Бернард Маламуд - The Natural

Vogelman struck him out. He dried his mouth on his sleeve, smiling faintly to himself for the first time since the game began. One more — the Mex. To finish him meant slamming the door on Hobbs, a clean shut-out, and tomorrow the World Series. The sun fell back in the sky and a hush hung like a smell in the air. Flores, with a crazed look in his eye, faced the pitcher. Fouling the first throw, he took for a ball, and swung savagely at the third pitch. He missed. Two strikes, there were only three… Roy felt himself slowly dying. You died alone. At least if he were up there batting… The Mexican’s face was lit in anguish. With bulging eyes he rushed at the next throw, and cursing in Spanish, swung. The ball wobbled crazily in the air, took off, and leaped for the right field wall. Running as though death dogged him, Flores made it, sliding headlong into third. Vogelman, drained of his heart’s blood, stared at him through glazed eyes.

The silence shattered into insane, raucous noise.

Roy rose from the bench. When he saw Pop searching among the other faces, his heart flopped and froze. He would gladly get down on his knees and kiss the old man’s skinny, crooked feet, do anything to get up there this last time. Pop’s haunted gleam settled on him, wavered, traveled down the line of grim faces… and came back to Roy. He called his name.

Up close he had black rings around his eyes, and when he spoke his voice broke.

“See what we have come to, Roy.”

Roy stared at the dugout floor. “Let me go in.”

“What would you expect to do?”

“Murder it.”

“Murder which?”

“The ball — I swear.”

Pop’s eyes wavered to the men on the bench. Reluctantly his gaze returned to Roy. “If you weren’t so damn busy gunning fouls into the stands that last time, you woulda straightened out that big one, and with three scoring, that woulda been the game.”

“Now I understand why they call them fouls.”

“Go on in,” Pop said. He added in afterthought, “Keep us alive.”

Roy selected out of the rack a bat that looked something like Wonderboy. He swung it once and advanced to the plate. Flores was dancing on the bag, beating his body as if it were burning, and jabbering in Spanish that if by the mercy of St. Christopher he was allowed to make the voyage home from third, he would forever after light candles before the saint.

The blank-faced crowd was almost hidden by the darkness crouching in the stands. Home plate lay under a deepening dusty shadow but Roy saw things with more light than he ever had before. A hit, tying up the game, would cure what ailed him. Only a homer, with himself scoring the winning run, would truly redeem him.

Vogelman was contemplating how close he had come to paradise. If the Mex had missed that pitch, the game would now be over. All night long he’d’ve felt eight foot tall, and when he got into bed with his wife, she’d’ve given it to him the way they do to heroes.

The sight of his nemesis crouched low in the brooding darkness around the plate filled him with fear.

Sighing, he brought himself, without conviction, to throw.

“Bo-ool one.”

The staring faces in the stands broke into a cry that stayed till the end of the game.

Vogelman was drenched in sweat. He could have thrown a spitter without half trying but didn’t know how and was afraid to monkey with them.

The next went in cap high.

“Eee bo-ool.”

Wickitt, the Pirate manager, ambled out to the mound.

“S’matter, Dutch?”

“Take me outa here,” Vogelman moaned.

“What the hell for? You got that bastard three times so far and you can do it again.”

“He gives me the shits, Walt. Look at him standing there like a goddamn gorilla. Look at his burning eyes. He ain’t human.”

Wickitt talked low as he studied Roy. “That ain’t what I see. He looks old and beat up. Last week he had a mile-high bellyache in a ladies’ hospital. They say he could drop dead any minute. Bear up and curve ‘em low. I don’t think he can bend to his knees. Get one strike on him and he will be your nookie.”

He left the mound.

Vogelman threw the next ball with his flesh screaming.

“Bo-ool three.”

He sought for Wickitt but the manager kept his face hidden.

In that case, the pitcher thought, I will walk him. They could yank him after that — he was a sick man.

Roy was also considering a walk. It would relieve him of responsibility but not make up for all the harm he had done. He discarded the idea. Vogelman made a bony steeple with his arms. Gazing at the plate, he found his eyes were misty and he couldn’t read the catcher’s sign. He looked again and saw Roy, in full armor, mounted on a black charger. Vogelman stared hard, his arms held high so as not to balk. Yes, there he was coming at him with a long lance as thick as a young tree. He rubbed his arm across his eyes and keeled over in a dead faint.

A roar ascended skywards.

The sun slid behind the clouds. It got cold again. Wickitt, leaning darkly out of the dugout, raised his arm aloft to the center field bullpen. The boy who had been pitching flipped the ball to the bullpen catcher, straightened his cap, and began the long trek in. He was twenty, a scrawny youth with light eyes.

“Herman Youngberry, number sixty-six, pitching for the Pirates.”

Few in the stands had heard of him, but before his long trek to the mound was finished his life was common knowledge. He was a six-footer but weighed a skinny one fifty-eight. One day about two years ago a Pirate scout watching him pitching for his home town team had written on a card, “This boy has a fluid delivery of a blinding fast ball and an exploding curve.” Though he offered him a contract then and there, Youngberry refused to sign because it was his lifelong ambition to be a farmer. Everybody, including the girl he was engaged to, argued him into signing. He didn’t say so but he had it in mind to earn enough money to buy a three hundred acre farm and then quit baseball forever. Sometimes when he pitched, he saw fields of golden wheat gleaming in the sun.

He had come to the Pirates on the first of September from one of their class A clubs, to help in the pennant drive. Since then he’d worked up a three won, two lost record. He’d seen what Roy had done to Vogelrnan the day he hit the four homers, and just now, and wasn’t anxious to face him. After throwing his warm-ups he stepped off the mound and looked away as Roy got back into the box.

Despite the rest he had had, Roy’s armpits were creepy with sweat. He felt a bulk of heaviness around his middle and that the individual hairs on his legs and chest were bristling.

Youngberry gazed around to see how they were playing Roy. It was straightaway and deep, with the infield pulled back too. Flores, though hopping about, was on the bag. The pitcher took a full wind-up and became aware the Knights were yelling dirty names to rattle him.

Roy had considered and decided against a surprise bunt. As things were, it was best to take three good swings.

He felt the shadow of the Judge and Memo fouling the air around him and turned to shake his fist at them but they had left the window.

The ball lit its own path.

The speed of the pitch surprised Stuffy Briggs and it was a little time before he could work his tongue free.

“Stuh-rike.”

Roy’s nose was full of the dust he had raised.

“Throw him to the pigs,” shrilled Otto Zipp.

If he bunted, the surprise could get him to first, and Flores home for the tying run. The only trouble was he had not much confidence in his ability to bunt. Roy stared at the kid, trying to hook his eye, but Youngberry wouldn’t look at him. As Roy stared a fog blew up around the young pitcher, full of old ghosts and snowy scenes. The fog shot forth a snaky finger and Roy carefully searched under it for the ball but it was already in the catcher’s mitt.