John Updike - Rabbit At Rest

Though he is sitting some distance away – a good firm chip shot, or a feathered wedge – the players eye him. They're doing this for themselves, not as a show for some fat old honky walking around where he shouldn't be. Where's his car? Feeling heat from their sidelong glances, not wanting so delicate a relation to turn awkward, Harry sighs ostentatiously and heaves himself up from the bench and walks away the way he came, taking note of the street signs so he can find this peaceful place again. If he comes every day he'll blend in. Blacks don't have this racist thing whites do, about keeping their neighborhoods pure. They can't be too angry these days, with their third Miss America just elected. The funny thing about the final judges' panel, it held two celebrities he feels he knows, has taken into himself, loves, actually: Phylicia Rashad, who for his money is the real star of The Cosby Show, with those legs and that nice loose smile, and Mike Schmidt, who had the grace to pack it in when he could no longer produce. So there is life after death of a sort. Schmidt judges. Skeeter lives. And the weekend before last, a young black girl beat Chrissie Evert in the last U.S. Open match she'll ever play. She packed it in too. There comes a time.

Now the News-Press wears daily banner headlines tracking Hurricane Hugo -Deadly Hugo roars into islands, Hugo rips into Puerto Rico. Tuesday, he walks in the expensive beachfront areas and scans the sky for hurricane signs, for clouds God's finger might write, and reads none. In the hall that evening, happening to be standing with him at the elevators, Mrs. Zabntski turns those veiny protuberant eyes up at him out of her skeletal face and pronounces, "Terrible thing."

"What is?"

"The thing coming," she says, her white hair looking already wind-tossed, lifted out from her skull in all directions.

"Oh, it'll never get here," Harry reassures her. "It's all this media hype. You know, hype, phony hullabaloo. They have to make news out of something, every night."

"Yeah?" Mrs. Zabritski says, coyly. The way her neck twists into her hunched shoulders gives her head a flirtatious tilt she may not mean. But then again she may. Didn't he hear on some TV show that even in the Nazi death camps there were romances? This windowless corridor, with its peach-and-silver wallpaper, is an eerie cryptlike space he is always anxious to get out of. The big vase on the marble half-moon table, with green glaze running into golden, could be holding someone's ashes. Still the elevator refuses to arrive. His female companion clears her throat and volunteers, "Wednesday buffet tomorrow. I like extra much the buffet."

"Me too," he tells her. "Except I can't choose and then I wind up taking too much and then eating it all." What is she suggesting, that they go together? That they have a date? He's stopped telling her that Janice is coming down.

"Do you do the kosher?"

"I don't know. Those scallops wrapped in bacon, are they kosher?"

She stares at him as if he were the crazy one, stares so hard her eyeballs seem in danger of snapping the bloody threads that hold them fast in their sockets. Then she must have decided he was joking, for a careful stiff smile slowly spreads across the lower half of her face, crisscrossed by wrinkles like a quilt sewn of tiny squares of skin. He thinks of that little sniffly slut in the Polish-American Club, her silken skin below the waist, below the sweater, and feels bitter toward Janice, for leaving him at his age at the mercy of women. He eats at his table alone but is so disturbed by Mrs. Zabritski's making a pass at him that he takes two Nitrostats to quell his heart.

After dinner, in bed, on September 1, 1781, the French troops make a dazzling impression upon the citizens of Philadelphia. Ecstatic applause greeted the dazzling spectacle of the French as they passed in review in their bright white uniforms and white plumes. Wearing colored lapels and collars of pink, green, violet or blue identifying their regiments, they were the most brilliantly appointed soldiers in Europe. Joseph Reed, the President of the State of Pennsylvania, entertained the French officers at a ceremonial dinner of which the main feature was an immense ninety pound turtle with soup served in its shell. Talk about cholesterol. Didn't seem to bother them, but, then, how old did those poor devils get to be? Not fifty-six, most of them. The troops are scared to march south for fear of malaria. Rochambeau has talked Washington out of attacking New York, and at this point seems to be the brains of the Revolution. He wants to rendezvous with De Grasse at the head of the Chesapeake. De Grasse has evaded Hood by sailing the back-alley route between the Bahamas and Cuba. It will never work.

Hugo headingfor U.S., the News-Press headline says next morning. For breakfast now, Harry has switched from Frosted Flakes to Nabisco Shredded Wheat 'n' Bran, though he forgets exactly why, something about fiber and the bowels. He does hope he never reaches the point where he has to think all the time about shitting. Ma Springer, toward the end, got to talking about her bowel movements like they were family heirlooms, each one precious. On the evening news half the commercials are for laxatives and the other half for hemorrhoid medicine, as if only assholes watch the news. That walking corpse in the locker room. After breakfast Harry walks along Pindo Palm Boulevard and brings back a bag of groceries from Winn Dixie, passing up the Keystone Corn Chips and going heavy on the low-cal frozen dinners. The day's predicted showers come at noon but seem over by three and in a kind of trance Rabbit drives into downtown Deleon, parks at a two-hour meter, and walks the mile to the playing field he discovered Monday. Today two sets of boys are on the dirt court, each using one basket. One set is energetically playing a two-on-two, but the other consists of three boys at a desultory game of what he used to call Horse. You take a shot, and if it goes in the next guy has to make the same shot, and if he misses he's an H, or an H-O, and when he's a HORSE he's out. Rabbit takes the bench within a chip shot of this group and frankly watches – after all, is it a free country or not?

The three are in their early teens at best, and don't know what to make of this sudden uninvited audience. One of these old ofays after some crack or a black boy's dick? Their languid motions stiffen, they jostle shoulders and pass each other sliding silent messages that make one another giggle. One of them perhaps deliberately lets a pass flip off his hands and bounce Harry's way. He leans off his bench end and stops it left-handed, not his best hand but it remembers. It remembers exactly. That taut pebbled roundness, the smooth seams between, the little circlet for taking the air valve. A big pebbled ball that wants to fly. He flips it back, a bit awkwardly, sitting, but still with a little zing to show he's handled one before. Somewhat satisfied, the trio resume Horse, trying skyhooks, under-the-basket layups, fall-back jumpers, crazy improvised underhanded or sidearm shots that now and then go in, by accident or miracle. One such wild toss rockets off the rim and comes Rabbit's way. This time he stands up with the ball and advances with it toward the boys. He feels himself big, a big shape with the sun behind him. His shadow falls across the face of the nearest boy, who wears an unravelling wool cap of many colors. Another boy has the number 8 on his tank top. "What's the game?" Harry asks them. "You call it Horse?"

"We call it Three," the wool cap answers reluctantly. "Three misses, you out." He reaches for the ball but Rabbit lifts it out of his reach.

"Lemme take a shot, could I?"

The boys' eyes consult, they figure this is the way to get the ball back. "Go 'head," Wool Cap says.