Authors: Bernard Malamud
The Natural (15 page)
Ahead was his door. Max was panting after him. As Roy shoved. the key into the lock, poking his eye close to do the job quick, Max from fifteen feet away aimed the camera and snapped the shutter. The flashbulb burst in the reflector. The door slammed. Max swore blue bloody murder as Roy, inside, howled with laughing.
H
e had a whopping good time at the ball game. Doc Casey had squeezed the swelling of his eye down and painted out the black with a flesh-tone color, and Roy led the attack against the Phils that sank them twice that afternoon, sweeping the series for the Knights and raising them into second place, only three games behind the Pirates. Pop was hilarious. The fans went wild. The newspapers called the Knights “the wonder team of the age” and said they were headed for the pennant.
e had a whopping good time at the ball game. Doc Casey had squeezed the swelling of his eye down and painted out the black with a flesh-tone color, and Roy led the attack against the Phils that sank them twice that afternoon, sweeping the series for the Knights and raising them into second place, only three games behind the Pirates. Pop was hilarious. The fans went wild. The newspapers called the Knights “the wonder team of the age” and said they were headed for the pennant.
On his way to Memo's after the game, Roy met her, wearing her summer furpiece, coming along the fourth-floor hall.
“I thought I would drop around and see how you are, Memo.”
She continued her slightly swaying walk to the elevator.
“I am all right,” she said.
He paused. “See the doctor yet?”
Memo blushed and said quickly, “He says it's neuritisânothing serious.”
She pressed the elevator button.
“Nothing serious?”
“That's what he said.” She was looking up the elevator shaft and he sensed she had not been to the doctor. He guessed her breast was not sick. He guessed she had said that to get him to slow down. Though he did not care for her technique, he controlled his anger and asked her to go to the movies.
“Sorry. Gus is picking me up.”
Back in his room he felt restless. He thought he'd be better off without her but the thought only made him bitter. Red Blow called him to go to the pictures but Roy said he had a headache. Later he went out by himself. That night he dreamed of her all night long. The sick breast had turned green yet he was anxious to have a feel of it.
Â
The next day, against the Braves, Roy got exactly no hits. The Knights won, but against the Dodgers in Brooklyn on Tuesday he went hitless once more and they lost. Since he had never before gone without a hit more than six times in a row there was talk now of a slump. That made him uneasy but he tried not to think of it, concerning himself with Memo and continuing his search through the papers for news of a hit-and-run accident on Long Island. Finding no mention of one he blamed the whole thing on his imagination and thought he'd better forget it. And he told himself not to worry about the slumpâit happened to the very bestâbut after a third day without even a bingle he couldn't help but worry.
As his hitlessness persisted everyone was astonished. It didn't seem possible this could happen to a miracle man like Roy. Enemy pitchers were the last to believe the news. They pitched him warily, fearing an eruption of his wrath, but before long they saw the worry in his eyes and would no longer yield those free and easy walks of yore. They straightened out their curves and whizzed them over the gut of the plate, counting on him either to top a slow roller to the infield or strike himself out. True, he was the same majestic-looking figure up there, well back in the box, legs spread wide, and with Wonderboy gleaming in the sun, raised over his shoulder (he had lowered it from his head). He swung with such power you could see a circle of dust lift off the ground as the bat passed over it, yet all it amounted to was breeze. It made many a pitcher feel
like a pretty tough hombre to see Roy drag himself away from the plate and with lowered head enter the dugout.
like a pretty tough hombre to see Roy drag himself away from the plate and with lowered head enter the dugout.
“What's the matter with me?” he thought with irritation. He didn't feel himself (wondered if he could possibly be sick). He felt blunt and dullâall thumbs, muscles, and joints, Charley horse all over. He missed the sensation of the sockâthe moment the stomach galloped just before the wood hit the ball, and the satisfying sting that sped through his arms and shoulders as he belted one. Though there was plenty of fielding to doâthe Knights' pitchers were getting to be loose with the hitsâhe missed the special exercise of running the bases, whirling round them with the speed of a race horse as nine frantic men tried to cut him down. Most of all he missed the gloating that blew up his lungs when he crossed the plate and they ran up another tally opposite his name in the record book. A whole apparatus of physical and mental pleasures was on the kibosh and without them he felt like the Hobbs he thought he had left behind dead and buried.
