"The Natural" - читать интересную книгу автора (Маламуд Бернард)

Batter Up!

1

“I shoulda been a farmer,” Pop Fisher said bitterly. “I shoulda farmed since the day I was born. I like cows, sheep, and those horniess goats — I am partial to nanny goats, my daddy wore a beard — I like to feed animals and milk ‘em. I like fixing things, weeding poison oak out of the pasture, and seeing to the watering of the crops. I like to be by myself on a farm. I like to stand out in the fields, tending the vegetables, the corn, the winter wheat — greenest looking stuff you ever saw. When Ma was alive she kept urging me to leave baseball and take up farming, and I always meant to but after she died I had no heart for it.” Pop’s voice all but broke and Red Blow shifted nervously on the bench but Pop didn’t cry. He took out his handkerchief, flipped it, and blew his nose. “I have that green thumb:” he said huskily, “and I shoulda farmed instead of playing wet nurse to a last place, dead-to-the-neck ball team.”

They were sitting in the New York Knights’ dugout, scanning the dusty field, the listless game and half-empty stands.

“Tough,” said Red. He kept his eye on the pitcher.

Removing his cap, Pop rubbed his bald head with his bandaged fingers. “It’s been a blasted dry season. No rains at all. The grass is worn scabby in the outfield and the infield is cracking. My heart feels as dry as dirt for the little I have to show for all my years in the game.”

He got up, stooped at the fountain and spat the warm, rusty water into the dust. “When the hell they going to fix this thing so we can have a decent drink of water? Did you speak to that bastard partner I have, like I said to?”

“Says he’s working on it.”

“Working on it,” Pop grunted. “He’s so tight that if he was any tighter he’d be too stiff to move. It was one of the darkest days of my life when that snake crawled into this club. He’s done me out of more dough than I can count.”

“Kid’s weakening again,” Red said. “He passed two.” Pop watched Fowler for a minute but let him stay. “If those boy scouts could bring in a coupla runs once in a while I’d change pitchers, but they couldn’t bring their own grandmother in from across the street. What a butchering we took from the Pirates in the first game and here we are six runs behind in this. It’s Memorial Day, all right, but not for the soldiers.”

“Should’ve had some runs. Bump had four for four in the first, and two hits before he got himself chucked out of this.”

Pop’s face burned. “Don’t mention that ape man to me — getting hisself bounced out of the game the only time we had runners on the bases when he come up.”

“I’d’ve thrown him out too if I was the ump and he slid dry ice down my pants.”

“I’d like to stuff him with ice. I never saw such a disgusting screwball for practical jokes.”

Pop scratched violently under his loosely bandaged fingers. “And to top it off I have to go catch athlete’s foot on my hands. Now ain’t that one for the books? Everybody I have ever heard of have got it on their feet but I have to go and get it on both of my hands and be itchy and bandaged in this goshdarn hot weather. No wonder I am always asking myself is life worth the living of it.”

“Tough,” Red said. “He’s passed Feeber, bases loaded.” Pop fumed. “My best pitcher and he blows up every time I put him against a first place team. Yank him.”

The coach, a lean and freckled man, got nimbly up on the dugout steps and signaled to the bullpen in right field. He sauntered out to the mound just as somebody in street clothes came up the stairs of the tunnel leading from the clubhouse and asked the player at the end of the bench, “Who’s Fisher?” The player jerked his thumb toward the opposite side of the dugout, and the man, dragging a large, beat-up valise and a bassoon case, treaded his way to Pop.

When Pop saw him coming he exclaimed, “Oh, my eight-foot uncle, what have we got here, the Salvation Army band?”

The man set his things on the floor and sat down on a concrete step, facing Pop. He beheld an old geezer of sixty-five with watery blue eyes, a thin red neck and a bitter mouth, who looked like a lost banana in the overgrown baseball suit he wore, especially his skinny legs in loose blue-and-white stockings.

