The Natural (8 page)

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Authors: Bernard Malamud

BOOK: The Natural
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As Roy hung up there was a loud dum-diddy-um-dum on the door and Bump Baily in a red-flowered Hollywood shirt breezed in.
“Hiya, buster. Saw you pull in with the old geezer and tracked you down. I would like for you to do me a favor.”
“Roy is the name.”
“Roy is fine. Listen, I got my room on the fourth floor, which is a damn sight classier than this mouse trap. I would like you to borrow it and I will borrow this for tonight.”
“What's the pitch?”
“I am having a lady friend visit me and there are too many nosy people on my floor.”
Roy considered and said okay. He unconsciously wet his lips.
Bump slapped him between the shoulders. “Stick around, buster, you will get yours.”
Roy knew he would never like the guy.
Bump told him his room number and they exchanged keys, then Roy put a few things into his valise and went downstairs.
Coming along the fourth floor hall he saw a door half open and figured this was it. As he pulled the knob he froze, for there with her back to him stood a slim, redheaded girl in black panties and brassiere. She was combing her hair before a mirror on the wall as the light streamed in around her through the billowy curtains. When she saw him in the mirror she let out a scream. He stepped back as if he had been kicked in the face. Then the door slammed and he had a splitting headache.
Bump's room was next door so Roy went in and lay down on the bed, amid four purple walls traced through with leaves flying among white baskets of fruit, some loaded high and some spilled over. He lay there till the pain in his brain eased.
At 6:30 he went down and met Red, in a droopy linen suit, and they had steaks in a nearby chophouse. Roy had two and plenty of mashed potatoes. Afterwards they walked up Fifth Avenue. He felt better after the meal.
“Want to see the Village?” Red said.
“What's in it?”
Red picked his teeth. “Beats me. Whatever they got I can't find it. How about a picture?”
Roy was agreeable so they dropped into a movie. It was a picture about a city guy who came to the country, where he had a satisfying love affair with a girl he met. Roy enjoyed it.
As they walked back to the hotel the night was soft and summery. He thought about the black-brassiered girl in the next room.
Red talked about the Knights. “They are not a bad bunch of players, but they aren't playing together and it's mostly Bump's fault. He is for Bump and not for the team. Fowler, Schultz, Hinkle, and Hill are all good pitchers and could maybe be fifteen or twenty game winners if they got some support in the clutches, which they don't, and whatever Bump gives them in hitting he takes away with his lousy fielding.”
“How's that?”
“He's just so damn lazy. Pop has thrown many a fine and suspension at him, but after that he will go into a slump on purpose and we don't win a one. If I was Pop I'da had his ass long ago, but Pop thinks a hitter like him could be a bell cow and lead the rest ahead, so he keeps hoping he will reform. If we could get the team rolling we'd be out of the cellar in no time.”
They were approaching the hotel and Roy counted with his eyes up to the fourth floor and watched the curtains in the windows.
“I read Scotty's report on you,” Red said. “He says you are a terrific hitter. How come you didn't start playing when you were younger?”
“I did but I flopped.” Roy was evasive.
Red cringed. “Don't say that word around here.”
“What word?”
“Flopped—at least not anywhere near Pop. He starts to cry when he hears it.”
“What for?”
“Didn't you ever hear about Fisher's Flop?”
“Seems to me I did but I am not sure.”
Red told him the story. “About forty years ago Pop was the third sacker for the old Sox when they got into their first World Series after twenty years. They sure wanted to take the
flag that year but so did the Athletics, who they were playing, and it was a rough contest all the way into the seventh game. That one was played at Philly and from the first inning the score stood at 3-3, until the Athletics drove the tie-breaker across in the last of the eighth. In the ninth the Sox's power was due up but they started out bad. The leadoffer hit a blooper to short, the second struck out, and the third was Pop. It was up to him. He let one go for a strike, then he slammed a low, inside pitch for a tremendous knock.
“The ball sailed out to deep center,” Red said, “where the center fielder came in too fast and it rolled through him to the fence and looked good for an inside-the-park homer, or at least a triple. Meanwhile, Pop, who is of course a young guy at this time, was ripping around the bags, and the crowd was howling for him to score and tie up the game, when in some crazy way as he was heading for home, his legs got tangled under him and he fell flat on his stomach, the living bejesus knocked out of him. By the time he was up again the ball was in the catcher's glove and he ran up the baseline after Pop. In the rundown that followed, the third baseman tagged him on the behind and the game was over.”
