The Flex of the Thumb (5 page)

Vano launched a dozen heaters which ranged from 108 to 118 miles per hour. They were like comets with angry tails, blurs that cracked the waiting mitt like cherry bombs. Then he threw a dozen of the 98 mile-an-hour sliders with the big bite, slamming into Neal's mitt ten inches off the ground. All in the strike zone.

Tony LaRussa wasn't speaking, but he was shaking his head. He thought to ask one of the scouts what the velocity was on his gun, but then he had another thought:
why bother
?

Neal explained to him, “I wish I could tell you I was
catchin'
this shit, Tony, but it's really just him hittin' the target.”

LaRussa, who thought he had seen it all but now understood that he hadn't, couldn't find his tongue. He simply continued with the head shaking.

Vano's sweat was full broken. He told LaRussa, “I'm grooved and ready. Can we do it now?”

“Sure, Kid, let's do it right now.”

Vano took his place on the mound. He looked slowly around the vast Oakland Coliseum but it didn't faze him; it could have been just another cow pasture next to another high school. Some of the A's took up defensive positions in no particular scheme, while others, the most famous ones, crowded around the batting cage. Standing next to Vano, Jerome Neal told him, “Don't be scared, Kid.”

Vano couldn't think of anything to be afraid of. “What's to be scared of?” he asked Neal.

Since he had just been on the receiving end of Vano's best stuff, the veteran catcher wasn't surprised by this level of nonchalance. “It's just something you're supposed to say to young pitchers.” Then Neal went ahead with some final instructions: “There won't be no signs. If you ever get the urge to throw something other than that heater, you just call me out here and tell me face to face. We straight on that?”

Vano said, “I don't want this thing here.” He was pointing to the portable screen in front of the mound which was used for the protection of batting practice pitchers.

“The screen's just for protection.”

“I don't care about protection, I care about bein' grooved. This thing will break my concentration.”

Neal shrugged his shoulders before he motioned to two groundskeepers who removed the screen. Then the catcher took his place behind the plate, where Ricky Henderson, the all-star left fielder, had the lumber out. The umpire was a college official named Quinn, a friend of LaRussa's.

Ricky Henderson asked Neal, “Why'd you take the screen away?”

Neal was adjusting his face mask to double check its security. He said, “Lucas don't want it. I guess he figures ain't nobody gonna make contact.”

This answer made Henderson furious. He locked his spikes in deep and tightened his grip on the bat handle. “I'm gonna wire this pale motherfucker up,” he announced.

From his crouch Neal said, “Get ready for some high heat.”

This second insult was more astonishing than the first to Henderson. “You tellin' me what's comin'?! Are you crazy??”

Neal just laughed while Henderson turned his notorious glare on Vano Lucas. Vano didn't see the glare, though. What he saw was the pitch complete, before he even threw it. He saw its beginning, its middle, and its end. He saw its velocity as well as its track.

Vano went slowly into his wind-up. The pitch exploded up and in to Henderson so fast it seemed like warp speed. The Oakland all-star was paralyzed. Quinn, the umpire, exclaimed “HoooHaaa!” which everyone understood to mean
strike one
.

The shaken Henderson stepped out of the box to try and regroup. He took a few seconds with the pine tar and longed for focus. It proved to be an exercise in futility, however, for when he stepped back inside the batter's box it was the same result. The second pitch froze him like the first. On the third delivery, he managed a feeble, late swing, then went straight to the dugout without a word.

The next batter, Terry Steinbach, went down on three straight pitches without removing the bat from his shoulder.

In his comfortable seat, Vernon Lucas was cackling. He asked Rakestraw if he'd seen enough.

“That's only two batters.”

“I can count,” was Vernon's reply. “Let me know when you've seen enough.”

Rakestraw didn't answer, but made a be-quiet gesture with the palm of his hand. The Oakland hitters went down one by one, like sheep in the chute. Most of them were called out, while others managed a late swing or two, of the impotent variety. Dave Henderson took a swing at every pitch, but made no contact.

