And he nods his head and says, 'My shoes.'
And Shor feels offended, he feels a look come into his face that carries the sting of a bad shave, those long- ago mornings of razor pull and cold water.
And he looks at Frank and says, 'Did you see the homer at least?'
'I saw part and missed part.'
And Shor says, 'Do I want to take the time to ask which part you missed so we can talk about it on the phone some day?'
There are people with their hands in their hair, holding in their brains.
Frank persists in looking down. He allows one foot to list to port so he can examine the side of his shoe for vomit marks. These are hand-crafted shoes from a narrow street with a quaint name in oldest London.
And Shor says, 'We just won unbelievable, they're ripping up the joint, I don't know whether to laugh, shit or go blind.'
And Frank says, 'I'm rooting for number one or number three.'
Russ is still manning the microphone and has one last thing to say and barely manages to get it out.
'The Giants won it. By a score of five to four. And they're picking Bobby Thomson up. And carrying him off the field.'
If his voice has art edge of disquiet it's because he has to get to the clubhouse to do interviews with players and coaches and team officials and the only way to get out there is to cross the length of the field on foot and he's already out of breath, out of words, and the crowd is growing over the walls. He sees Thomson carried by a phalanx of men, players and others, mostly others-the players have run for it, the players are dashing for the clubhouse-and he sees Thomson riding off-balance on the shoulders of men who might take him right out of the ballpark and into the streets for a block party.
Gleason is suspended in wreckage, drained and humped, and he has barely the wit to consider what the shouting's about.
The field streaked with people, the hat snatchers, the swift kids who imitate banking aircraft, their spread arms steeply raked.
Look at Cotter under a seat.
All over the city people are coming out of their houses. This is the nature of Thomson's homer. It makes people want to be in the streets, joined with others, telling others what has happened, those few who haven't heard-comparing faces and states of mind.
And Russ has a hot mike in front of him and has to find someone to take it and talk so he can get down to the field and find a way to pass intact through all that mangle.
And Cotter is under a seat handfighting someone for the baseball. He is trying to get a firmer grip. He is trying to isolate his rival's hand so he can prise the ball away finger by finger.
It is a tight little theater of hands and arms, some martial test with formal rules of grappling.
The iron seat leg cuts into his back. He hears the earnest breathing of the rival. They are working for advantage, trying to gain position.
The rival is blocked off by the seat back, he is facedown in the row above with just an arm stuck under the seat.
People make it a point to read the time on the clock atop the notched facade of the clubhouse, the high battlement-they register the time when the ball went in.
It is a small tight conflict of fingers and inches, a lifetime of effort compressed into seconds.
He gets his hands around the rival's arm just above the wrist. He is working fast, thinking fast-too much time and people take sides.
The rival, the foe, the ofay, veins stretched and bulged between white knuckles. If people take sides, does Cotter have a chance?
Two heart attacks, not one. A second man collapses on the field, a well-dressed fellow not exactly falling but letting himself down one knee at a time, slow and controlled, easing down on his right hand and tumbling dully over. No one takes this for a rollick. The man is not the type to do dog tricks in the dirt.
And Cotter's hands around the rival's arm, twisting in opposite directions, burning the skin-it's called an Indian burn, remember? One hand grinding one way, the other going the other, twisting hard, working fast.
There's a pause in the rival's breathing. He is pausing to note the pain. He fairly croons his misgivings now and Cotter feels the arm jerk and the fingers lift from the ball.
Thomson thrusting down off the shoulders of the men who carry him, beating down, pulling away from grabby hands-he sees players watching intently from the clubhouse windows.
And Cotter holds the rival's arm with one hand and goes for the ball with the other. He sees it begin to roll past the seat leg, wobbling on the textured surface. He sort of traps it with his eye and sends out a ladling hand.
The ball rolls in a minutely crooked path into the open.
The action of his hand is as old as he is. It seems he has been sending out this hand for one thing or another since the minute he shot out of infancy. Everything he knows is contained in the splayed fingers of this one bent hand.
Heart, my heart.
The whole business under the seat has taken only seconds. Now he's backing out, moving posthaste-he's got the ball, he feels it hot and buzzy in his hand.
A sense of people grudgingly getting out of his way, making way but not too quickly, dead-eye sidewalk faces.
The ball is damp with the heat and sweat of the rival's hand. Cotter's arm hangs lank at his side and he empties out his face, scareder now than he was when he went over the turnstile but determined to look cool and blank and going down the rows by stepping over seat backs and fitting himself between bodies and walking on seats when it is convenient.
Look at the ushers locking arms at the wrists and making a sedan seat for the cardiac victim and hauling him off to the station under the grandstand.
One glance back at the area above, he allows himself a glance and sees the rival getting to his feet. The man stands out, white-shirted and hulking, and it's not the college boy he thought it might be, the guy in the varsity jacket who'd been scrambling for the ball.
And the man catches his eye. This is not what Cotter wants, this is damage to the cause. He made a mistake looking back. He allowed himself a glance, a sidewise flash, and now he's caught in the man's hard glare.
The raised seams of the ball are pulsing in his hand.
Their eyes meet in the spaces between rocking bodies, between faces that jut and the broad backs of shouting fans. Celebration all around him. But he is caught in the man's gaze and they look at each other over the crowd and through the crowd and it is Bill Waterson with his shirt stained and his hair all punished and sprung- good neighbor Bill flashing a cutthroat smile.
The dead have come to take the living. The dead in winding-sheets, the regimented dead on horseback, the skeleton that plays a hurdy-gurdy Edgar stands in the aisle fitting together the two facing pages of the reproduction. People are climbing over seats, calling hoarsely toward the field. He stands with the pages in his face. He hadn't realized he was seeing only half the painting until the left-hand page drifted down and he got a glimpse of rust brown terrain and a pair of skeletal men pulling on bell ropes. The page brushed against a woman's arm and spun into Edgar's godfearing breast.
Thomson is out in center field now dodging fans who come in rushes and jumps. They jump against his body, they want to take him to the ground, show him snapshots of their families.
Edgar reads the copy block on the matching page. This is a sixteenth-century work done by a Flemish master, Pieter Bruegel, and it is called
A nervy title methinks. But he is intrigued, he admits it-the left-hand page may be even better than the right.
He studies the tumbrel filled with skulls. He stands in the aisle and looks at the naked man pursued by dogs. He looks at the gaunt dog nibbling the baby in the dead woman's arms. These are long gaunt starveling hounds, they are war dogs, hell dogs, boneyard hounds beset by parasitic mites, by dog tumors and dog cancers.