And Pop saw a tall, husky, dark-bearded fellow with old eyes but not bad features. His face was strong-boned, if a trifle meaty, and his mouth seemed pleasant though its expression was grim. For his bulk he looked lithe, and he appeared calmer than he felt, for although he was sitting here on this step he was still in motion. He was traveling (on the train that never stopped). His self, his mind, raced on and he felt he hadn’t stopped going wherever he was going because he hadn’t yet arrived. Where hadn’t he arrived? Here. But now it was time to calm down, ease up on the old scooter, sit still and be quiet, though the inside of him was still streaming through towns and cities, across forests and fields, over long years.

“The only music I make,” he answered Pop, patting the bassoon case, “is with my bat.” Searching through the pockets of his frayed and baggy suit, worn to threads at the knees and elbows, he located a folded letter that he reached over to the manager. “I’m your new left fielder, Roy Hobbs.”

“My what!” Pop exploded.

“It says in the letter.”

Red, who had returned from the mound, took the letter, unfolded it, and handed it to Pop. He read it in a single swoop then shook his head in disbelief.

“Scotty Carson sent you?”

“That’s right.”

“He must be daffy.”

Roy wet his dry lips.

Pop shot him a shrewd look. “You’re thirty-five if you’re a day.”

“Thirty-four, but I’m good for ten years.”

“Thirty-four — Holy Jupiter, mister, you belong in an old man’s home, not baseball.”

The players along the bench were looking at him. Roy licked his lips.

“Where’d he pick you up?” Pop asked.

“I was with the Oomoo Oilers.”

“In what league?”

“They’re semipros.”

“Ever been in organized baseball?”

“I only recently got back in the game.”

“What do you mean got back?”

“Used to play in high school.”

Pop snorted. “Well, it’s a helluva mess.” He slapped the letter with the back of his fingers. “Scotty signed him and the Judge okayed it. Neither of them consulted me. They can’t do that,” he said to Red. “That thief in the tower might have sixty per cent of the stock but I have it in writing that I am to manage this team and approve all player deals as long as I live.”

“I got a contract,” said Roy.

“Lemme see it.”

Roy pulled a blue-backed paper out of his inside coat pocket.

Pop scanned it. “Where in blazes did he get the figure of three thousand dollars?”

“It was for a five thousand minimum but the Judge said I already missed one-third of the season.”

Pop burst into scornful laughter. “Sure, but that entitles you to about thirty-three hundred. Just like that godawful deadbeat. He’d skin his dead father if he could get into the grave.”

He returned the contract to Roy. “It’s illegal.”

“Scotty’s your chief Scout?” Roy asked.

“That’s right.”

“He signed me to a contract with an open figure and the Judge filled it in. I asked about that and Scotty said he had the authority to sign me.”

“He has,” Red said to Pop. “You said so yourself if he found anybody decent.”

“That’s right, that’s what I said, but who needs a fielder old enough to be my son? I got a left fielder,” he said to Roy, “a darn good one when he feels like it and ain’t playing practical jokes on everybody.”

Roy stood up. “If you don’t want me, Merry Christmas.”

“Wait a second,” said Red. He fingered Pop up close to the fountain and spoke to him privately.

Pop calmed down. “I’m sorry, son,” he apologized to Roy when he returned to the bench, “but you came across me at a bad time. Also thirty-four years for a rookie is starting with one foot in the grave. But like Red says, if our best scout sent you, you musta showed him something. Go on in the clubhouse and have Dizzy fit you up with a monkey suit. Then report back here and I will locate you a place on this bench with the rest of my All-Stars.” He threw the players a withering look and they quickly turned away.

“Listen, mister,” Roy said, “I know my way out of this jungle if you can’t use me. I don’t want any second pickings.”

“Do as he told you,” Red said.

Roy rose, got his valise and bassoon case together, and headed into the tunnel. His heart was thumping like a noisy barrel.

“I shoulda bought a farm,” Pop muttered.

