by John Updike
“Here’s a story. One time when we were pretty newly married I got sore at Janice for something, just being herself probably, and drove to West Virginia and back in one night. Crazy. You couldn’t do that now without going to the savings bank first.”
“Yeah,” Charlie says slowly, saddened. Rabbit hadn’t wanted to sadden him. He could never figure out, exactly, how much the man had loved Janice. “She described that. You did a lot of roaming around then.”
“A little. I brought the car back though. When she left me, she took the car and kept it. As you remember.”
“Do I?”
He has never married, and that says something flattering, to Janice and therefore to Harry, the way it’s worked out. A man fucks your wife, it puts a new value on her, within limits. Harry wants to restore the conversation to the cheerful plane of dwindling energy. He tells Stavros, “Saw a kind of funny joke in the paper the other day. It said, You can’t beat Christopher Columbus for mileage. Look how far he got on three galleons.” He pronounces the crucial word carefully, in three syllables; but Charlie doesn’t act as if he gets it, only smiles a one-sided twitch of a smile that could be in response to pain.
“The oil companies made us do it,” Charlie says. “They said, Go ahead, burn it up like madmen, all these highways, the shopping malls, everything. People won’t believe it in a hundred years, the sloppy way we lived.”
“It’s like wood,” Harry says, groping back through history, which is a tinted fog to him, marked off in centuries like a football field, with a few dates -1066, 1776 - pinpointed and a few faces - George Washington, Hitler -hanging along the sidelines, not cheering. “Or coal. As a kid I can remember the anthracite rattling down the old coal chute, with these red dots they used to put on it. I couldn’t imagine how they did it, I thought it was something that happened in the ground. Little elves with red brushes. Now there isn’t any anthracite. That stuff they strip-mine now just crumbles in your hand.” It gives him pleasure, makes Rabbit feel rich, to contemplate the world’s wasting, to know that the earth is mortal too.
“Well,” Charlie sighs. “At least it’s going to keep those chinks from ever having an industrial revolution.”
That seems to wrap it up, though Harry feels they have let something momentous, something alive under the heading of energy, escape. But a lot of topics, he has noticed lately, in private conversation and even on television where they’re paid to talk it up, run dry, exhaust themselves, as if everything’s been said in this hemisphere. In his inner life too Rabbit dodges among more blanks than there used to be, patches of burnt-out gray cells where there used to be lust and keen dreaming and wide-eyed dread; he falls asleep, for instance, at the drop of a hat. He never used to understand the phrase. But then he never used to wear a hat and now, at the first breath of cold weather, he does. His roof wearing thin, starlight showing through.
You ASKED FOR IT, WE GOT IT, the big paper banner on the showroom window cries, in tune with the current Toyota television campaign. The sign cuts a slice from the afternoon sun and gives the showroom a muted aquarium air, or that of a wide sunken ship wherein the two Coronas and the acid-green Corolla SR-5 liftback wait to be bought and hoisted into the air on the other side of the glass and set down safe on the surface of the lot and Route 111 and the world of asphalt beyond.
A car swings in from this world: a fat tired ‘71 or ‘2 Country Squire wagon soft on its shocks, with one dented fender hammered out semi-smooth but the ruddy rustproofing underpaint left to do for a finish. A young couple steps out, the girl milky-pale and bare-legged and blinking in the sunshine but the boy roughened and reddened by the sun, his jeans dirt-stiffened by actual work done in the red mud of the county. A kind of crate of rough green boards has been built into the Squire’s chrome roof rack and from where Rabbit is standing, a soft wedge shot away, he can see how the upholstery and inner padding have been mangled by the station wagon’s use as a farm truck. “Hicks,” Charlie says from his desk. The pair comes in shyly, like elongated animals, sniffing the air-conditioned air.
Feeling protective, God knows why, Charlie’s snipe ringing in his ears, Harry walks toward them, glancing at the girl’s hand to see if she wears a wedding ring. She does not, but such things mean less than they used to. Kids shack up. Her age he puts at nineteen or twenty, the boy a bit older - the age of his own son. “Can I help you folks?”
