Rabbit gets into the Celica. Take a Ride in the Great Indoors: one of the new slogans they'd been trying to push. You can have too many slogans, they begin to cancel out. The engine starts up; reverse gear carries him smoothly13 backwards14. 1 Love When You Set Me Free, Toyota. The digital clock says 10:07. Traffic on Penn Boulevard is starting to thin, the diners and gas stations are beginning to darken. He turns right at the blinking red light and then right again at the Brewer15 bypass along the Running Horse River. The road lifts above the trees at a point near the elephant?gray gas tanks and the bypassed old city shows a certain grandeur17. Its twentystory courthouse built in the beginning of the Depression is still the tallest building, the concrete eagles with flared19 wings at each corner lit by spotlights20, and the sweeping21 shadow of Mt. Judge, crowned by the star?spatter of the Pinnacle22 Hotel, hangs behind everything like an unmoving tidal wave. The streetlamps show Brewer's brick tint5 like matches cupped in ruddy hands. Then, quite quickly, the city and all it holds are snatched from view. Groves23 of weed trees half?hide the empty factories along the river, and one might be anywhere in the United States on a four?lane divided highway.
He and Janice have done this Southward drive so often he knows the options: he can get off at 222 and proceed directly but pokily toward Lancaster through a string of stoplight?ridden Brewer suburbs, or he can stay on 422 a few miles to 176 and head directly south and then cut west to Lancaster and York. The first time he tried this trip, thirty years ago last spring come to think of it, he made the mistake of heading south too soon, toward Wilmington and a vision ofbarefoot du Pont women. But the East slants24 west, and the trick is to bear west until 83, which didn't exist in those days, and then drive south right into the maw of that two?headed monster, Baltimore?Washington. Monstrous26, she said. Well, in a way, you could say, being alive is monstrous. Those crazy molecules27. All by themselves? Never.
He turns on the radio, searching among the jabber28 of rock music and talk shows for the sweet old tunes30, the tunes he grew up on. It used to be easier to search with the old dial you twisted, instead of these jumpy digitized scan buttons: you could feel your way. The scan comes suddenly upon the silky voices of Dinah Shore and Buddy31 Clark entwined in the duet of "Baby, It's Cold Outside." Thrilling, it turns his spine32 to ice water, when, after all that melodious33 banter34 it's hard to understand every word of, they halt, and harmonize on the chorus line. Coooold, out, side. Then this same station of oldies, fading under the underpasses, crackling when the road curves too close to power lines, offers up a hit he's totally forgotten, how could he have? ? the high?school dances, the dolled?up couples shuffling35 to the languid waltz beat, the paper streamers drooping36 from the basketball nets, the rusty37 heater warmth of the dash?lit interior of Pop's Plymouth, the living warm furtive38 scent39, like the flavor of a food so strong you must choke it down at first, rising from between Mary Ann's thighs40. Vaya con18 Dios, my darling. The damp triangle of underpants, the garter belts girls wore then. The dewy smooth freshness of their bodies, all of them, sweatily wheeling beneath the crépe paper, the colored lights. Vaya con Dios, my love. Oh my. It hurts. The emotion packed into these phrases buried in some d j.'s dusty racks of 78s like the cotton wadding in bullets, like those seeds that come to life after a thousand years in some pyramid. Though the stars recycle themselves and remake all the heavy atoms Creation needs, Harry41 will never be that person again, that boy with that girl, his fingertips grazing the soft insides of her thighs, a few atoms rubbing off; a few molecules.
Then, "Mule42 Train," by Frankie Laine, not one of the great Laines but great enough, and "It's Magic," by Doris Day. Those pauses back then: It's ma? gic. They knew how to hurt you, back then when there were two eight?team baseball leagues and you could remember all the players. People then were not exactly softer, they were harder in fact, but they were easier to hurt, though in fewer places.
He has to leave 176 for 23 through Amish country, it's the one really local stretch of road, but there shouldn't be any buggies out this late to slow him down. Rabbit wants to see once more a place in Morgantown, a hardware store with two pumps outside, where a thickset farmer in two shirts and hairy nostrils43 had advised him to know where he was going before he went there. Well, now he does. He has learned the road and figured out the destination. But what had been a country hardware store was now a slick little realestate office. Where the gas pumps had been, fresh black asphalt showed under the moonlight the stark44 yellow stripes of diagonal parking spaces.
No, it isn't moonlight, he sees; it is the sulfurous illumination that afflicts45 busy paved places all night. Though the hour is near eleven, a traffic of giant trucks heaves and snorts and groans46 through the sleepy stone town; the realtor's big window is full of Polaroid snapshots of property for sale, and Route 23, once a narrow road on the ridge47 between two farm valleys as dark at night as manure49, now blazes with the signs that are everywhere. PIZZA HUT. BURGER KING. Rent a Movie. Turkey Hill MINIt MARKET. Quilt World. Shady Maple50 SMORGASBORD. Village Herb Shop. Country Knives. Real estate makes him think of Janice and his heart dips at the picture of her waiting with Nelson and Pru for him to show up over at the Springers' and panicking by now, probably imagining he's had a car accident, and coming back with her key to the deserted51 house, all fluttery and hotbreathed the way she gets. Maybe he should have left a note like she did him that time. Harry dear?1 must go off a few days to think. But she said never forgive him, shoot you both, she upped the stakes, let her stew52 in her own juice, thinks she's so smart suddenly, going back to school. Nelson the same way. Damned if they're going to get him sitting in on some family?therapy session run by his own son whose big redheaded wife he's boffed. Only really good thing he's done all year, as he looks back on it. Damned if he'll face the kid, give him the satisfaction, all white in the gills from this new grievance53. Rabbit doesn't want to get counselled.
The eleven?o'clock news comes on the radio. Jim Bakker, on trial in Charlotte, North Carolina, on twenty?four counts of fraud in connection with his scandal?ridden PTL television ministry54, collapsed55 today in court and is being held for up to sixty days for psychiatric evaluation56 at the Federal Correctional Institute. Dr. Basil Jackson, a psychiatrist57 who has been treating Bakker for nine months, said that the once?charismatic evangelist has been hallucinating: leaving the courtroom Wednesday after former PTL executive Steve Nelson collapsed on the witness stand, Bakker saw the people outside as animals intent upon attacking and injuring him. Bakker's wife, Tammy, said from her luxurious58 home in Orlando, Florida, that Bakker over the phone had seemed to be experiencing a terrible emotional trauma59 and that she prayed with him and they agreed that they would trust in the Lord. In Los Angeles, Jessica Hahn, the former PTL secretary whose sexual encounter with Bakker in 1980 led to his downfall, told reporters, quote, I'm not a doctor but I do know about Jim Bakker. I believe Jim Bakker is a master manipulator. I think this is a sympathy stunt60 just like it is every time Tammy gets on TV and starts crying and saying how abused they are, end quote. In Washington, the Energy Department is searching for mysteriously missing amounts of tritium, the heavy?hydrogen isotope61 necessary to the making of hydrogen bombs. Also in Washington, Science magazine reports that the new bomb detector62, called a TNA for thermal63 neutron64 analysis, installed today at JFK Airport in New York City, is set to detect two point five pounds of plastic explosives and would not have detected the bomb, thought to contain only one pound of Semtex explosive, which brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. In Toronto, movie superstar Marlon Brando told reporters that he has made his last movie. "It's horrible," he said of the motion picture, entitled The Freshman65. "It's going to be a flop66, but after this, I'm retiring. You can't imagine how happy I am." In Bonn, West Germany, Chancellor67 Helmut Kohl telephoned the new Polish Prime Minister, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, in a plea for better relations between their two countries. It was fifty years ago tomorrow, indeed almost right to this minute when allowances are made for time zones, that Germany under Adolf Hitler invaded Poland, precipitating68 World War II, in which an estimated fifty million persons were to perish. Like, wow! In sports, the Phillies are losing in San Diego and Pittsburgh is idle. As to the weather, it could be better, and it could be worse. Mezzo, mezzo. I didn't say messy, but look out for thundershowers, you Lancaster County night owls69. Oh yes, Brando also called his new and terminal movie a "stinker." No sweat, for a fellow who began his career in a torn undershirt.
Rabbit smiles in the whispering, onrushing cave of the car; this guy must think nobody is listening, gagging it up like this. Lonely in those radio studios, surrounded by paper coffee cups and perforated acoustic70 tiles. Hard to know the effect you're making. Hard to believe God is always listening, never gets bored. The dashboard lights of the Celica glow beneath his line of vision like the lights of a city about to be bombed.
The superhighway crosses the Susquehanna and at York catches 83. As Harry drives south, the station fades behind him, toward the end of Louis Prima's "Just a Gigolo," that fantastic chorus where the chorus keeps chanting "Just a gigolo" in a kind of affectionate mockery of that wheezy wonderful voice: it makes your scalp prickle with joy. Rabbit fumbles71 with the scan button but can't find another oldies station, just talk shows, drunks calling in, the host sounding punchy himself, his mouth running on automatic pilot, abortion72, nuclear waste, unemployment among young black males, CIA complicity in the AIDS epidemic73, Boesky, Milken, Bush and North, Nonega, you can't tell me thatRabbit switches the radio off, hating the sound of the human voice. Vermin. We are noisy vermin, crowding even the air. Better the murmur74 of the tires, the green road signs looming75 in the lights and parabolically enlarging and then whisked out of sight like magicians' handkerchieves. It's getting close to midnight, but before he stops he wants to be out of the state. Even that botched time ages ago he got as far as West Virginia. To get out of Pennsylvania you have to climb a nameless mountain, beyond Hungerford. Signs and lights diminish. The lonely highway climbs. High lakes gleam under what is, now, in a gap between clouds, true moonlight. He descends76 into Maryland. There is a different feeling: groomed77 center strips, advertisements for Park and Ride for commuters. Civilization. Out of the sticks. His eyelids78 feel sandy, his heart fluttery and sated. He pulls off 83 into a Best Western well north of Baltimore, pleased to think that nobody in the world, nobody but the stocky indifferent Asian?American desk clerk, knows his location. Where oh where is the missing tritium?
