The Natural

by Бернард Маламуд

  The sun hid behind the clouds for the most part. The day was chilly, football weather, but the stands were decorated with colored bunting, the flags on the grandstand roof rode high in the breeze and the crowd was raucous. The PA man tried to calm them but they were packed together too tight to be peaceful, for the Judge had sold hundreds of extra tickets and the standees raced for any seat that was vacant for a second. Besides, the Knights’ fans were jumpy, their nerves ragged from following the ups and downs of the team. Some glum-face gents bitterly cursed Roy out, calling him welsher, fool, pig-horse for eating himself into that colossal bellyache. But he had his defenders, who claimed the Big Man’s body burned food so fast he needed every bit he ate. They blamed the damage on ptomaine. The accusers wanted to know why no one else at the party had come down sick. They were answered where would the Knights be without Roy — at the bottom of the heap. The one who spoke got a rap on the ear for his trouble. The rapper was grabbed by a cop, run down the catwalk, and pitched into the rotunda. Yet though the fans were out of sorts and crabbing at each other, they presented a solid front when it came to laying bets. Many pessimistically shook their heads, but they counted up the seven straight wins over the Pirates, figured in that Hobbs was back, and reached into their pockets. Although there were not too many Pirate rooters around, the bets were quickly covered for every hard-earned buck.

  Otto Zipp was above all this. He sat like a small mountain behind the rail in short left, reading the sports page of his newspaper. He looked neither right nor left, and if somebody tried to talk to him Otto gave him short shrift. Then when they least expected it, he would honk his horn and cry out in shrill tones, “Throw him to the hawks.” After that he went back to the sports page.

  When the players began drifting into the clubhouse they were surprised to see Roy there. He was wearing his uniform and slowly polishing Wonderboy. The boys said hello and not much more. Flores looked at his feet. Some of them were embarrassed that they hadn’t gone to see him in the hospital. Secretly they were pleased he was here. Allie Stubbs even began to kid around with Olson. Roy thought they would not act so chipper if they knew he felt weak as piss and was dreading the game. The Judge was absolutely crazy to pay him thirty-five grand not to hit when he didn’t feel able to even lift a stick. He hoped Pop would guess how shaky he was and bench him. What a laugh that would be on the Judge — serve the bastard right. But when Pop came in, he didn’t so much as glance in Roy’s direction. He walked straight into his office and slammed the door, which suited Roy fine.

  Pop had ordered everybody kept out of the clubhouse until after the game but Mercy weaseled in. All smiles, he approached Roy, asking for the true story of what went on at the party that night, but Red Blow saw him and told him to stay outside. Max had tried the same act in the hospital last week. The floor nurse caught him sneaking toward Roy’s room and had him dropped out on the front steps. After leaving the clubhouse Max sent in a note, inviting Roy to come out and make a statement. People were calling him a filthy coward and what did he intend to say to that? Roy gave out a one-word unprintable reply. Mercy shot in a second note. “You’ll get yours — M.M.” Roy tore it up and told the usher to take no more slop from him.

  Pop poked his baldy out of his door and called for Roy. The players looked around uneasily. Roy got up and finally went into the office. For an insufferable time Pop failed to speak. He was unshaven, his face exuding gray stubble that made him look eighty years old. His thin frame seemed shrunken and his left eye was a little crossed with fatigue. Pop leaned back in his creaking swivel chair, staring with tears in his eyes over his half moons at the picture of Ma on his desk. Roy examined his fingernails.

  Pop sighed, “Roy, it’s my own fault.”

  It made Roy edgy. “What is?”

  “This mess that we are now in. I am not forgetting I kept you on the bench for three solid weeks in June. If I hadn’t done that foolish thing we’da finished the season at least half a dozen games out in front.”

  Roy offered no reply.

  “But your own mistake was a bad one too.”

  Roy nodded.

