Whatever Happened to Gloomy Gus of the Chicago Bears? by Robert Coover

Author:Robert Coover
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Whatever Happened to Gloomy Gus of the Chicago Bears?
ISBN: 9781453279328
Publisher: Dzanc Books
Published: 1987-09-09T04:00:00+00:00

“Hey, Meyer!” It’s one of the boys. “I was safe, wasn’t I?”

I‘ve been watching their game in the schoolyard without thinking about it. Now I let what I’ve just seen pass again in slow motion before my inner eye (the one I do all my sculpting with—everything goes in there, but not everything stays, and reason has nothing to do with it; it’s a lot like Gus’s gearbox, now that I think about it): Bernie, the boy who asked me the question, has tried to stretch a single to a double. The kid on second was thrown the ball in plenty of time and was standing well in front of the detached chunk of sidewalk they’re using for the base, but he was scared and had his eyes shut. Bernie, eyes all lit up with the joy of it (memory is the greatest illusionist of them all, I think, giving us time with one hand and taking it away with the other), bashed into him, sending the kid sprawling. Right now, he’s trying very hard not to cry. “You were out, Bernie.”

“See? See?” cries the other kid loudly, too loudly, the tears springing to the corners of his eyes, reinforcing his indignation and self-righteousness. “You’re out, I told ya!”

“Aw, Meyer, you’re blind! He wasn’t even looking what he was doing!”

“I know. He didn’t tag you, you tagged the ball. If you’d been smart, instead of trying to knock him down like that, you would’ve just tiptoed around behind him.”

Everybody laughs at that, even the kid who’s been hit. “Hey, Meyer,” says another, the fat boy who’s playing Big Zeke Bonura over on first, “come and umpire, will ya?”

“Yeah, Meyer!”

“Can’t, fellas. I’ve got to get on home, get some work done. Besides, I’m soaking wet, and I’ve got some raw fish here I have to put in the icebox.”

“Aw, Meyer, just half a hour!” pleads the bespectacled White Sox pitcher.

“No, you see, a friend of mine died today, I couldn’t really keep my mind on the ballgame. But, hey, that was some game you pitched Monday! You made the Hall of Fame!” The boys laugh at that, a little self-consciously maybe, but they know I’m good at pretending with them. I see Old Man Donaldson coming around the corner with his fruit cart. “I tell you what I will do, though—I’ll buy you all an apple!”

They cheer at that and swarm around Donald-son’s wagon to pick out the ones with the least bruises. Bernie, to get even, takes a banana, which is expensive. Donaldson is a surly old wretch and might have taken a cut at them with his horsewhip, but just then his old nag drops a load of manure, and he gets distracted picking it up, shoveling it into a bucket he keeps hanging from the side of the cart for the purpose. “Never throw nothin’ away,” he always says, and does so now. Bernie’s slide into second base with all its inner contradictions is still playing before my

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