He likes motel rooms ? the long clammy slot of hired space, the two double beds, the television set with its invitation to buy an R?rated movie, the shag carpet, the framed prints of big birds, the sanitized towels, the hush79 of anonymity80, the closeted echo of old sex. He sleeps well, as if he has slipped off his body with its troubles and left it lying on the other double bed. In his dream he is back at the lot, with a young woman who seems to be in charge. She wears a white cap and dangly81 earrings82 but when he leans close and tries to explain himself to her, to convey his indispensable usefulness to the enterprise, contrary to what she may have heard from Janice, she makes a wry83 mouth and her face melts under his eyes in a kind of visual scream.
For breakfast, he succumbs84 to the temptation and has two fried eggs, though the yolks are terrible for your arteries85, with bacon on the side. Rabbit likes the very American moment of packing up his car in sleepy unspeaking companionship with the other motel guests, elderly couples, cranky families, as they drift from the breakfast room across the parking lot with its long milky86 morning shadows. On the road again, with the radio again. The same news as the night before, amplified87 by the final baseball scores (Phils lost, five to one) and the news from Asia, where it is already afternoon for the busy Japanese currency speculators, the restive88 Chinese students, the doll?like Filipino hookers, the unhappily victorious90 Vietnamese, the up?and?coming although riotous91 Koreans, the tottering92 Burmese socialists93, the warring Cambodian factions94 including the mindless Khmer Rouge95 minions96 of the most atrocious national leader since Hitler and Stalin, the infamous97 Pol Pot. Like, wow! Wake up, songbirds! The d .j., not last night's but just as crazy and alone with himself, plays some rockabilly song Rabbit likes, about getting down, "make a little love, get down tonight." It occurs to Harry he didn't even jerk off last night, though motel rooms usually excite him. Boy, is he showing his age.
As Baltimore nears, the condominiums multiply, thicken, entire hills and valleys loaded with them, pastel gingerbread staircases containing invisible people. 83 ends seamlessly at 695 and with all the commuters in their neckties he drones around the Beltway, jostling for his space in the world as if he still deserves it. Then he takes up 95, which will be his home all the way to Florida. There are two ways around Washington, he and Janice have tried them both, the boringly expert travellers down in the condo like the Silbersteins say 495 passing to the north and west is actually quicker, but he likes the little glimpse of the monuments you get by staying east on 95 and crossing the Potomac on a broad bridge into Alexandria. The frozen far heart, ice?cream white, of the grand old republic.
After all that megalopolis98, Virginia feels bucolically99 vacant. The fields look bigger than those in Pennsylvania, the hills gentler and more open, with meadows and horses, a gracious mist in the air, once in a while a pillared manse on a pale?green rise like something embroidered100 on a sampler by a slaveowner's spinster daughter. A military tinge101: Fort Belvoir Engineer Proving Ground, Quantico Marine102 Corps103 Base. Harry thinks of his Army time and it comes back as a lyric104 tan, a translucent105 shimmer106 of aligned107 faceless men, the curious peace of having no decisions to make, of being told entirely108 what to do. War is a relief in many ways. Without the Cold War, what's the point of being an American? Still, we held them off. We creamed those oafs. Hitler, Stalin, and now Gorby. History will remember that, if not thank us. There is very little thanks in history. Dog eat dog. It becomes hard now to find stations on the radio that are not country music or religion. "Pray for difficult marriages," one preacher says, his grainy molasses?brown voice digging so deep into himself you can picture his shut eyes, the sweat on his temples, "pray for Christian109 husbands under stress, for Christian wives worried about their men; pray for all hostages, for prisoners in prison, for victims of the ghetto110, for all those with AIDS." Rabbit switches the station and resolves to call home when he stops for lunch.
How many rivers there are! After the Potomac, the Accotink, the Pohick, the Occoquan, the Rappahannock, the Pamunkey, the Ni, the Po, the Matta, the South Anna. The bridges thus marked are mere111 moments of the highway. Unseen towns are named: Massaponax, Ladysmith, Cedar112 Forks. North of Richmond, shacks113 in a thickening scatter114 mark the beginning of the true South, of rural blacks. Harry pulls into a Howard Johnson's on the Richmond outskirts115. His ears ring, the ankle of his accelerator foot aches, his neck is stiff; the heat has gone up several notches116 since the motel parking lot this morning. Inside the air?conditioned restaurant, salesmen with briefcases117 are at all the pay phones. He eats too much lunch, consuming the last French fry that came with his tasteless hamburger, mopping up salt with it in his fingers like his grandson Roy does, and then ordering apple pie to see if it's any different in Virginia. It's sweeter and gluier; it lacks that cinnamon they sprinkle on in Pennsylvania. A phone is available after he pays the check and with three dollars' worth of quarters ready he dials not the gray limestone118 house on Franklin Drive but the house where he used to live, the Springer house in Mt. Judge.
A little girl answers. The operator breaks in and Rabbit inserts three n?linutes' worth of quarters. He says, "Hi, Judy. It's Grandpa."
"Hi, Grandpa," she says, very calmly. Perhaps nothing of last night's revelation has filtered down to her yet. Or perhaps children this young are so innocent of what adulthood119 involves that nothing surprises them.
"How's it going?" he asks.
"O.K."
"You looking forward to school starting next week?"
"Kind of. Summer gets kind of boring."
"How's Roy? Is he bored by summer too?"
"He's so stupid he doesn't know what boring is. He's been put down for his nap now but is still bawling120. Mommy's flipping121 out." Since Harry seems stuck for a response, she volunteers, "Daddy's not here, he's over at the lot."
"That's O.K., I'd just as soon talk to your mommy actually. Could you get her for me? Judy," he impulsively122 adds, before the child can leave the phone.
"Yeah?"
"You study hard, now. Don't you worry about those kids who think they're so much. You're a very lovely girl and everything will come to you if you wait. Don't force it. Don't force growing up. Everything will be fine."
This is too much to try to cram123 into her. She is only nine. Ten more years before she can go west like Mim and break out. "I know," Judy says, with a sigh, and perhaps she does. After a rattle124 of the receiver on wood and voices in the background and footsteps hastily enlarging, Pru arrives at the telephone, breathless.
"Harry! "
"Hi there, Teresa. How's it going?" This seductive nonchalant tone, all wrong, but it just came out.
"Not so good," she says. "Where on earth are you?"
"Far away, where everybody wants me. Hey. Whajou tell for?"
"Oh Harry, I had to." She starts to cry. "I couldn't let Nelson not know, he's trying to be so straight. It's pathetic. He's been confessing all this dreadful stuff to me, I can't tell you or anybody the half of it, and at night we pray together, pray aloud kneeling by the bed, he's just so desperate to lick the drugs and be a decent father and husband, just be normal."
"He is, huh? Well, great. Still, you didn't need to turn us in, it only happened once, and there wasn't any follow?up, in fact I thought you'd totally forgotten about it."
"How could you think I'd forgotten? You must think I'm a real slut."
"Well, no, but, you know, you've been having a lot on your mind. For me, it was almost like I'd dreamed it." He means this as a compliment.
But Pru's voice hardens. "Well, it meant a little more to me than that." Women: you never know which side they want to dance on. "It was a terrible betrayal of my husband," she pronounces solemnly.
"Well," Rabbit says, "he hasn't been all that great a husband, as far as I can see. Hey, is Judy listening to all this?"
"I'm on the upstairs phone. I asked her to hang up downstairs."
"And did she? Judy!" Harry shouts. "I see you there!"
There is a fumbling125 soft rattle and a new clarity in the connection. Pru says, "Shit."
Rabbit reassures126 her. "I forget exactly what we said but I doubt if she understood much."
"She understands more than she lets on. Girls do."
"Well, anyway," he says. "Did he confess to affairs with men as well as women? Nelson."
"I can't possibly answer that question," she says, in a flat dry voice forever closed to him. Another woman's voice, warmer, courteous127, faintly lazy, probably black, breaks in, saying, "Sir, yore three minutes are u?up. Please deposit a dollar ten saints if you wish continuation."
"Maybe I'm done," he says, to both women.
Pru shouts, over their imperilled connection, "Harry, where are you?"
"On the road!" he shouts back. He still has a little stack of change in front of him and inserts four quarters and a dime128. As they gong away, he sings a snatch of a song he just heard on the radio, Willie Nelson's signature: "On the road again. . ."
This makes Pru sob129; it's as bad as talking to Janice. "Oh don't," she cries. "Don't tease us all, we can't help it we're all tied down back here."
Pity touches him, with the memory of her beauty naked like blossoms that night in the narrow musty room as the rain intensified130. She is stuck back there, she is saying, with the living. "I'm tied down too," he tells her. "I'm tied to my carcass."
"What shall I tell Janice?"
"Tell her I'm on the way to the condo. Tell her she can come join me whenever she wants. I just didn't like the squeeze you all put on me last night. I get claustrophobic in my old age."
"I never should have slept with you, it's just at the time . . ."
"It was," he says. "It was a great idea at the time. Tell me how'd you think I did, looking back on it? For an old guy."
She hesitates, then says, "That's it, that's the trouble. I don't see you as an old guy, Harry. I never did."
O.K., he has won this from her. This woman?to?man voice. Who could ask for anything more? Let her go. He says, "Don't you fret131, Pru. You're a great dish. Tell Nelson to loosen up. Just because he got over crack he doesn't have to turn into Billy Graham." Or Jim Bakker. Harry hangs up, and the telephone startles him by returning, with a pang132 and clatter133, the dime and four quarters. That operator with the Southern voice must have been listening and taken a shine to him.
As the afternoon wears on toward Fayetteville, North Carolina, where there is a Comfort Inn he and Janice have stayed at in years past, he hears an amazing thing on the car radio. They interrupt a string of Forties swing classics to announce that Bartlett Giamatti, Commissioner134 of Baseball and former president of Yale University, died of a heart attack on the island of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, late this afternoon. Pete Rose strikes back, Rabbit thinks. Professor Giamatti, who was only fifty?one years of age, retired135 after lunch in his summer home in Edgartown, and at three o'clock was found by his wife and son in full cardiac arrest. Only fifty?one, Rabbit thinks. Police took Giamatti to the Martha's Vineyard Hospital where he was worked upon for an hour and a half, the emergency team several times succeeded in restoring the electric mechanism136 of the heartbeat, but Giamatti was at last pronounced dead. That little electric twitch137: without it we're so much rotting meat. One of the first things he ought to do in Florida is make an appointment with Dr. Morris, to keep himself out of the hands of that hawk138?faced Australian, Dr. Olman. Dying to sink hú knife into me. Giamatti had been an English instructor139 at Yale, the news says, and became the youngest president in the history of the university, and in eleven years reversed that institution's trend into red ink and academic mediocrity. As president of the National League, he had aroused some players' ire by tampering140 with the strike zone and the balk141 rule. As commissioner, his brief tenure142 was dominated by the painful Rose affair, whose settlement a week ago left Giamatti in an apparently143 strong position. He was a heavy man and a heavy smoker144. At least I'm no smoker. And now, a tune29 our listeners never get tired of requesting, "In the Mood."