  “A bad one, with the team right on top of hooking the pennant.” Pop shook his head. Yet he said he wouldn’t blame Roy too much because it wasn’t entirely of his own doing. He then apologized for not coming to see him in the hospital. He had twice set out to but felt too grumpy to be fit company for a sick man, so he hadn’t come. “It’s not you that I am mad at, Roy — it’s that blasted Memo. I shoulda pitched her out on her ass the first day she showed up at my door.”

  Roy got up.

  “Sit down.” Pop bent forward. “We can win today.” His cold breath smelled bad. Roy drew his head back.

  “Well, we can, can’t we?”

  He nodded.

  “What’s the matter with you?”

  “I feel weak,” Roy said, “and I am not betting how I will hit today.”

  Pop’s voice got kindly again. “I say we can win it whichever way you feel. Once you begin to play you will feel stronger. And if the rest of those birds see you hustling they will break their backs to win. All they got to feel is there is somebody on this team who thinks they can.”

  Pop then related a story about a rookie third baseman he once knew, a lad named Mulligan. He was a fine hitter and thrower but full of hard luck all his life. Once he was beaned at the plate and had his skull cracked. He returned for spring practice the following year and the first day out he crashed into another fielder and broke his arm. On the return from that he was on first running to second on a hit and run play and the batter smacked the ball straight at him, breaking two ribs and dislocating a disc in his spine. After that he quit baseball, to everybody’s relief.

  “He was just unlucky,” Pop said, “and there wasn’t a thing anybody could do to take the whammy off of him and change his hard luck. You know, Roy, I been lately thinking that a whole lot of people are like him, and for one reason or the other their lives will go the same way all the time, without them getting what they want, no matter what. I for one.”

  Then to Roy’s surprise he said he never hoped to have a World Series flag. Pop swiveled his chair closer. “It ain’t in the cards for me — that’s all. I am wise to admit it to myself. It took a long time but I finally saw which way the arrow has been pointing.” He sighed deeply. “But that don’t hold true about our league pennant, Roy. That’s the next best thing and I feel I am entitled to it. I feel if I win it just this once — I will be satisfied. I will be satisfied, and win or lose in the Series, I will quit baseball forever.” He lowered his voice. “You see what it means to me, son?”

  “I see.”

  “Roy, I would give my whole life to win this game and take the pennant. Promise me that you will go in there and do your damndest.”

  “I will go in,” Roy sighed.

  After the practice bell had rung, when he reluctantly climbed up out of the dugout and shoved himself toward the batting cage with his bat in his hand, as soon as the crowd got a look at him the boo birds opened up, alternating with shrill whistles and brassy catcalls. Roy hardened his jaws, but then a rumble erupted that sounded like bubbling tubfuls of people laughing and sobbing. The noise grew to a roar, boiled over, and to his astonishment, drowned out the disapprovers in an ovation of cheering. Men flung their hats into the air, scaling straws and limp felts, pounded each other’s skulls, and cried themselves hoarse. Women screeched and ended up weeping. The shouting grew, piling reverberation upon reverberation, till it reached blast proportions. When it momentarily wore thin, Sadie Sutter’s solemn gong could be heard, but as the roar rose again, the gonging grew faint and died in the distance. Roy felt feverish. The applause was about over when he removed his cap to clean the sweat off his brow, and once more thunder rolled across the field, continuing in waves as he entered the cage. With teeth clenched to stop the chattering, he took three swipes at the ball, driving each a decent distance. At Pop’s urging he also went out onto the field
to shag some flies. Again the cheers resounded, although he wished they wouldn’t. He speared a few flies in his tracks, dropped his glove and walked to the dugout. The cheers trailed him in a foaming billow, but above the surflike roar and the renewed tolling of Sadie’s gong, he could hear Otto Zipp’s shrill curses. The dwarf drew down on his head a chorus of hisses but thumbed his cherry nose as Roy passed by. Roy paid him no heed whatsoever, infuriating Otto.

