Rabbit Redux

by John Updike

  “Yes, well,” the driver says, and that is all he says until he says to Rabbit, having stopped on Vista Crescent, “Eighteen.”

  “Dollars? For ten miles?”

  “Twelve. And I got to go back twelve now.”

  Rabbit goes to the driver’s side to pay, while the others run into the house. The man leans out and asks, “Know what you’re doing?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “They’ll knife you in the back every time.”

  “Who?”

  The driver leans closer; by street-lamplight Rabbit sees a wide sad face, sallow, a whale’s lipless mouth clamped in a melancholy set, a horseshoe-shaped scar on the meat of his nose. His answer is distinct: “Jigaboos.”

  Embarrassed for him, Rabbit turns away and sees – Nelson is right – a crowd of children. They are standing across the Crescent, some with bicycles, watching this odd car unload. This crowd phenomenon on the bleak terrain of Penn Villas alarms him: as if growths were to fester on the surface of the moon.

  The incident emboldens Skeeter. His skin has dared the sun again. Rabbit comes home from work to find him and Nelson shooting baskets in the driveway. Nelson bounces the ball to his father and Rabbit’s one-handed set from twenty feet out swishes. Pretty. “Hey,” Skeeter crows, so all the homes in Penn Villas can hear, “where’d you get that funky old style of shooting a basketball? You were tryin’ to be comical, right?”

  “Went in,” Nelson tells him loyally.

  “Shit, boy, a one-armed dwarf could have blocked it. T’get that shot off you need a screen two men thick, right? You gotta jump and shoot, jump and shoot.” He demonstrates; his shot misses but looks right: the ball held high, a back-leaning ascent into the air, a soft release that would arch over any defender. Rabbit tries it, but finds his body heavy, the effort of lifting jarring. The ball flies badly. Says Skeeter, “You got a white man’s lead gut, but I adore those hands.” They scrimmage one on one; Skeeter is quick and slick, slithering by for the layup on the give-and-go to Nelson again and again. Rabbit cannot stop him, his breath begins to ache in his chest, but there are moments when the ball and his muscles and the air overhead and the bodies competing with his all feel taut and unified and defiant of gravity. Then the October chill bites into his sweat and he goes into the house. Jill has been sleeping upstairs. She sleeps more and more lately, a dazed evading sleep that he finds insulting. When she comes downstairs, in that boring white dress, brushing back sticky hair from her cheeks, he asks roughly, “Dja do anything about the car?”

  “Sweet, what would I do?”

  “You could call your mother.”

  “I can’t. She and Stepdaddy would make a thing. They’d come for me.”

  “Maybe that’s a good idea.”

  “Stepdaddy’s a creep.” She moves past him, not focusing, into the kitchen. She looks into the refrigerator. “You didn’t shop.”

  “That’s your job.”

  “Without a car?”

  “Christ, you can walk up to the Acme in five minutes.”

  “People would see Skeeter.”

  “They see him anyway. He’s outside horsing around with Nelson. And evidently you’ve been letting him drive all around Pennsylvania.” His anger recharges itself: lead gut. “Goddammit, how can you just run an expensive car like that into the ground and just let it sit? There’s people in the world could live for ten years on what that car cost.”

  “Don’t, Harry. I’m weak.”

  “O.K. I’m sorry.” He tugs her into his arms. She rocks sadly against him, rubbing her nose on his shirt. But her body when dazed has an absence, an unconnectedness, that feels disagreeable against his skin. He itches to sneeze.

  Jill is murmuring, “I think you miss your wife.”

  “That bitch. Never.”

  “She’s like anybody else, caught in this society. She wants to be alive while she is alive.”

  “Don’t you?”

  “Sometimes. But I know it’s not enough. It’s how they get you. Let me go now. You don’t like holding me, I can feel it. I just remembered, some frozen chicken livers behind the ice cream. But they take forever to thaw.”