“What am I doing that's wrong?” he asked himself. No one on the bench or in the clubhouse had offered any advice or information on the subject or even so much as mentioned slump. Not even Pop, also worried, but hoping it would fade as suddenly as it had appeared. Roy realized that he was overanxious and pressingâeither hitting impatiently in front of the ball or swinging too lateâso that Wonderboy only got little bites of it or went hungry. Thinking he was maybe overstriding and getting his feet too far apart so that he could not pivot freely, he shifted his stride but that didn't help. He tried a new stance and attempted, by counting to himself, to alter his timing. It did no good. To save his eyesight he cut out all reading and going to the pictures. At bat his expression was so dark and foreboding it gave the opposing pitchers the shakes, but still they had his number.
He spent hours fretting whether to ask for help or wait it out. Some day the slump was bound to go, but when? Not that
he was ashamed to ask for help but once you had come this far you felt you had learned the game and could afford to give out with the advice instead of being forced to ask for it. He was, as they say, established and it was like breaking up the establishment to go around panhandling an earful. Like making a new beginning and he was sick up to here of new beginnings. But as he continued to whiff he felt a little panicky. In the end he sought out Red Blow, drew him out to center field and asked in an embarrassed voice, “Red, what is the matter with me that I am not hitting them?” He gazed over the right field wall as he asked the question.
he was ashamed to ask for help but once you had come this far you felt you had learned the game and could afford to give out with the advice instead of being forced to ask for it. He was, as they say, established and it was like breaking up the establishment to go around panhandling an earful. Like making a new beginning and he was sick up to here of new beginnings. But as he continued to whiff he felt a little panicky. In the end he sought out Red Blow, drew him out to center field and asked in an embarrassed voice, “Red, what is the matter with me that I am not hitting them?” He gazed over the right field wall as he asked the question.
Red squirted tobacco juice into the grass.
“Well,” he said, rubbing his freckled nose, “what's worrying your mind?”
Roy was slow to reply. “I am worrying that I am missing so many and can't get back in the groove.”
“I mean besides that. You haven't knocked up a dame maybe?”
“No.”
“Any financial worries about money?”
“Not right now.”
“Are you doing something you don't like to do?”
“Such as what?”
“Once we had a guy here whose wife made him empty the garbage pail in the barrel every night and believe it or not it began to depress him. After that he fanned the breeze a whole month until one night he told her to take the damn garbage out herself, and the next day he hit again.”
“No, nothing like that.”
Red smiled. “Thought I'd get a laugh out of you, Roy. A good belly laugh has more than once broke up a slump.”
“I would be glad to laugh but I don't feel much like it. I hate to say it but I feel more like crying.”
Red was sympathetic. “I have seen lots of slumps in my time, Roy, and if I could tell you why they come I could make a
fortune, buy a saloon and retire. All I know about them is you have to relax to beat 'em. I know how you feel now and I realize that every game we lose hurts us, but if you can take it easy and get rid of the nervousness that is for some reason in your system, you will soon snap into your form. From there on in you will hit like a house on fire.”
fortune, buy a saloon and retire. All I know about them is you have to relax to beat 'em. I know how you feel now and I realize that every game we lose hurts us, but if you can take it easy and get rid of the nervousness that is for some reason in your system, you will soon snap into your form. From there on in you will hit like a house on fire.”
“I might be dead by then,” Roy said gloomily.
Red removed his cap and with the hand that held it scratched his head.
“All I can say is that you have got to figure this out for yourself, Roy.”
Pop's advice was more practical. Roy visited the manager in his office after the next (fruitless) game. Pop was sitting at his roll top desk, compiling player averages in a looseleaf notebook. On the desk were a pair of sneakers, a picture of Ma Fisher, and an old clipping from the
Sporting News
saying how sensational the Knights were going. Pop closed the average book but not before Roy had seen a large red zero for the day's work opposite his name. The Knights had dropped back to third place, only a game higher than the Cardinals, and Pop's athlete's foot on his hands was acting up.
Sporting News
saying how sensational the Knights were going. Pop closed the average book but not before Roy had seen a large red zero for the day's work opposite his name. The Knights had dropped back to third place, only a game higher than the Cardinals, and Pop's athlete's foot on his hands was acting up.
“What do I have to do to get out of this?” Roy asked moodily.
Pop looked at him over his half-moon specs.
“Nobody can tell you exactly, son, but I'd say right off stop climbing up after those bad balls.”
Roy shook his head. “I don't think that's it. I can tell when they're bad but the reason I reach for them sometimes is that the pitchers don't throw me any good ones, which hasn't been so lately. Lately, they're almost all good but not for me.”