  The Pirates flipped through their practice and the game began. Pop had picked Fowler to start for the Knights. Roy figured then that he knew who was in this deal with him. Leave it to the Judge to tie the bag in the most economical way — with the best hitter and pitcher. He had probably asked Pop who he was intending to pitch and then went out and bought him, though no doubt paying a good deal less than the price Roy was getting. What surprised and shocked him was that Fowler could be so corrupt though so young and in the best of health. If he only had half the promise of the future Fowler had, he would never have dirtied his paws in this business. However, as he watched Fowler pitch during the first inning he wasn’t certain he was the one. His fast ball hopped today and he got rid of the first two Pirates with ease. Maybe he was playing it cagey first off, time would tell. Roy’s thoughts were broken up by the sound, and echo behind him, of the crack of a bat. The third man up had taken hold of one and it was arcing into deep left. Already Flores was hot footing it in from center. It occurred to Roy that although he had promised the Judge he wouldn’t hit, he had made no commitments as to catching them. Waving Flores aside, he ran several shaky steps and made a throbbing stab at the ball, spearing it on the half run for the third out. As he did so he noticed a movement up in the tower window and saw the Judge’s stout figure pressed against the window. He then recollected he hadn’t seen Memo since Saturday.

  To nobody’s surprise, Dutch Vogelman went to the mound for the Pirates. In a few minutes it was clear to all he was working with championship stuff, because he knocked the first three Knights off without half trying, including Flores, who was no easy victim. Roy had no chance to bat, for which he felt relieved. But after Fowler had also rubbed out the opposition, he was first up in the second inning. As he dragged Wonderboy up to the plate, the stands, after a short outburst, were hushed. Everybody remembered the four homers he had got off Vogelman the last time he had faced him. In the dugout Pop and the boys were peppering it up for him to give the ball a big ride, and so were Red Blow and Earl Wilson, on the baselines. What they didn’t know was that Roy had been struck giddy with weakness. His heart whammed like a wheezing steam engine, his head felt nailed to a pole, his eardrums throbbed as if he were listening to the bottom of the sea, and his arms hung like dead weights. It was with the greatest effort that he raised Wonderboy. As he was slowly getting set, he sneaked a cautious glance up at the tower, and it did not exactly surprise him that Memo, still in black, was standing at the window next to theJudge, blankly gazing down at him. Anyway, he knew where she was now.

  Vogelman had been taking his time. For a pitcher he was a comparatively short duck, with a long beak, powerful arms and legs, red sleeves leaking out of a battered jersey, and a nervous delivery. Despite the fact that he had ended the regular season as a twenty-five game winner, he worried to bursting beads of sweat at the thought of pitching to Roy. Every time he recalled those four gopher balls, one after the other landing in the stands, he cringed with embarrassment. And he knew, although there was nobody on base at the moment, that if he served one of them up now, it could conceivably ice the game for the Knights and louse up the very peak of his year of triumph. So Vogelman delayed by wiping the shine off the ball, inspecting the stitches, fumbling for the resin bag, scuffing his cleats in the dirt, and removing his cap to rub away the sweat he had worked up. When the boos of the crowd got good and loud, Stuffy Briggs bellowed for him to throw and Vogelman reluctantly let go with a pitch.

  The ball was a whizzer but dripping lard. Weak as he felt, Roy had to smile at what he could really do to that baby if he had his heart set on it, but he swung the slightest bit too late, grunting as the ball shot past Wonderboy — which almost broke his wrists to get at it — and plunked in the pocket of the catcher’s glove.

  …Where had she been since Saturday? Sunday was the first day she hadn’t come to the hospital, the day she knew he was getting out of the joint. He had left alone, followed by some reporters he wouldn’t talk to, and had taken a cab to the hotel. Once in his room he got into pajamas, and wondering why she hadn’t at least called him, fell asleep. He had then had this dream of her — seeing her in some city, it looked like Boston — and she didn’t recognize him when they passed but walked on fast in her swaying walk. He chased after her and she was (he remembered) swallowed up in the crowd. But he saw the red hair and followed after that, only it turned out to be a dyed redhead with a mean mouth and dirty eyes. Where’s Memo? he called, and woke thinking she was here in the room, but she wasn’t, and he hadn’t seen her till he located her up there in the tower.

