The Natural

by Bernard Malamud

  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.

  Lon Toomey, the hulking Cub hurler, who had twice in the last two weeks handed Roy his lumps, smiled behind his glove. He shot a quick glance at Fowler on second, fingered the ball, reared and threw. Roy, at the plate, watched it streak by.

  “Stuh-rike.”

  He toed in, his fears returning. What if the slump did not give way? How much longer could it go on without destroying him?

  Toomey lifted his right leg high and threw. Roy swung from his heels at a bad ball and the umpire sneezed in the breeze.

  “Strike two!”

  Wonderboy resembled a sagging baloney. Pop cursed the bat and some of the Knights’ rooters among the fans booed. Mike Barney’s harrowed puss looked yellow.

  Roy felt sick with remorse that he hadn’t laid aside Wonderboy in the beginning and gone into the game with four licks at bat instead of only three miserable strikes, two of which he already used up. How could he explain to Barney that he had traded his kid’s life away out of loyalty to a hunk of wood?

  The lady in the stands hesitantly rose for the second time. A photographer who had stationed himself nearby snapped a clear shot of her. She was an attractive woman, around thirty, maybe more, and built solid but not too big. Her bosom was neat, and her dark hair, parted on the side, hung loose and soft. A reporter approached her and asked her name but she wouldn’t give it to him, nor would she, blushing, say why she was standing now. The fans behind her hooted, “Down in front,” but though her eyes showed she was troubled she remained standing.

  Noticing Toomey watching her, Roy stole a quick look. He caught the red dress and a white rose, turned away, then came quickly back for another take, drawn by the feeling that her smile was for him. Now why would she do that for? She seemed to be wanting to say something, and then it flashed on him the reason she was standing was to show her confidence in him. He felt surprised that anybody would want to do that for him. At the same time he became aware that the night had spread out in all directions and was filled with an unbelievable fragrance.

  A pitch streaked toward him. Toomey had pulled a fast one. With a sob Roy fell back and swung.

  Part of the crowd broke for the exits. Mike Barney wept freely now, and the lady who had stood up for Roy absently pulled on her white gloves and left.

  The ball shot through Toomey’s astounded legs and began to climb. The second baseman, laying back on the grass on a hunch, stabbed high for it but it leaped over his straining fingers, sailed through the light and up into the dark, like a white star seeking an old constellation.

  Toomey, shrunk to a pygmy, stared into the vast sky.

  Roy circled the bases like a Mississippi steamboat, lights lit, flags fluttering, whistle banging, coming round the bend. The Knights poured out of their dugout to pound his back, and hundreds of their rooters hopped about in the field. He stood on the home base, lifting his cap to the lady’s empty seat.

  And though Fowler goose-egged the Cubs in the last of the ninth and got credit for the win, everybody knew it was Roy alone who had saved the boy’s life.

  It seemed perfectly natural to Iris to be waiting for him, with her shoes off to ease her feet, here on the park grass. He had been in her mind so often in the past month she could not conceive of him as a stranger, though he certainly was. She remembered having fallen asleep thinking of him last night. She had been gazing at the stars through her window, unaware just when they dissolved into summer rain, although she remembered opening a brown eye in time to see the two-pronged lightning plunge through a cloud and spread its running fire in all directions. And though she was sometimes afraid she would be hurt by it (this was her particular fear) she did not get up to shut the window but watched the writhing flame roll across the sky, until it disappeared over the horizon. The night was drenched and fragrant. Without the others knowing, she had slipped on a dress and gone across the road to walk in a field of daisies whose white stars lit up her bare feet as she thought of tomorrow in much the way she had at sixteen.

  Tonight was a high, free evening, still green and gold above the white fortress of buildings on Michigan Avenue, yet fading over the lake, from violet to the first blue of night. A breeze with a breath of autumn in it, despite that afternoon’s heat in the city, blew at intervals through the trees. From time to time she caught herself glancing, sometimes frowning, at her wristwatch although it was her own fault she had come so early. Her arms showed gooseflesh and she wondered if she had been rash to wear a thin dress at night but that was silly because the night was warm. It did not take her long to comprehend that the gooseflesh was not for now but another time, long ago, a time she was, however, no longer afraid to remember.