The pitcher in the shower had left the door wide open so the locker room was clouded with steam when Roy came in. Unable to find anybody he yelled into the shower room where was the prop man, and the one in the shower yelled back in the equipment room and close the door it was drafty. When the steam had thinned out and Roy could see his way around he located the manager’s office, so labeled in black letters on the door, but not the equipment room. In the diagonally opposite corner were the trainer’s quarters, and here the door was ajar and gave forth an oil of wintergreen smell that crawled up his nose. He could see the trainer, in a gray sweatshirt with KNIGHTS stenciled across his chest, working on a man mountain on the rubbing table. Catching sight of Roy, the trainer called out in an Irish brogue who was he looking for?

“Prop man,” Roy said.

“That’s Dizzy — down the hail.” The trainer made with his eyes to the left so Roy opened the door there and went down the hall. He located a sign, “Equipment,” and through the window under it saw the prop man in a baseball jersey sitting on a uniform trunk with his back to the wall. He was reading the sports page of the Mirror.

Roy rapped on the ledge and Dizzy, a former utility pitcher, hastily put the paper down. “Caught me at an interesting moment,” he grinned. “I was reading about this catcher that got beaned in Boston yesterday. Broke the side of his skull.”

“The name’s Roy Hobbs, new hand here. Fisher told me to get outfitted.”

“New man — fielder, eh?”

Roy nodded.

“Yeah, we been one man short on the roster for two weeks. One of our guys went and got himself hit on the head with a fly ball and both of his legs are now paralyzed.”

Roy winked.

“Honest to God. And just before that our regular third baseman stepped on a bat and rolled down the dugout steps. Snapped his spine in two places.” Dizzy grimaced. “We sure been enjoying an unlucky season.”

He came forth with a tape measure and took Roy’s measurements, then he went back and collected a pile of stuff from the shelves.

“Try this for size.” He handed him a blue cap with a white K stitched on the front of it.

Roy tried it. “Too small.”

“You sure got some size noggin there.”

“Seven and a half.” Roy looked at him.

“Just a social remark. No offense meant or intended.” He gave Roy a size that fitted.

“How’s it look?” Roy asked.

“A dream but why the tears?”

“I have a cold.” He turned away.

Dizzy asked him to sign for the stuff — Judge Banner insisted. He helped Roy carry it to his locker.

“Keep anything you like inside of here but for goodness’ sakes no booze. Pop throws fits if any of the players drink.”

Roy stood the bassoon case in upright. “Got a lock for the door?”

“Nobody locks their doors here. Before the game you deposit your valuables in that trunk there and I will lock them up.”

“Okay, skip it.”

Dizzy excused himself to get back to his paper and Roy began to undress.

The locker room was tomblike quiet. The pitcher who had been in the showers — his footsteps were still wet on the floor — had dressed rapidly and vanished. As he put his things away, Roy found himself looking around every so often to make sure he was here. He was, all right, yet in all his imagining of how it would be when he finally hit the majors, he had not expected to feel so down in the dumps. It was different than he had thought it would be. So different he almost felt like walking out, jumping back on a train, and going wherever people went when they were running out on something. Maybe for a long rest in one of those towns he had lived in as a kid. Like the place where he had that shaggy mutt that used to scamper through the woods, drawing him after it to the deepest, stillest part, till the silence was so pure you could crack it if you threw a rock. Roy remained lost in the silence till the dog’s yapping woke him, though as he came out of it, it was not barking he heard but the sound of voices through the trainer’s half-open door.

He listened closely because he had the weird impression that he knew all the voices in there, and as he sorted them he recognized first the trainer’s brogue and then a big voice that he did not so much recall, as remember having heard throughout his life — a strong, rawboned voice, familiar from his boyhood and some of the jobs he had worked at later, and the different places he had bummed around in, slop joints, third-rate hotels, prize fight gyms and such; the big voice of a heavy, bull-necked, strong-muscled guy, the kind of gorilla he had more than once fought half to death for no reason he could think of. Oh, the Whammer, he thought, and quickly ducked but straightened up when he remembered the Whammer was almost fifty and long since retired out of the game. But what made him most uneasy was a third voice, higher than the other two, a greedy, penetrating, ass-kissing voice he had definitely heard before. He strained his ears to hear it again but the big voice was talking about this gag he had pulled on Pop Fisher, in particular, spraying white pepper in Pop’s handkerchief, which made him sneeze and constantly blow his beak. That commenced an epidemic of base stealing, to Pop’s fury, because the signal to steal that day was for him to raise his handkerchief to his schnozzle.

