A Mound Over Hell Read online

  A Mound over hell

  Copyright © 2018 Gary Morgenstein

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the publisher.

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Published by Indigo

  an imprint of BHC Press

  Library of Congress Control Number:

  2017936818

  Print edition ISBN:

  978-1-946848-01-7

  Visit the publisher at:

  www.bhcpress.com

  Also available in trade softcover

  Jesse’s Girl

  Loving Rabbi Thalia Kleinman

  Take Me Out to the Ballgame

  The Man Who Wanted to

  Play Center Field for the

  New York Yankees

  To my wonderful wife Marcina,

  who never stops believing

  It’s the end of the world

  as we know it and I feel fine.

  ~ R.E.M. ~

  1

  On opening day of the last baseball season ever, Puppy Nedick woke up to find a hologram named Greta dancing on his chest. He wasn’t happy.

  “Good morning, good morning, good morning to you. Did you sleep well?”

  The brown wooden shutters automatically slid open, letting darkness spill into the small bedroom. Puppy glared at the ten-inch high alarm clock HG. He so hated Zelda for giving him this birthday present. He stumbled out of bed, landing on all fours.

  “Does Puppy need help? Just tell Greta what you want and she will do it.”

  He crawled under the bed, but couldn’t find the plug, though the top of his head found the bedspring, adding a bruised skull to his hangover. Puppy half fell into the bathroom, a step ahead of the pursuing HG.

  “I’ve turned on the coffee. Toast is a ‘cooking’…”

  He slammed the door and sat on the toilet. This morning I’ll find ways to get even with Zelda, Puppy thought. One effective, horrible-I-got-you-since-you-got-me. Greta pealed about the sunlight, as if Grandma wouldn’t let the sun come up.

  Puppy chose that day’s water allotment to shave instead of shower. He lathered up his cocoa-colored face, his watery green eyes, always percolating with surprised disappointment, peered back, boxed by a thick, hooked nose and receding hairline chasing thick black hair.

  He slumped at the rickety kitchen table. The vidnews, which went on automatically at sunrise, sang about some skateboarding champions. Apparently they so delighted a visiting Fifth Cousin that the said dignitary decided to skateboard himself. A true man of the people, he went down a hill and hit a rock, crashing head-first into a car. The teenagers whose athletic prowess started all this helped the Cousin, dressed his facial wounds and announced they’d set up a skateboarding tutorial right there in Dayton, Ohio. Everyone was happy. Life was good.

  “The true test of Family is adversity.” Grandma’s Eighteenth Insight skipped across the top of the screen. Puppy swallowed some aspirin.

  “I’m very disappointed in you, Puppy.” The hologram waited for him in the bedroom when he returned to dress.

  “Get at the end of the line.”

  “Out drinking and in your circumstances.”

  “Other people paid.”

  “For how long?” she whined.

  “As long as I can persuade other people to pay for my drinks. And hey, I still have a job.”

  “For five months.”

  “Instead of tormenting me, help me find my socks.”

  “Do I look like I have real arms?” Greta shook her head in disgust.

  Faint grey skittered across the sky as Puppy shivered and zipped up his black Bronx Hawks hoodie, adjusting the backpack off his aching right shoulder. Commuters pressed past toward the Grand Concourse, edging away from Morris Avenue, which was the tip of the southern Bronx Disappointment Village.

  There they went, dashing through the curtain of endless traffic, hurrying against a light; he’d swear on Grandma’s bra straps the damn Regs acted as if they could contract failure. That went against everything the Family stood for. As Grandma said in her Third Insight, nothing was permanent if you loved deeply and worked hard. Honesty, ethics, taking care of each other. Everyone believed that. If you failed, it was your fault. That’s how you ended up in a DV, like Puppy’s parents; he still lived two blocks away, on the Reg side. Close enough to seethe, far enough to remember.

