He stopped. Holy Jesus.
Then she remembered something else and tried, in fright, to raise herself.
“Roy, are you—”
But he shoved her back and went on from where he had left off.
After a hilarious celebration in the dining car (which they roused to uproar by tossing baked potatoes and ketchup bottles around) and later in the Pullman, where a wild bunch led by Roy stripped the pajamas off players already sound asleep in their berths, peeled Red Blow out of his long underwear, and totally demolished the pants of a new summer suit of Pop’s, who was anyway not sold on premature celebrations, Roy slept restlessly. In his sleep he knew he was restless and blamed it (in his sleep) on all he had eaten. The Knights had come out of Sportsman’s Park after trouncing the Cards in a double header and making it an even dozen in a row without a loss, and the whole club had gone gay on the train, including, mildly, Pop himself, considerably thawed out now that the team had leapfrogged over the backs of the Dodgers and Cards into third place. They were again hot on the heels of the Phils and not too distant from the Pirates, with a whole month to go before the end of the season, and about sixty per cent of their remaining games on home grounds. Roy was of course in fine fettle, the acknowledged King of Klouters, whose sensational hitting, pulverizing every kind of pitching, more than made up for his slump. Yet no matter how many bangs he collected, he was ravenously hungry for more and all he could eat besides. The Knights had boarded the train at dinner time but he had stopped off at the station to devour half a dozen franks smothered in sauerkraut and he guzzled down six bottles of pop before his meal on the train, which consisted of two oversize sirloins, at least a dozen rolls, four orders of mashed, and three (some said five) slabs of apple pie. Still that didn’t do the trick, for while they were all at cards that evening, he sneaked off the train as it was being hosed and oiled and hustled up another three wieners, and later secretly arranged with the steward for a midnight snack of a long T-bone with trimmings, although that did not keep him from waking several times during the night with pangs of hunger.
When the diner opened in the morning he put away an enormous breakfast and afterwards escaped those who were up, and found himself some privacy in a half-empty coach near the engine, where nobody bothered him because he was not too recognizable in gabardine, behind dark glasses. For a while he stared at the scattered outskirts of the city they were passing through, but in reality he was wondering whether to read the fat letter from Iris Lemon he had been carrying around in his suit pocket. Roy recalled the night on the lake shore, the long swim, the fire and after. The memory of all was not unpleasant, but what for the love of mud had made her take him for a sucker who would be interested in a grandmother? He found that still terrifying to think of, and although she was a nice enough girl, it had changed her in his mind from Iris more to lemon. To do her justice he concentrated on her good looks and the pleasures of her body but when her kid’s kid came to mind, despite grandma’s age of only thirty-three, that was asking too much and spoiled the appetizing part of her. It was simple enough to him: if he got serious with her it could only lead to one thing—him being a grandfather. God save him from that for he personally felt as young and frisky as a colt. That was what he told himself as the train sped east, and though he had a slight bellyache he fell into a sound sleep and dreamed how on frosty mornings when he was a kid the white grass stood up prickly stiff and the frozen air deep-cleaned his insides.
He awoke with Memo on his mind. To his wonder she turned up in his room in Boston the next night. It was after supper and he was sitting in a rocker near the window reading about himself in the paper when she knocked. He opened the door and she could have thrown him with a breath, so great was his surprise (and sadness) at seeing her. Memo laughingly said she had been visiting a girl friend’s summer place on the Cape, and on her way back to New York had heard the boys were in town so she stopped off to say hello, and here she was. Her face and arms were tanned and she looked better than she had in a long while. He felt too that she had changed somehow in the weeks he hadn’t seen her. That made him uneasy, as if any change in her would automatically be to his hurt. He searched her face but could not uncover anything new so explained it as the five pounds she said she had put on since he had seen her last.
He felt he still held it against her for giving him very little support at a time when he could use a lot, and also for turning Pop down when he had invited her to join them on the Western trip. Yet here, alone with her in his room, she so close and inevitably desirable—this struck him with the force of an unforgettable truth: the one he had had and always wanted —he thought it wouldn’t do to put on a sourpuss and make complaints. True, there was something about her, like all the food he had lately been eating, that left him, after the having of it, unsatisfied, sometimes even with a greater hunger than before. Yet she was a truly beautiful doll with a form like Miss America, and despite the bumps and bruises he had taken, he was sure that once he got an armlock on her things would go better.
