Puppy stiffened. “Why would baseball be blamed again?”
“Stop it,” he said harshly. “Wigs have been left by government buildings, schools, everywhere. It’s not about baseball. ”
“But it could be.”
“You’re not even mentioned in Grandma’s Daily Greetings to the Cousins.” As Puppy frowned, Kenuda explained, “That’s the progress on the top priorities of the day. How to feed more people. Lowering the percentage of HG nature. More schools. On and on. Never a word about baseball.”
“It’s good to be invisible, I guess,” he said with relief.
“I wouldn’t know.” Kenuda sighed. “This is about me, Puppy. First Cousin Cheng doesn’t like me very much.”
“That’s hard to understand.”
“Not really,” Kenuda admitted wryly. “He won’t authorize any further work until I come up with something with soul. Whatever that means.”
“It’s where you get tears in your eyes out of nowhere.”
“I was never a DV. I wouldn’t know.”
“Your loss.”
“Perhaps.” Kenuda smiled faintly. “We’re in this together, Nedick. If the season fails, I’ll probably be reassigned duties.”
“I’m toast either way.”
“Maybe not.” Elias paused. “Family revenues are tight. The lack of trade hurts. You didn’t hear that from me. I could see that if attendance holds up, perhaps there’d be another season. Calm down. But I can’t recommend anything if I’m not Commissioner.”
Puppy went into the kitchen, taking a very long time to return with a cup of coffee.
“We need to tie everything together,” he announced.
“Meaning?” Kenuda gestured impatiently.
“We have to make baseball more fun. Like it used to be. Really like it used to be. That’ll bring fans in. Lots of them. Trust me.”
“That’s a line Cheng will never cross.”
“He will if Grandma approves.”
Kenuda swallowed. “The woman was nearly killed on 10/12.”
“Right. Time for forgiveness.”
• • • •
ANOTHER COMMUNITY CENTER Sour Fat Lady watched Puppy lay his pencils on the table as if that were a diversion so he and Frecklie could steal the folding chairs and table which dated back nearly forty years to the time of the last American president.
“Thanks for letting us use the space.”
The woman made a mental note of the various Grandma Work Ethic posters, a calendar from 2083 and sketchy looking coffee cups in the cramped, little used basement, should it be necessary to file a Blue Shirts report.
Frecklie curled his lips and angrily gestured at her disrespect. She mimed a baseball being farted out of her wide butt.
“I’ll have to try that pitch.” Puppy grinned, sending the woman stomping up the steps like a hippo. Without asking if they were ready, she opened the door and the men and women shyly came down the steps, half-expecting really anything. There’d been no public announcements, of course, just Frecklie and his staff of forty-eight whispering around the DV.
A lithe man around fifty in a thin gray jacket bowed respectfully a few feet from the table and handed over his Lifecard.
“I saw you pitch, sir.”
“Thanks and please don’t call me, sir.”
“You were in high school.”
This was going to be so difficult, he knew. But options were limited. Kenuda had insisted he couldn’t allocate any more upgrades; he’d already danced across a line by approving the exhibits, reseeding the field and painting everything along the lower levels. When Puppy approached Fisher and Bocciccelli about reinvesting some profits into higher quality maintenance to spike the ticket sales and concession revenues, they’d twitched and moaned about their bottom lines. He’d mentioned the profit law requiring ninety-six percent to be plowed back into every business. Fisher had fired back that since baseball had been officially announced as dead, any profits went into escrow.
Get it from the bookkeeper, he’d smirked.
“You struck out twelve and pitched a complete game shutout,” the man said proudly as if Puppy were his son. Yeah, my father never saw me pitch. He wouldn’t go near the stadium.
“I’m too old to go nine innings anymore.”
Frecklie tapped the paper for him to move off memory lane.
“Anyway, sir,” Puppy said. “We need electricians, welders, those sort of workers.”
The man waited.
“Money’s small. It’s not a secret we’re doing this, communities coming together show how we love each other,” he quoted Grandma’s Twentieth Insight and the man made a face. “It’s for Amazon Stadium.”
The man brightened. “My kids can do that.”
Puppy and Frecklie exchanged quick looks. “This isn’t about the kids, Mr. Amelio. Unlike the other repairs, this is more complicated. The teens did a wonderful job.” Puppy tossed Frecklie a nod; he’d sulked for a day. “But we need the grownups.”
The line moved down until they filled the basement, staring open-mouthed.
“But, sir, we only work in the DV,” Mr. Amelio said quietly in case BTs leaped out of the peeling walls.
“That’s right. And the stadium’s located in the DV.”
The adults murmured, all of them thirty, forty, fifty, sixty years old, some even older. They’d spent much of their adult life apologizing since their only worth was their children. Except for a few remarkably resilient adults, honored on the vidnews for climbing back out of the DV, they’d long given up.
A slender youngish woman half raised her hand. “I wouldn’t take the money.”
That set off more murmurs of approval.
“Ma’am, we have to pay you…”
“No. Love can’t be bought,” she quoted Grandma’s Thirteenth Insight. “Where are you getting the money for materials?”
Frecklie patted Puppy’s right shoulder.
All the adults turned and tapped their neighbor’s shoulders. Puppy had never seen this before. Once everyone was certain they’d tapped all the arms, they reformed a line and waited patiently to tap Frecklie’s shoulder, then, almost with a religious air, tapped Puppy’s right arm.
For that fifteen minutes, the ache in his shoulder vanished.
• • • •
DALE SHOOK HER blonde curls, making a tiny windstorm. “Will you stop looking over my shoulder?’
“You said you knew what to do.” Puppy leaned his chin on a rusted rifle.
“I do, but this is really old shit.”
The scoreboard console still had bullet holes on both sides but, miraculously, none of the fusillade had damaged the
