The Natural (13 page)

He had, a vile powerlessness seized him.

Seeing all this, Pop was darkly furious. He all but ripped the recently restored bandages off his pusing fingers. His temper flared wild and red, his voice tore, he ladled out fines like soup to breadline beggars, and he was vicious to Roy.

“It’s that goshdamn bat,” he roared one forenoon in the clubhouse. “When will you get rid of that danged Wonderboy and try some other stick?”

“Never,” said Roy.

“Then rest your ass on the bench.”

So Roy sat out the game on the far corner of the bench, from where he could watch Memo, lovelier than ever in a box up front, in the company of two undertakers, the smiling, one-eye Gus, and Mercy, catlike contented, whose lead that night would read: “Hobbs is benched. The All-American Out has sunk the Knights into second division.”

He woke in the locker room, stretched out on a bench. He remembered lying down to dry out before dressing but he was still wet with sweat, and a lit match over his wristwatch told him it was past midnight. He sat up stiffly, groaned and rubbed his hard palms over his bearded face. The thinking started up and stunned him. He sat there paralyzed though his innards were in flight — the double-winged lungs, followed by the boat-shaped heart, trailing a long string of guts. He longed for a friend, a father, a home to return to — saw himself packing his duds in a suitcase, buying a ticket, and running for a train. Beyond the first station he’d fling Wonderboy out the window. (Years later, an old man returning to the city for a visit, he would scan the flats to see if it was there, glowing in the mud.) The train sped through the night across the country. In it he felt safe. He tittered.

The mousy laughter irritated him. “Am I outa my mind?” He fell to brooding and mumbled, “What am I doing that’s wrong?” Now he shouted the question and it boomed back at him off the walls. Lighting matches, he hurriedly dressed. Before leaving, he remembered to wrap Wonderboy in flannel. In the street he breathed easier momentarily, till he suspected someone was following him. Stopping suddenly, he wheeled about. A woman, walking alone in the glare of the street lamp, noticed him. She went faster, her heels clicking down the street. He hugged the stadium wall, occasionally casting stealthy glances behind. In the tower burned a dark light, the Judge counting his shekels. He cursed him and dragged his carcass on.

A cabbie with a broken nose and cauliflower ear stared but did not recognize him. The hotel lobby was deserted. An old elevator man mumbled to himself. The ninth-floor hall was long and empty. Silent. He felt a driblet of fear… like a glug of water backing up the momentarily opened drain and polluting the bath with a dead spider, three lice, a rat turd, and things he couldn’t stand to name or look at. For the first time in years he felt afraid to enter his room. The telephone rang. It rang and rang. He waited for it to stop. Finally it did. He warned himself he was acting like a crazy fool. Twisting the key in the lock, he pushed open the door. In the far corner of the room, something moved. His blood changed to falling snow.

Bracing himself to fight without strength he snapped on the light. A white shadow flew into the bathroom. Rushing in, he kicked the door open. An ancient hoary face stared at him. “Bump!” He groaned and shuddered. An age passed…

His own face gazed back at him from the bathroom mirror, his past, his youth, the fleeting years. He all but blacked out in relief. His head, a jagged rock on aching shoulders, throbbed from its rocky interior. An oppressive sadness weighed like a live pain on his heart. Gasping for air, he stood at the open window and looked down at the dreary city till his legs and arms were drugged with heaviness. He shut the hall door and flopped into bed. In the dark he was lost in an overwhelming weakness… I am finished, he muttered. The pages of the record book fell apart and fluttered away in the wind. He slept and woke, finished. All night long he waited for the bloody silver bullet.

On the road Pop was in a foul mood. He cracked down on team privileges: no more traveling wives, no signing of food checks — Red dispensed the cash for meals every morning before breakfast — curfew at eleven and bed check every night. But Roy had discovered that the old boy had invited Memo to come along with them anyway. He went on the theory that Roy had taken to heart his advice to stay away from her and it was making a wreck out of him. Memo had declined the invitation and Pop guiltily kicked himself for asking her.

Roy was thinking about her the morning they came into Chicago and were on their way to the hotel in a cab — Pop, Red, and him. For a time he had succeeded in keeping her out of his thoughts but now, because of the renewed disappointment, she was back in again. He wondered whether Pop was right and she had maybe jinxed him into a slump. If so, would he do better out here, so far away from her?