At the end of the story there was a guffaw and a yelp of laughter, then the trainer remarked something and this other voice, one that stood on stilts, commented that Bump certainly got a kick out of his jokes, and Bump, he must have been, said Pop wouldn’t agree to his release, so if he was going to be stuck in this swamp he would at least have a little fun.

He laughed loudly and said, “Here’s one for your colyum, kid. We were in Cincy in April and had a free day on our hands because this exhibition game was called off, so in the Plaza lobby that morning we get to bulling about players and records, and you know Pop and this line of his about how lousy the modern player is compared to those mustached freaks he played with in the time of King Tut. He was saying that the average fielder nowadays could maybe hit the kangaroo ball we got — he was looking at me — but you couldn’t count on him to catch a high fly. ‘How high?’ I ask him, innocent, and he points up and says, ‘Any decent height. They either lose them in the sun or misjudge them in the wind.’ So I say, ‘Could you catch the real high ones, Pop?’ And he pipes up, ‘As high as they went up I could catch them.’ He thinks a minute and says, ‘I bet I could catch a ball that is dropped from the top of the Empire State Building.’ ‘No,’ I says, like I was surprised, and ‘Yes,’ he says. So I say, ‘We have nothing on for today, and although there isn’t any Empire State Building in Cincinnati, yet I do have this friend of mine at the airport who owns a Piper Cub. I will give him a National League baseball and he will drop it at the height of the building if you will catch it.’ ‘Done,’ he says, as perky as a turkey, so I call up this guy I know and arrange it and off we go across the bridge to the Kentucky side of the river, where there is plenty of room to move around in. Well, sir, soon this yellow plane comes over and circles a couple of times till he has the right height, and then he lets go with something that I didn’t tell Pop, but which the boys are onto, is a grapefruit so that if it hits him it will not crack his skull open and kill him. Down the thing comes like a cannonball and Pop, in his black two-piece bathing suit, in case he has to go a little in the water, and wearing a mitt the size of a basket, circles under it like a dizzy duck, holding the sun out of his eyes as he gets a line on where it is coming down. Faster it falls, getting bigger by the second, then Pop, who is now set for the catch, suddenly lets out a howl, ‘My Christ, the moon is falling on me,’ and the next second, bong — the grapefruit busts him on the conk and we have all we can do to keep him from drowning in the juice.”

Now there was a loud cackle of laughter in the trainer’s room. The voice Roy didn’t like — the frightening thought dawned on him that the voice knew what he was hiding — it changed the subject and wanted to know from Bump if there was any truth to the rumor about him and Pop’s niece.

“Naw,” Bump said, and cagily asked, “What rumor?”

“That you and Memo are getting hitched.”

Bump laughed. “She must’ve started that one herself.”

“Then you deny it?”

The door was shoved open and Bump waltzed out in his shorts, as husky, broadbacked, and big-shouldered as Roy had thought, followed by the trainer and a slightly popeyed gent dressed in an expensive striped suit, whose appearance gave Roy a shooting pain in the pit of the stomach — Max Mercy.

Ashamed to be recognized, to have his past revealed like an egg spattered on the floor, Roy turned away, tucking his jersey into his pants.

But Bump paraded over with his hairy arm outstretched. “Hiya, Buster, you the latest victim they have trapped?”

Roy felt an irritable urge to pitch his fist at the loudmouth, but he nodded and shook hands.

