Rabbit, Run - John Updike [130]
They misunderstand. He just wants this straight. He explains to the heads, “You all keep acting as if I did it. I wasn’t anywhere near. She’s the one.” He turns to her, and in her face, slack as if slapped, sees that she too is a victim, that everyone is; the baby is gone, is all he’s saying, he had a baby and his wife drowned it. “Hey it’s O.K.,” he tells her. “You didn’t mean to.” He tries to take her hand but she snatches it back like from a trap and looks toward her parents, who step toward her.
His face burns; forgiveness had been big in his heart and now it’s hate. He hates her dumb face. She doesn’t see. She had a chance to join him in truth, just the simplest factual truth, and turned away in horror. He sees that among the heads even his own mother’s is horrified, blank with shock, a wall against him; she asks him what have they done to him and then she does it too. A suffocating sense of injustice blinds him. He turns and runs.
Uphill with broad strength. He dodges among gravestones exultantly. Dandelions grow bright as butter among the graves. Behind him his name is called in Eccles’ voice “Harry! Harry!” He feels Eccles chasing him but does not turn to look. He cuts diagonally through the stones across the grass toward the woods. The distance to the dark crescent of trees is greater than it seemed from beside the grave. The romping of his body turns heavy; the slope of land grows steeper. Yet there is a softness in the burial ground that sustains his flight, a gentle settled bumpiness that buoys him up with its reminiscence of the dodging spurting runs down a crowded court. He arrives between the arms of the woods and aims for the center of the crescent. Once inside, he is less sheltered than he expected; turning, he can see through the leaves back down the graveyard to where, beside the small green tent, the human beings he has left cluster. Eccles is halfway between them and him. His black chest heaves. His wide-set eyes concentrate into the woods. The others, thick stalks in dark clothes, jiggle: maneuvering, planning, testing each other’s strengths, holding each other up. Their pale faces flash mute signals toward the woods and turn away, in disgust or despair, and then flash again full in the declining sun, fascinated. Only Eccles’ gaze is steady. He may be gathering energy to renew the chase.
Rabbit crouches and runs raggedly. His hands and face are scratched from plowing through the bushes and saplings that rim the woods. Deeper inside there is more space. The pine trees smother all other growth. Their brown needles muffle the rough earth with a slippery blanket; sunshine falls in narrow slots on this dead floor. It is dim but hot in here, like an attic; the unseen afternoon sun bakes the dark shingles of green above his head. Dead lower branches thrust at the level of his eyes. His hands and face feel hot where they were scratched. He turns to see if he has left the people behind. No one is following. Far off, through a tiny patch at the end of the aisle of pines he is in, a green glows which is perhaps the green of the cemetery; but it seems as far off as the patches of sky he can glimpse above the treetops. In turning he loses some sense of direction. But the tree-trunks are at first in neat rows that carry him along between them, and he walks always against the slope of the land. If he walks far enough uphill he will in time reach the scenic drive that runs along the ridge. Only by going downhill can he be returned to the others.
The trees cease to march in rows and grow together more thickly. These are older trees. The darkness under them is denser and the ground is steeper. Rocks jut up through the blanket of needles, scabby with lichen; collapsed trunks hold intricate claws across his path. At places where a hole has been opened up in the roof of evergreen, berrying bushes and yellow grass grow in a hasty sweet-smelling tumble. These patches, some of them broad enough to catch a bit of sun slanting down the mountainside, make the surrounding darkness