The Natural Page 4

  “And he has won that award three times—what was it?”

  “The Most Valuable Player.” He had a panicky feeling he was losing her to the Whammer.

  She bit her lip. “Yet you defeated him,” she murmured.

  He admitted it. “He won’t last much longer I don’t think—the most a year or two. By then he’ll be too old for the game. Myself, I’ve got my whole life ahead of me.”

  Harriet brightened, saying sympathetically, “What will you hope to accomplish, Roy?”

  He had already told her but after a minute remarked, “Sometimes when I walk down the street I bet people will say there goes Roy Hobbs, the best there ever was in the game.”

  She gazed at him with touched and troubled eyes. “Is that all?”

  He tried to penetrate her question. Twice he had answered it and still she was unsatisfied. He couldn’t be sure what she expected him to say. “Is that all?” he repeated. “What more is there?”

  “Don’t you know?” she said kindly.

  Then he had an idea. “You mean the bucks? I’ll get them too.”

  She slowly shook her head. “Isn’t there something over and above earthly things—some more glorious meaning to one’s life and activities?”

  “In baseball?”

  “Yes.”

  He racked his brain—

  “Maybe I’ve not made myself clear, but surely you can see (I was saying this to Walter just before the train stopped) that yourself alone—alone in the sense that we are all terribly alone no matter what people say—I mean by that perhaps if you understood that our values must derive from—oh, I really suppose—” She dropped her hand futilely. “Please forgive me. I sometimes confuse myself with the little I know.”

  Her eyes were sad. He felt a curious tenderness for her, a little as if she might be his mother (That bird.) and tried very hard to come up with the answer she wanted—something you said about LIFE.

  “I think I know what you mean,” he said. “You mean the fun and satisfaction you get out of playing the best way that you know how?”

  She did not respond to that.

  Roy worried out some other things he might have said but had no confidence to put them into words. He felt curiously deflated and a little lost, as if he had just flunked a test. The worst of it was he still didn’t know what she’d been driving at.

  Harriet yawned. Never before had he felt so tongue-tied in front of a girl, a looker too. Now if he had her in bed—Almost as if she had guessed what he was thinking and her mood had changed to something more practical than asking nutty questions that didn’t count, she sighed and edged closer to him, concealing the move behind a query about his bassoon case. “Do you play?”

  “Not any music,” he answered, glad they were talking about something different. “There’s a thing in it that I made for myself.”

  “What, for instance?”

  He hesitated. “A baseball bat.”

  She was herself again, laughed merrily. “Roy, you are priceless.”

  “I got the case because I don’t want to get the stick all banged up before I got the chance to use it.”

  “Oh, Roy.” Her laughter grew. He smiled broadly.

  She was now so close he felt bold. Reaching down he lifted the hat box by the string and lightly hefted it.

  “What’s in it?”

  She seemed breathless. “In it?” Then she mimicked, “—Something I made for myself.”

  “Feels like a hat.”

  “Maybe a head?” Harriet shook a finger at him.

  “Feels more like a hat.” A little embarrassed, he set the box down. “Will you come and see me play sometime?” he asked.

  She nodded and then he was aware of her leg against his and that she was all but on his lap. His heart slapped against his ribs and he took it all to mean that she had dropped the last of her interest in the Whammer and was putting it on the guy who had buried him.

  As they went through a tunnel, Roy placed his arm around her shoulders, and when the train lurched on a curve, casually let his hand fall upon her full breast. The nipple rose between his fingers and before he could resist the impulse he had tweaked it.

  Her high-pitched scream lifted her up and twirling like a dancer down the aisle.

  Stricken, he rose—had gone too far.

  Crooking her arms like broken branches she whirled back to him, her head turned so far around her face hung between her shoulders.

  “Look, I’m a twisted tree.”

