Rabbit, Run - By John Updike Page 0,126
strength; he is sure his girl has ascended to Heaven. This feeling fills Eccles’ recited words like a living body a skin. “O God, whose most dear Son did take little children into his arms and bless them; Give us Grace, we beseech thee, to entrust the soul of this child to thy never-failing care and love, and bring us all to the heavenly kingdom; through the same thy Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.”
“Amen,” Mrs. Springer whispers.
Yes. That is how it is. He feels them all, the heads as still around him as tombstones, he feels them all one, all one with the grass, with the hothouse flowers, all, the undertaker’s men, the unseen caretaker who has halted his mower, all gathered into one here to give his unbaptized baby force to leap to Heaven.
An electric switch is turned, the straps begin to lower the casket into the grave and stop. Eccles makes a cross of sand on the lid; stray grains roll one by one down the curved lid into the hole. A pink hand throws crumpled petals. “Deal graciously, we pray thee, with all those who mourn, that, casting every care on thee …” The straps whine again. Janice at his side staggers. He holds her arm and even through the cloth it feels hot. A small breath of wind makes the canopy fill and flap like a sail. The smell of flowers rises toward them. “… and the Holy Ghost, bless you and keep you, now and for evermore. Amen.”
Eccles closes his book. Harry’s father and Janice’s, standing side by side, look up and blink. The undertaker’s men begin to be busy with their equipment, retrieving the straps from the hole. Mourners move into the sunshine. “Casting every care on thee.” He has done that; he feels full of strength. The sky greets him. It is as if he has been crawling in a cave and now at last beyond the dark recession of crowding rocks he has seen a patch of light; he turns, and Janice’s face, dumb with grief, blocks the light. “Don’t look at me,” he says. “I didn’t kill her.”
This comes out of his mouth clearly, in tune with the simplicity he feels now in everything. Heads talking softly snap around at a voice so sudden and cruel.
They misunderstand. He just wants this straight. He explains to the heads, “You all keep acting as if I did it. I wasn’t anywhere near. She’s the one.” He turns to her, and in her face, slack as if slapped, sees that she too is a victim, that everyone is; the baby is gone, is all he’s saying, he had a baby and his wife drowned it. “Hey it’s O.K.,” he tells her. “You didn’t mean to.” He tries to take her hand but she snatches it back like from a trap and looks toward her parents, who step toward her.
His face burns; forgiveness had been big in his heart and now it’s hate. He hates her dumb face. She doesn’t see. She had a chance to join him in truth, just the simplest factual truth, and turned away in horror. He sees that among the heads even his own mother’s is horrified, blank with shock, a wall against him; she asks him what have they done to him and then she does it too. A suffocating sense of injustice blinds him. He turns and runs.
Uphill with broad strength. He dodges among gravestones exultantly. Dandelions grow bright as butter among the graves. Behind him his name is called in Eccles’ voice “Harry! Harry!” He feels Eccles chasing him but does not turn to look. He cuts diagonally through the stones across the grass toward the woods. The distance to the dark crescent of trees is greater than it seemed from beside the grave. The romping of his body turns heavy; the slope of land grows steeper. Yet there is a softness in the burial ground that sustains his flight, a gentle settled bumpiness that buoys him up with its reminiscence of the dodging spurting runs down a crowded court. He arrives between the arms of the woods and aims for the center of the crescent. Once inside, he is less sheltered than he expected; turning, he can see through the leaves back down the graveyard to where, beside the small green tent, the human beings he has left cluster. Eccles is halfway between them and him. His black chest heaves. His wide-set eyes concentrate into