"His present whereabouts, any ideas?"

"No idea. His call came through from it sounded like a phone booth but I couldn"t swear to it."

The cop puts his broad hand over the notebook as if across the listening mouth of a telephone receiver. "Off the record. We"ve been watching this place. He was a little fish, a punk. We hoped he would lead us to something bigger."

"What bigger? Dope?"

"Civil disturbance. The blacks in Brewer are in touch with Philly, Camden, Newark. We know they have guns. We don"t want another York here, now do we?" Again, Rabbit"s silence is not what he wants. He repeats, "Now do we?"

"No, of course not. I was just thinking. He talked as if he was beyond revolution; he was kind of religious-crazy, not gun "Any idea why he set this fire?"

"I don"t think he did. It isn"t his style."

The pencil is back on the notebook. "Never mind about style," the chief says. "I want facts."

"I don"t have any more facts than I"ve told you. Some people in the neighborhood were upset because Skeeter was living with us, two men stopped me on the street yesterday and complained about it, I can give you their names if you want."

The pencil hovers. "They complained. Any specific threats of arson?"

&. Wisea.s.ses get fragged. You better f.u.c.king barricade the whole place. "Nothing that specific."

The chief makes a notation, it looks like n. c., and turns the notebook page. "The black have s.e.xual relations with the girl?"

"Look, I was off working all day. I"d come back and we"d cook supper and help the kid with his homework and sit around and talk. It was like having two more kids in the house, I don"t know what they did every minute. Are you going to arrest me, or what?"

A fatherly type himself, the chief takes a smiling long time answering. Rabbit sees that his nose wasn"t broken by accident, somewhere in the alleys of time he had asked for it. His snow-soft hair is cut evenly as a powderpuff, with a pink dent above the ears where the police cap bites. His smile broadens enough to crease his cheek. "Strictly speaking," he says, "this isn"t my beat. I"m acting on behalf of my esteemed colleague the sheriff of Furnace Township, who rolled over and went back to sleep. Offhand I"d say we"re doing a good enough business in the jails without putting solid citizens like you in there. We"ll have some more questions later." He flips the notebook shut and flips the radio on to put out a call, "All cars, Brewer police copy, be on the lookout, Negro, male, height approx five-six, weight approx one-twenty-five, medium dark-skinned, hair Afro, name Skeeter, that is Sally, Katherine, double Easter -" He does not turn his head when Rabbit opens the car door and walks away.

So again in his life the net of law has slipped from him. He knows he is criminal, yet is never caught. Sickness sinks through his body like soot. The firemen wet down the smoking wreckage, the clot of equipment along Vista Crescent breaks up and flows away. The house is left encircled in its disgrace with yellow flashers on trestles warning people off. Rabbit walks around the lawn, so lately a full stage, sodden and pitted by footprints, and surveys the damage.

The burning was worse on the back side: the fixtures of the bedroom bathroom dangle in s.p.a.ce from stems of contorted pipe. The wall that took the bed headboard is gone. Patches of nightblue sky show through the roof. He looks in the downstairs windows and sees, by flashing yellow light, as into a h.e.l.lish fun house, the sofa and the two chairs, salted with fallen plaster, facing each other across the cobbler"s bench. The driftwood lamp is still upright. On the shelves giving into the breakfast nook, Skeeter"s books squat, soaked and matted. Where the kitchen was, Harry can see out through the garage to an N of charred 2 by 4s. The sky wants to brighten. Birds - birds in Penn Villas, where? there are no trees old enough to hold them - flicker into song. It is cold now, colder than in the heart of the night, when the fire was alive. The sky pales in the east, toward Brewer. Mt. Judge develops an outline in the emulsion of pre-dawn gray. A cloud of birds migrating crosses the suburb southward. The soot is settling on Harry"s bones. His eyelids feel like husks. In his weariness he hallucinates; as in the seconds before we sleep, similes seem living organisms. The freshening sky above Mt. Judge is Becky, the child that died, and the sullen sky to the west, the color of a storm sky but flawed by stars, is Nelson, the child that lives. And he, he is the man in the middle.