  Six-o’clock news. The pale face caught behind the screen, unaware that his head, by some imperfection in reception at 26 Vista Crescent, is flattened, and his chin rubbery and long, sternly says, “Chicago. Two thousand five hundred Illinois National Guardsmen remained on active duty today in the wake of a day of riots staged by members of the extremist faction of the Students for a Democratic Society. Windows were smashed, cars overturned, policemen assaulted by the young militants whose slogan is” – sad, stern pause; the bleached face lifts toward the camera, the chin stretches, the head flattens like an anvil – “Bring the War Home.” Film cuts of white-helmeted policemen flailing at nests of arms and legs, of long-haired girls being dragged, of sudden bearded faces shaking fists that want to rocket out through the television screen; then back to clips of policemen swinging clubs, which seems balletlike and soothing to Rabbit. Skeeter, too, likes it. “Right on!” he cries. “Hit that honky snob again!” In the commercial break he turns and explains to Nelson, “It’s beautiful, right?”

  Nelson asks, “Why? Aren’t they protesting the war?”

  “Sure as a hen has balls they are. What those crackers protesting is they gotta wait twenty years to get their daddy’s share of the pie. They want it now.”

  “What would they do with it?”

  “Do, boy? They’d eat it, that’s what they’d do.”

  The commercial – an enlarged view of a young woman’s mouth – is over. “Meanwhile, within the courtroom, the trial of the Chicago Eight continued on its turbulent course. Presiding Judge Julius J. Hoffman, no relation to Defendant Abbie Hoffman, several times rebuked Defendant Bobby Seale, whose outbursts contained such epithets as” – again, the upward look, the flattened head, the disappointed emphasis – “pig, fascist, and racist.” A courtroom sketch of Seale is flashed.

  Nelson asks, “Skeeter, do you like him?”

  “I do not much cotton,” Skeeter says, “to establishment niggers.”

  Rabbit has to laugh. “That’s ridiculous. He’s as full of hate as you are.”

  Skeeter switches off the set. His tone is a preacher’s, ladylike. “I am by no means full of hate. I am full of love, which is a dynamic force. Hate is a paralyzing force. Hate freezes. Love strikes and liberates. Right? Jesus liberated the money-changers from the temple. The new Jesus will liberate the new money-changers. The old Jesus brought a sword, right? The new Jesus will also bring a sword. He will be a living flame of love. Chaos is God’s body. Order is the Devil’s chains. As to Robert Seale, any black man who has John Kennel Badbreath and Leonard Birdbrain giving him fund-raising cocktail parties is one house nigger in my book. He has gotten into the power bag, he has gotten into the publicity bag, he has debased the coinage of his soul and is thereupon as they say irrelevant. We black men came here without names, we are the future’s organic seeds, seeds have no names, right?”

  “Right,” Rabbit says, a habit he has acquired.

  Jill’s chicken livers have burned edges and icy centers.

  Eleven-o’clock news. A gauzy-bearded boy, his face pressed so hard against the camera the focus cannot be maintained, screams, “Off the pigs! All power to the people!”

  An unseen interviewer mellifluously asks him, “How would you describe the goals of your organization?”

  “Destruction of existing repressive structures. Social control of the means of production.”

  “Could you tell our viewing audience what you mean by ‘means of production’?”

  The camera is being jostled; the living room, darkened otherwise, flickers. “Factories. Wall Street. Technology. All that. A tiny clique of capitalists is forcing pollution down our throats, and the SST and the genocide in Vietnam and in the ghettos. All that.”

  “I see. Your aim, then, by smashing windows, is to curb a runaway technology and create the b
asis for a new humanism.”

  The boy looks off-screen blearily, as the camera struggles to refocus him. “You being funny? You’ll be the first up against the wall, you –” And the blip showed that the interview had been taped.

  Rabbit says, “Tell me about technology.”

  “Technology,” Skeeter explains with exquisite patience, the tip of his joint glowing red as he drags, “is horseshit. Take that down, Jilly.”

  But Jill is asleep on the sofa. Her thighs glow, her dress having ridden up to a sad shadowy triangular peep of underpants.

  Skeeter goes on, “We are all at work at the mighty labor of forgetting everything we know. We are sewing the apple back on the tree. Now the Romans had technology, right? And the barbarians saved them from it. The barbarians were their saviors. Since we cannot induce the Eskimos to invade us, we have raised a generation of barbarians ourselves, pardon me, you have raised them, Whitey has raised them, the white American middle-class and its imitators the world over have found within themselves the divine strength to generate millions of subhuman idiots that in less benighted ages only the inbred aristocracies could produce. Who were those idiot kings?”