Fayetteville used to be a hot town, with all the soldiers from Fort Bragg, Rabbit remembers from a segment of 60 Minutes he once watched. The downtown had some blocks of triple?X movies and sleazy hotels the city fathers finally in despair tore down entirely and made into a park. After a dinner of deep?fried shrimp145, with onion rings and white bread fried on one side, a Southern delicacy146 he guesses, at the Comfort Inn ? one of those restaurants with a salad bar big as a little cafeteria, so you wonder as you sit there waiting for the waitress if you're missing the boat ? Harry cruises in the slate147?gray Celica, his private Batmobile, toward the center of wicked Fayetteville. He can find for a hot spot only a shadowy broad street of blacks loitering in doorways148 here and there, waiting for some message, some event from beyond. No hookers in hotpants or spandex exercise tights, just a big red?bearded white man in studded black leather who keeps revving149 his motorcycle, twisting the throttle150 and producing a tremendous noise. The blacks don't blink. They keep waiting. Even at evening the shadowy air is hot, they move through it languidly like sick fish, their hands flapping at the wrists in that angled black way.
Back in his long room with its watery151 scent of cement from underneath152 the rug, with walls painted altogether yellow, moldings and pipes and air?conditioning vents153 and light?switch plates rollered and sprayed yellow, Rabbit thinks of adding $5.50 to his bill to watch something called Horny Housewives but instead watches, free, bits of Perfect Strangers (it makes him uneasy, two guys living together, even if one of them is a comical Russian) and pre?season football between the Seahawks and 49ers. The trouble with these softcore porn movies on hotel circuits, in case some four?year?old with lawyers for parents happens to hit the right buttons they show tits and ass16 and even some pubic hair but no real cunt and no pricks154, no pricks hard or soft at all. It's very frustrating155. It turns out pricks are what we care about, you have to see them. Maybe we're all queer, and all his life he's been in love with Ronnie Harrison. Nice, today, the way Pru burst out with that Shit again and then Don't tease. That level woman?to?man voice, as if he had his arms about her, her voice relaxing into their basic relation, cock to cunt, doing Nelson in. In bed at last in the dark he jerks off, picturing himself with a pair of coffee?colored hookers from old Fayetteville, to show himself he's still alive.
The morning radio news is dull. Giamatti's death, warmed over. Baseball mourns. Economy shows moderate growth. Bombardments in Beirut between Christians156 and Muslims worse than ever. Ex?HUD aide says files were shredded157. Supreme158 Court ruling against organized prayer before football games is rousing indignation all over the Southland. In Montgomery, Mayor Emory Folmar marched to the fifty?yard line and led a prayer there. His remarks over the public?address system linked football and prayer as American tradition. In Sylacauga, Alabama, local ministers rose in the bleachers and led the crowd of three thousand in the Lord's Prayer. In Pensacola, Florida, preachers equipped with bullhorns led spectactors in prayer. Fanatics159, Rabbit tells himself. Southerners are as scary as the Amish.
From here on down to the Florida line Route 95 is like a long green tunnel between tall pines. Little shacks peek160 through. A sign offers Pecan Rolls 3 for $ 2 .00. Bigger signs in Hispanic colors, orange and yellow on black, lime green, splashy and loud, miles and miles of them, begin to advertise something called South of the Border. Bear Up a Leetle Longer. You Never Sausage a Place! With a big basketball curving right off the billboard161, Have a Ball. When you finally get there, after all these miles of pine tunnel, it's a junky amusement park just across the South Carolina border: a village of souvenir shops, a kind of a space needle wearing a sombrero. Tacos, tacky. South Carolina is a wild state. The first to secede162. The pines get taller, with a tragic163 feeling. FIREWORKS are offered everywhere for sale. The land gets hillier. Trucks loaded with great tree trunks rumble164 unstoppably by on the downslope and labor165 to nearly a standstill on the up. Rabbit is nervously166 aware now of his Pennsylvania plates being Northern. Swerve167 out of line a bit and they'll throw him in the Pee Dee River. The Lynches River. The Pocatoligo River. Animals on this highway are hit so hard they don't squash, they explode, impossible to know what they were. Possums. Porcupines168. Some dear old Southern lady's darling pet pussycat. Reduced to fur stains amid the crescent fragments of exploded truck tires. Just think, he lay down for lunch and that was it.
Janice must have got the message from Pru, she may be already at the condo waiting, flying down from Philly and renting a car at the airport, better enjoy his freedom while he has it. He has come upon a black gospel station, an elastic169 fat voice shouting, "He'll be there, but you got to call him names." Endlessly repeated, with unexpected rhythmic170 variations. "Roll that stone away, do you know the story?" A commercial interrupts at last and, would you believe, it's for Toyotas. Those Japs don't miss a trick, you have to hand it to them. Selling right in the slave quarters. Your pruraristic society. Harry's neck hurts from holding his head in one position so long. He's beginning to feel bloated on radio, on travel. God's country. He could have made it smaller and still made the same point.
He'll be there. Funny, about Harry and religion. When God hadn't a friend in the world, back there in the Sixties, he couldn't let go of Him, and now when the preachers are all praying through bullhorns he can't get it up for Him. He is like a friend you've had so long you've forgotten what you liked about Him. You'd think after that heart scare, but in a way the closer you get the less you think about it, like you're in His hand already. Like you're out on the court instead of on the bench swallowing down butterflies and trying to remember the plays.
Perry Como comes on and sings "Because." Rabbit's scalp prickles at the end, the skin of his eyes stings. Because ? you ? are miiiine! Como the best, probably: Crosby had something sly?Irish about him, clowning around with Lamour and Hope, and Sinatra ? if there's one way in which Rabbit Angstrom has been out of step with mankind, it's Sinatra. He doesn't like his singing. He didn't like it when bobbysoxers were jumping out of their underpants for this skinny hollow?cheeked guy up on the stage at the Paramount171, and he didn't like it when he mellowed172 into this Las Vegas fat cat making all these moony albums you're supposed to screw to all across the nation: oceans of jism. White with foam174. His singing has always sounded flat to Rabbit, like he's grinding it out. Now, to Mim, Sinatra is a god, but that's more a matter of lifestyle, turning night into day and pally with gangsters177 and Presidents and that square gangster176 way of carrying your shoulders (Charlie Stavros has it) and Chairman of the Board and Sammy Davis, Jr., and Dean Martin before they dried out finally, if in fact they did, both men have terrible health problems he read somewhere, in one of those ridiculous scandal sheets Janice brings home from the Minit Market. Sometimes Harry envies Mim the glamorous178 dangerous life he guesses she's lived, he's glad for her, she always had that edge, wanting speed even if it killed her, even if it flipped179 her off the handlebars of his old Elgin. But the fast lane too gets to be a rut. He doesn't regret the life he led, though Brewer isn't New York New York or Chicago my kind of town the way Sinatra grinds it out. What he enjoyed most, it turns out in retrospect180, and he didn't know it at the time, was standing181 around in the showroom, behind the dusty big window with the banners, bouncing on the balls of his feet to keep up his leg muscles, waiting for a customer, shooting the bull with Charlie or whoever, earning his paycheck, filling his slot in the big picture, doing his bit, getting a little recognition. That's all we want from each other, recognition. Your assigned place in the rat race. In the Army, too, you had it: your number, your bunk182, your assigned duties, your place in line, your pass for Saturday night, four beers and fuck a whore in a ranch183 house. Honey, you didn't pay to be no two?timer. There's more to being a human being than having your own way. Fact is, it has come to Rabbit this late in life, you don't have a way apart from what other people tell you. Your mother first, and poor Pop, then the Lutheran minister, that tough old heinie Fritz Kruppenbach, you had to respect him though, he said what he believed, and then all those schoolteachers, Marty Tothero and the rest, trying to give you an angle to work from, and now all these talk?show hosts. Your life derives184, and has to give. Maybe if your mother was in the fast lane like Annabelle's you are naturally leery of the opposite sex. We haven186't set these kids terrific examples.
The pine trees have gaps now. Marshy187 stretches open the sky up, there are cabins on stilts188, trees with shaggy balls on them, colored wash hanging on lines. Homely189 hand?lettered signs. Dad's Real Southern Cookin'. Bi?Lo. A long bridge over Lake Marion, this enormous body ofwater in the middle of nowhere. Highways branch off to the capital, Columbia, where he's never been, though he and Janice did once detour190 over to Charleston and back on Route 17. Another time, they diverted to Savannah and spent the night in a made?over plantation191 house with high domed192 ceilings and louvers on the windows. They did do some fun things, he and Jan. The thing about a wife, though, and he supposes a husband for that matter, is that almost anybody would do, inside broad limits. Yet you're supposed to adore them till death do you part. Till the end of time. Ashepoo River. Wasn't that a comic strip, years ago?
He gets off the highway at a vast rest stop, an oasis193 in this wilderness194 ? gas pumps, a restaurant, a little department store selling groceries, beer, fireworks, suntan lotion195. At the counter a couple of young black men, glittery black in the heat, arms bare up to the shoulder, a mean little Malcolm X goatee on one of them. They have a menace down here, their color shouts, they are a race, they are everywhere. But the elderly white waitress has no trouble with these two black boys. The three chat and smile in the same dragged accent, making a little breeze with their mouths. Nice to see it. For this, the Civil War.
To test if he can still use his own voice, Rabbit asks the fat white man one empty stool away from him at the counter, a man who has made for himself at the salad bar a mountain of lettuce196 and red beets197 and coleslaw and cottage cheese and kidney beans and chickpeas, "About how many more hours is it to the Florida line?" He lets his Pennsylvania accent drag a little extra, hoping to pass.
"Four," the man answers with a smile. "I just came from there. Where you headin' for in Florida?"
