1971.08 妈妈的月亮

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妈妈的月亮
Rabbit Angstrom，《Rabbit，Run》中褪色的篮球英雄，已经老了十岁，可能也更聪明了。他生活中的这些场景取自厄普代克先生即将出版的小说《兔子重现》。

作者：约翰-厄普代克
1971年8月号
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I.

男人们在四点钟准时从小印刷厂里苍白地走出来，一瞬间的幽灵，眨着眼睛，直到室外的光线克服了附着在他们身上的持续的室内光线的空气。在冬天，松树街在这个时候是黑暗的；黑暗早早地从悬在布鲁尔这个停滞不前的城市上方的山上压下来；但现在是夏天，花岗岩路缘石上有云母的星星，排屋被有斑点的私生子边框区分开来，希望的小门廊有拼图支架和灰色的牛奶瓶盒，煤烟的银杏树和烘烤的路边汽车在像冻结爆炸的光亮下颤抖。这座城市试图重振其垂死的市中心，拆掉了一栋栋的建筑来建造停车场，这样一来，荒凉的开阔地，杂草丛生，瓦砾遍地，穿过曾经拥挤的街道，暴露出从未从远处看到的教堂外墙，产生了后门和半巷的新视角，加剧了光线的残酷广度。天空万里无云，但却没有颜色，盘旋着发白的湿气，在这些宾夕法尼亚州的夏天，除了让绿色的东西生长，什么都没有。男人们甚至没有晒黑：被汗水包裹着，他们变成了黄色。

一个男人和他的儿子，厄尔-安斯特罗姆和哈里，是被释放的印刷工人之一。父亲快退休了，一个瘦小的人，身上没有多余的东西，他的脸被怨气冲得空空的，上面凹陷着突出的滑落的坏假牙。儿子比他高五英寸，也更胖；他的壮年是柔软的，不知为何苍白而酸涩。小鼻子和微微上扬的上唇曾经使兔子这个绰号很合适，现在看来，加上十年来在油印机行业养成的粗腰和谨慎的弯腰，都是弱点的线索，一种接近于匿名的弱点。尽管他的身高、体型以及他移动头部的残余警觉性继续在街上将他区分开来，但已经有很多年没有人再叫他兔子了。

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"哈利，来个快速的怎么样？"他的父亲问道。在他们的小街与韦泽尔街交汇的拐角处，有一个公共汽车站和一个酒吧，凤凰城，外面的霓虹灯下有一个裸体的女孩，只有牛仔靴，里面昏暗的墙壁上画着仙人掌。他们的公交车，当他们乘坐时，方向相反；老人乘坐16A号车，绕过山去贾奇山镇，他在那里生活了一辈子，而哈里乘坐12号车，朝相反的方向去潘恩别墅，这是城市南部的一个新开发项目，牧场房屋和四分之一英亩的草坪被推土机留下的轮廓，枫树树苗被拴在地上，好像否则它们会飞走。三年前，他与珍妮丝和纳尔逊一起搬到那里。他的父亲仍然觉得搬出贾奇山是一种拒绝，因此大多数下午他们一起喝酒，以缓和一天的离别。在一起工作了十年，他们已经成长为哈里童年时的爱情，如果不是他的母亲在他们之间徘徊，他们会有这样的爱情。

"来杯Schlitz，"厄尔告诉酒保。

"戴基里"，哈利说。空调开得很高，他解开衬衫袖口，扣上纽扣以保暖。他总是穿着白衬衫上班和下班，作为一种取消墨水的方式。仪式上，他问父亲他的母亲怎么样了。

但他的父亲拒绝做出仪式性的回答。通常他说："好得不能再好了。"今天他在吧台前阴险地靠近一寸，说："没有那么好，哈利。"她患帕金森病已经好几年了。哈里的脑海中滑过她已经变成的样子，那双松弛的有节的手，趿拉着鞋，怯生生地走路，用空洞的惊奇的眼神研究他，尽管医生说她的头脑在那里和以前一样好，还有那张游荡的嘴，忘了闭上，直到唾液提醒它。"你是说在晚上？" 这个问题让她隐藏在黑暗中。

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老人再次阻止了兔子滑过的愿望。"不，现在晚上好点了。他们给她吃了一种新药，她说她现在睡得更好。这是在她的脑海里，更多。"

"是什么，爸爸？"

"我们不谈这个。哈利，这不是她的天性：这不是她和我曾经谈论过的那种事情。你母亲和我只是让某种类型的事情不说，这是我们的成长方式：如果我们不说，也许会更好。我不知道。我的意思是，现在他们已经把事情放到她的脑海里了。"

"这个他们是谁？" 哈利对着代基里酒的泡沫叹了口气，想道。他也要去；他们都要去。两者都没有足够的意义。当他的父亲向他逼近解释时，他似乎是这个城市里和周围数百个瘦弱的、抱怨的呆子中的一个。

"为什么，那些来探望她的人，现在她半天都在床上。玛米-凯洛格，就是一个。

朱莉娅-阿恩特是另一个。我讨厌像耶稣一样用它来打扰你。哈里，但她的谈话越来越疯狂了，而米尼在西海岸，你是唯一能帮我理清自己思路的人。我不想打扰你。但她的谈话越来越疯狂，她甚至说要给珍妮丝打电话。"

"珍妮丝! 她为什么要给珍妮丝打电话？"

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"好了"，拉了一下Schlitz酒。擦拭湿润的

用瘦骨嶙峋的手背擦拭湿润的上唇，手指以老人的方式半握紧。皱着眉头，龇牙咧嘴地准备开始行动。"嗯，谈的是珍妮丝。"

"我的珍妮丝？"

"现在，哈里。不要吹牛，不要责怪传坏消息的人。我只是想告诉你他们说了什么，而不是我相信什么。"

"我只是惊讶于有什么可说的。我几乎看不到她了，现在她一直在斯普林格的地段那边。"

"嗯，就是这样。这可能是你的错误。哈里，自从那次之后，你就把珍妮丝视为理所当然。" 他离开她的那一次。孩子死亡的时候。她把他带回来的时候。"十年前。"他的父亲毫无必要地补充道。哈里开始，在这个冰冷的酒吧里，镜子下面的架子上放着塑料盆里的仙人掌，小施利茨旋转器一遍又一遍地做着多色抛物线，感觉到世界在转动。他内心有一种充满希望的冷感在增长，在手铐里抓着他的手腕。消息并不全在，一个新的组合可能会打破它，这种陈旧的和平。


"哈利，在我的书中，人们的恶意超过了人类的理解，而这个可怜的灵魂对它没有任何防御措施--她躺在那里，不得不听。十年前，她不是已经把它们摆出来了吗？她的舌头难道不会把它们砍下来吗？他们告诉她，珍妮丝正在四处奔波。和一个特定的男人在一起。哈里，没有人声称她在玩把戏。"

寒意沿着拉比特的手臂蔓延到他的肩膀，并顺着血管树向他的腹部蔓延。"他们给那个男人起名字了吗？"

"就我所知，没有。哈利。他们现在怎么可能，因为很可能根本就没有这个人？"

好吧，如果他们能编出这个想法，他们就能编出一个名字。"

酒吧的电视正在运行，声音被关掉。那一天，火箭已经是第二十次爆炸了，数字以十分之一秒的速度向后倒退，直到到达零点；然后是高高的水壶下面的白色沸腾，升起的速度如此之慢，似乎一定会翻倒，迅速缩小成一个退却的斑点，一颗晃动的星星。沿着酒吧的黑衣人彼此之间喃喃自语。他们没有被抬起来，他们被留在这里，哈利的父亲对他嘀咕，窥探。"她最近对你有什么不同吗？哈里？听着，我知道这很可能是他们所说的废话，但是--她最近有什么......你知道，不同吗？"

听到他父亲说脏话，拉比特很不高兴：他小心翼翼地抬起头，好像在看电视，电视又回到了一个节目，人们在猜测帘子后面藏着什么样的奖品，当发现是一个八英尺长的冷冻食品柜时，他们又跳又叫，互相亲吻。他可能错了，但有那么一瞬间，他可以发誓这个年轻的家庭主妇在亲吻中张开嘴，让男主人尝尝她的舌头。总之，她不会停止接吻。节目组的眼睛向镜头滚动，请求怜悯，然后他们切入了一个广告。在沉默中，意大利面条和眼球滚动的画面掠过。"我不知道 "兔子说。"她有时会把酒喝得很好，但我也一样。"

"不是你。"老人告诉他。"你不是酒鬼。哈利。我一辈子都在看喝酒的人，像雕刻厂里的博尼那样的人，是个喝酒的人，用它来杀死自己，而且他知道这一点。你可能在晚上喝一两杯威士忌，你不再是春风得意的人了，但你不是酒鬼。" 他把松开的嘴藏在啤酒里，哈利拍了拍吧台，又拿了一杯代基里酒。老人把嘴凑得更近了。"现在，哈利，如果你不想谈，请原谅我问，但在床上怎么样？那是很顺利的，是吗？"

"不，"他慢慢地回答，对这种窥探不屑一顾，"我不会完全说好。告诉我妈妈的情况。她最近有没有呼吸困难的情况？"

"没有一次我被叫醒过。她吃了那些新的绿色药丸后睡得像个婴儿。我必须承认，这种新药是个奇迹；再过十年，杀死我们的唯一方法就是用煤气杀死我们--希特勒的想法是对的。你知道，现在已经没有任何疯子了：只要早晚给他们吃一片药，他们就会像爱因斯坦一样理智。你不会完全说它是......一起走的吧，我是这样理解你说的吗？"

"嗯，我们从来没有那么伟大过。流行，坦率地说。她有没有摔倒过？妈妈。"

"她可能会在白天摔一两个跟头，但不告诉我。我告诉她。我告诉她，呆在床上，看着盒子。她有这样的理论，她能做的时间越长，她就能永远不下床。我想她应该照顾好自己，把自己放在深冷的地方，在一两年内，他们很可能会开发出一种药丸，可以像普通感冒一样简单地清除这种病。已经有了，你知道，其中一些可的松：但医生告诉我们，他们不知道，但副作用可能会更严重。你知道：大C。我的计算是，抓住机会，反正他们就快准备好舔癌症了，有了这些移植物，很快他们就可以取代你的整个内脏。" 老人听到自己说得太多了，耷拉着脑袋盯着他的空啤酒，泡沫滑落下来，但还是忍不住补充说，要给它一个说法。"这是件可怕的事。" 而当哈利没有回应时。"上帝，她讨厌不活跃。"

朗姆酒开始起作用了。兔子已经不再感到寒冷，他的心也开始腾空而起。这里的空气似乎更稀薄，他的眼睛适应了黑暗。他问道："她的思想怎么样了？你不是说他们应该开始给她服用疯狂的药丸？"

"说实话，我不会对你撒谎，哈利，当她的舌头能找到话语时，她的头脑就像铃铛一样清晰。就像我说的，她最近在珍妮丝这件事上得到了提示。如果你和珍妮丝今晚能抽出时间来，会有很大的帮助--上帝啊，我不想打扰你，但这是事实--会有很大的帮助。不经常见到你，她的想象力就会自由发挥。现在，我知道你已经答应星期天给她过生日，但你要这样想：如果你被困在床上，除了白痴盒子和许多恶意的小人作伴，一个星期就好像一年了。如果你能在周末前的某个晚上赶到那里，把珍妮丝带上，这样玛丽就可以看看她--"

"我想去，爸爸。你知道我会的。"

"我知道，耶稣，我知道。我知道的比你想的多。你现在正是意识到你的老男人不是你一直认为的那个笨蛋的年龄。"

"问题是，珍妮丝一直在地段办公室工作到十点、十一点，而我不喜欢把孩子单独留在家里。事实上，我最好现在就回去，以防万一。" 万一它被烧毁了。万一有个疯子搬进来了。这些事情在报纸上经常发生。他能从他父亲的脸上读出--嘴角的鱼尾纹，紧缩的面纱，洗净的眼睛--老人的怀疑得到证实。兔子看到了红色。多管闲事的老骗子。珍妮丝：谁会养那条狗？她爱上了她的父亲，并坚持在那里。自从她开始在她父亲的地盘上代班以来，她就像个女童子军一样快乐，这些夏天的夜晚有一半是在晚饭后出去的。电视晚餐，把纳尔逊单独塞进屋里，等她微风吹来，脸颊红润，像刚从远足中走出来的孩子，健谈，他从不知道她是如此充满自我，在某种程度上，这对他的心有好处。他憎恨他的父亲试图用珍妮丝来对付他，于是用最方便的武器进行反击。妈妈。"你的这位医生，他有没有提到过养老院？"

老人的思维迟迟没有转换回自己的妻子身上。哈里有一个想法，一个像火车轮子碾过轨道开关的火花。妈妈曾经对老爹做过吗？把他耍得团团转。所有这些关于床上生活的打探，都暗示着一些经验。很难想象，不仅是和谁，而且是什么时候；从他记事起，她就一直在家里，除了刷子和耶和华见证人，没有人来看过她；然而这个想法让他兴奋，就像老爹的谣言让他心寒一样，开启了各种可能性。老爹说，"......在开始的时候。我们想至少拖到她卧床不起。如果我们到了她无法照顾自己的地步，在我退休之前，整天在那里，这是一个我们可能被迫的选择。但我不愿意看到这种情况。天哪，我讨厌看到这一幕。"

"嘿，爸爸--？"

"这是我的四毛钱。加上一角钱的小费。" 老人的手紧紧握住25美分的方式表明，这些钱对他来说是真正的银子，而不是在酒吧顶上平平响起的切铜三明治硬币。旧的价值观。大萧条时期，钱就是钱。再也不会是神圣的了；现在连一角钱都是银的。肯尼迪的脸杀死了半美元；使它们失去了流通性，而且它们再也没有回来。把金属放在月球上。解决他们账单的麻烦事把他关于妈妈的问题拖到了户外，然后他发现他不能问这个问题，他不太了解他的父亲。在这里，在炎热的光线下，他的父亲已经失去了所有的亲近感，看起来只是老态龙钟，眼睛下面有肝脏，鼻子两侧有断裂的血管，他的头发是纸板的颜色。"你想问我什么？"

"我忘了。" 哈利说，然后打了个喷嚏。从那个空调进入这个热气腾腾的地方，在他的两眼之间掀起了一场爆炸，把头转到了半个街区，让他的鼻孔流着泪。"不，我记得。疗养院。我们怎么能负担得起呢？一天50美元或什么的。它会把我们吸进下水道。"

他的父亲大笑起来，突然一咬牙，收回了滑落的牙齿，并跳起了小舞步，就在这烘烤着的人行道上，在人们刮过的红底白字的 "停止 "标志下面，写着 "PUS DROP"。"哈利。上帝以他的方式对你母亲和我并不全是坏事。信不信由你，在这个时代，活得这么久也有一些好处。这个星期天，她就要65岁了，可以享受医疗保险了。我从66年就开始缴费了；这就像一个巨大的重量从我胸口滚落。现在没有任何医疗费用可以打垮我们。他们把LBJ称为书中的每一个名字，但相信我，他为小人物做了很多好事。无论他在哪里出错，都是他的大心脏背叛了他。现在，这些漂亮的男孩在天空中。尼克松会抢走功劳，但这是民主党人把他们放在那里的；从我有记忆以来，一直是同样的故事，从威尔逊开始，共和党人就没有为小人物做过任何事情。"

"对。"哈利茫然地说道。他的巴士来了。"告诉她我们星期天会过来。"他推到后面的一个空地上，在那里，他一边挂着吧台一边向外看，他看到他的父亲是 "小人物 "之一。爸爸站在伟大的美国强光下，眯着眼睛看着从政府下来的祝福甘露，在紧张的快乐中从一边洗到另一边，他一天的工作已经完成，啤酒在他体内。 阿姆斯特朗在他上面，美国是人类历史的皇冠和惊愕。就像发射台上的一块砂砾，他已经完成了自己的任务 尽管如此，他一直是保持健康的人；谁会想到妈妈会先失败呢？兔子的脑海中，当公共汽车浸泡在它的齿轮袋中，涌动着，颤抖着，向他保存的她的形象靠近，就像一个可怕的遗物；黑色的头发已经变灰，男人的嘴太聪明了，菱形的鼻孔，对他来说，作为一个孩子，暗示着一种内心的酸楚，他从来不敢学习的眼睛闭着，在她失败的时候鼓着眼睛，整个长脸，稍微闪着汗水，麻木地躺在枕头上。他不忍心看到她这个样子是他很少去看的秘密，而不是珍妮丝。在她摸索着问候他的话语时，他的生命之源就这样浪费地盯着那里。还有那股温柔的黄褐色的病味，它甚至不呆在她的房间里，而是下楼来，在前厅的雨伞中迎接他们，并跟随他们进入厨房，在那里可怜的Pop为他们的饭菜取暖。一种像气体泄漏的气味，当他和米妮还小的时候，这种气味曾经让她很担心。

他男孩的头，凝重地祈祷着。原谅我，原谅我们，让她好过点。阿门。他只在公共汽车上祈祷过。现在这辆公交车有这种味道。

巴士上有太多的黑人。兔子越来越注意到他们。他们一直都在这里；作为一个小孩子，他记得在布鲁尔的街道上，你屏住呼吸走过，虽然他们从未伤害过你，只是看着；但现在他们更吵了。他们不再是光秃秃的头了，而是长满了毛。这没关系。这更像是自然。自然是我们正在耗尽的东西 店里的两个人是黑人，过了一会儿，你甚至没有注意到：至少他们记得如何笑。悲哀的是，作为一个黑人，他们的工资总是很低，他们的眼睛不像我们的眼睛，血淋淋的，棕色的，里面的液体快要颤抖出来。在某处读到一些人类学家认为黑人不是更原始，而是最新进化的东西，最新的男人。在某些方面更强硬，在某些方面更细腻。当然也更笨，但那时，聪明并不意味着那么多，原子弹和铝制啤酒罐都是如此。而且你不能说比尔-考斯比是愚蠢的。