  Half her life ago, just out of childhood it seemed, but that couldn’t be because she was too strangely ready for the irrevocable change that followed, she had one night alone in the movies met a man twice her age, with whom she had gone walking in the park. Sensing at once what he so unyieldingly desired, she felt instead of fright, amazement at her willingness to respond, considering she was not, like some she later met, starved of affection. But a mother’s love was one thing, and his, when he embraced her under the thick-leaved tree that covered them, was something else again. She had all she could do to tear herself away from him, and rushed through the branches, scratching her face and arms in the bargain. But he would not let her go, leading her always into dark places, hidden from all but the light of the stars, and taught her with his kisses that she could race without running. All but bursting with motion she cried don’t look, and when he restlessly turned away, undressed the bottom half of her. She offered herself in a white dress and bare feet and was considerably surprised when he pounced like a tiger.

  A horn hooted.

  It was Roy driving a hired car. He looked around for a parking place but she had slipped on her shoes and waved she was coming.

  He had come across her picture in one of the morning papers the day after he had knocked out the homer for the kid. Slicing it out carefully with his knife, he folded it without creasing the face and kept it in his wallet. Whenever he had a minute to himself (he was a smashing success at bat—five for five, three home runs—and was lionized by all) he took the picture out and studied it, trying to figure out why she had done that for him; nobody else ever had. Usually when he was down he was down alone, without flowers or mourners. He suspected she might be batty or a grownup bobby soxer gone nuts over him for having his name and picture in the papers. But from the intelligent look of her it didn’t seem likely. There were some players the ladies might fall for through seeing their pictures but not him—not that he was bad-looking or anything, just that he was no dream boy—nor was she the type to do it. In her wide eyes he saw something which caused him to believe she knew what life was like, though you really couldn’t be sure.

  He made up his mind and telephoned the photographer who had taken this shot of her, for any informatio
n he might have as to where she lived, but at his office they said he was covering a forest fire in Minnesota. During the game that afternoon Roy scanned the stands around him and in the fifth frame located her practically at his elbow in deep left. He got one of the ushers to take her a note saying could she meet him tonight? She wrote back not tonight but enclosed her phone number. After a shot of Scotch he called her. Her voice was interesting but she said frankly she wondered if their acquaintance ought to end now, because these things could be disillusioning when they dragged past their time. He said he didn’t think she would disappoint him. After some coaxing she yielded, chiefly because Roy insisted he wanted to thank her in person for her support of him.

  He held the door open and she stepped in.

  “I’m Iris Lemon,” she said with a blush.

  “Roy Hobbs.” He felt foolish for of course she knew his name. Despite his good intentions he was disappointed right off, because she was heavier than he had thought—the picture didn’t show that so much or if it did he hadn’t noticed—and she had lost something, in this soft brown dress, that she’d had in the red. He didn’t like them hefty, yet on second thought it couldn’t be said she really was. Big, yes, but shapely too. Her face and hair were pretty and her body—she knew what to wear on her feet—was well proportioned. He admitted she was attractive although as a rule he never thought so unless they were slim like Memo.

  So he asked her right out was she married.

  She seemed startled, then smiled and said, “No, are you?”

  “Nope.”

  “How is it the girls missed you?”

  Though tempted to go into a long explanation about that, he let it pass with a shrug. Neither of them was looking at the other. They both stared at the road ahead. The car hadn’t moved.

  Iris felt she had been mistaken to come. He seemed so big and bulky next to her, and close up looked disappointingly different from what she had expected. In street clothes he gained little and lost more, a warrior’s quality he showed in his uniform. Now he looked like any big-muscled mechanic or bartender on his night off. Whatever difference could it have made to her that this particular one had slumped? She was amazed at her sentimentality.