On his second at-bat, Mark McGuire hit one foul tip. Then he was called out on a 115-mile an hour blazer low and away. Vano had pitched through the entire line-up twice without allowing even one fair ball to be hit. He signaled to Neal, who came to the mound. “I need a break,” Vano complained. “This is like pitchin' six innings straight.”

Neal informed Rakestraw who said, “Let's not only give him a break, let's give him a check. We know what we're lookin' at here, the kid is unhittable.”

That would have been the end of it, except LaRussa informed that Jose Canseco was insisting on one more chance. He was demanding a third at-bat.

Rakestraw turned to Vernon Lucas to ask him what he thought.

“If he's not too tired to throw to another hitter, it's okay.” said Vernon. “You'll have to ask him. Go ahead and get your checkbook out, though.”

“Ask him,” Rakestraw said tersely to Jerome Neal.

When Neal asked Vano if he felt up to throwing to one more hitter, Vano was annoyed. But he said okay. “Who is it?” he wanted to know.

“Canseco wants one more chance.”

Vano popped his gum. “Okay. One fast ball, one slider, and then a change.”

“You throw a change?”

“I've got a circle change. I like to throw it once in a while, just for fun. Let's not just strike him out, let's make him look bad.”

Jerome Neal was grinning. “You seen a batter yet didn't look bad?”

“Hey, give me a break here; I just wanna throw it.”

Neal was still grinning. A lifetime .181 hitter during his checkered big-league career, he was getting no small satisfaction watching the overpaid, overindulged superstars overmatched. “Sounds good, Kid. Just make sure you remember the order.”

The first pitch was a laser, up and in. Canseco took a very late, albeit ferocious swing. He missed. He pounded his bat on the plate in frustration. The slider he hadn't seen; it froze him for strike two.

There were no vibes, yet Vano still took a lingering look at the clouds before he threw the change, which he was careful to keep down and away. At a mere 85 miles per hour, it approached Canseco like slow motion. So far out in front was the Oakland slugger that he nearly disclocated his spine. He took a hopeless swing while striving in vain to keep his hands back.

The bat flew out of his hands.

Vano didn't see it coming, at least not right away. It helicoptered its way in a twirling arc in his direction. When he did see it, it was too late to react. The big end of the
Louisville Slugger
nailed him right between the eyes, precipitating a festival of lights in his brain. Vano went down hard like a dropsack on a loose tether.

The impact of the pitching rubber did some modest damage to the lumbar region of his back, but he was unaware of it. He was out cold.

Vano's coma lasted 30 days. After three weeks, during which time he showed no sign of improvement, the doctor explained to Vernon that they might have to move him to a rehabilitational facility in Modesto.

“Why?”

“It's a facility which specializes in long-term care. This hospital is no longer appropriate.”

“You think you're going to warehouse him, in other words. Do I have any say in this?”

“No.” Then the doctor said, “It might be time to start thinking about some difficult decisions.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“If he continues to show no sign of recovery, you may want to ask yourself how long we should continue with this intravenous feeding.”

Vernon Lucas was appalled. “Are you out of your fucking mind?? Do you have any idea who this is?”

“He's your son, I believe.”

“This is Vano Lucas! He's got the greatest arm in the game! Maybe in the
history
of the game!”

“It's never an easy situation to confront,” murmured the doctor.

For her part, Sister Cecilia burst into tears and left the room. She made her way to the hospital chapel where she lit candles and worried her way feverishly through the rosary.

In his coma, Vano was a
tabula rasa
. He might have been dead. Until the 28th day, that is, when he fluttered some modest brain activity which triggered occasional moments of subconscious and semi-conscious perception. A mental picture of a terraced pyramid with urban flavor somehow, but so indistinct in its definition as if it sat behind a scrim. It was an image which repeated itself from time to time in his elliptical brain like a dream, only lacking even the
de facto
sequencing of a dream.