“Welcome to the lousiest team in the world, barring none,” Bump said. “And this is ol’ Doc Casey, the trainer, who has got nobody but cripples on his hands except me. And the bawkshaw with the eyes is Max Mercy, the famous sports colyumist. Most newspaper guys are your pals and know when to keep their traps shut, but to Max a private life is a personal insult. Before you are here a week he will tell the public how much of your salary you send to your grandma and bow good is your sex life.”

Max, whose mustache and sideboards were graying, laughed hollowly. He said to Roy, “Didn’t catch the name.”

“Roy Hobbs,” he said stiffly, but no one seemed to think it mattered very much.

The game was over and the players hoofed through the tunnel into the locker room. They tore out of their uniforms and piled into the showers. Some stayed in only long enough to wet their skins. Wiping themselves dry, they tumbled into street clothes. Their speed, however, did them no good, for Red, after courteously asking Mercy to leave, posted himself and Earl Wilson, the third base coach, at the door and they let nobody else out. The players waited nervously, except Bump, who slapped backs and advised everybody to cheer up. A few of the boys were working the strategy of staying in the showers so long they hoped Pop would grow sick and tired and leave. But Pop, a self-sustaining torch in the shut managerial office, outwaited them, and when he got the quiet knock from Red that the lobsters were in the pot, yanked open the door and strode sulphurously forth. The team shriveled.

Pop stepped up on a chair where for once, a bald, bristling figure, he towered over them. Waving his bandaged hands he began to berate them but immediately stopped, choked by his rage into silence.

“If he coughs now,” Bump boomed, “he will bust into dust.”

Pop glared at him, his head glowing like a red sun. He savagely burst out that not a single blasted one of them here was a true ballplayer. They were sick monkeys, broken-down mules, pigeon-chested toads, slimy horned worms, but not real, honest-to-god baseball players.

“How’s about flatfooted fish?” Bump wisecracked. “Get it, boys, fish — Fisher,” and he fell into a deep gargle of laughter at his wit, but the semi-frozen players in the room did not react.

“How’s he get away with it?” Roy asked the ghost standing next to him. The pale player whispered out of the corner of his mouth that Bump was presently the leading hitter in the league.

Pop ignored Bump and continued to give the team the rough side of his tongue. “What beats me is that I have spent thousands of dollars for the best players I could lay my hands on. I hired two of the finest coaches in the game. I sweat myself sick trying to direct you, and all you can deliver is those goddamn goose eggs.” His voice rose. “Do you dimwits realize that we have been skunked for the last forty-five innings in a row?”

“Not Bumpsy,” the big voice said, “I am terrific.”

“You now hold the record of the most consecutive games lost in the whole league history, the most strikeouts, the most errors —”

“Not Bumpsy —”

“— the most foolishness and colossal stupidities. In plain words, you all stink. I am tempted to take pity on those poor dopes who spend a buck and a half to watch you play and trade the whole lousy lot of you away.”

Bump dropped down on his knees and raised his clasped hands. “Me first, Lawdy, me first.”

“— and start from scratch to build up a team that will know how to play together and has guts and will fight the other guy to death before they drop seventeen games in the cellar.”

The players in the locker room were worn Out but Bump was singing, “Many brave hearts are asleep in the deep.”

“Beware,” he croaked low in his throat, “bewaaare —”

Pop shook a furious finger at him that looked as if it would fly off and strike him in the face. “As for you, Bump Baily, high and mighty though you are, some day you’ll pay for your sassifras. Remember that lightning cuts down the tallest trees too.”

Bump didn’t like warnings of retribution. His face turned surly.

“Lightning, maybe, but no burnt out old fuse.”

Pop tottered. “Practice at eight in the morning,” he said brokenly. But for Red he would have tumbled off the chair. In his office behind the slammed and smoking door they could hear him sobbing, “Sometimes I could cut my own throat.”

It took the Knights a while to grow bones and crawl out after Bump. But when everybody had gone, including the coaches and Dizzy, Roy remained behind. His face was flaming hot, his clothes soaked in sweat and shame, as if the old man’s accusations had been leveled at his head.

When Pop came out in his street clothes, a yellowed Panama and a loud sport jacket, he was startled to see Roy sitting there in the gloom and asked what he was waiting for.

