“You filthy scum, I hate your guts and always have since the day you murdered Bump.”
Her finger tightened on the trigger but when he came very close she sobbed aloud and thrust the muzzle into her mouth. He gently took the gun from her, opened the cylinder, and shook the cartridges into his palm. He pocketed them and again dumped the gun into the basket.
She was sobbing hysterically as he left.
Going down the tower stairs he fought his overwhelming self-hatred. In each stinking wave of it he remembered some disgusting happening of his life.
He thought, I never did learn anything out of my past life, now I have to suffer again.
When he hit the street he was exhausted. He had not shaved, and a black beard gripped his face. He felt old and grimy.
He stared into faces of people he passed along the street but nobody recognized him.
“He coulda been a king,” a woman remarked to a man.
At the corner near some stores he watched the comings and goings of the night traffic. He felt the insides of him beginning to take off (chug chug choo choo …). Pretty soon they were in fast flight. A boy thrust a newspaper at him. He wanted to say no but had no voice. The headline screamed, “Suspicion of Hobbs’s Sellout—Max Mercy.” Under this was a photo Mercy had triumphantly discovered, showing Roy on his back, an obscene bullet imbedded in his gut. Around him danced a naked lady: “Hobbs at nineteen.”
And there was also a statement by the baseball commissioner. “If this alleged report is true, that is the last of Roy Hobbs in organized baseball. He will be excluded from the game and all his records forever destroyed.”
Roy handed the paper back to the kid.
“Say it ain’t true, Roy.”
When Roy looked into the boy’s eyes he wanted to say it wasn’t but couldn’t, and he lifted his hands to his face and wept many bitter tears.
By Bernard Malamud
THE NATURAL
THE ASSISTANT
THE MAGIC BARREL
A NEW LIFE
IDIOTS FIRST
THE FIXER
PICTURES OF FIDELMAN
THE TENANTS
REMBRANDT’S HAT
DUBIN’S LIVES
GOD’S GRACE
THE PEOPLE AND UNCOLLECTED
STORIES
THE COMPLETE STORIES
Copyright © 1952, renewed 1980 by Bernard Malamud Introduction copyright © 2003 by Kevin Baker
All rights reserved
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
18 West 18th Street, New York 10011
www.fsgbooks.com
eISBN 9781466805033
First eBook Edition : November 2011
Originally published in 1952 by Farrar, Straus and Cudahy
This Farrar, Straus and Giroux paperback edition, 2003
Library of Congress Control Number: 2003104942
Paperback ISBN- 13: 978-0-374-50200-3
Paperback ISBN-10: 0-374-50200-5
The Natural Page 23