"Way the other end. Deleon. My wife and I have a condo there, I'm driving down alone, she'll be following later."
The man keeps smiling, smiling and chewing. "I know Deleon. Nice old town."
Rabbit has never noticed much that is old about it. "From our balcony we used to have a look at the sea but they built it up."
"Lot of building on the Gulf side now, the Atlantic side pretty well full. Began my day in Sarasota."
"Really? That's a long way to come."
"That's why I'm makin' such a pig of myself. Hadn't eaten more than a candy bar since five o'clock this morning. After a while you got to stop, you begin to see things."
"What sort of things?"
"This stretch I just came over, lot of patchy ground fog, it gets to you. just coffee gets to your stomach." This man has a truly nice way of smiling and chewing and talking all at once. His mouth is wide but lipless, like a Muppet's. He has set his truck driver's cap, with a bill and a mesh198 panel in the back, beside his plate; his good head of gray hair, slightly wavy199 like a rich man's, is permanently200 dented201 by the edge of the cap.
"You drivin' one of those big trucks? I don't know how you guys do it. How far you goin'?"
All the salad on the plate has vanished and the smile has broadened. "Boston."
"Boston! All that way?" Rabbit has never been to Boston, to him it is the end of the world, tucked up in under Maine. People living that far north are as fantastic to him as Eskimos.
"Today, tomorrow, whatever you call it, I expect to have this rig in Boston Sunday afternoon, twenty?four hours from now."
"But when do you sleep?"
"Oh, you pull over and get an hour here, an hour there."
"That's amazing."
"Been doin' it for fifteen years. I had retired, but came back to it. Couldn't stand it around the house. Nothin' on TV that was any good. How about you?"
"Me?" On the lam. A bad LAD. He realizes what the question means, and answers, "Retired, I guess."
"More power to ya, fella. I couldn't take it," the truck driver says. "Retirement202 taxed my brain." The elderly waitress so friendly with the two young blacks brings the hungry man an oval platter heavy with fried steak soaking in a pink mix of oil and blood, and three vegetables in little round side dishes, and a separate plate of golden?brown corn pone203.
Harry somewhat reluctantly ? he has made a friend ? pushes away from the counter. "Well, more power to you," he says.
And now this fat pale miracle man, who will be in Boston faster than a speeding bullet, who like Thomas Alva Edison only needs a catnap now and then, has his wide Muppet mouth too full to speak, and merely smiles and nods, and loses a snaky droplet204 of steak juice down the far side of his egg?shaped little chin. Nobody's perfect. We're only human. Look at Jim Bakker. Look at Bart Giamatti.
In his Celica Harry crosses the Tuglifinny River. The Salkehatchie. The Little Combahee. The Coosawatchie. The Turtle. Kickapoo, he thinks ? not Ashepoo. Kickapoo joy juice in Li'1 Abner. Between spates205 of black music that has that peculiar206 exciting new sound of boards being slapped on the floor, he hears commercials for the Upchurch Music Company ("an instrument that brings musical pleasure to generations to come") and a deodorizer called Tiny Cat. Why would a deodorizer be called Tiny Cat? He crosses the Savannah and leaves South Carolina and its fireworks at last. Because he is punchy from miles of miles, he turns off at the city exit and drives into the downtown and parks by a grand old courthouse and buys a hot pastrami sandwich at a little sandwich joint207 on the main street there. He sits eating it, trying not to have any of the juice spill out of the waxpaper and spot his pants, like that sickening driblet from the mouth of the guy back at the lunch place hours ago. This piece of Savannah, a block from the river, seems a set of outdoor rooms, walled in by row houses with high steps and curtains of dusty trees; a huge heat still rests on the day though the shadows are deepening, thickening on the soft old fa?ades, sadder and rosier208 than those in Brewer. A group of pigeons gathers around his bench, curious to see if he will spare any of the bun or Bar?B?Q potato chips. A young bum173 with long yellow hair like George Custer and that brown face you get from being homeless gives him a glittering wild eye from a bench behind a tree, in the next room as it were. A tall obelisk209 rises in commemoration of something, no doubt the glorious dead. Little chattering210 brown birds heave in and out of the trees as they try to decide whether the day is over. He better push on. He neatly211 packages his wastepaper and milk carton in the bag the sandwich came in and leaves it in a public trash basket, his gift to Savannah, the trace he will leave, like the cloud of finger?moisture on the edge of the bureau back home. The pigeons chuff and chortle off in indignant disappointment. The bum has silently come up behind him and asks him in no particular accent, the limp snarl212 of the drugged, if he has a cigarette. "Nope," Rabbit tells him. "Haven't smoked in thirty years." He remembers the moment when on a sudden resolve he canned a half?pack of Philip Moms, the nice old tobacco?brown pack, in somebody's open barrel in an alley48 in Mt. Judge. Left that trace too.
Rabbit moves toward his car with a racing213 heart, as the bum follows and mumbles214 behind him about spare change. He fiddles215 with the key and gets in and slams the door. The Celica, thank God, isn't too overheated after all its miles to start promptly216; George Custer, locked outside, blinks and turns, pretending not to notice. Harry drives cautiously through the outdoor rooms, around the tall monument, and gets lost on the way out of Savannah. He is caught in endless black neighborhoods, gently collapsing217 houses built of wood clapboard that last saw fresh paint in the days of Martin Luther King. They talk about assassination218 conspiracies219 but that was one that Harry could believe in. He can believe in it but he can't remember the name of the man they put in jail for it. A three?name name. Escaped once, but they caught him. James Earl something. So much for history. Panicking, he stops at a grocery store, the kind with a troughed wooden floor with shiny?headed nails that used to be in Mt. Judge when he was a boy, except that everybody in here is black; a lanky220 man the color of a dried bean pod, much amused, tells him how to get back to the superhighway, gesturing with long hands that flap loosely on his wrists.
Back on 95, Rabbit pushes through Georgia. As darkness comes on, it begins to rain, and with his old eyes, that can't sort out the lights too well at night any more, the rain is oppressive. He even turns off the radio, he feels so battered221 by pellets of experience. His body from being in one position so long feels as if somebody's been pounding it with sandbags. He better pull in. He finds a Ramada Inn beyond Brunswick. He eats a fried?catfish222 special that doesn't sit too well on top of the pastrami, especially the candied yams and the pecan pie; but why be in Georgia if you can't have pecan pie? The walk back to his room past the other motel doors, on cement sheltered by the continuous balcony overhead, is quietly blissful. In out of the rain. Sense enough. They can't catch me. But his snug223 moment of happiness reminds him of all those exposed unhappy loved ones back in Diamond County. Guilt224 gouges225 at his heart like a thumb in a semi?sensitive eye.
Halfway226 through The Golden Girls, it seems suddenly tedious, all that elderly sexiness, and the tough?mouthed old grandmother, people ought to know when to give up. He watches instead on the educational channel a Living Planet segment about life at the polar extremes. He's seen it before, but it's still surprising, how David Attenborough turns over those rocks in this most desolate227 place in Antarctica and there are lichens228 underneath, and all through the sunless abysmal229 winter these male penguins230 shuffling around in continuous blizzards231 with eggs on the tops of their webbed feet. Life, it's incredible, it's wearing the world out. A teno'clock news on the same channel tells the same old stuff he's been hearing on the radio all day. Poor Giamatti. A female baby panda born in the National Zoo in Washington. Reagan thought AIDS was as mild as measles232 until Rock Hudson died, reveals his former physician Brigadier General John Hutton. Another tattletale: Navy Commander David R. Wilson claims in this month's U.S. Naval233 Institute Proceedings234 magazine that the U.S.S. Vincennes was known among other ships in the Persian Gulf for her aggressive and imprudent actions for at least a month before the Vincennes gunned down an Iranian civil airliner235 containing over two hundred seventy men, women, and children. Poor devils, Iranians or not. Little children, women in shawls, end over end, hitting the dark hard water. New head of Japan in Washington, provisional government in Panama, mobs of East Germans in Hungary waiting to cross the border into the free world. Poor devils, they don't know the free world is wearing out.
Rabbit makes himself ready for bed, sleeping in the day's underwear, and tries to think about where he is, and who. This is the last night when he is nowhere. Tomorrow, life will find him again. Janice on the phone, the Golds next door. He feels less light than he thought he would, escaping Brewer. You are still you. The U.S. is still the U.S., held together by credit cards and Indian names. Harry becomes dead weight on the twin bed. Lost in the net of thread?lines on the map, he sleeps as in his mother's womb, another temporary haven.
Morning. The rain is just a memory of puddles236 on the sunstruck asphalt. Sunday. He goes for the French toast and link sausages, figuring tomorrow morning he'll be back to stale oat bran. Janice never cleans out the cupboards when they leave. Efficient, in a way, if you don't mind feeding ants and roaches. He keeps tasting maple syrup237 and eggs he didn't quite like. French toast is never as good as what Mom would cook up before sending him off to Sunday school: the flat baked golden triangles of bread, the syrup from the can shaped and painted like a log cabin, its spout238 the chimney. Putting his suitcase in the trunk, he is struck, not for the first time, by how the Celica's taillights are tipped, giving it, from the back, a slant25?eyed look.
Within an hour he crosses the St. Marys River and a highway sign says WELCOME TO FLORIDA and the radio commercials are for Blue Cross, denture fixatives, pulmonary clinics. The roadside becomes sandy and the traffic thickens, takes on glitter. Jacksonville suddenly looms239, an Oz of blue?green skyscrapers240, a city of dreams at the end of the pine?tree tunnel, gleaming glass boxes heaped around the tallest, the Baptist Hospital. You rise up onto bridges over the St. Johns River far below, and Jacksonville shines from a number of angles like a jewel being turned in your hand, and you pay a toll241, and must stay alert not to wind up heading toward Green Cove242 Springs or Tallahassee. Route 95 is now just one among many superhighways. The cars get wide and fat, the trucks carry rolls of fresh sod instead of skinned pine trunks. All around him, floating like misplaced boats, are big white campers and vans, Winnebagos and Starcrafts, Pathfinders and Dolphins, homes on wheels, the husband at the helm, his elbow out the window, the wife at home behind him, making the bed. From all of the states these caravans243 come to Florida, wearing even Colorado's green mountain profile and Maine's gesturing red lobster244. He notices a new kind of Florida license245 plate, a kind of misty246 tricolor memorial to the Challenger, among the many still with the green Florida?shaped stain in the middle like something spilled on a necktie. And wasn't that the disgrace of the decade, sending that poor New Hampshire schoolteacher and that frizzy?haired Jewish girl, not to mention the men, one of them black and another Oriental, all like some Hollywood cross?section of America, up to be blown into bits on television a minute later? Now the probers think they were probably conscious, falling toward the water, conscious for two or three minutes. Harry descends deeper into Florida, glad to be back among the palms and white roofs and tropical thinness, the clouds blue on gray on white on blue, as if the great skymaker is working here with lighter247 materials.
