The Natural

by Bernard Malamud

  “You sure had luck in your pants tonight, slugger.”

  “Some call it that.”

  Memo added the figures. She owed Roy two ten but Gus owed him twenty-one hundred. Roy laughed out loud.

  Gus wrote out a check, his eye still restless.

  Memo said she would write one too.

  “Forget it,” Roy said.

  “I have covered hers in mine,” said Gus, circling his pen around before signing.

  Memo flushed. “I like to pay my own way.”

  Gus tore up the check and wrote another. Seeing how she felt about it, Roy took Memo’s, figuring he would return it in the form of some present or other.

  Gus handed him a check for the twenty-one hundred. “Chicken feed,” he said.

  Roy gave the paper a loud smack with his lips. “I love it.”

  Gus dropped his guard and pinned his restless eye on Roy. “Say the word, slugger, and you can make yourself a nice pile of dough quick.”

  Roy wasn’t sure he had heard right. Gus repeated the offer.

  This time Roy was sure. “Say it again and I will spit in your good eye.”

  Gus’s grayish complexion turned blue.

  “Boys,” Memo said uneasily.

  Gus stalked into the bathroom.

  Memo’s face was pale. “Help me with the sandwiches, Roy.”

  “Did you hear what that bastard said to me?”

  “Sometimes he talks through his hat.”

  “Why do you invite him here?”

  She turned away. “He invited himself.”

  As she was slicing meat for the sandwiches Roy felt tender toward her. He slipped his arm around her waist. She looked up a little unhappily but when he kissed her she kissed back. They broke apart as Gus unlocked the bathroom door and came out glaring at them.

  While they were all drinking coffee Roy was in good spirits and no longer minded that Gus was around. Memo kidded him about the way he wolfed the sandwiches, but she showed her affection by also serving him half a cold chicken which he picked to the bone. He demolished a large slab of chocolate cake and made a mental note for a hamburger or two before he went to bed. Though Gus had only had a cup of coffee he was thoughtfully picking his teeth. After a while he looked at his gold watch, buttoned his vest, and said he was going. Roy glanced at Memo but she yawned and said she had to get up very very early in the morning.

  To everybody’s disgust the Reds, as if contemptuous of the bums who had so long lived in the basement below them, snapped the Knights’ streak at seventeen and the next day again beat them over a barrel. A great groan went up from the faithful. Stand back everybody, here they go again. Timber! As if by magic, attendance for a single game with the Phils sank to a handful. The Phils gave them another spanking. The press tipped their hats and turned their respectful attention to the Pirates, pointing out again how superb they were. It was beyond everybody how the half-baked Knights could ever hope to win the N.L. pennant. With twenty-one games left to play they were six behind the Pirates and four in back of the Phils. And to make matters worse, they’d fallen into a third-place tie with the Cards. Pop’s boys still retained a mathematical chance all right but they were at best a first-rate third-place team, one writer put it, and ended his piece, “Wait till next year.”

  Pop held his suffering head. The players stole guilty looks at one another. Even the Great Man himself was in a rut, though not exactly a slump. Still, he was held by inferior pitching to three constipated singles in three days. Everyone on the team was conscious something drastic had to be done but none could say what. Time was after them with a bludgeon. Any game they lost was the last to lose. It was autumn almost. They saw leaves falling and shivered at the thought of the barren winds of winter.

  The Pirates blew into town for their last games of the year with the Knights, a series of four. Thus far during the season they had trounced the Knights a fantastic 15-3 and despite the loss of their last three to the Knights (fool’s luck) were prepared to blast them out of their field. Watching the way the Pirates cut up the pea patch with their merciless hitting and precision fielding, the New Yorkers grew more dejected. Here was a team that was really a team, not a Rube Goldberg contraption. Every man jack was a fine player and no one guy outstanding. The Knights’ fans were embarrassed … Yet their boys managed to tease the first away from the Pirates. No one quite knew how, here a lucky bingle, there a lucky error. Opposite the first-place slickers they looked like hayseeds yet the harvest was theirs. But tomorrow was another day. Wait’ll the boys from the smoky city had got the stiffness of the train ride out of their legs. Yet the Knights won again in the same inept way. Their own rooters, seeping back into the stands, whistled and cheered. By some freak of nature they took the third too. The last game was sold out before 10 A.M. Again the cops had trouble with the ticketless hordes that descended on them.

