He doesn’t count it as he collects, but it’s got to be a month’s pay, maybe more. Certainly more in effect. Because it’s cash, the IRS won’t have to hear about it.
One of the bills is a C-note. The hand that thrusts it at Joe is very small, and has only four fingers. “Well done, man of the star,” says a strange voice--half growly, half squeaky--that seems to come from inside his head. Joe blinks, like a man trying to awaken from a dream. But the dream is too sweet. He walks on down the line, grabbing more greenbacks. Photographers follow, clicking away. By the time he gets back to the dugout, he doesn’t care about the voice any more. Still a game--no, two games--to play.
Roswell wins the first one. And the Rockets murder the NuMexers, 17-0, in the nightcap. Joe launches two more in the second game, one off a guy named John Goodell and one off Frank Galardo, who happens to be José’s uncle. That lets the Rockets slide into second, half a game ahead of the Carlsbad Potashers.
So it’s a busful of happy ballplayers who go back up US 285 to Roswell. Happy reporters and photographers, too--they have their story. And the national guys are doubly happy. They can get the hell out of New Mexico and back to the big city.
When Joe comes home, Dorothy shows him a fistful of wires. They’re all congratulating him, telling him what a great guy he is. That’s nice, sure. Then he shows her all the money the Artesia fans gave him. That’s way nicer.
More wires the next morning. By then, he’s back at Joe Bauman’s Texaco, pumping gas. Almost the first thing that happens when he gets there is a Rocket 88 Olds pulls up to the pump. In it are . . . a guy with greasy hair and kind of a cute redhead. They congratulate him, too. They were at the game when he hit his sixty-ninth. He fills the Olds’s tank. He takes their money and makes change. He feels disappointed, and can’t say why.
He hopes something big will come from his record, but it doesn’t. No major-league team cares about an old first baseman who hit a ton and a half of homers in the low minors. The San Francisco Seals from the PCL call, but that doesn’t pan out, either. He plays two more years for Roswell, then hangs ‘em up for good. Pumping gas, fixing cars . . . yeah, you can make a lifetime living at that. And he does.
He always wonders if he could have hacked it. Anybody good enough to play the game for money does. Joe has better reason than most. If he’d done some things differently back in the forties. . . . Too late now.
Years go by. That thing people in Roswell didn’t talk about? Some folks decide they can make money off it. Before long, people sell funny-looking aliens with big eyes in every gift shop, every drug store, every 7-Eleven. Even in gas stations.
Joe won’t sell them. The first time he sees one, he studies it for a second, then shakes his head. “Nah,” he says. “They don’t look quite like that.”
“Oh, yeah? And how do you know?” asks the poker buddy he’s with--they’re on a beer run.
He has no idea. “I just know, that’s all,” he says. The poker buddy gives him the horselaugh. He takes it. What else can he do? But, the rest of his days, he never laughs at a flying-saucer joke. Never once.