Hurry, hurry. The 12 bus takes forever to come, the walk down Emberly is endless. Yet his house, third from the end of Vista1 Crescent, low and new and a sullen2 apple?green on the quarter?acre of lawn scraggly with plantain, is intact, and all around it the unpopulated stretches of similar houses hold unbroken the intensity3 of duplication. That the blot4 of black inside his house is unmirrored fools him into hoping it isn't there. But, once up the three porch steps and through the door of three stepped windows, Rabbit sees, to his right, in the living room, from behind ? the sofa having been swung around ? a bushy black sphere between Jill's cone6 of strawberry gold and Nelson's square?cut mass of Janice?dark hair. They are watching television. Skeeter seems to have reinstated the box. The announcer, ghostly pale because the adjustment is too bright and mouthing as rapidly as a vampire8 because there is too much news between too many commercials, enunciates9, ". . . after a five?year exile spent in Communist Cuba, various African states, and Communist China, landed in Detroit today and was instantly taken into custody10 by waiting FBI men. Elsewhere on the racial front, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights sharply charged that the Nixon Administration has made quote a major retreat unquote pertaining11 to school integration12 in the southern states. In Fayette Mississippi three white Klansmen were arrested for the attempted bombing of the supermarket owned by newly elected black mayor of Fayette, Charles Evers, brother of the slain13 civil rights leader. In New York City Episcopal spokesmen declined to defend further their controversial decision to grant two hundred thousand dollars toward black church leader James Forman's demand of five hundred million dollars in quote reparations unquote from the Christian16 churches in America for quote three centuries of indignity17 and exploitation unquote. In Hartford Connecticut and Camden New Jersey18 an uneasy peace prevails after last week's disturbances19 within the black communities of these cities. And now, an important announcement."
"Hello, hello," Rabbit says, ignored.
Nelson turns and says, "Hey Dad. Robert Williams is back in this country."
"Who the hell is Robert Williams?"
Skeeter says, "Chuck baby, he's a man going to fry your ass7."
"Another black Jesus. How many of you are there?"
"By many false prophets," Skeeter tells him, "you shall know my coming, right? That's the Good Book, right?"
"It also says He's come and gone."
"Conlin' again, Chuck. Gonna fry your ass. You and Nixon's, right?"
"Poor old Nixon, even his own commissions beat on him. What the hell can he do? He can't go into every ghetto20 and fix the plumbing21 himself. He can't give every copped?out junkie a million dollars and a Ph.D. Nixon, who's Nixon? He's just a typical flatfooted Chamber22 of Commerce type who lucked his way into the hot seat and is so dumb he thinks it's good luck. Let the poor bastard23 alone, he's trying to bore us to death so we won't commit suicide."
"Nixon, shit. That honky was put there by the cracker24 vote, right? Strom Stormtrooper is his very bag. He is Herod, man, and all us black babies better believe it."
"Black babies, black leaders, Jesus am I sick of the word black. If I said white one?eightieth as often as you say black you'd scream yourself blue. For Chrissake, forget your skin."
"I'll forget it when you forget it, right?"
"Lord I'd love to forget not only your skin but everything inside it. I thought three days ago you said you were getting out in three days."
"Dad, don't." The kid's face is tense. Mom was right, too delicate, too nervous. Thinks the world is going to hurt him, so it will. The universal instinct to exterminate25 the weak.
Jill rises to shield the other two. Three on one: Rabbit is exhilarated. Faking and dodging26, he says before she can speak, "Tell the darker of your boyfriends here I thought he promised to pull out when he got a stake. I have twenty bucks27 here to give him. Which reminds me of something else."
Skeeter interrupts, addressing the air. "I love him when he gets like this. He is the Man."
And Jill is saying her piece. "Nelson and I refuse to live with this quarrelling. Tonight after supper we want to have an organized discussion. There's a crying need for education in this household."
"Household," Rabbit says, "I'd call it a refugee camp." He persists in what he has been reminded of. "Hey, Skeeter. Do you have a last name?"
"X," Skeeter tells him. "42X."
"Sure it's not Farnsworth?"
Skeeter's body sheds its shell, hangs there outfeinted a second, before regathering hardness. "That Super Tom," he says definitively28, "is not the slightest relation of mine."
"The Vat29 had your last name as Farnsworth."
"The Vat," Skeeter pronounces mincingly30, "is a Fascist31 rag."
Having scored, you put your head down and run back up the floor; but with that feeling inside, of having made a mark that can't be rubbed out. ` Just wondering," Rabbit smiles. He stretches out his arms as if from wall to wall. "Who wants a beer besides me?"
After supper, Nelson washes the dishes and Skeeter dries. Jill tidies up the living room for their discussion; Rabbit helps her swing the sofa back into place. On the shelves between the living room and the breakfast nook that he and Janice had kept empty Rabbit notices now a stack of tired paperbacks32, their spines33 chafed34 and biased35 by handling. The Selected Writings of W. E. B. Du Bois, The Wretched of the Earth, Soul on Ice, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, others, history, Marx, economics, stuff that makes Rabbit feel sick, as when he thinks about what surgeons do, or all the plumbing and gas lines there are under the street. "Skeeter's books," Jill explains. "I went into Jimbo's today for them, and his clothes. Babe had them."
"Hey Chuck," Skeeter calls from the sink, through the shelves, "know where I got those books? Over in Nam, at the Longbinh base bookstore. They love us to read, that crazy Army of yours. Teach us how to read, shoot, dig pot, sniff37 stag, black man's best friend, just like they say!" He snaps his towel, pap!
Rabbit ignores him and asks Jill, "You went in there? It's full of police, they could easy tail you."
Skeeter shouts from the kitchen, "Don't you worry Chuck, those poor pigs've bigger niggers than me to fry. You know what happened over in York, right? Brewer38's gone to make that look like the Ladies Aid ball!" Pap!
Nelson washing beside him asks. "Will they shoot every white person?"
"Just the big old ugly ones, mostly. You stay away from that gruesome Billy and stick next to me, Babychuck, you'll be all right."
Rabbit pulls down a book at random39 and reads,
Government is for the people's progress and not for the comfort of an aristocracy. The object of industry is the welfare of the workers and not the wealth of the owners. The object of civilization is the cultural progress of the mass of workers and not merely of an intellectual elite40.
It frightens him, as museums used to frighten him, when it was part of school to take trips there and to see the mummy rotting in his casket of gold, the elephant tusk41 filed into a hundred squinting42 Chinamen. Unthinkably distant lives, abysses of existence, worse than what crawls blind on ocean floors. The book is full of Skeeter's underlinings. He reads,
Awake, awake, put on thy strength, O Zion! Reject the weakness of missionaries43 who teach neither love nor brotherhood44, but chiefly the virtues45 of private profit from capital, stolen from your land and labor46. Africa, awake! Put on the beautiful robes of Pan?African socialism.
Rabbit replaces the book feeling better. There are no such robes. It is all crap. "What's the discussion about?" he asks, as they settle around the cobbler's bench.
Jill says nervously47, blushing, "Skeeter and Nelson and I were talking about it today after school and agreed that since there seems to be such a painful communications problem -"
"Is that what it is?" Rabbit asks. "Maybe we communicate too well."
"? a structured discussion might be helpful and educational."
"Me being the one who needs to be educated," Rabbit says.
"Not necessarily." The care with which Jill speaks makes Rabbit feel pity; we are too much for her, he thinks. "You're older than we are and we respect your experience. We all agree, I think, that your problem is that you've never been given a chance to formulate48 your views. Because of the competitive American context, you've had to convert everything into action too rapidly. Your life has no reflective content; it's all instinct, and when your instincts let you down, you have nothing to trust. That's what makes you cynical49. Cynicism, I've seen it said somewhere, is tired pragmatism. Pragmatism suited a certain moment here, the frontier moment; it did the work, very wastefully50 and ruthlessly, but it did it."
"On behalf of Daniel Boone," Rabbit says, "I thank you."
"It's wrong," Jill goes on gently, "when you say Americans are exploiters, to forget that the first things they exploit are themselves. You," she says, lifting her face, her eyes and freckles51 and nostrils52 a constellation53, "you've never given yourself a chance to think, except on techniques, basketball and printing, that served a self?exploitative purpose. You carry an old God with you, and an angry old patriotism54. And now an old wife." He takes breath to protest, but her hand begs him to let her finish. "You accept these things as sacred not out of love or faith but fear; your thought is frozen because the first moment when your instincts failed, you raced to the conclusion that everything is nothing, that zero is the real answer. That is what we Americans think, it's win or lose, all or nothing, kill or die, because we've never created the leisure in which to take thought. But now, you see, we must, because action is no longer enough, action without thought is violence. As we see in Vietnam."