  Sam had sneaked out on the squirming, apologetic Mercy, who, with his back to the Whammer—he with a newspaper raised in front of his sullen eyes—had kept up a leechlike prodding about Roy, asking where he had come from (oh, he’s just a home town boy), how it was no major league scout had got at him (they did but he turned them down for me) even with the bonus cash that they are tossing around these days (yep), who’s his father (like I said, just an old semipro who wanted awful bad to be in the big leagues) and what, for God’s sake, does he carry around in that case (that’s his bat, Wonderboy). The sportswriter was greedy to know more, hinting he could do great things for the kid, but Sam, rubbing his side where it pained, at last put him off and escaped into the coach to get some shuteye before they hit Chicago, sometime past 1 A.M.

  After a long time trying to settle himself comfortably, he fell snoring asleep flat on his back and was at once sucked into a long dream that he had gone thirsty mad for a drink and was threatening the slickers in the car get him a bottle or else. Then this weasel of a Mercy, pretending he was writing on a pad, pointed him out with his pencil and the conductor snapped him up by the seat of his pants and ran his freewheeling feet lickity-split through the sawdust, giving him the merry heave-ho off the train through the air on a floating trapeze, ploop into a bog where it rained buckets. He thought he better get across the foaming river before it flooded the bridge away so he set out, all bespattered, to cross it, only this queer duck of a doctor in oilskins, an old man with a washable white mustache and a yellow lamp he thrust straight into your eyeballs, swore to him the bridge was gone. You’re plumb tootin’ crazy, Sam shouted in the storm, I saw it standin’ with me own eyes, and he scuffled to get past the geezer, who dropped the light setting the rails afire. They wrestled in the rain until Sam slyly tripped and threw him, and helter-skeltered for the bridge, to find to his crawling horror it was truly down and here he was scratching space till he landed with a splishity-splash in the whirling waters, sobbing (whoa whoa) and the white watchman on the embankment flung him a flare but it was all too late because he heard the roar of the falls below (and restless shifting of the sea) and felt with his red hand where the knife had stabbed him …

  Roy was dreaming of an enormous mountain—Christ, the size of it—when he felt himself roughly shaken—Sam, he thought, because they were there—only it was Eddie holding a lit candle.

  “The fuse blew and I’ve had no chance to fix it.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Trou-ble. Your friend has collapsed.”

  Roy hopped out of the berth, stepped into moccasins and ran, with Eddie flying after him with the snuffed wax, into a darkened car where a pool of people under a blue light hovered over Sam, unconscious.

  “What happened?” Roy cried.

  “Sh,” said the conductor, “he’s got a raging fever.”

  “What from?”

  “Can’t say. We’re picking up a doctor.”

  Sam was lying on a bench, wrapped in blankets with a pillow tucked under his head, his gaunt face broken out in sweat. When Roy bent over him, his eyes opened.

  “Hello, kiddo,” he said in a cracked voice.

  “What hurts you, Sam?”

  “Where the washboard banged me—but it don’t hurt so much now.”

  “Oh, Jesus.”

  “Don’t take it so, Roy. I’ll be better.”

  “Save his strength, son,” the conductor said. “Don’t talk now.”

  Roy got up. Sam shut hi
s eyes.

  The train whistled and ran slow at the next town then came to a draggy halt. The trainman brought a half-dressed doctor in. He examined Sam and straightened up. “We got to get him off and to the hospital.”

  Roy was wild with anxiety but Sam opened his eyes and told him to bend down.

  Everyone moved away and Roy bent low.

  “Take my wallet outa my rear pocket.”

  Roy pulled out the stuffed cowhide wallet.

  “Now you go to the Stevens Hotel—”

  “No, oh no, Sam, not without you.”

  “Go on, kiddo, you got to. See Clarence Mulligan tomorrow and say I sent you—they are expecting you. Give them everything you have got on the ball—that’ll make me happy.”

  “But, Sam—”

  “You got to. Bend lower.”

  Roy bent lower and Sam stretched his withered neck and kissed him on the chin.

  “Do like I say.”

  “Yes, Sam.”

  A tear splashed on Sam’s nose.

  Sam had something more in his eyes to say but though he tried, agitated, couldn’t say it. Then the trainmen came in with a stretcher and they lifted the catcher and handed him down the steps, and overhead the stars were bright but he knew he was dead.