Red spat into the street. Roy tried to say something but couldn't.
“That night Fisher's Flop, or as they mostly call it, ‘Fisher's Famous Flop,' was in every newspaper in the country and was talked about by everybody. Naturally Pop felt like hell. I understand that Ma Fisher had the phone out and hid him up in the attic. He stayed there two weeks, till the roof caught fire and he had to come out or burn. After that they went to Florida for a vacation but it didn't help much. His picture was known to all and wherever he went they yelled after him, ‘Flippity-flop, flippity-flop.' It was at this time that Pop lost his hair. After a while people no longer recognized him, except on the ball field, yet though the kidding died down, Pop was a marked man.”
Roy mopped his face. “Hot,” he said.
“But he had his guts in him,” Red said, “and stayed in the game for ten years more and made a fine record. Then he retired from baseball for a couple of years, which was a good thing but he didn't know it. Soon one of Ma's rich relatives died and left them a pile of dough that Pop used to buy himself a half share of the Knights. He was made field manager and the flop was forgotten by now except for a few wise-egg sportswriters that, when they are too drunk to do an honest day's work, would raise up the old story and call it Fisher's Fizzle, or Farce, or Fandango—you wouldn't guess there are so many funny words beginning with an f—which some of them do to this day when the Knights look foolish. The result is that Pop has the feeling he has been jinxed since the time of his flop, and he has spent twenty-five years and practically all of his pile trying to break the jinx, which he thinks he can do by making the Knights into the world champs that the old Sox never did become. Eight times he has finished in second place, five in third, and the rest in fourth or fifth, but last season when the Judge bought into the club and then took advantage of Pop's financial necessity to get hold of ten per cent of his shares and make himself the majority stockholder, was our worst season. We ended up in the sewer and this year it looks like a repeat.”
“How come?”
“The Judge is trying to push Pop out of his job although he has a contract to manage for life—that's what the Judge had to promise to get that ten per cent of stock. Anyway, he's been trying everything he can think of to make things tough for Pop. He has by his sly ways forced all sorts of trades on us which make money all right but hurt the team. It burns me up,” Red said, “because I would give my right arm if I could get Pop the pennant. I am sure that if he took one and the Series after that, he would feel satisfied, quit baseball, and live in peace. He is one helluva white guy and deserves
better than he got. That's why I am asking you to give him the best you have in you.”
“Let him play me,” Roy said, “and he will get the best.”
In the lobby Red said he had enjoyed Roy's company and they should eat together more. Before he left he warned Roy to be careful with his earnings. They weren't much, he knew, but if in the future Roy had a chance to invest in something good, he advised him to do so. “There is a short life in baseball and we have to think of the future. Anything can happen to you in this game. Today you are on top and tomorrow you will be on your way out to Dubuque. Try to protect your old age. It don't pay to waste what you earn.”
To his surprise, Roy answered, “To hell with my old age. I will be in this game a long time.”
Red rubbed his chin. “How are you so sure?”
“It wasn't for nothing it took me fifteen years to get here. I came for more than the ride and I will leave my mark around here.”
Red waited to hear more but Roy shut up.
Red shrugged, “Well, each to their choice.”
Roy said good night and went upstairs. Entering Bump's room, he picked up a gilt hairpin from the carpet and put it into his wallet because some claimed it brought luck. For a while he stood at the window and watched the lit Empire State Building. It was a great big city, all right. He undressed, thinking of Pop's flop that changed his whole life, and got into bed.
In the dark the bed was in motion, going round in wide, sweeping circles. He didn't like the feeling so he lay deathly still and let everything go by—the trees, mountains, states. Then he felt he was headed into a place where he did not want to go and tried urgently to think of ways to stop the bed. But he couldn't and it went on, a roaring locomotive now, screaming into the night, so that he was tensed and sweating and groaned aloud why did it have to be me? what did I do
to deserve it? seeing himself again walking down the long, lonely corridor, carrying the bassoon case, the knock, the crazy Harriet (less and more than human) with the shiny pistol, and him, cut down in the very flower of his youth, lying in a red pool of his own blood.
