Бернард Маламуд - The Natural

After a long time trying to settle himself comfortably, he fell snoring asleep flat on his back and was at once sucked into a long dream that he had gone thirsty mad for a drink and was threatening the slickers in the car get him a bottle or else. Then this weasel of a Mercy, pretending he was writing on a pad, pointed him out with his pencil and the conductor snapped him up by the seat of his pants and ran his freewheeling feet lickity-split through the sawdust, giving him the merry heave-ho off the train through the air on a floating trapeze, pioop into a bog where it rained buckets. He thought he better get across the foaming river before it flooded the bridge away so he set out, all bespattered, to cross it, only this queer duck of a doctor in oilskins, an old man with a washable white mustache and a yellow lamp he thrust straight into your eyeballs, swore to him the bridge was gone. You’re plumb tootin’ crazy, Sam shouted in the storm, I saw it standin’ with me own eyes, and he scuffled to get past the geezer, who dropped the light setting the rails afire. They wrestled in the rain until Sam slyly tripped and threw him, and helterskeltered for the bridge, to find to his crawling horror it was truly down and here he was scratching space till he landed with a splishity-splash in the whirling waters, sobbing (whoa whoa) and the white watchman on the embankment flung him a flare but it was all too late because he heard the roar of the falls below (and restless shifting of the sea) and felt with his red hand where the knife had stabbed him —.

Roy was dreaming of an enormous mountain — Christ, the size of it — when he felt himself roughly shaken — Sam, he thought, because they were there — only it was Eddie holding a lit candle.

“The fuse blew and I’ve had no chance to fix it.”

“What’s the matter?”

“Trou-ble. Your friend has collapsed.”

Roy hopped out of the berth, stepped into moccasins and ran, with Eddie flying after him with the snuffed wax, into a darkened car where a pool of people under a blue light hovered over Sam, unconscious.

“What happened?” Roy cried.

“Sh,” said the conductor, “he’s got a raging fever.”

“What from?”

“Can’t say. We’re picking up a doctor.”

Sam was lying on a bench, wrapped in blankets with a pillow tucked under his head, his gaunt face broken out in sweat. When Roy bent over him, his eyes opened.

“Hello, kiddo,” he said in a cracked voice.

“What hurts you, Sam?”

“Where the washboard banged me — but it don’t hurt so much now.”

“Oh, Jesus.”

“Don’t take it so, Roy. I’ll be better.”

“Save his strength, son,” the conductor said. “Don’t talk now.”

Roy got up. Sam shut his eyes.

The train whistled and ran slow at the next town then came to a draggy halt. The trainman brought a half-dressed doctor in. He examined Sam and straightened up. “We got to get him off and to the hospital.”

Roy was wild with anxiety but Sam opened his eyes and told him to bend down. Everyone moved away and Roy bent low. “Take my wallet outa my rear pocket.” Roy pulled out the stuffed cowhide wallet. “Now you go to the Stevens Hotel —”

“No, oh no, Sam, not without you.”

“Go on, kiddo, you got to. See Clarence Mulligan tomorrow and say I sent you — they are expecting you. Give them every. thing you have got on the ball — that’!! make me happy.”

“But, Sam —”

“You got to. Bend lower.”

Roy bent lower and Sam stretched his withered neck and kissed him on the chin.

“Do like I say.”

“Yes, Sam.”

A tear splashed on Sam’s nose.

Sam had something more in his eyes to say but though he tried, agitated, couldn’t say it. Then the trainmen came in with a stretcher and they lifted the catcher and handed him down the steps, and overhead the stars were bright but he knew he was dead.

Roy trailed the anonymous crowd out of Northwest Station and clung to the shadowy part of the — wall till he had the courage to call a cab.

“Do you go to the Stevens Hotel?” he asked, and the driver without a word shot off before he could rightly be seated, passed a red light and scuttled a cripple across the deserted street. They drove for miles in a shadow-infested, street-lamped jungle.

He had once seen some stereopticon pictures of Chicago and it was a boxed-up ant heap of stone and crumbling wood buildings in a many-miled spreading checkerboard of streets without much open space to speak of except the railroads, stockyards, and the shore of a windy lake. In the Loop, the offices went up high and the streets were jampacked with people, and he wondered how so many of them could live together in any one place. Suppose there was a fire or something and they all ran out of their houses to see — how could they help but trample all over themselves? And Sam had warned him against strangers, because there were so many bums, sharpers, and gangsters around, people you were dirt to, who didn’t know you and didn’t want to, and for a dime they would slit your throat and leave you dying in the streets.

“Why did I come here?” he muttered and felt sick for home. The cab swung into Michigan Avenue, which gave a view of the lake and a white-lit building spiring into the sky, then before he knew it he was standing flatfooted (Christ, the size of it) in front of the hotel, an enormous four-sectioned fortress. He hadn’t the nerve to go through the whirling doors but had to because this bellhop grabbed his things — he wrested the bassoon case loose — and led him across the thick-carpeted lobby to a desk where he signed a card and had to count out five of the wallet’s pulpy dollars for a room he would give up as soon as he found a house to board in.

But his cubbyhole on the seventeenth floor was neat and private, so after he had stored everything in the closet he lost his nervousness. Unlatching the window brought in the lake breeze. He stared down at the lit sprawl of Chicago, standing higher than he ever had in his life except for a night or two on a mountain. Gazing down upon the city, he felt as if bolts in his knees, wrists, and neck had loosened and he had spread up in height. Here, so high in the world, with the earth laid out in small squares so far below, he knew he would go in tomorrow and wow them with his fast one, and they would know him for the splendid pitcher he was.

The telephone rang. He was at first scared to answer it. In a strange place, so far from everybody he knew, it couldn’t possibly be for him.

It rang again. He picked up the phone and listened.

“Hello, Roy? This is Harriet.”

He wasn’t sure he had got it right. “Excuse me?”

“Harriet Bird, silly.”

“Oh, Harriet.” He had completely forgotten her. “Come down to my room,” she giggled, “and let me say welcome to the city.”

“You mean now?”

“Right away.” She gave him the room number.

“Sure.” He meant to ask her how she knew he was here but she had hung up.

Then he was elated. So that’s how they did it in the city. He combed his hair and got out his bassoon case. In the elevator a drunk tried to take it away from him but Roy was too strong for him.

He walked — it seemed ages because he was impatient — through a long corridor till he found her number and knocked.

“Come on in.”

Opening the door, he was astonished at the enormous room. Through the white-curtained window the sight of the endless dark lake sent a shiver down his spine.

Then he saw her standing shyly in the far corner of the room, naked under the gossamer thing she wore, held up on her risen nipples and the puffed wedge of hair beneath her white belly. A great weight went off his mind.

As he shut the door she reached into the hat box which lay open next to a vase of white roses on the table and fitted the black feathered hat on her head. A thick veil fell to her breasts. In her hand she held a squat, shining pistol.