  Roy trailed the anonymous crowd out of Northwest Station and clung to the shadowy part of the wall till he had the courage to call a cab.

  “Do you go to the Stevens Hotel?” he asked, and the driver without a word shot off before he could rightly be seated, passed a red light and scuttled a cripple across the deserted street. They drove for miles in a shadow-infested, street-lamped jungle.

  He had once seen some stereopticon pictures of Chicago and it was a boxed-up ant heap of stone and crumbling wood buildings in a many-miled spreading checkerboard of streets without much open space to speak of except the railroads, stockyards, and the shore of a windy lake. In the Loop, the offices went up high and the streets were jampacked with people, and he wondered how so many of them could live together in any one place. Suppose there was a fire or something and they all ran out of their houses to see—how could they help but trample all over themselves? And Sam had warned him against strangers, because there were so many bums, sharpers, and gangsters around, people you were dirt to, who didn’t know you and didn’t want to, and for a dime they would slit your throat and leave you dying in the streets.

  “Why did I come here?” he muttered and felt sick for home.

  The cab swung into Michigan Avenue, which gave a view of the lake and a white-lit building spiring into the sky, then before he knew it he was standing flatfooted (Christ, the size of it) in front of the hotel, an enormous four-sectioned fortress. He hadn’t the nerve to go through the whirling doors but had to because this bellhop grabbed his things—he wrested the bassoon case loose—and led him across the thick-carpeted lobby to a desk where he signed a card and had to count out five of the wallet’s pulpy dollars for a room he would give up as soon as he found a house to board in.

  But his cubbyhole on the seventeenth floor was neat and private, so after he had stored everything in the closet he lost his nervousness. Unlatching the window brought in the lake breeze. He stared down at the lit sprawl of Chicago, standing higher than he ever had in his life except for a night or two on a mountain. Gazing down upon the city, he felt as if bolts in his knees, wrists, and neck had loosened and he had spread up in height. Here, so high in the world, with the earth laid out in small squares so far below, he knew he would go in tomorrow and wow them with his fast one, and they would know him for the splendid pitcher he was.

  The telephone rang. He was at first scared to answer it. In a strange place, so far from everybody he knew, it couldn’t possibly be for him.

  It rang again. He picked up the phone and listened.

  “Hello, Roy? This is Harriet.”

  He wasn’t sure he had got it right. “Excuse me?”

  “Harriet Bird, silly.”

  “Oh, Harriet.” He had completely forgotten her.

  “Come down to my room,” she giggled, “and let me say welcome to the city.”

  “You mean now?”

  “Right away.” She gave him the room number.

  “Sure.” He meant to ask her how she knew he was here but she had hung up.

  Then he was elated. So that’s how they did it in the city. He combed his hair and got out his bassoon case. In the elevator a drunk tried to take it away from him but Roy was too strong for him.

  He walked—it seemed ages because he was impatient—through a long corridor till he found her number and knocked.

  “Come on in.”

  Opening the door, he was astonished at the enormous room. Through the white-curtained window the sight of the endless dark lake sent a shiver down his spine.

  Then he saw her standing shyly in the far corner of the room, naked under the gossamer thing she wore, held up on her risen nipples and the puffed wedge of hair beneath her white belly. A great weight went off his mind.

  As he shut the door she reached into the hat box which lay open next to a vase of white roses on the table and fitted the black feathered hat on her head. A thick veil fell to her breasts. In her hand she held a squat, shining pistol.

  He was greatly confused and thought she was kidding but a grating lump formed in his throat and his blood shed ice. He cried out in a gruff voice, “What’s wrong here?”

  She said sweetly, “Roy, will you be the best there ever was in the game?”

  “That’s right.”

  She pulled the trigger (thrum of bull fiddle). The bullet cut a silver line across the water. He sought with his bare hands to catch it, but it eluded him and, to his horror, bounced into his gut. A twisted dagger of smoke drifted up from the gun barrel. Fallen on one knee he groped for the bullet, sickened as it moved, and fell over as the forest flew upward, and she, making muted noises of triumph and despair, danced on her toes around the stricken hero.

