The Natural

by Bernard Malamud

  Vogelman glanced at Allie edging into a lead again, kicked, and threw almost in desperation. Roy swung from his cleats.

  Thunder crashed. The pitcher stuffed his maimed fingers into his ears. His eyes were blinded. Pop rose and crowed himself hoarse. Otto Zipp, carrying a dark lump on his noodle, cowered beneath the ledge. Some of the fans had seen lightning, thought it was going to rain, and raised their coat collars. Most of them were on their feet, raving at the flight of the ball. Allie had raced in to score, so had Flores, and Roy was heading into second, when the umpire waved them all back. The ball had landed clearly foul. The fans groaned in shuddering tones.

  Wonderboy lay on the ground split lengthwise, one half pointing to first, the other to third.

  The Knights’ bat boy nervously collected both the pieces and thrust a Louisville Slugger into Roy’s limp hand. The crowd sat in raw silence as the nerveless Vogelman delivered his next pitch. It floated in, perfect for pickling, but Roy failed to lift the bat.

  Lajong, who followed, also struck out.

  With the Knights back in the field, Fowler quickly gave up a whacking triple to the first Pirate hitter. This was followed by a hard double, and almost before any of the stunned fans could realize it, the first run of the game was in. Pop bounced off the bench as if electrocuted and signaled the bullpen into hot activity. Red Blow sauntered out to the mound to quiet Fowler down but Fowler said he was all right so Red left.

  The next Pirate laced a long hopper to left. The shouting of the crowd woke Roy out of his grief for Wonderboy. He tore in for the ball, made a running jab for it and held it. With an effort he heaved to third, holding both runners to one bag. He knew now he was right about Fowler. The pitcher had pulled the plug. Roy signaled time and drifted in to talk to him. Both Red and Dave Olson also walked forward for a mound conference but Roy waved them back. As he approached the dark-faced Fowler, he saw the Judge up at the window, puffing his cigar.

  Roy spoke in a low voice. “Watch out, kid, we don’t want to lose the game.”

  Fowler studied him craftily. “Cut the crap, big shot. A lotta winning you been doing.”

  “Throw the ball good,” Roy advised him.

  “I will, when you start hitting it.”

  “Listen,” Roy said patiently. “This might be my last season in the game for I am already thirty-five. You want it to be yours?”

  Fowler paled. “You wouldn’t dare open your trap.”

  “Try something funny again and you will see.”

  Fowler turned angrily away. The fans began to whistle and stamp. “Set ’em up,” called Stuffy Briggs. Roy returned to left but after that, Fowler somehow managed to keep the next two men from connecting, and everybody said too bad that Roy hadn’t given him that pep talk after the first hit. Some of the fans remarked had anybody noticed that Roy had thumbed his nose up to the tower at the end of the inning?

  Every time Vogelman put Roy away, he felt infinitely better, consequently his pitching improved as the game progressed. Though he was surprised in the eighth to have Gabby Laslow touch him for a sharp single, he forced Olson to pop to short, Benz to line to him, and Fowler obliged by biting at three gamey ones for the last out. Counting up who he would have to throw to in the ninth, Vogelman discovered that if he got Stubbs, Baker, and the more difficult Flores out, there would be no Roy Hobbs to pitch to. The idea so excited him he determined to beat his brains out trying. Fowler, on the other hand, despite Roy’s good advice to him, got sloppier in his throwing, although subtly, so that nobody could be sure why, only his support was a whole lot better than he had hoped for, and neither of the first two Pirates up in the ninth, though they had walloped the ball hard, could land on base. Flores, the Mexican jumping bean, had nailed both shots. The third Pirate then caught a juicy pitch and poled out a high looping beauty to left, but Roy, running back—back—back, speared it against the wall. Though he was winded and cursed Fowler through his teeth, he couldn’t help but smile, picturing the pitcher’s disgust. And he felt confident that the boys would hold him a turn at bat and he would destroy Vogelman and save the game, the most important thing he ever had to do in his life.

