The Great American Novel

by Philip Roth

  “Thank you, Martita. Actually the sunsuit is something I designed and made myself.”

  “You didn’t! Well, watch out, Paris—there’s a little lady in Kakoola, Wisconsin, who just may run you out of business! Have you ever thought of designing clothes specifically for women midgets, Mrs. Yamm? Am I correct—it is ‘women midgets’; or does one say ‘midgetesses’? Our announcer and myself were talking that over just before the show, and Don says he believes he has heard the term ‘midgetesses’ used on occasion … No?”

  “No,” said Mrs. Yamm.

  “Tell me then, what do women midgets do about clothes? I’m sure all our listeners have wondered. Do most of them design and make their own, or are you out of the ordinary in that respect?”

  “Yes, I guess you could say I was out of the ordinary in that respect,” replied Mrs. Yamm. “But since I’m rather thin for my height, and most children’s clothes just swim on me, I took to making my own—I guess as a matter of necessity.”

  “It is the mother of invention, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” agreed Mrs. Yamm.

  “And may I say,” said Martita, “for the benefit of our radio audience, you are marvelously thin. I’m sure the ladies listening in, some of whom have my problem, would like to know your secret. Do you watch your diet?”

  “No, I more or less eat whatever I want.”

  “And continue to remain so wonderfully petite?”

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Yamm.

  “Oh, that we were all so lucky! I just look at a dish of ice cream—well, let’s not go into that sad story! Now—what is it like suddenly being the wife of a famous man? Do you find people staring at you now whenever you two step out?”

  “Well, of course, they always stared, you know, even before.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t doubt that. You are a darling couple. How did you meet Bob? Is there a funny story that goes with that? Did Bob get down on his knees to ask for your hand—or just how did he pop the question?”

  “He just asked me if I’d marry him.”

  “Not on bended knee, eh? Not the old-fashioned type.”

  “No.”

  “And just what do you think it was that made you attractive to a man like Bob Yamm?”

  “Well, my size, primarily. My being another midget.”

  “And a very lovely midget, if I may say for the benefit of the radio audience what Mrs. Yamm is too modest to say herself. Just to give our radio audience an idea of how lovely I’m going to run the risk of embarrassing our guest—I hope she won’t mind—but coming into the studio today, for the first moment I did not even realize that she was real. I had seen photographs of her, of course, and knew she would be my guest today—and yet in that first moment, seeing her in that darling outfit, with matching purse and shoes, sitting straight up in the corner of my office sofa with her legs out in front of her, one demurely crossed over the other, I actually thought she was a doll! I thought, ‘My granddaughter Cindy has been here and she’s left her new doll. She’ll be sick, wondering where it is, such a lovely and expensive one too, with real hair and so on’—and then the doll’s mouth opened and said, ‘How do you do, I’m Judy Yamm.’ Well, you’re blushing, but it’s true. I was literally and truly in wonderland for a moment. And I wouldn’t doubt that Bob Yamm was, when he first laid eyes upon you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Was it love at first sight for you, too? Did you ever expect when you first met him that Bob would be a major league baseball player?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “What a thrill then for two young people who only a few months ago thought of themselves as just an ordinary American couple. By the way, are there any little Yamms at home?”

  “Pardon? Oh, no—just Bob and myself.”

  “Uh-oh, I’m being told to cut it short, time for only one more question—so at the risk of being as ultracontroversial as your ultracontroversial husband, Bob Yamm, brilliant pinch-hitter for the Kakoola Reapers, I’m going to ask it. Do you think a midget can ever get to be President of the United States? Now you don’t have to answer that one.”

  “I think I won’t.”

  “Well, I’m no political pundit either, but let me say that I’ve been talking to a midget who could certainly get to be First Lady in my book—and that is the utterly delightful and charming and beautiful Judy Yamm, wife of the famous baseball star, and clothes designer in her own right—and I only hope our granddaughter Cindy isn’t waiting outside here, because one look at you, Judy Yamm, and she’s going to want to take you home for her own! This is Martita McGaff—have a happy, everyone!”

