From out of his supply cabinet, Zack resignedly fetches two twenty-inch-long steel troughs. Gingerly, he slips T.K.’s drug-deadened arm into first one and then the other so the arm is completely encased in metal. He snaps the two troughs together. He pumps a quantity of crushed foam through a series of plugs positioned in the cast at two-inch intervals. By mouth, he inflates two plastic sacks running the cast’s inside length. The sacks and foam will cushion a fair percentage of the impact T.K.’s arm will undergo. Certainly not all. The cast is meant to afford mediocre protection, nothing more. T.K.’s injuries are bound to be aggravated. Even T.K. has no illusions about that. Finished inflating the sacks, Zack sets about the laborious task of taping the entire contraction immobile to T.K.’s side.

Coach Carrerra returns. “Hey, what’s going on here? T.K., you’re in no condition to…”

“I’m going back in,” T.K. states flatly. “How are the Minutemen doing for numbers?”

Automatically, before he can absorb the full implications of T.K.’s statement, the coach answers. “Orval and Gus have been going wild. The Minutemen only have three actives left. Same as us.”

“Matision?”

“Yes, him, Bumbo Johnson, and their mediman.”

“They still got their bullet?”

“No. They used it to get Clausen.”

“We still got ours?”

Coach Carrerra nods. Filled with reservations as to the wisdom of T.K.’s decision, he makes one last attempt to dissuade him. “Don’t go back in there. I’m your coach. I want to win this one as much as you do, but there comes a time when the only logical thing to do is to hang up your horse. This game is as good as lost. Let’s think about next year, instead. Save yourself for the future. There’s no way you can do us any good out there, T.K.”

“Oh, but there is,” T.K. responds, “more good than you’ll ever know.”

His arm taped securely to his side, T.K. hops off the table. Leaning heavily on Zack for support, T.K. staggers out to the street.

Monday, December 6, 2010

A zealous proponent of the theory that adequate anticipation is the basis of successful manipulation, Pierce Spencer rarely leaves any aspect of his dealings to chance. Every alternative available to him is catalogued, itemized, placed in its proper perspective, chosen or discarded. The survivors are ruminated, modified and polished. When they achieve perfection, when they are clearly incontestable in their infinite superiority, they are doled out to appropriate functionaries, there to be implemented without so much as the slightest alteration.