The Complete Collection. William Wharton

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СКАЧАТЬ off this dream. I woke up in the middle of it and then kept it going, the way you do with dreams when they’re good. If we could pull this off we’d out-crazy Weiss in spades. The fucking army’ll give you a hundred and fifty percent disability just so they don’t ever have to see or hear from you again.

      ‘First, I’ll give Weiss a full load of bullshit about how you seem to be coming along and how when I talk about those baseballs you perk up. I’ll work up a sob story about your mother taking the balls, making you feel guilty. I might even tell him something about you wanting to fly, and balls flying through the air. I’ll give him the super dramatic version of you flying off the gas tank.

      ‘Now, here’s where I bring up the suggestion of bringing the balls into your cage here and watching what happens. He’ll fall for it. I can see it all.’

      Weiss starts hmming and hummming. A few times he strokes his chin, then tries to wrap one arm across his fat chest so he can rest his elbow on it. He’s almost too fat to pull it off. How can you be a psychiatrist if you can’t fold one arm across your chest, rest the other elbow on it and stroke your beard with your hand? It must be terrible to be a psychiatrist in the army and have no beard to stroke. Poor bastards go to school ten years practicing beard stroking and proper hmming and they zip the beard right out from under them. Weiss would look better with a beard, a nice black beard to hide extra chins.

      So, the next morning, early, we march down the corridor, the three of us, Weiss, Renaldi, and me. Renaldi’s proof you don’t have to actually be in the army to hate it.

      Weiss’s in the lead with his clipboard and fresh note paper. Renaldi’s behind him, acting very serious and professional. I bring up the rear with the box of balls. They smell moldy and are a mixed bunch, nobody could’ve bought them anywhere. These are the original baseballs, the real thing, stolen one at a time from live baseball players. This is one of the great collections in the world. Birdy’s mother, the left-center field ball hawk; burier of lost baseballs.

      We get to the cell and Weiss steps aside for Renaldi to open the door. He stands there, rocking up and down from his toes to his heels, back and forth, rocking his whole body like he’s fucking the air. He has his head tilted up, looking at the ceiling of the corridor. He’s like a monster choirboy; there’s something eunuchoid in his smooth-skinned face. A nice bushy mustache might help. I can just hear him breaking out with a quick Gregorian Kyrie eleison in high C. I stand there sniffing the baseballs and trying to hold myself in.

      I’m really into the story now and Birdy’s laughing. God, it’s good to hear him laugh.

      Renaldi gets the door open and Birdy comes hopping on over to us. He’s flapping his wings to be fed. Weiss jerks out of his choirboy position and stares. He whips his clipboard into place and starts scrawling away. Renaldi gets the second door open.

      ‘Birdy, you start jumping up and down now, flapping your arms and running around the room bouncing against the walls with those tremendous leaps you can do. We’d need one of your greatest bird imitations. You finish off by leaping up and perching on the edge of the toilet.’

      Weiss is stunned. He’s standing there, leaning forward till he’s almost falling over. His hands are hanging at his side, pen in one hand, clipboard in the other. I give him a shove with the ball box to get him all the way into the room. Renaldi locks the door.

      I walk past Weiss toward Birdy. Birdy hops off the toilet and over to me. He starts giving me the feed-me signal. I put the box beside him.

      ‘Here, Birdy. These are the baseballs your mother took from all the baseball players. You don’t have to worry about them anymore.’

      I back off to where Weiss and Renaldi are standing. I know if I look at either one, I’ll break up.

      Birdy hops around the box. He keeps his hands at his sides like wings and sticks his head into the box. He starts moving the balls around with his nose. He starts sniffing as if he’s a dog. Then he makes the big move. He spreads his legs over the box and lowers his butt on top of them, just the way a hen would lower herself onto a nest. He settles himself in and a slow smile spreads over his face.

      Weiss is a little recovered, his forehead is sweating and he’s scribbling away. Birdy sits there. Then, he lifts himself slightly off the nest. He looks down. His legs are straddling the box, more the way a male hovers over a nest than the way a female sits. Birdy reaches into the box with one of his hands and pulls out a baseball. It’s one of the better ones with the stitching still intact and almost white.

      He holds this ball up against the light. He peers into the light, through the ball. After somewhere between five seconds and five minutes, he stands up straight, still straddling the box of balls. ‘Sterile!’ he yells.

      ‘And then, Birdy, you throw the ball straight at Weiss’s head!’

      It’s a perfect bean ball! His glasses go flying! He turns and looks at me bare-eyed. ‘My God, Sergeant, the patient’s turned violent! Let’s get out of here. Where are my glasses?!’

      I pick up his glasses and hand them to him. The lenses are OK but the frame is bent out of line so they sit cockeyed on his face. He’s trying to get them on right when we hear the yell again.

      ‘Sterile!’

      Weiss is bopped again right on the forehead. He goes down backwards like he’s been pole-axed. His glasses are hanging by one ear. He gets on his knees with his back to Birdy and looks at Renaldi. ‘Open the door and get me out of here!’

      Weiss’s struggling to his feet when Renaldi picks up one of the balls and throws it toward the toilet.

      ‘Pick-off play at first!’

      There’s another yell.

      ‘Sterile!’

      Weiss is hit on the right cheek of his ass this time. The ball bounces toward me. I throw it up at the window, the one Birdy’s been staring out of all these days.

      ‘Foul ball, strike two!’

      Weiss looks over at me. He’s still on his knees and trying to hook his glasses over his ears. Birdy has another ball out of the box. He doesn’t look at it this time. He just throws it.

      ‘Sterile!’

      At the word, Weiss gives up on the glasses and huddles close to the floor with his hands over his head. A fat man down on the floor like that would bring out the worst in anybody. I know how lions must feel when they’ve brought down a water buffalo or some other big, dangerous animal. Birdy misses with this one but gets another one off right away. Before Weiss can move, it nips him on the back. The ball rebounds and Renaldi catches it on the fly.

      ‘Pick-off play at second!’

      He throws the ball past Birdy’s head to the far corner. Balls are bouncing all over the room now. Weiss keeps down, hunched, trying to get his glasses hooked back onto his face. He’s yelling. He wants Renaldi to open the door; he wants me to get the keys from Renaldi. We’re ignoring him. He’s threatening me with a court-martial; he should know better than that. He’s yelling for somebody to come save him. Nobody can hear much of anything through the two doors. They’re designed that way.

      We’re having a great time throwing the balls. Sometimes we throw them to each other, sometimes up at the ceiling trying to break the light bulb, or sometimes at Weiss when he looks as if he might be trying to get up. Every time we throw a СКАЧАТЬ