“No place to go,” Roy said.

“Whyn’t you get a room?”

“Ain’t got what it takes.”

Pop looked at him. “Scotty paid you your bonus cash, didn’t he?”

“Two hundred, but I had debts.”

“You shoulda drawn an advance on your first two weeks’ pay from the office when you came in today. It’s too late now, they quit at five, so I will write you out my personal check for twenty-five dollars and you can pay me back when you get the money.”

Pop balanced his checkbook on his knee. “You married?”

“No.”

“Whyn’t you ask around among the married players to see who has got a spare room? That way you’d have a more regular life. Either that, or in a respectable boarding house. Some of the boys who have their homes Out of town prefer to stay at a moderate-priced hotel, which I myself have done since my wife passed away, but a boarding house is more homelike and cheaper. Anyway,” Pop advised, “tonight you better come along with me to the hotel and tomorrow you can find a place to suit your needs.”

Roy remarked he wasn’t particularly crazy about hotels.

They left the ball park, got into a cab and drove downtown. The sky over the Hudson was orange. Once Pop broke out of his reverie to point out Grant’s Tomb.

At the Midtown Hotel, Pop spoke to the desk clerk and he assigned Roy a room on the ninth floor, facing toward the Empire State Building. Pop went up with him and pumped the mattress.

“Not bad,” he said.

After the bellhop had left he said he hoped Roy wasn’t the shenanigan type.

“What kind?” Roy asked.

“There are all sorts of nuts in this game and I remember one of my players — seems to me it was close to twenty years ago — who used to walk out on the fifteenth floor ledge and scare fits out of people in the other rooms. One day when he was walking out there he fell and broke his leg and only the darndest luck kept him from rolling right overboard. It was beginning to rain and he pulled himself around from window to window, begging for help, and everybody went into stitches at his acting but kept their windows closed. He finally rolled off and hit bottom.”

Roy had unpacked his valise and was washing up.

“Lemme tell you one practical piece of advice, son,” Pop went on. “You’re starting way late — I was finished after fifteen years as an active player one year after the age you’re coming in, but if you want to get along the best way, behave and give the game all you have got, and when you can’t do that, quit. We don’t need any more goldbrickers or fourfiushers or practical jokers around. One Bump Baily is too much for any team.”

He left the room, looking wretched.

The phone jangled and after a minute Roy got around to lifting it.

“What’s the matter?” Red Blow barked. “Don’t you answer your telephone?”

“I like it to ring a little, gives ‘em a chance to change their mind.”

“Who?”

“Anybody.”

Red paused. “Pop asked me to show you around. When are you eating?”

“I am hungry now.”

“Meet me in the lobby, half past six.”

As Roy hung up there was a loud dum-diddy-um-dum on the door and Bump Baily in a red-flowered Hollywood shirt breezed in.

“Hiya, buster. Saw you pull in with the old geezer and tracked you down. I would like for you to do me a favor.”

“Roy is the name.”

“Roy is fine. Listen, I got my room on the fourth floor, which is a damn sight classier than this mouse trap. I would like you to borrow it and I will borrow this for tonight.”

“What’s the pitch?”

“I am having a lady friend visit me and there are too many nosy people on my floor.”

Roy considered and said okay. He unconsciously wet his lips.

Bump slapped him between the shoulders. “Stick around, buster, you will get yours.”

Roy knew he would never like the guy.

Bump told him his room number and they exchanged keys, then Roy put a few things into his valise and went downstairs.

Coming along the fourth floor hall he saw a door half open and figured this was it. As he pulled the knob he froze, for there with her back to him stood a slim, redheaded girl in black panties and brassiere. She was combing her hair before a mirror on the wall as the light streamed in around her through the billowy curtains. When she saw him in the mirror she let out a scream. He stepped back as if he had been kicked in the face. Then the door slammed and he had a splitting headache.

Bump’s room was next door so Roy went in and lay down on the bed, amid four purple walls traced through with leaves flying among white baskets of fruit, some loaded high and some spilled over. He lay there till the pain in his brain eased.

