The Natural (16 page)

Read The Natural Online

Authors: Bernard Malamud

BOOK: The Natural
6.99Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
Little of this escaped the other Knights. While the going was good they had abandoned this sort of thing, but now that they were on the skids they felt the need of some extra assistance. So Dave Olson renewed his feud with the lady in the brown-feathered hat, Emil Lajong spun his protective backflips, and Flores revived the business with the birds. Clothes were put on from down up, gloves were arranged to point south when the players left the field to go to bat, and everybody, including Dizzy, owned at least one rabbit's foot. Despite these precautions the boys were once more afflicted by bonehead plays—failing to step on base on a simple force, walking off the field with two out as the winning run scored from first, attempting to stretch singles into triples, and fearing to leave first when the ball was good for at least two. And they were not ashamed to blame it all on Roy.
It didn't take the fans very long to grow disgusted with their antics. Some of them agreed it was Roy's fault, for jinxing
himself and the team on his Day by promising the impossible out of his big mouth. Others, including a group of sportswriters, claimed the big boy had all the while been living on borrowed time, a large bag of wind burst by the law of averages. Sadie, dabbing at her eyes with the edge of her petticoat, kept her gong in storage, and Gloria disgustedly swore off men. And Otto Zipp had reappeared like a bad dream with his loud voice and pesky tooter venomously hooting Roy into oblivion. A few of the fans were ashamed that Otto was picking on somebody obviously down, but the majority approved his sentiments. The old-timers began once again to heave vegetables and oddments around, and following the dwarf's lead they heckled the players, especially Roy, calling him everything from a coward to a son of a bitch. Since Roy had always had rabbit ears, every taunt and barb hit its mark. He changed color and muttered at his tormentors. Once in a spasm of weakness he went slowly after a fly ball (lately he had to push himself to catch shots he had palmed with ease before), compelling Flores to rush into his territory to take it. The meatheads rose to a man and hissed. Roy shook his fist at their stupid faces. They booed. He thumbed his nose. “You'll get yours,” they howled in chorus.
He had, a vile powerlessness seized him.
Seeing all this, Pop was darkly furious. He all but ripped the recently restored bandages off his pusing fingers. His temper flared wild and red, his voice tore, he ladled out fines like soup to breadline beggars, and he was vicious to Roy.
“It's that goshdamn bat,” he roared one forenoon in the clubhouse. “When will you get rid of that danged Wonderboy and try some other stick?”
“Never,” said Roy.
“Then rest your ass on the bench.”
So Roy sat out the game on the far corner of the bench, from where he could watch Memo, lovelier than ever in a box up front, in the company of two undertakers, the smiling,
one-eye Gus, and Mercy, catlike contented, whose lead that night would read: “Hobbs is benched. The All-American Out has sunk the Knights into second division.”
 