  “Huh?” says Rabbit.

  “Merovingians, right? Slipped my mind. They were dragged about in ox carts gibbering and we are now blessed with motorized gibberers. It is truly written, we shall blow our minds, and dedicate the rest to Chairman Mao. Right?”

  Rabbit argues, “That’s not quite fair. These kids have some good points. The war aside, what about pollution?”

  “I am getting weary,” Skeeter says, “of talking with white folk. You are defending your own. These rabid children, as surely as Agnew Dei, desire to preserve the status quo against the divine plan and the divine wrath. They are Antichrist. They perceive God’s face in Vietnam and spit upon it. False prophets: by their proliferation you know the time is nigh. Public shamelessness, ingenious armor, idiocy revered, all laws mocked but the laws of bribery and protection: we are Rome. And I am the Christ of the new Dark Age. Or if not me, then someone exactly like me, whom later ages will suppose to have been me. Do you believe?”

  “I believe.” Rabbit drags on his own joint, and feels his world expand to admit new truths as a woman spreads her legs, as a flower unfolds, as the stars flee one another. “I do believe.”

  Skeeter likes Rabbit to read to him from the Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. “You’re just gorgeous, right? You’re gone to be our big nigger tonight. As a white man, Chuck, you don’t amount to much, but niggerwise you groove.” He has marked sections in the book with paper clips and a crayon.

  Rabbit reads, “The reader will have noticed that among the names of slaves that of Esther is mentioned. This was the name of a young woman who possessed that which was ever a curse to the slave girl – namely, personal beauty. She was tall, light-colored, well formed, and made a fine appearance. Esther was courted by ‘Ned Roberts,’ the son of a favorite slave of Colonel Lloyd, and who was as fine-looking a young man as Esther was a woman. Some slaveholders would have been glad to have promoted the marriage of two such persons, but for some reason Captain Anthony disapproved of their courtship. He strictly ordered her to quit the society of young Roberts, telling her that he would punish her severely if he ever found her again in his company. But it was impossible to keep this couple apart. Meet they would and meet they did. Then we skip.” The red crayon mark resumes at the bottom of the page; Rabbit hears drama entering his voice, early morning mists, a child’s fear. “It was early in the morning, when all was still, and before any of the family in the house or kitchen had risen. I was, in fact, awakened by the heart-rendering shrieks and piteous cries of poor Esther. My sleeping-place was on the dirt floor of a little rough closet which opened into the kitchen –”

  Skeeter interrupts, “You can smell that closet, right? Dirt, right, and old potatoes, and little bits of grass turning yellow before they can grow an inch, right? Smell that, he slept in there.”

  “Hush,” Jill says.

  “– and through the cracks in its unplaned boards I could distinctly see and hear what was going on, without being seen. Esther’s wrists were firmly tied, and the twisted rope was fastened to a strong iron staple in a heavy wooden beam above, near the fireplace. Here she stood on a bench, her arms tightly drawn above her head. Her back and shoulders were perfectly bare. Behind her stood old master, cowhide in hand, pursuing his barbarous work with all manner of harsh, coarse, and tantalizing epithets. He was cruelly deliberate, and protracted the torture as one who was delighted with the agony of his victim. Again and again he drew the hateful scourge through his hand, adjusting it with a view of dealing the most pain-giving blow his strength and skill could inflict. Poor Esther had never before been severely whipped. Her shoulders were plump and tender. Each blow, vigorously laid on, brought screams from her as well as blood. Have mercy! Oh, mercy!’ she cried. I won’t do so no more.’ But her piercing cries seemed only to increase his fury.” The red mark stops but Rabbit sweeps on to the end of the chapter. “The whole scene, with all its attendant circumstances, was revolting and shocking to the last degree, and when the motives for the brutal castigation are known, language has no power to convey a just sense of its dreadful criminality. After laying on I dare not say how many stripes, old master untied his suffering victim. When let down she could scarcely stand. From my heart I pitied her, and child as I was, and new to such scenes, the shock was tremendous. I was terrified, hushed, stunned, and bewildered. The scene here described was often repeated, for Edward and Esther continued to meet, notwithstanding all efforts to prevent their meeting.”