  * * *

  The enthusiasm that Bob Yamm had generated around the nation took even the audacious Frank Mazuma by surprise, and though the owner continued to delight the fans by making unscheduled appearances on the stadium roof when Yamm came to bat, he let it be known to the press that of course his high-powered rifle was loaded only with blanks; in public, he even stopped referring to Bob as “Squirt” and “Runt,” allowing the fans to enjoy the midget however they liked. If they wanted to make a hero out of somebody who was only forty inches high, that was their business—especially as it was good for business. In fact, when a midget a full three inches shorter than Yamm turned up at Mazuma’s office one day, claiming to be a right-handed pitcher, Mazuma promptly pulled a catcher’s mitt out of his desk drawer and took him down beneath the stands for a tryout. The following day, a new name was added to the Reaper roster: No. ½, O.K. Ockatur.

  For a week, Ockatur sat alone in a corner of the Reaper dugout, pounding his little glove and muttering to himself what were taken at the time to be analyses of the weaknesses of the opposing batsmen. Then the Mundys arrived in town direct from a series in Asylum, and the right-hander climbed down off the Reaper bench, and with his curious rolling gait—for he was not so perfectly formed as Yamm, nor so handsome either—made his way out to the mound, where he pitched a four-hit shutout. Using a sidearm delivery, he started low as he could, actually dragging his knuckles in the dust, and then released the ball on a rising trajectory, so that it was still climbing through the strike zone when it passed the batter. “Why, I never seen nothin’ like it,” said Wayne Heket. “That little boy out there, or whatever he is, was throwin’ up at us.” “The mountain climber,” some called the Ockatur pitch; “the skyrocket,” “the upsydaisy”—and as for Ockatur’s right arm, inevitably it was dubbed “the ack-ack gun,” and with characteristic wartime enthusiasm little No. ½ was labeled “Kakoola’s Secret Weapon”—until the players around the league got the knack of laying into that odd, ascending pitch, and began to send it out of the ball park, “where,” said the writers, who weren’t fooled for too long either, “it belonged to begin with.”

  What caused the disenchantment, when it came, to be so profound was the discovery of Ockatur’s fierce hatred of all men taller than himself, including Bob Yamm. At the outset, his refusal to be photographed shaking Yamm’s hand on the steps of the Reaper dugout had startled those who had drawn around, in a spirit of good cheer, to observe the historic event. Visibly shaken by the rebuff, Yamm had nonetheless told the reporters present that he understood perfectly why Mr. Ockatur had turned away in a huff; in fact, he admired him for it! “What O.K. Ockatur has made clear, gentlemen, and in no uncertain terms, is that he has no intention of walking in Bob Yamm’s shadow.” And, in the face of increasingly blatant provocations, Bob continued to conduct himself as he had earlier with Frank Mazuma, when the Reaper owner would do whatever he could to get a laugh out of Bob’s size: he ignored him, and went about his job, which was to draw bases on balls as a pinch-hitter. Only with an adversary like Ockatur, it required a far more heroic effort of restraint, for where Mazuma was a clown who invariably could be counted on to compromise himself by his own exceedingly bad taste, Ockatur was a crazed and indefatigable enemy, who despised him and attacked him with all the ingrained bitterness of a man who is not only a midget by normal standards, but an
exceedingly short person even by the standards of the average midget. Though it was not a word Bob himself would ever have used either publicly or privately to describe Ockatur, in the end he had silently to agree with Judy, when she broke down crying one night at dinner, and called Ockatur, who was trying her husband to the breaking point, “nothing but a dirty little dwarf.”

