Rabbit at rest (73 page)

At ten, he goes out for his morning walk. He looks at the
northeast sky, toward the hurricane that is snubbing Florida, and
is struck by the clouds, how intricate they are, tattered, gray on
white on blue, with tilted sheets of fishscales and rows of long
clouds shaggy underneath but rounded on top as if by action of
swiftly running water, like the rhythmic ribs of sand the tide
leaves. A glassy wind blows through the sunlight. There is
something in the air that makes it slightly difficult to breathe.
Lack of ozone? Or too much ozone? It may be his imagination, but
the sky seems clean of airplanes. Usually you can see them layered
in their slow circling slants, coming in to land at the Southwest
Florida Regional Airport. The planes have been chased from the sky.
Under the sun a kind of highway of haze in bars recedes to the
northeast horizon like the reflections the moon stacks up in a calm
ocean.

On an impulse he decides to take the Celica and drive downtown
and park at a meter near the First Federal Bank and walk toward the
black section. This afternoon, he thinks, he might feel like trying
to get in some holes of golf. The pro shop called up a few days ago
and said they found his shoes.

At the recreation field beyond the empty ochre high school, a
lone tall boy in denim cutoffs is shooting baskets by himself. His
tank top is an electric turquoise stencilled with a snarling tiger
head - orange-and-white-striped fur, yellow
eyes, the tongue and end of the nose an unreal violet. On this boy,
though, the outfit has a certain propriety, the dignity of a chosen
uniform. Older than the kids yesterday, eighteen at least, he is a
deliberate performer, making good serious economical moves,
dribbling in, studying the ground, staring at the hoop, sizing up
the shot with two hands on the ball, letting go with the left hand
underneath only at the last while shooting. He wears
ankle-high black sneakers and no socks; his haircut is one of
those muffin-shapes on the top of the skull, with a series of
X's along the sides and back where the shaved part begins. Sitting
on the bench, the opposite end from a small red knapsack the boy
has evidently left there, Rabbit watches him a good while, while
the sun shines and the glassy wind blows and passing clouds dip the
dirt field and the surrounding frame houses in shadow. The houses
have the colors of sun-faded wash and seem remote and silent.
You don't see people going in and out.

To vary his attitude Harry sometimes tips his white face back as
if to sunbathe, coating his vision in red, letting photons burn
through his translucent eyelids. One time when he opens his eyes
the boy is standing close, darker than a cloud. There is something
matte about his blackness, and his high cheekbones and the thinness
of his lips hint at Indian blood.

"You want sumpin'?" His voice is light, level, unsmiling. It
seems to come out of the tiger's snarling violet mouth.

"No, nothing," Rabbit says. "My sitting here bother you?"

"You after no Scotty?" With the hand not holding the basketball
against his hip he makes the smallest, most delicate little motion
of cracking a whip. Rabbit darts his eyes at the knapsack and
brings them back to the tiger's mouth.

"No, thanks," he says. "Never touch it. How about a little
one-on-one, though? Since you seem to be out here
alone."

"I heard
some cheesecake come here yesterday was
foolin' around."

`Just foolin', that's what I do. I'm retired."

"How come you come out here to do your foolin'? Lot of
foolin'-around places over there in your end of Deleon." He
pronounces it the local way,
Dealya-in.

"It's pretty boring over there," Harry tells him. "I like it
here, where there isn't so much glitz. D'ya mind?"

The boy, taken a bit off balance, thinks for an answer, and
Rabbit's hands dart out and rest on the basketball, a more worn one
than the boys yesterday had, and not leather-colored but
scuffed red, white, and blue. Its rough-smooth surface feels
warm. "Come on," he begs, growling the "on." "Gimme the ball."

Tiger's expression doesn't change, but the ball comes loose.
With it, Harry strides onto the packed dirt. He feels precariously
tall, as when this summer he stepped out alone onto the macadam
street. He put on Bermuda shorts this morning, in case he got to
play. Dust and reflected sun caress his bare calves, his chalky old
man's calves that never had much hair and now have almost none
- actually none, where socks have rubbed for over fifty
years.

He goes for a jumper from pretty far out and it lucks in. He and
Tiger take shots alternately, careful not to touch and bouncing
their passes to each other. "You played once," the tall boy
says.

"Long time ago. High school. Never got to college. Different
style then than you guys have now. But if you feel like practicing
your moves one-on-one, I'm game. Play to
twenty-one. Honor system - call fouls on yourself."

There seems a leaden sadness in Tiger's stare, but he nods, and
takes the ball bounced to him. He walks with a cocky slump
shoulders down, butt out -out to the half-court line
scratched in the dirt with the heels of sneakers. From the back,
the kid is all bones and tendons, polished by sweat but not too
much, the sloped shoulders matte beneath the turquoise straps.