He at last can speak. "There was violence in Vietnam before we ever heard of the fucking place. You can see by just the way I'm sitting here listening to this crap I'm a pacifist basically." He points at Skeeter. "He's the violent son of a bitch."
"But you see," Jill says, her voice lulling55 and nagging56, with just a teasing ragged57 hem36 showing of the voice she uses in bed, "the reason Skeeter annoys and frightens you is you don't know a thing about his history, I don't mean his personal history so much as the history of his race, how he got to where he is. Things that threaten you like riots and welfare have jumped into the newspapers out of nowhere for you. So for tonight we thought we would just talk a little, have a kind of seminar, about Afro?American history."
"Please, Dad," Nelson says.
"Jesus. O.K. Hit me. We were beastly to the slaves so why do so few American Negroes want to give up their Cadillacs and, excuse the expression, colored televisions and go back to Africa?"
"Dad, don't."
Skeeter begins. "Let's forget the slavery, Chuck. It was forever ago, everybody used to do it, it was a country kind of thing, right? Though I must say, the more it began to smell like shit, the more you crackers58 rolled around in it, right?"
"We had more country."
"Easy, sit back. No arguments, right? You had cotton come along, right? Anybody but black folks die working those cotton swamps, right? Anyhoo, you had this war. You had these crazies up North like Garrison59 and Brown agitating60 and down South a bunch of supercrackers like Yancy and Rhett who thought they could fatten61 their own pie by splitting, funny thing is" ? he chuckles62, wheezes63, Rabbit pictures him with a shaved head and sees Farnsworth ? "they didn't, the Confederacy sent 'em away on a ship and elected all play?it?safes to office! Same up North with cats like Sumner. Come to the vote, people scared of the man with the idea, right? Do you know, suppose you don't, dude called Ruffin, bright as could be, invented modern agriculture or next thing to it, hated the Yankees so much he pulled the string on the first cannon64 at Sumter and shot himself in the head when the South lost? Wild men. Beautiful, right? So anyhoo, Lincoln got this war, right, and fought it for a bunch of wrong reasons ? what's so sacred about a Union, just a power trust, right? ? and for another wrong reason freed the slaves, and it was done. God bless America, right? So here I begin to get mad."
"Get mad, Skeeter," Rabbit says. "Who wants a beer?"
"Me, Dad."
"Half a one."
Jill says, "I'll split it with him."
Skeeter says, "That stuff rots the soul. Mind if I burn some good Red?"
"It's not legal."
"Right. But everybody does it. All those swish cats over in Penn Park, you think they have a Martini when they come home at night? That's yesterday. They blow grass. Sincerely, it is more in than chewing gum. Over in Nam, it was the fighting boy's candy."
"O.K. Light up. I guess we've gone this far."
"There is far to go," Skeeter says, rolling his joint65, from a rubber pouch66 he produces from within the sofa, where he sleeps, and thin yellow paper, licking it rapidly with that fat pale tongue, and twisting the ends. When he lights it, the twisted end flames. He sucks in hungrily, holds it in as if about to dive very deep, and then releases the sweet used smoke with a belch67. He offers the wet end to Rabbit. "Try?"
Rabbit shakes his head, watching Nelson. The kid's eyes are bird?bright, watching Skeeter. Maybe Janice is right, he's letting the kid see too much. Still, he didn't do the leaving. And life is life, God invented it, not him. But he looks at Nelson fearful that his presence in the room will be construed68 as a blessing69. He says to Skeeter, "Get on with your song. Lincoln won the war for the wrong reasons."
"And then he was shot, right?" Skeeter passes the joint to Jill. As she takes it her eyes ask Rabbit, Is this what you want? She holds it the way the experts do, not like a tobacco cigarette, something for Fred Astaire to gesture with, but reverently70 as food, with as many fingers as she can get around it, feeding the wet end to herself like a nipple. Her thin face goes peaceful, puts on the fat of dreams. Skeeter is saying, "So then you had these four million freed slaves without property or jobs in this economy dead on its feet thinking the halleluiah days had come. Green pastures, right? Forty acres and a mule71, right? Goddam green pickles72, Chuck, that was the most pathetic thing, the way those poor niggers jumped for the bait. They taught themselves to read, they broke their backs for chickenshit, they sent good men to the fuckhead Yoo Ess Senate, they set up legislatures giving Dixie the first public schools it ever had, how about that now, there's a fact for your eddi?cayshun, right? Jill honey, hand that stick back, you gonna blow yourself to the moon, that is uncut Red. And all this here while, Chuck and Babychuck, the crackers down there were frothing at the mouth and calling our black heroes baboons73. Couldn't do much else as long as the Northern annies hung around, right? Baboons, monkeys, apes: these hopeful sweet blacks trying to make men of themselves, thinking they'd been called to be men at last in these the Benighted75 States of Amurrika." Skeeter's face is shedding its shell of scom and writhing76 as if to cry. He has taken his glasses off. He is reaching toward Jill for the marijuana cigarette, keeping his eyes on Rabbit's face. Rabbit is frozen, his mind racing77. Nelson. Put him to bed. Seeing too much. His own face as he listens to Skeeter feels weak, shapeless, slipping. The beer tastes bad, of malt. Skeeter wants to cry, to yell. He is sitting on the edge of the sofa and making gestures so brittle78 his arms might snap off. He is crazy. "So what did the South do? They said baboon74 and lynched and whipped and cheated the black man of what pennies he had and thanked their white Jesus they didn't have to feed him anymore. And what did the North do? It copped out. It pulled out. It had put on all that muscle for the war and now it was wading79 into the biggest happiest muck of greed and graft80 and exploitation and pollution and slum?building and Indian?killing81 this poor old whore of a planet has ever been saddled with, right? Don't go sleepy on me Chuck, here comes the interesting part. The Southern assholes got together with the Northern assholes and said, Let's us do a deal. What's all this about democracy, let's have here a dollar?cracy. Why'd we ever care, free versus82 slave? Capital versus labor, that's where it's at, right? This poor cunt of a country's the biggest jampot's ever come along so let's eat it, friend. You screw your black labor and we'll screw our immigrant honky and Mongolian idiot labor and, whoo?hee! Halleluiah, right? So the Freedman's Bureau was trashed and the military governors were chased back by crackers on horses who were very big on cutting up colored girls with babies inside 'em and Tilden was cheated out of the Presidency83 in the one bonyfidey swindle election you can find admitted in every honky history book. Look it up, right? And that was the revolution of 1876. Far as the black man goes, that's the '76 that hurt, the one a hundred years before was just a bunch of English gents dodging taxes." Skeeter has put his glasses back on; the glass circles glitter behind a blueness of smoke. His voice has settled for irony84 again. "So let's all sing America the Beautiful, right? North and West, robber barons85 and slums. Down South, one big nigger barbecue. Hitler bless his sweet soul leastways tried to keep the ovens out of sight. Down Dixieway, every magnolia had a rope. Man, they passed laws if a nigger sneezed within three miles of a white ass his balls were chewed off by sawtoothed beagles. Some nigger didn't hop5 off the sidewalk and lick up the tobacco juice whenever the town trash spit, he was tucked into a chain gang and peddled86 to the sheriff's brother?in?law cheaper than an alligator87 egg. And if he ,dared ask for the vote the Fifteenth Amendment88 had flat?out given him, why, they couldn't think up ways to skin him slowly enough, they couldn't invent enough laws to express their dis?approbation89, better for a poor black man to go stick his head up Great?aunt Lily's snatch than try to stick it in a polling booth. Right? Chuck, I got to hand it to you, you had it all ways. The South got slavery back at half the price, it got control of Congress back by counting the black votes that couldn't be cast, the North got the cotton money it needed for capital, and everybody got the fun of shitting on the black man and then holding their noses. You believe any of this?"
"I believe all of it," Rabbit says.
"Do you believe, do you believe I'm so mad just telling this if I had a knife right now I'd poke14 it down your throat and watch you gargle your life away and would love it, oh, would I love it." Skeeter is weeping. Tears and smoke mix on the skin of his face.
"O.K., O.K.," Rabbit says.
"Skeeter, don't cry," Nelson says.
"Skeeter, it was too rich, I'm going to lose it," Jill says and stands. "I'm dizzy."
But Skeeter will talk only to Harry90. "What I want to say to you," he says, "what I want to make ever so clear, Chuck, is you had that chance. You could have gone some better road, right? You took that greedy turn, right? You sold us out, right? You sold yourselves out. Like Lincoln said, you paid in blood, sword for the lash91 and all that, and you didn't lift us up, we held out our hands, man, we were like faithful dogs waiting for that bone, but you gave us a kick, you put us down, you put us down."
