God's Kingdom by Howard Frank Mosher Page A

Kingdom Common and Kingdom Landing. There were two outs and the Common was behind by a run, with Jim Kinneson on first base and his cousin Job “Moose” Kinneson, the team’s cleanup hitter, at bat. Everyone’s attention was riveted on the game so nobody saw exactly where Mike had come from. There he was, moseying in past the hometown bleachers along the first-base line as though he’d just fallen out of the sky.
    The Landing’s closer, a raw-boned logger with a frighteningly errant fastball, had just brushed Moose back from the plate with a head-high pitch six inches inside. Moose was a good-natured giant, but as Jim’s older brother, Charlie, had told him, beware the wrath of a patient man. He pointed the business end of his forty-inch Louisville Slugger at the pitcher. “Don’t do that again, old son,” he said.
    The pitcher went into his stretch. He checked Jim, who had a shorter lead than usual, and no intention of taking the bat out of the hands of his team’s best hitter by getting picked off. That’s when Jim’s dad, Editor Kinneson, umping behind the plate, spotted Mike.
    â€œTime, gentlemen!” The editor threw up his hands and stepped out from behind the catcher. He pointed at the three-quarters-grown bull moose, now standing near the Outlaws’ on-deck circle as if waiting for his turn to bat.
    â€œWhy, looky there,” Moose said. “It’s a moose.”
    From the bleachers, laughter. Charlie liked to refer to Job Kinneson as the master of the obvious. At six-six and two hundred and forty pounds, Moose was the best long-ball hitter in the league. He owned a small dairy farm on the county road, just outside the village. Weekends he filled in as an auxiliary deputy sheriff at local events requiring the presence of a police officer. The master of the obvious could take the air out of a dance-hall slugfest just by walking through the door.
    Moose had a tiny, loud wife from Maine, known in the Common as Mrs. Moose, and five large, loud daughters, ranging in age from six to twelve, whom he referred to as “the gals.” Mrs. Moose and the gals never missed one of Moose’s home games. When Mike showed up on the green, they were perched in the bucket loader on the front of Moose’s green John Deere farm tractor next to the first-base bleachers, rooting for their father to bust one into the street in front of the brick shopping block and win the game.
    â€œYou gals stay put,” Moose called over to them. To the moose he said, “Keep off the playing field, young fella. We’ve got a ball game to finish here.”
    As Moose liked to put it, he had a way with critters. When someone in the Kingdom found an orphaned beaver kit or an injured fawn, they’d bring it to him to raise. He knew how to heal hawks with broken wings. Once he adopted a motherless bear cub. When it nipped off his left index finger at the middle knuckle during a play fight, he gave it to the Quebec provincial zoo across the border.
    Moose pointed at Mike with his abbreviated forefinger. “Stay,” he said.
    Mike, for his part, knelt down on his front legs, as moose will sometimes do in a hay field, and began to crop the short grass near the first-base coaching box.
    â€œGood moose,” Moose said. Then he stepped back into the batter’s box and poled the next pitch over the bandstand in deep center field for a game-winning home run.
    No gloater, Moose ducked his head and started around the bases with his eyes on the ground. As he jogged toward first, the gals swarmed him. They clung to his legs and scrambled onto his shoulders, shrieking joyously. Just behind them came Mike, ambling along and from time to time giving Moose an encouraging reef with its modest set of antlers. Jim crossed home plate, where the team had gathered to greet him and Moose, then ran for his reporter’s camera in the dugout. His shot of Moose rounding third base