Rabbit, Run - John Updike [43]
In the kitchen he discovers an odd oversight. The pork chops never taken from the pan, cold as death, riding congealed grease. He dumps them out in the paper bag under the sink and with a spatula scrapes crumbs of the stiff specked fat after them. The bag, stained dark brown at the bottom, smells of something sweetly rotting. He puzzles, the can is downstairs out back, can’t take two trips. He decides to forget it. He draws scalding water into the sink and puts the pan in to soak. The breath of steam like a whisper in a tomb frightens him.
In haste he takes clean Jockey pants, T-shirts, and socks from a drawer, three shirts in cellophane and blue cardboard from another, a pair of laundered suntans from a third, draws his two suits and a sports shirt from the closet, and wraps the smaller clothing in the suits to form a bundle he can carry. The job makes him sweat. Clutching his clothes between two arms and a lifted thigh, he surveys the apartment once more, and the furniture, carpeting, wallpaper all seem darkly glazed with the murk filming his own face; the rooms are filled with flavor of an awkward job, and he is glad to get out. The door snaps shut behind him irrevocably. His key is inside.
Toothbrush. Razor. Cuff links. Shoes. At each step down he remembers something he forgot. He hurries, his feet patter. Jumps. His head almost hits the naked bulb burning at the end of a black cord in the vestibule. His name on the mailbox seems to call at him as he sweeps past; its letters of blue ink crowd the air like a cry. He feels ridiculous, ducking into the sunlight like one of those weird thieves you read about in the back pages of newspapers who instead of stealing money and silver carry away a porcelain washbasin, twenty rolls of wallpaper, or a bundle of old clothes.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Angstrom.”
A neighbor is passing, Miss Arndt, in a lavender church hat, carrying a palm frond in clutched hands. “Oh. Hello. How are you?” She lives three houses up; they think she has cancer.
“I am just splendid,” she says. “Just splendid.” And stands there in sunshine, bewildered by splendor, flatfooted, leaning unconsciously against the slope of the pavement. A green car goes by too slowly. Miss Arndt sticks in his way, amiably confused, grateful for something, her simple adherence to the pavement it seems, like a fly who stops walking on the ceiling to marvel at itself.
“How do you like the weather?” he asks.
“I love it, I love it; Palm Sunday is always blue. It makes the sap rise in my legs.” She laughs and he follows; she stands rooted to the hot cement between the feathery shade of two maples. She knows nothing, he becomes certain.
“Yes,” he says, for her eyes have snagged on his arms. “I seem to be doing spring cleaning.” He shrugs the bundle to clarify.
“Good,” she says, with a surprising sarcastic snarl. “You young husbands, you certainly take the bit in your teeth.” Then she twists, and exclaims, “Why, there’s a clergyman in there!”
The green car has come back, even more slowly, down the center of the street. With a dismay that makes the bundle of clothes double its weight in his arms, Rabbit realizes he is pinned. He lurches from the porch and strides past Miss Arndt saying, “I got to run,” right on top of her considered remark, “It’s not Reverend Kruppenbach.”
No, of course not Kruppenbach; Rabbit knows who it is, though he doesn’t know his name. Episcopal. The Springers were Episcopalians, more of the old bastard’s social climbing, everyone else was Lutheran or Reformed if they were anything. He doesn’t quite run; the downward pavement jars his heels at every stride, he can’t see the cement under the bundle he carries. If he can just make the alley. His one hope is the preacher can’t be sure it’s him. He feels the green car crawling behind him; he thinks of throwing the clothes away and really running. If he could get into the old