You take 95 parallel to the East Coast to 4, and then skim diagonally over through all that Disney World that poor little Judy wanted to go to, next time they come they must schedule it in. Where some of the self?appointed travel experts at the condo (he always did think Ed Silberstein a know?it?all, even before his son tried to put the make on Pru) advise staying on 4 all the way to 75 and saving in minutes what you lose in miles, or at least taking 17 to Port Charlotte, he likes to move south on 27, right through the hot flat belly248 of the state, through Haines City and Lake Wales, into the emptiness west of the Seminole reservation and Lake Okeechobee, and then over to Deleon on Route 80.
In Florida, there is no trouble finding Golden Oldies stations on the car radio. We're all oldies down here. The music of your life, some of the announcers like to call it, and it keeps tumbling in, Patti Page begging "Never let me gooooo, I love you soooooo," and then doing so perkily that Latin?American bit with "Aye yi yi" and the caballeros, and finishing "I've waited all my life, to give you all my love, my heart belongs to you," and then Tony Bennett or one of those other mooing Italians with "Be My Love," speaking of all my love, and then Gogi Grant and "The Wayward Wind," he hasn't thought of Gogi Grant for ages, it's a rare song that doesn't light up some of his memory cells, while the landscape outside the car windows beyond the whoosh249 of the airconditioner gets more and more honkytonk ? Flea250 World, Active Adult Living and car after car goes by with an orange Garfield stuck to the back window with paws that are suction cups. "Why you ramble251, no one knows," Nat "King" Cole singing "Rambling252 Rose," ending so gently, "Why I want you, no one knows," you can just about see that wise slow smile, and then "Tzena, Tzena," he hasn't heard that for years either, the music doesn't come ethnic253 any more, and "Oh, My Papa," speaking of ethnic, and Kay Starr really getting her back into "Wheel of Fortune," all those hiccups254, hard?driving, "Puleazzze let it be now," and "A?Tisket, A?Tasket," that really goes back, he was walking to grade school then with Lottie Bingaman, in love with Margaret Schoelkopf, and Presley's "Love Me Tender," knock him all you want, before he got fat and druggy and spooked in the end he had a real voice, a beautiful voice, not like foghorn255 Sinatra, and then Ray Charles, now there's another real voice, "I Can't Stop Loving You," "dreaming of yesterdayssss," the way it trails off like that, that funny blind man's waggle of the head, and Connie Francis, "Where the Boys Are," a voice to freeze your scalp all right, but whose life are these songs? That was beachparty era, he was all married and separated and reconciled and working at Verity256 Press by then, no more parties for him. Ronnie Harrison and Ruth fucking all weekend at the Jersey257 Shore: that still rankles258.
The station fades out and in trying to find another he passes through a broadcast church service, evangelical, a man shouting "Jesus knows! Jesus looks into your heart! Jesus sees the death in your heart!" and Harry passes on, coming upon, too late for all of the sobbing259, Johnny Ray's "Cry," "If your sweetheart sends a letter of goodbye," that was around the time he had to go into the Army and part from Mary Ann, he didn't know it would be for good, they argued about Johnny Ray, Rabbit insisting the guy had to be a fruit to sing that way, and then down in Texas he realized the song was for him, his sweetheart sent a letter. Next number, Dean Martin comes on loafing through "That's Amore": by now Harry had come back and taken up with Janice, the quiet girl behind the nuts counter at Kroll's, her little tight body, the challenge of her puzzled dark eyes, he remembers because he would joke, "That's amore," after they would fuck in the room Linda Hammacher would let them use, with its view of the dove?gray gas tanks by the river. "Only the Lonely," the late Roy Orbison warbles. "There goes my baby, there goes my heart," in that amazing voice that goes higher and higher till you think it must break like crystal, as in a way it did; Rabbit supposed his being dead is what makes this one a Golden Oldie.
The songs roll on, broken every half?hour by summaries of the news. A bombing in Colombia has injured eighty?four, the Colombian woes260 are increased by a drop in coffee prices, President Bush's upcoming speech on the nation's drug problems rouses Washington speculation261, can he do a Reagan? Also in Washington, officials are still hopeful that the newborn baby panda, fighting for its life in an incubator, will survive. Locally, manatees262 continue active in the Caloosahatchee Basin, and the Dolphins were beaten yesterday in Miami by the Philadelphia Eagles, twenty to ten. Rabbit likes hearing this score, but the old songs, all that syrup about love, love, the sweetness, the cuteness, the doggies in the window and Mommy kissing Santa Claus and the naughty lady of Shady Lane, the background strings263 and pizzicato bridges and rising brass264 crescendos meant to thrill the pants off you, wear him down: he resents being made to realize, this late, that the songs of his life were as moronic265 as the rock the brainless kids now feed on, or the Sixties and Seventies stuff that Nelson gobbled up ? all of it designed for empty heads and overheated hormones266, an ocean white with foam, and listening to it now is like trying to eat a double banana split the way he used to. It's all disposable, cooked up to turn a quick profit. They lead us down the garden path, the music manufacturers, then turn around and lead the next generation down with a slightly different flavor of glop.
Rabbit feels betrayed. He was reared in a world where war was not strange but change was: the world stood still so you could grow up in it. He knows when the bottom fell out. When they closed down Kroll's, Kroll's that had stood in the center of Brewer all those years, bigger than a church, older than the courthouse, right at the head of Weiser Square there, with every Christmas those otherworldly displays of circling trains and nodding dolls and twinkling stars in the corner windows as if God Himself put them there to light up this darkest time of the year. As a little kid he couldn't tell what God did from what people did; it all came from above somehow. He can remember standing as a child in the cold with his mother gazing into this world of tinselled toys as real as any other, the air biting at his cheeks, the sound of the Salvation267 Army bells begging, the smell of the hot soft pretzels sold on Weiser Square those years, the feeling around him of adult hurrying ?bundled?up bodies pushing into Kroll's where you could buy the best of everything from drapes to beds, toys to pots, china to silver. When he worked there back in Shipping268 you saw the turnover269, the hiring and firing, the discontinued lines, the abrupt270 changes of fashion, the panicky gamble of all this merchandising, but still he believed in the place as a whole, its power, its good faith. So when the system just upped one summer and decided271 to close Kroll's down, just because shoppers had stopped coming in because the downtown had become frightening to white people, Rabbit realized the world was not solid and benign272, it was a shabby set of temporary arrangements rigged up for the time being, all for the sake of the money. You just passed through, and they milked you for what you were worth, mostly when you were young and gullible273. If Kroll's could go, the courthouse could go, the banks could go. When the money stopped, they could close down God Himself.
For miles in the vicinity of Disney World and beyond, lesser274 amusement and theme parks hold out their cups for the tourist overflow275. Waxworks276. Wet 'n' Wild, a water slide. Sea World. Circus World, not the one that's redux down in Sarasota. What a dumb word, as dumb as faux, you see it everywhere suddenly, faux fur, faux jewelry277. False is what they mean. A museum of old dolls and toys. Old, old, they sell things as antiques now that aren't even as old as he is, another racket. On Route 27, going due south, you enter slightly rolling dry pale farm country, bleached278 by heat, with pale cattle in wide parched279 fields and orange groves with their dark dense280 irrigated281 green, and giant tanks holding water, shaped like giant mushrooms, like spaceships come from beyond. At the side of the road little wobbly hand?painted signs offer BOILED PEANUTS, tiny Mexican girls manning the stands, and there is, in faint echo of the giant theme parks to the north, a touching282 dusty amusement park, spindly structures put together for a minute's giddy sensation, idle, waiting for the evening's little customers.
The sun is high now and the morning's tattered283 gray clouds have melted away and the heat is serious, crushing, frightening when he steps out of the Celica at a Texaco to use the facilities because there is no escape from it, like snow at the South Pole, it even drifts into the men's room, as humid a heat as in the Pennsylvania summer but more searing, more wrathful. The road is wide but has lights and roads coming from the bleached farmland; the small cities drift by, Lake Wales, Frostproof, Avon Park, Sebring, and he wonders about the lives led there, away from the coasts, away from the condos and the fishing charters, by people who wake up and go to work just like those in Brewer, only everything flattened284 by the sun: how did they get here, so near the edge of the world, on this sand spit that a little rise in sea level because of Antarctica melting because of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would wash away? A column of thick smoke appears on his left, toward the Seminole reservation, thick and poisonous, a disaster, an atomic bomb, war has been declared while he's been drowning in musical memories; he expects to run into a forest fire, but nothing happens, the column of smoke slowly recedes285 on his left, he'll never know what it was. A dump most likely. Harry's whole body feels cramped286 because of long sitting and he takes a Nitrostat because of the cute little rush it gives you, the inner loosening, the tickle287.
The land gets less and less settled and more scraggy. The towns take on funny names like Lake Placid288 and Venus and Old Venus and Palmdale; just beyond Palmdale, after you cross the Fisheating Creek289, at Harrisburg no less, the state capital up there but a nothing down here, you bear right on 29, a narrow road so straight and flat you can see for miles, trucks coming at you through a shimmer that cuts off their wheels, rednecks in pickups pushing in the rearview mirror to pass, hardly any signs, a feeling all around of swamp, so remote from civilization the radio station fades, its last song of your life before it finally fades is somebody called Connie Boswell, way before Rabbit's time, singing "Say It Isn't So" with a rueful little lisp, quietly as if she's just talking it to you, "You've found somebody newww," the band behind her soft and tinny like those that used to play in hotel lobbies with lots of potted palms, a Twenties feeling, they lived hard, no worry about smoking and drinking and cholesterol290, just do it, "Ssay it isn't sso," he could almost cry, she sounds so sincere, so truly wounded. What ís Janice's game, anyway? He'll find out soon enough.
