Rabbit, Run - By John Updike Page 0,65
notes dissolve into nonsense. He fumbles through his memory and manages to bring out, “I feel Harry is in some respects a special case.”
“The only thing special about him is he doesn’t care who he hurts or how much. Now I mean no offense Reverend Eccles and I’m sure you’ve done your best considering how busy you are but to be honest I wish that first night I had called the police like I wanted to.”
He seems to hear that she is going to call the police to arrest him. Why not? With his white collar he forges God’s name on every word he speaks. He steals belief from the children he is supposed to be teaching. He murders faith in the minds of any who really listen to his babble. He commits fraud with every schooled cadence of the service, mouthing Our Father when his heart knows the real father he is trying to please, has been trying to please all his life. When he asks her, “What can the police do?” he seems to himself to mean what can they do to him.
“Well I don’t know but more than play golf I expect.”
“I’m quite sure he will come back.”
“You’ve been saying that for two months.”
“I still believe it.” But he doesn’t, he doesn’t believe anything. Silence.
“Could you”—her voice is changed; it beseeches—“bring me over that stool there in the corner? I have to get my legs up.”
When he blinks, his eyelids scratch. He rouses from his daze and gets the stool and takes it to her. Her broad shins in their green childlike socks lift meekly, and as he places the stool under the heels, his bending, with its echo of religious-pamphlet paintings of Christ washing the feet of beggars, fits his body to receive a new flow of force. He straightens up and towers above her. She plucks at her skirt at the knees, tugging it down.
“Thank you,” she says. “That’s a real relief for me.”
“I’m afraid it’s the only sort of relief I’ve given you,” he confesses with a simplicity that he finds, and mocks himself for finding, admirable.
“Ah,” she sighs. “There’s not much anybody can do I guess.”
“No, there are things to do. Perhaps you’re right about the police. The law provides protection for wives; why not use it?”
“Fred’s against it.”
“Mr. Springer has good reasons. I don’t mean merely business reasons. All the law can extract from Harry is financial support; and I don’t think, in this case, that money is really the point. In fact I’m not sure money is ever really the point.”
“That’s easy to say if you’ve always had enough.” He doesn’t mind. It seemed to slip from her automatically, with less malice than lassitude; he is certain she wants to listen.
“That may be. I don’t know. But at any rate my concern—everyone’s concern for that matter, I’m sure—is with the general health of the situation. And if there’s to be a true healing, it must be Harry and Janice who act. Really, no matter how much we want to help, no matter how much we try to do on the fringes, we’re outside.” In imitation of his father he has clasped his hands behind him and turned his back on his auditor; through the screen he watches the one other who, perhaps, is not outside, Nelson, lead the Fosnacht boy across the lawn in pursuit of a neighbor’s dog. Nelson’s laughter spills from his head as his clumsy tottering steps jar his body. The dog is old, reddish, small, and slow; the Fosnacht boy is puzzled yet pleased by his friend’s cry of “Lion! Lion!” It interests Eccles to see that under conditions of peace Angstrom’s boy leads the other. The green air seen through the muzzy screen seems to vibrate with Nelson’s noise. Eccles feels the situation: this constant translucent outpour of selfish excitement must naturally now and then dam in the duller boy’s narrower passages and produce a sullen backflow, a stubborn bullying act. He pities Nelson, who will be stranded in innocent surprise many times before he locates in himself the source of this strange reverse tide. It seems to Eccles that he himself was this way as a boy, always giving and giving and always being suddenly swamped. The old dog’s tail wags as the boys approach. It stops wagging and droops in an uncertain wary arc when they surround it like hunters, crowing. Nelson reaches out and beats the dog’s back with both hands. Eccles wants