Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon

lap, “tug now, hard as ever you can.”
    Thinking
young prig
and
mocking ass
the doctor rocks back on his free leg, grunting, the bowl wallowing to and fro. Roger
     holds the door and peers attentively into where the foot vanished. “If we had a bit
     of Vaseline, we could—something slippery. Wait! Stay there, Pointsman, don’t move,
     we’ll have this resolved. . . .” Under the car, impulsive lad, in search of the crankcase
     plug by the time Pointsman can say, “There isn’t
time
Mexico, he’ll escape, he’ll escape.”
    “Quite right.” Up again fumbling a flashlight from his jacket pocket. “I’ll flush
     him out, you wait with the net. Sure you can get about all right? Nasty if you fell
     or something just as he made his break for the open.”
    “For pity’s sake,” Pointsman thumping after him back into the wreckage. “Don’t frighten
     him Mexico, this isn’t Kenya or something, we need him as close to normative, you
     know, as possible.”
    Normative?
Normative?
    “Roger,” calls Roger, giving him short-long-short with the flash.
    “Jessica,” murmurs Jessica, tiptoeing behind them.
    “Here, fellow,” coaxes Roger. “Nice bottle of
ether
here for you,” opening the flask, waving it in the cellar entrance, then switching
     on his beam. Dog looks up out of an old rusted pram, bobbing black shadows, tongue
     hanging, utter skepticism on his face. “Why it’s Mrs. Nussbaum!” Roger cries, the
     same way he’s heard Fred Allen do, Wednesday nights over the BBC.
    “You vere ekshpecting maybe
Lessie?
” replies the dog.
    Roger can smell ether fumes quite strongly as he starts his cautious descent. “
Come
on mate, it’ll be over before you know it. Pointsman just wants to count the old
     drops of saliva, that’s all. Wants to make a wee incision in your cheek, nice glass
     tube, nothing to bother about, right? Ring a bell now and then. Exciting world of
     the laboratory, you’ll love it.” Ether seems to be getting to him. He tries to stopper
     the flask: takes a step, foot plunges into a hole. Lurching sideways, he gropes for
     something to steady himself. The stopper falls back out of the flask and in forever
     among the debris at the bottom of the smashed house. Overhead Pointsman cries, “The
     sponge, Mexico, you forgot the
sponge!
” down comes a round pale collection of holes, bouncing in and out of the light of
     the flash. “Frisky chap,” Roger making a two-handed grab for it, splashing ether liberally
     about. He locates the sponge at last in his flashlight beam, the dog looking on from
     the pram in some confusion. “Hah!” pouring ether to drench the sponge and go wisping
     cold off his hands till the flask’s empty. Taking the wet sponge between two fingers
     he staggers toward the dog, shining the light up from under his chin to highlight
     the vampire face he thinks he’s making. “Moment—of truth!” He lunges. The dog leaps
     off at an angle, streaking past Roger toward the entrance while Roger keeps going
     with his sponge, headfirst into the pram, which collapses under his weight. Dimly
     he hears the doctor above whimper, “He’s getting away. Mexico, do hurry.”
    “Hurry.” Roger, clutching the sponge, extricates himself from the infant’s vehicle,
     taking it off as if it were a shirt, with what seems to him not unathletic skill.
    “Mexico-o-o,” plaintive.
    “Right,” Roger blundering up the cellar’s rubble to the outside again, where he beholds
     the doctor closing in on the dog, net held aloft and outspread. Rain falls persistently
     over this tableau. Roger circles so as to make with Pointsman a pincer upon the animal,
     who now stands with paws planted and teeth showing near one of the pieces of rear
     wall still standing. Jessica waits halfway into it, hands in her pockets, smoking,
     watching.
    “Here,” hollers the sentry, “you. You idiots. Keep away from that bit of wall, there’s
     nothing to hold it up.”
    “Do you