The Natural

She sobbed for the longest time. So long he grew jumpy with doubts about their future relations, but then she stopped crying and said in a damp voice, “Would you have me, Roy?”

He swayed with emotion as he got out thickly, “Would I?” To keep from hitting the ground he hopped into bed and sprawled out.

She came to him, her white hands clasped, her wet eyelids like sparkling flowers. “There’s one thing you have to understand, Roy, and then maybe you won’t want me. That is that I am afraid to be poor.” She said it with intensity, her face turning dark at her words. “Maybe I am weak or spoiled, but I am the type who has to have somebody who can support her in a decent way. I’m sick of living like a slave. I got to have a house of my own, a maid to help me with the hard work, a decent car to shop with and a fur coat for winter time when it’s cold. I don’t want to have to worry every time a can of beans jumps a nickel. I suppose it’s wrong to want all of that but I can’t help it. I’ve been around too long and seen too much. I saw how my mother lived and I know it killed her. I made up my mind to have certain things. You understand that, don’t you, Roy?”

He nodded.

“We have to face it,” she said. “You’re thirty-five now and that don’t give you much time left as a ball player.”

“What d’ye mean?” he asked, deadpan.

But it wasn’t his blood pressure she was referring to. For a minute he was afraid she had found out.

“I’m sorry to say this, Roy, but I have to be practical. Suppose the next one is your last season, or that you will have one more after that? Sure, you’ll probably get a good contract till then but it costs money to live, and then what’ll we do for the rest of our lives?”

It was dark in the room now. He could scarcely see her. “Turn on the lights.”

She smeared powder over her nose and under her eyes, then pressed the button.

He stared at her.

She grew restless. “Roy —”

“I was just thinking, even if I had to quit right now I could still scrounge up about twenty-five grand in the next few months. That’s a lotta dough.”

She seemed doubtful. “What would you do with it?”

“We’d get hitched and I would invest in a business. Everybody does that. My name is famous already. We will make out okay. You will have what you want.”

“What kind of business?” Memo asked.

“I can’t say for sure — maybe a restaurant.”

She made a face.

“What do you have in mind?” Roy asked.

“Oh, something big, Roy. I would like you to buy into a company where you could have an executive job and won’t have to go poking your nose into the stew in a smelly restaurant.”

A jet of nausea shot up from his gizzard. He admitted to himself he wanted nothing to do with restaurants.

“How much dough do we need to get in on one of those big companies?”

“I should think more than twenty-five thousand.”

He gulped. “Around thirty-five?”

“More like fifty.”

Roy frowned. Talk of that kind of dough gave him a bellyache. But Memo was right. It had to be something big or it wouldn’t pay back enough. And if it was a big company he could take it a little easy, to protect his health, without anybody kicking. He pondered where to get another twenty-five thousand, and it had to be before the start of the next baseball season because as soon as everybody saw he wasn’t playing, it wouldn’t be easy to cash in on his name. People had no use for a has been. He had to be married and have the dough, both before next spring — in case he never did get to play. He thought of other means to earn some money fast — selling the story of his life to the papers, barnstorming a bit this fall and winter, not too strenuously. But neither of these things added up to much — not twenty-five grand. Roy lay back with his eyes shut.

Memo whispered something. His lids flew open. What was she doing with an old black dress on, her hair uncombed, looking like Lola, the Jersey City fortuneteller? Yet her voice was calm…

“Who sent you,” he spoke harshly, “— that bastard Gus?”

She turned flame-faced but answered quietly, “The Judge.”

“Banner?” Somebody inside of him — this nervous character lately hanging around — crashed a glass to the floor. Roy’s pulses banged.

“He said he’d pay you fifteen thousand now and more next season. He says it would depend on you.”

“I thought I smelled skunk.”

“He asked me to deliver the message. I have nothing to do with it.”

“Who else is in on this?”

“I don’t know.”

“Pop?”

“No.”

He lay motionless for an age. She said no more, did not plead or prod. It grew late. An announcement was made for visitors to leave. She rose and tiredly put on her coat.

“I was thinking of all the years you would be out of the game.”

“What does he want me to do?”

“It’s something about the playoff — I don’t know.”

“They want me to drop it?”

She didn’t answer.

“No,” he said out loud.

She shrugged. “I told them you wouldn’t.”

She was thin and haggard-looking. Her shoulders drooped, her hands were bloodless. To refuse her just about broke his heart.

He fell into a deep slumber but had not slept very long before this rat-eyed vulture, black against the ceiling, began to flap around the room and dripping deep fat spiraled down toward his face. Wrestling together, they knocked over the tables and chairs, when the lights went on and waked him. Roy grabbed under the pillow for a gun he thought was there, only it wasn’t. Awake, he saw through the glare that Judge Goodwill Banner, in dark glasses and hairy black fedora, was staring at him from the foot of the bed.

“What the hell do you want here?”

“Don’t be alarmed,” the Judge rumbled. “Miss Paris informed me you were not asleep, and the authorities granted me a few minutes to visit with you.”

“I got nothing to say to you.” The nightmare had weakened him. Not wanting the Judge to see that, he pulled himself into a sitting position.

The Judge, yellow-skinned in the electric light, and rumpled-looking, sat in the armchair with his potlike hat on. He sucked an unwilling flame into his King Oscar and tossed the burnt-out match on the floor.

“How is your health, young man?”

“Skip it. I am all right now.”

The Judge scrutinized him.

“Wanna bet?” Roy said.

The Judge’s rubbery lips tightened around his cigar. After a minute he removed it from his mouth and said cautiously, “I assume that Miss Paris has acquainted you with the terms of a certain proposal?”

“Leave her name out of it.”

“An admirable suggestion — a proposal, you understand, made by persons unknown.”

“Don’t make me laugh. I got a good mind to sick the FBI on you.”

The Judge examined his cigar. “I rely on your honor. You might consider, however, that there is no witness other than Miss Paris, and I assume you would be solicitous of her?”

“I said to leave her name out.”

“Quite so. I believe she erred concerning the emolument offered — fifteen thousand, was it? My understanding is that twenty thousand, payable in cash in one sum, is closer to the correct amount. I’m sure you know the prevailing rate for this sort of thing is ten thousand dollars. We offer twice that. Any larger sum is unqualifiedly out of the question because it will impair the profitableness of the venture. I urge you to consider carefully. You know as well as I that you are in no condition to play.”