Rabbit, Run Read Online Free PDF Page A

Joseph Street, and turns left, ignoring the sign saying STOP . He heads down Jackson to where it runs obliquely into Central, which is also 422 to Philadelphia. STOP . He doesn’t want to go to Philadelphia but the road broadens on the edge of town beyond the electric-power station and the only other choice is to go back through Mt. Judge around the mountain into the thick of Brewer and the suppertime traffic. He doesn’t intend ever to see Brewer again, that flowerpot city. The highway turns from three-lane to four-lane and there is no danger of hitting another car; they all run along together like sticks on a stream. Rabbit turns on the radio. After a hum a beautiful Negress sings, “Without a song, the dahay would nehever end, without a song.” Rabbit wishes for a cigarette to go with the washed feeling inside and remembers he gave up smoking and feels cleaner still. He slumps down and puts one arm up on the back of the seat and glides down the twilight pike left-handed. “A field of corn” the Negress’s voice bending dark and warm like the inside of a cello “the grasses grow” the countryside dipping around the road like a continuous dark bird “it makes no mind no how” his scalp contracts ecstatically “wihithout a.” The smell of parched rubber says the heater has come on and he turns the little lever to MOD .
    “Secret Love,” “Autumn Leaves,” and something whose title he missed. Supper music. Music to cook by. His mind nervously shifts away from the involuntary vision of Janice’s meal sizzling in the pan, chops probably, the grease-tinted water bubbling disconsolately, the unfrozen peas steaming away their vitamins. He tries to think of something pleasant. He imagines himself about to shoot a long one-hander; but he feels he’s on a cliff, there is an abyss he will fall into when the ball leaves his hands. He tries to repicture his mother and sister feeding his son, but the boy is crying in backward vision, his forehead red and his mouth stretched wide and his helpless breath hot. There must be something: the water from the ice plant running in the gutter, yellowish, the way it curled on stones and ran in diagonal wrinkles, waving the pretty threads of slime attached to its edges. Suddenly Janice shivers in memory of the other’s girl’s bed in declining daylight. He tries to blot out the sensation with Miriam, Mim on his handlebars, Mim on a sled in dark snowfall being pulled up Jackson Street by him, the little kid laughing in her hood, himself the big brother, the red lights in snowfall marking the trestles the town crew have used to block off the street for sledding, down, down, the runners whistling on the dark packed slick, Hold me Harry, the sparks as the runners hit the cinders spread at the bottom for safety, the scraping stop like the thump of a great heart in the dark. Once more Harry, then we’ll go home, I promise Harry, please, oh I love you, little Mim only seven or so, in her dark hood, the street waxy with snow still falling. Poor Janice would probably have the wind up now, on the phone to her mother or his mother, somebody, wondering why her supper was getting cold. So dumb. Forgive me.
    He accelerates. The growing complexity of lights threatens him. He is being drawn into Philadelphia. He hates Philadelphia. Dirtiest city in the world they live on poisoned water. He wants to go south, down, down the map into orange groves and smoking rivers and barefoot women. It seems simple enough, drive all night through the dawn through the morning through the noon park on a beach take off your shoes and fall asleep by the Gulf of Mexico. Wake up with the stars above perfectly spaced in perfect health. But he is going east, the worst direction, into unhealth, soot, and stink, a smothering hole where you can’t move without killing somebody. Yet the highway sucks him on, and a sign says P OTTSTOWN 2. He almost brakes. But then he thinks.
    If he is heading east, south is on his right.