但在这些受过教育的、宽容的想法面前，有一种恐惧；他不明白为什么他们要如此吵闹。这四个人就坐在他的下面，戳戳点点，让他们的噪音在银色的大铁圈里发出来：他们很清楚，他们在烦扰那些拉着购物袋回家的白胖妻子。他们是一个奇怪的种族。不仅是他们的皮肤，还有他们的组合方式，像狮子一样松散的关节，头部很奇怪，好像他们的思想是不同的形状，即使他们没有威胁，也会出现扭曲。就好像所有这些非洲人的头发和金耳环，以及公共汽车上的喧闹声，一些热带植物的种子被鸟儿偷偷带进来，正在占领这个花园。他的花园。兔子知道这是他的花园，这就是为什么他在猎鹰的后窗上贴了一个国旗贴纸，尽管珍妮丝说这是老套和法西斯主义。在报纸上，你会看到康涅狄格州的这些房子，父母在巴哈马不在，孩子们就会进来打砸开派对。这个国家越来越像这样了。仿佛它只是在这里生长，而不是人们牺牲自己的生命来建设它。

公交车沿着韦泽一路前行，越过奔马河，开始把人放下，而不是把他们带上。这座城市有着疲惫的五角硬币（曾经是一个仙境。柜台和他的鼻子一样高，大书小书散发着圣诞节的味道），Krolfs百货公司（他曾经在那里工作，在家具部后面敲开板条），花盆式的交通圈，电车轨道曾经在那里形成一个铿锵有力的交叉点，然后是空荡荡的灰尘橱窗，商店已经被郊区的购物中心饿死，还有那些来来往往的悲伤的狭窄地方，叫Go- Go或Boutique，还有仿花岗岩面孔的殡仪馆和多余的卖场，以及一个卖热烤花生的鞋店和印有Phi Sly-M BOY A MARTYRED的非洲报纸，还有一个卖数字并有打孔板的花店，以及一个管架服装零售商旁边的杂货店，旁边是一个叫JlMBO's Friendly LOUNGE的角落潜水。城市的烟头在桥边被掐灭。城市让路，在他年轻时被煤炭淤泥窒息的开阔水域之后（一个人曾经试图从这座桥上自杀，但一直坚持到他的臀部，直到警察把他拉出来），但现在已经被疏浚，支持着停泊的游船的斑斑点点。到了西布鲁尔（West Brewer），这是城市的一个斑驳的仿制品，同样是用砖头涂成的挤压式房屋，但这里和那里被一个停车场的旋转器打破，加油站的泵和标示的悬垂物，超市停车场的湖泊般的深度，挤满了闪亮的鳍。公交车越来越轻，黑人越来越少，驶向宽敞的希望，经过住宅堡垒，四面都是洒脱的草坪，新尖的挡土墙上有修剪过的绣球花，经过博物馆的一瞥，那里的花园总是花团锦簇，天鹅吃着学童扔来的面包皮，然后瞥见县精神病医院高大的新翼的窗户，橙色的窗户正对着下沉的太阳。更近的地方是西布鲁尔干洗店，一家自称 "爱好天堂 "的玩具店，一家挂着 "2001：太空漫游 "牌子的里亚尔托电影院。街道转弯，变成高速公路，进入绿色的郊区，在那里，20年代的工业小骑士们建造了半木结构的梦想房屋，卵石灰泥和熟料砖，灰泥像面包皮一样薄，糖果和硬化饼干面团的女巫之家，有两辆车的车库和弯曲的车道。在布鲁尔县，除了一些被铁栅栏环抱的男爵庄园和数英里长的草坪外，没有比这些房子更高的地方了；最成功的牙医可能会买一栋，最狡猾的保险推销员，最勇敢的眼科医生。这个区甚至还有另一个名字，以区别于西布鲁尔。潘恩公园。潘恩别墅与这个名字遥相呼应，尽管它并没有被纳入这个区，而是坐落在高炉镇的边界上，向内看。这个乡镇曾经是以木炭为燃料的熔炉为革命火枪冶炼铁水的地方，现在大部分还是农田，它的几辆扫雪车和唯一的警长很难应付这个由泥泞的草坪和坑洼的马路以及开发商突然留给它的次级代码下水道组成的牧场房屋村。

兔子在宾夕法尼亚公园的一个车站下车，沿着一条模拟都铎式的街道--恩贝里大道，走到路面在镇界处发生变化，成为宾夕法尼亚别墅的恩贝里大道。他住在Vista Crescent，从头到尾的第三栋房子。曾经这里可能有一个远景，一个由红色谷仓和田园石农舍组成的柔和坡度的山谷，但更多的潘恩别墅被添加进来，现在从任何一个窗户看出去，都好像是一面支离破碎的镜子，像这样的房子，电话线和电视天线显示在玻璃破裂的地方。他的房子是

他的房子是用苹果绿色的铝板建造的，编号是26。兔子走上他的石板门廊，打开他的门，三个小窗户像三个台阶一样排列着，呼应着三个台阶的门铃声。

嘿，爸爸，"他的儿子从客厅里叫道，他右边的房间有过去所谓的会客厅那么大，有一个他们从来不用的壁炉。"他们已经离开了地球轨道！"。他们在四万三千英里之外。"

"对他们来说是好事，"他说。"你母亲在这里吗？" "不在，在学校他们让我们都去看发射的集会。"

"她有打电话吗？"

"自从我来到这里就没有。我不久前才来的。" 纳尔逊，13岁，身高低于平均水平，有他母亲的深色肤色，脸上有一些精细的切割和警惕，可能来自安格斯特。他的长睫毛不知从何而来，而他的齐肩长发是他自己的想法。不知怎的，拉比特觉得，如果他再高一点就好了，头发这么长。就像现在这样。与女孩的相似度高得吓人。

"你整天都在做什么？"

同样的电视节目，人们猜测、获得、尖叫和亲吻M.C.的节目仍在进行。

"没做什么。"

"去操场？"

"一阵子。"

"那去哪里？"

"哦。"到西布鲁尔去，就在比利的公寓附近逛逛。嘿？"

"是吗？"

"他父亲给他买了一辆迷你自行车作为生日礼物。它真的很酷。前面有一个很长的部分，所以你必须伸手去拿把手。"

"你骑过它？"

"他只让我骑了一次。它是闪亮的，上面没有一丁点油漆；它只是金属，有一个白色的香蕉座。"

"他比你大，是吗？"

"两个月。就这么简单。就两个月，爸爸。"

"他在哪里骑它？这在街上是不合法的，是吗？"

"他们的大楼有一个大停车场，他骑着它到处跑。没有人说什么。它只花了一百八十美元。爸爸。"

"继续说，我去买啤酒。"

房子很小，以至于男孩可以被厨房里的父亲听到，他的声音混杂着电视里欢快的贪婪喷出的声音和冰箱门开关的厚重吸力。"嘿，爸爸，有件事我不明白。" "说吧。"

"我以为福斯纳奇夫妇已经离婚了。" "分居了。"

"那他父亲怎么会一直给他送这些整洁的垃圾？你应该看看他的高保真音响，那都是他的，为他的房间准备的，甚至不能分享。四个扬声器。爸爸，还有耳机。耳机非常棒。就像你在Tiny Tim里面一样。"

"这就是要去的地方。" 兔子说，来到了客厅。"想喝一口吗？"

男孩从罐子里喝了一口。在他上唇的绒毛上放了一个钥匙孔宽度的泡沫。并做了一个苦瓜脸。

哈利解释说："当人们离婚时，父亲并不是不喜欢孩子，他只是不能再和他们一起生活了。福斯纳特之所以一直给比利送这些昂贵的东西，可能是他对离开他感到内疚。"

"他们为什么会分开。爸爸，你知道吗？"

"难倒我了。更大的谜题是。"他们为什么曾经结婚？" 兔子认识佩吉-福斯纳特的时候，她还是佩吉-格林，一个在中排的大屁股墙眼女孩，总是在空中挥舞着她的手，因为她认为她有答案。他对福斯纳赫特就不太了解了：一个总是耸着肩膀的瘦弱的小家伙：以前在舞会乐队里吹萨克斯，现在是韦泽街上端的一家音乐商店的合伙人，以前叫Chords 'n' Records，现在叫Fidelity Audio。按照福斯纳特得到的折扣，比利的高保真音响套装肯定几乎不花钱。就像他们不断塞给这些年轻尖叫者的奖品一样。那个和M.C.接吻的人现在已经离开了，一对有色人种正在猜测。脸色苍白，但肯定是彩色的。没关系，让他们猜吧，和我们其他人一起尖叫。

这比从屋顶上狙击要好。不过，他还是想知道那个黑人新娘会是什么样子。大嘴唇，直接把你吸走，男人像耶稣一样慢，像鞭子一样长，要用一切办法把他们弄起来，永远在那里，这就是为什么白种女人需要他们，白种男人太快了，必须继续工作。兔子喜欢，在《笑傲江湖》中，当Teresa做go-go的时候，他们在她的皮肤上用白色的字画出来的方式。当他们一家人一起看的时候，珍妮丝和纳尔逊总是问他那些字是什么；自从他从事印刷业后，他就能像闪电一样阅读，上下颠倒，也能照镜子：他总是有一双好眼睛。他问纳尔逊 "你为什么不再呆在操场上了？我在你这个年龄时，整天都在玩 "马和二十一"。

"是的，但你很厉害。你当时很高。" 纳尔逊曾经为运动而疯狂。小联盟、校内运动，但最近他不在了。兔子把这归咎于他自己的母亲保存的一本剪贴簿，是他在四十年代末的篮球时代，当时他创造了一些县级记录：去年冬天，每次他们去参观Mt. Nelson法官都会要求把它拿出来，然后躺在地板上，那些老的干黄色游戏，胶水已经干成灰尘，MT. 法官推翻了黄鹂鸟。ANGSTROM打出了37分，对孩子来说，这只是发生在20年前，来自星星的光。


"我长高了，"兔子告诉他。"在你这个年龄，我并不比你高多少。" 一个谎言，但不是真的。只有几英寸。在一个英寸重要的世界里。推杆。轨道。摆正姿势。他为纳尔逊的身高感到难过。他自己的身高从来没有给他带来什么好处；如果他能从自己身上减掉五英寸，然后把它们给纳尔逊，他可能会这样做。如果它不痛的话。

"不管怎么说，爸爸。现在的体育是正统的。没有人这样做。"

"好吧，现在有什么是不公平的？除了吃药和躲避征兵之外。还有让你的头发长到你的眼睛里。你妈妈到底在哪里？我要给她打电话。把该死的电视关掉，在你的生活中就这一次。"

大卫-弗罗斯特已经取代了《火柴人游戏》。所以纳尔逊把它完全关掉了。哈里对孩子脸上闪过的惊恐表情感到后悔：就像他父亲在街上打喷嚏时的表情一样。基督，他们甚至害怕让他打喷嚏。在他看来，他的儿子和父亲都一样脆弱和悲伤。这就是关心任何人的麻烦：你开始为他们感到难过；你想把他们放在一个架子上。

电话在一组透明架子的下方，理论上，这组架子将客厅与一种他们称之为早餐角的凹室隔开。上面放着几本烹饪书，但据他所知，珍妮丝从来没有研究过这些书，只是做着她一直以来做的炸鸡、无味的牛排、豌豆和炸薯条。哈里拨通了那个熟悉的号码，一个熟悉的声音回答说。"斯普林格汽车公司。我是斯塔夫罗斯先生。"

"查理，你好。 嘿，珍妮丝在吗？"

"当然在，哈利。技巧如何？" 斯塔夫罗斯是个推销员，总得说点什么。

"诡计多端。"他回答。

"等一下，朋友。好女人就在这里。" 电话外，他的声音叫道："接电话吧。是你的老头子。"

另一个听筒被举起。透过瞬间沉默的结孔，拉比特看到了办公室：展厅地板上闪闪发光的展示车，斯普林格老头的磨砂玻璃门紧闭着，绿顶的柜台后面有三张钢制办公桌。斯塔夫罗斯在其中一张。另一张是Janice，中间的一张是Mildred Kroust，即Springer雇了30年的记账员，只是她通常因为某种晚年的女性问题而病倒了，所以她的办公桌上除了铁丝篮、纺锤和记事本外，空空如也。兔子还可以看到墙上去年的小狗日历，以及圣诞树后面咖啡色的旧保险柜上的丰田旅行车的纸板剪影。他最后一次到斯普林格的地段是为了参加他们的圣诞聚会。"哈里，亲爱的。"珍妮丝说，现在他已经被怀疑了，他确实从她的声音中听到了一些新的东西，一种微弱的急促的呼吸声，他打断她唱的一首歌的声音。"你要骂我了。是吗？"

"不，我和孩子只是在想，如果--如果是的话，到底什么时候--我们能在这里吃上一顿家常菜。"

"哦，我知道，"她唱道。"我也讨厌这样：只是米尔德里德经常外出，我们不得不去看她的书，而她的系统真的是零。"零：他在她的声音中听到另一个声音。"说实话，"她继续唱道。"如果事实证明她一直在骗取爸爸的钱财，我们都不会感到惊讶。"

"是啊。你看。珍妮丝。听起来你在那边玩得很开心--"

"好玩？ 我在措辞，亲爱的。"

"当然，现在到底发生了什么？"

"你是什么意思，怎么回事？除了你妻子想带点额外的面包回家之外，什么也没有发生。" 面包？"'继续'--真的。你可能认为你坐在黑暗中摆弄那台机器，每小时能得到七美元或什么，是很好的钱。哈里，但事实是，一百美元再也买不到任何东西了，它就这样消失了。"

"天哪，为什么要给我上这个关于通货膨胀的课？我只想知道为什么我的妻子从不在家为我和孩子做该死的晚餐。"

"哈利，有人一直在窃听你关于我的事吗？"

"窃听？他们怎么会这么做呢0珍妮丝。只要告诉我。我应该把两个电视晚餐放在烤箱里还是什么？"

停顿了一下，在这期间，他有一个幻觉：看到她的翅膀在盘旋，她的歌声暂停：想象自己在翱翔，无根，自由。一个古老的预感，模糊不清。珍妮丝说，她的话很有分寸，所以他的感觉就像一个孩子看着母亲把几汤匙的糖放进一碗面糊里。"你能不能......甜0就今晚？坦率地说，我们这里正处于一个小危机之中。解释起来太复杂了，但我们必须把一些数字搞清楚，否则明天就没法发工资了。"

"这个我们是谁？你父亲那里？"

"哦。"当然。

"我可以和他谈一谈吗？"

"为什么，他在外面的停车场。"

"我想知道他是否得到了那些爆炸比赛的门票。这孩子很想去。"

"嗯，实际上。我没有看到他。我猜他已经回家吃晚饭了。"

"所以那里只有你和查理。"

"其他人在进进出出。我们正在拼命地解开米尔德里德制造的这个混乱。这是最后一晚了。哈利。我保证。我会在八点到九点之间回家，然后明天晚上我们一起去看电影。那个太空的东西还在西布鲁尔。我今天早上开车来的时候注意到了。"

兔子突然累了，对这次谈话，对一切都累了。混乱的能量围绕着他。一个人的胃口减少了，但世界却永远不会。"好吧，你能回家就回家。但我们得谈谈。"

"我很想谈谈。哈利。" 从她的语气来看，她认为 "谈 "是指做爱，而他确实是指谈。她挂断了电话：一个满意的不耐烦的声音。

他又打开了一瓶啤酒。拉环断了，所以他不得不在刀抽屉里的所有东西下面找到那把生锈的老教堂钥匙。他加热了两份索尔兹伯里牛排晚餐；在等待烤箱预热到400度时，他阅读了包装上列出的成分：水、牛肉、豌豆、脱水土豆片、面包屑、蘑菇、面粉、黄油、人造黄油、盐、麦芽糊精。 番茄酱、玉米淀粉。伍斯特沙司，水解植物蛋白，谷氨酸钠，脱脂干奶，脱水洋葱，调味料，糖，焦糖色，香料，半胱氨酸和盐酸硫胺。阿拉伯胶。从锡纸上的图片来看，没有任何线索表明所有这些东西适合在哪里。他一直以为阿拉伯胶是用来擦除的东西。三十六岁了，他知道的东西比他开始时还少。不同的是，现在他知道他永远不会知道的东西有多少。他永远不知道怎么说中文，也不知道和非洲公主做爱的感觉。六点钟的新闻都是关于太空的，都是关于空虚的：一些秃头男人玩着小玩具来展示对接和脱钩的动作，然后一个小组谈论这对未来五百年的意义。他们一直提到哥伦布，但就拉比特所见，这恰恰相反。哥伦布盲目飞行，但却撞上了什么东西，这些人确切地看到了他们瞄准的地方，而那是一个大圆的东西。索尔兹伯里牛排有防腐剂的味道，纳尔逊只吃了几口，拉比特试图和他开玩笑。"没有电视就不能吃电视晚餐。"他们跳来跳去，试图找到一些东西来支撑他们，但什么也没有；一切都滑过去了，直到九点以后，在卡罗尔-伯内特的节目中，她和格默-派尔做了一个关于独行侠的短剧，实际上很有趣。它把兔子带回到他过去坐在杰克逊路的收音机听筒扶手椅上的时候，扶手椅上的油渍已经变黑，因为他过去把花生酱饼干三明治堆在那里听。妈妈曾经大发雷霆。每个周一、周三和周五晚上都会播放。如果是夏天，你就会从踢罐子或三站或一站的地方进来，整个后院的邻居都会变得很安静，然后在八点，门会砰地一声关上，游戏又开始了，那些慷慨的夏日，刚刚好的黑暗可以让人睡觉，一场跨越大洋的战争正在进行，只是为了让他能在这样的幸福中旋转，在这样安静的成长中度过一天。吃麦片。