He woke in the locker room, stretched out on a bench. He remembered lying down to dry out before dressing but he was still wet with sweat, and a lit match over his wristwatch told him it was past midnight. He sat up stiffly, groaned and rubbed his hard palms over his bearded face. The thinking started up and stunned him. He sat there paralyzed though his innards were in flight—the double-winged lungs, followed by the boat-shaped heart, trailing a long string of guts. He longed for a friend, a father, a home to return to—saw himself packing his duds in a suitcase, buying a ticket, and running for a train. Beyond the first station he'd fling Wonderboy out the window. (Years later, an old man returning to the city for a visit, he would scan the flats to see if it was there, glowing in the mud.) The train sped through the night across the country. In it he felt safe. He tittered.
The mousy laughter irritated him. “Am I outa my mind?” He fell to brooding and mumbled, “What am I doing that's wrong?” Now he shouted the question and it boomed back at him off the walls. Lighting matches, he hurriedly dressed. Before leaving, he remembered to wrap Wonderboy in flannel. In the street he breathed easier momentarily, till he suspected someone was following him. Stopping suddenly, he wheeled about. A woman, walking alone in the glare of the street lamp, noticed him. She went faster, her heels clicking down the street. He hugged the stadium wall, occasionally casting stealthy glances behind. In the tower burned a dark light, the Judge counting his shekels. He cursed him and dragged his carcass on.
A cabbie with a broken nose and cauliflower ear stared but did not recognize him. The hotel lobby was deserted. An old elevator man mumbled to himself. The ninth-floor
hall was long and empty. Silent. He felt a driblet of fear … like a glug of water backing up the momentarily opened drain and polluting the bath with a dead spider, three lice, a rat turd, and things he couldn't stand to name or look at. For the first time in years he felt afraid to enter his room. The telephone rang. It rang and rang. He waited for it to stop. Finally it did. He warned himself he was acting like a crazy fool. Twisting the key in the lock, he pushed open the door. In the far corner of the room, something moved. His blood changed to falling snow.
Bracing himself to fight without strength he snapped on the light. A white shadow flew into the bathroom. Rushing in, he kicked the door open. An ancient hoary face stared at him. “Bump!” He groaned and shuddered. An age passed … His own face gazed back at him from the bathroom mirror, his past, his youth, the fleeting years. He all but blacked out in relief. His head, a jagged rock on aching shoulders, throbbed from its rocky interior. An oppressive sadness weighed like a live pain on his heart. Gasping for air, he stood at the open window and looked down at the dreary city till his legs and arms were drugged with heaviness. He shut the hall door and flopped into bed. In the dark he was lost in an overwhelming weakness … I am finished, he muttered. The pages of the record book fell apart and fluttered away in the wind. He slept and woke, finished. All night long he waited for the bloody silver bullet.
 