  Skeeter turns to Jill and slaps her sharply, as a child would, on the chest. “Don’t hush me, you cunt.”

  “I wanted to hear the passage.”

  “How’d it turn you on, cunt?”

  “I liked the way Harry read it. With feeling.”

  “Fuck your white feelings.”

  “Hey, easy,” Rabbit says, helplessly, seeing that violence is due.

  Skeeter is wild. Keeping his one hand on her shoulder as a brace, with the other he reaches to her throat and rips the neck of her white dress forward. The cloth is tough; Jill’s head snaps far forward before the rip is heard. She recoils back into the sofa, her eyes expressionless; her little tough-tipped tits bounce in the torn V.

  Rabbit’s instinct is not to rescue her but to shield Nelson. He drops the book on the cobbler’s bench and puts his body between the boy and the sofa. “Go upstairs.”

  Nelson, stunned, bewildered, has risen to his feet; he moans, “He’ll kill her, Dad.” His cheeks are flushed, his eyes are sunk.

  “No he won’t. He’s just high. She’s all right.”

  “Oh shit, shit,” the child repeats in desperation; his face caves into crying.

  “Hey there Babychuck,” Skeeter calls. “You want to whip me, right?” Skeeter hops up, does a brittle bewitched dance, strips off his shirt so violently one cuff button flies off and strikes the lampshade. His skinny chest, naked, is stunning in its articulation: every muscle sharp in its attachment to the bone. Rabbit has never seen such a chest except on a crucifix. “What’s next?” Skeeter shouts. “Wanna whup my bum, right? Here it is!” His hands have undone his fly button and are on his belt, but Nelson has fled the room. His sobbing comes downstairs, diminishing.

  “O.K., that’s enough,” Rabbit says.

  “Read a little bitty bit more,” Skeeter begs.

  “You get carried away.”

  “That damn child of yours, thinks he owns this cunt.”

  “Stop calling her a cunt.”

  “Man, wasn’t this Jesus gave her one.” Skeeter cackles.

  “You’re horrible,” Jill tells him, drawing the torn cloth together.

  He flips one piece aside. “Moo.”

  “Harry, help me.”

  “Read the book, Chuck, I’ll be good. Read me the next paper clip.”

  Above them, Nelson’s footsteps cross t
he floor. If he reads, the boy will be safe. “Alas, that the one?”

  “That’ll do. Little Jilly, you love me, right?”

  “Alas, this immense wealth, this gilded splendor, this profusion of luxury, this exemption from toil, this life of ease, this sea of plenty, were not the pearly gates they seemed –”

  “You’re my pearly gate, girl.”

  “The poor slave, on his hard pine plank, scantily covered with his thin blanket, slept more soundly than the feverish voluptuary who reclined upon his downy pillow. Food to the indolent is poison, not sustenance. Lurking beneath the rich and tempting viands were invisible spirits of evil, which filled the self-deluded gormandizer with aches and pains, passions uncontrollable, fierce tempers, dyspepsia, rheumatism, lumbago, and gout, and of these the Lloyds had a full share”

  Beyond the edge of the page Skeeter and Jill are wrestling; in gray flashes her underpants, her breasts are exposed. Another flash, Rabbit sees, is her smile. Her small spaced teeth bare in silent laughter; she is liking it, this attack. Seeing him spying, Jill starts, struggles angrily out from under, hugs the rags of her dress around her, and runs from the room. Her footsteps flicker up the stairs. Skeeter blinks at her flight; he resettles the great pillow of his head with a sigh. “Beautiful,” is the sigh. “One more, Chuck. Read me the one where he fights back.” His carved chest melts into the beige sofa; its airfoam is covered in a plaid of green and tan and red that have rubbed and faded toward a single shade.

  “You know, I gotta get up and go to work tomorrow.”

  “You worried about your little dolly? Don’t you worry about that. The thing about a cunt, man, it’s just like a Kleenex, you use it and throw it away.” Hearing silence, he says, “I’m just kidding, right? To get your goat, O.K.? Come on, let’s put it back together, the next paper clip. Trouble with you, man, you’re all the time married. Woman don’t like a man who’s nothin’ but married, they want some soul that keeps ’em guessing, right? Woman stops guessing, she’s dead.”