No, he cried, oh no, and lashed at his pillow, as he had a thousand times before.
Finally, as the sight of him through the long long years of suffering faded away, he quieted down. The noise of the train eased off as it came to a stop, and Roy found himself set down in a field somewhere in the country, where he had a long and satisfying love affair with this girl he had seen in the picture tonight.
He thought of her till he had fallen all but deep asleep, when a door seemed to open in the mind and this naked redheaded lovely slid out of a momentary flash of light, and the room was dark again. He thought he was still dreaming of the picture but the funny part of it was when she got into bed with him he almost cried out in pain as her icy hands and feet, in immediate embrace, slashed his hot body, but there among the apples, grapes, and melons, he found what he wanted and had it.
A
t the clubhouse the next morning the unshaven Knights were glum and redeyed. They moved around listlessly and cursed each step. Angry fist fights broke out among them. They were sore at themselves and the world, yet when Roy came in and headed for his locker they looked up and watched with interest. He opened the door and found his new uniform knotted up dripping wet on a hook. His sanitary socks and woolen stockings were slashed to shreds and all the other things were smeared black with shoe polish. He located his jock, with two red apples in it, swinging from a cord attached to the light globe, and both his shoes were nailed to the ceiling. The boys let out a bellow of laughter. Bump just about doubled up howling, but Roy yanked the wet pants off the hook and caught him with it smack in the face. The players let out another yowl.
Bump comically dried himself with a bath towel, digging deep into his ears, wiping under the arms, and shimmying as he rubbed it across his fat behind.
“Fast guesswork, buster, and to show you there's no hard feelings, how's about a Camel?”
Roy wanted nothing from the bastard but took the cigarette because everyone was looking on. When he lit it, someone in the rear yelled, “Fire!” and ducked as it burst in Roy's face. Bump had disappeared. The players fell into each other's arms. Tears streamed down their cheeks. Some of them could not unbend and limped around from laughing so.
Roy flipped the ragged butt away and began to mop up his wet locker.
Allie Stubbs, the second baseman, danced around the room in imitation of a naked nature dancer. He pretended to discover a trombone at the foot of a tree and marched around blowing oompah, oompah, oompah.
Roy then realized the bassoon case was missing. It startled him that he hadn't thought of it before.
“Who's got it, boys?”—but no one answered. Allie now made out like he was flinging handfuls of rose petals into the trainer's office.
Going in there, Roy saw that Bump had broken open the bassoon case and was about to attack Wonderboy with a hacksaw.
“Lay off of that, you goon.”
Bump turned and stepped back with the bat raised. Roy grabbed it and with a quick twist tore it out of his sweaty hands, turning him around as he did and booting him hard with his knee. Bump grunted and swung but Roy ducked. The team crowded into the trainer's office, roaring with delight.
But Doc Casey pushed his way through them and stepped between Roy and Bump. “That'll do, boys. We want no trouble here. Go on outside or Pop will have your hides.”
Bump was sweaty and sore. “You're a lousy sport, alfalfa.”
“I don't like the scummy tricks you play on people you have asked for a favor,” Roy said.
“I hear you had a swell time, wonderboy.”
Again they grappled for each other, but Doc, shouting for help, kept them apart until the players pinned Roy's arms and held on to Bump.
“Lemme at him,” Bump roared, “and I will skin the skunk.”
Held back by the team, they glared at one another over the trainer's head.
“What's going on in there?” Pop's shrill blast came from inside the locker room. Earl Wilson poked his grayhaired,
sunburned head in and quickly called, “All out, men, on the double.” The players scurried past Pop and through the tunnel. They felt better.
Dizzy hustled up a makeshift rig for Roy. He dressed and polished his bat, a little sorry he had lost his temper, because he had wanted to speak quietly to the guy and find out whether he was expecting the redhead in his room last night.
Thinking about her made him uneasy. He reported to Pop in the dugout.
“What was that trouble in there between Bump and you?” Pop asked.
Roy didn't say and Pop got annoyed. “I won't stand for any ructions between players so cut it out or you will find yourself chopping wood back in the sticks. Now report to Red.”