在这个短剧中，独行侠有一个妻子。她在小屋里跺脚，说她如何讨厌家务，讨厌她的孤独生活。她说："你从不在家。""你总是在一片尘土和一声酣畅淋漓的'嗨-吼，银'中消失。" 看不见的观众笑了，兔子也笑了。纳尔逊不明白有什么好笑的。兔子告诉他，"他们以前总是这样介绍节目的"。

那孩子横着说。"我知道。爸爸。"兔子有点失去了小品的线索；有一个笑话他没有听到，其笑声正在消失。

现在独行侠的妻子正在抱怨丹尼尔-布恩给他的妻子带来了漂亮的毛皮，但 "我从你那里得到过什么？一颗银弹"。她打开一扇门，一束银色的子弹冲了出来，淹没了整个地板。在接下来的短剧中，卡罗尔-伯内特和科纳-派尔以及扮演托恩托的人（不是小萨米-戴维斯，而是另一个电视黑人）不断滑倒，意外地被这些子弹压住。兔子想到数以百万计的人在观看，数以百万计的赞助商在铺路，仍然没有人花时间意识到会发生这种情况。地上的银色子弹乱成一团。托恩托告诉独行侠，"下次最好先把子弹放在枪里"。

妻子转而抱怨起了汤托。''他。为什么我们总是要请他来吃饭？他从来没有让我们回来。"

Tonto告诉她，如果她来到他的帐篷，她会被七八个勇士绑架。她没有被吓到，反而很感兴趣。她翻了翻那双大眼睛，说： "我们走吧，kemo sabe。"

纳尔逊问道。"爸爸，什么是kemo sabe？"

兔子很惊讶地说道。"我不知道。我想是'好朋友'或'老板'之类的东西。" 的确，仔细想想，他对唐托一无所知。独行侠是个白人，所以牧场上的法律和秩序会对他有利，但唐托呢？对他的种族来说是个犹大，是比较无私的、孤独的、英雄的美德形象。他是什么时候得到回报的？他为什么对那个戴面具的陌生人忠心耿耿？在童年时代，人们从不问。Tonto只是站在 "正义的一边"。那时候，这似乎是一个正确的梦想，红色和白色在一起，红色和白色相爱，就像国旗上的条纹一样自然。"正义的一方 "到哪里去了？他在试图回答纳尔逊时已经错过了几个笑话。小品正在接近高潮。妻子正在告诉独行侠。"你必须在他或我之间做出选择"。双手合十，她站得很凶。

独行侠做决定的停顿时间并不长。"上马吧。托恩托，"他说。他在留声机上放了一张《威廉-泰勒序曲》的唱片，然后两个人都离开了。妻子蹑手蹑脚地走过来，脚下传来子弹的脆响，把唱片换成了 "印第安人的爱情呼唤"。Tonto从屏幕的另一边走进来。他和她亲吻并拥抱。"我一直很感兴趣，"卡罗尔-伯内特向观众倾诉，她的脸变得很大，"对印第安人的事务感兴趣。"

无形的观众发出了一阵笑声，甚至连坐在他的休闲椅上的兔子也笑了起来，但在笑声之下，这最后的插科打诨显得平淡无奇，也许是因为大家仍然认为汤托是清廉的，是超越一切的，就像耶稣和阿姆斯特朗。"睡觉了，嗯？" 兔子说。他关掉了节目，因为它变成了一连串的字幕。突如其来的小星星闪了一下，然后消失了。

纳尔逊说，"学校的孩子们说福斯纳特先生有外遇，这就是他们离婚的原因。"

"也可能他只是厌倦了不知道他妻子的哪只眼睛在看他。"

"爸爸。外遇到底是什么？"

"哦，就是两个人在和别人结婚的时候互相看对方。"

"你和妈妈发生过这种情况吗？"

"我不会这么说。我放过一次假，没有持续很长时间。在你大约三岁的时候。你不会记得的。"

"不过，我记得。我记得妈妈哭得很厉害，在孩子的葬礼上大家都在追你，我记得我站在威尔伯街的地方，只有你在我旁边的房间里，透过窗纱往下看小镇，知道妈妈在医院里。"

"是啊。那些日子真可怜。这个星期六，如果斯普林格爷爷拿到了他说的票，我们就去看爆炸比赛。"

"我知道。"男孩说，没有热情，并向楼梯飘去。这让哈利感到不安，在他的眼角余光中，每天有一两次，他似乎看到屋里有另一个女人，一个不是珍妮丝的女人；而这时只有他的长发儿子。

再来一杯啤酒。他把纳尔逊未吃完的晚餐刮到处理池里，处理池有时会发出甜美的臭味，因为潘恩别墅的下水道流速缓慢，设计不慎。他在楼下走来走去，为洗碗机收集杯子；珍妮丝的特技之一是四处游荡，把沾满灰尘的杯子和用作烟灰缸的碟子以及涂有苦艾酒的酒杯放在她想到的任何壁架上--电视机顶，窗台。她怎么能帮助解决米尔德里德的麻烦呢？也许在屋外，她是一股高效的旋风。还有一个高高在上的银。印第安事务。可怜的爸爸和他的谣言。可怜的妈妈躺在那里成为毒舌和恶梦的猎物。他们两个人，他们的头脑已经干涸，就像干草堆里的老鼠一样滑行。他的心态避开了。他看着窗外，在黄昏中看到电视天线的黑线，铝制的衣服树，远处车库上的篮球架。他怎么能让孩子对运动感兴趣呢？如果他太矮，不适合打篮球，那就打棒球。任何东西，只要把一些东西放在那里，一些幸福，以后可以生活一段时间。如果他现在走空，他根本不会持续。因为我们会越来越空。兔子从窗口转过身来，在他自己的房子里到处都能看到滑溜溜的一次性光泽。它从起居室的椅子和沙发的合成织物上向他闪耀，从珍妮丝买的一盏用一块漂流木称重和接线作为底座的合成艺术性上向他闪耀，从架子上除了几个有游乐场纪念品光泽的烟灰缸外的非自然外观的天然木材上向他闪耀：它从钢铁水槽、厨房的油毡上闪烁着疯狂的旋涡，油在水中，东西不混合。水槽上方的窗户是黑色的，不透明的，就像精神病院窗户上的橙色。他看到镜子里的自己的湿手。在水下。他揉碎了他心不在焉地喝光的铝制啤酒罐。罐子里的东西在他体内有金属的感觉：有腐蚀性，令人发胖。事情并不混合。他无法紧紧抓住任何思想，并使之成为某种东西，这一定是疲劳。兔子把自己抬上楼梯，推着自己完成脱衣服和牙齿护理的水下动作，沉入床上，没有费心去关楼下和浴室的灯。他从一个哀伤的窒息的收音机噪音中听到，纳尔逊还没睡。他想他应该起来说晚安，给孩子一个祝福，但当光线持续进入他的卧室时，一种重量压迫着他，伴随着男孩轻柔的敲门声，开门和关门的声音。从婴儿期开始，兔子在别人起床的时候睡得最好。直立的像钉子一样压住世界，像灯柱、路标、蒲公英的茎、蜘蛛网......。

大东西溜到床上。珍妮丝。局子里的荧光表盘上写着11的5，它的两只手合并成一只手指。她穿着睡衣很温暖。皮肤比棉花还暖和。他梦见一条抛物线，试图在上面掌舵。尽管他试图掌舵的东西在和他对抗。就像一个坏掉的雪橇。

"把它解开了？""他问她。

"差不多吧。我很抱歉。哈利。爸爸回来了，他就是不肯让我们走。"

"抓住一个黑鬼的脚趾。"他喃喃自语。

"你和纳尔逊度过了怎样的一个夜晚？"

"一种没什么的夜晚。"

"有人打电话吗？"

"没有人。"

他感觉到她，虽然已经很晚了，但她还活着，很兴奋，想说话，很抱歉，想弥补。她在床上改变了它的质量，从一个他想抓住的抗拒的筏子变成了一个弯曲的路线，变成了一个巢穴，一个满载的空洞，本身就是弯曲的。她的手在寻找他，他用运动员的老本能将她拂去，以保护那个地方。她转过身来，背对着他。他接受了这种拒绝。他依偎着她。她那没有骨头的腰部像鸟儿一样轻咬着。他一直担心与她结婚后她会像她母亲一样变胖，但随着她的年龄越来越大，她那瘦小的、有活力的父亲在她身上体现出来。他的手离开浸泡的地方，在前面游离到她的腹部，因为生了两个孩子，隐隐约约有种爱的松动。小狗的脖子。他是否应该让她再生一个来代替死去的那只？也许这就是错误。对他来说，这一切似乎都是一个坑，她的子宫和坟墓，性和死亡，他退缩了，拒绝了。

II.
比赛继续进行着。在乏味的策略、替补打者和故意保送的情况下。

延长了最后的时间。哈兹勒顿队获胜。7-3. 斯普林格老头叹了口气。他以一种不自然的姿势从睡梦中爬起来。他擦了擦胡子上的一粒啤酒。"'恐怕我们的小伙子们没能为你完成任务。内莉。"他说。

"那好吧。爷爷。这是很好的。"

他对哈利说： "虽然那个年轻的特雷克斯勒是个新人"

在太阳下喝了两杯啤酒后昏昏沉沉，横眉冷对。兔子在球赛结束后没有邀请斯普林格进屋，只是对他的一切表示感谢。屋子里一片寂静，就像外太空。厨房的桌子上放着一个密封的信封，地址是 "哈里"。里面的信，在珍妮丝半成型的手上，带着不稳定的斜度和吝啬的抽筋，写着："。

亲爱的哈利--

我必须离开几天去思考。请不要试图找到或跟踪我们，我们现在都要尊重对方的人格，信任对方，这是非常重要的。

我对你说我有一个情人的想法感到震惊，因为我认为这不会是诚实的，这让我怀疑我对你是否有任何意义，杰尔-尼尔森我已经和祖母去了波科诺斯。别忘了给他操场上的午餐费。

- 爱你。

扬

"Jan"--她的名字来自于她曾经在Kroll's工作的那些年，她穿着口袋上方缝有Jan字样的罩衫卖咸坚果。在那些日子里，有些下午他们会去她在第八街的朋友的公寓。当太阳落在巨大的灰色盖板后面时，水平上升的光线。当她让他脱下她所有的衣服时，那是一种奇迹。那时的内衣更有质感：丝袜的扣子可以解开，弹性的痕迹印在她的皮肤上。这个名字在这十五年里一直悬浮在她身上：她在房子周围留给他的纸条上都签着 "J"。

"妈妈在哪里？" 纳尔逊问道。

"她去了波科诺斯。" 兔子说，把纸条拉回胸前，以防男孩试图读它。"她和妈妈一起走了。她的腿在这高温下越来越糟糕。我知道这看起来很疯狂，但事情有时就是这样。你和我今晚可以在Burger Bliss吃饭。"

男孩的脸--残缺不全，被遮住耳朵的头发框住，他丰满的嘴唇扣着纽扣，他的前额因害怕犯错而下沉--全神贯注，似乎在倾听，就像他三岁时，飞行和死亡在他头上沙沙作响。也许他当时的经历决定了他现在所说的话。他坚定地告诉他的父亲。"她会回来的。"

星期天的黎明很闷热。七点新闻说，昨晚在约克和该州西部地区又发生了零星的枪击事件。埃德加敦警察局长多米尼克-J-阿雷纳预计今天将正式指控肯尼迪参议员离开事故现场。阿波罗十一号已进入月球轨道，雄鹰号正在为其历史性的下降做准备。兔子睡得很不好，把盒子关掉，光着脚在草坪上走来走去，把头疼的感觉震出头骨。潘恩别墅的房子都很安静，零星的天主教汽车轰鸣着去做弥撒了。纳尔逊九点左右下来，给他做完早餐后。哈里带着一杯咖啡和《周日啤酒凯旋》回到了床上。滑稽报纸头版上的史努比正躺在他的狗窝上做梦。很快兔子就睡着了。那孩子看起来很害怕。孩子的脸喊了一声，一个无声的气球就出来了。当他醒来时，电钟上写着十一点五分。秒针扫了一圈又一圈：齿轮不把自己磨成灰才怪。兔子穿上衣服--出于对星期天的尊重，穿上新的白衬衫，第二次下楼，他的脚还是光着的，地毯对他的脚底有种模糊的感觉，这是一种单身的感觉。这房子感觉很大，全是他的。他拿起电话簿，查找STAVROS CHAS 1204 Eisenhower Av. 他没有拨号，只是凝视着这个名字和号码，仿佛要看到他的妻子，比铅笔的小点还小，在字母之间爬行。他拨了一个他熟记于心的号码。


他的父亲接听了。"什么事？" 一个警惕的声音，准备挂断一个疯子或推销员的电话。

"爸爸。"嗨；嘿，我希望你那天晚上没有等待或什么；我们没能赶到，1甚至无法接通电话。"

稍微停顿了一下，不多，只够让他知道他们确实很失望。"不，我们估计是有什么事，就按老时间睡觉了。你母亲不是一个爱抱怨的人，你知道的。"

"对。好吧。关于今天。"

他的声音嘶哑到低声说。"哈利，你今天必须过来。如果你不去，你会伤她的心。"

"我会的，我会的，但是--"

老人用嘴捂住听筒，嘶哑地催促道："这可能是她最后一次，你知道的。生日。"

"我们来了。流行。我是说，我们中的一些人要来。珍妮丝不得不走了。"

"怎么走？"

"这有点复杂，关于她母亲的腿和波科诺斯的事情；她昨晚决定她必须，我不知道。这没什么可担心的。大家都很好，她只是不在这里。不过孩子在这里。" 为了说明问题，他叫道："纳尔逊！"

没有人回答。

"他一定是骑着自行车出去了。流行。他整个上午都在附近。你想我们什么时候去？"

"什么时候都可以，哈利。下午晚些时候或左右。你能早来就早来。我们要吃烤牛肉。你母亲想烤一个蛋糕，但医生认为这对她来说可能太难了。我在面包店买了一个不错的。奶油糖衣，那不是你以前的最爱吗？"


"今天是她的生日，不是我的。我应该送她什么礼物？"

"只是你的简单存在，哈利，就是她想要的所有礼物。"

"嗯，好的。我会想办法的。向她解释一下珍妮丝不会来了。"

"正如我的父亲，上帝保佑，曾经说过，这是令人遗憾的，但这也是没办法的。"

一旦波普找到那条仪式性的静脉，他往往会驾驭它。兔子挂断了电话。孩子的自行车--一辆生锈的Schwinn，一直想给他买辆新的，两个挡泥板都磨破了--不在车库里。猎鹰也不在。只有油罐、煤气罐、割草机、乱七八糟的花园水管（珍妮丝一定是最后一次使用它）、一个缺牙的耙子，以及猎鹰的雪地轮胎在那里。有一个多小时，拉比特在屋子里迷迷糊糊地游走，不知道该给谁打电话，没有车。不想和电视机一起进屋。他在边界花坛里拔草，在他们自己的房子的第一个兴奋的夏天，珍妮丝在那里种植了球茎，并在植物和灌木中设置了。从那时起，他们什么也没做，只是看着杜鹃花死去，接受水仙花和鸢尾花的到来，并让凤仙花在随后的这些夏天里奋力抗争，自然界中失去了自然。他一直在除草，直到他开始把自己看成是杂草，而他那只指甲上有丑陋的大月亮的手是上帝选择和杀戮的手；然后他走进屋子，看向冰箱，生吃了一根胡萝卜。他看了看电话簿，查了查福斯纳特；有很多人，他花了点时间才知道M就是那个人，M代表玛格丽特，只是首字母，用来搪塞淫秽的电话，尽管如果他在那上面，他很快就会发现，首字母是没有关系的女人。"佩吉，你好；我是哈里-安斯特罗姆。" 他带着微弱的自豪感强调说他的名字；他们是同学，她记得他是个人物时。"我只是想知道，纳尔逊在那边和比利玩吗？他刚才骑车走了，我想知道去哪里。"

佩吉说，"他不在这里，哈利。对不起。" 她的声音结了霜，她所知道的一切，珍妮丝昨天在她耳边爆料。然后，她更加热情地问道："一切进展如何？" 他读出了这个等式--奥利离开了我；珍妮丝离开了你：你好。

他急忙说："太好了。嘿，如果纳尔逊来了，告诉他我想要提示。我们得去他奶奶家。"

她的声音在说再见时变冷了，加入了所有知道的人的庞大的刺眼的冰脸。纳尔逊似乎是县里剩下的一个不知道的人：这使他更加珍贵。然而，当男孩回来时，他满脸通红，头发因用力踩踏而湿透，他告诉父亲："我在Fosnachts。"