The taxi turned up Michigan Avenue, where they had a clear view of the lake. Roy was silent. Red happened to glance out the back window. He stared at something and then said, “Have either of you guys noticed the black Cadillac that is following us around? I’ve seen that damn auto most everywhere we go.”

Roy turned to see. His heart jumped. It looked like the car that had chased them halfway across Long Island.

“Drat ‘em,” Pop said. “I fired those guys a week ago. Guess they didn’t get my postcard.”

Red asked who they were.

“A private eye and his partner,” Pop explained. “I hired them about a month back to watch the Great Man here and keep him outa trouble but it’s a waste of good money now.” He gazed back and fumed. “Those goshdarn saps.”

Roy didn’t say anything but he threw Pop a hard look and the manager was embarrassed.

As the cab pulled up before the hotel, a wild-eyed man in shirtsleeves, hairy-looking and frantic, rushed up to them.

“Any of you guys Roy Hobbs?”

“That’s him,” Pop said grimly, heading into the hotel with Red. He pointed back to where Roy was getting out of the cab.

“No autographs.” Roy ducked past the man.

“Jesus God, Roy,” he cried in a broken voice. He caught Roy’s arm and held on to it. “Don’t pass me by, for the love of God.”

“What d’you want?” Roy stared, suspicious.

“Roy, you don’t know me,” the man sobbed. “My name’s Mike Barney and I drive a truck for Cudahy’s. I don’t want a thing for myself, only a favor for my boy Pete. He was hurt in an accident, playin’ in the street. They operated him for a broken skull a coupla days ago and he ain’t doin’ so good. The doctor says he ain’t fightin’ much.”

Mike Barney’s mouth twisted and he wept.

“What has that got to do with me?” Roy asked, white-faced. The truck driver wiped his eyes on his sleeve. “Pete’s a fan of yours, Roy. He got a scrapbook that thick fulla pictures of you. Yesterday they lemme go in and see him and I said to Pete you told me you’d sock a homer for him in the game tonight. After that he sorta smiled and looked better. They gonna let him listen a little tonight, and I know if you will hit one it will save him.”

“Why did you say that for?” Roy said bitterly. “The way I am now I couldn’t hit the side of a barn.”

Holding to Roy’s sleeve, Mike Barney fell to his knees. “Please, you gotta do it.”

“Get up,” Roy said. He pitied the guy and wanted to help him yet was afraid what would happen if he couldn’t. He didn’t want that responsibility.

Mike Barney stayed on his knees, sobbing. A crowd had collected and was watching them.

“I will do the best I can if I get the chance.” Roy wrenched his sleeve free and hurried into the lobby.

“A father’s blessing on you,” the truck driver called after him in a cracked voice.

Dressing in the visitors’ clubhouse for the game that night, Roy thought about the kid in the hospital. He had been thinking of him on and off and was anxious to do something for him. He could see himself walking up to the plate and clobbering a long one into the stands and then he imagined the boy, healed and whole, thanking him for saving his life. The picture was unusually vivid, and as he polished Wonderboy, his fingers itched to carry it into the batter’s box and let go at a fat one.

But Pop had other plans. “You are still on the bench, Roy, unless you put that Wonderboy away and use a different stick.”

Roy shook his head and Pop gave the line-up card to the ump without his name on it. When Mike Barney, sitting a few rows behind a box above third base, heard the announcement of the Knights’ line-up without Roy in it, his face broke out in a sickish sweat.

The game began, Roy taking his non-playing position on the far corner of the bench and holding Wonderboy between his knees. It was a clear, warm night and the stands were just about full. The floods on the roof lit up the stadium brighter than day. Above the globe of light lay the dark night, and high in the sky the stars glittered. Though unhappy not to be playing, Roy, for no reason he could think of, felt better in his body than he had in a week. He had a hunch things could go well for him tonight, which was why he especially regretted not being in the game. Furthermore, Mike Barney was directly in his line of vision and sometimes stared at him. Roy’s gaze went past him, farther down the stands, to where a young blackhaired woman, wearing a red dress, was sitting at an aisle seat in short left. He could clearly see the white flower she wore pinned on her bosom and that she seemed to spend more time craning to get a look into the Knights’ dugout — at him, he could swear — than in watching the game. She interested him, in that red dress, and he would have liked a close gander at her but he couldn’t get out there without arousing attention.

