Extract from John Apdike’s Run, Rabbit

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, you can taste the chemicals. 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 POTTSTOWN 2. He almost brakes. But then he thinks.

If he is heading east, south is on his right. And then, as if the world were just standing around waiting to serve his thoughts, a broad road to the right is advertised, ROUTE 100 WEST CHESTER WILMINGTON. Route 100 has a fine ultimate sound. He doesn't want to go to Wilmington but it's the right direction. He's never been to Wilmington. The du Ponts own it. He wonders what it's like to make it to a du Pont.

He doesn't drive five miles before this road begins to feel like a part of the same trap. The first road offered him he turns right on. A keystone marker in the headlights says 23. A good number. The first varsity game he played in he made 23 points. A sophomore and a virgin. Trees overshadow this narrower road.

A barefoot du Pont. Brown legs probably, bitty birdy breasts. Beside a swimming pool in France. Something like money in a naked woman, deep, millions. You think of millions as being white. Sink all the way in softly still lots left. Rich girls frigid? Nymphomaniacs? Must vary. Just women after all, descended from some old Indian—cheater luckier than the rest, inherit the same stuff if they lived in a slum. Glow all the whiter there, on drab mattresses. That wonderful way they have of coming forward around you when they want it. Otherwise just fat weight. Funny how the passionate ones are often tight and dry and the slow ones wet. They want you up and hard on their little ledge. The thing is play them until just a touch. You can tell: their skin under the fur gets all loose like a puppy's neck.

Route 23 works west through little tame country towns, Coventryville, Elverson, Morgantown. Rabbit likes these. Square high farmhouses nuzzle the road. Soft chalk sides. In one town a tavern blazes and he stops at a hardware store opposite with two gasoline pumps outside. He knows from the radio it's about seventhirty, but the hardware store is still open, shovels and seeders and post—hole diggers and axes blue and orange and yellow in the window, along with some fishing rods and a string of fielder's gloves. A middle—aged man comes out in boots, baggy suntans, and two flannel shirts.

" Yes sir, " he says, coming down on the second word with forced weight, like a lame man stepping.

" Couldya fill it up with regular? "

The man starts to pump it in and Rabbit gets out of the car and goes around to the back and asks, " How far am I from Brewer? "

The farmer looks up with a look of curt distrust from listening to the gas gurgle. He lifts a finger. " Back up and take that road and it's sixteen miles to the bridge. "

Sixteen. He has driven forty miles to get sixteen miles away.

But it was far enough, this was another world. It smells differently, smells older, of nooks and pockets in the ground that nobody's poked into yet.

" Suppose I go straight? "

" That'll take you to Churchtown. "

" What's after Churchtown? "

" New Holland. Lancaster. "

" Do you have any maps? "

" Son, where do you want to go? "

" Huh? I don't know exactly. "

" Where are you headed? "

The man is patient. His face at the same time seems fatherly and crafty and stupid.

For the first time, Harry realizes he is a criminal. He hears the gasoline rise in the neck of the tank and notices with what care the farmer squeezes every drop he can into the tank without letting it slosh over the lip insolently the way a city garageman would. Out here a drop of gas isn't supposed to escape and he's in the middle of it at night. Laws aren't ghosts in this country, they walk around with the smell of earth on them. Senseless fear cakes over Rabbit's body.

" Check the oil? " the man asks after hanging up the hose on the side of the rusty pump, one of the old style, with the painted bubble head.

" No. Wait. Yeah. You better had. Thanks. " Simmer down. All he'd done was ask for a map.

Damn dirtdigger – what was so suspicious about that? Somebody was always going somewhere. He better get the oil checked because he wasn't going to stop again until he was halfway to Georgia.

" Hey, how far is Lancaster south of here? "

" Due south? Don't know. It's about twenty—five miles on the road. Your oil's all right. You think you're going to Lancaster now? "

" Yeah, I might. "

" Check your water? "

" No. It's O. K. "

" Battery? "

" It's great. Let's go. "

The man lets the hood slam down and smiles over at Harry. " That's three—ninety on the gas, young fella": the words are pronounced in that same heavy cautious crippled way.

Rabbit puts four ones in his hand, which is stiff and crusted and has fingernails that remind you of those old shovels you see worn into weird shapes. The farmer disappears into the hardware store; maybe he's phoning the state cops. He acts like he knows something, but how could he? Rabbit itches to duck into the car and drive off. To steady himself he counts the money left in his wallet. Seventy—three; today was payday. Fingering so much lettuce strengthens his nerves. Switching off the lights in the hardware store as he comes, the farmer comes back with the dime and no map. Harry cups his hand for the dime and the man pushes it in with his broad thumb and says, " Looked around inside and the only road map is New York State. You don't want to go that way, do you now? "

" No, " Rabbit answers, and walks to his car door. He feels through the hairs on the back of his neck the man following him. He gets into the car and slams the door and the farmer is right there, the meat of his face hung in the open door window. He bends down and nearly sticks his face in. His cracked thin lips with a scar tilting toward his nose move thoughtfully. He's wearing glasses, a scholar. " The only way to get somewhere, you know; is to figure out where you're going before you go there. "

Rabbit catches a whiff of whisky. He says in a level way, " I don't think so. " The lips and spectacles and black hairs poking out of the man's tear—shaped nostrils show no surprise. Rabbit pulls out, going straight. Everybody who tells you how to act has whisky on their breath.

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