“Danged if I know just what to tell you,” Pop said, scratching at his reddened fingers. He too felt a little frightened. But he recommended bunting and trying to beat them out. He said Roy had a fast pair of legs and getting on base, in which ever way, might act to restore his confidence.
But Roy, who was not much of a bunterânever had his heart in letting the ball hit the bat and roll, when he could just as well lash out and send the same pitch over the fenceâcould not master the art of it overnight. He looked foolish trying to bunt, and soon gave it up.
Pop then recommended hitting at fast straight ones thrown by different pitchers for thirty minutes every morning, and to do this till he had got his timing back, because it was timing that was lost in a slump. Roy practiced diligently and got so he could connect, yet he couldn't seem to touch the same pitches during the game.
Then Pop advised him to drop all batting practice and to bat cold. That didn't help either.
“How is your eye that got hurt?” Pop asked.
“Doc tested it, he says I see perfect.”
Pop looked grimly at Wonderboy. “Don't you think you ought to try another stick for a change? Sometimes that will end up a slump.”
Roy wouldn't hear of it. “Wonderboy made all of my records with me and I am staying with him. Whatever is wrong is wrong with me and not my bat.”
Pop looked miserable but didn't argue.
Â
Only rarely he saw Memo. She was not around much, never at the games, though she had begun to come quite often a while back. Roy had the morbid feeling she couldn't stand him while he was in this slump. He knew that other people's worries bothered her and that she liked to be where everybody was merry. Maybe she thought the slump proved he was not as good a player as Bump. Whatever it was, she found excuses not to see him and he got only an occasional glimpse of her here and there in the building. One morning when he ran into her in the hotel grill room, Memo reddened and said she was sorry to read he was having a tough time.
Roy just nodded but she went on to say that Bump used to
ease his nerves when he wasn't hitting by consulting a fortuneteller named Lola who lived in Jersey City.
ease his nerves when he wasn't hitting by consulting a fortuneteller named Lola who lived in Jersey City.
“What for?” Roy asked.
“She used to tell him things that gave him a lift, like the time she said he was going to be left money by someone, and he felt so good it raised him clean out of his slump.”
“Did he get the dough that she said?”
“Yes. Around Christmas his father died and left him a garage and a new Pontiac. Bump cleared nine thousand cash when he sold the property.”
Roy thought it over afterwards. He had little faith that any fortuneteller could help him out of his trouble but the failure of each remedy he tried sank him deeper into the dumps and he was now clutching for any straw. Borrowing a car, he hunted up Lola in Jersey City, locating her in a two-story shack near the river. She was a fat woman of fifty, and wore black felt slippers broken at the seams, and a kitchen towel wrapped around her head.
“Step right inside the parlor,” she said, holding aside the beaded curtain leading into a dark and smelly room, “and I will be with you in a jiffy, just as soon as I get rid of this loud mouth on the back porch.”
Feeling ill at ease and foolish, Roy waited for her.
Lola finally came in with a Spanish shawl twisted around her. She lit up the crystal ball, passed her gnarled hands over it and peered nearsightedly into the glass. After watching for a minute she told Roy he would soon meet and fall in love with a darkhaired lady.
“Anything else?” he said impatiently.
Lola looked. A blank expression came over her face and she slowly shook her head. “Funny,” she said, “there ain't a thing more.”
“Nothing about me getting out of a slump in baseball?”
“Nothing. The future has closed down on me.”
Roy stood up. “The trouble with what you said is that I am already in love with a swell-looking redhead.”
Because of the shortness of the sitting Lola charged him a buck instead of the usual two.
After his visit to her, though Roy was as a rule not superstitious, he tried one or two things he had heard about to see how they would work. He put his socks on inside out, ran a red thread through his underpants, spat between two fingers when he met a black cat, and daily searched the stands for some crosseyed whammy who might be hexing him. He also ate less meat, though he was always hungry, and he arranged for a physical check-up. The doctor told him he was in good shape except for some high blood pressure that was caused by worrying and would diminish as soon as he relaxed. He practiced different grips on Wonderboy before his bureau mirror and sewed miraculous medals and evil-eye amulets of fish, goats, clenched fists, open scissors, and hunchbacks all over the inside of his clothes.
Other books
Fourmile by Watt Key
The Third Fate by Nadja Notariani
Wicked Seduction by Jade Lee
The Canary Caper by Ron Roy
Away for the Weekend by Dyan Sheldon
On a Beam of Light by Gene Brewer
Caleb's Blessing by Silver, Jordan
Bed of Nails by Michael Slade
Falling For Disaster by Sterling, K.
Berlin at War by Roger Moorhouse