Roy went over to where Red was catching Chet Schultz, today's pitcher, and Red said to wait his turn at the batting cage.
The field was overrun with droopy players. Half a dozen were bunched near the gate of the cage, waiting to be pitched to by Al Fowler, whom Pop had ordered to throw batting practice for not bearing down in the clutches yesterday. Some of the men were at the sidelines, throwing catch. A few were shagging flies in the field, a group was playing pepper. On the line between home and first Earl Wilson was hacking out grounders to Allie Stubbs, Cal Baker at short, Hank Benz, the third baseman, and Emil Lajong, who played first. At the edge of the outfield, Hinkle and Hill, two of the regular starters, and McGee, the reliefer, were doing a weak walk-run-walk routine. No one seemed to be thoroughly awake, but when Roy went into the batting cage they came to life and observed him.
Fowler, a southpaw, was in a nasty mood. He didn't like having his ears burned by Pop, called a showboat in front of the other men, and then shoved into batting practice the day
after he had pitched. Fowler was twenty-three but looked thirty. He was built rangy, with very light hair and eyelashes, and small blue eyes. As a pitcher he had the stuff and knew it, but all season long he had been erratic and did a great amount of griping. He was palsy with Bump, who as a rule had no friends.
When Roy came up with Wonderboy, he hugged the plate too close to suit Fowler, who was in there anyway only to help the batters find their timing. In annoyance Fowler pitched the ball at Roy's head. Roy hit the dirt.
Pop shrieked, “Cut that out, you blasted fool.” Fowler mumbled something about the ball slipping. Yet he wanted to make Roy look silly and burned the next one in. Roy swung and the ball sailed over the right field fence. Red-faced, Fowler tried a hard, sharp-breaking curve. Roy caught it at the end of his bat and pulled it into the left field stands.
“Try this one, grandpa.” Fowler flung a stiff-wrist knuckler that hung in the air without spin before it took a sudden dip, but Roy scooped it up with the stick and lifted it twenty rows up into the center field stands. Then he quit. Fowler was scowling at his feet. Everybody else stared at Roy.
Pop called out, “Lemme see that bat, son.”
Both he and Red examined it, hefting it and rubbing along the grain with their fingers.
“Where'd you get it?” Pop asked.
Roy cleared his throat. He said he had made it himself.
“Did you brand this name Wonderboy on it?”
“That's right.”
“What's it mean?”
“I made it long ago,” Roy said, “when I was a kid. I wanted it to be a very good bat and that's why I gave it that name.”
“A bat's cheap to buy,” Red said.
“I know it but this tree near the river where I lived was split by lightning. I liked the wood inside of it so I cut me out a
bat. Hadn't used it much until I played semipro ball, but I always kept it oiled with sweet oil and boned it so it wouldn't chip.”
“Sure is white. Did you bleach the wood?”
“No, that's the true color.”
“How long ago d'you make it?” Pop asked.
“A long time—I don't remember.”
“Whyn't you get into the game then?”
Roy couldn't answer for a minute. “I sorta got sidetracked.”
But Pop was all smiles. “Red'll measure and weigh it. If there's no filler and it meets specifications you'll be allowed to use it.”
“There's nothing in it but wood.”
Red clapped him on the back. “I feel it in my bones that you will have luck with it.” He said to Pop, “Maybe we can start Roy in the line-up soon?”
Pop said they would see how it worked out.
But he sent Roy out to left field and Earl hit fungos to him all over the lot. Roy ran them down well. He took one shot over his shoulder and two caroming off the wall below the stands. His throwing was quick, strong, and bull's eye.
When Bump got around to his turn in the cage, though he did not as a rule exert himself in practice, he now whammed five of Fowler's fast pitches into the stands. Then he trotted out to his regular spot in the sun field and Earl hit him some long flies, all of which he ran for and caught with gusto, even those that went close to the wall, which was unusual for him because he didn't like to go too near it.
Practice picked up. The men worked faster and harder than they had in a long time. Pop suddenly felt so good, tears came to his eyes and he had to blow his nose.
 
In the clubhouse about an hour and a half before game time, the boys were sitting around in their underwear after showers.