兔子眨了眨眼，说："好吧，在这之后，让我们保持更好的联系。我暂时是你的母亲，也是你的父亲。"他们吃了午饭，陈旧的黑麦上的黎巴嫩香肠。他们沿着恩伯雷走到韦泽，搭上12路公交车向东进入布鲁尔。由于是星期天，他们不得不在无云无色的天空下等待20分钟。在医院站，一群游客上了车。他们已经完成了自己的职责，茫然地赚走了死花，读完了书。桥下的黑河里，白色箭头的船翻着皱巴巴的船头，嗡嗡作响。当拉比特试图离开时，一个有色人种的孩子把他的脚留在了过道上：他踩着它。"大脚。"这个男孩对他的同伴说。


"胖嘴唇。"跟在后面的纳尔逊对那个有色人种男孩说。

他们试图找到一家开门的商店，他的母亲总是很难买到礼物。其他孩子曾给他们的母亲买过欢快的垃圾：一元店的珠宝、卫生水瓶、糖果盒、围巾。对于妈妈来说，这些东西太多，或者不够，米姆总是给她一些她自己做的东西：一个编织的锅垫，一个手绘的日历。兔子不善于做东西，所以他给她自己，他的战利品，他的头条新闻。妈妈似乎很满意：她关心的是生活而不是东西。但现在呢？一个垂死的人还能要什么？当Rabbit和Nelson走在令人眼花缭乱的Brewer市中心时，怪异的假肢装置--手臂、腿、电池驱动的心脏--在Rabbit的脑海中运行。当他和纳尔逊走在令人眼花缭乱的布鲁尔市中心时，他们发现一家药店开着保温杯、太阳镜、剃须水。柯达胶卷，塑料婴儿裤：没有给他母亲的东西 他想要一些大的东西，明亮的东西，能让她明白的东西。Realgirl液体化妆品。超级多肉素。不涂抹的卸妆液。腿部的裸体。一架洗发水的发色，每个信封上都有一个不同的微笑的阴户。金发雪女王。丹麦小麦。基拉尼鲁塞特。巴黎的香料。西班牙黑葡萄酒。纳尔逊拉着他的白衬衫袖子，把他引到一个Sunbeam Clipmaster和一个Roto-Shine磁性电动擦鞋机并排依偎在一起的地方，包装得很光鲜。"她不穿鞋了，只穿拖鞋，他说，"而且我记得她从来不剪头发。但他的注意力被一个12.95美元的加湿器所吸引。从盒子上的图片来看，它看起来像一个胖乎乎的东西碟子。无论她如何不动。它都会在那里。不过，在布鲁尔周围，无论如何，夏天都是一样潮湿的，但也许在冬天，散热器会使房子变干，墙纸剥落，皮肤开裂：它可能会帮助它日夜在那里。他继续看一个康德莱克水瓶和一个两英寸半的阅读杯，并把这两样东西当作病态的东西来看待。他的整个内脏都开始感到不适。世界的痛苦是一个坑，所有这些糖浆和药片千倍万倍都无法填补。他来到Quikease头皮梳电动按摩器前。盒子上有裸体女人的剪影，优雅地抚摸着她们的肩膀，女同性恋者，抚摸着她们的脖子后面，盒子上还有什么地方留给人们想象，看起来像带电的毛刷。$11.95. 褥疮。这可能有帮助。它可能会让她笑，痒，嗡嗡声：这就是生活。生活是一种按摩。而且它的价格比加湿器少一美元。时间在流逝。纳尔逊拽着他的袖子，想要一杯枫树核桃冰激凌汽水，而孩子正在吃。兔子买了一张生日卡和按摩器一起使用，上面有一只公鸡在打鸣，深红色的太阳在升起，绿色的字在外面喊着：早上起来真好。......里面则是祝你生日快乐，马! 马。姆。天啊，世界上有多少巧妙的废话。他还是买了，因为这只公鸡是明亮的橙色，而且很欢快，足以打动她。她的眼睛不一定是昏暗的，但他最好是安全的。


外面的世界是明亮而荒芜的。他们两人在空荡荡的街道上感到孤独。兔子抓着他笨重的包裹。大家都去哪儿了？地球上还有生命吗'。沿着软沥青的荒废街道走了三个街区，那是一朵巨大的花的脸，是向日葵啤酒标志的中心，说他们正在接近四点。他们在同一个角落等待，在凤凰酒吧对面。哈里的父亲习惯性地在那里等着，然后湖边的I6A公交车到贾奇山。他们是唯一的乘客：司机神秘地告诉他们："他们就要下来了。"他们穿过城市公园，经过二战时的坦克、乐队和网球场，绕过山肩，往上走。他们的一边是加油站和绿色的悬崖：另一边是悬崖，远处是高架桥。当孩子凝视着窗外，朝着下一座山的方向。兔子问他。"你今天早上去了哪里？告诉我真相。"

男孩回答，最后。"艾森豪威尔大道"

"去看妈妈的车是否在那里？"

"我想是的。"

"是吗？"


"是的"

"你进去了吗？"

"没有。只是抬头看了一会儿窗户。"

"你知道要看什么号码吗？"

"一二哦四。"

"这听起来很对。"

他们在中央大街下车，在花岗岩浸信会教堂旁边，沿着杰克逊大街向他父母的房子走去。这些街道在他的一生中没有改变。它们建得太近了，没有空地，也太结实了，无法拆掉，是一种带红色的砖，上面有紫红色的伤痕，其质地在拉比特小时候认为是干裂的，就像他冬天的嘴唇。枫树和马栗树掩盖了矮小的前院草坪，用小铁丝网围成的芭蕉树和箱形树篱。这些房子都是半独立的，而且很重；它们的屋顶是石板的，门廊是砖墙的，每扇橡木和斜面玻璃的门上面都有一个阴郁的教堂色彩的扇灯。作为一个孩子，拉比特想象那扇灯是路德教坛上方窗户的孩子，因此也是上帝的孩子，是一个淡紫色和金色的哨兵，他和爸爸、妈妈和米姆每天在上面来回走动十几次。现在，他和他的儿子一起走进来。他自己还是个儿子，不敢敲门，他觉得他父母的地方令人窒息。虽然客厅高脚椅上的时钟只显示4点20分，但黑暗已经来临：黑暗的地毯，厚厚的窗帘，死气沉沉的墙纸，盆栽挤满了有窗户那一侧的玻璃。妈妈曾经抱怨说，他们的房子是角落里的那一半，但是当他们的老邻居博尔格夫妇去世后，他们的那一半房子进入了市场，他们没有采取行动询问价格，一对来自斯克兰顿的年轻夫妇买下了它，年轻的妻子怀孕了，赤着脚，年轻的丈夫在422号公路边的一个新的电子厂里做事；而安格斯特罗姆夫妇仍然住在黑暗的那一半。他们更喜欢这样。阳光会褪色。空间杀伤力大。他们把他，哈里，送到外面的世界去发光，但在这里抱着自己的影子。他们的邻居家在另一边，隔着两条水泥人行道，中间有一条草带，那里住着妈妈曾经为谁来修剪草带而争吵的老卫理公会成员，已经挂了一年的出售招牌。人们现在想要更多的空气和土地，而这些蜷缩在山坡上的社区不能给他们。在Rabbit看来，这所房子有防腐剂的味道；有掩盖其他气味的味道，有时间层的味道，有蜡、气雾剂和死亡的味道；有安全的味道。


Ashape，一个阴暗的人，从厨房里走了出来。他以为那是他的父亲，但那是他的母亲，趿拉着鞋，穿着浴袍，但却挺拔地移动着。她俯身向前，不苟言笑地接受他的吻。她布满皱纹的脸颊是温暖的；她稳定在他手腕上的手是有节律的、冰冷的。

"生日快乐。妈妈。" 他把按摩器抱在胸前；现在提供它还太早。她盯着那个包裹，仿佛他在他们之间放了一个盾牌。

"我六十五岁了，"她说，摸索着短语，所以她的句子在中间结束。"当我二十岁的时候。我告诉我的男朋友我想被枪毙。当我三十岁的时候。" 与其说是她的嘴唇奇怪地颤抖着试图在一个想法上闭合，不如说是伴随着她的凝视，一个不眨眼的、不聚集在一起的凝视，把她的眼睛从任何流动中抬起来，用一种最终失明的感觉来吓唬兔子，从一块黑板上，他们都将被擦拭干净。

"你告诉了爸爸这个？"

"不是你爸爸。另一个。我后来才见到你爸爸。另外这个人，我很高兴。他不在这里。来看我了。"

"我看你挺好的，"兔子告诉她。"我没想到你会起来。"

"纳尔逊。我看起来怎么样。对你来说？" 因此，她承认了这个男孩。她一直在考验他，让他处于防御状态。她从来没有原谅过他，因为他不是另一个哈利，因为他身上有那么多的珍妮丝。她曾经说过，那双小春哥的手。现在她自己的手，被遗忘在她的浴袍腰带前，不断地进行瘫痪式的摆动。

"不错，"纳尔逊说。他很警觉。他已经知道，简短和及时的反应是他最好的防御。

为了把注意力从孩子身上移开。兔子问她。"你应该起来了吗？"

她笑了，一个惊人的无声的东西；她的头向后倾斜，她的大鼻子从其尖端和底部的切面闪烁，她的手停止了摇晃。"我知道，厄尔说话的方式。从他要我上床的方式来看，你会认为。我已经躺下了。医生。想让我起来。我不得不烤了一个蛋糕。厄尔想。蛋糕店的那些无味的帕子之一。珍妮丝呢？"

"是的，关于这一点。她非常抱歉，她没能来。她不得不和她母亲一起去波科诺斯，这让我们都很吃惊。"

"事情可以是。令人惊讶。"

从楼上传来厄尔-安格斯特伦瘦弱的声音，焦急地呼唤着，带着磨刀霍霍的得意，"他们下来了！"。老鹰已经着陆了! 我们在月球上，男孩和女孩们! 山姆大叔在月球上了！"

"那只是。妈妈说，并以一种粗暴的姿态将她扭曲的手向后扫向她的耳朵，以抚平从她仍然扭曲的发髻上散落下来的一块头发。有趣的是，头发在变老后会变得更加顽固。他们说，即使在坟墓里，它也会生长。打开女人的棺材，发现整个东西都塞在床垫里面。阴毛也是吗？有趣的是它从来不需要被剪掉。当他触摸母亲的手臂，帮助她上楼看月亮时，她肘部以上的肉令人不安--在骨头上松动，就像一只煮熟的鸡。

场景是在妈妈的卧室，在房子的前面。它有他们的地窖曾经有的味道，当他们有那两只猫的时候。他试着记住它们的名字。潘西。还有威利。威利，那只雄猫，经常打架，他的肚子开始晃动，不得不被带到动物救援中心。管子里没有月亮的照片，只有噼里啪啦的声音，而纸板剪影模拟了正在发生的事情，电子字母拼出了在噼里啪啦的人声中谁在说话。

". ......周围有数以千计的一英尺和两英尺的小坑，"一个男人用过去在《汤姆-米克斯》剧集之间试图向他们推销切碎的Ralston的声音说。"我们看到在我们前面几百英尺处有一些有棱角的块状物，可能有两英尺大，有棱角的边缘。在我们前面的地面轨道上，正好有一座小山在视野中。难以估计，但可能有半英里或一英里。"

一个被确认为休斯顿的声音说。"收到。安宁。我们收到。完毕。" 这个声音具有德克萨斯州的那种权威性。仿佛词语是他们发明的，他们说得那么有爱。53年拉比特驻扎在胡德堡的时候。德州对他来说就像月亮一样，棕色的土地从他的膝盖开始平坦如刀，紫色褶皱的地平线，天空比他能相信的更大更荒芜，第一次离开他潮湿的绿色山丘，也是最后一次。每个人的声音都是那么好听，那么狡猾，那么有爱，甚至妓院里的女孩也是如此。

一个叫哥伦比亚的声音说。"听起来比昨天好多了。在那个很低的太阳角度下，那时它看起来粗糙得像个麦穗。" 如同鹅卵石？电子信件上注明，MIKE COLLINS从指挥模块或月球上说话。

宁静说："它真的很粗糙。迈克，在目标着陆区上空。它非常粗糙，坑坑洼洼，有大量的岩石，可能有的岩石比五英尺或十英尺大很多。" 妈妈的房间里有蕾丝窗帘，颜色发黄，后面夹着锡制的雏菊，在婴儿的眼里看来是很神奇的，玫瑰和荆棘的墙纸从散热器安全阀上方的墙上卷起，一种毛绒绒的扶手椅，可以吸走灰尘。当他还是个孩子的时候，这把椅子就在楼下，他会用袜子把大量的漩涡状微尘释放到下午的阳光下；这些漩涡状的微尘对他来说似乎是世界，每一个都是地球，而他就在其中的一个，小得令人难以想象，令人难以忍受。下午时分，一些光线曾经进入屋内，在枫树之间。现在，枫树把光线挤得满满的，使房间变得地窖般昏暗。床头柜上放着一个由药瓶和圣经组成的直立小公司。哀号里放着他和米姆在高中时的彩色照片，他记得那是一个爱出风头的蓝颚小骗子拍的，他自称是工作室的人，每年春天，他都要让他们在礼堂里排队，把头发梳湿，这样他们的父母两周后就忍不住让他们带钱到班里去买一张8乘10的彩色照片和一张钱包大小的自己的脸谱。现在，这个骗子通过时间的翻转，已经成为自己的捐赠者，否则将永远失去。兔子瘦小的头在半透明的金发中呈粉红色，他的耳朵离头一英寸远，他的眼睛还没有准备好，像弹珠一样蓝，甚至他的下眼睑也是年轻时的肉色；而米姆的脸在齐肩的洗发水照耀下显得丰满，她的口红的颜色像徽章一样钉在她脸的白色上。两个孩子都向太空微笑着，透过歪把子的污浊镜头，从那个散发着汗味的健身房向他们的母亲卧床的某一天走去。

哥伦比亚开玩笑说。"有疑问的时候，就长期降落。"

宁静说。"嗯，我们做到了。"

而休斯顿介入了。"Tranquillity Houston。如果你准备好了，我们有一份P-22的更新资料给你。完毕。"

哥伦比亚又开起了玩笑。"为你服务，先生。"

休斯敦，不以为然，一个计算机城市不眠不休地工作，回答。"对。迈克。P一0四三二八；P二一0四三七二八，那是向南四英里。这是基于一个目标着陆点。完毕。"

哥伦比亚公司重复了这些数字。

宁静说："我们的任务定时器现在读数为九零四三四七，静止。"

"收到，收到。你的任务计时器现在是静态的，请再说一遍时间。"

"九点四三四四七"。

"收到, 收到, 宁静号。那个重力调整看起来不错。我们看到你在回收。"

"嗯，不。我正想把1665号时间弄出来，但不知怎么的，在我做BRP32号输入之前，它就在6-22号进行了。我想在这里记录一个时间，然后我想知道你是想让我在扭动角度上进行，还是在扭动之前回去再重新输入。完毕。"

"罗格，巴兹。待命。"

纳尔逊和他的祖父全神贯注地听着这些程序；玛丽-安格斯特伦不耐烦地转过身来，或者说是她的动作困难使所有的手势都显得不耐烦了吗--然后趿拉着鞋走到楼道里，再次下楼。兔子的心在空洞中颤抖着，跟在后面。她不需要帮助就能下楼。在花花绿绿的厨房里，她问道："你说的是什么地方。珍妮丝在哪里？"

"在波科诺斯，和她母亲在一起。"

"我为什么要相信这个？"

"你为什么不应该？"

她弯着腰，摇摇晃晃地。"打开烤箱，往里看。"纠结的铁丝头发在她弯腰时散落下来。她哼了一声，站起来，说："珍妮丝。别挡着我的路。这些天。"

在他惊恐的、被催眠的状态下。兔子只能，似乎，问问题。"她为什么要这样做？"

他的母亲陈述并凝视着，只有她的舌头在她分开的嘴唇之间移动，才暴露出她正试图说话。"我知道得太多了，"她最后说，"关于她。"

兔子说，"你只知道一群可悲的老流言蜚语告诉你的关于她的事情。还有，不要再纠缠老爹了，他一上班就纠缠我。" 由于她没有反击，他被激怒了，继续说。"米姆在拉斯维加斯一天转十次戏，我想你要担心的事情会比可怜的珍妮丝的私生活多。"

"她总是这样。"他母亲说，"被宠坏了。"

"是的，纳尔逊也是我想被宠坏的。你会怎么形容我呢？就在昨天，我还坐在爆炸比赛那边，想着我是个多么糟糕的棒球运动员，总是害怕球。我是一个相当糟糕的丈夫，一个邋遢的父亲，当Verity出版社倒闭时，我也会跟着倒闭，不得不去领救济金。有些生活。谢谢你，妈妈。"

"嘘，"她说，面无表情，"你会让。蛋糕掉下来。"像一把生锈的千斤顶，她强迫自己弯下腰，向煤气炉里看去。

"对不起，妈妈，但天哪，我最近很累。"

"你会感觉更好的，当。你是我的年龄。"

派对很成功。他们坐在厨房的桌子旁，桌子上的四个地方在这么多年里被磨破了搪瓷。就像以前一样，只是妈妈穿着浴袍，米姆变成了纳尔逊。爸爸把鸡肉切好，然后把妈妈的那块切成小块，给她吃：她的右手可以拿叉子，但不能用刀。他的牙齿滑落，他提议用纽约州的酒为 "我的玛丽，一个历经磨难的天使 "干杯。兔子想知道什么是瘦。也许这就是它。当她拆开她的几个礼物时，她对按摩器笑了。"这是什么？让我继续跳？"她问道，并让她丈夫把它插上，然后把它放在纳尔逊的头顶上，震动着。他需要这种振奋人心的触摸。哈里感到珍妮丝的离去在啃噬着他。当蛋糕被切开时，孩子只吃了半块，所以兔子不得不吃双份，以免伤害他母亲的感情。

