"Jes' read and knit and sit cozy by the fire," Skeeter tells him.

"Her number's in the book if you need to get ahold of me. Under just M."

"We won't disturb you," Jill tells him.

Nelson unexpectedly says, "Skeeter, lock the doors and don't go outside unless you have to."

The Negro pats the boy's brushed hair. "Wouldn't dream of it, chile. Ol' tarbaby, he just stay right here in his briar patch."

Nelson says suddenly, panicking, "Dad, we shouldn't go."

"Don't be dumb." They go. Orange sunlight stripes with long shadows the s.p.a.ces of flat lawn between the low houses. As Vista Crescent curves, the sun moves behind them and Rabbit is struck, seeing their elongated shadows side by side, by how much like himself Nelson walks: the same loose lope below, the same faintly tense stillness of the head and shoulders above. In shadow the boy, like himself, is as tall as the giant at the top of the beanstalk, treading the sidewalk on telescoping legs. Rabbit turns to speak. Beside him, the boy's overlong dark hair bounces as he strides to keep up, lugging his pajamas and toothbrush and change of underwear and sweater in a paper grocery bag for tomorrow's boat ride, an early birthday party. Rabbit finds there is nothing to say, just mute love spinning down, love for this extension of himself downward into time when he will be in the grave, love cool as the flame of sunlight burning level among the stick-thin maples and fallen leaves, themselves flames curling.

And from Peggy's windows Brewer glows and dwindles like ashes in a gigantic hearth. The river shines blue long after the sh.o.r.es turn black. There is a puppy in the apartment now, a fuzzy big-pawed Golden that tugs at Rabbit's hand with a slippery nipping mouth; its fur, touched, is as surprising in its softness as ferns. Peggy has remembered he likes Daiquiris; this time she has mix and the electric blender rattles with ice before she brings him his drink, half froth. She has aged a month: a pound or two around her waist, two or three more gray hairs showing at her parting. She has gathered her hair back in a twist, rather than letting it straggle around her face as if she were still in high school. Her face looks pushed-forward, scrubbed, glossy. She tells him wearily, "Ollie and I may be getting back together."

She is wearing a blue dress, secretarial, that suits her more than that paisley that kept riding up her pasty thighs. "That's good, isn't it?"

"It's good for Billy." The boys, once Nelson arrived, went down the elevator again, to try to repair the mini-bike in the bas.e.m.e.nt. "In fact, that's mostly the reason; Ollie is worried about Billy. With me working and not home until dark, he hangs around with that bad crowd up toward the bridge. You know, it's not like when we were young, the temptations they're exposed to. It's not just cigarettes and a little feeling up. At thirteen now, they're ready to go."

Harry brushes froth from his lips and wishes she would come away from the window so he could see all of the sky. "I guess they figure they might be dead at eighteen."

"Janice says you like the war."

"I don't like it; I defend it. I wasn't thinking of that, they have a lot of ways to die now we didn't have. Anyway, it's nice about you and Ollie, if it works out. A little sad, too."

"Why sad?"

"Sad for me. I mean, I guess I blew my chance, to -"

"To what?"

"To cash you in."

Bad phrase, too harsh, though it had been an apology. He has lived with Skeeter too long. But her blankness, the blankness of her silhouette as Peggy stands in her habitual pose against the windows, suggested it. A blank check. A woman is blank until you f.u.c.k her. Everything is blank until you f.u.c.k it. Us and Vietnam, f.u.c.king and being f.u.c.ked, blood is wisdom. Must be some better way but it's not in nature. His silence is leaden with regret. She remains blank some seconds, says nothing. Then she moves into the s.p.a.ce around him, turns on lamps, lifts a pillow into place, plumps it, stoops and straightens, turns, takes light upon her sides, is rounded into shape. A lumpy big woman but not a fat one, clumsy but not gross, sad with evening, with Ollie or not Ollie, with having a lengthening past and less and less future. Three cla.s.ses behind his, Peggy Gring had gone to high school with Rabbit and had seen him when he was good, had sat in those hot bleachers screaming, when he was a hero, naked and swift and lean. She has seen him come to nothing. She plumps down in the chair beside his and says, "I've been cashed in a lot lately."