He walks up to his battered front door, brushes away the gla.s.s shards, and sits down on the flagstone porchlet. It is warm, like a hearth. Though none of his neighbors came forward to speak to him, to sparkle on the bright screen of his disaster, the neighborhood presents itself to his gaze unapologetically, naked in the gathering light, the pastel roof shingles moist in patches echoing the pattern of rafters, the back-yard bathing pools and swing sets whitened by dew along with the gra.s.s. A half-moon rests c.o.c.keyed in the blanched sky like a toy forgotten on a floor. An old man in a noisy green raincoat, a geezer left behind as a watchman, walks over and speaks to him. "This your home, huh?"

"This is it."

"Got some other place to go?"

"I suppose."

"Body a loved one?"

"Not exactly."

"That"s good news. Cheer up, young fella. Insurance"ll cover most of it."

"Do I have insurance?"

"Had a mortgage?"

Rabbit nods, remembering the little slippery bankbook, imagining it burned.

"Then you had insurance. d.a.m.n the banks all you will, they look after their own, you"ll never catch them d.a.m.n Jews short."

This man"s presence begins to seem strange. It has been months since anything seemed as strange as this man"s presence. Rabbit asks him, "How long you staying here?"

"I"m on duty till eight."

"Why? "

"Fire procedure. Prevent looting." The two of them look wonderingly at the dormant houses and cold lawns of Penn Villas. As they look, a distant alarm rings and an upstairs light comes on, sallow, dutiful. Still, looting these days is everywhere. The geezer asks him, "Anything precious in there, you might want to take along?" Rabbit doesn"t move. "You better go get some sleep, young fella."

"What about you?" Rabbit asks.

"Fella my age doesn"t need much. Sleep long enough soon enough. Anyway, I like the peacefulness of these hours, have ever since a boy. Always up, my dad, he was a great boozer and a late sleeper, used to wallop the bejesus out of me if I made a stir mornings. Got in the habit of sneaking out to the birds. Anyway, double-hour credit, time outdoors on this shift. Don"t always put it in, go over a certain amount, won"t get any social security. Kill you with kindness, that"s the new technique."

Rabbit stands up, aching; pain moves upward from his shins through his groin and belly to his chest and out. A demon leaving. Smoke, mist rise. He turns to his front door; swollen by water, axed, it resists being opened. The old man tells him, "It"s my responsibility to keep any and all persons out of this structure. Any damage you do yourself, you"re the party responsible.".

"You just told me to take out anything precious."

"You"re responsible, that"s all I"m saying. I"m turning my back. Fall through the floor, electrocute yourself, don"t call for help. Far as I"m concerned, you"re not there. See no evil is the way I do it."

"That"s the way I do it too." Under pressure the door pops open. Splintered gla.s.s on the other side sc.r.a.pes white arcs into the hall floor finish. Rabbit begins to cry from smoke and the smell. The house is warm, and talks to itself, a swarm of small rustles and snaps arises from the section on his left; settling noises drip from the charred joists and bubble up from the drenched dark rubble where the floor had been. The bed"s metal frame has fallen into the kitchen. On his right, the living room is murky but undamaged. The silver threads of the l.u.s.trex chair gleam through an acid mist of fumes; the television set"s green blank waits to be turned on. He thinks of taking it, it is the one resaleable item here, but no, it is too heavy to lug, he might drop himself through the floor, and there are millions like it. Janice once said we should drop television sets into the jungle instead of bombs, it would do as much good. He thought at the time the idea was too clever for her; even then Stavros was speaking through her.

She always loved that dumb bench. He remembers her kneeling beside it early in their marriage, rubbing it with linseed oil, short keen strokes, a few inches at a time, it made him feel h.o.r.n.y watching. He takes the bench under his arm and, discovering it to be so light, pulls the driftwood lamp loose from its socket and takes that too. The rest the looters and insurance adjusters can have. You never get the smell of smoke out. Like the smell of failure in a life. He remembers the storm windows, Windexing their four sides, and it seems a fable that his life was ever centered on such details. His house slips from him. He is free. Orange light in long stripes, from sun on the side of him opposite from the side the sun was on when he and Nelson walked here a long night ago, stretches between the low strange houses as he walks down Vista Crescent with the table and the lamp tugging under his arms. Peggy"s Fury is the only car still parked along the curb: a teal-blue tailfinned boat the ebb has stranded. He opens the door, pushes the seat forward to put the bench in the back, and finds someone there. A Negro. Asleep. "What the h.e.l.l," Rabbit says.

