The Natural

“I won’t take it if we win, kiddo, but just let it stand if we lose,” Sam said, embarrassed.

“We came by it too hard.”

“Just let it stand so.”

He cautioned Roy to keep his pitches inside, for the Whammer was known to gobble them on the outside corner.

Sam returned to the plate and crouched behind the batter, his knees spread wide because of the washboard. Roy drew on his glove and palmed the ball behind it. Mercy, rubbing his hands to warm them, edged back about six feet behind Sam.

The onlookers retreated to the other side of the tracks, except Harriet, who stood without fear of fouls up close. Her eyes shone at the sight of the two men facing one another.

Mercy called, “Batter up.”

The Whammer crowded the left side of the plate, gripping the heavy bat low on the neck, his hands jammed together and legs plunked evenly apart. He hadn’t bothered to take off his coat. His eye on Roy said it spied a left-handed monkey.

“Throw it, Rube, it won’t get no lighter.”

Though he stood about sixty feet away, he loomed up gigantic to Roy, with the wood held like a caveman’s ax on his shoulder. His rocklike frame was motionless, his face impassive, unsmiling, dark.

Roy’s heart skipped a beat. He turned to gaze at the mountain.

Sam whacked the leather with his fist. “Come on, kiddo, wham it down his whammy.”

The Whammer out of the corner of his mouth told the drunk to keep his mouth shut.

“Burn it across his button.”

“Close your trap,” Mercy said.

“Cut his throat with it.”

“If he tries to dust me, so help me I will smash his skull,” the Whammer threatened.

Roy stretched loosely, rocked back on his left leg, twirling the right a little like a dancer, then strode forward and threw with such force his knuckles all but scraped the ground on the follow-through.

At thirty-three the Whammer still enjoyed exceptional eyesight. He saw the ball spin off Roy’s fingertips and it reminded him of a white pigeon he had kept as a boy, that he would send into flight by flipping it into the air. The ball flew at him and he was conscious of its bird-form and white flapping wings, until it suddenly disappeared from view. He heard a noise like the bang of a firecracker at his feet and Sam had the ball in his mitt. Unable to believe his ears he heard Mercy intone a reluctant strike.

Sam flung off the glove and was wringing his hand.

“Hurt you, Sam?” Roy called.

“No, it’s this dang glove.”

Though he did not show it, the pitch had bothered the Whammer no end. Not just the speed of it but the sensation of surprise and strangeness that went with it — him batting here on the railroad tracks, the crazy carnival, the drunk catching and a clown pitching, and that queer dame Harriet, who had five minutes ago been patting him on the back for his skill in the batting cage, now eyeing him coldly for letting one pitch go by.

He noticed Max had moved farther back.

“How the hell you expect to call them out there?”

“He looks wild to me.” Max moved in.

“Your knees are knockin’,” Sam tittered.

“Mind your business, rednose,” Max said.

“You better watch your talk, mister,” Roy called to Mercy.

“Pitch it, greenhorn,” warned the Whammer.

Sam crouched with his glove on. “Do it again, Roy. Give him something simular.”

“Do it again,” mimicked the Whammer. To the crowd, maybe to Harriet, he held up a vaunting finger showing there were other pitches to come.

Roy pumped, reared and flung.

The ball appeared to the batter to be a slow spi

“Hey, Max,” Sam said, as he chased the ball after it had bounced out of the glove, “how do they pernounce Whammer if you leave out the W?”

“Strike,” Mercy called long after a cheer (was it a jeer?) had burst from the crowd.

“What’s he throwing,” the Whammer howled, “spitters?”

“In the pig’s poop.” Sam thrust the ball at him. “It’s drier than your granddaddy’s scalp.”

“I’m warning him not to try any dirty business.”

Yet the Whammer felt oddly relieved. He liked to have his back crowding the wall, when there was a single pitch to worry about and a single pitch to hit. Then the sweat began to leak out of his pores as he stared at the hard, lanky figure of the pitiless pitcher, moving, despite his years and a few waste motions, like a veteran undertaker of the diamond, and he experienced a moment of depression.

Sam must have sensed it, because he discovered an unexpected pity in his heart and even for a split second hoped the idol would not be tumbled. But only for a second, for the Whammer had regained confidence in his known talent and experience and was taunting the greenhorn to throw.

Someone in the crowd hooted and the Whammer raised aloft two fat fingers and pointed where he would murder the ball, where the gleaming rails converged on the horizon and beyond was invisible.

Roy raised his leg. He smelled the Whammer’s blood and wanted it, and through him the worm’s he had with him, for the way he had insulted Sam.

The third ball slithered at the batter like a meteor, the flame swallowing itself. He lifted his club to crush it into a universe of sparks but the heavy wood dragged, and though he willed to destroy the sound he heard a gong bong and realized with sadness that the ball he had expected to hit had long since been part of the past; and though Max could not cough the fatal word out of his throat, the Whammer understood he was, in the truest sense of it, out.

The crowd was silent as the violet evening fell on their shoulders.

For a night game, the Whammer harshly shouted, it was customary to turn on lights. Dropping the bat, he trotted off to the train, an old man.

The ball had caught Sam smack in the washboard and lifted him off his feet. He lay on the ground, extended on his back. Roy pushed everybody aside to get him air. Unbuttoning Sam’s coat, he removed the dented washboard.

“Never meant to hurt you, Sam.”

“Just knocked the wind outa me,” Sam gasped. “Feel better now.” He was pulled to his feet and stood steady.

The train whistle wailed, the echo banging far out against the black mountain.

Then the doctor in the broadbrimmed black hat appeared, flustered and morose, the conductor trying to pacify him, and Eddie hopping along behind.

The doctor waved the crumpled yellow paper around. “Got a telegram says somebody on this train took sick. Anybody out here?”

Roy tugged at Sam’s sleeve.

“Ixnay.”

“What’s that?”

“Not me,” said Roy.

The doctor stomped off. He climbed into his Ford, whipped it up and drove away.

The conductor popped open his watch. “Be a good hour late into the city.”

“All aboard,” he called.

“Aboard,” Eddie echoed, carrying the bassoon case.

The buxom girl in yellow broke through the crowd and threw her arms around Roy’s neck. He ducked but she hit him quick with her pucker four times upon the right eye, yet he could see with the other that Harriet Bird (certainly a snappy goddess) had her gaze fastened on him.

They sat, after di