The Bazaar of Bad Dreams

I tuck the reduced hand under the sheets. That way it won’t get cold. Then I wave away some flies. I can’t remember ever seeing flies in our apartment before. They probably smelled that dead rat Carlo was talking about.

‘You know Billy Ederle?’ I say. ‘I gave him a slant on that damn Po-TENS account, and I think he’s going to run with it.’

Nothing from Ellen.

‘You can’t be dead,’ I say. ‘That’s unacceptable.’

Nothing from Ellen.

‘Do you want coffee?’ I glance at my watch. ‘Something to eat? We’ve got chicken soup. Just the kind that comes in the pouches, but it’s not bad when it’s hot.’ Not bad when it’s hot, what a lousy slogan that would be. ‘What do you say, El?’

She says nothing.

‘All right,’ I say. ‘That’s all right. Remember when we went to the Bahamas, hon? When we went snorkeling and you had to quit because you were crying? And when I asked why, you said “Because it’s all so beautiful.”’

Now I’m the one who’s crying.

‘Are you sure you don’t want to get up and walk around a little? I’ll open the windows and let in some fresh air.’

Nothing from Ellen.

I sigh. I stroke that fluff of hair. ‘All right,’ I say, ‘why don’t you just sleep for another couple of hours? I’ll sit here beside you.’

And that’s exactly what I do.

For Joe Hill

Yeah, it’s about baseball, but give it a chance, okay? You don’t have to be a sailor to love the novels of Patrick O’Brian, and you don’t have to be a jockey – or even a bettor – to love the Dick Francis mysteries. Those stories come alive in the characters and the events, and I hope you’ll find a similar liveliness here. I got the idea for this tale after watching a postseason playoff game where a bad call resulted in a near riot at Atlanta’s Turner Field. Fans showered the field with cups, hats, signs, pennants, and beer bottles. After an umpire was bonked on the head with a pint whiskey bottle (by then empty, of course), the teams were pulled from the field until order could be restored. The TV commentators moaned about poor sportsmanship, as though such ventings of disgust and outrage had not gone on at America’s ballparks for a hundred years or more.

I’ve loved baseball all my life, and wanted to write about the game as it was in a time when such energetic demurrals, accompanied by declarations of ‘Kill the ump!’ and ‘Buy him a Seeing Eye dog!’ were considered a valid part of the game. A time when baseball was almost as smashmouth as football, when players slid into second base with their cleats up, and collisions at the plate were expected rather than outlawed. Those were days when the reversal of a call based on a TV replay would have been regarded with horror, for the umpire’s word was law. I wanted to use the language of those earlier ballplayers to summon up the texture and color of mid-century sporting America. I wanted to see if I could create something that was both mythic and – in a horrible way – sort of funny.

I also had a chance to put myself in the story, and I loved that. (My first paying gig as a writer was as a sports reporter for the Lisbon Enterprise, after all.) My sons call that sort of thing ‘metafiction.’ I just think of it as fun, and I hope that’s what this story is: good old-fashioned fun, with the last line cribbed from a great movie called The Wild Bunch.

And watch out for the blade, Constant Reader. It is a Stephen King story, after all.

Blockade Billy

William Blakely?

Oh my God, you mean Blockade Billy. Nobody’s asked me about him in years. Of course, no one asks me much of anything in here, except if I’d like to sign up for Polka Night at the K of P Hall downtown or something called Virtual Bowling. That’s right here in the common room. My advice to you, Mr King – you didn’t ask for it, but I’ll give it to you – is, don’t get old, and if you do, don’t let your relatives put you in a zombie hotel like this one.

It’s a funny thing, getting old. When you’re young, people always want to listen to your stories, especially if you were in pro baseball. But when you’re young, you don’t have time to tell them. Now I’ve got all the time in the world, and it seems like nobody cares about those old days. But I still like to think about them. So, sure, I’ll tell you about Billy Blakely. Awful story, of course, but those are the ones that last the longest.

Baseball was different in those days. You have to remember that Blockade Billy played for the Titans only ten years after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier, and the Titans are long gone. I don’t suppose New Jersey will ever have another Major League team, not with two powerhouse franchises just across the river in New York. But it was a big deal then – we were a big deal – and we played our games in a different world.