Rabbit, Run by John Updike Page B

“We go out there and there are these five farmers clumping up and down, and we get about fifteen points up right away and I just take it easy. And there are just a couple dozen people sitting up on the stage and the game isn’t a league game so nothing matters much, and I get this funny feeling I can do anything, just drifting around, passing the ball, and all of a sudden I know, you see, I know I can do anything. The second half I take maybe just ten shots, and every one goes right in, not just bounces in, but doesn’t touch the rim, like I’m dropping stones down a well. And these farmers running up and down getting up a sweat, they didn’t have more than two substitutes, but we’re not in their league either, so it doesn’t matter much to them, and the one ref just leans over against the edge of the stage talking to their coach. Oriole High. Yeah, and then afterwards their coach comes down into the locker room where both teams are changing and gets a jug of cider out of a locker and we all passed it around. Don’t you remember?” It puzzles him, yet makes him want to laugh, that he can’t make the others feel what was so special. He resumes eating. The others are done and on their second drinks.
    “Yes, sir, Whosie, you’re a real sweet kid,” Margaret tells him.
    “Pay no attention, Harry,” Tothero says, “that’s the way tramps talk.”
    Margaret hits him: her hand flies up from the table and across her body into his mouth, flat, but without a slapping noise.
    “Socko,” Ruth says. Her voice is indifferent. The whole thing is so quiet that the Chinaman, clearing their dishes away, doesn’t look up, and seems to hear nothing.
    “We’re going,” Tothero announces, and tries to stand up, but the edge of the table hits his thighs, and he can stand no higher than a hunchback. The slap has left a little twist in his mouth that Rabbit can’t bear to look at, it’s so ambiguous and blurred, such a sickly mixture of bravado and shame and, worst, pride or less than pride, conceit. This deathly smirk issues the words, “Are you coming, my dear?”
    “Son of a bitch,” Margaret says, yet her little hard nut of a body slides over, and she glances behind her to see if she is leaving anything, cigarettes or a purse. “Son of a bitch,” she repeats, and there is something pretty in the level way she says it. Both she and Tothero seem calmer now, determined and kind of rigid.
    Rabbit starts to push up from the table, but Tothero sets a rigid urgent hand on his shoulder, the coach’s touch, that Rabbit had so often felt on the bench, just before the pat on the bottom that sent him into the game. “No no, Harry. You stay. One apiece. Don’t let our vulgarity distract you. I couldn’t borrow your car, could I?”
    “Huh? How would I get anywhere?”
    “Quite right, you’re quite right. Forgive my asking.”
    “No, I mean, you can if you want—” In fact he feels deeply reluctant to part with a car that is only half his.
    Tothero sees this. “No no. It was an insane thought. Good night.”
    “You bloated old bastard,” Margaret says to him. He glances toward her, then down fuzzily. She is right, Harry realizes, he is bloated; his face is lopsided like a tired balloon. Yet this balloon peers down at him as if there was some message bulging it, heavy and vague like water.
    “Where will you go?” Tothero asks.
    “I’ll be fine. I have money. I’ll get a hotel,” Rabbit tells him. He wishes, now that he has refused him a favor, that Tothero would go.
    “The door of my mansion is open,” Tothero says. “There’s the one cot only, but we can make a mattress—”
    “No, look,” Rabbit says severely. “You’ve saved my life, but I don’t want to saddle you. I’ll be fine. I can’t thank you enough anyway.”
    “We’ll talk sometime,” Tothero promises; his hand twitches, and accidentally taps Margaret’s thigh.
    “I could kill you,” Margaret says at his side, and they go off,