  Walt Wickitt, the peerless Pirate manager, pitched his ace hurler, Dutch Vogelman, in that last game. Vogelman was a terrific pitcher, a twenty-three game winner, the only specimen in either league that season. He was poison to the Knights who had beat him only once in the past two years. Facing Roy in some six games, he had held him to a single in four, and crippled him altogether in the last two, during Roy’s slump. Most everyone kissed this game goodbye, although Roy started with a homer his first time up. Schultz then gave up two runs to the Pirates. Roy hit another round tripper. Schultz made it three for the Pirates. Roy ended by slamming two more homers and that did it, 4-3. High and mighty to begin with, Vogelman looked like a drowned dog at the end, and the Pirates hurriedly packed their duffel bags and slunk out of the stadium. The Phils were now in first place by a game, the Pirates second, and the Knights were one behind them and coming up like a rocket. Again pennant fever raged through the city and there was cheering in the streets.

  Now all that was left for the Knights in this nerve-racking race were four games in Brooklyn, including a Sunday double header, four with Boston and two more with the Reds, these at home. Then three away with the Phils, one of which was the playoff of the washed-out game in June when Roy had knocked the cover off the ball. Their schedule called for the wind-up in the last week of September, against the Reds in another three-game tilt at home, a soft finish, considering the fact that the Pirates and Phils had each other to contend with. If, God willing, the Knights made it (and were still functioning), the World Series was scheduled to begin on Tuesday, October first, at the Yankee Stadium, for the Yanks had already cinched the American League pennant.

  The race went touch and go. To begin with the Knights dropped a squeaker (Roy went absolutely hitless) to the Dodgers as the Pirates won and the Phils lost—both now running neck and neck for first, the Knights two behind. Just as the boys were again despairing of themselves, Roy got after the ball again. He did not let on to anyone, but he had undergone a terrible day after his slaughter of the Pirates, a day of great physical weakness, a strange draining of strength from his arms and legs, followed by a splitting headache that whooshed in his ears. However, in the second game at Ebbets Field, he took hold of himself, gripped Wonderboy, and bashed the first pitch into the clock on the right field wall. The clock spattered minutes all over the place, and after that the Dodgers never knew what time it was. All they knew was that Roy Hobbs collected a phenomenal fourteen straight hits that shot them dead three times. Carried on by the momentum, the Knights ripped the Braves and brutally trounced the Reds, taking revenge on them for having ended their recent streak of seventeen.

  With only six games to play, a triple first-place tie resulted. The Knights’ fans beat themselves delirious, and it became almost unbearable when the Phils lost a heartbreaker to the Cards and dropped into second place, leaving the Pirates and Knights in the tie. Before the Phils could recover, the Knights descended upon Shibe Park, followed by wild trainloads of fans who had to be there to see. They saw their loveboys take the crucial playoff (Roy was terrific), squeak through the second game (he had a poor day), an
d thoroughly wipe the stunned Phils off the map in the last (again stupendous). At this point of highest tension the Pirate mechanism burst. To the insane cheering of the population of the City of New York, the Cubs pounded them twice, and the Reds came in with a surprise haymaker. A pall of silence descended upon Pennsylvania. Then a roar rose in Manhattan and leaped across the country. When the shouting stopped the Knights were undeniably on top by three over the Pirates, the Phils third by one more, and therefore mathematically out of the race. With three last ones to play against the lowly Reds, the Knights looked in. The worst that could possibly happen to them was a first-place tie with the Pirates—if the Pirates won their three from the Phils as the Knights lost theirs to the Reds—a fantastic impossibility the way Roy was mauling them.