"You mean with Ollie?"

"Others. Guys I meet at work. Ollie minds. That may be why he wants back in."

"If Ollie minds, you must be telling him. So you must want him back in too."

She looks into the bottom of her gla.s.s; there is nothing there but ice. "And how about you and Janice?"

"Janice who? Let me get you another drink."

"Wow. You've become a gentleman."

"Slightly."

As he puts her gin-and-tonic into her hand, he says, "Tell me about those other guys."

"They're O.K. I'm not that proud of them. They're human. I'm human."

"You do it but don't fall in love?"

"Apparently. Is that terrible?"

"No," he says. "I think it's nice."

"You think a lot of things are nice lately."

"Yeah. I'm not so uptight. Sistah Peggeh, I'se seen de light."

The boys come back upstairs. They complain the new headlight they bought doesn't fit. Peggy feeds them, a ca.s.serole of chicken legs and b.r.e.a.s.t.s, poor dismembered creatures simmering. Rabbit wonders how many animals have died to keep his life going, how many more will die. A barnyard full, a farmful of thumping hearts, seeing eyes, racing legs, all stuffed squawking into him as into a black sack. No avoiding it: life does want death. To be alive is to kill. Dinner inside them, they stuff themselves on television: Jackie Gleason, My Three Sons, Hogan's Heroes, Petticoat Junction, Mannix. An orgy. Nelson is asleep on the floor, radioactive light beating on his closed lids and open mouth. Rabbit carries him into Billy's room, while Peggy tucks her own son in. "Mom, I'm not sleepy."

"It's past bedtime."

"It's Sat.u.r.day night."

"You have a big day tomorrow."

"When is he going home?" He must think Harry has no ears. "When he wants to."

"What are you going to do?"

"Nothing that's any of your business."

"Mom."

"Shall I listen to your prayers?"

"When he's not listening."

" Then you say them to yourself tonight."

Harry and Peggy return to the living room and watch the week's news roundup. The weekend commentator is fairer-haired and less severe in expression than the weekday one. He says there has been some good news this week. American deaths in Vietnam were reported the lowest in three years, and one twenty-fourhour period saw no American battle deaths at all. The Soviet Union made headlines this week, agreeing with the U.S. to ban atomic weapons from the world's ocean floors, agreeing with Red China to hold talks concerning their sometimes b.l.o.o.d.y border disputes, and launching Soyuz 6, a linked three-stage s.p.a.ce spectacular bringing closer the day of permanent s.p.a.ce stations. In Washington, Hubert Humphrey endorsed Richard Nixon's handling of the Vietnam war and Lieutenant General Lewis B. Hershey, crusty and controversial head for twenty-eight years of this nation's selective service system, was relieved of his post and promoted to four-star general. In Chicago, riots outside the courtroom and riotous behavior within continued to characterize the trial of the so-called Chicago Eight. In Belfast, Protestants and British troops clashed. In Prague, Czechoslovakia's revisionist government, in one of its sternest moves, banned citizens from foreign travel. And preparations were under way: for tomorrow's Columbus Day parades, despite threatened protests from Scandinavian groups maintaining that Leif Ericson and not Columbus was the discoverer of America, and for Wednesday's Moratorium Day, a nationwide outpouring of peaceful protest. "c.r.a.p," says Rabbit. Sports. Weather. Peggy rises awkwardly from her chair to turn it off. Rabbit rises, also stiff. "Great supper," he tells her. "I guess I'll get back to the ranch."

The television off, they stand rimmed by borrowed light: the bathroom door down the hall left ajar for the boys, the apartment-house corridor a bright slit beneath the door leading out, the phosph.o.r.escence of Brewer through the windows. Peggy's body, transected and rimmed by those remote fires, does not quite fit together; her arm jerks up from darkness and brushes indifferently at her hair and seems to miss. She shrugs, or shudders, and shadows slip from her. "Wouldn't you like," she asks, in a voice not quite hers, originating in the dim charged s.p.a.ce between them, and lighter, breathier, "to cash me in?"