The boy brushes back his hair, showing a low white forehead. His broad baked face gives him a look of smiling even when he isn’t. “We chust came in for some information.” His accent bespeaks the south of the county, less aggressively Dutch than the north, where the brick churches get spiky and the houses and barns are built of limestone instead of sandstone. Harry figures them for leaving some farm to come into the city, with no more need to haul fenceposts and hay bales and pumpkins and whatever else this poor heap was made to haul. Shack up, get city jobs, and spin around in a little Corolla. We got it. But the boy could be just scouting out prices for his father, and the girlfriend be riding along, or not even be a girlfriend, but a sister, or a hitchhiker. A little touch of the hooker about her looks. The way her soft body wants to spill from these small clothes, the faded denim shorts and -purple Paisley halter. The shining faintly freckled flesh of her shoulders and top arms and the busy wanton abundance of her browny-red many-colored hair, carelessly bundled. A buried bell rings. She has blue eyes in deep sockets and the silence of a girl from the country used to letting men talk while she holds a sweetand-sour secret in her mouth, sucking it. An incongruous disco touch in her shoes, with their high cork heels and ankle straps. Pink toes, painted nails. This girl will not stick with this boy. Rabbit wants this to be so; he imagines he feels an unwitting swimming of her spirit upward toward his, while her manner is all stillness. He feels she wants to hide from him, but is too big and white, too suddenly womanly, too nearly naked. Her shoes accent the length of her legs; she is taller than average, and not quite fat, though tending toward chunky, especially around the chest. Her upper lip closes over the lower with a puffy bruised look. She is bruisable, he wants to protect her; he relieves her of the pressure of his gaze, too long by a second, and turns to the boy.
“This is a Corolla,” Harry says, slapping orange tin. “The twodoor model begins at thirty-nine hundred and will give you highway mileage up to forty a gallon and twenty to twenty-five city driving. I know some other makes advertise more but believe me you can’t get a better buy in America today than this jalopy right here. Read Consumer Reports, April issue. Much better than average on maintenance and repairs through the first four years. Who in this day and age keeps a car much longer than four years? In four years we may all be pushing bicycles the way things are going. This particular car has four-speed synchromesh transmission, fully transistorized ignition system, power-assisted front disc brakes, vinyl reclining bucket seats, a locking gas cap. That last feature’s getting to be pretty important. Have you noticed lately how all the autosupply stores are selling out of their siphons? You can’t buy a siphon in Brewer today for love nor money, guess why. My mother-in-law’s old Chrysler over in Mt. Judge was drained dry the other day in front of the hairdresser’s, she hardly ever takes the buggy out except to go to church. People are getting rough. Did you notice in the .paper this morning where Carter is taking gas from the farmers and going to give it to the truckers? Shows the power of a gun, doesn’t it?”
“I didn’t see the paper,” the boy says.
He is standing there so stolidly Harry has to move around him with a quick shuffle-step, dodging a cardboard cutout of a happy customer with her dog and packages, to slap acid-green. “Now if you want to replace your big old wagon, that’s some antique, with another wagon that gives you almost just as much space for half the running expense, this SR-5 has some beautiful features - a fivespeed transmission with an overdrive that really saves fuel on a long trip, and a fold-down split rear seat that enables you to carry one passenger back there and still have the long
space on the other side for golf clubs or fenceposts or whatever. I don’t know why Detroit never thought it, that split seat. Here we’re supposed to be Automobile Heaven and the foreigners come up with all the ideas. If you ask me Detroit’s let us all down, two hundred million of us. I’d much rather handle native American cars but between the three of us they’re junk. They’re cardboard. They’re pretend.”
“Now what are those over there?” the boy asks.
“That’s the Corona, if you want to move toward the top of the line. Bigger engine - twenty-two hundred ccs. Instead of sixteen. More of a European look. I drive one and love it. I get about thirty miles to the gallon on the highway, eighteen or so in Brewer. Depends on how you drive, of course. How heavy a foot you have. Those testers for Consumer Reports, they must really give it the gun, their mileage figures are the one place they seem off to me. This liftback here is priced at sixty-eight five, but remember you’re buying yen for dollars, and when trade-in time comes you get your yen back.”
The girl smiles at “yen.” The boy, gaining confidence, says, “And this one here now.” The young farmer has touched the Celica’s suave black hood. Harry is running out of enthusiasm. Interested in that, the kid wasn’t very interested in buying.
