After a last chorus of “we watch each other all night”, they hugged. The children contentedly closed their eyes. Grandma turned off the light, her round almond-shaped eyes shining alone on the screen, watching her Family go to sleep.
Pablo yawned, dribbling wine down his chin. The forgotten envelope hung out of his white coat, tossed on a chair. She wasn’t bad looking, he smiled, tearing it open in between sips. Maybe she’ll be Mrs. Dr. Pablo.
He stared at the note. Simple. Clear.
Pablo poured more wine.
• • • •
THE WHITE LETTERING of the Salvatore’s Furniture sign faded down the side of the old five-story brick warehouse on the deserted end of the Grand Concourse at East 204th Street. Hazel parked behind a line of rusting cars languishing in front of boarded-up storefronts.
The Black Top lifted his reflector face-mask just inside the bland metal door, which took a few minutes to find along the featureless building designed to be ignored. Expressionless except for bored suspicion, the BT studied the pass for a long time. He looked Hazel up and down.
Hazel tapped the signature again. “Order of Sport Commissioner Kenuda. It’s all there.”
The Black Top folded his arms, black armored elbows grazing the two guns on his hips. His job was not to be rushed.
“Temporary loan of equipment,” Puppy explained.
Now the BT noticed Puppy; he wasn’t pleased. He ran Puppy’s Lifecard through a small security device outside the front door, disappointed when no notification of Puppy Nedick, notorious criminal, came back demanding his capture.
The BT disappeared inside. They waited silently in the faint moonlight. The door slid open. Another BT escorted them down a crusty hallway, up a flight and into a storage area, slipping out silently.
“Fucking Black Tops,” Hazel growled.
Three shelves loomed over them. Hazel propped a ladder against the wall and half-hopped up the steps. Puppy noticed the Gelinium.
“Sicily,” Hazel explained over his shoulder.
“First or second battle or would you prefer I don’t ask?”
“Appreciate that much courtesy.”
“There were a lot of veterans in my DV when I was a kid. We learned the rules. Especially showing respect.”
“DV was the only place where we got that. Go outside and people would spit at you. But as a soldier, you dared not respond. You had to take it. Ever hear of the tomato medal?”
Puppy shook his head.
“How many times you stood there as someone threw shit at you, blaming you for losing the war. Rotten tomatoes at a bad stage performance…”
“I get it.”
“I knew a guy, claimed to be eligible for twenty-seven tomato medals. Tony Teller. I heard he blew his brains out. He left a note: ‘This makes tomato medal number twenty-eight’. I figure it’s probably a true story. If it’s not, it’s still a good one.” Hazel stared off. “Though sometimes we didn’t take it. I broke the skull of a sucker in Jersey once. He asked me if I faked the injury. I dumped his body in a trash can. Maybe he was even dead.” Hazel shrugged and steadied the rickety ladder. “Anyway. I was at Second Sicily, though I was on ship for the first invasion. Never made it that far ashore. I lost the leg trying to recapture that boot. Shit like that never works. There’s a reason why something’s gone. Jobs, love, wars.”
Puppy allowed Hazel his moment before changing the subject. “What else is in this building?”
“Just junk, I think. Supposedly there’s a room full of cellular phones, Allah robes, even cans of bad foods passed off as technological breakthroughs. The food scandals of the ‘70s. Grandma’s a pack rat.”
Hazel’s rummaging sent dust onto Puppy. He finally tossed down a large burlap sack. “Nothing’s marked. Though you don’t need to label these.”
He gingerly stepped back down and flipped out a blade lightly taped to his ankle, traditional DV style, slicing the burlap and then the plastic covering six bats.
“Damn.” Puppy slid out a sleek, black bat. He sniffed. “Real wood.”
“Yup.” Hazel’s eyes gleamed as he swung a white ash bat. “Isn’t this an Albert Cheng model?”
“Hell yeah.” Puppy scampered quickly up the ladder and threw down another bag. It bounced a little. Hazel was already stacking gloves carefully.
“I thought they’d burned a lot of these after the trials.” Puppy slipped on a fielder’s glove. Cracked, dried out, yet it still felt wonderful. He found another bag with ancient jockstraps, which he quickly closed.
“Who knows what they really burnt,” Hazel said. “When I first started in sports, I found this amazing piece someone had done, documenting all the baseball burnings.”
“That the Anglia documentary?”
“No, no.” Hazel crouched, holding out a catcher’s mitt. “That one was approved. This was rogue.”
Angry citizens tearing down baseball fields, confiscating equipment from neighbors, and axing/hammering/smashing to smithereened shit the remaining nine ballparks that had comprised the rest of the major league homes: Wrigley Field, Fenway Park, Braves Field, Forbes Stadium, Phillies Field, Houston Aerodome, Cleveland Civic Center, St. Louis’ Golden Arches, and Minneapolis-St. Paul Baseball Fields.
In each city center, the rubble was dragged away on robot-driven trucks with waving schoolchildren hanging onto the side. Huge smelt-like holes swallowed up the steel and concrete, while smaller surrounding fires devoured the equipment, magazines, books, trading cards, photographs, banners, anything resembling memorabilia.
“This woman filmmaker caught the attacks on the manufacturers.”
“Wasn’t that approved?”
“Not on the workers,” Hazel said quietly. “Must be thousands of people from Rawlings, Louisville Slugger, Wilson, on and on, buried beneath the razed buildings.”
“They say there are bodies under Fenway and Wrigley,” Puppy added.
John flipped the mitt back into the bag and slipped on a catcher’s mask. “They say a lot of things.” He went back up the ladder and opened another bag, whistling softly as he unfurled an American flag draping nearly to the floor.
“Ever see one?” Hazel’s voice was gentle.
“In school. I was five, six.”
“Before they burnt ‘em all away