  He cut through the DV. The aged buildings’ beige and rust brick faces were worn, yet there was always a flower pot in the windowsills. The cars were older models, some even from before the war, bodies scratched, dents hammered out into dimples. Playgrounds, at this hour, were empty. You went to school or worked. You tried to do something, anything, or you stayed out of sight. Otherwise you shamed the whole community.

  They said you could eat off the streets of a DV. He had here, many times. Sidewalks were scrubbed. Light poles gleamed. Garbage didn’t seem to exist. You filled a trash bag even a quarter of the way and then shoved it down the chute. You took pride in something, even when you had nothing. At least you could be clean. Every one of the eighty-nine Disappointment Villages in what was left of America was the same, an old suit pressed and cleaned over and over until the frayed strands begged for mercy, just waiting for a pretty new tie.

  Leaving the DV, as if they ever did, Puppy strolled along the water, pausing near the Drive to watch HG sailboats drift past on the Harlem River, the abandoned buildings of Manhattan’s Washington Heights like decayed beggars on the other side. Puppy waved back at the fake boat crew and headed down 161st Street to River Avenue. He paused under the El, the B train rumbling overhead, and waited out the fifteen-minute 8AM shower, squirming into his thin sweatshirt as the temperature dropped eight degrees.

  As part of his annual superstition, Puppy stepped on the pile of broken concrete forming a jagged path outside Amazon Stadium and handed his baseball historian’s pass to the A30 on the stool by Gate Six. The robot grunted in one bored breath, returning Puppy’s card.

  “You’re new?” Puppy asked.

  The robot nodded. “Lucky me.”

  “We’ll go out with a bang.”

  The A30’s eyes swiveled back and forth in faint sarcasm. All ‘bots had the same face. Which was no face. Could never tell what the ‘bots were thinking, though you were supposed to.

  “Nice to meet you.” Puppy surprised the A30 by shaking its hand.

  “Oh. Okay. Nice to meet you, Mr. Nedick.”

  “Just Puppy.” He paused just inside. “Anyone else here?”

  The A30 shrugged. “A few.”

  Inside, a lone A31 swept the long, filthy pavilion, corralling piles of dirt around a gutted hole five inches deep. There were similar piles of dirt near the other craters; maybe the robot thought the blasted pockmarks of the floor were bins.

  Along the interior wall was the famous mural of the legendary Three Amigos, Mooshie Lopez, Easy Sun Yen and Derek Singh, blotched with grime and dotted with bullet holes, the recognizable faces of the New York Yankees greats nearly faded from neglect; indifference is a brutal enemy. The shattered windows of the gift shops had long since collapsed inward onto hazy dark interiors, a few items remaining on the floor: a torn t-shirt, a miniature bat, broken pieces of something stepped on, stomped on, crushed amid the otherwise barren dusty shelves.

  A small condiments table blocked an old customer service booth. Pu
ppy examined the soiled packets of mustard and ketchup.

  “Excuse me,” he called over to the A31 with the broom. “There’s no food.”

  The robot gestured, sending dust onto Puppy’s jeans.

  “This is not food.”

  “Yes it is,” it answered stubbornly. “Says so on the packets.”

  “I mean, real food. These go with real food, but you don’t just eat them like they’re a meal.”

  The robot waited patiently.

  “It’s opening day. We always have one stand selling hot dogs.”

  The ‘bot shrugged and wandered off with its broom, shoving dirt into the holes.

  Puppy sighed and headed through Section 116. The brown infield and outfield glistened with the morning shower, slowly drying off under the reluctant sun. They’d have rays until 10:40AM; games rarely went more than an hour anyway. A couple of young boys sat expectantly behind the Falcons’ visiting dugout on the third base side. Probably cutting school; this was about the safest place in the Bronx, hell, the entire country to hide. An older man slept a few rows up, snoring noisily.

  Sitting off to the first base side, the Blue Shirt Officer Brennan tipped his blue cap.

  “Top of the morning, Mr. Nedick.”