They were bulling, working crossword puzzles, shaving and writing letters. Two were playing checkers, surrounded by a circle of others, and the rest were drinking soda, looking at the
Sporting News
, or just resting their eyes. Though they tried to hide it they were all nervous, always glancing up whenever someone came into the room. Roy couldn't make sense of it.
Red took him around to meet some of the boys and Roy spoke a few words to Dave Olson, the squat catcher, also to the shy Mexican center fielder, Juan Flores, and to Gabby Laslow, who patrolled right field. They sidestepped Bump, sitting in front of his locker with a bath towel around his rump, as he worked a red thread across the yellowed foot of a sanitary sock.
“Changes that thread from sock to sock every day,” Red said in a low voice. “Claims it keeps him hitting.”
As the players began to get into clean uniforms, Pop, wearing halfmoon specs, stepped out of his office. He read aloud the batting order, then flipping through his dog-eared, yellow-paged notebook he read the names of the players opposing them and reminded them how the pitchers were to pitch and the fielders field them. This information was scribbled all over the book and Pop had to thumb around a lot before he had covered everybody. Roy then expected him to lay on with a blistering mustard plaster for all, but he only glanced anxiously at the door and urged them all to be on their toes and for gosh sakes get some runs.
Just as Pop finished his pep talk the door squeaked open and a short and tubby man in a green suit peeked in. Seeing they were ready, he straightened up and entered briskly, carrying a briefcase in his hand. He beamed at the players and without a word from anybody they moved chairs and benches and arranged themselves in rows before him. Roy joined the rest, expecting to hear some kind of talk. Only Pop and the
coaches sat behind the man, and Dizzy lounged, half open-mouthed, at the door leading to the hall.
“What's the act?” Roy asked Olson.
“It's Doc Knobb.” The catcher looked sleepy.
“What's he do?”
“Pacifies us.”
The players were attentive, sitting as if they were going to have their pictures snapped. The nervousness Roy had sensed among them was all but gone. They looked like men whose worries had been lifted, and even Bump gave forth a soft grunt of contentment.
The doctor removed his coat and rolled up his shirtsleeves. “Got to hurry today,” he told Pop, “got a polo team to cheer up in Brooklyn.”
He smiled at the men and then spoke so softly, at first they couldn't hear him. When he raised his voice it exuded calm.
“Now, men,” he purred, “all of you relax and let me have your complete attention. Don't think of a thing but me.” He laughed, brushed a spot off his pants, and continued. “You know what my purpose is. You're familiar with that. It's to help you get rid of the fears and personal inferiorities that tie you into knots and keep you from being aces in this game. Who are the Pirates? Not supermen, only mortals. What have they got that you haven't got? I can't think of a thing, absolutely not one. It's the attitude that's licking you —your own, not the Pirates'. What do you mean to yourselves? Are you a flock of bats flying around in a coffin, or the sun shining calmly on a blue lake? Are you sardines being swallowed up in the sea, or the whale that does the swallowing? That's why I'm here, to help you answer that question in the affirmative, to help you by mesmerism and autosuggestion, meaning you do the suggesting, not I. I only assist by making you receptive to your own basic thoughts. If you think you are winners, you will be. If you don't, you won't. That's psychology.
That's the way the world works. Give me your whole attention and look straight into my eyes. What do you see there? You see sleep. That's right, sleep. So relax, sleep, relax …”
His voice was soft, lulling, peaceful. He had raised his pudgy arms and with stubby fingers was making ripples on a vast calm sea. Already Olson was gently snoring. Flores, with the tip of his tongue protruding, Bump, and some of the other players were fast asleep. Pop looked on, absorbed.
Staring at the light gleaming on Pop's bald bean, Roy felt himself going off … way way down, drifting through the tides into golden water as he searched for this lady fish, or mermaid, or whatever you called her. His eyes grew big in the seeking, first fish eyes, then bulbous frog eyes. Sailing lower into the pale green sea, he sought everywhere for the reddish glint of her scales, until the water became dense and dark green and then everything gradually got so black he lost all sight of where he was. When he tried to rise up into the light he couldn't find it. He darted in all directions, and though there were times he saw flashes of her green tail, it was dark everywhere. He threshed up a storm of luminous bubbles but they gave out little light and he did not know where in all the glass to go.

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