"Wait," Harry says. "I better take a pill first. Don't mind
me."

The Nitrostat burns under his tongue, and by the time Tiger has
come in and has his layup blocked, and Rabbit has dribbled out and
missed a twenty-footer, the pill's little kick has reached
his other end. He feels loose and deeply free at first. Tiger has
some good herky-jerky moves, and can get a step on the heavier
older man whenever he wants, but he wastes a lot of shots. The
stopand-pop style doesn't give you quite the time to get in
harmony with the target, and there isn't enough height to Tiger's
arc. The ball comes off his hands flat and turns the hoop's circle
into a slot. And he is giving Harry an inch or two in height;
Rabbit lifts a few close-in jumpers over the boy's fingertips
- soft, high, in, just like that, air balls only right
through the netless hoop, a scabby orange circle bent awry by too
many show offs practicing slam-dunks and hanging on imitating
Darryl Dawkins - and Tiger begins to press tighter, inviting
a turn around the corner and a break for the basket if Harry can
find the surge. Tiger's elbows and sharp knees rattle off his body
and he has to laugh at the old sensation, the jostle and press. He
is aware of his belly being slung up and down by the action and of
a watery weariness entering into his knees, but adrenaline and
nostalgia overrule. Tiger begins to exploit his opponent's slowness
more cruelly, more knifingly, slipping and slashing by, and Rabbit
kicks himself up a notch, feeling his breath come harder, through a
narrower passage. Still, the sun feels good, springing sweat from
his pores like calling so many seeds into life. The nature of this
exertion is to mix him with earth and sky: earth, the packed
pink-tan glaring dust printed over and over with the fanned
bars of his Nikes and the cagelike grid of Tiger's black sneakers,
stamped earth in the rim of his vision as he dribbles; and sky,
wide white sky when he looks up to follow his shot or the other's.
The clouds have gathered in an agitated silvery arena around the
blinding sun, a blue bullring. Rabbit accidentally in one twist of
upward effort stares straight into the sun and can't for a minute
brush away its blinking red moon of an afterimage. His chest feels
full, his head dizzy; his pulse rustles in his ears, the soaked
space between his shoulder blades holds a jagged pain. Tiger
retrieves his own rebound and holds the ball against his hip in his
graceful way and gives Harry a deliberate stare. His skin is like a
grinding stone of fine black grits. His ears are small and flat to
his head and his hair above the row of X's is kinked as tight as
nature can make it; sun glints from every circular particle.

"Hey man, you all right?"

"I'm. Fine."

"You puffin' pretty bad."

"You wait. Till you're my age."

"How about coolin' it? No big deal."

This is gracious, Rabbit sees, through the sweat in his eyebrows
and the pounding of his blood. He feels as if his tree of veins and
arteries is covered with big pink blossoms. No big deal. No big
deal you're too out of shape for this. No big deal you aren't good
even for a little one-on-one. His sweat is starting to
cake on his legs, with the dust. He's afraid he's going to lose the
rhythm, the dance, the whatever it is, the momentum, the grace. He
asks, "Aren't you. Having fun?" He is enjoying scaring Tiger with
his big red face, his heaving cheesecake bulk, his berserk icy blue
eyes.

Tiger says, "Sure, man. Medium fun." At last he smiles.
Wonderful even teeth, in lavender gums. Even the ghetto kids get
orthodontia now.

"Let's keep our bargain. Play to twenty-one. Like we said.
Eighteen up, right?"

"Right." Neither player has called a foul.

"Go. Your ball, Tiger." The pain in Harry's back is spreading,
like clumsy wings. The young black man whips around him for a quick
under-the-basket layup. Harry takes the ball out and
stops short a step inside the half-court line and, unguarded,
lets fly an old-fashioned two-handed set shot. He knows
as it leaves his hands it will drop; a groove in the shape of the
day guides it down.

"Man," Tiger says admiringly, "that is pure horseshit," and he
tries to imitate it with a long one-hander that rockets
straight back off the rim, its arc is too low. Rabbit grabs the
rebound but then can't move with it, his body weighs a ton, his
feet have lost their connection to his head. Tiger knifes in
between him and the basket, leans right in his face with a violet
snarl, then eases back a little, so Rabbit feels a gap, a moment's
slackness in the other in which to turn the corner; he takes one
slam of a dribble, carrying his foe on his side like a bumping sack
of coal, and leaps up for the peeper. The hoop fills his circle of
vision, it descends to kiss his lips, he can't miss.

