McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales - Michael Chabon [172]
He read what came up on the screen.
He looked at what he had read on the screen for a long time. Then he went back to the counter.
“You were the player-manager of the World Champion 1948 Cleveland Indians. Shortstop. 152 games, 560 at bats, 199 hits, 116 runs. You were the all-time franchise leader with a .355 batting average, slugging and on-base percentages, and a .987 OPS! What are you doing here, for gawdsakes?!”
Boudreau removed the little paper hat, scratched at his hair for a moment, sighed, and said, “Rhadamanthus carries a grudge.”
Colman stared dumbly. Zeus had three sons. One of them was Rhadamanthus, originally a judge in the afterlife, assigned the venue of the Elysian plain, which was considered a very nice neighborhood. But sometime between Homer and Virgil, flame-haired Rhadamanthus got reassigned to Tartarus, listed in all the auto club triptychs as Hell. Strict judge of the dead. No sin goes unpunished. From which the word “rhadamanthine” bespeaks inflexibility.
“What did you do to honk him off?”
“I went with Bearden instead of Bob Lemon in the first game of the series against the Boston Braves. We lost one to nothing. Apparently he had a wad down on the game.”
A slim black man, quite young, wearing a saffron robe and cardboard garrison cap, came out of the back. Lou aimed a thumb at him. “Larry Doby, left fielder. First Negro to play in the American League.” Doby smiled, gave a little salute, and said to Colman, “Figure it out yet?”
Colman shook his head.
“Well, good luck.” Then, in Latin, he added, “ Difficilia quae pulchra.” Colman had no idea what that meant, but Doby seemed to wish him well with the words. He said Thank you.
Lou pointed toward the rear. “That’s our drive-thru attendant, Joe Gordon, great second baseman. Third baseman Ken Keltner on the grill with our catcher, Jim Hegan; Bob Feller’s working maintenance just till his arm gets right again, but Lemon and Steve Gromek’ll be handling the night shift. And our fry guy is none other than the legendary Leroy ‘Satchel’ Paige . . . hey, Satch, say hello to the new kid!”
Lifting the metal lattice basket out of the deep fryer filled with sizzling vegetable oil, Satchel Paige knocked the basket half-full of potatoes against the edge of the tub to shake away excess drippings, and grinned hugely at Colman. “You see mine up there?” he said, cocking his head toward the signage of wise sayings. Colman nodded and smiled back.
“Well,” said Lou Boudreau, saffron-robed counterman shortstop manager of the 1948 World Series champion Cleveland Indians, who had apparently really pissed off Rhadamanthus, “are you ready to order?”
Time had run out. Colman knew this was it. Whatever he said next would be either the gate pass or the bum’s rush. He considered the choices on the menu, trying to pick one that spoke to his gut. It had to be one of them.
His mind raced. It had to be one of them.
He paused. It was the moment of the cortical-thalamic pause. Why did it have to be one of them?
Life wasn’t a fountain.
There was only one thing to say to God, if one were at the Gate. At the Core, the Nexus, the Center, the Eternal Portal. Only one thing that made sense, whether this was God or just a minimum-wage, part-time employee. Colman straightened, unfurrowed his brow, and spoke the only words that would provide entrance if one were confronting God. He said to Lou Boudreau:
“Let me talk to the Head Jew.”
The peppy little shortstop grinned and nodded and said, “May I super-size that for you?”
Private Grave 9
KAREN JOY FOWLER
Every week Massoud takes our trash out and buries it. Yesterday’s was chicken bones, orange peels, a tin that cherries had come in and another for peas, a comb I sat on and broke, two prints I overexposed, and several dicarded drafts of Mallick’s letter to Lord Wallis about our progress, Meanwhile, at G4 and G5, two bone hairpins and seven clay shards