Read Online The Natural by Bernard Malamud - Free Book Online

pipes up, ‘As high as they went up I could catch them.’ He thinks a minute and says, ‘I bet I could catch a ball that is dropped from the top of the Empire State Building.’ ‘No,’ I says, like I was surprised, and ‘Yes,’ he says. So I say, ‘We have nothing on for today, and although there isn’t any Empire State Building in Cincinnati, yet I do have this friend of mine at the airport who owns a Piper Cub. I will give him a National League baseball and he will drop it at the height of the building if you will catch it.’ ‘Done,’ he says, as perky as a turkey, so I call up this guy I know and arrange it and off we go across the bridge to the Kentucky side of the river, where there is plenty of room to move around in. Well, sir, soon this yellow plane comes over and circles a couple of times till he
has the right height, and then he lets go with something that I didn’t tell Pop, but which the boys are onto, is a grapefruit so that if it hits him it will not crack his skull open and kill him. Down the thing comes like a cannonball and Pop, in his black two-piece bathing suit, in case he has to go a little in the water, and wearing a mitt the size of a basket, circles under it like a dizzy duck, holding the sun out of his eyes as he gets a line on where it is coming down. Faster it falls, getting bigger by the second, then Pop, who is now set for the catch, suddenly lets out a howl, ‘My Christ, the moon is falling on me,’ and the next second, bong—the grapefruit busts him on the conk and we have all we can do to keep him from drowning in the juice.”
    Now there was a loud cackle of laughter in the trainer’s room. The voice Roy didn’t like—the frightening thought dawned on him that the voice knew what he was hiding—it changed the subject and wanted to know from Bump if there was any truth to the rumor about him and Pop’s niece.
    â€œNaw,” Bump said, and cagily asked, “What rumor?”
    â€œThat you and Memo are getting hitched.”
    Bump laughed. “She must’ve started that one herself.”
    â€œThen you deny it?”
    The door was shoved open and Bump waltzed out in his shorts, as husky, broadbacked, and big-shouldered as Roy had thought, followed by the trainer and a slightly popeyed gent dressed in an expensive striped suit, whose appearance gave Roy a shooting pain in the pit of the stomach—Max Mercy.
    Ashamed to be recognized, to have his past revealed like an egg spattered on the floor, Roy turned away, tucking his jersey into his pants.
    But Bump paraded over with his hairy arm outstretched. “Hiya, Buster, you the latest victim they have trapped?”
    Roy felt an irritable urge to pitch his fist at the loudmouth, but he nodded and shook hands.
    â€œWelcome to the lousiest team in the world, barring none,”
Bump said. “And this is ol’ Doc Casey, the trainer, who has got nobody but cripples on his hands except me. And the hawkshaw with the eyes is Max Mercy, the famous sports colyumist. Most newspaper guys are your pals and know when to keep their traps shut, but to Max a private life is a personal insult. Before you are here a week he will tell the public how much of your salary you send to your grandma and how good is your sex life.”
    Max, whose mustache and sideboards were graying, laughed hollowly. He said to Roy, “Didn’t catch the name.”
    â€œRoy Hobbs,” he said stiffly, but no one seemed to think it mattered very much.
    Â 
    The game was over and the players hoofed through the tunnel into the locker room. They tore out of their uniforms and piled into the showers. Some stayed in only long enough to wet their skins. Wiping themselves dry, they tumbled into street clothes. Their speed, however, did them no good, for Red, after courteously asking Mercy to leave, posted himself and Earl Wilson, the third base coach, at the door and