“You’ve just put your hand on one super machine,” Harry tells him. “The Celica GT Sport Coupe, a car that’ll ride with a Porsche or an MG any day. Steel-belted radials, quartz crystal clock, AM/FM stereo - all standard. Standard. You can imagine what the extras are. This one has power steering and a sun roof. Frankly, it’s pricey, pretty near five figures, but like I say, it’s an investment. That’s how people buy cars now, more and more.
‘That old Kleenex mentality of trade it in every two years is gone with the wind. Buy a good solid car now, you’ll have something for a long while, while the dollars if you keep ‘em will go straight to Hell. Buy good goods, that’s my advice to any young man starting up right now.”
He must be getting too impassioned, for the boy says, “We’re chust looking around, more or less.”
“I understand that,” Rabbit says quickly, pivoting to face the silent girl. “You’re under absolutely no pressure from me. Picking a car is like picking a mate - you want to take your time.” The girl blushes and looks away. Generous paternal talkativeness keeps bubbling up in Harry. “It’s still a free country, the Commies haven’t gotten any further than Cambodia. No way I can make you folks buy until you’re good and ready. It’s all the same to me, this product sells itself. Actually you’re lucky there’s such a selection on the floor, a shipment came in two weeks ago and we won’t have another until August. Japan can’t make enough of these cars to keep the world happy. Toyota is number-one import all over the globe.” He can’t take his eyes of this girl. Those chunky eyesockets reminding him of somebody. The milky flecked shoulders, the dent of flesh where the halter strap digs. Squeeze her and you’d leave thumbprints, she’s that fresh from the oven. “Tell me,” he says, “which size’re you thinking of? You planning to cart a family around, or just yourselves?”
The girl’s blush deepens. Don’t marry this chump, Harry thinks. His brats will drag you down. The boy says, “We don’t need another wagon. My dad has a Chevy pick-up, and he let me take the Squire over when I got out of high school.”
“A great junk car,” Rabbit concedes. “You can hurt it but you can’t kill it. Even in ‘71 they were putting more metal in than they do now. Detroit is giving up the ghost.” He feels he is floating on their youth, on his money, on the brightness of this June afternoon and its promise that tomorrow, a Sunday, will be fair for his golf game. “But for people planning to tie the knot and get serious you need something more than a nostalgia item, you need something more like this.” He slaps orange tin again and reads irritation in the cool pallor of the girl’s eyes as they lift to his. Forgive me, baby, you get so fucking bored standing around in here, when the time comes you tend to run off at the mouth.
Stavros, forgotten, calls from his desk, across the showroom space awash in sun shafts slowly approaching the horizontal, “Maybe they’d like to take a spin.” He wants peace and quiet for his paperwork.
“Want to test drive?” Harry asks the couple.
“It’s pretty late,” the boy points out.
“It’ll take a minute. You only pass this way once. Live it up. I’ll get some keys and a plate. Charlie, are the keys to the blue Corolla outside hanging on the pegboard or in your desk?”
“I’ll get ‘em,” Charlie grunts. He pushes up from his desk and, still bent, goes into the corridor behind the waist-high partition of frosted glass - a tacky improvement ordered by Fred Springer toward the end of his life. Behind it, three hollow flush doors in a wall of fake-walnut pressboard open into the offices of Mildred Kroust and the billing girl, whoever she is that month, with the office of the Chief Sales Representative between them. The doors are usually ajar and the girl and Mildred keep crossing back and forth to consult. Harry prefers to stand out here on the floor. In the old days there were just three steel desks and a strip of carpet; the one closed door marked the company toilet with its dispenser of powdered soap you turned upside down to get any out of. Reception now is off in another separate cubicle, adjoining the waiting room where few customers ever wait. The keys Charlie needs hang, among many others, some no longer unlocking anything in this world, on a pegboard darkened by the touch of greasy fingertips beside the door on the way to Parts: Parts, that tunnel of loaded steel shelves whose sliding window overlooks the clangorous cavern of Service. No reason for Charlie to go except he knows where things are and you don’t want to leave customers alone for a moment and feeling foolish, they’re apt to sneak away. More timid than deer, customers. With nothing to say between them, the boy, the girl, and Harry can hear the faint strained wheeze of Charlie’s breathing as he comes back with the demonstrator Corolla keys and the dealer’s plate on its rusty spring clip. “Want me to take these youngsters out?” he asks.