"Skeeter, please don't ever give me any more of that what-ever it was, ever, ever," Jill says, drifting away.
Skeeter controls his crying, lifts his face darkened in streaks92 like ashes wetted down. "It wasn't just us, you sold yourselves out, right? You really had it here, you had it all, and you took that greedy mucky road, man, you made yourself the asshole of the planet. Right? To keep that capitalist thing rolling you let those asshole crackers have their way and now you's all asshole crackers, North and South however you look there's assholes, you lapped up the poison and now it shows, Chuck, you say America to you and you still get bugles93 and stars but say it to any black or yellow man and you get hate, right? Man the world does hate you, you're the big pig keeping it all down." He jabs blearily with his skinny finger, and hangs his head.
From upstairs, discreet94 as the noise a cat makes catching95 a bird, comes a squeezed heaving noise, Jill being sick.
Nelson asks, "Dad, shouldn't you call a doctor?"
"She'll be O.K. Go to bed. You have school tomorrow."
Skeeter looks at Rabbit; his eyeballs are fiery96 and rheumy. "I said it, right?"
"Trouble with your line," Rabbit tells him, "it's pure self?pity. The real question is, Where do you go from here? We all got here on a bad boat. You talk as if the whole purpose of this country since the start has been to frustrate97 Negroes. Hell, you're just ten per cent. The fact is most people don't give a damn what you do. This is the freest country around, make it if you can, if you can't, die gracefully98. But Jesus, stop begging for a free ride."
"Friend, you are wrong. You are white but wrong. We fasci-nate you, white man. We are in your dreams. We are tech-nology's nightmare. We are all the good satisfied nature you put down in yourselves when you took that mucky greedy turn. We are what has been left out of the industrial revolution, so we are the next revolution, and don't you know it? You know it. Why else you so scared of me, Rabbit?"
"Because you're a spook with six loose screws. I'm going to bed."
Skeeter rolls his head loosely, touches it dubiously99. In the light from the driftwood lamp his round mass of hair is seen as insubstantial, his skull100 narrow as the bone handle of a knife. He brushes at his forehead as if midges are there. He says, "Sweet dreams. I'm too spaced to sleep right now, I got just to sit here, nursing the miseries102. Mind if I play the radio if I keep it low?"
"No."
Upstairs, Jill, a sudden warm wisp in his arms, begs with rapid breath, "Get him out of here, Harry, don't let him stay, he's no good for me, no good for any of us."
"You brought him here." He takes her talk as the exaggerat-ing that children do, to erase103 their fears by spelling them out; and indeed in five minutes she is dead asleep, motionless. The electric clock burns beyond her head like a small moon's skeleton. Downstairs, a turned?down radio faintly scratches. And shortly Rabbit too is asleep. Strangely, he sleeps soundly, with Skeeter in the house.
"Harry, how about a quick one?" His father tells the bartender, as always, "Let's make it a Schlitz."
"Whisky sour," he says. Summer is over, the air?conditioning in the Phoenix104 has been turned off. He asks, "How's Mom doing?"
"As good as can be hoped, Harry." He nudges a conspiratorial105 inch closer. "That new stuff really seems to do the job, she's on her feet for hours at a rime106 now. For my money, though, the sixty-four?thousand?dollar question is what the long?range effects will be. The doctor, he's perfectly107 honest about it. He says to her when we go on in to the hospital, `How's my favorite guinea pig?' "
"What's the answer?" Rabbit abruptly108 asks.
His father is startled. "Her answer?"
"Anybody's."
His father now understands the question and shrugs109 his narrow shoulders in his faded blue shirt. "Blind faith," he suggests. In a mutter he adds, "One more bastard under the ground."
On the television above the bar men are filing past a casket, but the sound is turned off and Rabbit cannot tell if it is Everett Dirksen's lying?in?state in Washington or Ho Chi Minh's ceremonies in Hanoi. Dignitaries look alike, always dressed in mourning. His father clears his throat, breaks the silence. "Janice called your mother last night."
"Boy, I think she's cracking up, she's on the phone all the time. Stavros must be losing his muscle."
"She was very disturbed, she said you'd taken a colored man into your house."
"I didn't exactly take him, he kind of showed up. Nobody's supposed to know about it. I think he's Farnsworth's son."
"That can't be, Jerry's never married to my knowledge."
"They don't marry generally, right? They weren't allowed to as slaves."
This bit of historical information makes Earl Angstrom grimace110. He takes, what for him, with his boy, is a tough line. "I must say, Harry, I'm not too happy about it either."
The funeral (the flag on the coffin111 has stars and stripes, so it must be Dirksen's) vanishes, and flickering112 in its place are shots of cannons113 blasting, of trucks moving through the desert, of planes soundlessly batting through the sky, of soldiers waving. He cannot tell if they are Israeli or Egyptian. He asks, "How happy is Mom about it?"
"I must say, she was very short with Janice. Suggested if she wanted to run your household she go back to it. Said she had no right to complain. I don't know what all else. I couldn't bear to listen; when women get to quarrelling, I head for the hills."
` "Janice talk about lawyers?"
"Your mother didn't mention it if she did. Between you and me, Harry, she was so upset it scared me. I don't believe she slept more than two, three hours; she took twice the dose of Seconal and still it couldn't knock her out. She's worried and, pardon my crust for horning in where I have no business, Harry, so am L"
"Worried about what?"
"Worried about this new development. I'm no nigger?hater, I'm happy to work with 'em and I have for twenty years, if needs be l'll live next to 'em though the fact is they haven't cracked Mt. Judge yet, but get any closer than that, you're playing with fire, in my experience."
"What experience?"
"They'll let you down," Pop says. "They don't have any feeling of obligation. I'm not blaming a soul, but that's the fact, they'll let you down and laugh about it afterwards. They're not ethical114 like white men and there's no use saying they are. You asked me what experience, I don't want to go into stories, though there's plenty I could tell, just remember I was raised in the Third Ward15 back when it was more white than black, we mixed it up in every sense. I know the people of this county. They're goodnatured people. They like to eat and drink and like to have their red?light district and their numbers, they'll elect the scum to political office time and time again; but they don't like seeing their women desecrated115."
"Who's being desecrated?"
"Just that menagerie over there, the way you're keeping it, is a desecration116. Have you heard from your neighbors what they think about it yet?"
"I don't even know my neighbors."
"That black boy shows his face outside, you'll get to know them; you'll get to know them as sure as I'm sitting here trying to be a friend and not a father. The day when I could whip sense into you is long by, Harry, and anyway you gave us a lot less trouble than Mim. Your mother always says you let people push you around and I always answer her, Harry knows his way around, he lands on his feet; but I'm beginning to see she may be right. Your mother may be all crippled up but she's still hard to fool, ask the man who's tried."
"When did you try?"
But this secret ? had Pop played Mom false? ? stays dammed behind those loose false teeth the old man's mouth keeps adjusting, pensively117 sucking. Instead he says, "Do us a favor, Harry, I hate like hell to beg, but do us a favor and come over tonight and talk about it. Your mother stiff armed Janice but I know when she's been shook."
"Not tonight, I can't. Maybe in a couple of days, things'll clear up."
"Why not, Harry? We promise not to grill118 you or anything, Lord, I wouldn't ask for myself, it's your mother's state of mind. You know" ? and he slides so close their shirt sleeves touch and Rabbit smells the sour fog of his father's breath ? "she's having the adventure now we're all going to have to have."
"Stop asking, Pop. I can't right now."
"They've gotcha in their clutches, huh?"
He stands straight, decides one whisky sour will do, and answers, "Right.
That night after supper they discuss slavery. Jill and Skeeter have done the dishes together, Rabbit has helped Nelson with his homework. The kid is into algebra119 this year but can't quite manage that little flip120 in his head whereby a polynomial cracks open into two nice equalities of x, one minus and one plus. Rabbit had been good at math, it was a game with limits, with orderly movements and a promise of completion at the end. The combination always cracked open. Nelson is tight about it, afraid to let go and swing, a smart kid but tight, afraid of maybe that thing that got his baby sister: afraid it might come back for him. They have half an hour before Laugh?In, which they all want to watch. Tonight Skeeter takes the big brown chair and Rabbit the one with silver threads. Jill and Nelson sit on the airfoam sofa. Skeeter has some books; they look childishly bright under his thin brown hands. School days. Sesame Street.
Skeeter says to Rabbit, "Chuck, I been thinking I sold out the truth last night when I said your slavery was a country thing. The fact upon reflection appears to be that your style of slavery was uniquely and e?specially121 bad, about the worst indeed this poor blood?soaked globe has ever seen." Skeeter's voice as he speaks exerts a steady pressure, wind rattling122 a dead tree. His eyes never deviate123 to Nelson or Jill.
