melt down the fence?’ Esteban asked the Wizard.
‘Why should he?’ asked the Wizard.
‘Because the priest is God’s representative. He does God’s work.’
‘What can the priests do on the outside that they cannot do inside the fence, except graveside services? If they wished to they could lead prayers, perform marriages, administer the Eucharist, hear confessions; the sick could be brought to visit them. Because these priests choose to decay before your eyes, to choose as their only duties the blessing of goats and lottery tickets, is not the fault of God. If I were God I would turn the fence to stone so the priests might disintegrate in private.’
‘I have decided to be a priest,’ said Esteban. ‘And I will do the same work no matter which side of the fence I am on.’
‘You will go far,’ said the Wizard. ‘I will see that you are allowed to bless each new balloon that I add to my fleet.’ The Wizard, at the time, did not own even one balloon.
Word of the miraculous baseball-playing babies spread outward from Courteguay. In nearby Haiti, Papa Doc Duvalier, when he heard of the astonishing children, sent an emissary with golf ball-sized diamonds on his ebony fingers, who offered to buy the babies from their father in return for a twenty-pound bar of gold and six virgins.
‘In Haiti, women who have had sex only with Papa Doc Duvalier or a member of his cabinet are still considered virgins. The gold bar has a leaden center and the virgins have the pox,’ said the Wizard, who had bigger plans for the battery. Hector Alvarez Pimental reluctantly turned down the offer. In America he knew, baseball players were rich and worshipped. They were idolized more than generals, bullfighters, plantation owners, rock stars or even Papa Doc Duvalier. Besides, what would Duvalier do with them, turn them into soccer players?
‘They play soccer in Haiti,’ said the Wizard, ‘soccer is for rowdies who are not yet smart enough to tie their own shoes. When I become President of the Republic of Courteguay I will have a baseball installed on our flag.’ The Courteguayan flag was a solid green rectangle with a white cube at its center. The small square had no significance whatever, and the rumor was that the material for the first flag had had a flaw in its center that the flag-maker interpreted as a design.
By the time the boys were seven years old they were playing in the best league in Courteguay, and were virtually unbeatable. General Bravura, who was now El Presidente, disagreed with the Wizard about possibly negotiating to send the boys to America. The Wizard went ahead and laboriously wrote a letter that he addressed to: El Presidente, American State of Miami, United States of America, The World. Or so the Wizard claims.
Since he mistrusted the Courteguayan Postal Service, a very small operation because sixty percent of Courteguayans were illiterate, the Wizard sent the letter to America by Dominican rumrunner, which would drop it off somewhere in the Florida Keys. He signed the letter Umberto Salvador Geraldo Alfredo Jorge Blanco, wizard, El Presidente of Courteguay in Waiting.
The letter, by a highly circuitous route, found its way to the Governor of Florida who, having ambitions to become at least a senator, if not President, forwarded it to the owner of the only Major League Baseball Club in the True South. If he was going to be a senator or President of the United States from the South, he decided that the South should have a competitive baseball team in the National League. The only Major League Baseball Club in the True South had always had a reputation for mediocrity, even though the owner probably knew something about television stations, of which he owned hundreds, though he apparently knew little about Major League baseball.
The only Major League Baseball Club in the True South sent a scout to San Barnabas. The scout was a famous baseball star of the forties, who had had more losing battles with the bottle than Babe Ruth had home runs. After seeing the battery of Esteban and Julio in action he stayed sober for two full weeks, just to be certain that what he was witnessing was not alcohol induced.
‘Julio Pimental is the best baseball pitcher I have ever seen,’ he wrote back to the only Major League Baseball Club in the True South, ‘but he is only eight years old. What do I do? Can I sign him? Can I sign his father? He has an agent of sorts, a man in blue silk dress that has silver stars, crescents, triangles and hammers all over it. How soon do you think we can introduce this boy to organized baseball? Aren’t there child labor laws to contend with? Would something like this fall under the Coogan Law? By the way, Julio pitches to his twin brother, who is an average catcher but who couldn’t hit water if he fell out of a boat. I understand they come as a pair, because the pitcher won’t let anyone else catch him.’
The owner of the only Major League Baseball Club in the True South was on intimate terms with the President of the United States. In fact, the President had once suggested to the Leader of the House, in a not altogether joking manner, that the leader of the House should introduce a bill to break up the New York Yankees. The President indicated that he would be happy to sign such a bill into law.
The President and the owner of the only Major League Baseball Club in the True South conferred deep into the night.
The alcoholic scout signed Hector Alvarez Pimental to a two-year contract as a scout. Though the father of the twins never realized it, he was paid more as a scout than the manager of the only Major League Baseball Club in the True South. Of course, the manager worked very cheaply.
The ball club also offered to rent the family a comfortable home in a pleasant district in San Barnabas. However, Fernandella refused to leave the cool stream full of flashing fish, the shady mango and guava trees, and the yard full of docile pheasants who did everything but pluck and eviscerate themselves so anxious were they to grace Fernandella’s table. Reluctantly, and at great cost, for the Wizard somehow managed to become general contractor, the only Major League Baseball Club in the True South completely remodeled the home built on the side hill, adding a full basement holding an electric furnace. The plans for the house had been drawn up by a Minneapolis firm with a Federal Consulting Contract. When finished the renovated house looked like a cross between a Southern plantation house and a nouveau riche Albanian immigrant’s idea of how a wealthy family should live. There were gold faucets, chrome lighting fixtures, garish carpets, and velvet paintings on the brightly hued walls.
The only Major League Baseball Club in the True South, in consultation with the President of the United States, decided they would wait until Julio was ten years old before signing him. Deep in the bowels of the Capitol, the U.S. Government Printing Office manufactured birth certificates for Esteban and Julio showing each to be sixteen years of age.
The bonus Julio’s father demanded for signing was a hot-air balloon. The baseball club complied, for their negotiators were vaguely intimidated by the sinister demeanor of the Wizard, who always seemed present, his silks swishing malevolently in the background. They knew the hot-air balloon was for the Wizard and they hoped it would encourage him to travel extensively.
The Wizard, though he did not actually take part in the deal-making, was inclined to take the negotiators for a walk along the now yard-wide, crystal stream full of blue fish sparking like quicksilver; the Wizard made the negotiators aware that the stream began from nothing and diminished to nothing, and while he never claimed responsibility, he intimated strongly that he had something to do with its emergence.
