Rays and Sundry Beasts, A True Accounting of the Great Trading of Men

By my troth, I have seen many strange things since I woke in this bright and roaring age, but never before have I seen a man traded the way a lord trades a milk cow, and I confess it has left me shaken past the telling of it, though tell it I must, for that is the labor set before me.

The criers of the realm — and there are many criers now, for every man seems to carry a small glowing tablet upon which criers speak without ceasing — have announced that the Tampa Bay Rays, who I am given to understand are a company of men sworn to a banner same as any lord's retinue, have acquired unto themselves one Freddy Peralta, lately of the Milwaukee Brewers, through what the criers call a "trade." I have turned this word over in my head as a miller turns grain, and I confess I do not have the learning to say what manner of goods change hands in such a bargain. In my village, when the reeve traded a man, it was a bondsman traded for a plough-ox or three bushels of good barley, and the man traded had no more say in it than the ox did. I am told this is not quite so here, that Master Peralta is no bondsman and that some manner of coin, or perhaps other men, or perhaps merely a promise written upon parchment, passed between the two lords in exchange for him. I do not fully credit this. A man is a man and a cow is a cow, and yet here we are, and I set it down true because that is my office, even where my understanding fails me, which it does constantly and without shame.

I am told Master Peralta is what they call a "pitcher," which by the sound of it should be a vessel for holding ale or milk, and indeed I spent a good long while at the start of my watching this day searching the field for such a vessel, thinking perhaps the whole contest turned upon who could fill it fastest, as at a village fair. I did not find the vessel. I found instead a man standing alone upon a small mound of raised dirt, apart from his fellows, glowering at another man crouched some distance off holding up strange signs with his fingers, the way a leper might signal from beyond the village bounds. I took this mound for a sort of pulpit, and the pitcher for a sort of wandering friar, delivering some manner of small round sermon to the man crouching, who received it either in silence or by striking it away with a club, depending on his humor. I could make neither head nor tail of why this was repeated so many times, save that repetition is itself a kind of prayer, and perhaps that is the whole of the rite.

I will say this plainly: bowling was much in evidence at this contest, or so I believe, for there was a great deal of throwing and a great deal of swinging of clubs at the thing thrown, and twice — twice! — I am certain I saw a man strike the ball so true and so far that he was made to run the whole compass of the field and return to whence he started, which any honest man would call a home run, and a fine splendid one at that, and I cheered myself hoarse for it though the crowd around me seemed strangely muted, as if this were an everyday marvel to them and not the miracle it plainly was. Perhaps they are simply a people made numb by wonders, the way a smith grows deaf to his own hammer.

But I confess, good reader, that the contest itself held my eye but poorly compared to the wonders arrayed about it. There was a man — and here is a marvel worth ten of any pitcher — pushing a little wheeled stall from which he sold what I can only describe as meat packed tight into a pale trencher of bread, no knife, no trencher of wood, no grace said over it that I could hear, and folk simply seized these meat-tubes with bare hands and devoured them standing, walking, even mid-roar, as though starvation itself pursued them through the stands. I watched this vendor a full quarter of an hour, transfixed, while behind him — I am told — some manner of decisive blow was struck in the contest proper. I did not see it. I was watching the meat-tube man. I do not regret this. A serf must know his priorities, and mine that day were meat-tubes.

There was also a great painted ox, or some beast fashioned to resemble one, who danced upon two legs and embraced small children and tended, so far as I could discern, absolutely nothing — no field, no herd, no plough — and yet was cheered with a warmth I have not seen given to any honest working beast in all my days tilling the lord's land. I do not begrudge him the cheering. I only note, as a man who has walked behind a real ox through real mud, that this one has the easier post.

And then, God be good, there came a moment — I swear this upon the bones of the parish saint — when every man upon the field seemed to walk backward at once, retracing steps already taken, the great glowing tapestry of numbers behind them flickering and re-showing what had already passed, as though time itself had been made to repeat a stitch it had dropped. I have no word for this but witchcraft, and I set it down as witchcraft, and I invite any wiser man to correct me, though I doubt one shall, for I do not know who reads these dispatches nor whether they read them at all.

Of the trade itself — the true matter I was sent to report — I can say only this, and I say it as truly as I am able: the man Peralta has been given over from one company of men to another, the Brewers releasing him unto the Rays, and I am told this is accounted a matter of some weight among those who follow such things closely, the way a good harvest or a poor one is weighed among us. Whether he pitches well ale or sermons or small round prayers from his mound, I cannot say, for I did not stay to see him do it in his new livery. The light was going. The meat-tube man had sold his last tube and wheeled his stall away, and something in me went with him.

I must away now, for the field wants tending and I have tarried too long among ox-dancers and meat-tubes, and there is no one but me to see to the turnips before the frost takes them.

— Hodge o' the Field, watching still, understanding little, God keep you