  The ride home from Philadelphia usually took a little more than an hour but it was a bughouse nightmare because of the way the fans on the train pummeled the players. Hearing that a mob had gathered at Penn Station to welcome the team, Pop ordered everyone off at Newark and into cabs. But as they approached the tunnel they were greeted by a deafening roar as every craft in the Hudson, and all the way down the bay, opened up with whistles and foghorns …

  In their locker room after the last game at Philly, some of the boys had started chucking wet towels around but Pop, who had privately wept tears of joy, put the squelch on that.

  “Cut out all that danged foolishness when we still need one more to win,” he had sternly yelled.

  When they protested that it looked at last that they were in, he turned lobster red and bellowed did they want to jinx themselves and cook their own gooses? As a result, despite all the attention they were receiving, the boys were a glum bunch going home. Some had secretly talked of celebrating once they had ditched the old fusspot but they were afraid to. Even Roy had fallen into low spirits, only he was thinking of Memo.

  His heart ached the way he yearned for her (sometimes seeing her in a house they had bought, with a redheaded baby on her lap, and himself going fishing in a way that made it satisfying to fish, knowing that everything was all right behind him, and the home-cooked meal would be hot and plentiful, and the kid would carry the name of Roy Hobbs into generations his old man would never know. With this in mind he fished the stream in peace and later, sitting around the supper table, they ate the fish he had caught), yearning so deep that the depth ran through ever since he could remember, remembering the countless things he had wanted and missed out on, wondering, now that he was famous, if the intensity of his desires would ever go down. The only way that could happen (he relived that time in bed with her) was to have her always. That would end the dissatisfactions that ate him, no matter how great were his triumphs, and made his life still wanting and not having.

  It later struck him that the picture he had drawn of Memo sitting domestically home wasn’t exactly the girl she was. The kind he had in mind, though it bothered him to admit it, was more like Iris seemed to be, only she didn’t suit him. Yet he could not help but wonder what was in her letter and he made up his mind he would read it once he got back in his room. Not that he would bother to answer, but he ought at least to know what she said.

  He felt better, at the hotel, to find a note from Memo in his mailbox, saying to come up and celebrate with a drink. She greeted him at the door with a fresh kiss, her face flushed with how glad she was, saying, “Well, Roy, you’ve really done it. Everybody is talking about what a wonderful marvel you are.”

  “We still got this last one to take,” he said modestly, though tickled at her praise. “I am not counting my onions till that.”

  “Oh, the Knights are sure to win. All the papers are saying it all depends what you do. You’re the big boy, Roy.”

  He grabbed both her palms. “Bigger than Bump?”

  Her eyelids fluttered but she said yes.

  He pulled her close. She kissed for kiss with her warm wet mouth. Now is the time, he thought. Backing her against the wall, he slowly rubbed his hand up between her thighs.

  She broke away, breathing heavily. He caught her and pressed his lips against her nippled blouse.

  There were tears in her eyes.

  He groaned, “Honey, we are the ones that are alive, not him.”

  “Don’t say his name.”

  “You will forget him when I love you.”

  “Please let’s not talk.”

  He lifted her in his arms and laid her down on the couch. She sat bolt upright.

  “For Christ sakes, Memo, I am a grown guy and not a kid. When are you gonna be nice to me?”

  “I am, Roy.”

  “Not the way I want it.”

  “I will.” She was breathing quietly now.

  “When?” he demanded.

  She thought, distracted, then said, “Tomorrow—tomorrow night.”

  “That’s too long.”

  “Later.” She sighed, “Tonight.”

  “You are my sugar honey.” He kissed her.

  Her mood quickly changed. “Come on, let’s celebrate.”