  If Ockatur came to seem to the Yamms and to the press an insult to the good name of midgets everywhere, to Ockatur, Bob Yamm seemed the last man in the world to bear the title of “the midgets’ midget.” The sight of Yamm wearing a smaller number than his own made him wild with anger (or envy, as most interpreted it): why, if Yamm was Number ¼, then he should be 1⁄8, if not 1⁄16! He was the shorter of the two, and with his oversized head and bandy legs, was far more representative of the average little person than this perfectly proportioned, well-spoken, college-educated, smartly dressed, “courageous,” “dignified,” forty-inch fraternity-boy Adonis, with his spic-and-span Kewpie-doll of a wife! Oh how he hated the kind of midget who went around pretending that he was nothing but a smaller edition of everybody else! who wanted no more than “an even break like everybody else”! As if it were possible for a midget’s life to be anything but a trial and a nightmare! As if it were possible sitting in a high chair in a restaurant eating your dinner to feel like “everybody else,” while as a matter of fact “everybody else” was either looking the other way in disgust, or openly staring in wonder. And that, only if the management would seat you to begin with. Sorry sir, no room—no room, to somebody who weighs only fifty-five pounds and could take his dinner in the phone booth! And what about phone booths? What about having to ask the policeman on his beat if he will be kind enough to pick you up so you can dial—is that like “everybody else,” Bob Yamm? Is it like “everybody else” to go into a public urinal and stand on tiptoes at the trough, while “everybody else” is pissing over your shoulder? And what about the movie show, where either you sit in the front row and look straight up at figures that loom over you even worse than in life, or you go all the way to the back, to the last row, and stand there on your seat—if the usher will permit. Ushers—those compassionate souls! And what about doorknobs, Bob? What about stairways! Turnstiles! Water coolers! Is there a single object that a midget confronts in this entire world that does not say to him loud and clear, “Get out of here, you, you’re the wrong size.” An even break like everybody else! Oh, that’s whose midget Bob Yamm was, all right—everybody else’s! And that’s whose midget he wanted to be, too!

  Is it any wonder then that on the afternoon they were to be photographed shaking hands outside the Reaper dugout, Ockatur muttered at Yamm that insult of midget argot ordinarily applied to the so-called normal-sized people? Chin to chin, looking into Yamm’s clear, kind blue eyes, Ockatur snarled, “I didn’t know they piled shit that high!” then turned and angrily walked—waddled, alas, would be a more accurate description—down into the Reaper clubhouse, leaving Bob to interpret Ockatur’s appalling behavior in what he hoped would be the best interest of their mutual cause.

  OCKATUR, YAMM IN DUGOUT SLUGFEST; BRAWLING MIDGETS DRAW SUSPENSION, FINE FROM MAZUMA; PINCH-HIT STAR ADMITS GUILT, ADDS: “THIS CLUB NOT BIG ENOUGH FOR BOTH OF US”; TO QUIT GAME, MAY RUN FOR CONGRESS AFTER HOLLYWOOD FILMS LIFE

  Sept. 14—The much-feared volcano the Reapers have been worrying over privately for two weeks erupted yesterday in the team dugout, when the first two midgets in baseball, pinch-hitter Bob Yamm and pitcher O.K. Ockatur, came to blows. Yamm was just about to leave the Reaper dugout to pinch-hit against Asylum in the eighth [Asylum won the game 5–4, tumbling the Reapers into seventh place. See story p. 43] when a remark from Ockatur sparked the feud that has been developing between the two since the midget pitcher joined the Reapers in the stretch drive for sixth.

  Following the bloody battle, both players were taken by ambulance to Kakoola Memorial for treatment of cuts and bruises.

  Would Suspend Pope

  Owner Frank Mazuma promptly slapped a one hundred dollar fine and a ten-day suspension on each player for “conduct unbecoming a Reaper.” Mazuma said: “Of course it’s going to hurt the club. If Bob had walked yesterday he would have forced in the tying run and we might well be in sixth right now, where we belong. But there is more to this game than winning.”

  Mazuma replied with some salty language when asked if he would have meted out such punishment to the players if either had been “someone your own size.” “It strikes me,” said an angry Mazuma, “as somewhat odd that the guy who has single-handedly lifted the barrier against midgets should now be accused of picking on them because they happen to be small. I don’t care if they were giants. Throw a punch in my dugout, and I don’t care if you are the Pope himself, out you go on your ———.”

  [In the Vatican, sources close to the Pontiff said the Holy Father had not yet been informed of Mazuma’s remark. Photo story on local Catholic reaction, pro and con, p. 7.]

  Brilliant Midgets

  No one knows yet what exactly passed between the two players as Yamm was moving out of the dugout to pinch-hit against the Keepers with the bases loaded and one out. According to other players, ever since Ockatur came up and began his brilliant winning streak—3–0 to date—he has been needling Yamm, asking him why he doesn’t go ahead and swing away. In the fifteen times he came to bat prior to his suspension, Yamm had not swung at a pitched ball. To date there have been only three strikes called against the forty-inch-high pinch-hitter, each coming in a different game.