  Pop, on the other hand, was losing hope. His hands trembled and his false teeth felt like rocks in his mouth, so he plucked them out and dropped them into his shirt pocket. Instead of Allie, he called Ed Simmons to pinch hit, but Vogelman, working with renewed speed and canniness, got Ed to hit a soft one to center field. Pop swayed on the bench, drooling a little out of the corners of his puckered mouth. Red was a ghost, even his freckles were pale. The stands were shrouded in darkening silence. Baker spat and approached the plate. Remembering he hadn’t once hit safely today, Pop called him back and substituted Hank Kelly, another pinch hitter.

  Vogelman struck him out. He dried his mouth on his sleeve, smiling faintly to himself for the first time since the game began. One more—the Mex. To finish him meant slamming the door on Hobbs, a clean shut-out, and tomorrow the World Series. The sun fell back in the sky and a hush hung like a smell in the air. Flores, with a crazed look in his eye, faced the pitcher. Fouling the first throw, he took for a ball, and swung savagely at the third pitch. He missed. Two strikes, there were only three … Roy felt himself slowly dying. You died alone. At least if he were up there batting … The Mexican’s face was lit in anguish. With bulging eyes he rushed at the next throw, and cursing in Spanish, swung. The ball wobbled crazily in the air, took off, and leaped for the right field wall. Running as though death dogged him, Flores made it, sliding headlong into third. Vogelman, drained of his heart’s blood, stared at him through glazed eyes.

  The silence shattered into insane, raucous noise.

  Roy rose from the bench. When he saw Pop searching among the other faces, his heart flopped and froze. He would gladly get down on his knees and kiss the old man’s skinny, crooked feet, do anything to get up there this last time. Pop’s haunted gleam settled on him, wavered, traveled down the line of grim faces … and came back to Roy. He called his name.

  Up close he had black rings around his eyes, and when he spoke his voice broke.

  “See what we have come to, Roy.”

  Roy stared at the dugout floor. “Let me go in.”

  “What would you expect to do?”

  “Murder it.”

  “Murder which?”

  “The ball—I swear.”

  Pop’s eyes wavered to the men on the bench. Reluctantly his gaze returned to Roy. “If you weren’t so damn busy gunning fouls into the stands that last time, you woulda straightened out that big one, and with three scoring, that woulda been the game.”

  “Now I understand why they call them fouls.”

  “Go on in,” Pop said. He added in afterthought, “Keep us alive.”

  Roy selected out of the rack a bat that looked something like Wonderboy. He swung it once and advanced to the plate. Flores was dancing on the bag, beating his body as if it were burning, and jabbering in Spanish that if by the mercy of St. Christopher he was allowed to make the voyage home from third, he would forever after light candles before the saint.

  The blank-faced crowd was almost hidden by the darkness crouching in the stands. Home plate lay under a deepening dusty shadow but Roy saw things with more light than he ever had before. A hit, tying up the game, would cure what ailed him. Only a homer, with himself scoring the winning run, would truly redeem him.

  Vogelman was contemplating how close he had come to paradise. If the Mex had missed that pitch, the game would now be over. All night long he’d’ve felt eight foot tall, and when he got into bed with his wife, she’d’ve given it to him the way they do to heroes.

  The sight of his nemesis crouched low in the brooding darkness around the plate filled him with fear.

  Sighing, he brought himself, without conviction, to throw.

  “Bo-ool one.”

  The staring faces in the stands broke into a cry that stayed till the end of the game.

  Vogelman was drenched
in sweat. He could have thrown a spitter without half trying but didn’t know how and was afraid to monkey with them.

  The next went in cap high.

  “Eee bo-ool.”

  Wickitt, the Pirate manager, ambled out to the mound.

  “S’matter, Dutch?”

  “Take me outa here,” Vogelman moaned.

  “What the hell for? You got that bastard three times so far and you can do it again.”

  “He gives me the shits, Walt. Look at him standing there like a goddamn gorilla. Look at his burning eyes. He ain’t human.”

  Wickitt talked low as he studied Roy. “That ain’t what I see. He looks old and beat up. Last week he had a mile-high bellyache in a ladies’ hospital. They say he could drop dead any minute. Bear up and curve ’em low. I don’t think he can bend to his knees. Get one strike on him and he will be your nookie.”