Skeeter awakes blind and gropes for his gla.s.ses on the rubber floor. "Chuck baby," he says, looking up with twin circles of gla.s.s. His Afro is flattened on one side. Bad fruit. "All by yourself, right?"

"Yeah." The little car holds a concentration of that smell which in the mornings would spice the living room, give it animal substance, sleep"s sweetness made strong.

"How long"s it been light?"

"Just started. It"s around six. How long"ve you been here?"

"Since I saw you and Babychuck pull in. I called you from a booth up on Weiser and then watched to see if you"d go by. The car wasn"t you but the head was, right, so I snuck along through the back yards and got in after you parked. The old briar patch theory, right? s.h.i.t if I didn"t fall asleep. Hey get in man, you"re lettin" in the air."

Rabbit gets in and sits in the driver"s seat, listening without turning his head, trying to talk without moving his mouth. Penn Villas is coming to life; a car just pa.s.sed. "You ought to know," he says, "they"re looking for you. They think you set it."

"Count on the fuzz to f.u.c.k up. Why would I go burn my own pad?"

"To destroy evidence. Maybe Jill - what do you call it? O. D."d."

"Not on the scag she was getting from me, that stuff was so cut sugar water has more flash. Look, Chuck, that up at your house was honky action. Will you believe the truth, or shall I save my breath for the pigpen?"

"Let"s hear it."

Skeeter"s voice, unattached to his face, is deeper than Harry remembers, with a hypnotic rasping lilt that reminds him of childhood radio. "Jill sacked out early and I made do with the sofa, right? Since getting back on the stuff she wasn"t putting out any of her own, and anyway I was pretty s.p.a.ced and beat, we went twice around the county unloading that bulls.h.i.t car. Right? So I wake up. There was this rattling around. I placed it coming from the kitchen, right? I was thinkin" it was Jill coming to bug me to shoot her up again, instead there was this whoosh and soft woomp, reminded me of an APM hitting in the bush up the road, only it wasn"t up any road, I say to myself The war is come home. Next thing there"s this slam of a door, garage door from the rumble of it, and I flip to the window and see these two honky cats makin" tail across the lawn, across the street, into between those houses there, and disappear, right? They had no car I could see. Next thing, I smell smoke."

"How do you know these were white men?"

"s.h.i.t, you know how honkies run, like with sticks up their a.s.s, right?"

"Could you identify them if you saw them again?"

"I ain"t identifying Moses around here. My skin is fried in this county, right?"

"Yeah," Rabbit says. "Something else you should know. Jill is dead."

The silence from the back seat is not long. "Poor b.i.t.c.h, doubt if she knows the difference."

"Why didn"t you get her out?"

"h.e.l.l, man, there was heat, right? I thought lynching time had come, I didn"t know there wasn"t twelve hundred crackers out there, I was in no shape to take care of some whitey woman, let Whitey take care of his own."

"But n.o.body stopped you."

"Basic training, right? I eluded as they say my pursuers."

"They didn"t want to hurt you. It was me, they were trying to tell me something. People around here don"t lynch, don"t be crazy."

"Crazy, you"ve been watching the wrong TV channel. How about those cats in Detroit?"

"How about those dead cops in California? How about all this Off the Pigs c.r.a.p you brothers have been pushing? I should take you in. The Brewer cops would love to see you, they love to re-educate crazy c.o.o.ns."

Two more cars swish by; from the height of a milk truck the driver looks down curiously. "Let"s drive," Skeeter says.

"What"s in it for me?"

"Nothing much, right?"