On his way back to consciousness, Vano surfaced by way of an intense telepathic journey through time and space. He was zooming through the universe. It may have lasted only a few moments, but since time was suspended, it seemed like a lengthy event. He was passing at incredible speed through a zone of laser beams and particles of light.

At first there seemed to be no pattern to the twinkling. There was nothing beneath his feet that he could see, yet he felt himself supported somehow. He found himself in a chamber of sorts where light patterns suggested walls, then quickly vanished. Coalitions of light points defined the presence of evanescent human-like shapes.

Vano heard a voice: “Welcome.” The voice seemed to have as its source one of the shapes, but the shapes twinkled in and out, and not always in the same spot.

The voice spoke again: “You will know us as particle people. That is not a name we use, but earth humanoids, dwelling in the ego mode, are usually comforted by a system of labeling.” The diction was so clean and firm. Vano thought the voice sounded like the radio announcer on the midnight to six A.M. shift. Each of the particle people had an occasional head region, but nothing resembling a mouth. He couldn't tell which of the particle people was speaking at any given moment.

The particle voice continued by saying, “Our way of life is the way of complete harmony with the ebb and flow of the universe. We are able to reduce ourselves to the billions of atomic particles of which we, like all matter, are constituted. In this diffuse state, we float through the universe as particle dust, each atomic particle a microcosm of the total organism. We live in concord with the entire span of the electromagnetic spectrum. When there may be cause, we are able to reconvene our atomic particles, so to speak, in a sort of committee of the whole. It is then that we assume these humanoid forms. Now you understand the fundamental principle of particle mode existence.”

Vano Lucas wasn't sure he understood anything. He could see countless stars in all directions. He could see nothing when he looked down, yet he still felt something firm underfoot. The walls, though transparent, were visible from time to time, just like the particle humanoids themselves. He wondered how he got here, and what he was doing here.

“You are here because the vibrations you have known from time to time have led you to the threshold of
hooommm,
if only on a superficial plane. You have the capacity, or so we believe, to go beyond.”

Hooommm
? Vano wondered. Since they were able to know his thoughts, it occurred to him that the particle people might be God.

The particle voice seemed to reside in his brain as well as without: “We are not God. We can know your thoughts because we are blended with the whole electromagnetic spectrum. Dwellers on Earth are fond of imagining a huge creature like themselves, who lives in the sky. They call this imaginary creature God. It is a predictable and, in some respects, necessary compensation because the way of life for humanoids on Earth is the ego mode. It includes only a very tiny fraction of the spectrum. There is no self but the ego, and very little freedom from the demands made by this self. The energy needed to maintain the ego mode is its own support system. Now you understand the fundamental principle of ego mode existence.”

But Vano's head was swimming. It was plain to him that he was hearing only parts of what the particle people were telling him, and his understanding of what he did hear was so limited.

“Do not worry,” the particle voice instructed him. “Everything we are telling you will lodge in your memory bank. Which parts become available to your conscious mind will, of course, depend on your development. The point of emphasis is that
hooommm
is a zone in response to the ego mode, but it is also part of a larger process which, at this point, remains beyond your ken. This is a partial understanding of the actual meaning of existence. Someday, your understanding may be complete.”

And then in an instant, the particle people were gone. Vano felt himself whisked away at unimaginable speed, surrounded once again by the darkness and the flashing laser beams.

Awake and alert in the aftermath of this cosmic downhill, he rolled onto his side in the hospital bed. There were strong vibrations to rattle the cage of this tenuous consciousness. His hospital room seemed pellucid with an orange haze. Even so, he could make out clearly the two women seated near the window, wearing salmon hospital smocks.

He was looking at them, but immersed in crossword puzzles, they failed to notice his brand-new body language. Vano's
hooommm
was still a dull roar, and the two women seemed so far away. “I think I've been someplace,” he announced in a loud voice.

The startled women turned to look. “Did you say something? Are you awake?”

Vano repeated it, after a pause: “I think I've been someplace.”