  BATTER UP!

  I shoulda been a farmer,” Pop Fisher said bitterly.”I shoulda farmed since the day I was born. I like cows, sheep, and those hornless goats—I am partial to nanny goats, my daddy wore a beard—I like to feed animals and milk ’em. I like fixing things, weeding poison oak out of the pasture, and seeing to the watering of the crops. I like to be by myself on a farm. I like to stand out in the fields, tending the vegetables, the corn, the winter wheat—greenest looking stuff you ever saw. When Ma was alive she kept urging me to leave baseball and take up farming, and I always meant to but after she died I had no heart for it.” Pop’s voice all but broke and Red Blow shifted nervously on the bench but Pop didn’t cry. He took out his handkerchief, flipped it, and blew his nose.”I have that green thumb,” he said huskily,”and I shoulda farmed instead of playing wet nurse to a last place, dead-to-the-neck ball team.”

  They were sitting in the New York Knights’ dugout, scanning the dusty field, the listless game and half-empty stands.

  “Tough,” said Red. He kept his eye on the pitcher.

  Removing his cap, Pop rubbed his bald head with his bandaged fingers. “It’s been a blasted dry season. No rains at all. The grass is worn scabby in the outfield and the infield is cracking. My heart feels as dry as dirt for the little I have to show for all my years in the game.”

  He got up, stooped at the fountain and spat the warm, rusty water into the dust. “When the hell they going to fix this thing so we can have a decent drink of water? Did you speak to that bastard partner I have, like I said to?”

  “Says he’s working on it.”

  “Working on it,” Pop grunted. “He’s so tight that if he was any tighter he’d be too stiff to move. It was one of the darkest days of my life when that snake crawled into this club. He’s done me out of more dough than I can count.”

  “Kid’s weakening again,” Red said. “He passed two.”

  Pop watched Fowler for a minute but let him stay. “If those boy scouts could bring in a coupla runs once in a while
I’d change pitchers, but they couldn’t bring their own grandmother in from across the street. What a butchering we took from the Pirates in the first game and here we are six runs behind in this. It’s Memorial Day, all right, but not for the soldiers.”

  “Should’ve had some runs. Bump had four for four in the first, and two hits before he got himself chucked out of this.”

  Pop’s face burned. “Don’t mention that ape man to me—getting hisself bounced out of the game the only time we had runners on the bases when he come up.”

  “I’d’ve thrown him out too if I was the ump and he slid dry ice down my pants.”

  “I’d like to stuff him with ice. I never saw such a disgusting screwball for practical jokes.”

  Pop scratched violently under his loosely bandaged fingers. “And to top it off I have to go catch athlete’s foot on my hands. Now ain’t that one for the books? Everybody I have ever heard of have got it on their feet but I have to go and get it on both of my hands and be itchy and bandaged in this goshdarn hot weather. No wonder I am always asking myself is life worth the living of it.”

  “Tough,” Red said. “He’s passed Feeber, bases loaded.”

  Pop fumed. “My best pitcher and he blows up every time I put him against a first place team. Yank him.”

  The coach, a lean and freckled man, got nimbly up on the dugout steps and signaled to the bullpen in right field. He sauntered out to the mound just as somebody in street clothes came up the stairs of the tunnel leading from the clubhouse and asked the player at the end of the bench, “Who’s Fisher?” The player jerked his thumb toward the opposite side of the dugout, and the man, dragging a large, beat-up valise and a bassoon case, treaded his way to Pop.

  When Pop saw him coming he exclaimed, “Oh, my eight-foot uncle, what have we got here, the Salvation Army band?”

  The man set his things on the floor and sat down on a concrete step, facing Pop. He beheld an old geezer of sixty-five with watery blue eyes, a thin red neck and a bitter mouth, who looked like a lost banana in the overgrown baseball suit he wore, especially his skinny legs in loose blue-and-white stockings.