Rabbit, Run - John Updike [66]
“Well now what do you know about my son-in-law that I don’t?”
“That he’s a good man, for one thing.”
“Good for what?”
“Must you be good for something?” He tries to think. “Yes, I suppose you must.”
“Nelson! Stop that this minute!” She turns rigid in the glider but does not rise to see what is making the boy cry. Eccles, sitting by the screen, can see. The Fosnacht boy stands by the swing, holding two red plastic trucks. Angstrom’s son, some inches shorter, is batting with an open hand toward the bigger boy’s chest, but does not quite dare to move forward a step and actually strike him. Young Fosnacht stands with the maddening invulnerability of the stupid, looking down at the flailing hand and contorted face of the smaller boy without even a smile of satisfaction, a true scientist, observing without passion the effect of his experiment. Mrs. Springer’s voice leaps to a frantic hardness and cuts through the screen: “Did you hear me I said stop that bawling!”
Nelson’s face turns up toward the porch and he tries to explain, “Pilly have—Pilly—” But just trying to describe the injustice gives it unbearable force, and as if struck from behind he totters forward and slaps the thief’s chest and receives a mild shove that makes him sit on the ground. He rolls on his stomach and spins in the grass, revolved by his own incoherent kicking. Eccles’ heart seems to twist with the child’s body; he knows so well the propulsive power of a wrong, the way the mind batters against it and each futile blow sucks the air emptier until it seems the whole frame of blood and bone must burst in a universe that can be such a vacuum.
“The boy’s taken his truck,” he tells Mrs. Springer.
“Well let him get it himself,” she says. “He must learn. I can’t be getting up on these legs and running outside every minute; they’ve been at it like that all afternoon.”
“Billy.” The boy looks up in surprise toward Eccles’ male voice. “Give it back.” Billy considers this new evidence and hesitates indeterminately. “Now, please.” Convinced, Billy walks over and pedantically drops the toy on his sobbing playmate’s head.
The new pain starts fresh grief in Nelson’s throat, but seeing the truck on the grass beside his face chokes him. It takes him a moment to realize that the cause of his anguish is removed and another moment to rein the emotion in his body. His great dry gasps as he rounds these corners seem to heave the sheet of trimmed grass and the sunshine itself. A wasp bumping persistently against the screen dips and the aluminum chair under Eccles threatens to buckle; as if the wide world participates in Nelson’s readjustment.
“I don’t know why the boy is such a sissy,” Mrs. Springer says. “Or maybe I do.”
Her sly adding this irks Eccles. “Why?”
The purple skin under her eyes lifts and the corners of her mouth pull down in an appraising scowl. “Well, he’s like his dad: spoiled. He’s been made too much of and thinks the world owes him what he wants.”
“It was the other boy; Nelson only wanted what was his.”
“Yes and I suppose you think with his dad it was all Janice’s fault.” She pronounces “Janice” with German juice, Channiss, making the girl seem thicker, darker, more precious and important than the tenuous, pathetic image in Eccles’ mind. He wonders if she’s not, after all, right: if he hasn’t gone over to the other side.
“No I don’t,” he says. “I think his behavior has no justification. This isn’t to say, though, that his behavior doesn’t have reasons, reasons that in part your daughter could have controlled. With my Church, I believe that we are all responsible beings, responsible for ourselves and for each other.” The words, so well turned-out, taste chalky in his mouth. He wishes she’d offer him something to drink. Spring is turning hot.
The old gypsy sees his uncertainty. “Well that’s easy to say,” she