黄昏越来越浓：在西布鲁尔，疗养院的窗户被烧成了橙色，而在山的这一边，阴影像窃贼一样潜入这所房子和未售出的房子之间狭窄的混凝土空间。透过贴着纸的墙壁，从这对年轻的赤脚夫妇的房子里，渗出摇滚乐队沉闷的低音打击乐，使妈妈架子上配好的罐子（饼干、糖、面粉、咖啡）在空旷中颤动。在客厅里，桃花心木高脚椅的玻璃面在颤抖。纳尔逊的眼睛开始下沉：他的眼皮降低了。当他向前倾倒在冰冷的桌边时，他的小纽扣丘比特弧形嘴笑着表示歉意。他的长辈们谈论着附近的旧时光，30年代和40年代的人，曾经是那么的活泼，你每天都能看到他们，却从未想过要拍一张照片。老卫理公会的人拒绝修剪他那一半的草带。在他之前，Zims家有一个漂亮的女儿，母亲在每次早餐和晚餐时都会大喊大叫。街上那个在椒盐卷饼厂上夜班的男人，在一个黎明开枪自杀，除了牛奶车的马匹，没有人听到。那时他们有牛奶车。街道上是柔软的灰尘。


纳尔逊与睡眠作斗争。兔子问他： "想回家吗0"

"不，爸爸。" 他睡眼惺忪地对自己的机智笑了笑。

兔子延伸了这个笑话。"时间是21个小时。我们最好与我们的航天器会合。"

但飞船是空的：在彭家庄的黑夜中，一个长长的空盒子，在虚空中慢慢旋转，它的边框床铺上有一半的杂草。孩子被吓得不敢回家。兔子也是如此。他们坐在妈妈的床上，在黑暗中看电视。他们被告知，坐在月球上的大金属蜘蛛里的人不能睡觉，所以月球行走的时间被提前了几个小时。演播室里的人，脸色苍白，因为打发时间而变得苍白，用真人大小的模拟模型演示应该发生的事情；在一些频道上，穿着太空服的人正在走来走去。最后，它发生了。真正的事件。或者是这样吗？舱腿上的电视摄像机打开了：屏幕上出现了一个抽象的画面。播音员解释说，屏幕上方的黑色是月夜，左下角的黑色是带有梯子的航天器的影子，白色是月球的表面。纳尔逊睡着了，他的头靠在父亲的大腿上；有趣的是，孩子们的头骨在睡觉时变得潮湿。就像地下的灯泡。妈妈的腿在毯子下面：她在他身后的枕头上撑着。爸爸在椅子上睡着了，他的呼吸是遥远的悲伤的大海，触到岸边又退回去，触到岸边又退回去，是一个不断运转的老泵；灯火透过窗帘的缝隙偷偷摸摸地照着他的头顶，他稀疏的头发被弄成了松软的羽毛。在明亮的盒子上，有事情发生了。一个蛇形的形状从左上角溜下来；那是一条男人的腿。它又长出了一条腿，使月球表面的亮斑黯然失色。在这些抽象的阴影和强光中，有一个笨拙的人影穿插其间。他说了一些关于 "台阶 "的话，噼里啪啦的声音让兔子听不懂。横向行驶的电子字母拼出 "人在月球上"。噼里啪啦的声音告诉休斯顿，表面是松软的粉状物，他可以用脚趾把它挑起来，它像木炭粉一样粘在他的靴子上，他只陷进去一小部分，比地球上的模拟物更容易移动。从他身后传来。兔子的母亲的手艰难地伸出来，触及他的后脑勺，停留在那里，笨拙地试图按摩他的头皮，以缓解她知道他所处的麻烦的想法。"我不知道。妈妈，"他突然承认。"我知道它已经发生了，但我还没有任何感觉。"

约翰-厄普代克是一位多产的诗歌、艺术和文学批评以及小说作家。他因 "兔子 "系列的两部小说分别于1982年和1991年获得普利策小说奖，成为仅有的三位多次获得该奖项的作家之一。



Pop Mom Moon
Rabbit Angstrom, the faded basketball hero of Rabbit, Run, is ten years older, and perchance wiser. These scenes from his life are drawn from Rabbit Redux, Mr. Updike’s forthcoming novel.

By John Updike
AUGUST 1971 ISSUE
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I.

Men emerge pale from the little printing plant at four sharp, ghosts for an instant, blinking, until the outdoor light overcomes the air of constant indoor light clinging to them. In winter, Pine Street at this hour is dark; darkness presses down early from the mountain that hangs above this stagnant city of Brewer; but now in summer the granite curbs starred with mica and the row houses differentiated by speckled bastard sidings and the hopeful small porches with their jigsaw brackets and gray milk-bottle boxes and the sooty ginkgo trees and the baking curbside cars wince beneath a brilliance like a frozen explosion. The city, attempting to revive its dying downtown, has torn away blocks of buildings to create parking lots, so that a desolate openness, weedy and rubbled, spills through the once-packed streets, exposing church facades never seen from a distance and generating new perspectives of rear entryways and half-alleys and intensifying the cruel breadth of the light. The sky is cloudless yet colorless, hovering blanched humidity, in the way of these Pennsylvania summers, good for nothing but to make green things grow. Men don’t even tan: filmed by sweat, they turn yellow.

A man and his son, Earl Angstrom and Harry, are among the printers released from work. The father is near retirement, a thin man with no excess left to him, his face washed empty by grievances and caved in above the protruding slippage of bad false teeth. The son is five inches taller and fatter; his prime is soft, somehow pale and sour. The small nose and slightly lifted upper lip that once made the nickname Rabbit fit now seem, along with the thick waist and cautious stoop bred into him by a decade of the linotyper’s trade, clues to weakness, a weakness verging on anonymity. Though his height, his bulk, and a remnant alertness in the way he moves his head continue to distinguish him on the street, years have passed since anyone has called him Rabbit.

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“Harry, how about a quick one?" his father asks. At the corner where their side street meets Weiser there is a bus stop and a bar, the Phoenix, with a girl nude but for cowboy boots in neon outside and cactuses painted on the dim walls inside. Their buses, when they take them, go in opposite directions; the old man takes number 16A around the mountain to the town of Mount Judge, where he has lived his life, and Harry takes number 12 in the opposite direction to Penn Villas, a new development south of the city, ranch houses and quarter-acre lawns contoured as the bulldozer left them and maple saplings tethered to the earth as if otherwise they might fly away. He moved there with Janice and Nelson three years ago. His father still feels the move out of Mount Judge as a rejection, and so most afternoons they have a drink together to soften the day’s parting. Working together ten years, they have grown into the love they would have had in Harry’s childhood, had not his mother loomed so large between them.

“Make it a Schlitz,” Earl tells the bartender.

“Daiquiri,” Harry says. The air conditioning is turned so far up he unrolls his shirt cuffs and buttons them for warmth. He always wears a white shirt to work and after, as a way of canceling the ink. Ritually, he asks his father how his mother is.

But his father declines to make a ritual answer. Usually he says, “As good as can be hoped.”Today he sidles a conspiratorial inch closer at the bar and says, “Not as good as could be hoped, Harry.”She has had Parkinson’s disease for years now. Harry’s mind slides away from picturing her the way she has become, the loosely fluttering knobbed hands, the shuffling, sheepish walk, the eyes that study him with vacant amazement though the doctor says her mind is as good as ever in there, and the mouth that wanders open and forgets to close until saliva reminds it. “At nights, you mean?” The very question offers to hide her in darkness.

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Again the old man blocks Rabbit’s desire to slide by. “No. the nights are better now. They have her on a new pill, and she says she sleeps better now. It’s in her mind, more.”

“What is, Pop?”

“We don’t talk about it. Harry, it isn’t in her nature: it isn’t the type of thing she and I have ever talked about. Your mother and i have just let a certain type of thing go unsaid, it was the way we were brought up: maybe it would have been better if we hadn’t. I don’t know. I mean things now they’ve put into her mind.”

“Who’s this they?” Harry sighs into the daiquiri foam and thinks. He’s going too; they’re both going. Neither makes enough sense. As his father pushes closer against him to explain, he seems one of the hundreds of skinny, whining codgers in and around this city. men who have sucked this same brick tit for sixty years and have dried up with it.

“Why, the ones who come to visit her now she spends half the day in bed. Mamie Kellog, for one.

Julia Arndt’s another. I hate like the Jesus to bother you with it. Harry, but her talk is getting wild, and with Mini on the West Coast you’re the only one to help me straighten out my own mind. I hate to bother you. but her talk is getting so wild that she even talks of telephoning Janice.”

“Janice! Why would she call Janice?”

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“Well" A pull on the Schlitz. A wiping of the wet

upper lip with the bony back of the hand, fingers half-clenched in an old man’s clutching way. A loosetoothed grimacing getting set to dive in. “Well, the talk is about Janice.”

“My Janice?”

“Now, Harry. don’t blow your lid Don’t blame the bearer of bad tidings. I’m trying to tell you what they say. not what I believe.”

“I’m just surprised there’s anything to say. I hardly see her anymore, now that she’s over at Springer’s lot all the time.”

“Well, that’s it. That may be your mistake. Harry, You’ve taken Janice for granted ever since—the time.” The time he left her. The time the baby died. The time she took him back. “Ten years ago.”his father needlessly adds. Harry is beginning, here in this cold bar with cactuses in plastic pots on the shelves beneath the mirrors and the little Schlitz spinner doing its polychrome parabola over and over, to feel the world turn. A hopeful coldness inside him grows, grips his wrists inside his cuffs. The news isn’t all in, a new combination might break it open, this stale peace.


“Harry, the malice of people surpasses human understanding in my book, and the poor soul has no defenses against it—there she lies and has to listen. Ten years ago. wouldn’t she have laid them out? Wouldn’t her tongue have cut them down? They’ve told her that Janice is running around. With one certain man. Harry, Nobody claims she’s playing the held.”

The coldness spreads up Rabbit’s arms to his shoulders, and down the tree of veins toward his stomach. “Do they name the man?”

“Not to my knowledge. Harry. How could they now, when in all likelihood, there is no man?”

Well, if they can make up the idea, they can make up a name.”

The bar television is running, with the sound turned off. For the twentieth time that day the rocket blasts off, the numbers pouring backwards in tenths of seconds faster than the eye until zero is reached; then the white boiling beneath the tall kettle, the lifting so slow it seems certain to tip, the swift diminishment into a retreating speck, a jiggling star. The men dark along the bar murmur among themselves. They have not been lifted, they are left here Harry’s father mutters at him, prying. “Has she seemed any different to you lately. Harry? Listen, I know in all probability it’s what they call a crock of shit, but—has she seemed any. you know, different lately?”

It offends Rabbit to hear his father swear: he lifts his head fastidiously, as if to watch the television, which has returned to a program where people are tryina to guess what sort of prize is hidden behind a curtain, and jump and squeal and kiss each other when it turns out to be an eight-foot frozen-food locker. He might be wrong but for a second he could swear this young housewife opens her mouth in midkiss and gives the m.c. a taste of her tongue. Anyway, she won’t stop kissing. The m.c.’s eyes roll out to the camera for mercy, and they cut to a commercial. In silence images of spaghetti and eyeballs rolling riffle past. “I don’t know" Rabbit says. “She hits the bottle prettv well sometimes, but then so do I.”

“Not you.” the old man tells him. “you’re no drinker. Harry. I’ve seen drinkers all my life, somebody like Boonie over in engraving, there’s a drinker, killing himself with it, and he knows it. he couldn’t stop if they told him he’d die tomorrow. You may have a whiskey or two in the evening, you’re no spring chicken anymore, but you’re no drinker.” He hides his loose mouth in his beer, and Harry taps the bar for another daiquiri. The old man nuzzles closer. “Now, Harry, forgive me for asking if you don’t want to talk about it, but how about in bed? That goes along pretty well, does it?”

“No,”he answers slowly, disdainful of this prying, “I wouldn’t exactly say well. Tell me about Mom. Has she had any of those breathing fits lately?”

“Not a one that I’ve been woken up for. She sleeps like a baby with those new green pills. This new medicine is a miracle, I must admit; ten more years the only way to kill us’ll be to gas us to death—Hitler had the right idea. Already, you know, there aren’t any more crazy people: just give ‘em a pill morning and evening and they’re sensible as Einstein. You wouldn’t exactly say it does . . .go along OK, is that what I understood you said?”

“Well, we’ve never been that great. Pop, frankly. Does she fall down ever? Mom.”

“She may take a tumble or two in the day and not tell me about it. I tell her. I tell her, stay in bed and watch the box. She has this theory the longer she can do things the longer she’ll stay out of bed for good. I figure she should take care of herself, put herself in deep freeze, and in a year or two in all likelihood they’ll develop a pill that’ll clear this up simple as a common cold. Already, you know, some of these cortisones: but the doctor tells us they don’t know but what the side effects may be worse. You know: the big C. My figuring is, take the chance, they’re just about ready to lick cancer anyway, and with these transplants pretty soon they can replace your whole insides.” The old man hears himself talking too much and slumps to stare into his empty beer, the suds sliding down, but can’t help adding, to give it all point. “It’s a terrible thing.” And when Harry fails to respond: “God, she hates not being active.”

The rum is beginning to work. Rabbit has ceased to feel cold, his heart is beginning to lift off. The air in here seems thinner, his eyes adjusting to the dark. He asks, “How’s her mind? You aren’t saying they should start giving her crazy pills?”

“In honest truth, I won’t lie to you, Harry, it’s as clear as a bell, when her tongue can find the words. And as I say, she’s gotten hipped lately on this Janice thing. It would help a lot—Jesus I hate to bother you. but it’s the truth—it would help a lot if you and Janice could spare the time to come over tonight. Not seeing you too often her imagination’s free to take off. Now, I know you’ve promised Sunday for her birthday, but think of it this way: if you’re stuck in bed with nobody but the idiot box and a lot of malicious biddies for company, a week can seem a year. If you could make it up there some evening before the weekend, bring Janice along so Mary could look at her-”

“I’d like to, Pop. You know I would.”

“I know, Jesus, I know. I know more than you think. You’re at just the age to realize your old man’s not the dope you always thought he was.”

“The trouble is, Janice works in the lot office until ten, eleven all the time, and I don’t like to leave the kid alone in the house. In fact, I better be getting back there now just in case.” In case it’s burned down. In case a madman has moved in. These things happen all the time in the papers. He can read in his father’s face—a fishy pinching in at the corners of the mouth, a tightened veiling of the washed-out eyes— the old man’s suspicions confirmed. Rabbit sees red. Meddling old crock. Janice: who’d have that mutt? In love with her father, and there she stuck. Happy as a Girl Scout since she began to fill in at her father’s lot, half these summer nights out way past supper. TV dinners, tuck Nelson in alone and wait up for her to breeze in blooming with rosy cheeks like a child fresh from a hike and talkative, he’s never known her to be so full of herself, in a way it does his heart good. He resents his father trying to get at him with Janice and hits back with the handiest weapon. Mom. “This doctor you have, does he ever mention a nursing home?”

The old man’s mind is slow making the switch back to his own wife. Harry has a thought, a spark like where train wheels run over a track switch. Did Mom ever do it to Pop? Play him false. All this poking around about life in bed hints at some experience. Hard to imagine, not only who with but when; she was always in the house as long as he could remember, nobody ever came to visit but the brush man and the Jehovah’s Witness; yet the thought excites him, as Pop’s rumor chills him, opens up possibilities. Pop is saying, “. . . at the beginning. We want to hold off at least until she’s bedridden. If we reach the point where she can’t take care of herself before I’m on retirement and there all day, it’s an option we might be forced into. I’d hate to see it. though. Jesus, I’d hate to see it.”

“Hey, Pop—?”

“Here’s my forty cents. Plus a dime for the tip.” The way the old man’s hand clings curlingly to the quarters in offering them betrays that they are real silver to him instead of cut-copper-sandwich coins that ring flat on the bar top. Old values. The Depression when money was money. Never be sacred again; not even dimes are silver now. Kennedy’s face killed half dollars; took them out of circulation, and they’ve never come back. Put the metal on the moon. The niggling business of settling their bill delays his question about Mom until they are outdoors, and then he sees he can’t ask it, he doesn’t know his father that well. Out here in the hot light his father has lost all sidling intimacy and looks merely old—liverish scoops below his eyes, broken veins along the sides of his nose, his hair the no-color of cardboard. “What’d you want to ask me?”

“I forget.” Harry says, and sneezes. Coming into this heat from that air conditioning sets off an explosion between his eyes that turns heads around halfway down the block and leaves his nostrils weeping. “No. I remember. The nursing home. How can we afford it? Fifty bucks a day or whatever. It’ll suck us right down the drain.”

His father laughs, with a sudden snap to retrieve his slipping teeth, and does a little shuffling dance step, right here on the baking sidewalk, beneath the white-on-red BUs STOP sign that people have scratched and lipsticked to read PUS DROP. “Harry. God in His way hasn’t been all bad to your mother and me. Believe it or not, there’s some advantages to living so long in this day and age. This Sunday she’s going to be sixty-five and come under Medicare. I’ve been paying in since ‘66; it’s like a great weight rolled off my chest. There’s no medical expense can break us now. They called LBJ every name in the book, but believe me, he did a lot of good for the little man. Wherever he went wrong, it was his big heart betrayed him. These pretty boys in the sky right now. Nixon’ll hog the credit, but it was the Democrats put ‘em there; it’s been the same story ever since I can remember, ever since Wilson-the Republicans don’t do a thing for the little man.”

“Right.”Harry says blankly. His bus is coming. “Tell her we’ll be over Sunday.”He pushes to a clear space at the back where, looking out while hanging to the bar, he sees his father as one of the “little men.” Pop stands whittled by the great American glare, squinting in the manna of blessings that come down from the government, shuffling from side to side in nervous happiness that his day’s work is done, that a beer is inside him. that Armstrong is above him, that the U.S. is the crown and stupefaction of human history. Like a piece of grit in the launching pad, he has done his part Still, he has been the one to keep his health; who would have thought Mom would fail first? Rabbit’s mind, as the bus dips into its bag of gears and surges and shudders, noses closer into the image of her he keeps like a dreaded relic; the black hair gone gray, the mannish mouth too clever for her life, the lozenge-shaped nostrils that to him as a child suggested a kind of soreness within, the eyes whose color he had never dared learn closed, bulge-lidded in her failing, the whole long face, slightly shining as if with sweat, lying numbed on the pillow. He can’t bear to see her like this is the secret of his seldom visiting, not Janice. The source of his life staring wasted there while she gropes for the words to greet him. And that gentle tawny smell of sickness that doesn’t even stay in her room but comes downstairs to meet them in the front hall among the umbrellas and follows them into the kitchen, where poor Pop warms their meals. A smell like gas escaping, that used to worry her so when he and Mini were little.

He boys his head and curtly prays. Forgive me, forgive us, make it easy for her. Amen. He only ever prays on buses. Now this bus has that smell.

The bus has too many Negroes.Rabbit notices them more and more. They’ve been here all along; as a tiny kid he remembers streets in Brewer you held your breath walking through, though they never hurt you. just looked; but now they’re noisier. Instead of bald-looking heads, they’re bushy. That’s OK. it’s more Nature. Nature is what we’re running out of Two of the men in the shop are Negroes, and after a while you didn’t even notice: at least they remember how to laugh. Sad business, being a Negro man. always underpaid, their eyes don’t look like our eyes, blood-shot, brown, liquid in them about to quiver out. Read somewhere some anthropologist thinks Negroes instead of being more primitive are the latest thing to evolve, the newest men. In some ways tougher, in some ways more delicate. Certainly dumber, but then, being smart hasn’t amounted to so much, the atom bomb and the onepiece aluminum beer can. And you can’t say Bill Cosby’s stupid.

But against these educated, tolerant thoughts rests a certain fear; he doesn’t see why they have to be so noisy The four seated right under him, jabbing and letting their noise come out in big silvery hoops: they know damn well they’re bugging the fat white wives pulling their shopping bags home Well, that’s kids of any color: but strange. They are a strange race. Not only their skins but the way they’re put together, loose-jointed like lions, strange about the head, as if their thoughts were a different shape and came out twisted even when they meant no menace. It’s as if all these Afro hair bushes and gold earrings and hoopy noise on buses, seeds of some tropical plant sneaked in by the birds, were taking over the garden. His garden. Rabbit knows it’s his garden and that’s why he’s put a flag decal on the back window of the Falcon even though Janice says it’s corny and fascist. In the papers you read about these houses in Connecticut where the parents are away in the Bahamas and the kids come in and smash it up for a party. More and more this country is getting like that. As if it just grew here instead of people laying down their lives to build it.

The bus w’orks its way down Weiser and crosses the Running Horse River and begins to drop people instead of taking them on. The city with its tired fiveand-dimes (that used to be a wonderland: the counters as high as his nose and the Big Little Books smelling like Christmas) and its Krolfs Department Store (where he once worked knocking apart crates behind the furniture department) and its flowerpotted traffic circle where the trolley tracks used to make a clanging star of intersection and then the empty dusty windows where stores have been starved by the suburban shopping malls and the sad narrow places that come and go called Go-Go or Boutique and the funeral parlors with imitation granite faces and the surplus outlets and a shoe parlor that sells hot roasted peanuts and Afro newspapers printed in Phi Sly—M BOY A MARTYRED -and a flower shop where they sell numbers and have punchboards and a variety store next to a pipe-rack clothing retailer—next to a corner dive called JlMBO’S Friendly LOUNGE, cigarette ends of the city snuffed by the bridge; the city gives way, after the hash of open water that in his youth was choked with coal silt (a man once tried to commit suicide from this bridge but stuck there up to his hips until the police pulled him out) but that now has been dredged and supports a flecking of moored pleasure boats, to West Brewer, a gappy imitation of the city, the same squeezed houses of brick painted red, but broken here and there by the twirlers of a car lot, the pumps and blazoned overhang of a gas station, the lakelike depth of a supermarket parking lot crowded with shimmering fins. Surging and spitting. the bus. growing lighter, the Negroes vanishing, moves toward a hope of spaciousness, past residential fortresses with sprinkled lawn around all four sides and clipped hydrangeas above newly pointed retaining walls, past a glimpse of the museum whose gardens were always in blossom and where the swans ate the breadcrusts schoolchildren threw them, then a glimpse of the sunstruck windows, orange facing the sinking sun. of the tall new wing of the County Hospital for the Insane. Closer at hand, the West Brewer Dry Cleaners, a toy store calling itself Hobby Heaven, a Rialto movie house with a stubby marquee: 2001: SPACE OD’SEY. The street curves, becomes a highway, dips into green suburbs where in the twenties little knights of industry built half-timbered dream houses, pebbled mortar and clinker brick, stucco flaky as piecrust, witches’ houses of candy and hardened cookie dough, with two-car garages and curved driveways. In Brewer County, but for a few baronial estates ringed by iron fences and moated by miles of lawn, there is nowhere higher to go than these houses; the most successful dentists may get to buy one. the pushiest insurance salesmen, the suavest ophthalmologists. This section even has another name, distinguishing itself From West Brewer: Penn Park. Penn Villas echoes the name hopefully, though it is not incorporated into this borough but sits on the border of Furnace Township, looking in. The township, where once charcoal-fed furnaces had smelted the iron for revolutionary muskets, is now still mostly farmland, and its few snowplows and single sheriff can hardly cope with this ranch-house village of muddy lawns and potholed macadam and sub-code sewers the developers suddenly left in its care.

Rabbit gets off at a stop in Penn Park and walks down a street of mock Tudor, Emberly Avenue, to where the road surface changes at the township line and becomes Emberly Drive in Penn Villas. He lives on Vista Crescent, third house from the end. Once there may have been here a vista, a softly sloped valley of red barns and fieldstone farmhouses, but more Penn Villas had been added and now the view from any window is as if into a fragmented mirror, of houses like this, telephone wires and television aerials showing where the glass cracked. His house is

faced with apple-green aluminum clapboards and is numbered 26. Rabbit steps onto his flagstone porchlet and opens his door with its three baby windows arranged like three steps, echoing the door chime of three stepped tones.

Hey, Dad,” his son calls from the living room, a room on his right the size of what used to be called a parlor, with a fireplace they never use. “They’ve left earth’s orbit! They’re forty-three thousand miles away.”

“Good for them,” he says. “Your mother here?” “No. At school they let us all into assembly to see the launch.”

“She call at all?”

“Not since I’ve been here. I just got in a while ago.” Nelson, at thirteen, is under average height, with his mother’s dark complexion, and something finely cut and wary about his face that may come from the Angstroms. His long eyelashes come from nowhere, and his shoulder-length hair is his own idea. Somehow, Rabbit feels, if he were taller it would be all right, to have hair so long. As is. the resemblance to a girl is frighteningly strong.

“Whadja do all day?”

The same television program, of people guessing and getting and squealing and kissing the m.c., is still going on.

“Nothing much.”

“Go to the playground?”

“For a while.”

“Then where?”

“Oh. over to West Brewer, just to hang around Billy’s apartment. Hey?”

“Yeah?”

“His father got him a mini-bike for his birthday. It’s real cool. With that real long front part so you have to reach up for the handles.”

“You rode it?”

“He only let me once. It’s all shiny, there isn’t a speck of paint on it; it’s just metal, with a white banana seat.”

“He’s older than you, isn’t he?”

“By two months. That’s all. Just two months, Dad.”

“Where does he ride it? It’s not legal on the street, is it?”

“Their building has a big parking lot he rides it all around. Nobody says anything. It only cost a hundred-eighty dollars. Dad.”

“Keep talking; I’m getting a beer.”

The house is small enough so that the boy can be heard by his father in the kitchen, his voice mixed with gleeful greedy spurts from the television and the chunky suck of the refrigerator door opening and shutting. “Hey, Dad, something I don’t understand.” “Shoot.”

“I thought the Fosnachts were divorced.” “Separated.”

“Then how come his father keeps getting him all this neat junk? You ought to see the hi-fi set he has, that’s all his, for his room, not even to share. Four speakers. Dad, and earphones. The earphones are fantastic. It’s like you’re way inside Tiny Tim.”

“That’s the place to be.” Rabbit says, coming into the living room. “Want a sip?”

The boy takes a sip from the can. putting a keyhole width of foam on the fuzz of his upper lip. and makes a bitter face.

Harry explains, “When people get divorced the father doesn’t stop liking the kids, he just can’t live with them anymore. The reason Fosnacht keeps getting Billy all this expensive stuff is probably he feels guilty for leaving him.”

“Why did they get separated. Dad, do you know?”

“Beats me. The bigger riddle is. why did they ever get married?” Rabbit knew Peggy Fosnacht when she was Peggy Gring, a big-assed wall-eyed girl in the middle row always waving her hand in the air because she thought she had the answer. Fosnacht he knew less well: a weedy little guy always shrugging his shoulders: used to play the saxophone in prom bands, now a partner in a music store on the upper end of Weiser Street, used to be called Chords ‘n’ Records, now Fidelity Audio. At the discount Fosnacht got, Billy’s hi-fi set must have cost next to nothing. Like these prizes they keep socking into these young shriekers. The one that frenchkissed the m.c. is off now, and a colored couple is guessing. Pale, but definitely colored. That’s OK; let ‘em guess, wan. and shriek with the rest of us.

Better that than sniping from rooftops. Still, he wonders how that black bride would be. Big lips, suck you right off, the men are slow as Jesus, long as whips, takes everything to get them up. in there forever, that’s why white women need them, white men too quick about it, have to get on with the job. making America great. Rabbit loves, on Laugh-In. when Teresa does the go-go bit, the way they paint the words in white on her skin. When thev watch as a family Janice and Nelson are always asking him what the words are; since he took up the printer’s trade he can read like a flash, upside down, mirrorwise too: he always had good quick eyes. He asks Nelson. “Why don’t you stay at the playground anymore? When I was your age I’d be playing Horse and Twenty-One all day long.”

“Yeah, but you were good. You were tall.” Nelson used to be crazy for sports. Little League, intramural, but lately he isn’t. Rabbit blames it on a scrapbook his own mother kept, of his basketball days in the late forties, when he set some county records: last winter every time they would go visit Mt. Judge Nelson would ask to get it out. and lie on the floor with it, those old dry-yellow games, the glue dried to dust, MT. JUDGE TOPPLES ORIOLE. ANGSTROM HITS FOR 37. just happening for the kid. that happened twenty years ago, light from a star.


“I got tall,” Rabbit tells him. “At your age I wasn’t much taller than you are.” A lie, but not really. A few inches. In a world where inches matter. Putts. Orbits. Squaring up a form. He feels bad about Nelson’s height. His own never did him much good; if he could take five inches off himself and give them to Nelson he might. If it didn’t hurt.

“Anyway, Dad. sports are square now. Nobody does it.”

“Well, what isn’t square now? Besides pill-popping and draft-dodging. And letting your hair grow down into your eyes. Where the hell is your mother? I’m going to call her. Turn the frigging TV down for once in your life.”

David Frost has replaced The Match Game. so Nelson turns it off entirely. Harry regrets the scared look that glimmered across the kid’s face: like the look on his father’s face when he sneezed on the street. Christ, they’re even scared to let him sneeze. His son and father seem alike fragile and sad to him. That’s the trouble with caring about anybody: you begin to feel bad about them; you want to put them on a shelf.

The telephone is on the lower of a set of see-through shelves that in theory divides the living room from a kind of alcove they call a breakfast nook. A few cookbooks sit on them, but Janice has never to his knowledge looked into them, just dishes up the same fried chicken and tasteless steak and peas and french fries she’s always dished up. Harry dials the familiar number and a familiar voice answers. “Springer Motors. Mr. Stavros speaking.”

“Charlie, hi. Hey, is Janice around?”

“Sure is, Harry. How’s tricks?” Stavros is a salesman and always has to say something.

“Tricky.” he answers.

“Hold on. friend. The good woman’s right here.” Off-phone, his voice calls, “Pick it up. It’s your old man.”

Another receiver is lifted. Through the knothole of momentary silence Rabbit sees the office: the gleaming display cars on the showroom floor, old man Springer’s frosted-glass door shut, the green-topped counter with the three steel desks behind: Stavros at one. Janice at another, and Mildred Kroust the bookkeeper Springer has had for thirty years at the one in between, except she’s usually out sick with some sort of female problem she’s developed late in life so her desk top is empty and bare but for wire baskets and a spindle and a blotter. Rabbit can also see last year’s puppy-dog calendar on the wall and the cardboard cutout of the Toyota station wagon on the old coffeecolored safe, behind the Christmas tree. The last time he was at Springer’s lot was for their Christmas party. “Harry, sweet.”Janice says, and now that he has been made suspicious he does hear something new in her voice, a breathy lilt of faint hurry, of a song he has interrupted her singing. “You’re going to scold me. aren’t you?”

“No. the kid and I were just wondering if—and if so when the hell—we’re going to get a home-cooked meal around here.”

“Oh. I know,” she sings. “I hate it too: it’s just that with Mildred out so much we’ve had to go into her books, and her system is really zilch.”Zilch: he hears another voice in hers. “Honestly,” she sings on. “if it turns out she’s been swindling Daddy of millions, none of us will be surprised.”

“Yeah. Look. Janice. It sounds like you’re having a lot of fun over there—”

“Fun? I’m wording, sweetie.”

“Sure. Now what the hell is really going on?”

“What do you mean, going on? Nothing is going on except your wife is trying to bring home a little extra bread.” Bread? “’Going on’—really. You may think your seven or whatever dollars an hour you get for sitting in the dark diddling that machine is wonderful money. Harry, but the fact is a hundred dollars doesn’t buy anything anymore, it just goes. ”

“Jesus, why am I getting this lecture on inflation? All I want to know is why my wife is never home to cook the goddamn supper for me and the kid.”

“Harry, has somebody been bugging you about me?”

“Bugging? How would they do that0 Janice. Just tell me. shall I put two TV dinners in the oven or what?”

A pause, during which he has a vision: sees her wings hover, her song suspended: imagines himself soaring, rootless, free. An old premonition, dim. Janice says, with measured words, so he feels as when a child watching his mother leveling tablespoons of sugar into a bowl of batter. “Could you. sweet0 Just for tonight? We’re in the middle of a little crisis here, frankly. It’s too complicated to explain, but we have to get some figures firm or we can’t do the paychecks tomorrow.”

“Who’s this we? Your father there?”

“Oh. sure.”

“Could I talk to him a second?”

“Why? He’s out on the lot.”

“I want to know if he got those tickets for the Blasts game. The kid’s dying to go.”

“Well, actually. I don’t see him. I guess he’s gone home for supper.”

“So it’s just you and Charlie there.”

“Other people are in and out. We’re desperately trying to untangle this mess Mildred made. This is the last night. Harry. I promise. I’ll be home between eight and nine, and then tomorrow night let’s all go to a movie together. That space thing is still in West Brewer. I noticed this morning while driving in.”

Rabbit is suddenly tired, of this conversation, of everything. Confusing energy surrounds him. A man’s appetites diminish, but the world’s never. “OK. Be home when you can. But we got to talk.”

“I’d love to talk. Harry.” From her tone she assumes “talk” means fuck, when he did mean talk. She hangs up: a satisfied impatient sound.

He opens another beer. The pull-tab breaks, so he has to find the rusty old church key underneath everything in the knife drawer. He heats up two Salisbury steak dinners; while waiting for the oven to preheat to 400 degrees, he reads the ingredients listed on the package: water, beef, peas, dehydrated potato flakes, bread crumbs, mushrooms, flour, butter, margarine, salt, malto-dextrin. tomato paste, cornstarch. Worcestershire sauce, hydrolyzed vegetable protein, monosodium glutamate, nonfat dry milk, dehydrated onions, flavoring, sugar, caramel color, spice, cysteine and thiamine hydrochloride. gum arabic. There is no clue from the picture on the tinfoil where all this stuff fits in. He always thought gum arabic was something you erased with. Thirty-six years old and he knows less than when he started. With the difference that now he knows how little he’ll always know. He’ll never know how to talk Chinese or how screwing an African princess feels. The six o’clock news is all about space, all about emptiness: some bald man plays with little toys to show the docking and undocking maneuvers, and then a panel talks about the significance of this for the next five hundred years. They keep mentioning Columbus, but as far as Rabbit can see it’s the exact opposite: Columbus flew blind and hit something, these guys see exactly where they’re aiming and it’s a big round nothing. The Salisbury steak tastes of preservative, and Nelson eats only a few bites Rabbit tries to joke him into it: “Can’t eat a TV dinner without TV.”They channel-hop, trying to find something to hold them, but there is nothing; it all slides past until, after nine, on Carol Burnett. she and Gomer Pyle do an actually pretty funny skit about the Lone Ranger. It takes Rabbit back to when he used to sit in the radio-listening armchair back on Jackson Road, its arms darkened with grease spots from the peanut butter cracker-sandwiches he used to stack there to listen with. Mom used to have a fit. Every Monday. Wednesday, and Friday night it came on at seven thirty, and if it was summer you’d come in from kick-the-can or three-stops-or-a-catch and the neighborhood would grow quiet all across the backyards and then at eight the doors would slam and the games begin again, those generous summer days, just enough dark to fit sleep into, a war being fought across oceans just so he could spin out his days in such happiness, in such quiet growing. Eating Wheaties.

In this skit the Lone Ranger has a wife. She stamps around a cabin saying how she hates housework, hates her lonely life. “You’re never home.” she says, “you keep disappearing in a cloud of dust and a hearty ‘Heigh-ho, Silver.’ ” The unseen audience laughs, Rabbit laughs. Nelson doesn’t see what’s so funny. Rabbit tells him, “That’s how they always used to introduce the program.”

The kid says crossly. “I know. Dad,” and Rabbit loses the thread of the skit a little; there has been a joke he didn’t hear whose laughter is dying.

Now the Lone Ranger’s wife is complaining that Daniel Boone brings his wife beautiful furs, but “What do I ever get from you? A silver bullet.” She opens a door and a bushel of silver bullets comes crashing out and floods the floor. For the rest of the skit Carol Burnett and Corner Pyle and the man who plays Tonto (not Sammy Davis, Jr., but another TV Negro) keep slipping and crunching on these bullets, by accident. Rabbit thinks of the millions who are watching, the millions the sponsors are paving, and still nobody took time to realize that this would happen. a mess of silver bullets on the floor. Tonto tells the Lone Ranger, “Better next time, put-um bullet in gun first.”

The wife turns to complaining about Tonto. ‘’Him. Why must we always keep having him to dinner? He never has us back.”

Tonto tells her that if she comes to his tepee, she will be kidnapped by seven or eight braves. Instead of being frightened, she is interested. She rolls those big Burnett eyes and says. “Let’s go, kemo sabe. ”

Nelson asks. “Dad, what’s kemo sabe?”

Rabbit is surprised to have to say. “I don’t know. Something like ‘good friend’ or ‘boss,’ I suppose.” Indeed, come to think of it he understands nothing about Tonto. The Lone Ranger is a white man, so law and order on the range will work to his benefit, but what about Tonto? A Judas to his race, the more disinterested and lonely and heroic figure of virtue. When did he get his payoff? Why was he faithful to the masked stranger? In the boyhood days one never asked. Tonto was simply on “the side of right.” It seemed a correct dream then, red and white together, red loving white as naturally as stripes in the flag. Where has “the side of right” gone? He has missed several jokes while trying to answer Nelson. The skit is approaching its climax. The wife is telling the Lone Ranger. “You must choose between him or me.” Arms folded, she stands fierce.

The Lone Ranger’s pause for decision is not long. “Saddle up. Tonto,” he says. He puts on the phonograph a record of the William Tell Overture, and both men leave. The wife tiptoes over, a bullet crunching underfoot, and changes the record to “Indian Love Call.” Tonto enters from the other side of the screen. He and she kiss and hug. “I’ve always been interested,” Carol Burnett confides out to the audience, her face getting huge, “in Indian affairs.”

There is a laugh from the invisible audience, and even Rabbit sitting there in his easy chair laughs, but underneath the laugh this final gag falls flat, maybe because everybody still thinks of Tonto as incorruptible. as above it all, like Jesus and Armstrong. “Bedtime, huh?” Rabbit says. He turns off the show as it unravels into a string of credits. The sudden little star flares, then fades.

Nelson says, “The kids at school say Mr. Fosnacht was having an affair, that’s why they got divorced.”

“Or maybe he just got tired of not knowing which of his wife’s eyes was looking at him.”

“Dad. what is an affair exactly?”

“Oh, it’s two people seeing each other when they’re married to somebody else.”

“Did that ever happen to you and Mom?”

“I wouldn’t say so. I took a vacation once, that didn’t last very long. When you were about three. You wouldn’t remember.”

“I do, though. I remember Mom crying a lot, and everybody chasing you at the baby’s funeral, and I remember standing in the place on Wilbur Street, with just you in the room beside me, and looking down at the town through the window screen, and knowing Mom was in the hospital.”

“Yeah. Those were poor days. This Saturday, if Grandpa Springer has got the tickets he said he would, we’ll go to the Blasts game.”

“I know.” the boy says, unenthusiastic, and drifts toward the stairs. It unsettles Harry, how in the corner of his eye, once or twice a day, he seems to see another woman in the house, a woman who is not Janice; when it is only his long-haired son.

One more beer. He scrapes Nelson’s uneaten dinner into the Disposal, which sometimes sweetly stinks because the Penn Villas sewers flow sluggishly, carelessly engineered. He moves through the downstairs collecting glasses for the dishwasher; one of Janice’s stunts is to wander around leaving dreggy cups with saucers used as ashtrays and wineglasses coated with vermouth on whatever ledges occur to her—the TV top, a windowsill. How can she be helping untangle Mildred’s mess? Maybe out of the house she’s a whirlwind of efficiency. And a heigh-ho Silver. Indian affairs. Poor Pop and his rumor. Poor Mom lying there prey to poison tongues and nightmares. The two of them, their minds gone dry as haystacks rats slither through. His mind shies away. He looks out the window and sees in dusk the black lines of a TV aerial, an aluminum clothes tree, a basketball hoop on a far garage. How can he get the kid interested in sports? If he’s too short for basketball, then baseball. Anything, just to put something there, some bliss, to live on later for a while. If he goes empty now he won’t last at all. because we get emptier. Rabbit turns from the window and everywhere in his own house sees a slippery disposable gloss. It glints back at him from the synthetic fabric of the livingroom chairs and sofa, the synthetic artiness of a lamp Janice bought with a piece of driftwood weighted and wired as a base, the unnatural-looking natural wood of the shelves empty but for a few ashtrays with the sheen of fairgrounds souvenirs: it glints hack at him from the steel sink, the kitchen linoleum with its whorls as of madness, oil in water, things don’t mix. The window above the sink is black and opaque as the orange that paints the asylum windows. He sees mirrored in it his own wet hands. Underwater. He crumples the aluminum beer can he has absentmindedly drained. Its contents feel metallic inside him: corrosive, fattening. Things don’t mix. His inability to fasten on to any thought and make something of it must be fatigue. Rabbit lifts himself up the stairs, pushes himself through the underwater motions of undressing and dental care, sinks into bed without bothering to turn out the lights downstairs and in the bathroom. He hears from a mournful smothered radio noise that Nelson is still awake. He thinks he should get up and say good-night, give the kid a blessing, but a weight crushes him while light persists into his bedroom, along with the boy’s soft knocking noises, opening and shutting doors. looking tor something to do. Since infancy Rabbit sleeps best when others are up. upright like nails holding down the world, like lampposts, street signs, dandelion stems, cobwebs . . .

Something big slithers into the bed. Janice. The fluorescent dial on the bureau is saying five of eleven, its two hands merged into one finger. She is warm in her nightie. Skin is warmer than cotton. He was dreaming about a parabolic curve, trying to steer on it. though the thing he was trying to steer was fighting him. like a broken sled.

“Get it untangled?"” he asks her.

“Just about. I’m so sorry. Harry. Daddy came back and he just wouldn’t let us go.”

“Catch a nigger by the toe.” he mumbles.

“What sort of evening did you and Nelson have?”

“A kind of nothing sort of evening.”

“Anybody call?”

“Nobody.”

He senses she is, late as it is, alive, jazzed up. and wants to talk, apologetic, wanting to make it up. Her being in the bed changes its quality, from a resisting raft he is seeking to hold to a curving course to a nest, a laden hollow, itself curved. Her hand seeks him out and he brushes her away with an athlete’s old instinct to protect that spot. She turns then her back on him. He accepts this rejection. He nestles against her. Her waist where no bones are nips like a bird dipping. He had been afraid marrying her she would get fat like her mother but as she ages more and more her skinny little stringy go-getter of a father comes out in her. His hand leaves the dip to stray around in front to her belly, faintly lovingly loose from having had two babies. Puppy’s neck. Should he have let her have another to replace the one that died? Maybe that was the mistake. It had all seemed like a pit to him then, her womb and the grave, sex and death, he had pulled back, refused.

II.
The game drags on. with a tedious flurry of strategy, of pinch hitters and intentional walks.

prolonging the end. Hazleton wins. 7-3. Old Man Springer sighs. getting up us if from a nap in an unnatural position. He wipes a fleck of beer from his moustache. “’Fraid our boys didn’t come through for you. Nellie.”he says.

“That’s OK. Grampa. It was neat.”

To Harry he says. “That young Trexler is a comer though”

Groggy and cross from two beers in the sun. Rabbit doesn’t invite Springer into his house after the ball game, just thanks him a lot for everything. The house is silent, like outer space. On the kitchen table is a sealed envelope, addressed “Harry.” The letter inside, in Janice’s half-formed hand, with its unsteady slant and miserly cramping, says,

Harry dear-

I must go off a few days to think. Please don’t try to find or follow us please It is very important that we all respect each other as people and trust each other now.

I was shocked by your idea that I keep a lover since I don’t think this would he honest and it made me wonder if I mean anything to you at all Jell Nelson I’ve gone to the Poconos with Grandmom. Don’t forget to give him lunch money for the playground.

• Love.

Jan

“Jan”—her name from the years she used to work at Kroll’s selling salted nuts in the smock with Jan stitched above the pocket in script. In those days some afternoons they would go to her friend’s apartment up on Eighth Street. The horizontal rose rays as the sun set behind the great gray gasholder. The wonder of it as she let him slip off all her clothes. Underwear more substantial then: stocking snaps to undo, the marks of elastic printed on her skin. Jan. That name suspended in her these fifteen years: the notes she left for him around the house were signed “J.”

“Where’s Mom?” Nelson asks.

“She’s gone to the Poconos.” Rabbit says, pulling the note back toward his chest, in case the boy tries to read it. “She’s gone with Mom-mom. her legs were getting worse in this heat. I know it seems crazy, but that’s how things are sometimes. You and I can eat over at Burger Bliss tonight.”

The boy’s face—freckled, framed by hair that covers his ears, his plump lips buttoned shut and his eves sunk in fear of making a mistake—goes rapt, seems to listen, as when he was three and flight and death were rustling above him. Perhaps his experience then shapes what he says now. Firmly he tells his father. “She’ll be back.”

Sunday dawns muggy. The seven o’clock news says there was scattered shooting again last night in York and the western part of the state. Edgartown police chief Dominick J. Arena is expected today formally to charge Senator Kennedy with leaving the scene of an accident. Apollo Eleven is in lunar orbit and the Eagle is being readied for its historic descent. Rabbit slept badly and turns the box off and walks around the lawn barefoot to shock the headache out of his skull. The houses of Penn Villas are hushed, with the odd Catholic car roaring off to Mass. Nelson comes down around nine, and after making him breakfast. Harry goes back to bed with a cup of coffee and the Sunday Brewer Triumph. Snoopy on the front page of the funny papers is lying dreaming on his doghouse. and soon Rabbit falls asleep. The kid looked scared. The boy’s face shouts, and a soundless balloon comes out. When he awakes, the electric clock says five of eleven. The second hand sweeps around and around: a wonder the gears don’t wear themselves to dust. Rabbit dresses—fresh white shirt out of respect for Sunday—and goes downstairs the second time, his feet still bare, the carpeting fuzzy to his soles, a bachelor feeling. The house feels enormous, all his. He picks up the phone book and looks up STAVROS CHAS 1204 Eisenhower Av. He doesn’t dial, merely gazes at the name and the number as if to see his wife, smaller than a pencil dot. crawling between the letters. He dials a number he knows by heart.


His father answers. “Yes?” A wary voice, ready to hang up on a madman or a salesman.

“Pop. hi; hey, I hope you didn’t wait up or anything the other night; we weren’t able to make it and 1 couldn’t even get to a phone.”

A little pause, not much, just enough to let him know they were indeed disappointed. “No. we figured something came up and went to bed about the usual time. Your mother isn’t one to complain, as you know.”

“Right. Well. took. About today.”

His voice goes hoarse to whisper. “Harry, vou must come over today. You’ll break her heart if you don’t.”

“1 will, 1 will, but—”

The old man has cupped his mouth against the receiver, urging hoarsely, “This may be her last, you know. Birthday.”

“We’re coming. Pop. 1 mean, some of us are. Janice has had to go off.”

“Go off how?”

“It’s kind of complicated, something about her mother’s legs and the Poconos; she decided last night she had to, I don’t know. It’s nothing to worry about. Everybody’s all right, she’s just not here. The kid’s here though.” To illustrate, he calls, “Nelson!”

There is no answer.

“He must be out on his bike. Pop. He’s been right around all morning. When would you like us?”

“Whenever it suits you, Harry. Late afternoon or so. Come as early as you can. We’re having roast beef. Your mother wanted to bake a cake but the doctor thought it might be too much for her. I bought a nice one over at the bakery. Butterscotch icing, didn’t that used to be your favorite?”


“It’s her birthday, not mine. What should I get her for a present?”

“Just your simple presence, Harry, is all the present she desires.”

“Yeah, OK. I’ll think of something. Explain to her Janice won’t be coming.”

“As my father, God rest, used to say, It is to be regretted, but it can’t be helped.”

Once Pop finds that ceremonious vein, he tends to ride it. Rabbit hangs up. The kid’s bike—a rusty Schwinn, been meaning to get him a new one, both fenders rub—is not in the garage. Nor is the Falcon. Only the oil cans, the gas can, the lawnmower, the jumbled garden hose (Janice must have used it last), a lawn rake with missing teeth, and the Falcon’s snow tires are there. For an hour or so Rabbit swims around the house in a daze, not knowing who to call, not having a car. not wanting to go inside with the television set. He pulls weeds in the border beds where that first excited summer of their own house Janice planted bulbs and set in plants and shrubs. Since then they have done nothing, just watched the azaleas die and accepted the daffodils and iris as they came in and let the phlox fight it out as these subsequent summers wore on, nature lost in nature. He weeds until he begins to see himself as a weed and his hand with its ugly big moons on the fingernails as God’s hand choosing and killing; then he goes inside the house and looks into the refrigerator and eats a carrot raw. He looks into the phone directory and looks up Fosnacht; there are a lot of them and it takes him a while to figure out M is the one, M for Margaret and just the initial to put off obscene calls, though if he were on that kick he’d soon figure out that initials were unattached women. “Peggy, hi; this is Harry Angstrom.” He says his name with faint proud emphasis; they were in school together, and she remembers him when he was somebody. “I was just wondering, is Nelson over there playing with Billy? He went off on his bike a while ago and I’m wondering where to.”

Peggy says, “He’s not here, Harry. Sorry.” Her voice is frosted with all she knows, Janice burbling into her ear yesterday. Then more warmly she asks, “How’s everything going?” He reads the equation— Ollie left me; Janice left you: hello.

He says hastily, “Great. Hey, if Nelson comes by. tell him I want hint. We got to go to his grandmother’s.”

Her voice cools in saying good-bye, joins the vast glaring ice-face of all those who know. Nelson seems the one person left in the county who doesn’t know: this makes him even more precious. Yet. when the boy returns. red-faced and damp-haired from hard pedaling, he tells his father, “I was at the Fosnachts.”

Rabbit blinks and says, “OK. After this, let’s keep in better touch. I’m your mother and your father for the time being.”They eat lunch, Lebanon baloney on stale rye. They walk up Emberly to Weiser and catch a 12 bus east into Brewer. It being Sunday, they have to wait twenty minutes under the cloudless colorless sky. At the hospital stop a crowd of visitors gets on. having done their duty, dazed, earning away dead flowers and read books. Boats, white arrowheads tipping wrinkled wakes, are buzzing in the black river below the bridge. A colored kid leaves his foot in the aisle when Rabbit tries to get oft’: he steps over it. “Big feet.”the boy remarks to his companion.


“Fat lips.”Nelson, following, says to the colored boy.

