The Natural Page 7

  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 gre
w 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.

  Roy ripped open his lids and sprang up. He shoved his way out from between the benches.

  The doctor was startled but made no attempt to stop him. Pop called out, “Hey, where do you think you’re going?”

  “Out.”

  “Sit down, dammit, you’re on the team.”

  “I might be on the team but no medicine man is going to hypnotize me.”

  “You signed a contract to obey orders,” Pop snapped shrilly.

  “Yes, but not to let anybody monkey around in my mind.”

  As he headed into the tunnel he heard Pop swear by his eight-foot uncle that nobody by the name of Roy Hobbs would ever play ball for him as long as he lived.

  He had waited before … and he waited now, on a spike-scuffed bench in the dugout, hidden from sky, wind and weather, from all but the dust that blew up from Knights Field and lodged dry in the throat, as the grass grew browner. And from time ticking off balls and strikes, batters up and out, halves and full innings, games won and (mostly) lost, days and nights, and the endless train miles from Philly, with in-between stops, along the arc to St. Louis, and circling back by way of Chi, Boston, Brooklyn … still waiting.

  “C’mon, Roy,” Red had urged, “apologize to Pop, then the next time Knobb comes around, join the boys and everything will be okay.”

  “Nix on that,” said Roy, “I don’t need a shyster quack to shoot me full of confidence juice. I want to go through on my own steam.”

  “He only wants everybody to relax and be able to do their best.”

  Roy shook his head. “I been a long time getting here and now that I am, I want to do it by myself, not with that kind of bunk.”

  “Do what?” Red asked.

  “What I have to do.”

  Red shrugged and gave him up as too stubborn. Roy sat around, and though it said on his chest he was one of the team, he sat among them alone; at the train window, gazing at the moving trees, in front of his locker, absorbed in an untied shoe lace, in the dugout, squinting at the great glare of the game. He traveled in their company and dressed where they did but he joined them in nothing, except maybe batting practice, entering the cage with the lumber on his shoulder glistening like a leg bone in the sun and taking his chops at the pill. Almost always he hammered the swift, often murderous throws (the practice pitchers dumped their bag of tricks on him) deep into the stands, as the players watched and muttered at the swift flight of the balls, then forgot him when the game started. But there were days when the waiting got him. He could feel the strength draining from his bones, weakening him so he could hardly lift Wonderboy. He was unwilling to move then, for fear he would fall over on his puss and have to crawl away on all fours. Nobody noticed he did not bat when he felt this way except Pop; and Bump, seeing how white his face was, squirted contemptuous tobacco juice in the dust. Then when Roy’s strength ebbed back, he would once again go into the batters’ cage and do all sorts of marvelous things that made them watch in wonder.

  He watched them and bad as he felt he had to laugh. They were a nutty bunch to begin with but when they were losing they were impossible. It was like some kind of sickness. They threw to the wrong bases, bumped heads together in the outfield, passed each other on the baselines, sometimes batted out of order, throwing both Pop and the ump into fits, and cussed everybody else for their mistakes. It was not uncommon to see them pile three men on a bag, or behold a catcher on the opposing team, in a single skip and jump, lay the tag on two of them as they came thundering together into home plate. Or watch Gabby Laslow, in a tight spot, freeze onto the ball, or Allie Stubbs get socked with it in the jaw, thrown by Olson on a steal as Allie admired a lady in the stands. Doc Knobb’s hypnotism cut down their jitters but it didn’t much help their coordination, yet when they were left unhypnotized for a few days, they were afflicted with more than the usual number of hexes and whammies and practiced all sorts of magic to undo them. To a man they crossed their fingers over spilled salt, or coffee or tea, or at the sight of a hearse. Emil Lajong did a backward flip whenever he located a cross-eyed fan in the stands. Olson hated a woman who wore the same drab brown-feathered hat every time she showed up. He spat through two fingers whenever he spotted her in the crowd. Bump went through his ritual with the colored threads in his socks and shorts. Pop sometimes stroked a rabbit’s foot. Red Blow never changed his clothes during a “winning streak,” and Flores secretly touched his genitals whenever a bird flew over his head.