At 6:30 he went down and met Red, in a droopy linen suit, and they had steaks in a nearby chophouse. Roy had two and plenty of mashed potatoes. Afterwards they walked up Fifth Avenue. He felt better after the meal.

“Want to see the Village?” Red said.

“What’s in it?”

Red picked his teeth. “Beats me. Whatever they got I can’t find it. How about a picture?”

Roy was agreeable so they dropped into a movie. It was a picture about a city guy who came to the country, where he had a satisfying love affair with a girl he met. Roy enjoyed it. As they walked back to the hotel the night was soft and summery. He thought about the black-brassiered girl in the next room.

Red talked about the Knights. “They are not a bad bunch of players, but they aren’t playing together and it’s mostly Bump’s fault. He is for Bump and not for the team. Fowler, Schultz, Hinkle, and Hill are all good pitchers and could maybe be fifteen or twenty game winners if they got some support in the clutches, which they don’t, and whatever Bump gives them in hitting he takes away with his lousy fielding.”

“How’s that?”

“He’s just so damn lazy. Pop has thrown many a fine and suspension at him, but after that he will go into a slump on purpose and we don’t win a one. If I was Pop I’da had his ass long ago, but Pop thinks a hitter like him could be a bell cow and lead the rest ahead, so he keeps hoping he will reform. If we could get the team rolling we’d be out of the cellar in no time.”

They were approaching the hotel and Roy counted with his eyes up to the fourth floor and watched the curtains in the windows.

“I read Scotty’s report on you,” Red said. “He says you are a terrific hitter. How come you didn’t start playing when you were younger?”

“I did but I flopped.” Roy was evasive.

Red cringed. “Don’t say that word around here.”

“What word?”

“Flopped — at least not anywhere near Pop. He starts to cry when he hears it.”

“What for?”

“Didn’t you ever hear about Fisher’s Flop?”

“Seems to me I did but I am not sure.”

Red told him the story. “About forty years ago Pop was the third sacker for the old Sox when they got into their first World Series after twenty years. They sure wanted to take the flag that year but so did the Athletics, who they were playing, and it was a rough contest all the way into the seventh game. That one was played at Philly and from the first inning the score stood at 3–3, until the Athletics drove the tie-breaker across in the last of the eighth. In the ninth the Sox’s power was due up but they started out bad. The leadoffer hit a blooper to short, the second struck out, and the third was Pop. It was up to him. He let one go for a strike, then he slammed a low, inside pitch for a tremendous knock.

“The ball sailed out to deep center,” Red said, “where the center fielder came in too fast and it rolled through him to the fence and looked good for an inside-the-park homer, or at least a triple. Meanwhile, Pop, who is of course a young guy at this time, was ripping around the bags, and the crowd was howling for him to score and tie up the game, when in some crazy way as he was heading for home, his legs got tangled under him and he fell flat on his stomach, the living bejesus knocked out of him. By the time he was up again the ball was in the catcher’s glove and he ran up the baseline after Pop. In the rundown that followed, the third baseman tagged him on the behind and the game was over.”

Red spat into the street. Roy tried to say something but couldn’t.

“That night Fisher’s Flop, or as they mostly call it, ‘Fisher’s Famous Flop,’ was in every newspaper in the country and was talked about by everybody. Naturally Pop felt like hell. I understand that Ma Fisher had the phone out and hid him up in the attic. He stayed there two weeks, till the roof caught fire and he had to come out or burn. After that they went to Florida for a vacation but it didn’t help much. His picture was known to all and wherever he went they yelled after him, ‘Flippity-flop, flippity-flop.’ It was at this time that Pop lost his hair. After a while people no longer recognized him, except on the ball field, yet though the kidding died down, Pop was a marked man.”

Roy mopped his face. “Hot,” he said.