  He left the mound.

  Vogelman threw the next ball with his flesh screaming.

  “Bo-ool three.”

  He sought for Wickitt but the manager kept his face hidden.

  In that case, the pitcher thought, I will walk him. They could yank him after that—he was a sick man.

  Roy was also considering a walk. It would relieve him of responsibility but not make up for all the harm he had done. He discarded the idea. Vogelman made a bony steeple with his arms. Gazing at the plate, he found his eyes were misty and he couldn’t read the catcher’s sign. He looked again and saw Roy, in full armor, mounted on a black charger. Vogelman stared hard, his arms held high so as not to balk. Yes, there he was coming at him with a long lance as thick as a young tree. He rubbed his arm across his eyes and keeled over in a dead faint.

  A roar ascended skywards.

  The sun slid behind the clouds. It got cold again. Wickitt, leaning darkly out of the dugout, raised his arm aloft to the center field bullpen. The boy who had been pitching flipped the ball to the bullpen catcher, straightened his cap, and began the long trek in. He was twenty, a scrawny youth with light eyes.

  “Herman Youngberry, number sixty-six, pitching for the Pirates.”

  Few in the stands had heard of him, but before his long trek to the mound was finished his life was common knowledge. He was a six-footer but weighed a skinny one fifty-eight. One day about two years ago a Pirate scout watching him pitching for his home town team had written on a card, “This boy has a fluid delivery of a blinding fast ball and an exploding curve.” Though he offered him a contract then and there, Youngberry refused to sign because it was his lifelong ambition to be a farmer. Everybody, including the girl he was engaged to, argued him into signing. He didn’t say so but he had it in mind to earn enough money to buy a three hundred acre farm and then quit baseball forever. Sometimes when he pitched, he saw fields of golden wheat gleaming in the sun.

  He had come to the Pirates on the first of September from one of their class A clubs, to help in the pennant drive. Since then he’d worked up a three won, two lost record. He’d seen what Roy had done to Vogelman the day he hit the four ’ homers, and just now, and wasn’t anxious to face him. After throwing his warm-ups he stepped off the mound and looked away as Roy got back into the box.

  Despite the rest he had had, Roy’s armpits were creepy with sweat. He felt a bulk of heaviness around his middle and that the individual hairs on his legs and chest were bristling.

  Youngberry gazed around to see how they were playing Roy. It was straightaway and deep, with the infield pulled back too. Flores, though hopping about, was on the bag. The pitcher took a full wind-up and became aware the Knights were yelling dirty names to rattle him.

  Roy had considered and decided against a surprise bunt. As things were, it was best to take three good swings.

  He felt the shadow of the Judge and Memo fouling the air around him and turned to shake his fist at them but they had left the window.

  The ball lit its own path.

  The speed of the pitch surprised Stuffy Briggs and it was a little time before he could work his tongue free.

  “Stuh-rike.”

  Roy’s nose was full of the dust he had raised.

  “Throw him to the pigs,” shrilled Otto Zipp.

  If he bunted, the surprise could get him to first, and Flores home for the tying run. The only trouble was he had not much confidence in his ability to bunt. Roy stared at the kid, trying to hook his eye, but Youngberry wouldn’t look at him. As Roy stared a fog blew up around the young pitcher, full of old ghosts and snowy scenes. The fog shot forth a snaky finger and Roy carefully searched under it for the ball but it was already in the catcher’s mitt.

  “Strike two.”

  “Off with his head,” Otto shrieked.

  It felt like winter. He wished for fire to warm his frozen fingers. Too late for the bunt now. He wished he had tried it. It would have caught them flatfooted.

  Pop ran out with a rabbit’s foot but Roy wouldn’t take it. He would never give up, he swore. Flores had fallen to his knees on third and was imploring the sky.

  Roy caught the pitcher’s eye. His own had blood in them. Youngberry shuddered. He threw—a bad ball—but the batter leaped at it.

  He struck out with a roar.