  They were not much different from the fans in the patched and peeling stands. On weekdays the stadium usually looked like a haunted house but over the weekend crowds developed. The place often resembled a zoo full of oddballs, including gamblers, bums, drunks, and some ugly crackpots. Many of them came just to get a laugh out of the bonehead plays. Some, when the boys were losing, cursed and jeered, showering them —whenever they came close enough—with rotten cabbages, tomatoes, blackened bananas and occasionally an eggplant. Yet let the umpire call a close play against the Knights and he became a target for pop bottles, beer cans, old shoes or anything that happened to be lying around loose. Surprisingly, however, a few players were chosen for affection and even admiration by their fans. Sadie Sutter, a girl of sixty-plus, who wore large flowered hats, bobby sox, and short skirts, showed her undying love for Dave Olson every time he came up to the plate by banging with all her might on a Chinese gong she dragged into the stadium every day. A Hungarian cook, a hearty man with a hard yellow straw hat jammed tight on his skull, hopped up on his seat and crowed like a rooster whenever Emil Lajong originated a double play. And there was a girl named Gloria from Mississippi, a washed-out flower of the vestibules, who between innings when her eyes were not on the game, lined up a customer or two for a quickie later. She gave her heart to Gabby, yelling, “Get a move on, mo-lasses,” to set him in motion after a fly ball. Besides these, there had appeared early in the present season, a pompous Otto P. Zipp, whose peevish loudspeaker could be heard all over the park, his self-chosen mission to rout the critics of Bump Baily, most of whom razzed the big boy for short legging on the other fielders. The dwarf honked a loud horn at the end of a two-foot walking stick, and it sounded as if a flock of geese had been let loose at the offenders, driving them—his purple curses ringing in their ears —to seek shelter in some hidden hole in the stands or altogether out of the ballpark. Zipp was present at every home game, sitting at the rail in short left field, and Bump made it his much publicized business, as he trotted out to his position at the start of the game, to greet him with a loud kiss on the forehead, leaving Otto in a state of creamy bliss.

  Roy got to know them all as he waited, all one if you looked long enough through the haze of cigarette smoke, except one … Memo Paris, Pop’s redheaded niece, sad, spurned lady, who sat without wifehood in the wives’ box behind third base. He could, if she would let him, find her with his eyes shut, with his hands alone as he had in the dark. Always in the act of love she lived in his mind, the only way he knew her, because she would not otherwise suffer his approach. He was to blame, she had wept one bitter midnight, so she hated his putrid guts. Since the team’s return to the city (the phone banged in his ear and she ripped up his letters when they were delivered) whenever he got up from his seat in the hotel lobby as she stepped out of the elevator, to say how sorry he was for beginning at the wrong end, she tugged at her summer furpiece and breezed past him in greeneyed scorn, withering in the process Bump at the cigar stand, who had laughed aloud at Roy
’s rout. (“Honeybunch,” he had explained, “it was out of the pity of my heart that I took that shmo into my room, because they didn’t have one for him and I was intending to pass the night at the apartment of my he cousin from Mobile. How’d I know you’d go in there when you said you weren’t speaking to me?” He swore it hadn’t been a gag—had he ever pulled one on her?—but Memo punished him in silence, punishing herself, and he knew it because she still came every day to see him play.) She walked out of the lobby, with her silver bracelets tinkling, swaying a little on her high heels, as if she had not too long ago learned to walk on them, and went with her beautiful body away, for which Roy everlastingly fried Bump Baily in the deep fat of his abomination.

  It was for her he waited.

  On the morning of the twenty-first of June Pop told Roy that as of tomorrow he was being shipped to a Class B team in the Great Lakes Association. Roy said he was quitting baseball anyway, but that same day, in answer to an angry question of Pop’s as to why the team continued to flop, Doc Knobb said that the manager’s hysterical behavior was undoing all the good he had done, and he offered to hypnotize Pop along with the others without hiking his fee. Pop shrilly told the psychologist he was too old for such bamboozlement, and Knobb retorted that his attitude was not only ridiculous but stupid. Pop got redfaced and told him to go to perdition with his hocus pocus and as of right then the doctor was canned.