  “Celebrate what?”

  “About the team.”

  Surprised she wanted to do that now, he said he was shaved and ready to go.

  “I don’t mean to go out.” What she meant, she explained, was that she had prepared a snack in one of the party rooms upstairs. “They’re bringing it all up from the kitchen—a buffet with cold meats and lots of other things. I thought it’d be fun to get some girls together with the boys and all enjoy ourselves.”

  Though he had on his mind what he was going to do to her later, and anything in between was a waste of time, still she had gone to all the trouble, and he wanted to please her. Nor was the mention of food exactly distasteful to him. He had made a double steak disappear on the train, but that was hours ago.

  Memo served him a drink and finished telephoning the men she couldn’t reach before. Though on the whole the players said they wanted to come, some, still remembering Pop, were doubtful they ought to, but Memo convinced them by saying that Roy and others were coming. She didn’t ask the married players to bring their wives and they didn’t mention the oversight to her.

  At ten o’clock Memo went into the bathroom and put on a flaming yellow strapless gown. Roy got the idea that she was wearing nothing underneath and it gave him a tense pleasure. They rode up to the eighteenth floor. The party was already on. There were about a dozen men around but only four or five girls. Memo said more were coming later. Most of the players did not exactly look happy. A few were self-consciously talking to the girls, and the others were sitting on chairs gabbing among themselves. Flores stood in a corner with a melancholy expression on his phiz. Al Fowler, one of those having himself a fine time, called to him when was the wake.

  Someone was pounding the keys of the upright piano against the wall. On the other side of the room, a brisk, pint-size chef with a tall puffed cap on, half again as big as him, stood behind a long, cloth-covered table, dishing out the delicatessen.

  “Sure is some snack,” Roy marveled. “You must’ve hocked your fur coat.”

  “Gus chipped in,” Memo said absently.

  He was immediately annoyed. “Is that ape coming up here?”

  She looked hurt. “Don’t call him dirty names. He is a fine, generous guy.”

  “Two bits he had the grub poisoned.”

  “That’s not funny.” Memo walked away but Roy went after her and apologized, though her concern for the bookie—even on the night they were going to sleep together—unsettled and irritated him. Furthermore, he was now worried how Pop would take it if he found out about the players at this shindig despite his warning against celebrating too soon.

  He asked Memo if the manager knew what was going on.

  She was sweet again. “Don’t worry about him, Roy. I’d’ve invited him but he wouldn’t fit in at all here because we are all young people. Don’t get anxious about the party, because Gus said not to serve any hard liquor.”

  “Nice kid, Gus. Must be lay
ing his paper on us for a change.”

  Memo made no reply.

  Everybody was there by then. Dave Olson had a cheerful blonde on his arm. Allie, Lajong, Hinkle, and Hill were harmonizing “Down by the Old Mill Stream.” Fowler was showing some of the boys how to do a buck and wing. The cigar smoke was thick. To Roy things did still not sit just right. Everybody was watching everybody else, as if they were all waiting for a signal to get up and leave, and some of the players looked up nervously every time the door opened, as if they were expecting Doc Knobb, who used to hypnotize them before the games. Flores, from across the room, stared at Roy with black, mournful eyes, but Roy turned away. He couldn’t walk out on Memo.

  “Some blowout,” Fowler said to him.

  “Watch yourself, kid,” Roy warned him in an undertone.

  “Watch yourself yourself.”

  Roy threw him a hard look but Memo said, “Just let Roy head over to the table. He is dying for a bite.”

  It was true. Though the thought of having her tonight was on the top of his mind, he could not entirely forget the appetizing food. She led him to the table and he was surprised and slightly trembly at all there was of it—different kinds of delicatessen meat, appetizing fish, shrimp, crab and lobster, also caviar, salads, cheeses of all sorts, bread, rolls, and three flavors of ice cream. It made his belly ache, as if it had an existence apart from himself.