The Natural

Roy just nodded but she went on to say that Bump used to ease his nerves when he wasn’t hitting by consulting a fortuneteller named Lola who lived in Jersey City.

“What for?” Roy asked.

“She used to tell him things that gave him a lift, like the time she said he was going to be left money by someone, and he felt so good it raised him clean out of his slump.”

“Did he get the dough that she said?”

“Yes. Around Christmas his father died and left him a garage and a new Pontiac. Bump cleared nine thousand cash when he sold the property.”

Roy thought it over afterwards. He had little faith that any fortuneteller could help him out of his trouble but the failure of each remedy he tried sank him deeper into the dumps and he was how clutching for any straw. Borrowing a car, he hunted up Lola in Jersey City, locating her in a two-story shack near the river. She was a fat woman of fifty, and wore black felt slippers broken at the seams, and a kitchen towel wrapped around her head.

“Step right inside the parlor,” she said, holding aside the beaded curtain leading into a dark and smelly room, “and I will be with you in a jiffy, just as soon as I get rid of this loud mouth on the back porch.”

Feeling ill at ease and foolish, Roy waited for her.

Lola finally came in with a Spanish shawl twisted around her. She lit up the crystal ball, passed her gnarled hands over it and peered nearsightedly into the glass. After watching for a minute she told Roy he would soon meet and fall in love with a darkhaired lady.

“Anything else?” he said impatiently.

Lola looked. A blank expression came over her face and she slowly shook her head. “Fu

“Nothing about me getting out of a slump in baseball?”

“Nothing. The future has closed down on me.”

Roy stood up. “The trouble with what you said is that I am already in love with a swell-looking redhead.”

Because of the shortness of the sitting Lola charged him a buck instead of the usual two.

After his visit to her, though Roy was as a rule not superstitious, he tried one or two things he had heard about to see how they would work. He put his socks on inside out, ran a red thread through his underpants, spat between two fingers when he met a black cat, and daily searched the stands for some crosseyed whammy who might be hexing him. He also ate less meat, though he was always hungry, and he arranged for a physical check-up. The doctor told him he was in good shape except for some high blood pressure that was caused by worrying and would diminish as soon as he relaxed. He practiced different grips on Wonderboy before his bureau mirror and sewed miraculous medals and evil-eye amulets of fish, goats, clenched fists, open scissors, and hunchbacks all over the inside of his clothes.

Little of this escaped the other Knights. While the going was good they had abandoned this sort of thing, but now that they were on the skids they felt the need of some extra assistance. So Dave Olson renewed his feud with the lady in the brown-feathered hat, Emil Lajong spun his protective backflips, and Flores revived the business with the birds. Clothes were put on from down up, gloves were arranged to point south when the players left the field to go to bat, and everybody, including Dizzy, owned at least one rabbit’s foot. Despite these precautions the boys were once more afflicted by bonehead plays—failing to step on base on a simple force, walking off the field with two out as the wi

It didn’t take the fans very long to grow disgusted with their antics. Some of them agreed it was Roy’s fault, for jinxing himself and the team on his Day by promising the impossible out of his big mouth. Others, including a group of sportswriters, claimed the big boy had all the while been living on borrowed time, a large bag of wind burst by the law of averages. Sadie, dabbing at her eyes with the edge of her petticoat, kept her gong in storage, and Gloria disgustedly swore off men. And Otto Zipp had reappeared like a bad dream with his loud voice and pesky tooter venomously hooting Roy into oblivion. A few of the fans were ashamed that Otto was picking on somebody obviously down, but the majority approved his sentiments. The old-timers began once again to heave vegetables and oddments around, and following the dwarf’s lead they heckled the players, especially Roy, calling him everything from a coward to a son of a bitch. Since Roy had always had rabbit ears, every taunt and barb hit its mark. He changed color and muttered at his tormentors. Once in a spasm of weakness he went slowly after a fly ball (lately he had to push himself to catch shots he had palmed with ease before), compelling Flores to rush into his territory to take it. The meatheads rose to a man and hissed. Roy shook his fist at their stupid faces. They booed. He thumbed his nose. “You’ll get yours,” they howled in chorus.

He had, a vile powerlessness seized him.

Seeing all this, Pop was darkly furious. He all but ripped the recently restored bandages off his pusing fingers. His temper flared wild and red, his voice tore, he ladled out fines like soup to breadline beggars, and he was vicious to Roy.

“It’s that goshdamn bat,” he roared one forenoon in the clubhouse. “When will you get rid of that danged Wonderboy and try some other stick?”

“Never,” said Roy.

“Then rest your ass on the bench.”

So Roy sat out the game on the far corner of the bench, from where he could watch Memo, lovelier than ever in a box up front, in the company of two undertakers, the smiling, one-eye Gus, and Mercy, catlike contented, whose lead that night would read: “Hobbs is benched. The All-American Out has sunk the Knights into second division.”

He woke in the locker room, stretched out on a bench. He remembered lying down to dry out before dressing but he was still wet with sweat, and a lit match over his wristwatch told him it was past midnight. He sat up stiffly, groaned and rubbed his hard palms over his bearded face. The thinking started up and stu

The mousy laughter irritated him. “Am I outa my mind?” He fell to brooding and mumbled, “What am I doing that’s wrong?” Now he shouted the question and it boomed back at him off the walls. Lighting matches, he hurriedly dressed. Before leaving, he remembered to wrap Wonderboy in fla

A cabbie with a broken nose and cauliflower ear stared but did not recognize him. The hotel lobby was deserted. An old elevator man mumbled to himself. The ninth-floor hall was long and empty. Silent. He felt a driblet of fear… like a glug of water backing up the momentarily opened drain and polluting the bath with a dead spider, three lice, a rat turd, and things he couldn’t stand to name or look at. For the first time in years he felt afraid to enter his room. The telephone rang. It rang and rang. He waited for it to stop. Finally it did. He warned himself he was acting like a crazy fool. Twisting the key in the lock, he pushed open the door. In the far corner of the room, something moved. His blood changed to falling snow.