You think 29 will never end, between its ditches of swamp water, its stiff gray vegetation, but it finally comes into 80, at La Belle185, streaming west just south of the Caloosahatchee, and then you're almost home, there are signs to the Southwest Florida Regional Airport and planes roaring low overhead, he could shoot them down through his windshield if he were the Vincennes. For nostalgia's sake, to get back into it, the Florida thing, he pushes on past Interstate 75 to Route 41. Starvin' Marvin. Universal Prosthetics. Superteller. STARLITE MOTEL. That time he and Janice wound up in a motel like they were an illicit291 couple when in fact they'd been married for thirteen years. Unlucky number but they survived it. Thirty?three years married this year. Thirtyfour since they first fucked. Back in Kroll's he never realized she'd come into money eventually. She just seemed a pathetic little mutt behind the nuts counter, "Jan" stitched to her brown smock, something insecure and sexy about her, a secure independent woman like Elvira probably isn't so much into sex, Jan was, she was amazed when he went down on her like he used to for Mary Ann in the car, only now on a bed. Mom didn't take to Jan; stand-ing in the kitchen with soapy hands she would say Fred Springer was a con artist with his used cars. Now Springer Motors is kaput, finito. Down the tubes just like Kroll's. Nothing is sacred.
Harry comes to his turning off 41. The plumes292 of pampas grass, the flowering shrubs293 along the curving streets look different this time of year, more florid. He has never been down here at this time of year before. It seems emptier, fewer cars in the driveways, more curtains drawn294, the sidewalks looking less walked?on than ever, the traffic thinner even though this is rush hour, with that late?afternoon pall175 in the air, like tarnish295 on silver. He doesn't see a single squashed armadillo on Pindo Palm Boulevard. The guard at the security gate of Valhalla Village, a lean bespectacled black Harry hasn't seen before, doesn't know him, but finds his name on the list of tenants296 and waves him through without a smile, all efficiency, probably college?educated, over?qualified297.
The code on the inner entrance door of Building B doesn't work. So many numbers in his life, he may be getting it wrong. But after the third time it fails to click him in, he figures it's not him, the code has been changed. And so, limping from a stiffness in his right leg from pushing on the accelerator for over three days, Harry has to hobble over across the carpeted traffic island and the asphalt, in the dazing heat, through the rush of half?forgotten tropical aromas298, hibiscus, bougainvillea, dry palm thatch299, crunchy broad?bladed St. Augustine grass, to the management office in Building C to get it, the new code.
They say they sent the notice to his summer address up north; he tells them, "My wife must have torn it up or lost it or some-thing." His voice talking to people again sounds odd and croaky, coming from several feet outside himself, like the to?one?side echo or chorus that sometimes startles you on the car stereo sys-tem. He feels awkward and vulnerable out of the car: a sea snail300 without its shell. On his way by, he looks into Club Nineteen and is surprised to see nobody at the tables, inside or out, though a couple of foursomes are waiting on the first tee, in the lengthen-ing shadows. You don't play, he guesses, in the middle of the day this time of year.
The elevator has a different color inspection301 card in the slip?in frame, the peach?colored corridor smells of a different air fresh-ener, with a faint nostalgic tang of lemonade. The door of 413 opens easily, his two keys scratch into their wiggly slots and turn, there are no cobwebs to brush against his face, no big brown hairy spiders scuttling302 away on the carpet. He imagines all sorts of spooky things lately. The condo is like it always was, as absol-utely still as a reconstruction303 of itself? the see?through shelves, the birds and flowers Janice made of small white shells, the big green glass egg that used to sit in Ma Springer's living room, the blond square sofa, the fake?bamboo desk, the green?gray dead television screen. Nobody bothered to disturb or rob the place: kind of a snub. He carries his two bags into the bedroom and opens the slid-ing door onto the balcony. The sound of his footsteps makes deep dents89 in the silence of the place. An electric charge of reproach hangs in the stagnant304 air. The condo hadn't expected him, he is early. Having arrived at it after such a distance makes everything appear magnified, like the pitted head of a pin under a microscope. The whole apartment?its furniture, its aqua cabinets and Formica countertop, its angles of fitted door frame and baseboard ? seems to Rabbit a tight structure carefully hammered together to hold a brimming amount of fear.
A white telephone sits waiting to ring. He picks it up. There is no buzz. God on the line. Disconnected for the season. Today is Sunday, tomorrow is Labor Day. The old familiar riddle305: how do you telephone the phone company without a telephone?
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1
rigid
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| adj.严格的，死板的；刚硬的，僵硬的 | |
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dent
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| n.凹痕，凹坑；初步进展 | |
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den
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| n.兽穴；秘密地方；安静的小房间，私室 | |
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slung
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| 抛( sling的过去式和过去分词 )； 吊挂； 遣送； 押往 | |
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tint
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| n.淡色，浅色；染发剂；vt.着以淡淡的颜色 | |
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tints
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| 色彩( tint的名词复数 )； 带白的颜色； （淡色）染发剂； 痕迹 | |
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7
salute
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| vi.行礼，致意，问候，放礼炮；vt.向…致意，迎接，赞扬；n.招呼，敬礼，礼炮 | |
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panes
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| 窗玻璃( pane的名词复数 ) | |
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silhouette
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| n.黑色半身侧面影，影子，轮廓；v.描绘成侧面影，照出影子来，仅仅显出轮廓 | |
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gulf
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| n.海湾；深渊，鸿沟；分歧，隔阂 | |
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11
muffled
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| adj.（声音）被隔的；听不太清的；（衣服）裹严的；蒙住的v.压抑，捂住( muffle的过去式和过去分词 )；用厚厚的衣帽包着（自己） | |
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12
latch
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| n.门闩，窗闩；弹簧锁 | |
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smoothly
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| adv.平滑地，顺利地，流利地，流畅地 | |
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backwards
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| adv.往回地，向原处，倒，相反，前后倒置地 | |
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brewer
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| n. 啤酒制造者 | |
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ass
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| n.驴；傻瓜，蠢笨的人 | |
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grandeur
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| n.伟大，崇高，宏伟，庄严，豪华 | |
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18
con
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| n.反对的观点，反对者，反对票，肺病；vt.精读，学习，默记；adv.反对地，从反面；adj.欺诈的 | |
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19
Flared
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| adj. 端部张开的, 爆发的, 加宽的, 漏斗式的 动词flare的过去式和过去分词 | |
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20
spotlights
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| n.聚光灯（的光）( spotlight的名词复数 )；公众注意的中心v.聚光照明( spotlight的第三人称单数 )；使公众注意，使突出醒目 | |
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21
sweeping
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| adj.范围广大的，一扫无遗的 | |
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pinnacle
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| n.尖塔，尖顶，山峰；(喻)顶峰 | |
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23
groves
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| 树丛，小树林( grove的名词复数 ) | |
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24
slants
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| （使）倾斜，歪斜( slant的第三人称单数 )； 有倾向性地编写或报道 | |
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25
slant
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| v.倾斜，倾向性地编写或报道；n.斜面，倾向 | |
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26
monstrous
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| adj.巨大的；恐怖的；可耻的，丢脸的 | |
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molecules
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| 分子( molecule的名词复数 ) | |
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jabber
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| v.快而不清楚地说；n.吱吱喳喳 | |
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29
tune
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| n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整 | |
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30
tunes
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| n.曲调，曲子( tune的名词复数 )v.调音( tune的第三人称单数 )；调整；（给收音机、电视等）调谐；使协调 | |
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31
buddy
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| n.（美口）密友，伙伴 | |
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32
spine
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| n.脊柱，脊椎；(动植物的)刺；书脊 | |
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33
melodious
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| adj.旋律美妙的，调子优美的，音乐性的 | |
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34
banter
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| n.嘲弄，戏谑；v.取笑，逗弄，开玩笑 | |
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35
shuffling
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| adj. 慢慢移动的, 滑移的 动词shuffle的现在分词形式 | |
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36
drooping
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| adj. 下垂的，无力的 动词droop的现在分词 | |
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37
rusty
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| adj.生锈的；锈色的；荒废了的 | |
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38
furtive
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| adj.鬼鬼崇崇的，偷偷摸摸的 | |
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39
scent
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| n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉 | |
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40
thighs
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| n.股，大腿( thigh的名词复数 )；食用的鸡（等的）腿 | |
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41
harry
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| vt.掠夺，蹂躏，使苦恼 | |
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42
mule
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| n.骡子，杂种，执拗的人 | |
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43
nostrils
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| 鼻孔( nostril的名词复数 ) | |
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44
stark
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| adj.荒凉的；严酷的；完全的；adv.完全地 | |
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45
afflicts
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| 使受痛苦，折磨( afflict的名词复数 ) | |
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46
groans
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| n.呻吟，叹息( groan的名词复数 )；呻吟般的声音v.呻吟( groan的第三人称单数 )；发牢骚；抱怨；受苦 | |
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47
ridge
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| n.山脊；鼻梁；分水岭 | |
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48
alley
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| n.小巷，胡同；小径，小路 | |
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49
manure
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| n.粪，肥，肥粒；vt.施肥 | |
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50
maple
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| n.槭树，枫树，槭木 | |
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51
deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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52
stew
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| n.炖汤，焖，烦恼；v.炖汤，焖，忧虑 | |
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53
grievance
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| n.怨愤，气恼，委屈 | |
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54
ministry
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| n.(政府的)部；牧师 | |
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55
collapsed
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| adj.倒塌的 | |
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56
evaluation
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| n.估价，评价；赋值 | |
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57
psychiatrist
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| n.精神病专家；精神病医师 | |
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58
luxurious
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| adj.精美而昂贵的；豪华的 | |
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59
trauma
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| n.外伤，精神创伤 | |
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60
stunt
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| n.惊人表演，绝技，特技；vt.阻碍...发育，妨碍...生长 | |
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61
isotope
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| n.同位素 | |
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62
detector
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| n.发觉者，探测器 | |
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63
thermal
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| adj.热的，由热造成的；保暖的 | |
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64
neutron
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| n.中子 | |
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65
freshman
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| n.大学一年级学生(可兼指男女) | |
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66
flop
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| n.失败(者)，扑通一声；vi.笨重地行动，沉重地落下 | |
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67
chancellor
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| n.(英)大臣；法官；(德、奥)总理；大学校长 | |
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68
precipitating
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| adj.急落的，猛冲的v.（突如其来地）使发生( precipitate的现在分词 )；促成；猛然摔下；使沉淀 | |
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69
owls
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| n.猫头鹰( owl的名词复数 ) | |
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70
acoustic
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| adj.听觉的，声音的；(乐器)原声的 | |
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71
fumbles
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| 摸索，笨拙的处理( fumble的名词复数 ) | |
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72
abortion
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| n.流产，堕胎 | |
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73
epidemic
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| n.流行病；盛行；adj.流行性的，流传极广的 | |
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74
murmur
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| n.低语，低声的怨言；v.低语，低声而言 | |
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75
looming
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| n.上现蜃景（光通过低层大气发生异常折射形成的一种海市蜃楼）v.隐约出现，阴森地逼近( loom的现在分词 )；隐约出现，阴森地逼近 | |
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76
descends
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| v.下来( descend的第三人称单数 )；下去；下降；下斜 | |
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77
groomed
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| v.照料或梳洗（马等）( groom的过去式和过去分词 )；使做好准备；训练；（给动物）擦洗 | |
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78
eyelids
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| n.眼睑( eyelid的名词复数 )；眼睛也不眨一下；不露声色；面不改色 | |
