The Natural by Bernard Malamud Read Free Book Online Page A

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