Yes, it turns out, yes he would, and they b.u.mp, and fumble, and unzip, and she is gumdrops everywhere, yet stately as a statue, planetary in her breadth, a contour map of some snowy land where he has never been; not since Ruth has he had a woman this big. Naked, she makes him naked, even kneeling to unlace his shoes, and then kneeling to him in the pose of Jill to Skeeter, so he has glided across a gulf, and stands where last night he stared. He gently unlinks her, lowers her to the floor, and tastes a salty swamp between her legs. Her thighs part easily, she grows wet readily, she is sadly unclumsy at this, she has indeed been to bed with many men. In the knowing way she handles his p.r.i.c.k he feels their presences, feels himself competing, is put off, goes soft. She leaves off and comes up and presses the gumdrop of her tongue between his lips. Puddled on the floor, they keep knocking skulls and ankle bones on the furniture legs. The puppy, hearing their commotion, thinks they want to play and thrusts his cold nose and scrabbling paws among their sensitive flesh; his fern-furry busy bustlingness tickles and hurts. This third animal among them re-excites Rabbit; observing this, Peggy leads him down her hall, the dark crease between her b.u.t.tocks snapping tick-tock with her walk. Holding her rumpled dress in front of her like a pad, she pauses at the boys' door, listens, and nods. Her hair has gone loose. The puppy for a while whimpers at their door and claws the floor as if to dig there; then he is eclipsed by the inflammation of their senses and falls silent beneath the thunder of their blood. Harry is afraid with this unknown woman, of timing her wrong, but she tells him, "One sec." Him inside her, she does something imperceptible, relaxing and tensing the muscles of her v.a.g.i.n.a, and announces breathily "Now." She comes one beat ahead of him, a cool solid thump of a come that lets him hit home without fear of hurting her: a f.u.c.k innocent of madness. Then slides in that embarra.s.sment of afterwards - of returning discriminations, of the other re-emerging from the muddle, of sorting out what was hers and what was yours. He hides his face in the hot cave at the side of her neck. "Thank you."

"Thank you yourself," Peggy Fosnacht says, and, what he doesn't especially like, grabs his bottom to give her one more deep thrust before he softens. Both Jill and Janice too ladylike for that. Still, he is at home.

Until she says, "Would you mind rolling off? You're squeezing the breath out of me."

"Am I so heavy?"

"After a while."

"Actually, I better go."

"Why? It's only midnight."

"I'm worried about what they're doing back at the house."

"Nelson's here. The others, what do you care?"

"I don't know. I care."

"Well they don't care about you and you're in bed with someone who does."

He accuses her: "You're taking Ollie back."

"Have any better ideas? He's the father of my child."

"Well that's not my fault."

"No, nothing's your fault," and she tumbles around him, and they make solid sadly skillful love again, and they talk and he dozes a little, and the phone rings. It shrills right beside his ear.

A woman's arm, plump and elastic and warm, reaches across his face to pluck it silent. Peggy Gring's. She listens, and hands it to him with an expression he cannot read. There is a clock beside the telephone; its luminous hands say one-twenty. "Hey. Chuck? Better get your a.s.s over here. It's bad. Bad."

"Skeeter?" His throat hurts, just speaking. f.u.c.king Peggy has left him dry.

The voice at the other end hangs up.

Rabbit kicks out of the bedcovers and hunts in the dark for his clothes. He remembers. The living room. The boys' door opens as he runs down the hall naked. Nelson's astonished face takes in his father's nakedness. He asks, "Was it Mom?"

"Mom?"

"On the phone."

"Skeeter. Something's gone wrong at the house."

"Should I come?"

They are in the living room, Rabbit stooping to gather his clothes scattered over the floor, hopping to get into his underpants, his suit pants. The puppy, awake again, dances and nips at him.

"Better stay."

"What can it be, Dad?"

"No idea. Maybe the cops. Maybe Jill getting sicker."

"Why didn't he talk longer?"

