“Please give a big Knights welcome to retired major general Jackie ‘Jackpot’ Collins!” The PA announcer sounded like he was calling a kid’s birthday party. “General Collins served thirty-five years in the army and the Agency, deploying multiple times across the globe for America. She’s been decorated for valor under enemy fire in Vietnam and Beirut! Praise to the Victors!” Scattered applause emerged from the bleachers. “She’s now running for Senate with the American Sacrifice Party.”
I can’t even, Mia thought. Service. Not sacrifice. How do you get that wrong?
“Go General Jackpot! Go Knights!”
Mia joined the other staffers in the box and clapped. More scattered applause emerged from the bleachers. She watched a woman below yawn into her pretzel. Three rows beyond, an overweight man struggled with a divider so he could get into his seat. Across the way, a pair of early twentysomethings kissed like the other had a lemon drop wedged in the throat.
The military called people like this citizens. Politics knew them as voters.
General Collins reached the mound and began kicking at the dirt, like the consultant had showed her. A large, milk-brown mitt enveloped her left hand and wrist. The general was a rightie with little physical grace. Mia had spent the previous two afternoons in a parking lot near campaign headquarters, helping the general practice. The throws had improved, in fits and starts, though not before a dented car and an upset feral cat. They’d considered tabling the pitch until the spring but couldn’t be certain the chance would still be there. Odd as it was, a militia of disaffected veterans seizing their inaugural had helped American Service’s reputation.
Or American Sacrifice. As the people prefer, Mia thought.
A round, smiley young Knight trotted out to shake the general’s hand, then took his position behind home plate. General Collins stared into his mitt like it had violated a direct order. She rocked her body back then forward, and slingshotted her arm out and away. It was more push shot than throw, but it’s what had worked in the parking lot.
It did not work on the field.
Mia held her breath as the ball dropped ten feet in front of home plate, dribbling to a leaky halt. Someone behind her cursed. Anyone in the crowd bothering to pay attention shrugged, as did the round, smiley Knight, who began jogging toward the general with the ball in tow.
General Collins raised her mitt. No self-conscious smile dared speckle her now. She remained unmoved and pounded into the mitt with her free hand. She said something to the player, who asked her to repeat it.
She wanted the baseball again.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. This didn’t happen, as far as Mia or anyone else in the box knew. But with the general refusing to move, ironic encouragement rose up from the crowd. They’d seen plenty of poor first pitches before, but they’d never seen anyone demand a second try. They loved it, or were at least amused by it, and when the Knight threw back the baseball, genuine cheers broke out at Knights Stadium for the first time in months.
General Collins stared deep into the catcher’s mitt. She rocked her body back. She rocked her body forward. She slingshotted her arm out and away.
This throw was a rocket, though an errant one, sailing well beyond the outstretched glove of the young Knight.
The general raised her mitt again, pounding her hand into it. The player rose from his crouch, no longer grinning, and looked to the edges of the field, hoping for intervention. Then the crowd started up.
“Jack-Pot.” The refrain began somewhere behind first base, where a group of day-drinking frat boys had taken nest. “Jack-Pot!” It moved through the crowd like an electric current. General Collins remained on the mound, unmoved, mitt raised, calling yet again for the ball.
She got it again. The crowd stood en masse now, shouting, whistling, chanting. “Jack-Pot! Jack-Pot! Jack-Pot!”
General Collins stared into the player’s mitt once more. She rocked her body back. She rocked her body forward. She slingshotted her arm, out and away.
The ball fired into the Knight’s mitt like a bullet. A perfect throw. A perfect strike. As the fans reached fever pitch and the players trotted out to shake her hand, General Collins raised a fist to the sky.
It’d all gone as planned. Someday Mia hoped to anticipate this precisely. To form stakes from nothingness. That more than anything impressed her. The act of creation from a void. The triumph of will over expectation.
* * *
Mia left after the second inning for midtown, citing a meeting. In the subway station, just beyond the body scanners, she passed a cluster of wanted posters. Veteran Zero had been hospitalized and arrested after being shot in the ballroom—by Sebastian, of all people—but he was only a lieutenant. The true leader of the Mayday Front remained at large. Jonah Gray’s mug shot leered at her, long, sloped chin and cloudy eyes seeming to rise from the grainy black-and-white photograph. He looked like someone Mia had once known. From her youth? From the army? It pricked at her, like a hangnail, but try as she might, she couldn’t place him.
“Should be considered armed and extremely dangerous,” the posters read in big red print. “If you have any information concerning Jonah Gray, please call 911 or your local Bureau office.”
Her fiancé still spent most of his waking hours at a local Bureau office, the hunt for Jonah Gray his everything. They’d been able to sneak away for dinner the week before, their first date in weeks. In a taxi home, he’d pulled her over to him, wrapping his arms around her body, an open smile and a distant, starry look gobbling up his face.
“Can’t promise I’ll be much more than mediocre,” Jesse had said. “But you’re going to be an incredible mother.”
Her tell? She’d poured herself a small glass of wine but hadn’t touched it.
He hadn’t asked, he hadn’t prodded. He’d just figured it out, and was overjoyed. Jesse’s reaction contrasted so sharply with her own that she’d almost resented him for it. Then he started talking names and Mia let herself get lost in his enthusiasm. By the time they fell asleep that night, Mia had decided she’d be one of those moms who loved her own child fiercely while remaining indifferent to children as a whole. That seemed doable. An incredible mother? She doubted that. Would an incredible mother have needed to super-fly her child from a ballroom to get away from gunfire? No. An incredible parent wouldn’t have put them in that position to begin with.
Semper Gumby, she’d reminded herself. I can do this. I will do this.
The general’s campaign headquarters lay in the northern reaches of midtown, a prewar walk-up shaped like a loaf of bread, close enough to Asian Harlem that they used it as a media talking point. They’d occupied the third floor, above an agency that represented professional animals and below a comedy website geared toward college students. It was a long way from Wall Street. On her first day, Mia had shared an elevator with a golden retriever in a cardigan and a degenerate Santa.
A man in rags sat in front of the building, head between his knees. Mia first took him for a maven addict but as she neared the entrance he looked up, his eyes both clear and probing.
“With the campaign?” he asked. His voice was lucid, too.
Mia nodded.
“Where’s the general on the colonies?”