His face must have shown more than he intended, because she turned moodily to the window and said, “Roy, don’t bawl me out for not seeing you for a while. There are some things I just can’t take and one of them is being with people who are blue. I had too much of that in my life with my mother and it really makes me desperate.” More tenderly she said, “That’s why I had to stand off to the side, though I didn’t like to, and wait till you had worked out of it, which I knew you would do. Now here I am the first chance I got and that is the way it used to be between Bump and me.”
Roy said soberly, “When are you going to find out that I ain’t Bump, Memo?”
“Don’t be mad,” she said, lifting her face to him. “All I meant to say is that I treat all my friends the same.” She was close and warm-breathed. He caught her in his arms and she snuggled tight, and let him feel the “sick” breast without complaining. But when he tried to edge her to the bed, she broke for air and said no.
“Why not?” he demanded.
“I’m not well,” said Memo.
He was suspicious. “What’s wrong?”
Memo laughed. “Sometimes you are very innocent, Roy. When a girl says she is not well, does she have to draw you a map?”
Then he understood and was embarrassed for being so dimwitted. He did not insist on any more necking and thought it a good sign that she had talked to him so intimately.
The Knights took their three in Boston and the next day won a twi-night double header in Ebbets Field, making it seventeen straight wins on the comeback climb. Before Roy ended his slump they had fallen into fifth place, twelve games behind, then they slowly rose to third, and after this twin bill with Brooklyn, were within two of the Phils, who had been nip and tucking it all season with the Cards and Dodgers. The Pirates, though beaten three in a row by the Knights on their Western swing (the first Knight wins over them this season) were still in first place, two games ahead of the Phils in a tight National League race.
When the Knights returned to their home grounds for a three-game set with the cellar-dwelling Reds, the city awakened in a stampede. The fans, recovered from their stunned surprise at the brilliant progress of the team, turned out in droves. They piled into the stands with foolish smiles, for most of them had sworn off the Knights during the time of Roy’s slump. Now for blocks around the field, the neighborhood was in an uproar as hordes fought their way out of subways, trolleys and buses, and along the packed streets to ticket windows that had been boarded up (to Judge Banner’s heartfelt regret) from early that morning, while grunting lines of red-faced cops, reinforced by sweating mounties, tried to shove everybody back where they had come from. After many amused years at the expense of the laughingstock Knights, a scorching pennant fever blew through the city. Everywhere people were bent close to their radios or stretching their necks in bars to have a look at the miracle boys (so named by sportswriters from all over the U.S. who now crammed into the once deserted press box
es) whose every move aroused their fanatic supporters to a frenzy of excitement which whirled out of them in concentric rings around the figure of Roy Hobbs, hero and undeniable man of destiny. He, it was said by everyone, would lead the Knights to it.
The fans dearly loved Roy but Roy did not love the fans. He hadn’t forgotten the dirty treatment they had dished out during the time of his trouble. Often he felt he would like to ram their cheers down their throats. Instead he took it out on the ball, pounding it to a pulp, as if the best way to get even with the fans, the pitchers who had mocked him, and the statisticians who had recorded (forever) the kind and quantity of his failures, was to smash every conceivable record. He was like a hunter stalking a bear, a whale, or maybe the sight of a single fleeing star the way he went after that ball. He gave it no rest (Wonderboy, after its long famine, chopping, chewing, devouring) and was not satisfied unless he lifted it (one eye cocked as he swung) over the roof and spinning toward the horizon. Often, for no accountable reason, he hated the pill, which represented more of himself than he was willing to give away for nothing to whoever found it one dull day in a dirty lot. Sometimes as he watched the ball soar, it seemed to him all circles, and he was mystified at his devotion to hacking at it, for he had never really liked the sight of a circle. They got you nowhere but back to the place you were to begin with, yet here he stood banging them like smoke rings out of Wonderboy and everybody cheered like crazy. The more they cheered the colder he got to them. He couldn’t stop hitting and every hit made him hungry for the next (a doctor said he had no tapeworm but ate like that because he worked so hard), yet he craved no cheers from the slobs in the stands. Only once he momentarily forgave them—when reaching for a fly, he almost cracked into the wall and they gasped their fright and shrieked warnings. After he caught the ball he doffed his cap and they rocked the rafters with their thunder.