Rabbit, a game student (in high school he used to get B's), asks, "What was so bad about it?"
"Let me guess what you think. You think it wasn't so bad on the plantations124, right? What with banjos and all the fritters you could eat and 01' Massah up at the big house instead of the Department of Welfare, right? Those niggers were savages125 anyway, their chuckleheads pure bone, and if they didn't like it, well, why didn't they just up and die in their chains like the noble old redman, right?"
"Yeah. Why didn't they?"
"I love that question. Because I have the answer. The reason is, old Tonto was so primitive128 farmwork made no sense to him, he was on the moon, right?, and just withered129 away. Now the black man, he was from West Africa, where they had agriculture. Where they had social organization. How do you think those slaves got to the coast from a thousand miles away? Black men arranged it, they wouldn't cut the white men in, they kept the pie all for themselves. Organization men, right?"
"That's interesting."
"I'm glad you said that. I am grateful for your interest."
"He meant it," Jill intercedes130.
"Swallow your tongue," Skeeter says without looking toward her.
"Swallow your tongue yourself," Nelson intervenes. Rabbit would be proud of the boy, but he feels that Nelson's defense131 of Jill, like Skeeter's attack, are automatic: parts of a pattern the three have developed while he is away working.
"The readings," Jill prompts.
Skeeter explains. "Little Jilly and “, today, been talking, and her idea is, to make cosy132 nights all together more structured, right? We'd read aloud a few things, otherwise I'm apt to do all the talking, that is until you decide to dump me on the floor again."
"Let me get a beer then."
"Puts pimples133 on your belly134, man. Let me light up some good Tijuana brass135 and pass it over, old athlete like you shouldn't be getting a beer gut136, right?"
Rabbit neither agrees nor moves. He glances at Nelson: the kid's eyes are sunk and shiny, frightened but not to the point of panic. He is learning; he trusts them. He frowns over to stop his father looking at him. Around them the furniture ? the fireplace that never holds a fire, the driftwood base like a corpse137 lying Propped138 on one arm ? listens. A quiet rain has begun at the windows, sealing them in. Skeeter holds his lips pinched to seal into himself the first volumes of sweet smoke, then exhales139, sighing, and leans back into the chair, vanishing between the brown wings but for the glass?and?silver circles of his spectacles. He says, "He was property, right? From Virginia on, it was profit and capital absolutely. The King of England, all he cared about was tobacco cash, right? Black men just blots140 on the balance sheet to him. Now the King of Spain, he knew black men from way back; those Moors141 had run his country and some had been pretty smart. So south of the border a slave was property but he was also other things. King of Spain say, That's my subject, he has legal rights, right? Church say, That's an everlasting142 immortal143 soul there: baptize him. Teach him right from wrong. His marriage vows144 are sacred, right? If he rustles145 up the bread to buy himself free, you got to sell. This was all written in the law down there. Up here, the law said one thing: no rights. No rights. This is no man, this is one warm piece of animal meat, worth one thousand Yoo Hess Hay coldblooded clams146. Can't let it marry, that might mess up selling it when the market is right. Can't let it go and testify in court, that might mess up Whitey's property rights. There was no such thing, no such, believe me, as the father of a slave child. That was a legal fact. Now how could the law get that way? Because they did believe a nigger was a piece of shit. And they was scared of their own shit. Man, those crackers were sick and they knew it absolutely. All those years talkin' about happy Rastus chompin' on watermelon they was scared shitless of uprisings, uprisings, Chuck, when there hadn't been more than two or three the whole hundred years and those not amounted to a bucket of piss. They was scared rigid147, right? Scared of blacks learning to read, scared of blacks learning a trade, scared of blacks on the job market, there was no place for a freedman to go, once he was freed, all that talk about free soil, the first thing the free?soil convention in Kansas said was we don't want no black faces here, keep 'em away from our eyeballs. The thing about these Benighted States all around is that it was never no place like other places where this happens because that happens, and some men have more luck than others so let's push a little here and give a little here; no, sir, this place was never such a place it was a dream, it was a state of mind from those poor fool pilgrims on, right? Some white man see a black man he don't see a man he sees a symbol, right? All these people around here are walking around inside their own heads, they don't even know if you kick somebody else it hurts, Jesus won't even tell 'em because the Jesus they brought over on the boats was the meanest most de?balled Jesus the good Lord ever let run around scaring people. Scared, scared. I'm scared of you, you scared of me, Nelson scared of us both, and poor Jilly here so scared of everything she'll run and hide herself in dope again if we don't all act like big daddies to her." He offers the smoking wet?licked reefer around. Rabbit shakes his head no.
"Skeeter," Jill says, "the selections." A prim127 clubwoman calling the meeting to order. "Thirteen minutes to Laugh?In," Nelson ?says. "I don't want to miss the beginning, it's neat when they introduce themselves."
"Ree?ight," Skeeter says, fumbling148 at his forehead, at that buzzing that seems sometimes there. "Out of this book here." The book is called Slavery; the letters are red, white, and blue. It seems a small carnival149 under Skeeter's slim hand. "Just for the fun of it, to give us something more solid than my ignorant badmouthing, right? You know, like a happening. Chuck, this gives you pretty much a pain in the ass, right?"
"No, I like it. I like learning stuff. I have an open mind."
"He turns me on, he's so true to life," Skeeter says, handing the book to Jill. "Baby, you begin. Where my finger is, just the part in little type." He announces, "These are old?time speeches, dig?"
Jill sits up straight on the sofa and reads in a voice higher than her natural voice, a nice?girl?school?schooled voice, with riding lessons in it, and airy big white?curtained rooms; territory even higher in the scale than Penn Park.
"Think," she reads, "of the nation's deed, done continually and afresh. God shall hear the voice of your brother's blood, long crying from the ground; His justice asks you even now, `America, where is thy brother?' This is the answer which America must give: `Lo, he is there in the rice?swamps of the South, in herfields teeming150 with cotton and the luxuriant cane151. He was weak and I seized him; naked and I bound him; ignorant, poor and savage126, and I over?mastered him. I laid on his feebler shoulders my grievous yoke152. I have chained him with my fetters153; beat him with my whip. Other tyrants154 had dominion155 over him, but my finger was on his human?flesh. I am fed with his toil156; fat, voluptuous157 on his sweat, and tears, and blood. I stole the father, stole also the sons, and set them to toil; his wife and daughters area pleasant spoil to me. Behold158 the children also of thy servant and his handmaidens ? sons swarthier than their sire. Askest thou for the African? I have made him a beast. Lo, there Thou hast what is thine.' " She hands the book back blushing. Her glance at Rabbit says, Bear with us. Haven't I loved you?
Skeeter is cackling. "Green pickles, that turns me on. A pleasant spoil to me, right? And did you dig that beautiful bit about the sons swarthier than their sire? Those old Yankee sticks were really bugged159, one respectable fuck would have stopped the abolition160 movement cold. But they weren't getting it back home in the barn so they sure gave hell to those crackers getting it out in the slave shed. Dark meat is soul meat, right? That was Theodore Parker, here's another, the meanest mouth in the crowd, old William Lloyd. Nellie, you try this. Just where I've marked. Just read the words slow, don't try for any expression."
Gaudy161 book in hand, the boy looks toward his father for rescue. "I feel stupid."
Rabbit says, "Read, Nelson. I want to hear it."
He turns for help elsewhere. "Skeeter, you promised I wouldn't have to."
"I said we'd see how it went. Come on, your daddy likes it. He has an open mind."
"You're just poking162 fun of everybody."
"Let him off," Rabbit says. "I'm losing interest."
Jill intervenes. "Do it, Nelson, it'll be fun. We won't turn on Laugh?In until you do."
The boy plunges163 in, stumbling, frowning so hard his father wonders if he doesn't need glasses. "No matter," he reads, "though every party should be torn by dis?, dis -"
Jill looks over his shoulder. "Dissensions."
"? every sest -"
"? every sect dashed into fragments, the national compact dissolved -"
Jill says, "Good!"
"Let him ride," Skeeter says, his eyes shut, nodding.
Nelson's voice gains confidence. "? the land filled with the horrors of a civil and a servile war? still, slavery must be buried in the grave of infantry165 -"
"? infamy, beyond the possibility of a rez, a razor-"
"A resurrection."
"If the State cannot survive the anti?slavery agitation167, then let the State perish. If the Church must be cast down by the strugglings of Humanity, then let the Church fall, and its fragments be scattered168 to the four winds of heaven, never more to curse the earth. If the American Union cannot be maintained, except by immolating169 ? what's that?"
