The Natural Read Online Free PDF Page B

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.
    â€œHurt you, Sam?” Roy called.
    â€œNo, 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.
    â€œHow the hell you expect to call them out there?”
    â€œHe looks wild to me.” Max moved in.
    â€œYour knees are knockin’,” Sam tittered.
    â€œMind your business, rednose,” Max said.
    â€œYou better watch your talk, mister,” Roy called to Mercy.
    â€œPitch it, greenhorn,” warned the Whammer.

    Sam crouched with his glove on. “Do it again, Roy. Give him something simular.”
    â€œDo 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 spinning planet looming toward the earth. For a long light-year he waited for this globe to whirl into the orbit of his swing so he could bust it to smithereens that would settle with dust and dead leaves into some distant cosmos. At last the unseeing eye, maybe a fortuneteller’s lit crystal ball—anyway, a curious combination of circles—drifted within range of his weapon, or so he thought, because he lunged at it ferociously, twisting round like a top. He landed on both knees as the world floated by over his head and hit with a whup into the cave of Sam’s glove.
    â€œHey, 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?”
    â€œStrike,” Mercy called long after a cheer (was it a jeer?) had burst from the crowd.
    â€œWhat’s he throwing,” the Whammer howled, “spitters?”
    â€œIn the pig’s poop.” Sam thrust the ball at him. “It’s drier than your granddaddy’s scalp.”
    â€œI’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