The car starts at a touch. The motor is more silent than their tires swishing in the puddles along Vista Crescent, past the apple-green ruin and the man in the green raincoat dozing on the doorstep. Rabbit heads out the curved streets to where they end, to where they become truck tracks between muddy house foundations. He finds a lost country lane. Tall rows of poplars, a neglected potholed surface. Skeeter sits up. Rabbit waits for the touch of metal on the back of his neck. A gun, a knife, a needle: they always have something. Poison darts. But there is nothing, nothing but the fluctuating warmth of Skeeter"s breathing on the back of his neck. "How could you let her die?" he asks.

"Man, you want to talk guilt, we got to go back hundreds of years."

"I wasn"t there then. But you were there last night."

"I was severely disadvantaged."

Harry"s head is light with lack of sleep; he knows he shouldn"t be making decisions. "Tell you what. I"ll drive you ten miles south and you take it from there."

"That"s cutting it fine, man, but let"s say sold. One embarra.s.sment remains. We brothers call it bread."

"You just got six hundred for selling her car."

"My wallet back next to that sofa, every mothering thing, right?"

"How about that black suitcase in the closet?"

"Say. You been snooping, or what?"

"I have maybe thirty dollars," Rabbit says. "You can have that. I"ll keep this ride from the cops but then that"s quits. Like you said, you"ve had it in this county."

"I shall return," Skeeter promises, "only in glory."

"When you do, leave me out of it."

Miles pa.s.s. A hill, a cl.u.s.ter of sandstone houses, a cement factory, a billboard pointing to a natural cave, another with a huge cutout of a bearded Amishman. Skeeter in yet another of his voices, the one that sounds most like a white man and therefore in Rabbit"s ears most human, asks, "How"d Babychuck take it, Jill"s being wasted?"

"About like you"d expect."

"Broken up, right?"

"Broken up."

"Tell him, there"s a ton of c.u.n.t in the world."

"I"ll let him figure that out himself."

They come to a corner where two narrow roads meet in sunlight. On the far side of a tan cut cornfield a whitewashed stone house sends up smoke. A wooden arrow at the intersection says Galilee 2. Otherwise it could be nowhere. A jet trail smears in the sky. Pennsylvania spreads south silently, through green and brown. A dry stone conduit underlies the road here; a roadside marker is a metal keystone rusted blank. Rabbit empties his wallet into Skeeter"s pink palm and chokes off the impulse to apologize for its not being more. He wonders now what would be proper. A Judas kiss? They have scarcely touched since the night they wrestled and Harry won. He holds out his hand to shake farewell. Skeeter studies it as if like Babe he will tell a fortune, takes it into both his slick narrow hands, tips it so the meaty pink creases are skyward, contemplates, and solemnly spits into the center. His saliva being as warm as skin, Harry at first only knows it has happened by seeing: moisture full of bubbles like tiny suns. He chooses to take the gesture as a blessing, and wipes his palm dry on his pants. Skeeter tells him, "Never did figure your angle."

"Probably wasn"t one," is the answer.

"Just waiting for the word, right?" Skeeter cackles. When he laughs there is that complexity about his upper lip white men don"t have, a welt in the center, a genial seam reminding Rabbit of the st.i.tch of flesh that holds the head of your c.o.c.k to the shaft. As Harry backs Peggy"s Fury around in the strait intersection, the young black waits by a bank of brown weed stalks. In the rearview mirror, Skeeter looks oddly right, blends right in, even with the gla.s.ses and goatee, hanging empty-handed between fields of stubble where crows settle and shift, gleaning.

COL. EDWIN E. ALDRIN, JR.: Now you"re clear. Over toward me. Straight down, to your left a little bit. Plenty of room. You"re lined up nicely. Toward me a little bit. Down. O.K. Now you"re clear. You"re catching the first hinge. The what hinge? All right, move. Roll to the left. O.K., now you"re clear. You"re lined up on the platform. Put your left foot to the right a little bit. O.K., that"s good. More left. Good.

NEIL ARMSTRONG: O.K., Houston, I"m on the porch.

IV. Mim

RABBIT is at his machine. His fmgers feather, the matrices rattle on high, the molten lead comfortably steams at his side.

ARSON SUSPECTED IN PENN VILLAS BLAZE.

Out-of-Stater Perishes