"His voice sounded funny, I'm not sure it was our phone."

"I'm coming with you."

"I told you to stay here."

"I must, Dad."

Rabbit looks at him and agrees, "O.K. I guess you must."

Peggy in blue bathrobe is in the hall; more lights are on. Billy is up. His pajamas are stained yellow at the fly, he is pimply and tall. Peggy says, "Shall I get dressed?"

"No. You're great the way you are." Rabbit is having trouble with his tie: his shirt collar has a b.u.t.ton in the back that has to be undone to get the tie under. He puts on his coat and stuffs the tie into his pocket. His skin is tingling with the start of sweat and his p.e.n.i.s murmuringly aches. He has forgotten to do the laces of his shoes and as he kneels to do them his stomach jams into his throat.

"How will you get there?" Peggy asks.

"Run," Rabbit answers.

"Don't be funny, it's a mile and a half. I'll get dressed and drive you."

She must be told she is not his wife. "I don't want you to come. Whatever it is, I don't want you and Billy to get involved."

"Mo-om," Billy protests from the doorway. But he is still in stained pajamas whereas Nelson is dressed, but for bare feet. His sneakers are in his hand.

Peggy yields. "I'll get you my car keys. It's the blue Fury, the fourth slot in the line against the wall. Nelson knows. No, Billy. You and I will stay here." Her voice is factual, secretarial.

Rabbit takes the keys, which come into his hand as cold as if they have been in the refrigerator. "Thanks a lot. Or have I said that before? Sorry about this. Great dinner, Peggy."

"Glad you liked it."

"We'll let you know what's what. It's probably nothing, the son of a b.i.t.c.h is probably just stoned out of his mind."

Nelson has put his socks and sneakers on. "Let's go, Dad. Thank you very much, Mrs. Fosnacht."

"You're both very welcome."

"Thank Mr. Fosnacht in case I can't go on the boat tomorrow."

Billy is still trying. "Mo-om, let me." No."

"Mom, you're a b.i.t.c.h."

Peggy slaps her son: pink leaps up on his cheek in stripes like fingers, and the child's face hardens beyond further controlling. "Mom, you're a wh.o.r.e. That's what the bridge kids say. You'll lay anybody."

Rabbit says, "You two take it easy," and turns; they flee, father and son, down the hall, down the steel stairwell, not waiting for an elevator, to a bas.e.m.e.nt ofparked cars, a polychrome lake caught in a low illumined grotto. Rabbit blinks to realize that even while he and Peggy were heating their little mutual darkness a cold fluorescent world surrounded them in hallways and down stairwells and amid unsleeping pillars upholding their vast building. The universe is unsleeping, neither ants nor stars sleep, to die will be to be forever wide awake. Nelson finds the blue car for him. Its dashlights glow green at ignition. Almost silently the engine comes to life, backs them out, sneaks them along past the stained grotto walls. In a corner by the brickwork of a stairwell the all-chrome mini-bike waits to be repaired. An asphalt exitway becomes a parking lot, becomes a street lined with narrow houses and great green signs bearing numbers, keystones, shields, the names of unattainable cities. They come onto Weiser; the traffic is thin, sinister. The stoplights no longer regulate but merely wink. Burger Bliss is closed, though its purple oven glows within, plus a sallow residue of ceiling tubes to discourage thieves and vandals. A police car nips by, bleating. The Acme lot at this hour has no horizon. Are the few cars still parked on it abandoned? Or lovers? Or ghosts in a world so thick with cars their shadows like leaves settle everywhere? A whirling light, insulting in its brilliance, materializes in Rabbit's rear-view mirror and as it swells acquires the overpowering grief of a siren. The red bulk of a fire engine plunges by, sucking the Fury toward the center of the street, where the trolley-track bed used to be. Nelson cries, "Dad!"

"Dad what?"

"Nothing, I thought you lost control."

"Never. Not your Dad."

The movie marquee, unlit and stubby, is announcing, BACK BY REQST - 2001. All these stores along Weiser have burglar lights on and a few, a new defense, wear window grilles.