Rabbit, Run - By John Updike Page 0,12

the square window. Tall coffin lined with hair clopping along to the tune of a dying horse. Amish overworked their animals, he knew. Fanatics. Hump their women standing up, out in the fields, wearing clothes, just hoist black skirts and there it was, nothing underneath. No underpants. Fanatics. Worship manure.

The rich earth seems to cast its darkness upward into the air. The farm country is somber at night. He is grateful when the lights of Lancaster merge with his dim beams. He stops at a diner whose clock says 8:04. He hadn’t intended to eat until he got out of the state. He takes a map from the rack by the door and while eating three hamburgers at the counter studies his position. He is in Lancaster, surrounded by funny names, Bird in Hand, Paradise, Intercourse, Mt. Airy, Mascot. They probably didn’t seem funny if you lived in them. Like Mt. Judge; you get used. A town has to be called something.

Bird in Hand, Paradise: his eyes keep going back to this dainty lettering on the map. He has an impulse, amid the oil-filmed shimmer of this synthetic and desultory diner, to drive there. Little plump women, toy dogs in the street, candy houses in lemon sunshine.

But no, his goal is the huge white sun of the south. And from the map he’s been traveling more west than south; if the dirtdigger back there had had a map he could have gone due south on 10. Now the only thing to do is go into the heart of Lancaster and take 222 out and take it all the way down into Maryland and then catch 1. He remembers reading in the Saturday Evening Post how 1 goes from Florida to Maine through the most beautiful scenery in the world. He asks for a glass of milk and to go with it a piece of apple pie; the crust is crisp and bubbled but the filling is watery and lavender in color. He pays by cracking a ten and goes out into the parking lot feeling pleased. The hamburgers had been fatter and warmer than the ones you get in Brewer, and the buns had seemed steamed.

It takes him a half-hour to pick his way through the city. On 222 he drives south through Refton, Hessdale, New Providence, and Quarryville, through Mechanics Grove and Unicorn and then a long stretch so dull and unmarked he doesn’t know he’s entered Maryland until he hits Oakwood. On the radio he hears “No Other Arms, No Other Lips,” “Stagger Lee,” a commercial for Raiko Clear Plastic Seat Covers, “If I Didn’t Care” by Connie Francis, a commercial for Radio-Controlled Garage Door Operators, “I Ran All the Way Home Just to Say I’m Sorry,” “That Old Feeling” by Mel Torme, a commercial for Big Screen Westinghouse TV Set with One-Finger Automatic Tuning, “needle-sharp pictures a nose away from the screen,” “The Italian Cowboy Song,” “Yep,” by Duane Eddy, a commercial for Papermate Pens, “Almost Grown,” a commercial for Tame Cream Rinse, “Let’s Stroll,” news (President Eisenhower and Prime Minister Harold Macmillan began a series of talks in Gettysburg, Tibetans battle Chinese Communists in Lhasa, the whereabouts of the Dalai Lama, spiritual ruler of this remote and backward land, are unknown, a $250,000 trust fund has been left to a Park Avenue maid, Spring scheduled to arrive tomorrow), sports news (Yanks over Braves in Miami, somebody tied with somebody in St. Petersburg Open, scores in a local basketball tournament), weather (fair and seasonably warm), “The Happy Organ,” “Turn Me Loose,” a commercial for Savings Bank Life Insurance, “Rocksville, P-A” (Rabbit loves it), “A Picture No Artist Could Paint,” a commercial for New Formula Barbasol Presto-Lather, the daily cleansing action tends to prevent skin blemishes and emulsifies something, “Pink Shoe Laces” by Dody Stevens, a letter about a little boy called Billy Tessman who was hit by a car and would appreciate cards or letters, “Petit Fleur,” “Fungo” (great), a commercial for Wool-Tex All-Wool Suits, “Fall Out” by Henry Mancini, “Everybody Likes to Cha Cha Cha,” a commercial for Lord’s Grace Table Napkins and the gorgeous Last Supper Tablecloth, “The Beat of My Heart,” a commercial for Speed-Shine Wax and Lanolin Clay, “Venus,” and then the same news again. Where is the Dalai Lama?

Shortly after Oakwood he comes to Route 1, which with its hot-dog stands and Calso signs and roadside taverns aping log cabins is unexpectedly discouraging. The further he drives the more he feels some