The press, generally snotty to him during his slump, also changed its tune. To a man (except one) they showered him with praise, whooped him on, and in their columns unofficially accoladed him Rookie of the Year (although they agreed he resembled nothing so much as an old hand, a toughened veteran of baseball wars) and Most Valuable Player, and years before it was time talked of nominating him for a permanent niche in the Cooperstown Hall of Fame. He belonged, they wrote, with the other immortals, a giant in performance, who resembled the burly boys of the eighties and nineties more than the streamlined kids of today. He was a throwback to a time of true heroes, not of the brittle, razzle dazzle boys that had sprung up around the jack rabbit ball—a natural not seen in a dog’s age, and weren’t they the lucky ones he had appeared here and now to work his wonders before them? More than one writer held his aching head when he speculated on all Roy might have accomplished had he come into the game at twenty.
The exception was of course Mercy, who continued to concern himself with Roy’s past rather than his accomplishments. He spent hours in the morgue, trying to dredge up possible clues to possible crimes (What’s he hiding from me?), wrote for information to prison wardens, sheriffs, county truant officers, heads of orphan asylums, and semipro managers in many cities in the West and Northwest, and by offering rewards, spurred all sorts of research on Roy by small-town sportswriters. His efforts proved fruitless until one day, to his surprise, he got a letter from a man who block printed on a sheet of notebook paper that for two hundred bucks he might be tempted to tell a thing or two about the new champ. Max hastily promised the dough and got his first break. Here was an old sideshow freak who swore that Roy had worked as a clown in a small traveling carnival. For proof he sent a poster showing the clown’s face—in his white and red warpaint—bursting through a paper hoop. Roy was recognizable as the snubnose Bobo, who despite the painted laugh on his pan, seemed sadeyed and unhappy. Certain the picture would create a sensation, Max had it printed on the first page above the legend, “Roy Hobbs, Clown Prince of Baseball,” but most of those who bought the paper refused to believe it was Roy and those who did, didn’t give a hoot.
Roy was burned about the picture and vowed to kick the blabbermouth in the teeth. But he didn’t exactly do that, for when they met the next evening, in the Midtown lobby, Max made a handsome apology. He said he had to hand it to Roy for beating everybody else in the game ten different ways, and he was sorry about the picture. Roy nodded but didn’t show up on time at the chophouse down the block, where he was awaited by Pop, Red, and Max—to Pop’s uneasiness, because Roy was prompt for his meals these days.
The waiter, a heavyset German with a schmaltzy accent and handlebar mustaches, approached for their orders. He started the meal by spilling soup on Max’s back, then serving him a steak that looked like the charcoal it had been broiled on. When Max loudly complained he brought him, after fifteen minutes, another, a bleeding beauty, but this the waiter snatched from under the columnist’s knife because he had already collected Pop’s and Red’s finished plates and wanted the third. Max let out a yawp, the frightened waiter dropped the dishes on his lap, and while stooping to collect the pieces, lurched against the table and spilled Max’s beer all over his pants.
Pop sprang up and took an angry swipe at the man but Red hauled him down. Meanwhile the waiter was trying to wipe Max’s pants with a wet towel and Max was swearing bloody murder at him. This got the waiter sore. Seizing the columnist by his coat collar he shook him and said he would teach him to talk like a “shentleman und nod a slob.” He laid Max across his knee, and as the customers in the chophouse looked on in disbelief, smacked his rear with a heavy hand. Max managed to twist himself free. Slapping frantically at the German’s face, he knocked off his mustache. In a minute everybody in the place was shrieking with laughter, and even Pop had to smile though he said to Red he was not at all surprised it had turned out to be Roy.
Roy had a Saturday date with Memo coming up but he was lonely for her that night so he went up to the fourth floor and rang her buzzer. She opened the door, dressed in black lounging pajamas with a black ribbon tied around her horsetail of red hair, which had a stunning effect on him.
Memo’s face lit in a slow blush. “Why, Roy,” she said, and seemed not to know what else to say.