  Roy gazed at the empty bases. Striking out with nobody on was the least harm he could do the team, yet his fingers itched to sock it a little. He couldn’t trust himself to because — who could tell? — it might go over the fence, the way Wonderboy was tugging at his muscles. Vogelman then tried a low-breaking curve that Roy had to “take” for ball one. The pitcher came back with a foolish floater that he pretended to almost break his back reaching after.

  Strike two. There were only three.

  …He was remembering the time his old lady drowned the black torn cat in the tub. It had gotten into the bathroom with her and bit at her bare ankles. She once and for all grabbed the cursed thing and dropped it into the hot tub. The cat fought to get out, but she shrilly beat it back and though it yowled mournfully, gave it no mercy. Yet it managed in its hysterical cat-way to stay afloat in the scalding water that she bathed in to cut her weight down, until she &hoved its dirty biting head under, from which her hand bled all over. But when the water was drained, and the cat, all glossy wet, with its pink tongue caught between its teeth, lay there dead, the whole thing got to be too much for her and she couldn’t lift it out of the tub.

  He closed his eyes before the next pitch in the hope it would be quickly called against him, but it curved out for a ripe ball two. Opening his lids, he saw Mercy in a nearby seat, gazing at him with a malevolent sneer. You too, Max, Roy thought, tightening his hold on the bat. Vogelman was beginning to act more confident. You too, Vogelman, and he shut his eyes again, thinking how, after that time with Iris on the beach, when they were driving home, she rested her head against his arm. She was frightened, wanted him to comfort her but he wouldn’t. “When will you grow up, Roy?” she said.

  Vogelman blistered across a hot, somewhat high one, not too bad to miss, and that made it three and out. Otto Zipp held his nose and pulled the chain, and Roy, quivering, remained for a few seconds with the stick raised over his head, shriveling the dwarf into the silence and immobility that prevailed elsewhere. He threw Wonderboy aside — some in the front boxes let out a gasp — and returned empty-handed to the bench. The Judge and Memo had gone from the tower window.

  As the Pirates came to bat for their half of the third (there were no Knight hits after Roy struck out) a breeze blew dust all over the place. Some of the fans with nothing better to do were shoveling the rotten fruit and slices of buttered sandwich bread into paper sacks, or kicking it under their seats. Nobody seemed to be hungry and the Stevens boys, despite all their barking, sold only a few hot coffees. Nor was there much talk of the past half inning. A few complained that Roy had never looked so bad — like a sloppy walrus. Others reminded them the game was young yet.

  Neither team scored in either the third or fourth. The way the Knights fanned made Roy wonder if they had all been bought off by the Judge. Yet it didn’t seem likely. He was too stingy. In the fifth came his next turn, again first up, a small break.

  The stands awoke and began a rhythmic clappin
g. “Lift ‘at pill, Roy. Bust its guts. Make it bleed. You can do it, kid.”

  “You can do it,” Pop hollered from the dugout steps.

  With a heavy heart Roy pulled himself up to the plate. He had shooting pains in back muscles that had never bothered him before and a crick in his neck. He couldn’t comfortably straighten up and the weight of Wonderboy crouched him further. But Vogelman, despite Roy’s strikeout, was burdened with worry over what he still might do. He wiped his face with his red sleeve but failed to calm down. By wide margins his first two throws were balls. To help him out, Roy swung under the third pitch. Otto Zipp then let out a string of boos, bahs, and bums, Roy thought he better foul the next one for strike two but Vogelman wouldn’t let him, throwing almost over his head. Remembering he could walk if he wanted to, Roy waited. There was no harm to anybody in that and it would look better for him. The next pitch came in too close, and that was how he got to first and the Judge again to the window. But it made no difference one way or the other, for though Lajong sacrificed him to second, Gabby slashed a high one across the diamond which the second baseman jumped for, and he tagged Roy for an unassisted double play. Nobody could blame him for that, Roy thought, as he headed out to the field. He stole a look back at Pop and the manager was muttering to himself out of loose lips in a bony face. It seemed to Roy he had known the old man all his life long.