"Sacrificing," Jill says.
Rabbit says, "I thought it meant burn." ? Nelson looks up, uncertain he should continue.
The rain continues at the windows, gently, gently nailing them in, tighter together.
Skeeter's eyes are still closed. "Finish up. Do the last sentence, Babychuck."
"If the Republic must be blotted170 out from the roll of nations, by pro-claiming liberty to the captives, then let the Republic sink beneath the waves of oblivion, and a shout of joy, louder than the voice of many waters, fill the universe at its extinction171. I don't understand what any of this stuff means."
Skeeter says, "It means, More Power to the People, Death to the Fascist Pigs."
Rabbit says, "To me it means, Throw the baby out with the bath." He remembers a tub of still water, a kind of dust on its dead surface. He relives the shock of reaching down through it to pull the plug. He loops back into the room where they are sitting now, within the rain.
Jill is explaining to Nelson, "He's saying what Skeeter says. If the System, even if it works for most people, has to oppress some of the people, then the whole System should be destroyed."
"Do I say that? No." Skeeter leans forward from the mossy brown wings, reaching a trembling thin hand toward the young people, all parody172 shaken from his voice. "That'll come anyway. That big boom. It's not the poor blacks setting the bombs, it's the offspring of the white rich. It's not injustice173 pounding at the door, it's impatience174. Put enough rats in a 'cage the fat ones get more frantic175 than the skinny ones 'cause they feel more squeezed. No. We must look past that, past the violence, into the next stage. That it's gonna blow up we can assume. That's not interesting. What comes next is what's interesting. There's got to be a great calm."
"And you're the black Jesus going to bring it in," Rabbit mocks. "From A.D. to A.S. After Skeeter. I should live so long. All Praise Be Skeeter's Name."
He offers to sing but Skeeter is concentrating on the other two, disciples176. "People talk revolution all the time but revolution's not interesting, right? Revolution is just one crowd taking power from another and that's bullshit, that's just power, and power is just guns and gangsters177, and that's boring bullshit, right? People say to me Free Huey, I say Screw Huey, he's just Agnew in blackface. World forgets gangsters like that before they're dead. No. The problem is really, when the gangsters have knocked each other off, and taken half of everybody else with them, to make use of the space. After the Civil War ended, there was space, only they let it fill up with that same old greedy muck, only worse, right? They turned that old dog?eat?dog thing into a divine law."
"That's what we need, Skeeter," Rabbit says. "Some new divine laws. Why doncha go up to the top of Mt. Judge and have 'em handed to you on a tablet?"
Skeeter turns that nicely carved knife?handle of a face to him slowly, says slowly, "I'm no threat to you, Chuck. You're set. Only thing I could do to you is kill you and that matters less than you think, right?"
Jill delicately offers to make peace. "Didn't we pick out something for Harry to read?"
"Fuck it," Skeeter says. "That won't swing now. He's giving off ugly vibes, right? He's not ready. He is immature178."
Rabbit is hurt, he had only been kidding. "Come on, I'm ready, give me my thing to read."
Skeeter asks Nelson, "What say, Babychuck? Think he's ready?"
Nelson says, "You must read it right, Dad. No poking fun."
"Me? Who'd I ever poke fun of?"
"Mom. All the time you poke fun of Mom. No wonder she left you."
Skeeter gives Harry the book open to a page. "Just a little bit. Just read where I've marked."
Soft red crayon. Those Crayola boxes that used to remind him of bleachers with every head a different color. This strange return. "I believe, my friends and fellow citizens," Rabbit reads solemnly, "we are not prepared for this suffrage179. But we can learn. Give a man tools and let him commence to use them, and in time he will learn a trade. So it is with voting. We may not understand it at the start, but in time we shall learn to do our duty."
The rain makes soft applause.
Skeeter tips his narrow head and smiles at the two children on the sofa. "Makes a pretty good nigger, don't he?"
Nelson says, "Don't, Skeeter. He didn't poke fun so you shouldn't."
"Nothing wrong with what I said, that's what the world needs, pretty good niggers, right?"
To show Nelson how tough he is, Rabbit tells Skeeter, "This is all bleeding?heart stuff: It'd be like me bellyaching that the Swedes were pushed around by the Finns in the year Zilch."
Nelson cries, "We're missing Laugh?In!"
They turn it on. The cold small star expands, a torrent180 of stripes snaps into a picture, Sammy Davis Jr. is being the little dirty old man, tapping along behind the park bench, humming that aimless sad doodling tune181. He perks182 up, seeing there is someone sitting on the bench. It is not Ruth Buzzi but Arte Johnson, the white, the real little dirty old man. They sit side by side and stare at each other. They are like one man looking into a crazy mirror. Nelson laughs. They all laugh: Nelson, Jill, Rabbit, Skeeter. Kindly183 the rain fastens them in, a dressmaker patting and stitching all around the house, fitting its great wide gown.
Nights with Skeeter, they blend together. Skeeter asks him, "You want to know how a Ne?gro feels?"
"Not much."
"Dad, don't," Nelson says.
gill, silent, abstracted, passes Rabbit the joint. He takes a tentative puff184. Has hardly held a cigarette in ten years, scared to inhale185. Nearly sick after the other time, in Jimbo's. You suck and hold it down. Hold it down.
"Ee?magine," Skeeter is saying, "being in a glass box, and every time you move toward something, your head gets bumped. Ee?magine being on a bus, and everybody movin' away, 'cause your whole body's covered with pustulatin' scabs, and they're scared to get the disease."
Rabbit exhales, lets it out. "That's not how it is. These black kids on buses are pushy186 as hell."
"You've set so much type the world is lead, right? You don't hate nobody, right?"
"Nobody." Serenely187. Space is transparent188.
"How you feel about those Penn Park people?"
"Which ones?"
"All those ones. All those ones live in those great big piecrust mock?Two?door houses with His and Hers Caddies parked out by the hydrangea bushes. How about all those old farts down at the Mifflin Club with all those iron gates that used to own the textile mills and now don't own anything but a heap of paper keeps 'em in cigars and girlfriends? How about those? Let 'em settle in before you answer."
Rabbit pictures Penn Park, the timbered gables, the stucco, the weedless lawns plumped up like pillows. It was on a hill. He used to imagine it on the top of a hill, a hill he could never climb, because it wasn't a real hill like Mt. Judge. And he and Mom and Pop and Mim lived near the foot of this hill, in the dark next to the Bolgers, and Pop came home from work every day too tired to play catch in the back yard, and Mom never had jewelry189 like other women, and they bought day?old bread because it was a penny cheaper, and Pop's teeth hurt to keep money out of the dentist's hands, and now Mom's dying was a game being played by doctors who drove Caddies and had homes in Penn Park. "I hate them," he tells Skeeter.
The black man's face lights up, shines. "Deeper."
Rabbit fears the feeling will be fragile and vanish if he looks at it but it does not; it expands, explodes. Timbered gables, driveway pebbles190, golf clubs fill the sky with debris191. He remembers one doctor. He met him early this summer by accident, coming up on the porch to visit Mom, the doctor hurrying out, under the fanlight that sees everything, in a swank cream raincoat though it had just started to sprinkle, that kind of dude, who produces a raincoat from nowhere when proper, all set up, life licked, tweed trousers knife?sharp over polished strapped192 shoes, hurrying to his next appointment, anxious to get away from this drizzling193 tilted194 street. Pop worrying his teeth like an old woman in the doorway195, performing introductions, "our son Harry," pathetic pride. The doctor's irritation196 at being halted even a second setting a prong of distaste on his upper lip behind the clipped mustache the color of iron. His handshake also metal, arrogant197, it pinches Harry's unready hand and says, l am strong, I twist bodies to my will. I am life, I am death. "I hate those Penn Park motherfuckers," Harry amplifies198, performing for Skeeter, wanting to please him. "If I could push the red button to blow them all to Kingdom Come" ? he pushes a button in mid101?air ? "I would." He pushes the button so hard he can see it there.
"Ka?boom, right?" Skeeter grins, flinging wide his sticklike arms.
"But it is," Rabbit says. "Everybody knows black pussy199 is beautiful. It's on posters even, now."
Skeeter asks, "How you think all this mammy shit got started? Who you think put all those hog200?fat churchified old women at the age of thirty in Harlem?"
"Not me."
"It was you. Man, you is just who it was. From those breeding cabins on you made the black girl feel sex was shit, so she hid from it as quick as she could in the mammy bit, right?"
"Well, tell 'em it's not shit."
"They don't believe me, Chuck. They see I don't count. I have nó muscle, right? I can't protect my black women, right? 'Cause you don't let me be a man."
