The Natural (5 page)
Authors: Bernard Malamud
The doctor waved the crumpled yellow paper around. “Got a telegram says somebody on this train took sick. Anybody out here?”
Roy tugged at Sam's sleeve.
“Ixnay.”
“What's that?”
“Not me,” said Roy.
The doctor stomped off. He climbed into his Ford, whipped it up and drove away.
The conductor popped open his watch. “Be a good hour late into the city.”
“All aboard,” he called.
“Aboard,” Eddie echoed, carrying the bassoon case.
The buxom girl in yellow broke through the crowd and threw her arms around Roy's neck. He ducked but she hit him quick with her pucker four times upon the right eye, yet he could see with the other that Harriet Bird (certainly a snappy goddess) had her gaze fastened on him.
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They sat, after dinner, in Eddie's dimmed and empty Pullman, Roy floating through drifts of clouds on his triumph as Harriet went on about the recent tourney, she put it, and the unreal forest outside swung forward like a gate shutting. The odd way she saw things interested him, yet he was aware of the tormented trees fronting the snaky lake they were passing, trees bent and clawing, plucked white by icy blasts from the black water, their bony branches twisting in many a broken direction.
Harriet's face was flushed, her eyes gleaming with new insights. Occasionally she stopped and giggled at herself for the breathless volume of words that flowed forth, to his growing astonishment, but after a pause was on her galloping way againâa girl on horsebackâreviewing the inspiring sight (she said it was) of David jawboning the Goliath-Whammer, or was
it Sir Percy lancing Sir Maldemer, or the first son (with a rock in his paw) ranged against the primitive papa?
it Sir Percy lancing Sir Maldemer, or the first son (with a rock in his paw) ranged against the primitive papa?
Roy gulped. “My father? Well, maybe I did want to skull him sometimes. After my grandma died, the old man dumped me in one orphan home after the other, wherever he happened to be workingâwhen he didâthough he did used to take me out of there summers and teach me how to toss a ball.”
No, that wasn't what she meant, Harriet said. Had he ever read Homer?
Try as he would he could only think of four bases and not a book. His head spun at her allusions. He found her lingo strange with all the college stuff and hoped she would stop it because he wanted to talk about baseball.
Then she took a breather. “My friends say I have a fantastic imagination.”
He quickly remarked he wouldn't say that. “But the only thing I had on my mind when I was throwing out there was that Sam had bet this ten spot we couldn't afford to lose out on, so I had to make him whiff.”
“To whiffâoh, Roy, how droll,” and she laughed again.
He grinned, carried away by the memory of how he had done it, the hero, who with three pitched balls had nailed the best the American League had to offer. What didn't that say about the future? He felt himself falling into sentiment in his thoughts and tried to steady himself but couldn't before he had come forth with a pronouncement: “You have to have the right stuff to play good ball and I have it. I bet some day I'll break every record in the book for throwing and hitting.”
Harriet appeared startled then gasped, hiding it like a cough behind her tense fist, and vigorously applauded, her bracelets bouncing on her wrists. “Bravo, Roy, how wonderful.”
“What I mean,” he insisted, “is I feel that I have got it in meâthat I am due for something very big. I have to do it. I mean,” he said modestly, “that's of course when I get in the game.”
Her mouth opened. “You mean you're notâ” She seemed, to his surprise, disappointed, almost on the verge of crying.
“No,” he said, ashamed. “Sam's taking me for a tryout.”
Her eyes grew vacant as she stared out the window. Then she asked, “But Walterâ
he
is a successful professional player, isn't he?”
he
is a successful professional player, isn't he?”
“The Whammer?” Roy nodded.
“And he has won that award three timesâwhat 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 thinkâthe 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 thingsâsome more glorious meaning to one's life and activities?”
“In baseball?”
“Yes.”
He racked his brainâ
“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 aloneâalone in the sense that we are all terribly alone no matter what people sayâI mean by that perhaps if you understood that our values must derive fromâoh, I really supposeâ” She dropped her hand futilely. “Please forgive me. I sometimes confuse myself with the little I know.”
(I was saying this to Walter just before the train stopped) that yourself aloneâalone in the sense that we are all terribly alone no matter what people sayâI mean by that perhaps if you understood that our values must derive fromâoh, I really supposeâ” 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 wantedâsomething 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 bedâAlmost 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, “âSomething 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 roseâhad 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.”
Â
Sam had sneaked out on the squirming, apologetic Mercy, who, with his back to the Whammerâhe with a newspaper raised in front of his sullen eyesâhad 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.
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 â¦
Roy was dreaming of an enormous mountainâChrist, the size of itâwhen he felt himself roughly shakenâSam, he
thought, because they were thereâonly it was Eddie holding a lit candle.
thought, because they were thereâonly 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 meâbut 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 his 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 Hotelâ”
“No, oh no, Sam, not without you.”
“Go on, kiddo, you got to. See Clarence Mulligan tomorrow and say I sent youâthey are expecting you. Give them everything you have got on the ballâthat'll make me happy.”
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