They try to find a store open His mother was always difficult to buy presents for. Other children had given their mothers cheerful junk: dime-store jewelry, bottles of toilet water, boxes of candy, scarves. For Mom that had been too much, or not enough Mim always gave her something she had made: a woven potholder, a hand-illustrated calendar. Rabbit was poor at making things so he gave her himself, his trophies, his headlines. Mom had seemed satisfied: lives and not things concerned her. But nowwhat? What can a dying person want? Grotesque prosthetic devices—arms. legs, battery-operated hearts—run through Rabbit’s head as he and Nelson walk the dazzling. Sunday-stilled downtown of Brewer Up near Ninth and Weiser they find a drugstore open Thermos hollies, sunglasses, shaving lotion. Kodak film, plastic baby pants: nothing for his mother He wants something big. something bright, something to get through to her. Realgirl Liquid Make-up. Super Plenamins. Non-Smear polish remover. Nudit for the Legs. A rack of shampoo-in hair color, a different smiling cunt on every envelope: Snow Queen Blond. Danish Wheat. Killarney Russet. Parisian Spice. Spanish Black Wine. Nelson plucks him by the sleeve of his white shirt and leads to where a Sunbeam Clipmaster and a Roto-Shine Magnetic Electric Shoe Polisher nestle side by side, glossily packaged “She doesn’t wear shoes anymore, just slippers, he says, “and she never cut her hair that I can remember. It used to hang down to her waist.”But his attention is drawn on to a humidifier for $12.95. From the picture on the box. it looks like a fat thing saucer. No matter how immobile she got. it would be there. Around Brewer, though, the summers are as humid as they can be anyway, but maybe in the winter, the radiators dry out the house, the wallpaper peels, the skin cracks: it might help It would be there night and day. when he wasn’t. He moves on to a Kantleek Water Bottle and a two-anda-half-inch reading glass and dismisses both as morbid. His whole insides are beginning to feel sickly. The pain of the world is a crater all these syrups and pills a thousandfold would fail to fill. He comes to the Quikease Electric Massager with Scalp Comb. It has the silhouettes of naked women on the box, gracefully touching their shoulders, Lesbians, caressing the backs of their necks, where else the box leaves to the imagination, with what looks like a hairbrush on a live wire. $11.95. Bedsores. It might help. It might make her laugh, tickle, buzz: it is life. Life is a massage. And it costs a dollar less than the humidifier. Time is ticking. Nelson tugs at his sleeve and wants a maple walnut ice cream soda While the kid is eating it. Rabbit buys a birthday card to go with the massager It shows a rooster crowing, a crimson sun rising, and green letters shouting on the outside It’s Great to Get Up in the A.M. . . . and on the inside . . . to Wish You a Happy Birthday, MA! Ma. Am. God, what a lot of ingenious crap there is in the world. He buys it anyway, because the rooster is bright orange and jubilant enough to get through to her. Her eyes aren’t dim necessarily but he better play it safe.


The world outside is bright and barren. The two of them feel alone on the empty street. Rabbit gripping his bulky package. Where is everybody? Is there life on earth’.’ Three blocks down the deserted street of soft asphalt the clock that is the face of a giant flower, the center of the Sunflower Beer sign, says they are approaching four. They wait at the same corner, opposite the Phoenix Bar. where Harry’s father customarily waits. and lake the I6A bus to Mt. Judge. They are the only passengers: the driver tells them mysteriously “They’re about down.”Up they go through the City Park, past the World War II tank and the bandshell and the tennis court, around the shoulder of the mountain. On one side of them, gas stations and a green cliff: on the other, a precipice and, distantly, a viaduct. As the kid gazes out the window, toward the next mountain over. Rabbit asks him. “Where did you go this morning? Tell me the truth.”

The boy answers, finally. “Eisenhower Avenue”

“To see if Mommy’s car was there?”

“I guess.”

“Was it?”


“Yep ”

“D’you go in?”

“Nope. Just looked up at the windows awhile.”

“Did you know the number to look at?”

“One two oh four.”

“That sounds right. ”

They get off at Central, beside the granite Baptist church, and walk up Jackson toward his parents’ house. The streets haven’t changed in his lifetime. They were built too close together for vacant lots and too solidly to tear down, of a reddish brick with purplish bruises in it, and a texture that as a child Rabbit thought of as chapped, like his lips in winter. Maples and horse chestnuts darken the stumpy front lawns, hedged by little wired barricades of barberry and box. The houses are semidetached and heavy; their roofs are slate and their porches have brick walls, and above each door of oak and beveled glass winks a fanlight of somber churchly colors. As a child Rabbit imagined that fanlight to be a child of the windows above the Lutheran altar and therefore of God, a mauve and golden seeing sentinel posted above where he and Pop and Mom and Mim came and went a dozen times a day. Now, entering with his son. still too much a son himself to knock, he feels his parents’ place as stifling. Though the clock on the living-room highboy says only 4:20, darkness has come: dark carpets, thick drawn drapes, dead wallpaper, potted plants crowding the glass on the side that has the windows. Mom used to complain about how they had the inside half of a corner house but when the Bolgers, their old neighbors, died, and their half went onto the market, they made no move to inquire after the price, and a young couple from Scranton bought it, the young wife pregnant and barefoot and the young husband something in one of the new electronics plants out along Route 422; and the Angstroms still live in the dark half. They prefer it. Sunlight fades. Space kills. They sent him, Harry, out in the world to shine, but hugged their own shadows here. Their neighbor house on the other side, across two cement sidewalks with a strip of grass between them, where lived the old Methodist Mom used to fight with about who would mow the grass strip, has had a FOR SALE sign up for a year. People now want more air and land than these huddled hillside neighborhoods can give them. The house smells to Rabbit of preservative; of odors filming other odors, of layers of time, of wax and Aerosol and death; of safety.


Ashape, a shade, comes forward from the kitchen. He expects it to be his father, but it is his mother, shuffling, in a bathrobe, yet erect and moving. She leans forward unsmiling to accept his kiss. Her wrinkled cheek is warm; her hand steadying itself on his wrist is knobbed and cold.

“Happy birthday. Mom.” He hugs the massager against his chest; it is too early to offer it. She stares at the package as if he had put a shield between them.

“I’m sixty-five,” she says, groping for phrases so her sentences end in the middle. “When I was twenty. I told my boyfriend I wanted to be shot. When I was thirty.” It is not so much the strange tremulous attempt of her lips to close upon a thought as the accompanying stare, an unblinking ungathering gaze into space, that lifts her eves out of any flow and frightens Rabbit with a sense of ultimate blindness, of a blackboard from which they will all be wiped clean.

“You told Pop this?”

“Not your dad. Another. I didn’t meet your dad till later. This other one, I’m glad. He’s not here. To see me now.”

“You look pretty good to me,” Rabbit tells her. “I didn’t think you’d be up.”

“Nelson. How do I look. To you?” Thus she acknowledges the boy. She has always been testing him, putting him on the defensive. She has never forgiven him for not being another Harry, for having so much Janice in him. Those little Springer hands, she used to say. Now her own hands, held forgotten in front of her bathrobe belt, constantly work in a palsied waggle.

“Nice,” Nelson says. He is wary. He has learned that brevity and promptness of response are his best defense.

To take the attention off the kid. Rabbit asks her. “Should you be up?”

She laughs, an astonishing silent thing; her head tips back, her big nose glints from the facets of its tip and underside, her hand stops waggling. “I know, the way Earl talks. You’d think from the way he wants me in bed. I’m laid out already. The doctor. Wants me up. I had to bake a cake. Earl wanted. One of those tasteless paps from the bakery. Where’s Janice?”

“Yeah, about that. She’s awfully sorry, she couldn’t come. She had to go off with her mother to the Poconos, it took us all by surprise.”

“Things can be. Surprising.”

From upstairs Earl Angstrom’s thin voice calls anxiously, with a wheedler’s borrowed triumph, “They’re down! Eagle has landed! We’re on the moon, boys and girls! Uncle Sam is on the moon!”

“That’s just. The place for him,” Mom says, and with a rough gesture sweeps her distorted hand back toward her ear, to smooth down a piece of hair that has wandered loose from the bun she still twists up. Funny, the hair as it grays grows more stubborn. They say even inside the grave, it grows. Open coffins of women and find the whole thing stuffed like inside of a mattress. Pubic hair too? Funny it never needs to be cut. When he touches his mother’s arm to help her up the stairs to look at the moon, the flesh above her elbow is disconcerting—loose upon the bone, as on a well-cooked chicken.

The set is in Mom’s bedroom at the front of the house. It has the smell their cellar used to have when they had those two cats. He tries to remember their names. Pansy. And Willy. Willy, the tom, got in so many fights his belly began to slosh and he had to be taken to the Animal Rescue. There is no picture of the moon on the tube, just crackling voices while cardboard cutouts simulate what is happening, and electronic letters spell out who in the crackle of men is speaking.

“. . . literally thousands of little one and two foot craters around the area,” a man is saying in the voice that used to try to sell them Shredded Ralston between episodes of Tom Mix. “We see some angular blocks out several hundred feet in front of us that are probably two feet in size and have angular edges. There is a hill in view just about on the ground track ahead of us. Difficult to estimate, but might be a half a mile or a mile.”

A voice identified as Houston says. “Roger. Tranquillity. We copy. Over.” The voice has that Texas authority. As if words were invented by them, they speak so lovingly. When Rabbit was stationed at Fort Hood in ‘53. Texas looked like the moon to him, brown land running from his knees level as a knife, purple rumpled horizon, sky bigger and barer than he could believe, first time away from his damp green hills, last time too. Everybody’s voice was so nice and gritty and loving, even the girls in the whorehouse.

A voice called Columbia says. “Sounds like a lot better than it did yesterday. At that very low sun angle, it looked rough as a cob then.” As a cob? The electronic letters specify, MIKE COLLINS SPEAKING FROM COMMAND MODULE ORBITING MOON.

Tranquillity says, “It really was rough. Mike, over the targeted landing area. It was extremely rough, cratered and large numbers of rocks that were probably some many larger then five or ten feet in size.” Mom’s room has lace curtains aged yellowish and pinned back with tin daisies that to an infant’s eyes seemed magical, rose-and-thorns wallpaper curling loose from the wall above where the radiator safety valve steams, a kind of plush armchair that soaks up dust. When he was a child this chair was downstairs and he would sock it to release torrents of swirling motes into the shaft of afternoon sun; these whirling motes seemed to him worlds, each an earth, with him on one of them, unthinkably small, unbearably. Some light used to get into the house in late afternoon. between the maples. Now the maples have thronged that light solid, made the room cellar-dim. The bedside table supports an erect little company of pill bottles and a Bible. The wails hold tinted photographs of himself and Mim in high school, taken he remembers by a pushy pudgy little blue-jawed crook who called himself a Studio and weaseled his way into the building every spring and made them line up in the auditorium and wet-comb their hair so their parents couldn’t resist two weeks later letting them take in to the homeroom the money for an 8 by 10 tinted print and a sheet of wallet-sized grislies of themselves; now this crook by the somersault of time has become a donor of selves otherwise forever lost: Rabbit’s skinny head pink in its translucent blond whiffle, his ears out from his head an inch, his eyes unready blue as marbles, even his lower lids youthfully fleshy; and Mim’s face plump between the shoulder-length shampoo-shining sheaves rolled under in Rita Hayworth style, the scarlet tint of her lipstick pinned like a badge on the starched white of her face. Both children smile out into space, through the crook’s smudged lens, from that sweat-scented giggling gym toward their mother bedridden someday.

Columbia jokes. “When in doubt, land long.”

Tranquillity says. “Well, we did.”

And Houston intervenes. “Tranquillity Houston. We have a P twenty-two update for you if you’re ready to copy. Over.”

Columbia jokes again: “At your service, sir.”

Houston, unamused, a city of computers working without sleep, answers. “Right. Mike. P one one zero four thirty two eighteen; P two one zero four thirtyseven twenty-eight and that is four miles south. This is based on a targeted landing site. Over.”

Columbia repeats the numbers.

Tranquillity says, “Our mission timer is now reading nine zero four thirty-four forty-seven and static.”

“Roger, copy. Your mission timer is now static at— say again the time.”

“Nine zero four thirty-four forty-seven.”

“Roger, copy, Tranquillity. That gravity align looked good. We see you recycling.”

“Well. no. I was trying to get time sixteen sixty-five out and somehow it proceeded on the six-twenty-two before I could do a BRP thirty-two enter. I want to log a time here and then I’d like to know whether you want me to proceed on torquing angles or to go back and re-enter again before torquing. Over.”

“Rog, Buzz. Stand by.”

Nelson and his grandfather listen raptly to these procedures; Mary Angstrom turns impatiently—or is it that her difficulty of motion makes all gestures appear impatient?— and makes her shuffling way out into the landing and down the stairs again. Rabbit, heart trembling in its hollow, follows. She needs no help going down the stairs. In the garishly bright kitchen she asks, “Where did you say. Janice was?”

“In the Poconos with her mother.”

“Why should I believe that?”

“Why shouldn’t you?”

She stoops over, waveringly. to open the oven and look in. tangled wire hair falling loose as she bends. She grunts, stands, and states, “Janice. Stays out of my way. These days.”

In his frightened, hypnotized condition. Rabbit can only, it seems, ask questions. “Why would she do that?”

His mother states and stares, only a movement of her tongue between her parted lips betraying that she is trying to speak. “I know too much,” she at last brings out, “about her.”

Rabbit says, “You know only what a bunch of pathetic old gossips tell you about her. And stop bugging Pop about it, he comes into work and bugs me.” Since she does not fight back, he is provoked to go on. “With Mim out turning ten tricks a day in Las Vegas I’d think you’d have more to worry about than poor Janice’s private life.”

“She was always.” his mother brings out, “spoiled.”

“Yes and Nelson too I suppose is spoiled. How would you describe me? Just yesterday I was sitting over at the Blasts game thinking what a lousy baseball player I was, always scared of the ball. I’m a pretty poor husband, a sloppy father, and when the Verity Press folds I’ll fold with it and have to go on welfare. Some life. Thanks, Mom.”

“Hush,” she says, expressionless, “you’ll make. The cake fall,” and like a rusty jackknife she forces herself to bend over and peer into the gas oven.

“Sorry, Mom, but Jesus I’m tired lately.”

“You’ll feel better when. You’re mv age.”

The party is a success. They sit at the kitchen table with the four places worn through the enamel in all those years. It is like it used to be, except that Mom is in a bathrobe and Mim has become Nelson. Pop carves the chicken and then cuts up Mom’s piece in small bits for her: her right hand can hold a fork but cannot use a knife. His teeth slipping down, he proposes a toast in New York State wine to “my Mary, an angel through thick and thin”: Rabbit wonders what the thin was. Maybe this is it. When she unwraps her few presents, she laughs at the massager. “Is this. To keep me hopping?” she asks, and has her husband plug it in, and rests it, vibrating, on the top of Nelson’s head. He needs this touch of cheering up. Harry feels Janice’s absence gnawing at him. When the cake is cut, the kid eats only half a piece, so Rabbit has to eat double to not hurt his mother’s feelings.

Dusk thickens: over in West Brew er the sanatorium windows are burning orange, and on this side of the mountain the shadows sneak like burglars into the narrow concrete space between this house and the unsold one. Through the papered walls, from the house of the young barefoot couple, seeps the dull bass percussion of a rock group, making the matched tins (cookies, sugar, flour, coffee) on Mom’s shelf tingle in their emptiness. In the living room the glass face of the mahogany highboy shivers. Nelson’s eyes begin to sink: his eyelids lower. His little button cupid-curved mouth smiles in apology as he slumps forward into the cold edge of the table. His elders talk about old times in the neighborhood, people of the thirties and forties, once so alive you saw them every day and never thought to take even a photograph. The old Methodist refusing to mow his half of the grass strip. Before him the Zims with that pretty daughter the mother would shriek at every breakfast and supper. The man down the street who worked nights at the pretzel plant and who shot himself one dawn with nobody to hear it but the horses of the milk wagon. They had milk wagons then. The streets were soft dust.


Nelson fights sleep. Rabbit asks him. “Want to head home0”

“Negative, Pop.” He sleepily smiles at his own wit.

Rabbit extends the joke. “The time is twenty-one hours. We better rendezvous with our spacecraft.”

But the spacecraft is empty: a long empty box in the blackness of Penn Villas, slowly spinning in the void, its border beds half-weeded. The kid is frightened to go home. So is Rabbit. They sit on Mom’s bed and watch television in the dark. They are told the men in the big metal spider sitting on the moon cannot sleep, so the moon walk has been moved up several hours. Men in studios, pale and drawn from killing time, demonstrate with life-size mockups what is supposed to happen; on some channels men in space suits are walking around. laying down tinfoil trays as if for a cookout. At last it happens. The real event. Or is it? A television camera on the leg of the module comes on: an abstraction appears on the screen. The announcer explains that the blackness in the top of the screen is the lunar night, the blackness in the lower left corner is the shadow of the spacecraft with its ladder, the whiteness is the surface of the moon. Nelson is asleep, his head on his father’s thigh; funny how kids’ skulls grow damp when they sleep. Like bulbs underground. Mom’s legs are under the blankets: she is propped up on pillows behind him. Pop is asleep in his chair, his breathing a distant sad sea, touching shore and retreating, touching shore and retreating, an old pump that keeps going; lamplight sneaks through a crack in the windowshade and touches the top of his head, his sparse hair mussed into lank feathers. On the bright box something is happening. A snaky shape sneaks down from the upper left corner; it is a man’s leg. It grows another leg, eclipses the bright patch that is the surface of the moon. A man in clumsy silhouette has interposed himself among these abstract shadows and glare. He says something about “steps” that a crackle keeps Rabbit from understanding. Electronic letters traveling sideways spell out MAN IS ON THH MOON. The voice, crackling, tells Houston that the surface is tine and powdery, he can pick it up with his toe, it adheres to his boot like powdered charcoal, that he sinks in only a fraction of an inch, that it’s easier to move around than in the simulations on the earth. From behind him. Rabbit’s mother’s hand with difficulty reaches out, touches the back of his skull, stays there, awkwardly tries to massage his scalp, to ease away thoughts of the trouble she knows he is in. “1 don’t know. Mom,” he abruptly admits. “I know it’s happened, but I don’t feel anything yet.”□

John Updike was a prolific writer of poetry, art and literary criticism, and fiction. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1982 and 1991 for two novels in his “Rabbit” series, becoming one of just three authors to win the award more than once.