The Natural

The whole thing was kept a surprise, and after batting practice was over on this particular Saturday afternoon in early August, the right field gate had swung open and a whole caravan of cars, led by a limousine full of officials and American Legionnaires, and followed by a gorgeous, underslung white Mercedes-Benz and a lumbering warehouse van loaded with stuff, drove in and slowly circled the field to the music of a band playing “Yankee Doodle,” while the crowd cheered shrilly. Someone then tapped Roy and said it was all for him.

“Who, me?” he said, rising…

When he had made his speech and retired to the dugout, after a quick, unbelieving glance at the mountain of gifts they were unpacking for him, the fans sat back in frozen silence, some quickly crossing their fingers, some spitting over their left shoulders, onto the steps so they wouldn’t get anyone wet, almost all hoping he had not jinxed himself forever by saying what he had said. “The best there ever was in the game” might tempt the wrath of.some mighty powerful ghosts. But they quickly recovered from the shock of his audacity and clapped up a thick thunder of applause.

It was everyman’s party and they were determined to enjoy it. No one knew exactly who had supplied the big dough, but the loyal everyday fans had contributed all sorts of small change and single bucks to buy enough merchandise to furnish a fair-sized general store. When everything was unloaded from the van, Roy posed in front of it, fiddling with a gadget or two for the benefit of the photographers, though he later tipped off Dizzy to sell whatever he could to whoever had the cash. Mercy himself counted two television sets, a baby tractor, five hundred feet of pink plastic garden hose, a nanny goat, lifetime pass to the Paramount, one dozen hand-painted neckties offering different views of the Grand Canyon, six aluminum traveling cases, and a credit for seventy-five taxi rides in Philadelphia. Also three hundred pounds of a New Jersey brand Swiss cheese, a set of andirons and tongs, forty gallons of pistachio ice cream, six crates of lemons, a frozen side of hog, hunting knife, bearskin rug, snowshoes, four burner electric range, deed to a lot in Florida, twelve pairs of monogrammed blue shorts, movie camera and projector, a Chris-Craft motor boat — and, because everybody thought the Judge (unashamedly looking on from his window in the tower) was too cheap to live — a certified check for thirty-six hundred dollars. Although the committee had tried to keep out all oddball contributions, a few slipped in, including a smelly package of Limburger cheese, one human skull, bundle of comic books, can of rat exterminator, and a package of dull razor blades, this last with a card attached in the crabbed handwriting of Otto Zipp: “Here, cut your throat,” but Roy did not take it to heart.

When he was told, to his amazement, that the Mercedes Benz was his too, he could only say, “This is the happiest day of my life.” Getting in, he drove around the park to the frenzied waving and whistling of the fans and whirring of movie cameras. The gleaming white job was light to the touch of hand and foot and he felt he could float off in it over the stadium wall. But he stopped before Memo’s box and asked if she would go with him for a jaunt after the game, to which she, lowering her eyes, replied she was agreeable.

Memo said she longed to see the ocean so they drove over the bridge and down into Long Island toward Jones Beach, stopping when she was hungry, for charcoal-broiled steaks at a roadside tavern. Afterwards it was night, lit up by a full moon swimming in lemon juice, but at intervals eclipsed by rain clouds that gathered in dark blots and shuttered the yellow light off the fields and tree tops.

She spoke little, once remarking it looked like rain.

He didn’t answer. Though he had started off riding high (he had paid back the patrons of his Day by walloping a homer that drove in the winning run) he now felt somewhat heavy hearted. For the past two weeks he had been seeing Memo most every day but had made little headway. There were times when he thought yes, I am on my way up in her affections, but no sooner did he think that when something she did or said, or didn’t do or didn’t say, made him think no, I am not. It was a confusing proposition to want a girl you’d already had and couldn’t get because you had; a situation common in his life, of having first and then wanting what he had had, as if he hadn’t had it but just heard about it, and it had, in the hearing, aroused his appetite. He even wished he had not had her that night, and wondered — say he hadn’t — whether he would be in the least interested in her today.

In another sense it wasn’t a bad evening. He was with her, at least, and they were traveling together, relaxed, to the ocean. He didn’t exactly know where it was and though he liked the water, tonight he did not much care if they never came to it. He felt contentment in moving. It rested him by cutting down the inside motion — that which got him nowhere, which was where he was and she was not, or where his ambitions were and he was chasing after. Sometimes he wished he had no ambitions — often wondered where they had come from in his life, because he remembered how satisfied he had been as a youngster, and that with the little he had had — a dog, a stick, an aloneness he loved (which did not bleed him like his later loneliness), and he wished he could have lived longer in his boyhood. This was an old thought with him.

Hoping for a better fate in the future he stepped on the gas and was at once seized by an uneasy fear they were being followed. Since the mirror showed nobody behind them, he wondered at his suspicions and then recalled a black sedan that had been on their tail, he thought, all the way down from the city, only they had lost it a while back in turning off the highway. Yet he continued to watch in the mirror, though it showed only the lifeless moonlit road.

Memo said Jones Beach was too far and told him to stop the next time they came to a brook or pond where she could take off her shoes and go wading in the water. When he spied a small stream running along the edge of a wooded section between two towns, he slowed down. They parked across the shoulder of the asphalt and got out but as they crossed this wooden bridge to the grassy side of the stream, they were confronted by a sign: DANGER. POLLUTED WATER. NO SWIMMING. Roy was all for getting into the car to find another place, but Memo said no, they could watch the water from the bridge. She lit a cigarette, all in light, her hair and green summer dress, and her naked legs and even the slave bracelet around her left ankle gleaming in the light of the moon. Smoking, she watched the water flowing under the bridge, its movement reflected on her face.

After a while, seeing how silent she was, Roy said, “I bet I got enough today to furnish a house.”

Memo said, “Bump was coming up for a Day just before he died.”

He felt anger rise in his heart and asked coldly, “Well, Memo, what did he have that I haven’t got?” He stood to his full height, strong and handsome.

Without looking at him she spoke Bump’s name thoughtfully, then shook her head to snap out of it, as if it didn’t pay to be thoughtful about Bump. “Oh,” she answered, “he was carefree and full of life. He did the craziest things and always kept everybody in stitches. Even when he played ball, there was something carefree and playful about it. Maybe he went all the way after a fly ball or maybe he didn’t, but once he made up his mind to catch it, it was exciting how he ran and exciting how he caught it. He made you think you had been wishing for a thing to happen for a long time and then he made it happen. And the same with his hitting. When you catch one, Roy, or go up to hit, everybody knows beforehand that it will land up in your glove, or be a hit. You work at it so — sometimes you even look desperate — but to him it was a playful game and so was his life. Nobody could ever tell what would happen next with Bump, and that was the wonderful thing of it.”