Naylor and the Racing Meats

By my troth, I have watched a fine day of bowling and I understand near none of it, but I set it down true as I saw it, for that is the whole of my charge.

The manor of Milwaukee and the manor of Cleveland did today exchange men, as lords will do when the harvest wants for hands in one field and overflows in another. I am told a man named Bo Naylor has gone to Milwaukee, and a man named Blake Perkins has gone the other way to Cleveland, to stand in the outer pasture where the ball, when struck, goes bounding off toward the fences and must be run down before it reaches the ditch. This much I have on good authority and I will not embellish it, for a serf who lies about the harvest gets no supper. Naylor goes to the Brewers. Perkins goes to the Guardians. It is done, and criers on the great glowing tapestry beyond the field spoke of it with the gravity men usually reserve for a change of king.

I confess the bowling itself wanted my attention less than the din around it, for a man cannot be blamed for marveling first at what is nearest his eye, and what was nearest my eye, for the better part of an hour, was a parade of meats.

They call it, I am told by the man beside me who did not seem troubled to explain it twice, the Great Race of Sausages. I will say plainly: I have seen many strange things since I woke in this shining and thunderous age, the great tapestry of numbers not least among them, but I had not thought to see costumed meats contend against one another for sport before an assembled multitude of thousands, and I do not know that anything since my arrival has moved me so near to tears. A bratwurst, encased head to foot and near as tall as a grown ox, ran the width of the field pursued and harried by a sausage of a different house entirely, the crowd roaring as though the fate of the manor hung upon which meat crossed first. I confess I could not tell you which meat prevailed. I was watching the little ones in the front rows, who screamed with a joy I have not seen since the harvest fires, and I thought: whatever this contest is truly for, it is doing its work.

I am told this meat-race is no part of the bowling, that it happens between the turns of play, a diversion only. I do not credit this. In my experience a lord does not permit an idle spectacle to interrupt the business of the day unless that spectacle is, in some fashion I cannot parse, the business of the day. I set it down as I saw it and let wiser heads than mine sort the wheat from the chaff.

There was, too, a man who came round with a great tray strapped about his neck, crying out something of "cold beer, cold beer" in a voice that carried further than the horn they blow to start the contest. I watched him work the crowd the length of three benches and thought him the hardest-laboring soul on the grounds, harder even than the men swinging the long clubs, for he neither rested between rows nor complained of it, and I honored him for it, though I could not tell you his name nor which manor claims him.

Of the bowling proper, here is what I saw and what I am told is true, and I will keep to it faithfully. A man stands upon a small mound of dirt raised up like a burial barrow and hurls a hard white ball at great speed toward another man holding a club, who must strike it or let it pass, and there is much argument among the officials as to whether a pitch that passed was fair or foul, settled by a fourth man crouched low behind who calls it as he sees it and is not gainsaid. When the club connects true, the ball flies out over the heads of the men in the pasture and sometimes clean over the fence entire, and this, I am given to understand, is called a home run, and the striker walks a slow and stately circuit of four stone markers set in the earth like the corners of a fallow field, and is cheered the whole way as though he had ridden home from a crusade. It happened twice while I watched, and both times the great tapestry lit up with fire and numbers I could not read, and a song was played that seemed to please everyone greatly, though I know it not.

There was also a beast. I must set this down though I fear I shall not be believed. Between the turns a great furred creature, taller than any man, walked among the benches embracing children and striking poses for those who held up their small glowing tablets to capture its likeness. It did not speak. It did not labor. It simply was, and the crowd loved it without reservation, and I confess I do not understand what manner of creature it is meant to be nor what work it does for its keep, but I have decided I love it too, and I hope it is fed well and kindly, wherever such beasts sleep at night.

The trading of Naylor and Perkins, when at last the criers returned to it, was spoken of as a shrewd bargain for both houses — Milwaukee gaining a young man skilled in receiving the hard-thrown ball behind the striker, Cleveland gaining a swift man for the outer pasture where such speed is dear. I am told both houses judged themselves the wiser for the exchange, which I have found is generally true of any two lords who trade men, each certain he kept the better half of the herd. I wish both men well in their new fields. It cannot be an easy thing, to wake one morning tending one lord's ground and by evening tend another's, though I suppose I know something of waking somewhere I did not expect to be.

I did not understand the greater part of what I saw today. I did not understand why the meats raced, nor what the beast was, nor why the man with the tray was cheered nearly as loud as the strikers, nor why the tapestry burst into fire each time the ball cleared the fence. But I understood the roaring, and the roaring was glad, and a glad crowd is a good sign in any age, mine or this one. I have written it all down as faithfully as a serf's poor learning allows, and left the sorting of wheat from chaff to better minds than my own.

The light is going and I am wanted elsewhere — there is a field past this field that will not tend itself, and it does not care what became of Bo Naylor.

— Hodge, watching still, understanding little, God be good to us all