On the road Pop was in a foul mood. He cracked down on team privileges: no more traveling wives, no signing of food checks—Red dispensed the cash for meals every morning before breakfast—curfew at eleven and bed check every night. But Roy had discovered that the old boy had invited Memo to come along with them anyway. He went on the theory that Roy had taken to heart his advice to stay away from her and
it was making a wreck out of him. Memo had declined the invitation and Pop guiltily kicked himself for asking her.
Roy was thinking about her the morning they came into Chicago and were on their way to the hotel in a cab—Pop, Red, and him. For a time he had succeeded in keeping her out of his thoughts but now, because of the renewed disappointment, she was back in again. He wondered whether Pop was right and she had maybe jinxed him into a slump. If so, would he do better out here, so far away from her?
The taxi turned up Michigan Avenue, where they had a clear view of the lake. Roy was silent. Red happened to glance out the back window. He stared at something and then said, “Have either of you guys noticed the black Cadillac that is following us around? I've seen that damn auto most everywhere we go.”
Roy turned to see. His heart jumped. It looked like the car that had chased them halfway across Long Island.
“Drat 'em,” Pop said. “I fired those guys a week ago. Guess they didn't get my postcard.”
Red asked who they were.
“A private eye and his partner,” Pop explained. “I hired them about a month back to watch the Great Man here and keep him outa trouble but it's a waste of good money now.” He gazed back and fumed. “Those goshdarn saps.”
Roy didn't say anything but he threw Pop a hard look and the manager was embarrassed.
As the cab pulled up before the hotel, a wild-eyed man in shirtsleeves, hairy-looking and frantic, rushed up to them.
“Any of you guys Roy Hobbs?”
“That's him,” Pop said grimly, heading into the hotel with Red. He pointed back to where Roy was getting out of the cab.
“No autographs.” Roy ducked past the man.
“Jesus God, Roy,” he cried in a broken voice. He caught
Roy's arm and held on to it. “Don't pass me by, for the love of God.”
“What d'you want?” Roy stared, suspicious.
“Roy, you don't know me,” the man sobbed. “My name's Mike Barney and I drive a truck for Cudahy's. I don't want a thing for myself, only a favor for my boy Pete. He was hurt in an accident, playin' in the street. They operated him for a broken skull a coupla days ago and he ain't doin' so good. The doctor says he ain't fightin' much.”
Mike Barney's mouth twisted and he wept.
“What has that got to do with me?” Roy asked, white-faced.
The truck driver wiped his eyes on his sleeve. “Pete's a fan of yours, Roy. He got a scrapbook that thick fulla pictures of you. Yesterday they lemme go in and see him and I said to Pete you told me you'd sock a homer for him in the game tonight. After that he sorta smiled and looked better. They gonna let him listen a little tonight, and I know if you will hit one it will save him.”
“Why did you say that for?” Roy said bitterly. “The way I am now I couldn't hit the side of a barn.”
Holding to Roy's sleeve, Mike Barney fell to his knees. “Please, you gotta do it.”
“Get up,” Roy said. He pitied the guy and wanted to help him yet was afraid what would happen if he couldn't. He didn't want that responsibility.
Mike Barney stayed on his knees, sobbing. A crowd had collected and was watching them.
“I will do the best I can if I get the chance.” Roy wrenched his sleeve free and hurried into the lobby.
“A father's blessing on you,” the truck driver called after him in a cracked voice.
Dressing in the visitors' clubhouse for the game that night, Roy thought about the kid in the hospital. He had been thinking of him on and off and was anxious to do something for him. He could see himself walking up to the plate and clobbering
a long one into the stands and then he imagined the boy, healed and whole, thanking him for saving his life. The picture was unusually vivid, and as he polished Wonderboy, his fingers itched to carry it into the batter's box and let go at a fat one.
But Pop had other plans. “You are still on the bench, Roy, unless you put that Wonderboy away and use a different stick.”
Roy shook his head and Pop gave the line-up card to the ump without his name on it. When Mike Barney, sitting a few rows behind a box above third base, heard the announcement of the Knights' line-up without Roy in it, his face broke out in a sickish sweat.
The game began, Roy taking his non-playing position on the far corner of the bench and holding Wonderboy between his knees. It was a clear, warm night and the stands were just about full. The floods on the roof lit up the stadium brighter than day. Above the globe of light lay the dark night, and high in the sky the stars glittered. Though unhappy not to be playing, Roy, for no reason he could think of, felt better in his body than he had in a week. He had a hunch things could go well for him tonight, which was why he especially regretted not being in the game. Furthermore, Mike Barney was directly in his line of vision and sometimes stared at him. Roy's gaze went past him, farther down the stands, to where a young blackhaired woman, wearing a red dress, was sitting at an aisle seat in short left. He could clearly see the white flower she wore pinned on her bosom and that she seemed to spend more time craning to get a look into the Knights' dugout—at him, he could swear—than in watching the game. She interested him, in that red dress, and he would have liked a close gander at her but he couldn't get out there without arousing attention.
Pop was pitching Fowler, who had kept going pretty well during the two dismal weeks of Roy's slump, only he was
very crabby at everybody—especially Roy—for not getting him any runs, and causing him to lose two well-pitched games. As a result Pop had to keep after him in the late innings, because when Fowler felt disgusted he wouldn't bear down on the opposing batters.
Up through the fifth he had kept the Cubs bottled up but he eased off the next inning and they reached him for two runs with only one out. Pop gave him a fierce glaring at and Fowler then tightened and finished off the side with a pop fly and strikeout. In the Knights' half of the seventh, Cal Baker came through with a stinging triple, scoring Stubbs, and was himself driven in by Flores' single. That tied the score but it became untied when, in their part of the inning, the Cubs placed two doubles back to back, to produce another run.
As the game went on Roy grew tense. He considered telling Pop about the kid and asking for a chance to hit. But Pop was a stubborn cuss and Roy knew he'd continue to insist on him laying Wonderboy aside. This he was afraid to do. Much as he wanted to help the boy—and it really troubled him now—he felt he didn't stand a Chinaman's chance at a hit without his own club. And if he once abandoned Wonderboy there was no telling what would happen to him. Probably it would finish his career for keeps, because never since he had made the bat had he swung at a ball with any other.

Other books

A Girl Like You by Maureen Lindley
Woman of Three Worlds by Jeanne Williams
Swift Runs The Heart by Jones, Mary Brock
Ultraviolet by Nancy Bush
Not Without Hope by Nick Schuyler and Jeré Longman
Freedom's Ransom by Anne McCaffrey
Murder.com by Haughton Murphy
Short Stories 1927-1956 by Walter de la Mare