"Go ahead. Be one."
Skeeter gets up from the armchair with the silver threads and circles the imitation cobbler's bench with a wary201 hunchbacked quickness and kisses Jill where she sits on the sofa. Her hands, after a startled jerk, knit together and stay in her lap. Her head does not pull back nor strain forward. Rabbit cannot see, around the eclipsing orb202 of Skeeter's Afro, Jill's eyes. He can see Nelson's eyes. They are warm watery203 holes so dark, so stricken that Rabbit would like to stick pins into them, to teach the child there is worse. Skeeter straightens from kissing, wipes the Jill?spit from his mouth. "A pleasant spoil. Chuck, how do you like it?"
"I don't mind. If she doesn't."
Jill has closed her eyes, her mouth open on a small bubble. "She does mind it," Nelson protests. "Dad, don't let him!" Rabbit says to Nelson, "Bedtime, isn't it?"
Physically204, Skeeter fascinates Rabbit. The lustrous205 pallor of the tongue and palms and the soles of the feet, left out of the sun. Or a different kind of skin? White palms never tan either. The peculiar206 glinting luster207 of his skin. The something so very finely turned and finished in the face, reflecting light at a dozen polished points: in comparison white faces are blobs: putty still drying. The curious greased grace of his gestures, rapid and watchful208 as a lizard's motions, free of mammalian fat. Skeeter in his house feels like a finely made electric toy; Harry wants to touch him but is afraid he will get a shock.
"O.K.? "
"Not especially." Jill's voice seems to come from further away than beside him in the bed.
"Why not?"
"I'm scared."
"Of what? Of me?"
"Of you and him together."
"We're not together. We hate each other's guts209."
She asks, "When are you kicking him out?"
"They'll put him in jail."
"Good."
The rain is heavy above them, beating everywhere, inserting itself in that chimney flashing that always leaked. He pictures a wide brown stain on the bedroom ceiling. He asks, "What's with you and him?"
She doesn't answer. Her lean cameo profile is lit by a flash. Seconds pass before the thunder arrives.
He asks shyly, "He getting at you?"
"Not that way anymore. He says that's not interesting. He ?wants me another way now."
"What way can that be?" Poor girl, crazy suspicious.
"He wants me to tell him about God. He says he's going to bring some mesc for me."
The thunder follows the next flash more closely.
"That's crazy." But exciting: maybe she can do it. Maybe he can get music out of her like Babe out of the piano.
"He is crazy," Jill says. "I'll never be hooked again."
"What can I do?" Rabbit feels paralyzed, by the rain, the thunder, by his curiosity, by his hope for a break in the combination, for catastrophe210 and deliverance.
The girl cries out but thunder comes just then and he has to ask her to repeat it. "All you care about is your wife," she shouts upward into the confusion in heaven.
Pajasek comes up behind him and mumbles211 about the phone. Rabbit drags himself up. Worse than a liquor hangover, must stop, every night. Must get a grip on himself. Get a grip. Get angry. "Janice, for Chrissake ?"
"It isn't Janice, Harry. It's me. Peggy."
"Oh. Hi. How's tricks? How's Ollie?"
"Forget Ollie, don't ever mention his name to me. He hasn't been to see Billy in weeks or contributed anything to his keep, and when he finally does show up, you know what he brings? He's a genius, you'll never guess."
"Another mini?bike."
"A puppy. He brought us a Golden Retriever puppy. Now what the hell can we do with a puppy with Billy off in school and me gone from eight to five every day?"
"You got a job. Congratulations. What do you do?"
"I type tape for Brewer Fealty212 over at Youngquist, they're putting all their records on computer tape and not only is the work so boring you could scream, you don't even know when you've made a mistake, it comes out just holes in this tape, all these premium213 numbers."
"It sounds nifty. Peggy, speaking of work, they don't appreciate my being called here."
Her voice retreats, puts on dignity. "Pardon me. I wanted to talk to you when Nelson wasn't around. Ollie has promised Billy to take him fishing next Sunday, not this Sunday, and I wondered, since it doesn't look as if you'll ever ask me, if you'd like to have dinner Saturday when you bring him over."
Her open bathrobe, that pubic patch, the silver stretchmarks, don't count your chickens. Meaning do count your chickens. "That might be great," he says.
"Might be."
"I'll have to see, I'm kind of tied up these days -"
"Hasn't that man gone yet? Kick him out, Harry. He's taking incredible advantage ofyou. Call the police if he won't go. Really, Harry, you're much too passive."
"Yeah. Or something." Only after shutting the office door behind him and starting to walk through the solid brightness toward his machine does he feel last night's marijuana clutch at him, drag at his knees like a tide. Never again. Let Jesus find him another way.
"Tell us about Vietnam, Skeeter." The grass is mixing with his veins214 and he feels very close, very close to them all: the driftwood lamp, Nelson's thatch215 of hair an anxious tangle216, Jill's bare legs a touch unshaped at the ankles. He loves them. All. His voice moves in and out behind their eyes. Skeeter's eyes roll red toward the ceiling. Things are pouring for him through the ceiling.
"Why you want to be told?" he asks.
"Because I wasn't there."
"Think you should have been there, right?"
` Yes."
"Why would that be?"
"I don't know. Duty. Guilt217."
"No sir. You want to have been there because that is where it was at, right?"
"O.K.
"It was the best place," Skeeter says, not quite as a question.
"Something like that."
Skeeter goes on, gently urging, "It was where you would have felt not so de?balled, right?"
"I don't know. If you don't want to talk about it, don't. Let's turn on television."
"Mod Squad218 will be on," Nelson says.
Skeeter explains: "If you can't fuck, dirty pictures won't do it for you, right? And then if you can, they don't do it either."
"O.K., don't tell us anything. And try to watch your language in front of Nelson."
At night when Jill turns herself to him in bed he finds the unripe219 hardness of her young body repels220 him. The smoke inside him severs221 his desires from his groin, he is full of flitting desires that prevent him from directly answering her woman's call, a call he helped create in her girl's body. Yet in his mind he sees her mouth defiled222 by Skeeter's kiss and feels her rotting with his luminous223 poison. Nor can he forgive her for having been rich. Yet through these nightly denials, these quiet debasements, he feels something unnatural224 strengthening within him that may be love. On her side she seems, more and more, to cling to him; they have come far from that night when she went down on him like a little girl bobbing for apples.