Pop was pitching Fowler, who had kept going pretty well during the two dismal weeks of Roy’s slump, only he was very crabby at everybody — especially Roy — for not getting him any runs, and causing him to lose two well-pitched games. As a result Pop had to keep after him in the late innings, because when Fowler felt disgusted he wouldn’t bear down on the opposing batters.

Up through the fifth he had kept the Cubs bottled up but he eased off the next inning and they reached him for two runs with only one out. Pop gave him a fierce glaring at and Fowler then tightened and finished off the side with a pop fly and strikeout. In the Knights’ half of the seventh, Cal Baker came through with a stinging triple, scoring Stubbs, and was himself driven in by Flores’ single. That tied the score but it became untied when, in their part of the inning, the Cubs placed two doubles back to back, to produce another run.

As the game went on Roy grew tense. He considered telling Pop about the kid and asking for a chance to hit. But Pop was a stubborn cuss and Roy knew he’d continue to insist on him laying Wonderboy aside. This he was afraid to do. Much as he wanted to help the boy — and it really troubled him now — he felt he didn’t stand a Chinaman’s chance at a hit without his own club. And if he once abandoned Wonderboy there was no telling what would happen to him. Probably it would finish his career for keeps, because never since he had made the bat had he swung at a ball with any other.

In the eighth on a double and sacrifice, Pop worked a runner around to third. The squeeze failed so he looked around anxiously for a pinch hitter. Catching Roy’s eye, he said, as Roy had thought he would, “Take a decent stick and go on up there.”

Roy didn’t move. He was sweating heavily and it cost him a great effort to stay put. He could see the truck driver suffering in his seat, wiping his face, cracking his knuckles, and sighing. Roy averted his glance.

There was a commotion in the lower left field stands. This lady in the red dress, whoever she was, had risen, and standing in a sea of gaping faces, seemed to be searching for someone. Then she looked toward the Knights’ dugout and sort of half bowed her head. A murmur went up from the crowd. Some of them explained it that she had got mixed up about the seventh inning stretch and others answered how could she when the scoreboard showed the seventh inning was over? As she stood there, so cleanly etched in light, as if trying to communicate something she couldn’t express, some of the fans were embarrassed. And the stranger sitting next to her felt a strong sexual urge which he concealed behind an impatient cigarette. Roy scarcely noticed her because he was lost in worry, seriously considering whether he ought to give up on Wonderboy.

Pop of course had no idea what was going on in Roy’s head, so he gave the nod to Ed Simmons, a substitute infielder. Ed picked a bat out of the rack and as he approached the plate the standing lady slowly sat down. Everyone seemed to forget her then. Ed flied out. Pop looked scornfully at Roy and shot a stream of snuff into the dust.

Fowler had a little more trouble in the Cubs half of the eighth but a double play saved him, and the score was still 3–2. The ninth opened. Pop appeared worn out. Roy had his eyes shut. It was Fowler’s turn to bat. The second guessers were certain Pop would yank him for a pinch hitter but Fowler was a pretty fair hitter for a pitcher, and if the Knights could tie the score, his pitching tonight was too good to waste. He swung at the first ball, connecting for a line drive single, to Pop’s satisfaction. Allie Stubbs tried to lay one away but his hard-hit fly ball to center was caught. To everybody’s surprise Fowler went down the white line on the next pitch and dove safe into second under a cloud of dust. A long single could tie the score, but Cal Baker, to his disgust, struck out and flung his bat away. Pop again searched the bench for a pinch hitter. He fastened his gaze on Roy but Roy was unapproachable. Pop turned bitterly away.

Mike Barney, a picture of despair, was doing exercises of grief. He stretched forth his long hairy arms, his knobby hands clasped, pleading. Roy felt as though they were reaching right into the dugout to throttle him.

He couldn’t stand it any longer. “I give up.” Placing Wonderboy on the bench he rose and stood abjectly in front of Pop.

Pop looked up at him sadly. “You win,” he said. “Go on in.”

Roy gulped. “With my own bat?”

Pop nodded and gazed away.

Roy got Wonderboy and walked out into the light. A roar of recognition drowned the announcement of his name but not the loud beating of his heart. Though he’d been at bat only three days ago, it felt like years — an ageless time. He almost wept at how long it had been.