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79
hush
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| int.嘘，别出声；n.沉默，静寂；v.使安静 | |
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80
anonymity
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| n.the condition of being anonymous | |
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81
dangly
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| 悬摆的，摆晃的 | |
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82
earrings
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| n.耳环( earring的名词复数 )；耳坠子 | |
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83
wry
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| adj.讽刺的；扭曲的 | |
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84
succumbs
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| 不再抵抗（诱惑、疾病、攻击等）( succumb的第三人称单数 )； 屈从； 被压垮； 死 | |
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85
arteries
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| n.动脉( artery的名词复数 )；干线，要道 | |
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86
milky
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| adj.牛奶的，多奶的；乳白色的 | |
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87
amplified
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| 放大，扩大( amplify的过去式和过去分词 )； 增强； 详述 | |
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88
restive
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| adj.不安宁的，不安静的 | |
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89
dents
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| n.花边边饰；凹痕( dent的名词复数 )；凹部；减少；削弱v.使产生凹痕( dent的第三人称单数 )；损害；伤害；挫伤（信心、名誉等） | |
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90
victorious
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| adj.胜利的，得胜的 | |
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91
riotous
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| adj.骚乱的；狂欢的 | |
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92
tottering
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| adj.蹒跚的，动摇的v.走得或动得不稳( totter的现在分词 )；踉跄；蹒跚；摇摇欲坠 | |
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93
socialists
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| 社会主义者( socialist的名词复数 ) | |
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94
factions
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| 组织中的小派别，派系( faction的名词复数 ) | |
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95
rouge
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| n.胭脂，口红唇膏；v.(在…上)擦口红 | |
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96
minions
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| n.奴颜婢膝的仆从( minion的名词复数 )；走狗；宠儿；受人崇拜者 | |
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97
infamous
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| adj.声名狼藉的，臭名昭著的，邪恶的 | |
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98
megalopolis
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| n.特大城市 | |
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99
bucolically
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| adv.牧羊地，牧歌地，田园风味地 | |
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100
embroidered
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| adj．绣花的 | |
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101
tinge
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| vt.(较淡)着色于，染色；使带有…气息；n.淡淡色彩，些微的气息 | |
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102
marine
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| adj.海的；海生的；航海的；海事的；n.水兵 | |
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103
corps
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| n.(通信等兵种的)部队；(同类作的)一组 | |
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104
lyric
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| n.抒情诗，歌词；adj.抒情的 | |
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105
translucent
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| adj.半透明的；透明的 | |
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106
shimmer
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| v./n.发微光，发闪光；微光 | |
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107
aligned
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| adj.对齐的，均衡的 | |
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108
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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109
Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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110
ghetto
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| n.少数民族聚居区，贫民区 | |
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111
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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112
cedar
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| n.雪松，香柏(木) | |
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113
shacks
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| n.窝棚，简陋的小屋( shack的名词复数 ) | |
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114
scatter
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| vt.撒，驱散，散开；散布/播；vi.分散，消散 | |
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115
outskirts
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| n.郊外，郊区 | |
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116
notches
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| n.（边缘或表面上的）V型痕迹( notch的名词复数 )；刻痕；水平；等级 | |
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117
briefcases
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| n.公文[事]包( briefcase的名词复数 ) | |
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118
limestone
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| n.石灰石 | |
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119
adulthood
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| n.成年，成人期 | |
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120
bawling
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| v.大叫，大喊( bawl的现在分词 )；放声大哭；大声叫出；叫卖（货物） | |
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121
flipping
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| 讨厌之极的 | |
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122
impulsively
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| adv.冲动地 | |
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123
cram
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| v.填塞，塞满，临时抱佛脚，为考试而学习 | |
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124
rattle
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| v.飞奔，碰响；激怒；n.碰撞声；拨浪鼓 | |
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125
fumbling
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| n. 摸索,漏接 v. 摸索,摸弄,笨拙的处理 | |
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126
reassures
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| v.消除恐惧或疑虑，恢复信心( reassure的第三人称单数 ) | |
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127
courteous
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| adj.彬彬有礼的，客气的 | |
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128
dime
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| n.（指美国、加拿大的钱币）一角 | |
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129
sob
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| n.空间轨道的轰炸机；呜咽，哭泣 | |
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130
intensified
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| v.（使）增强， （使）加剧( intensify的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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131
fret
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| v.(使)烦恼；(使)焦急；(使)腐蚀，(使)磨损 | |
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132
pang
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| n.剧痛，悲痛，苦闷 | |
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133
clatter
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| v./n.(使)发出连续而清脆的撞击声 | |
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134
commissioner
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| n.（政府厅、局、处等部门）专员，长官，委员 | |
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135
retired
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| adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的 | |
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136
mechanism
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| n.机械装置；机构，结构 | |
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137
twitch
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| v.急拉，抽动，痉挛，抽搐；n.扯，阵痛，痉挛 | |
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138
hawk
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| n.鹰，骗子；鹰派成员 | |
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139
instructor
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| n.指导者，教员，教练 | |
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140
tampering
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| v.窜改( tamper的现在分词 )；篡改；（用不正当手段）影响；瞎摆弄 | |
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141
balk
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| n.大方木料；v.妨碍；不愿前进或从事某事 | |
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142
tenure
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| n.终身职位；任期；(土地)保有权，保有期 | |
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143
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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144
smoker
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| n.吸烟者，吸烟车厢，吸烟室 | |
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145
shrimp
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| n.虾，小虾；矮小的人 | |
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146
delicacy
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| n.精致，细微，微妙，精良；美味，佳肴 | |
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147
slate
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| n.板岩，石板，石片，石板色，候选人名单；adj.暗蓝灰色的，含板岩的；vt.用石板覆盖，痛打，提名，预订 | |
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148
doorways
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| n.门口，门道( doorway的名词复数 ) | |
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149
revving
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| v.（使）加速( rev的现在分词 )；（数量、活动等）激增；（使发动机）快速旋转；（使）活跃起来 | |
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150
throttle
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| n.节流阀，节气阀，喉咙；v.扼喉咙，使窒息，压 | |
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151
watery
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| adj.有水的，水汪汪的；湿的，湿润的 | |
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152
underneath
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| adj.在...下面，在...底下；adv.在下面 | |
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153
vents
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| （气体、液体等进出的）孔、口( vent的名词复数 )； （鸟、鱼、爬行动物或小哺乳动物的）肛门； 大衣等的)衩口； 开衩 | |
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154
pricks
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| 刺痛( prick的名词复数 )； 刺孔； 刺痕； 植物的刺 | |
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155
frustrating
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| adj.产生挫折的，使人沮丧的，令人泄气的v.使不成功( frustrate的现在分词 )；挫败；使受挫折；令人沮丧 | |
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156
Christians
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| n.基督教徒( Christian的名词复数 ) | |
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157
shredded
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| shred的过去式和过去分词 | |
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158
supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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159
fanatics
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| 狂热者，入迷者( fanatic的名词复数 ) | |
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160
peek
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| vi.偷看，窥视；n.偷偷的一看，一瞥 | |
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161
billboard
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| n.布告板，揭示栏，广告牌 | |
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162
secede
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| v.退出，脱离 | |
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163
tragic
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| adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的 | |
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164
rumble
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| n.隆隆声；吵嚷；v.隆隆响；低沉地说 | |
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165
labor
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| n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦 | |
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166
nervously
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| adv.神情激动地，不安地 | |
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167
swerve
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| v.突然转向，背离；n．转向，弯曲，背离 | |
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168
porcupines
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| n.豪猪，箭猪( porcupine的名词复数 ) | |
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169
elastic
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| n.橡皮圈，松紧带；adj.有弹性的；灵活的 | |
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170
rhythmic
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| adj.有节奏的，有韵律的 | |
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171
paramount
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| a.最重要的，最高权力的 | |
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172
mellowed
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| （使）成熟( mellow的过去式和过去分词 )； 使色彩更加柔和，使酒更加醇香 | |
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173
bum
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| n.臀部；流浪汉，乞丐；vt.乞求，乞讨 | |
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174
foam
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| v./n.泡沫，起泡沫 | |
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175
pall
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| v.覆盖，使平淡无味；n.柩衣，棺罩；棺材；帷幕 | |
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176
gangster
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| n.匪徒，歹徒，暴徒 | |
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177
gangsters
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| 匪徒，歹徒( gangster的名词复数 ) | |
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178
glamorous
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| adj.富有魅力的；美丽动人的；令人向往的 | |
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179
flipped
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| 轻弹( flip的过去式和过去分词 )； 按（开关）； 快速翻转； 急挥 | |
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180
retrospect
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| n.回顾，追溯；v.回顾，回想，追溯 | |
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181
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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182
bunk
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| n.(车、船等倚壁而设的)铺位；废话 | |
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183
ranch
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| n.大牧场，大农场 | |
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184
derives
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| v.得到( derive的第三人称单数 )；（从…中）得到获得；源于；（从…中）提取 | |
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185
belle
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| n.靓女 | |
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186
haven
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| n.安全的地方，避难所，庇护所 | |
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187
marshy
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| adj.沼泽的 | |
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188
stilts
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| n.（支撑建筑物高出地面或水面的）桩子，支柱( stilt的名词复数 )；高跷 | |
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189
homely
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| adj.家常的，简朴的；不漂亮的 | |
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190
detour
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| n.绕行的路，迂回路；v.迂回，绕道 | |
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191
plantation
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| n.种植园，大农场 | |
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192