收听单词发音 |
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vista
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| n.远景，深景，展望，回想 | |
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sullen
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| adj.愠怒的，闷闷不乐的，(天气等)阴沉的 | |
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intensity
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| n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度 | |
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blot
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| vt.弄脏（用吸墨纸）吸干；n.污点，污渍 | |
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hop
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| n.单脚跳，跳跃；vi.单脚跳，跳跃；着手做某事；vt.跳跃，跃过 | |
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cone
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| n.圆锥体，圆锥形东西，球果 | |
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ass
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| n.驴；傻瓜，蠢笨的人 | |
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vampire
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| n.吸血鬼 | |
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enunciates
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| n.（清晰地）发音( enunciate的名词复数 )；确切地说明v.（清晰地）发音( enunciate的第三人称单数 )；确切地说明 | |
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custody
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| n.监护，照看，羁押，拘留 | |
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pertaining
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| 与…有关系的，附属…的，为…固有的(to) | |
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integration
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| n.一体化，联合，结合 | |
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slain
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| 杀死，宰杀，杀戮( slay的过去分词 )； (slay的过去分词) | |
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poke
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| n.刺，戳，袋；vt.拨开，刺，戳；vi.戳，刺，捅，搜索，伸出，行动散慢 | |
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ward
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| n.守卫，监护，病房，行政区，由监护人或法院保护的人（尤指儿童）；vt.守护，躲开 | |
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Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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indignity
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| n.侮辱，伤害尊严，轻蔑 | |
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jersey
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| n.运动衫 | |
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disturbances
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| n.骚乱( disturbance的名词复数 )；打扰；困扰；障碍 | |
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ghetto
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| n.少数民族聚居区，贫民区 | |
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plumbing
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| n.水管装置；水暖工的工作；管道工程v.用铅锤测量（plumb的现在分词）；探究 | |
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chamber
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| n.房间，寝室；会议厅；议院；会所 | |
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bastard
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| n.坏蛋，混蛋；私生子 | |
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cracker
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| n.（无甜味的）薄脆饼干 | |
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exterminate
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| v.扑灭，消灭，根绝 | |
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dodging
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| n.避开，闪过，音调改变v.闪躲( dodge的现在分词 )；回避 | |
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27
bucks
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| n.雄鹿( buck的名词复数 )；钱；（英国十九世纪初的）花花公子；（用于某些表达方式）责任v.（马等）猛然弓背跃起( buck的第三人称单数 )；抵制；猛然震荡；马等尥起后蹄跳跃 | |
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28
definitively
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| adv.决定性地，最后地 | |
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29
vat
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| n.(=value added tax)增值税，大桶 | |
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30
mincingly
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31
fascist
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| adj.法西斯主义的；法西斯党的；n.法西斯主义者，法西斯分子 | |
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32
paperbacks
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| n.平装本，平装书( paperback的名词复数 ) | |
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33
spines
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| n.脊柱( spine的名词复数 )；脊椎；（动植物的）刺；书脊 | |
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34
chafed
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| v.擦热（尤指皮肤）( chafe的过去式 )；擦痛；发怒；惹怒 | |
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35
biased
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| a.有偏见的 | |
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36
hem
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| n.贴边，镶边；vt.缝贴边；(in)包围，限制 | |
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37
sniff
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| vi.嗅…味道；抽鼻涕；对嗤之以鼻，蔑视 | |
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38
brewer
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| n. 啤酒制造者 | |
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39
random
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| adj.随机的；任意的；n.偶然的(或随便的)行动 | |
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40
elite
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| n.精英阶层；实力集团；adj.杰出的，卓越的 | |
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41
tusk
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| n.獠牙，长牙，象牙 | |
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42
squinting
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| 斜视( squint的现在分词 )； 眯着眼睛； 瞟； 从小孔或缝隙里看 | |
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43
missionaries
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| n.传教士( missionary的名词复数 ) | |
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44
brotherhood
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| n.兄弟般的关系，手中情谊 | |
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45
virtues
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| 美德( virtue的名词复数 )； 德行； 优点； 长处 | |
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46
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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47
nervously
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| adv.神情激动地，不安地 | |
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48
formulate
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| v.用公式表示；规划；设计；系统地阐述 | |
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49
cynical
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| adj.(对人性或动机)怀疑的，不信世道向善的 | |
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50
wastefully
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| 浪费地，挥霍地，耗费地 | |
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51
freckles
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| n.雀斑，斑点( freckle的名词复数 ) | |
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52
nostrils
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| 鼻孔( nostril的名词复数 ) | |
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53
constellation
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| n.星座n.灿烂的一群 | |
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54
patriotism
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| n.爱国精神，爱国心，爱国主义 | |
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55
lulling
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| vt.使镇静，使安静（lull的现在分词形式） | |
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56
nagging
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| adj.唠叨的，挑剔的；使人不得安宁的v.不断地挑剔或批评（某人）( nag的现在分词 )；不断地烦扰或伤害（某人）；无休止地抱怨；不断指责 | |
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57
ragged
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| adj.衣衫褴褛的，粗糙的，刺耳的 | |
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58
crackers
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| adj.精神错乱的，癫狂的n.爆竹( cracker的名词复数 )；薄脆饼干；（认为）十分愉快的事；迷人的姑娘 | |
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59
garrison
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| n.卫戍部队；驻地，卫戍区；vt.派(兵)驻防 | |
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60
agitating
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| 搅动( agitate的现在分词 )； 激怒； 使焦虑不安； （尤指为法律、社会状况的改变而）激烈争论 | |
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61
fatten
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| v.使肥，变肥 | |
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62
chuckles
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| 轻声地笑( chuckle的名词复数 ) | |
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63
wheezes
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| n.喘息声( wheeze的名词复数 )v.喘息，发出呼哧呼哧的喘息声( wheeze的第三人称单数 ) | |
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64
cannon
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| n.大炮，火炮；飞机上的机关炮 | |
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65
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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66
pouch
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| n.小袋，小包，囊状袋；vt.装...入袋中，用袋运输；vi.用袋送信件 | |
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67
belch
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| v.打嗝，喷出 | |
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68
construed
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| v.解释（陈述、行为等）( construe的过去式和过去分词 )；翻译，作句法分析 | |
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69
blessing
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| n.祈神赐福；祷告；祝福，祝愿 | |
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70
reverently
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| adv.虔诚地 | |
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71
mule
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| n.骡子，杂种，执拗的人 | |
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72
pickles
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| n.腌菜( pickle的名词复数 )；处于困境；遇到麻烦；菜酱 | |
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73
baboons
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| n.狒狒( baboon的名词复数 ) | |
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74
baboon
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| n.狒狒 | |
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75
benighted
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| adj.蒙昧的 | |
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76
writhing
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| （因极度痛苦而）扭动或翻滚( writhe的现在分词 ) | |
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77
racing
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| n.竞赛，赛马；adj.竞赛用的，赛马用的 | |
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78
brittle
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| adj.易碎的；脆弱的；冷淡的；(声音)尖利的 | |
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79
wading
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| （从水、泥等）蹚，走过，跋( wade的现在分词 ) | |
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80
graft
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| n.移植，嫁接，艰苦工作，贪污；v.移植，嫁接 | |
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81
killing
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| n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财 | |
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82
versus
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| prep.以…为对手，对；与…相比之下 | |
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83
presidency
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| n.总统(校长，总经理)的职位(任期) | |
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84
irony
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| n.反语，冷嘲；具有讽刺意味的事，嘲弄 | |
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85
barons
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| 男爵( baron的名词复数 )； 巨头； 大王； 大亨 | |
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86
peddled
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| （沿街）叫卖( peddle的过去式和过去分词 )； 兜售； 宣传； 散播 | |
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87
alligator
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| n.短吻鳄(一种鳄鱼) | |
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88
amendment
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| n.改正，修正，改善，修正案 | |
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89
approbation
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| n.称赞；认可 | |
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90
harry
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| vt.掠夺，蹂躏，使苦恼 | |
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91
lash
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| v.系牢；鞭打；猛烈抨击；n.鞭打；眼睫毛 | |
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92
streaks
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| n.（与周围有所不同的）条纹( streak的名词复数 )；（通常指不好的）特征（倾向）；（不断经历成功或失败的）一段时期v.快速移动( streak的第三人称单数 )；使布满条纹 | |
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93
bugles
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| 妙脆角，一种类似薯片但做成尖角或喇叭状的零食； 号角( bugle的名词复数 )； 喇叭； 匍匐筋骨草； （装饰女服用的）柱状玻璃（或塑料）小珠 | |
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94
discreet
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| adj.(言行)谨慎的；慎重的；有判断力的 | |
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95
catching
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| adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住 | |
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96
fiery
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| adj.燃烧着的，火红的；暴躁的；激烈的 | |
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97
frustrate
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| v.使失望；使沮丧；使厌烦 | |
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98
gracefully
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| ad.大大方方地；优美地 | |
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99
dubiously
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| adv.可疑地，怀疑地 | |
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100
skull
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| n.头骨；颅骨 | |
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101
mid
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| adj.中央的，中间的 | |
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102
miseries
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| n.痛苦( misery的名词复数 )；痛苦的事；穷困；常发牢骚的人 | |
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103
erase
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| v.擦掉；消除某事物的痕迹 | |
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104
phoenix
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| n.凤凰，长生(不死)鸟；引申为重生 | |
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105
conspiratorial
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| adj.阴谋的，阴谋者的 | |
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106
rime
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| n.白霜；v.使蒙霜 | |
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107
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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108
abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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109
shrugs
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| n.耸肩（以表示冷淡，怀疑等）( shrug的名词复数 ) | |
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110
grimace
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| v.做鬼脸，面部歪扭 | |
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111
coffin
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| n.棺材，灵柩 | |
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112
flickering
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| adj.闪烁的，摇曳的，一闪一闪的 | |
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113
cannons
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| n.加农炮，大炮，火炮( cannon的名词复数 ) | |
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114