“No, you sit and rest,” Harry tells him, adding, “You might start locking up in back.” Their sign claims they are open Saturdays to six but on this ominous June day of gas drought quarter of should be close enough. “Back in a minute.”
The boy asks the girl, “Want to come or stay here?”
“Oh, come,” she says, impatience lighting up her mild face as she turns and names him. “Jamie, Mother expects me back.”
Harry reassures her, “It’ll just take a minute.” Mother. He wishes he could ask her to describe Mother.
Out on the lot, bright wind is bringing summer in. The spots ofgrass around the asphalt sport buttery dabs of dandelion. He clips the plate to the back of the Corolla and hands the boy the keys. He holds the seat on the passenger side forward so the girl can get into the rear; as she does so the denim of her shorts permits a peek of cheek of ass. Rabbit squeezes into the death seat and explains to Jamie the trinkets of the dashboard, including the space where a tape deck could go. They are, all three passengers, on the tall side, and the small car feels stuffed. Yet with imported spunk the Toyota tugs them into rapid motion and finds its place in the passing lane of Route 111. Like riding on the back of a big bumblebee; you feel on top of the buzzing engine. “Peppy,” Jamie acknowledges.
“And smooth, considering,” Harry adds, trying not to brake on the bare floor. To the girl he calls backwards, “You O.K.? Shall I slide my seat forward to give more room?” The way the shorts are so short now you wonder if the crotches don’t hurt. The stitching, pinching up.
“No I’m all right, I’ll sit sideways.”
He wants to turn and look at her but at his age turning his head is not so easy and indeed some days he wakes with pains all through the neck and shoulders from no more cause than his dead weight on the bed all night. He tells Jamie, “This is the sixteen hundred cc., they make a twelve hundred base model but we don’t like to handle it, I’d hate to have it on my conscience that somebody was killed because he didn’t have enough pick-up t
o get around a truck or something on these American roads. Also we believe in carrying a pretty full complement of options; without ‘em you’ll find yourself short-changed on the trade-in when the time comes.” He manages to work his body around to look at the girl. “These Japanese for all their good qualities have pretty short legs,” he tells her. The way she has to sit, her ass is nearly on the floor and her knees are up in the air, these young luminous knees inches from his face.
Unself-consciously she is pulling a few long hairs away from her mouth where they have blown and gazing through the side window at this commercial stretch of greater Brewer. Fast-food huts in eye-catching shapes and retail outlets of everything from bridal outfits to plaster birdbaths have widened the aspect of this, the old Weisertown Pike, with their parking lots, leaving the odd surviving house and its stump of a front lawn sticking out painfully. Competitors - Pike Porsche and Renault, Diefendorfer Volkswagen, Old Red Barn Mazda and BMW, Diamond County Automotive Imports - flicker their FUEL ECONOMY banners while the gasoline stations intermixed with their beckoning have shrouded pumps and tow trucks parked across the lanes where automobiles once glided in, were filled, and glided on. An effect of hostile barricade, late in the day. Where did the shrouds come from? Some of them quite smartly tailored, in squared-off crimson canvas. A new industry, gas pump shrouds. Among vacant lakes of asphalt a few small stands offer strawberries and early peas. A tall sign gestures to a cement-block building well off the road; Rabbit can remember when this was a giant Mister Peanut pointing toward a low shop where salted nuts were arrayed in glass cases, Brazil nuts and hazelnuts and whole cashews and for a lesser price broken ones, Diamond County a great area for nuts but not that great, the shop failed. Its shell was broken and doubled in size and made into a nightclub and the sign repainted, keeping the top hat but Mister Peanut becoming a human reveller in white tie and trails. Now after many mutilations this sign has been turned into an ill-fitted female figure, a black silhouette with no bumps indicating clothing, her head thrown back and the large letters D I S C O falling in bubbles as if plucked one by one from her cut throat. Beyond such advertisements the worn green hills hold a haze of vapor and pale fields bake as their rows of corn thicken. The inside of the Corolla is warming with a mingled human smell. Harry thinks of the girl’s long thigh as she stretched her way into the back seat and imagines he smells vanilla. Cunt would be a good flavor of ice cream, Sealtest ought to work on it.