“Shut the door,” came a man’s annoyed voice from inside, “or I might catch a cold.”
“Gus is here,” Memo quickly explained. “Come on in.”
Roy entered, greatly disappointed.
Memo lived in a large and airy one-room apartment with a kitchenette, and a Murphy bed out of sight. Gus Sands, smoking a Between-the-Acts little cigar, was sitting at a table near the curtained window, examining a hand of double solitaire he and Memo had been playing. His coat was hanging on the chair and a hand-painted tie that Roy didn’t like, showing a naked lady dancing with a red rose, hung like a tongue out of his unbuttoned vest, over a heavy gold watch chain.
Seeing who it was, Gus said, “Welcome home, slugger. I see you have climbed out of the hole that you were in.”
“I suppose it cost you a couple of bucks,” said Roy.
Gus was forced to laugh. He had extended his hand but Roy didn’t shake. Memo glanced at Roy as if to say be nice to Gus.
Roy couldn’t get rid of his irritation that he had found Gus here, and he felt doubly annoyed that she was still seeing him. He had heard nothing from her about Gus and had hoped the bookie was out of the picture, but here he was as shifty-eyed as ever. What she saw in this half-bald apology for a cigar store Indian had him beat, yet he was conscious of a fear in his chest that maybe Gus meant more to her than he had guessed. The thought of them sitting peacefully together playing cards gave him the uneasy feeling they might even be married or something. But that couldn’t be because it didn’t make sense. In the first place why would she marry a freak like Gus? Sure he had the bucks but Memo was a hot kid and she couldn’t take them to bed with her. And how could she stand what he looked like in the morning without the glass eye in the slot? In the second place Gus wouldn’t let his wife walk around without a potato-siz
ed diamond, and the only piece of jewelry Memo wore was a ring with a small jade stone. Besides, what would they be doing here in this one-room box when Gus owned a penthouse apartment on Central Park West?
No. He blamed these fantastic thoughts on the fact that he was still not sure of her. And he kept wishing he could have her to himself tonight. Memo caught on because, when he looked at her, she shrugged.
Gus got suspicious. He stared at them with the baleful eye, the glass one frosty.
They were sitting around uncomfortably until Memo suggested they play cards. Gus cheered up at once.
“What’ll it be, slugger?” he said, collecting the cards.
“Pinochle is the game for three.”
“I hate pinochle,” Memo said. “Let’s play poker but not the open kind.”
“Poker is not wise now,” Gus said. “The one in the middle gets squeezed. Anybody like to shoot crap?”
He brought forth a pair of green dominoes. Roy said he was agreeable and Memo nodded. Gus wanted to roll on the table but Roy said the rug was better, with the dice bouncing against the wall.
They moved the table and squatted on the floor. Memo, kneeling, rolled first. Gus told her to fade high and in a few minutes she picked up two hundred dollars. Roy hit snake eyes right off, then sevened out after that. Gus shot, teasing Roy to cover the three one hundred dollar bills he had put down. Memo took twenty-five of it and Roy had the rest. Gus made his point and on the next roll took another two hundred from Roy. That was more than he was carrying in cash but Gus said he could play the rest of the game on credit. The bookie continued to roll passes. In no time he was twelve hundred in on Roy, not counting the cash he had lost. Roy was irritated because he didn’t like to lose to Gus in front of Memo. He watched Gus’s hands to make sure he wasn’t palming another pair of dice. What made him suspicious was that Gus seemed to be uncomfortable. His glass eye was fastened on the dice but the good one roamed restlessly about. And he was now fading three hundred a throw and sidebetting high. Since Memo was taking only a ten spot here and there, Roy was covering the rest. By the end of Gus’s second streak Roy was thirty-five hundred behind and his underwear was sweating. Gus finally went out, Memo quickly lost, then Roy, to his surprise, started off on a string of passes. Now he was hot and rolled the cubes for a long haul, growing merrier by the minute as Gus grew glummer. Before Roy was through, Gus had returned the cash he had taken from him and owed him eleven hundred besides. When Roy finally hit seven, Memo got up and said she had to make coffee. Gus and Roy played on but Roy was still the lucky one. Gus said that dice ought never to be played with less than four and gave up in disgust. He dusted off his knees.
The Natural Page 16