ethical
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| adj.伦理的，道德的，合乎道德的 | |
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115
desecrated
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| 毁坏或亵渎( desecrate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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116
desecration
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| n. 亵渎神圣, 污辱 | |
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117
pensively
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| adv.沉思地，焦虑地 | |
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118
grill
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| n.烤架，铁格子，烤肉；v.烧，烤，严加盘问 | |
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119
algebra
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| n.代数学 | |
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120
flip
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| vt.快速翻动；轻抛；轻拍；n.轻抛；adj.轻浮的 | |
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121
specially
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| adv.特定地；特殊地；明确地 | |
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122
rattling
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| adj. 格格作响的, 活泼的, 很好的 adv. 极其, 很, 非常 动词rattle的现在分词 | |
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123
deviate
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| v.(from)背离，偏离 | |
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124
plantations
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| n.种植园，大农场( plantation的名词复数 ) | |
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125
savages
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| 未开化的人，野蛮人( savage的名词复数 ) | |
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126
savage
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| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
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127
prim
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| adj.拘泥形式的，一本正经的；n.循规蹈矩，整洁；adv.循规蹈矩地，整洁地 | |
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128
primitive
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| adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物 | |
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129
withered
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| adj. 枯萎的，干瘪的，（人身体的部分器官）因病萎缩的或未发育良好的 动词wither的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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130
intercedes
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| v.斡旋，调解( intercede的第三人称单数 )；说情 | |
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131
defense
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| n.防御，保卫；[pl.]防务工事；辩护，答辩 | |
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132
cosy
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| adj.温暖而舒适的，安逸的 | |
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133
pimples
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| n.丘疹，粉刺，小脓疱( pimple的名词复数 ) | |
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134
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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135
brass
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| n.黄铜；黄铜器，铜管乐器 | |
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136
gut
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| n.[pl.]胆量；内脏；adj.本能的；vt.取出内脏 | |
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137
corpse
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| n.尸体，死尸 | |
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138
propped
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| 支撑，支持，维持( prop的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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139
exhales
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| v.呼出，发散出( exhale的第三人称单数 )；吐出（肺中的空气、烟等），呼气 | |
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140
blots
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| 污渍( blot的名词复数 )； 墨水渍； 错事； 污点 | |
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141
moors
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| v.停泊，系泊（船只）( moor的第三人称单数 ) | |
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142
everlasting
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| adj.永恒的，持久的，无止境的 | |
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143
immortal
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| adj.不朽的；永生的，不死的；神的 | |
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144
vows
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| 誓言( vow的名词复数 )； 郑重宣布，许愿 | |
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145
rustles
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| n.发出沙沙的声音( rustle的名词复数 )v.发出沙沙的声音( rustle的第三人称单数 ) | |
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146
clams
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| n.蛤；蚌，蛤( clam的名词复数 )v.（在沙滩上）挖蛤( clam的第三人称单数 ) | |
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147
rigid
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| adj.严格的，死板的；刚硬的，僵硬的 | |
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148
fumbling
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| n. 摸索,漏接 v. 摸索,摸弄,笨拙的处理 | |
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149
carnival
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| n.嘉年华会，狂欢，狂欢节，巡回表演 | |
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150
teeming
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| adj.丰富的v.充满( teem的现在分词 )；到处都是；（指水、雨等）暴降；倾注 | |
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151
cane
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| n.手杖，细长的茎，藤条；v.以杖击，以藤编制的 | |
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152
yoke
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| n.轭；支配；v.给...上轭，连接，使成配偶 | |
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153
fetters
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| n.脚镣( fetter的名词复数 )；束缚v.给…上脚镣，束缚( fetter的第三人称单数 ) | |
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154
tyrants
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| 专制统治者( tyrant的名词复数 )； 暴君似的人； （古希腊的）僭主； 严酷的事物 | |
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155
dominion
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| n.统治，管辖，支配权；领土，版图 | |
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156
toil
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| vi.辛劳工作，艰难地行动；n.苦工，难事 | |
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157
voluptuous
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| adj.肉欲的，骄奢淫逸的 | |
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158
behold
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| v.看，注视，看到 | |
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159
bugged
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| vt.在…装窃听器（bug的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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160
abolition
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| n.废除，取消 | |
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161
gaudy
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| adj.华而不实的；俗丽的 | |
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162
poking
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| n. 刺，戳，袋 vt. 拨开，刺，戳 vi. 戳，刺，捅，搜索，伸出，行动散慢 | |
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163
plunges
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| n.跳进，投入vt.使投入，使插入，使陷入vi.投入，跳进，陷入v.颠簸( plunge的第三人称单数 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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164
sect
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| n.派别，宗教，学派，派系 | |
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165
infantry
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| n.[总称]步兵(部队) | |
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166
infamy
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| n.声名狼藉，出丑，恶行 | |
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167
agitation
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| n.搅动；搅拌；鼓动，煽动 | |
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168
scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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169
immolating
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| v.宰杀…作祭品( immolate的现在分词 ) | |
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170
blotted
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| 涂污( blot的过去式和过去分词 )； （用吸墨纸）吸干 | |
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171
extinction
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| n.熄灭，消亡，消灭，灭绝，绝种 | |
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172
parody
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| n.打油诗文，诙谐的改编诗文，拙劣的模仿；v.拙劣模仿，作模仿诗文 | |
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173
injustice
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| n.非正义，不公正，不公平，侵犯（别人的）权利 | |
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174
impatience
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| n.不耐烦，急躁 | |
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175
frantic
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| adj.狂乱的，错乱的，激昂的 | |
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176
disciples
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| n.信徒( disciple的名词复数 )；门徒；耶稣的信徒；（尤指）耶稣十二门徒之一 | |
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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
immature
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| adj.未成熟的，发育未全的，未充分发展的 | |
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179
suffrage
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| n.投票，选举权，参政权 | |
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180
torrent
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| n.激流，洪流；爆发，(话语等的)连发 | |
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181
tune
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| n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整 | |
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182
perks
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| 额外津贴，附带福利，外快( perk的名词复数 ) | |
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183
kindly
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| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
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184
puff
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| n.一口(气)；一阵(风)；v.喷气，喘气 | |
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185
inhale
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| v.吸入(气体等)，吸(烟) | |
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186
pushy
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| adj.固执己见的，一意孤行的 | |
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187
serenely
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| adv.安详地，宁静地，平静地 | |
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188
transparent
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| adj.明显的，无疑的；透明的 | |
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189
jewelry
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| n.（jewllery）（总称）珠宝 | |
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190
pebbles
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| [复数]鹅卵石； 沙砾； 卵石，小圆石( pebble的名词复数 ) | |
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191
debris
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| n.瓦砾堆，废墟，碎片 | |
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192
strapped
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| adj.用皮带捆住的，用皮带装饰的；身无分文的；缺钱；手头紧v.用皮带捆扎(strap的过去式和过去分词)；用皮带抽打；包扎；给…打绷带 | |
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193
drizzling
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| 下蒙蒙细雨，下毛毛雨( drizzle的现在分词 ) | |
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194
tilted
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| v. 倾斜的 | |
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195
doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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196
irritation
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| n.激怒，恼怒，生气 | |
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197
arrogant
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| adj.傲慢的，自大的 | |
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198
amplifies
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| 放大，扩大( amplify的第三人称单数 )； 增强； 详述 | |
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199
pussy
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| n.(儿语)小猫，猫咪 | |
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200
hog
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| n.猪；馋嘴贪吃的人；vt.把…占为己有，独占 | |
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201
wary
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| adj.谨慎的，机警的，小心的 | |
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202
orb
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| n.太阳；星球；v.弄圆；成球形 | |
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203
watery
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| adj.有水的，水汪汪的；湿的，湿润的 | |
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204
physically
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| adj.物质上，体格上，身体上，按自然规律 | |
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205
lustrous
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| adj.有光泽的；光辉的 | |
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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
luster
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| n.光辉；光泽，光亮；荣誉 | |
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208
watchful
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| adj.注意的，警惕的 | |
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209
guts
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| v.狼吞虎咽，贪婪地吃，飞碟游戏（比赛双方每组5人，相距15码，互相掷接飞碟）；毁坏（建筑物等）的内部( gut的第三人称单数 )；取出…的内脏n.勇气( gut的名词复数 )；内脏；消化道的下段；肠 | |
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210
catastrophe
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| n.大灾难，大祸 | |
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211
mumbles
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| 含糊的话或声音，咕哝( mumble的名词复数 ) | |
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212
fealty
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| n.忠贞，忠节 | |
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213
premium
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| n.加付款；赠品；adj.高级的；售价高的 | |
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214
veins
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| n.纹理；矿脉( vein的名词复数 )；静脉；叶脉；纹理 | |
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215
thatch
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| vt.用茅草覆盖…的顶部；n.茅草(屋) | |
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216
tangle
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| n.纠缠；缠结；混乱；v.(使)缠绕；变乱 | |
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217
guilt
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| n.犯罪；内疚；过失，罪责 | |
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218
squad
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| n.班，小队，小团体；vt.把…编成班或小组 | |
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219
unripe
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| adj.未成熟的；n.未成熟 | |
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220
repels
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| v.击退( repel的第三人称单数 )；使厌恶；排斥；推开 | |
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221
severs
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| v.切断，断绝( sever的第三人称单数 )；断，裂 | |
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222
defiled
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| v.玷污( defile的过去式和过去分词 )；污染；弄脏；纵列行进 | |
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223
luminous
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| adj.发光的，发亮的；光明的；明白易懂的；有启发的 | |
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224
unnatural
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| adj.不自然的；反常的 | |
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