domed
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| adj. 圆屋顶的, 半球形的, 拱曲的 动词dome的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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193
oasis
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| n.（沙漠中的）绿洲，宜人的地方 | |
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194
wilderness
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| n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠 | |
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195
lotion
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| n.洗剂 | |
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196
lettuce
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| n.莴苣；生菜 | |
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197
beets
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| 甜菜( beet的名词复数 )； 甜菜根； （因愤怒、难堪或觉得热而）脸红 | |
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198
mesh
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| n.网孔，网丝，陷阱；vt.以网捕捉，啮合，匹配；vi.适合； [计算机]网络 | |
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199
wavy
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| adj.有波浪的，多浪的，波浪状的，波动的，不稳定的 | |
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200
permanently
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| adv.永恒地，永久地，固定不变地 | |
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201
dented
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| v.使产生凹痕( dent的过去式和过去分词 )；损害；伤害；挫伤（信心、名誉等） | |
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202
retirement
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| n.退休，退职 | |
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203
pone
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| n.玉米饼 | |
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204
droplet
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| n.小滴，飞沫 | |
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205
spates
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| n.大量( spate的名词复数 )；（河流）暴涨；发洪水；（人）口若悬河 | |
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206
peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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207
joint
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| adj.联合的，共同的；n.关节，接合处；v.连接，贴合 | |
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208
rosier
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| Rosieresite | |
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209
obelisk
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| n.方尖塔 | |
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210
chattering
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| n. （机器振动发出的）咔嗒声，(鸟等)鸣，啁啾 adj. 喋喋不休的，啾啾声的 动词chatter的现在分词形式 | |
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211
neatly
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| adv.整洁地，干净地，灵巧地，熟练地 | |
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212
snarl
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| v.吼叫，怒骂，纠缠，混乱；n.混乱，缠结，咆哮 | |
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213
racing
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| n.竞赛，赛马；adj.竞赛用的，赛马用的 | |
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214
mumbles
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| 含糊的话或声音，咕哝( mumble的名词复数 ) | |
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215
fiddles
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| n.小提琴( fiddle的名词复数 )；欺诈；（需要运用手指功夫的）细巧活动；当第二把手v.伪造( fiddle的第三人称单数 )；篡改；骗取；修理或稍作改动 | |
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216
promptly
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| adv.及时地，敏捷地 | |
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217
collapsing
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| 压扁[平]，毁坏，断裂 | |
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218
assassination
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| n.暗杀；暗杀事件 | |
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219
conspiracies
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| n.阴谋，密谋( conspiracy的名词复数 ) | |
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220
lanky
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| adj.瘦长的 | |
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221
battered
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| adj.磨损的；v.连续猛击；磨损 | |
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222
catfish
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| n.鲶鱼 | |
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223
snug
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| adj.温暖舒适的，合身的，安全的；v.使整洁干净，舒适地依靠，紧贴；n.（英）酒吧里的私房 | |
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224
guilt
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| n.犯罪；内疚；过失，罪责 | |
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225
gouges
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| n.凿( gouge的名词复数 )；乱要价；（在…中）抠出…；挖出…v.凿( gouge的第三人称单数 )；乱要价；（在…中）抠出…；挖出… | |
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226
halfway
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| adj.中途的，不彻底的，部分的；adv.半路地，在中途，在半途 | |
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227
desolate
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| adj.荒凉的，荒芜的；孤独的，凄凉的；v.使荒芜，使孤寂 | |
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228
lichens
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| n.地衣( lichen的名词复数 ) | |
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229
abysmal
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| adj.无底的，深不可测的，极深的；糟透的，极坏的；完全的 | |
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230
penguins
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| n.企鹅( penguin的名词复数 ) | |
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231
blizzards
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| 暴风雪( blizzard的名词复数 )； 暴风雪似的一阵，大量（或大批） | |
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232
measles
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| n.麻疹，风疹，包虫病，痧子 | |
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233
naval
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| adj.海军的，军舰的，船的 | |
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234
proceedings
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| n.进程，过程，议程；诉讼(程序)；公报 | |
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235
airliner
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| n.客机，班机 | |
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236
puddles
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| n.水坑， （尤指道路上的）雨水坑( puddle的名词复数 ) | |
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237
syrup
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| n.糖浆，糖水 | |
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238
spout
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| v.喷出，涌出；滔滔不绝地讲；n.喷管；水柱 | |
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239
looms
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| n.织布机( loom的名词复数 )v.隐约出现，阴森地逼近( loom的第三人称单数 )；隐约出现，阴森地逼近 | |
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240
skyscrapers
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| n.摩天大楼 | |
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241
toll
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| n.过路(桥)费；损失，伤亡人数；v.敲(钟) | |
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242
cove
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| n.小海湾，小峡谷 | |
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243
caravans
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| （可供居住的）拖车（通常由机动车拖行）( caravan的名词复数 )； 篷车； （穿过沙漠地带的）旅行队（如商队） | |
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244
lobster
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| n.龙虾，龙虾肉 | |
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245
license
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| n.执照，许可证，特许；v.许可，特许 | |
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246
misty
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| adj.雾蒙蒙的，有雾的 | |
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247
lighter
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| n.打火机，点火器；驳船；v.用驳船运送；light的比较级 | |
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248
belly
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| n.肚子，腹部；(像肚子一样)鼓起的部分，膛 | |
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249
whoosh
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| v.飞快地移动，呼 | |
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250
flea
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| n.跳蚤 | |
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251
ramble
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| v.漫步，漫谈，漫游；n.漫步，闲谈，蔓延 | |
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252
rambling
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| adj.[建]凌乱的，杂乱的 | |
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253
ethnic
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| adj.人种的，种族的，异教徒的 | |
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254
hiccups
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| n.嗝( hiccup的名词复数 )；连续地打嗝；暂时性的小问题；短暂的停顿v.嗝( hiccup的第三人称单数 )；连续地打嗝；暂时性的小问题；短暂的停顿 | |
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255
foghorn
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| n..雾号（浓雾信号） | |
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256
verity
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| n.真实性 | |
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257
jersey
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| n.运动衫 | |
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258
rankles
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| v.（使）痛苦不已，（使）怨恨不已( rankle的第三人称单数 ) | |
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259
sobbing
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| <主方>Ⅰ adj.湿透的 | |
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260
woes
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| 困境( woe的名词复数 )； 悲伤； 我好苦哇； 某人就要倒霉 | |
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261
speculation
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| n.思索，沉思；猜测；投机 | |
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262
manatees
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| n.海牛（水生哺乳动物，体宽扁，尾圆，有鳃状肢）( manatee的名词复数 ) | |
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263
strings
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| n.弦 | |
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264
brass
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| n.黄铜；黄铜器，铜管乐器 | |
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265
moronic
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| a.低能的 | |
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266
hormones
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| n. 荷尔蒙，激素 名词hormone的复数形式 | |
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267
salvation
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| n.（尤指基督）救世，超度，拯救，解困 | |
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268
shipping
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| n.船运（发货，运输，乘船） | |
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269
turnover
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| n.人员流动率，人事变动率；营业额，成交量 | |
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abrupt
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| adj.突然的，意外的；唐突的，鲁莽的 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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272
benign
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| adj.善良的，慈祥的；良性的，无危险的 | |
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273
gullible
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| adj.易受骗的；轻信的 | |
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274
lesser
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| adj.次要的，较小的；adv.较小地，较少地 | |
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275
overflow
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| v.(使)外溢，(使)溢出；溢出，流出，漫出 | |
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276
waxworks
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| n.公共供水系统；蜡制品，蜡像( waxwork的名词复数 ) | |
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277
jewelry
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| n.（jewllery）（总称）珠宝 | |
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278
bleached
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| 漂白的，晒白的，颜色变浅的 | |
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279
parched
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| adj.焦干的；极渴的；v.（使）焦干 | |
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280
dense
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| a.密集的，稠密的，浓密的；密度大的 | |
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281
irrigated
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| [医]冲洗的 | |
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282
touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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283
tattered
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| adj.破旧的，衣衫破的 | |
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284
flattened
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| [医]（水）平扁的，弄平的 | |
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285
recedes
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| v.逐渐远离( recede的第三人称单数 )；向后倾斜；自原处后退或避开别人的注视；尤指问题 | |
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286
cramped
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| a.狭窄的 | |
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287
tickle
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| v.搔痒，胳肢；使高兴；发痒；n.搔痒，发痒 | |
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288
placid
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| adj.安静的，平和的 | |
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289
creek
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| n.小溪，小河，小湾 | |
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290
cholesterol
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| n.（U）胆固醇 | |
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291
illicit
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| adj.非法的，禁止的，不正当的 | |
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292
plumes
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| 羽毛( plume的名词复数 )； 羽毛饰； 羽毛状物； 升上空中的羽状物 | |
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293
shrubs
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| 灌木( shrub的名词复数 ) | |
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294
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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295
tarnish
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| n.晦暗，污点；vt.使失去光泽；玷污 | |
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296
tenants
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| n.房客( tenant的名词复数 )；佃户；占用者；占有者 | |
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297
qualified
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| adj.合格的，有资格的，胜任的，有限制的 | |
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298
aromas
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| n.芳香( aroma的名词复数 )；气味；风味；韵味 | |
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299
thatch
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| vt.用茅草覆盖…的顶部；n.茅草(屋) | |
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300
snail
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| n.蜗牛 | |
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301
inspection
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| n.检查，审查，检阅 | |
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302
scuttling
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| n.船底穿孔，打开通海阀（沉船用）v.使船沉没( scuttle的现在分词 )；快跑，急走 | |
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303
reconstruction
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| n.重建，再现，复原 | |
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304
stagnant
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| adj.不流动的，停滞的，不景气的 | |
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305
riddle
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| n.谜，谜语，粗筛；vt.解谜，给…出谜，筛，检查，鉴定，非难，充满于；vi.出谜 | |
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