  Bump Baily’s form glowed red on the wall. There was a wail in the wind. He feared the mob would swarm all over him, tear him apart, and strew his polluted remains over the field, but they had vanished. Only O. Zipp climbed down out of his seat. He waddled to the plate, picked up the bat and took a vicious cut at something. He must’ve connected, because his dumpy bow legs went like pistons around the bases. Thundering down from third he slid into the plate and called himself safe.

  Otto dusted himself off, lit a cigar and went home.

  When it was night he dragged the two halves of the bat into left field, and with his jackknife cut a long rectangular slash into the turf and dug out the earth. With his hands he deepened the grave in the dry earth and packed the sides tight. He then placed the broken bat in it. He couldn’t stand seeing it in two pieces so he removed them and tried squeezing them together in the hope they would stick but the split was smooth, as if the bat had willed its own brokenness, and the two parts would not stay together. Roy undid his shoelaces and wound one around the slender handle of the bat, and the other he tied around the hitting part of the wood, so that except for the knotted laces and the split he knew was there it looked like a whole bat. And this was the way he buried it, wishing it would take root and become a tree. He poured back the earth, carefully pressing it down, and replaced the grass. He trod on it in his stocking feet, and after a last long look around, walked off the field. At the fountain he considered whether to carry out a few handfuls of water to wet the earth above Wonderboy but they would only leak through his fingers before he got there, and since he doubted he could find the exact spot in the dark he went down the dugout steps and into the tunnel.

  He felt afraid to go in the clubhouse and so was glad the lights were left on with nobody there. From the looks of things everybody had got their clothes on and torn out. All was silence except the drip drop of the shower and he did not want to go in there. He got rid of his uniform in the soiled clothes can, then dressed in street clothes. He felt something thick against his chest and brought out a sealed envelope. Tearing it open, he discovered a package of thousand dollar bills. He had never seen one before and here were thirty-five. In with the bills was a typewritten note: “The contract will have to wait. There are grave doubts that your cooperation was wholehearted.” Roy burned the paper with a match. He considered burning the bills but didn’t. He tried to stuff them into his wallet. The wad was too thick so he put them back in the envelope and slipped it into his pocket.

  The street was chill and its swaying lights, dark. He shivered as he went to the corner. At the tower he pulled himself up the unlit stairs.

  The Judge’s secretary was gone but his private door was unlocked so Roy let himself in. The office was pitch black. He located the apartment door and stumbled up the narr
ow stairs. When he came into the Judge’s overstuffed apartment, they were all sitting around a table, the redheaded Memo, the Judge with a green eyeshade over his black wig, and the Supreme Bookie, enjoying a little cigar. They were counting piles of betting slips and a mass of bills. Memo was adding the figures with an adding machine.

  Gus got up quickly when he saw Roy. “Nice goin’, slugger,” he said softly. Smiling, he advanced with his arm extended. “That was some fine show you put on today.”

  Roy slugged the slug and he went down in open-mouthed wonder. His head hit the floor and the glass eye dropped out and rolled into a mousehole.

  Memo was furious. “Don’t touch him, you big bastard. He’s worth a million of your kind.”

  Roy said, “You act all right, Memo, but only like a whore.”

  “Tut,” said the Judge.

  She ran to him and tried to scratch his eyes but he pushed her aside and she fell over Gus. With a cry she lifted the bookie’s head on her lap and made mothering noises over him.

  Roy took the envelope out of his pocket. He slapped the Judge’s wig and eyeshade off and showered the thousand dollar bills on his wormy head.

  The Judge raised a revolver.

  “That will do, Hobbs. Another move and I shall be forced to defend myself.”

  Roy snatched the gun and dropped it in the wastebasket. He twisted the Judge’s nose till he screamed. Then he lifted him onto the table and pounded his back with his fists. The Judge made groans and pig squeals. With his foot Roy shoved the carcass off the table. He hit the floor with a crash and had a bowel movement in his pants. He lay moaning amid the betting slips and bills.

  Memo had let Gus’s head fall and ran around the table to the basket. Raising the pistol, she shot at Roy’s back. The bullet grazed his shoulder and broke the Judge’s bathroom mirror. The glass clattered to the floor.

  Roy turned to her.

  “Don’t come any nearer or I’ll shoot.”

  He slowly moved forward.