The Natural

The Judge looked Roy over, struck a match under the top of his desk and drew a flame into his dead King Oscar. He blew out a smelly cloud of yellow smoke that hid his face a full minute.

“Nice of you to come,” he rumbled. “To what good cause may I attribute this pleasant surprise?”

“I guess you know, Judge,” said Roy, trying to make himself comfortable.

The Judge rumbled in his belly.

“I’m reminded of a case that came before me once. ‘What do you plead?’ I asked the defendant. ‘I leave it to you, Judge, take your choice,’ he responded. I did and sent him to the penitentiary for twenty years.”

The Judge coughed and cackled over that. Roy regarded him closely. Everybody had warned him he was a slick trader, especially Pop who had poured out a hot earful about his partner. “He will peel the skin off of your behind without you knowing it if you don’t watch out.” That was what had happened to him, he said, and he went on to tell Roy that not long after the Judge had bought into the club — after working up Charlie Gulch, Pop’s old-time partner, against him and getting him to sell out — he had taken advantage of some financial troubles Pop was having with his two brothers who owned a paint factory, and also because of his own sickness that kept him in a hospital under expensive medical care all winter long, and the Judge put the squeeze on him to get ten per cent of his stock for a pittance, which had then looked like a life saver because Pop was overdrawn at the bank and they wouldn’t lend him another cent on his share of the Knights. Later, when he realized how much of a say in things he had lost to the Judge he kicked himself all over the lot, for the Judge, as Red Blow had told Roy, drummed up all sorts of player deals to turn a buck, and though Pop fought him on these, he showed on paper that they were losing money at the gate and this was the only way to cover their losses and keep the team going, so Pop had to give in on most of them although he had fought the Judge to a standstill when he wanted to sell Bump and would do the same if he tried it with Roy. It beat Pop where Goodie Banner, as he called him, had got the money to operate with in the first place. He had known him years ago as an impoverished shyster but once he got on the bench his fortunes improved. Yet his salary was only twelve thousand a year for the three years he had served so he must have had backing to buy into the club and later — the dratted nerve of the worm — to offer to buy Pop out altogether. He said he wouldn’t exactly call the Judge a thief but he wouldn’t exactly call him honest either. For instance, the Judge had once casually asked Pop if he wanted to go in for any sideline activities over what they had already contracted for, meaning concessions and the like. Pop said no, he was only interested in the game end of it, so the Judge drew up an agreement offering Pop five per cent of all receipts from enterprises initiated by himself, and he began to rent the place to miniature auto races, meetings, conventions, and dog races, making all sorts of money for himself, while things necessary to the team were being neglected. “When triple talk is invented,” Pop said bitterly, “he will own the copyright.”

It was dark in the office but the Judge made no attempt to switch on the lights. He sat there motionless, a lumpy figure aglow around the edges against the darkening sky.

Roy thought he better get down to brass tacks. “Well, Judge,” he said, shifting in his chair, “I thought you might be expecting me to drop in and see you. You know what I am doing to the ball both here and on the road. The papers have been writing that you might be considering a new contract for me.”

The Judge blew at the ash of his cigar.

Roy grew restless. “I figure forty-five thousand is a fair price for my work. That’s only ten grand more than Bump was getting — and you can subtract off the three thousand in my contract now.” This last was an afterthought and he had decided to leave out the percentage of the gate till next year.

The Judge rumbled, Roy couldn’t tell if it was in his throat or belly.

“I was thinking of Olaf Jespersen.” The Judge’s eyes took on a faraway, slightly glazed look. “He was a farmer I knew in my youth — terrible life. Yet as farmers often do, he managed to live comfortably because he owned a plot of ground with a house on it and had come into possession of an extraordinary cow, Sieglinde. She was a splendid animal with soft and silky front and well-shaped hooves. Her milk yield was some nine gallons per diem, altogether exceptional. In a word she was a superior creature and had the nicest ways with children — her Own of course; but Olaf was deeply disturbed by an ugly skin discoloration that ran across her rump. For a long while he had been eyeing Gussie, an albino cow of his neighbor down the road. One day he approached the man and asked if Gussie was for sale. The neighbor said yes, frankly admitting she gave very little milk although she consumed more than her share of fodder. Olaf said he was willing to trade Sieglinde for her and the neighbor readily agreed. Olaf went back for the cow but on the way to the neighbor’s she stepped into a rut in the road and keeled over as if struck dead. Olaf suffered a heart attack. Thus they were found but Sieglinde recovered and became, before very long, her splendid nine-gallon self, whereas Olaf was incapacitated for the remainder of his days. I often drove past his place and saw him sitting on the moldy front porch, a doddering cripple starving to death with his tubercular albino cow.”

Roy worked the fable around in his mind and got the point. It was not an impressive argument: be satisfied with what you have, and he said so to the Judge.

“‘The love of money is the root of all evil,’” intoned the Judge.

“I do not love it, Judge. I have not been near enough to it to build up any affection to speak of.”

“Think, on the one hand, of the almost indigent Abraham Lincoln, and on the other of Judas Iscariot. What I am saying is that emphasis upon money will pervert your values. One cannot begin to imagine how one’s life may alter for the worse under the impetus of wealth-seeking.”

Roy saw how the land lay. “I will drop it to thirty-five thousand, the same as Bump, but not a cent less.”

The Judge struck a match, throwing shadows on the wall. It was now night. He sucked a flame into his cigar. It went in like a slug, out like a moth — in and outs then forever in and the match was out. The cigar glowed, the Judge blew out a black fog of smoke, then they were once more in the dark.

Lights on, you stingy bastard, Roy thought.

“Pardon the absence of light,” the Judge said, almost making him jump. “As a youngster I was frightened of the dark — used to wake up sobbing in it, as if it were water and I were drowning — but you will observe that I have disciplined myself so thoroughly against that fear, that I much prefer a dark to a lit room, and water is my favorite beverage. Will you have some?”

“No.”

“There is in the darkness a unity, if you will, that cannot be achieved in any other environment, a blending of self with what the self perceives, an exquisite mystical experience. I intend some day to write a disquisition ‘On the Harmony of Darkness; Can Evil Exist in Harmony?’ It may profit you to ponder the question.”

“All I know about the dark is that you can’t see in it.”

“A pure canard. You know you can.”

“Not good enough.”

“You see me, don’t you?”

“Maybe I do and maybe I don’t.”