“But he had his guts in him,” Red said, “and stayed in the game for ten years more and made a fine record. Then he retired from baseball for a couple of years, which was a good thing but he didn’t know it. Soon one of Ma’s rich relatives died and left them a pile of dough that Pop used to buy himself a half share of the Knights. He was made field manager and the flop was forgotten by now except for a few wise-egg sportswriters that, when they are too drunk to do an honest day’s work, would raise up the old story and call it Fisher’s Fizzle, or Farce, or Fandango — you wouldn’t guess there are so many funny words beginning with an f — which some of them do to this day when the Knights look foolish. The result is that Pop has the feeling he has been jinxed since the time of his flop, and he has spent twenty-five years and practically all of his pile trying to break the jinx, which he thinks he can do by making the Knights into the world champs that the old Sox never did become. Eight times he has finished in second place, five in third, and the rest in fourth or fifth, but last season when the Judge bought into the club and then took advantage of Pop’s financial necessity to get hold of ten per cent of his shares and make himself the majority stockholder, was our worst season. We ended up in the sewer and this year it looks like a repeat.”

“How come?”

“The Judge is trying to push Pop out of his job although he has a contract to manage for life — that’s what the Judge had to promise to get that ten per cent of stock. Anyway, he’s been trying everything he can think of to make things tough for Pop. He has by his sly ways forced all sorts of trades on us which make money all right but hurt the team. It burns me up,” Red said, “because I would give my right arm if I could get Pop the pennant. I am sure that if he took one and the Series after that, he would feel satisfied, quit baseball, and live in peace. He is one helluva white guy and deserves better than he got. That’s why I am asking you to give him the best you have in you.”

“Let him play me,” Roy said, “and he will get the best.”

In the lobby Red said he had enjoyed Roy’s company and they should eat together more. Before he left he warned Roy to be careful with his earnings. They weren’t much, he knew, but if in the future Roy had a chance to invest in soniething good, he advised him to do so. “There is a short life in baseball and we have to think of the future. Anything can happen to you in this game. Today you are on top and tomorrow you will be on your way out to Dubuque. Try to protect your old age. It don’t pay to waste what you earn.”

To his surprise, Roy answered, “To hell with my old age. I will be in this game a long time.”

Red rubbed his chin. “How are you so sure?”

“It wasn’t for nothing it took me fifteen years to get here. I came for more than the ride and I will leave my mark around here.”

Red waited to hear more but Roy shut up.

Red shrugged, “Well, each to their choice.”

Roy said good night and went upstairs. Entering Bump’s room, he picked up a gilt hairpin from the carpet and put it into his wallet because some claimed it brought luck. For a while he stood at the window and watched the lit Empire State Building. It was a great big city, all right. He undressed, thinking of Pop’s flop that changed his whole life, and got into bed.

In the dark the bed was in motion, going round in wide, sweeping circles. He didn’t like the feeling so he lay deathly still and let everything go by — the trees, mountains, states. Then he felt he was headed into a place where he did not want to go and tried urgently to think of ways to stop the bed. But he couldn’t and it went on, a roaring locomotive now, screaming into the night, so that he was tensed and sweating and groaned aloud why did it have to be me? what did I do to deserve it? seeing himself again walking down the long, lonely corridor, carrying the bassoon case, the knock, the crazy Harriet (less and more than human) with the shiny pistol, and him, cut down in the very flower of his youth, lying in a red pool of his own blood.

No, he cried, oh no, and lashed at his pillow, as he had a thousand times before.

Finally, as the sight of him through the long long years of suffering faded away, he quieted down. The noise of the train eased off as it came to a stop, and Roy found himself set down in a field somewhere in the country, where he had a long and satisfying love affair with this girl he had seen in the picture tonight.

He thought of her till he had fallen all but deep asleep, when a door seemed to open in the mind and this naked redheaded lovely slid out of a momentary flash of light, and the room was dark again. He thought he was still dreaming of the picture but the funny part of it was when she got into bed with him he almost cried out in pain as her icy hands and feet, in immediate embrace, slashed his hot body, but there among the apples, grapes, and melons, he found what he wanted and had it.