  His fifteen consecutive bases on balls already exceed the old major league record by seven.

  Second Volcano

  The second volcano erupted in Kakoola—and the nation—at exactly 9:07 P.M. Central Daylight Saving Time, when Bob Yamm went on station KALE to read to Reaper fans the letter which he had just sent by special messenger to owner Frank Mazuma. [See back page for photo story on midget messenger and his reactions.]

  Yamm appeared at the studio with a bandaged head and hand, accompanied by his wife, Judith. Both were dressed in the style they have made a nationwide fad in only a matter of weeks. Bob wore his famous gray double-breasted pin-striped suit, and Mrs. Yamm a monogrammed yellow sunsuit, with matching yellow purse, shoes, and hair barrette. Mrs. Yamm maintained her composure throughout, but was seen to dab at her face with a yellow handkerchief when her husband read the final paragraph of his prepared statement. [See story “Grown Men Weep” for reaction of studio technicians to Yamm Farewell Speech, p. 9.]

  The Farewell Address

  The following is the complete text of the Yamm speech, as broadcast over KALE:

  Good evening. I am Bob Yamm. I have in the past hour sent a letter to Mr. Frank Mazuma, owner of the Kakoola Reapers, which I shall now read to you in its entirety.

  Dear Mr. Mazuma: I want to tell you that I am wholly to blame for the violent incident that occurred this afternoon at 3:56 P.M., as I was leaving the dugout to pinch-hit against the Asylum Keepers. In the five hours that have elapsed since, I have remained silent as to my responsibility, and have thus caused a great injustice to be visited upon my teammate O.K. Ockatur.

  No Excuse

  I have no more excuse to make for this unconscionable delay than for the incident itself. If I told you that I was too “dazed” at the time to collect my thoughts, I would be reporting only a fraction of the truth. I fear that it was unjustifiable anger, and a cowardly fear of the consequences, that served to seal both my lips and O.K. Ockatur’s fate.

  In Anguish Since Five-Thirty

  I was discharged from the hospital at 5:14 P.M., clinging still to my self-righteous attitude and fully intending to maintain my silence. I will tell you now that my conscience has not given me a moment’s peace since 5:30 when I returned home, and, in anguish, heard the news bulletin announcing your decision to punish O.K. Ockatur and myself equally. That I allowed three hours and two minutes more to intervene between your press conference and my decision to come on
the air (reached at 8:32 C.D.S.T.), is, I fear, yet another black mark against my integrity.

  Keeps Pitchers Honest

  Mr. Mazuma, it will not do any longer to intimate—if only by my silence—that even if I am responsible for this ugly affair, I should be excused from blame because of the burdens I have borne since entering the big leagues. I do not wish to minimize the difficulties and hardships that must befall any man who is a pioneer in his field. I mean rather to suggest that the pressures—and the prejudices—that I have had to withstand as the first midget in baseball, have been as nothing beside those under which my teammate and fellow midget, O.K. Ockatur, has had to labor.

  That there might one day be a midget pinch-hitting in the big leagues had long ago occurred to baseball men, if only as a “funny” idea, a curiosity to draw fans to the ball park. Moreover, on the basis of the thousands of letters I have received from midgets around the country since joining the Reapers, I think I can safely say that this dream of a midget pinch-hitter, who one day would stand at home plate testing the control of the best pitchers in the game, has been a secret ambition of American midgets from time immemorial. I have even received letters from nonmidgets, from full-grown baseball fans, who write to wish me well, and to say that the presence of a midget in the batter’s box may well be what is necessary to prevent big league pitching from deteriorating any further—to keep the pitchers, as they like to put it, “honest.” And many of these correspondents are fans who admit to having scoffed at the idea just a short month ago.

  Unfortunately, they continue to scoff at the idea of a midget on the mound. Victorious though he has been in three consecutive outings, in many ways the spark plug of the Reaper drive on sixth, O.K. Ockatur continues to remain to many something less than a major league pitcher. Sad to say, in their estimations he is still “a freak.”