
Come on. Come on. The untouchables hoisted up a fresh ball. Come on Teentsy Bear’s hand coughed and then signed Go.
Yes!
Before I could walk forward Armadillo Shit put a wad of chili-flavored chewing gum into my mouth. It was more liquid than the twentieth-century-and-later kind, and it was laced with cocaine that had been traded over unimaginable vast distances from the far south, from a whole other world. Kind of a combination tooth protector and combat pill.
“Hit me,” I said. Armadillo Shit slapped my right cheek. I slapped him back with the back of palm of my left hand and stepped out into the court. You could smell how pumped the crowd was. My feet found the warm-friend welcome of my marker through the latex soles.
The ball knot unraveled. My body automatically shifted its weight from side to side, my toes hooking over the edge of the marker, my yoke twisting left and right around my upper waist like a heavy tire, settling into the groove of the supersensitive and super-sturdy Motown bump-swings that were every ballplayer’s dominant lifetime rhythm. A few beats ago I’d still been aware of all these confusing conflicting feelings, gratitude to and love for 2 Jeweled Skull and also all these competing worries about Lady Koh and Marena and my own objectives, and now they were all just wiped out as I felt the centrality of the face-off marker, the elevation of the targets, the volume of warm air between the banks, and especially the vectors of my teammates and opponents.
The ball was about to disengage.
I snuck a hand down into my eyedazzler sarong-swags and tightened the inner knots on my yoke-padding.
I flexed my iffy ankle. I felt like I could jump over the mul. Gonna pop a pot of powdered pigment, I thought. Poppety poppety pot. The ball dropped, more slowly than ever this time, the world slowing as I sped up.
“Chun!”
I was there before I knew it and my hip connected, my mass transferring inertia into the sphere, and I had that rush back again. Of the few things I can tell you for sure, I can tell you that it was more satisfying than getting your Louisville Slugger square into a twelve-inch regulation softball.
Hun Xoc got the pass. I got around Emerald Howler as he passed back to me. “ Bok. ” No problem. I shot. “BOK.” I missed. Whiff.
Emerald Snapper got the ball. Emerald Immanent set up and scored a great-goal.
“Seventeen goals, Ocelots,
And eight goals, Harpies.”
Long time away, I thought. Don’t get discouraged. Come on, focus.
I noticed the torches had been lit. In the violet twilight the court was weirdly multishadowed and dichromatic. I looked at the sky. Need another watch, I thought. Come on.
Hun Xoc was watching our coach. Teentsy Bear was watching the other side. I turned and caught what he was saying.
They’re going to trap you between them, Teentsy signed to Hun Xoc.
I’ll take care of it, Hun Xoc signed.
Not allowed, Teentsy Bear signed. Even if we get a goal or two while they’re beating you up it doesn’t matter. If you’re out of action we’re rat bait.
Red Hun Xoc signed an “Understood.” The tenth ball came down.
“Chun!”
(36)
Like Teentsy had said, Emerald Immanent pretended to try to make the tip and then he and Emerald Howler came together at Hun Xoc. Just as they were about to trap him, and without looking, Hun Xoc faked a stumble. I got the ball and back-passed to Red Cord. He bounce-passed back to me. I came up to shoot. Howler was about to nail me but Hun Xoc was there and jumped high up in front of him, waving his arms and puffing out his cheeks into a frog face. I shot but just missed the peg. Emerald Snapper got it and passed. Emerald Immanent shot, missed, and then instead of recovering dove into Hun Xoc and gave him a good bump, but Hun Xoc rolled himself up like an armadillo and slipped away backward, back into our home zone. He was the best at that stuff. Red Cord had gotten the ball and sent me a lob pass. I shuffled four finger-widths closer to the north bank. My old systems were still responding, everything flowing pretty well.
Apex. Down. I got my hip into place and braced myself and “bok,” yesssss, ball! Ball! Ball!
Correct angle.
Dodge. Around. Successful. Under.
Ball. Ball. Now.
“BOK!!!”
I got the black sun just at the right nanoinstant and the feeling was like nothing else, so delicate, so powerful, so round, so firm, so fully boked, so violent even though you’re just standing in one place. It’s hard to explain how visceral the impact is, I guess if anything it feels most like doing a “dig” in volleyball, or hitting a chester or header in futbol, I mean, soccer. Or like the way you can launch another person on a trampoline. When you hit the ball with your body the contact’s just erotic, it’s like you’re a slit-gong ringing out this incredible chord made up of all your different nerves, pain, pleasure, position, everything, it’s globally refreshing like every one of your two hundred and six bones pops out of its socket, shakes off all the accumulated pressure of time and gravity, and snaps back into place better than ever, and you just buzz and ring afterward like you went through this electroshock degaussing.
I could feel I was going to make the shot, so instead of a follow-through I dove forward, rolling over along the oiled bank before he could get to me. I couldn’t see the jade dust falling on me, but t seemed as though I could feel it.
Score! GREAT-SCORE! GREAT SCOOORRRE!!!
“ Li’skuba wasak. 17 Ocelots, 12 Harpies.”
On the eleventh serve Hun Xoc shouldered in a great-goal, bringing the score to 17 Ocelots, 16 Harpies. As of now Hun Xoc was the top ballplayer in the known world. I got eye contact with him and his exposed cheeks flashed or implied a smile under his mask. Floods of pride welled up in my chest or heart or wherever such fountains well.
On the twelfth serve I hit a single, for 17 Ocelots to 17 Harpies. It wasn’t spectacular, but it was a whole new game. The cheering went on and on and on. And-the-crowd-goes-wild, my mind looped over and over, in the weird even spondee of Howard Cosell. The Harpy clansmen and partisans and even what you might call “undecideds” were all really roaring this time, like stir-crazy cats in the middle of winter in the old Lion House at the Bronx Zoo, the way when they really got going that reverb would just soak into all the tons of masonry around you until the whole building was like a big old bronze alarum bell. I rolled back and south into our home zone and into a cloud of trash talk, a little afraid the cats were going to pile on top of me even after the call, and didn’t look up until I saw the red paint under me. A big shadow passed on my right, Emerald Immanent glaring suspiciously at me, thinking of hand-smashing me even though the ball was dead. He didn’t do it, though. Even if all the umpires had been fixed they’d have to call a si’pil- a big fault, like a sin-and take him out of the game.