  “Happy opening day, Officer.”

  “Hopefully the crowd will be respectful of the occasion.”

  Puppy looked around the lower field boxes, seats torn out in chunks, a six-foot mortar wound some twenty rows behind the Hawks home dugout.

  On the scoreboard in center field, flanked by the gutted remnants clinging to the main screen, the ancient Grandma, head of The Family which governed America, smiled down. Slightly wrinkled yellow face, slightly smiling, never any disappointment. Do not worry, her expression said, filling the entire screen. I’m always here.

  Puppy laid his backpack by his seat behind home plate, a weather-scarred, blackened orange wig rustling feebly beneath the broken adjoining seat, which was forbidden to be moved like everything else in the stadium.

  “What’re we doing this year?” Puppy tapped the A29’s shoulder in the front row. The robot continued studying the squat machine on its lap.

  “Same as last year.”

  “Which was the same as the year before.”

  “Same as the year you and me started.” The A29 frowned at the dials. “Fifteen springs and summers.” The robot was pleased by its efforts and, now relaxed, turned toward Puppy. “Folks know what they’re getting when they come here.” He gestured to the nearly empty ballpark.

  “But this is the final season.”

  “And you thought, let’s jazz this up. Me, too.”

  “Really?” Puppy’s spirits lifted.

  “They killed it.” The A29 jerked its head toward the second level of executive offices behind first base, where the Hawks and Falcons owners hid.

  “Why?”

  “Why do they do anything? Money.”

  “Even to do a little something different? Like make the Falcons outfielders triplets…”

  “Can’t do.”

  “A pitcher with a personality? One player with personality.”

  The Falcons lead-off hitter B’run Campanis dozed at the on-deck circle. The A28 umpire headed toward home plate.

  The A29 rubbed its metallic fingers together and pressed a button, pointing at the HG players suddenly filling the outfield, stretching their legs. “They wanted to get rid of the them.”

  “And if a ball was hit into the outfield…”

  “They didn’t care.” The A29 rubbed its nose knowingly at the thought processes of humans. The HG pitcher and catcher materialized on the field, joined by the Hawks infielders, laconically tossing a ball as if slowly thawing out.

  “Well, I want to say something before the game,” Puppy insisted.

  “What about a special graphic on the scoreboard?”

  “Can you do that?”

  “I wish.”

  Puppy waited respectfully while Officer Brennan, standing at home plate, led the crowd in Grandma’s Blessing, all eyes upraised, chins lifted toward the scoreboard:

  “May our love always be for love

  May we think of the Family as ourselves

  May we work hard and reward effort

  May we help those who cannot succeed.”

  At the robot umpire’s call of “play ball,” the portly Campanis, buttons undone on his red jersey like he’d dressed in the dugout, waddled to home plate. Puppy gingerly hopped onto the top of the Hawks home dugout and motioned for a couple arriving fans to move closer. The two young women seemed to prefer their privacy and each other’s tongues, and took seats down the first base line.

  Puppy waved his arms to get the attention of the eight fans. Campanis stepped into the batter’s box and scratched his stubble. “B’run, could you wait a second?”

  “We got a timetable,” the umpire said, irritated.

  “Just one second.”

  The HG pitcher fired a fastball anyway.

  “Hello everyone.” Puppy silently begged the A29 to freeze the action. “I want to welcome you to the start of the 2098 baseball season.”

  Beyond the right center field fence, gutted of bleacher seats, a massive crusher truck was parked, two A20s in work clothes, sipping beer, waiting to tear the stadium down.

  “I hope you all have a great time this year.”

  The HG fired another pitch.

  “Will you make him stop?” Puppy shouted at the A29, who scowled. Robots were so damn sensitive about being called out for doing anything wrong.

  “We’ve still got lots of tickets for the rest of the season so…” another pitch cut across the plate… “enjoy today’s contest between the Bronx Hawks and the Bronx Falcons. Let’s give a big cheer for these great players.”

  An enthusiastic crowd of one, Puppy clapped and shouted before returning to his seat, propping his blue sneakers on the railing and opening his black and white notebook. The only real equipment were the bats, though there were a couple buckets of mottled balls and gloves in the Hawks dugout runway.

  The HG pitcher threw an HG ball to the human batter, whose hitting skills, such as they were, was programmed into the system. The play was generated by what the humans “hit,” but other than that, everything else danced merrily out of the A29’s machine.

  Campanis smacked a ground ball toward second, not even waiting for his HG runner to scamper down the line before shuffling like a fat wind-up doll into the dugout. At least button the uniform top, Puppy pleaded silently. Try to look like a damn major league player.

  “Game One of the 2098 baseball season, baseball’s final year.” He wrote in his neat handwriting. There was always hope, even when it was hopeless.

  • • • •

  ZELDA JONES SHOOK the dice very carefully onto the floor of Puppy’s living room, letting out a squeal of joy as she sent her silver car racing around the Monopoly board.

  “Your squeaking is really annoying,” Puppy grumbled.

  “That’s why I do it. Keeps you off balance.” She grinned triumphantly, clapping her chubby black hands together and scrunching up her slight nose, set like a stranger on her wide face.

  “You a dead Allah, dude.” Zelda turned to Pablo Diaz, frowning miserably at the little car sitting on the green Pennsylvania Avenue space as if that meant an asteroid would come crashing through the window, ending all life including their weekly Wednesday games night.

  “Then buy it.” Pablo’s frown deepened. “In the long run, it means little.”

  “Except kicking your butt.” Zelda tucked her right leg under her ample rear.

  “Perhaps.” Diaz watched uneasily as Zelda placed hotels on her latest claim. “Can I go now or do you need a few more minutes to squeak like you’ve conquered the Caliphate.”

  Zelda danced with thick gangly arms snaking out in all directions around Pablo. He ignored her with growing difficulty, turning his attention to Puppy.

  “How many were out there today?
”

  “Eight, though two of them spent most of the game making out.”

  “Is that allowed?”

  “Does it matter?”

  Pablo rolled the dice and reluctantly held his silver airplane over Pennsylvania Avenue.

  “Put it down, big boy,” Zelda whispered.

  “Tell her to stop,” Pablo pleaded.

  “Right there. On my lush luxurious property. There you go.” Zelda licked Pablo’s left ear. He twisted away angrily. Zelda licked his other ear, whispering huskily, “Pay up.”

  Pablo’s long, skilled fingers carefully counted out the money like it was real. To Pablo, everything was real. Games, fun, laughter, all predicates for somber hard work, life lessons, endless practice. He had always been the most driven of them.

  Zelda carefully recounted the money.

  “That’s insulting.” Pablo puckered up his long, narrow face.

  She acknowledged that with a sweet smile while Puppy dumped another bag of Famous Nebraska chips into a large bowl.

  “My assistant’s chair is empty, Puppy,” Pablo said in that way he had of forgetting to include people in the dialogue bouncing around his head.

  “Come on.”

  “Is there some shame here?” Pablo was mildly indignant. “Pietra did pretty well as my dental hygienist.”

  “You really think Puppy is right for this, Dr. Diaz?” Zelda held out the neck of the Hartford Heaven beer bottle as a microphone, which Pablo not so politely moved aside.

  “Pietra was in the fashion world. All she knew about teeth were her regular cleanings and how they sparkled when she modeled. Now look at her. A year with me and onto dental school.”

  “Dr. Nedick has a nice ring, Pup.” Zelda spooned a chunk of Gussie’s Guac onto a chip. “Now that you’re entering the mature phase of your life.”

  “I’m serious,” Pablo continued earnestly through their laughter. “You need to find something. This is stable. There’s always tooth decay. Accidents. Like chipping a tooth.” He indicated the stale chips. “Think about it.”