The Natural by Bernard Malamud Read Free Book Online Page B

like cows, sheep, and those hornless 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.
    â€œTough,” 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?”
    â€œSays he’s working on it.”
    â€œWorking 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.”
    â€œKid’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.”
    â€œShould’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.”
    â€œI’d’ve thrown him out too if I was the ump and he slid dry ice down my pants.”
    â€œI’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.”
    â€œTough,” 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