Hank

1. "Help! Help! The sky is falling! —"

Tommy, at his usual stool. He'd heard about the pop-up I dropped. Well, not really dropped.

"— The sky is falling! It hit me on the head!"

I sat at the other end of the bar and Larry brought me over an Old Style-Larry as in Jerry and Larry's Sports Palace, a big dim cool sticky room with a beat-up pool table and some pictures of Chicago athletes on the walls. It was Saturday, early yet, just Tommy there, Larry reading one of those newspapers about Bigfoot and Elvis Presley's ghost and babies born with a tail.

Tommy kept grinning at me, nodding his big bald head.

I told him to watch his game show and leave-me the fuck alone.

Vanna White was turning over a bunch of O's. Tommy thinks she's some kind of goddess. I can't see it, myself. She's got a nice walk though, back and forth, swinging those arms.

"There's no fool like an old fool!" he shouted.

I figured he meant me, but he was telling the contestant the answer.

She ignored him and took another spin of the wheel and landed on Bankrupt.

"Stupid cow." He told Larry to put the Cub game back on.

I'll say this much for Tommy. Ever since we were kids he's always been a loyal Cubs fan. I don't know why. This is a south suburb, part of White Sox territory. I remember he once gave this other kid a pair of his sister's panties for an Ernie Banks card. They were red.

Sandberg took a called third strike.

"Swing the fucking bat," Tommy told him. Then he turned to me and smiled. "So, how's the old coconut?"

He enjoys himself. His life is even stupider than mine, but he enjoys it.

I asked him who he talked to. I knew he wasn't at the game, because if he's there you hear him, I do, anyway. He's always on my ass.

"Ossifer Phil."

This busybody cop, Phil Spaulding-my girlfriend Karen's cousin. Officer Phil, gossip squad.

"He said you could hear this konk when it landed," Tommy said, then started laughing his wheezy laugh, which turned into a coughing fit, till he gurgled something up, which he spit in a napkin. He smokes a lot.

In case you're interested, here's the way it happened. Eighth inning, guy hits a pop-up out to me at second base, a mile high against this big blank milky gray sky, and I start to get dizzy and jelly-legged, two balls corning down, and I go after the wrong one, the real ball bouncing off my head-with a konk-and landing behind me. Hurt like hell but I just went and picked it up and tossed it back to the pitcher and did some groundskeeping with my spikes — nobody laughing on either team, it was that pathetic. And when the inning was over I left the game. Just walked to my car and drove home.

Larry said, "Listen to this," and read to us from his newspaper, about a man in Milwaukee who ate his own cat.

Tommy defended the guy, meat being meat: "A cow, a cat, what the fuck's the difference?"

I thought about dropping by Karen's. Or staying here and getting shitfaced.

Tommy and Larry kept going at it about the guy and his cat.

I got up and left.

Tommy yelled, "Watch out for them falling baseballs!"

* * *

Karen answered the door all sweaty and redfaced in her spandex exercise suit, a Jane Fonda workout video carrying on behind her. Karen and Jane were wearing the same outfit, but what a difference. I'm saying Karen's gotten fat. Just in the last year or so she's gotten awful hefty.

First thing she says to me, "How's your head?"

"What the hell, was it on the news?"

She turned the video off. "Phil was over."

See what I mean about that guy?

"He said you left the game. Were you feeling dizzy? Or nauseous at all?" Karen's a part-time nurse's aid.

I sat on the couch and hung my head. "I left," I said, "because I'm forty years old and no damn good anymore. Washed up ... over the hill ..." I was waiting for her to come over and comfort me a little. "Obsolete ... worthless ..."

"Listen, Jim's on his way over, bringing Brian back, okay?"

Jim's her ex, Brian's their kid.

"Right," I said, and got up and trudged to the door.

"You can stay. I just thought you'd want to know."

I told her I'd see her later.

"Don't I even get a hug?" she said.

I went over and put my arms around her.

"What's the matter, Hank?"

"I don't know."

"Because you missed that ball?"

"I guess."

She held me tighter. "You're not over the hill, honey. You're a very good baseball player. Everyone makes an error once in a while. You know that. Right?"

"Right." I patted her and pulled away, not wanting this after all. I told her I'd drop by tonight, after Brian's in bed, and headed to the door.

"You okay?" she said.

"I'm fine. I'll see you later."

"Pick ,up a movie."

"All right."

"No John Wayne, though."

Out in the car I started the engine — and then I just sat there wondering what the hell to do with myself next, staring through the windshield at that sky I told you about: this great big milky gray empty blank nothing. And pretty soon, I'm not kidding, I felt like I was drifting into it — turning into it. Honest to God, I felt like I was disappearing. It scared the shit out of me. I drove back to the Palace.

"Chicken Little returns," Tommy announced, still the only one there.

I was actually glad to see him. I sat just a few stools away. The Cub game was still going, Cubs at bat. Tommy filled me in: "Tied in the thirteenth, two outs, runner on second, Grace at the plate. I'm gonna call you 'Chicklit' for short, how's that."

"Fine." Compared to other names he's had for me.

Larry brought me over an Old Style.

Grace tried to check his swing and sent a one-hopper back to the mound, Tommy shouting, "Asshole!"

I told Larry to bring my friend here another draft.

Tommy gave me a worried look. "How's your head?"

"Better," I told him.

* * *

My head wasn't so good the next morning, but not from any falling baseballs.

It was raining out, this dismal Sunday-morning drizzle, and I laid in bed trying to remember if I did anything last night to feel sorry about, besides forgetting my date with Karen.

I remembered the Palace getting loud and crowded, everyone coming up to me--even strangers-asking how's my head, with an amused little look in their eye.

I remembered talking to Redman for a while, getting one of his Indian warrior pep talks.

I remembered Tommy calling me "Chicklit."

Then I turned on my side and my eye fell on this. framed photo I keep on the wall and I remembered telling somebody The Story. That's what Tommy calls it: The Story. It's true, though. One day when I was a little kid I played catch in Comiskey Park with White Sox second baseman Nellie Fox and afterwards we talked together. And sometimes when I get drunk I find somebody to tell it to. I wonder who I found last night. And I wonder what I told them.

The thing is, I've told it so many times in so many ways I don't remember what the real story is anymore. I know it happened, though. I've got the photograph: me and Nellie, outside the White Sox dugout. I'm wearing a Sox uniform, holding Nellie's huge club of a bat, and he's squatting with his arm around my waist. This is probably after we played catch-my glove's...