Up he goes, way up toward the torn clouds. His torso is ripped
by a terrific pain, elbow to elbow. He bursts from within; he feels
something immense persistently fumble at him, and falls unconscions
to the dirt. Tiger catches the ball on its fall through the basket
and feels a body bump against him as if in purposeful foul. Then he
sees the big old white man, looking choked and kind of sleepy in
the face, collapse soundlessly, like a rag doll being dropped.
Tiger stands amazed above the fallen body - the plaid Bermuda
shorts, the brand-new walking Nikes, the blue golf shirt with
a logo of intertwined V's. Adhesive dust of fine clay clings to one
cheek of the unconscious flushed face like a shadow, like half of a
clown's mask of paint. Shocked numb, the boy repeats, "Pure
horseshit."

The impulse to run ripples through him, draining his head of
practical thoughts. He doesn't want to get mixed up with nobody.
From the end of the bench he retrieves the knapsack, the kind very
small Boy Scouts might use on a one-night camping trip, and,
holding it and the basketball close to his chest, walks
deliberately away. In the middle of the block, he begins to run,
under the high excited sky. An airplane goes over, lowering on a
slow diagonal.

Seen from above, his limbs splayed and bent, Harry is as alone
on the court as the sun in the sky, in its arena of clouds. Time
passes. Then the social net twitches; someone who in the houses
bordering the lonely recreation field has been watching through a
curtained window calls 911. Minutes later, several of the elderly
poor battened down against danger in their partitioned little
rooms, with only television for a friend, mistake the approaching
sirens for a hurricane alert, and believe that the storm has veered
back from South Carolina toward them.

"The infarction looks to be transmural," Dr. Ohnan tells Janice,
and clarifies: "Right through the gosh-darn wall." He tries
to show her with the skin and flesh of his fist the difference
between this and a sub-endocardial infarction that you can
live with. "Ma'am, the whole left ventricle is shot," he says. "My
guess is there was a complete restenosis since this April's
procedure up north." His big face, with its sunburnt hook nose and
jutting Australian jaw, assaults and confuses Janice in her
sleeplessness and grief. All this activity of the doctor's hands,
as if he's trying to turn Harry inside out for her, now that it's
too late. "Too late for a bypass now," Dr. Olman almost snorts, and
with an effort tames his voice into its acquired Southern softness.
"Even if by a miracle, ma'am, he were to pull through this present
trauma, where you and I have healthy flexible muscle he'd just have
a wad of scar tissue. You can replace arteries and valves but
there's no substitute yet for live heart muscle." He exudes
controlled anger, like a golfer who has missed three short putts in
a row. He is so young, Janice groggily thinks, he blames people for
dying. He thinks they do it to make his job more difficult.

After last evening's visit from the Penn Park police (how young
they seemed, too, how scared to be bringing their ugly news; the
Deleon hospital had called them finally because neither the number
of the condo phone nor the number they got for his driver'slicense
address from Information would answer, she had been out showing a
young couple some properties, one a split-level in Brewer
Heights and the other an old sandstone farmhouse over toward
Oriole; the police came into her driveway the minute she got home,
their twirling blue light licking the limestone walls so all the
neighbors must have wondered) and then telephoning to reach Mim,
who wasn't answering her phone either, and to get seats for herself
and Nelson on some kind of night flight to Florida, with Eastern
still mostly out on strike and everything going in or out of
Atlanta cancelled or delayed because of the hurricane, and then the
drive to South Philly and the airport, the miles of Schuylkill
Expressway under repair, and among all the confusing barrels with
reflective tape Nelson's taking a turn that wound them up in the
dead middle of the city right there by Independence Hall - it
seemed to happen in a minute - and then the hours of waiting
with nothing to do but soothe Nelson and read newspapers people had
abandoned on the plastic chairs and remember Harry all the ways he
was from the day she first saw him in the high-school
corridors and at the basketball games, out there on the court so
glorious and blond, like a boy made of marble, and then the empty
condo, so tidy except for the stacks of old newspapers he would
never throw out and the junk-food crumbs in the wicker easy
chair, but no traces of another woman in the bedroom, just that
book she got him for last Christmas with the sailing ship on the
jacket, and Nelson right beside her overreacting to everything so
she almost wished he had let her come alone - after a while
the mother in you dies just like heart muscle she supposes -
and a few hours of ragged sleep that ended too early when the boys
began to mow the greens and the men began to play, with Nelson
actually complaining at breakfast that there weren't any Frosted
Flakes, just these bran cereals that taste like horse chow, after
all this Janice felt much like her husband did emerging from his
long drive on Labor Day weekend, as if her body had been pounded
all over with sandbags. In the hall, the newspaper was delivered to
the door on this as on every other day: