"We've been raped, we've been raped!"

 

? BACKGROUND VOICE ABOARD SOYUZ 5

 

 

ONE DAY in September Rabbit comes home from work to find another man in the house. The man is a Negro. "What the hell," Rabbit says, standing in the front hall beside the three chime tubes.

 

"Hell, man, it's revolution, right?" the young black says, not rising from the mossy brown armchair. His glasses flash two silver circles; his goatee is a smudge in shadow. He has let his hair grow out so much, into such a big ball, that Rabbit didn't recognize him at first.

 

Jill rises, quick as smoke, from the chair with the silver threads. "You remember Skeeter?"

 

"How could I forget him?" He goes forward a step, his hand lifted ready to be shaken, the palm tingling with fear; but since Skeeter makes no move to rise, he lets it drop back to his side, unsullied.

 

Skeeter studies the dropped white hand, exhaling smoke from a cigarette. It is a real cigarette, tobacco. "I like it," Skeeter says. "I like your hostility, Chuck. As we used to say in Nam, it is my meat."

 

"Skeeter and I were just talking," Jill says; her voice has changed, it is more afraid, more adult. "Don't I have any rights?"

 

Rabbit speaks to Skeeter. "I thought you were in jail or something."

 

"He is out on bail," Jill says, too hastily.

 

"Let him speak for himself."

 

Wearily Skeeter corrects her. "To be precise, I am way out on bail. I have jumped the blessed thing. I am, as they would say, desired by the local swine. I have become one hot item, right?"

 

"It would have been two years," Jill says. "Two years for nothing, for not hurting anybody, not stealing anything, for nothing, Harry."

 

"Did Babe jump bail too?"

 

"Babe is a lady," Skeeter goes on in this tone of weary mincing precision. "She makes friends easy, right? I have no friends. I am known far and wide for my lack of sympathetic qualities." His voice changes, becomes falsetto, cringing. "Ali is one baad niggeh." He has many voices, Rabbit remembers, and none of them exactly his.

 

Rabbit tells him, "They'll catch you sooner or later. Jumping bail makes it much worse. Maybe you would have gotten off with a suspended sentence."

 

"I have one of those. Officialdom gets bored with handing them out, right?"

 

"How about your being a Vietnam veteran?"

 

"How about it? I am also black and unemployed and surly, right? I seek to undermine the state, and Of Massah State, he cottons on."

 

Rabbit contemplates the set of shadows in the old armchair, trying to feel his way. The chair has been with them ever since their marriage, it comes from the Springers' attic. This nightmare must pass. He says, "You talk a cool game, but I think you panicked, boy."

 

"Don't boy me."

 

Rabbit is startled; he had meant it neutrally, one outlaw to another. He tries to amend: "You're just hurting yourself. Go turn yourself in, say you never meant to jump."

 

Skeeter stretches luxuriously in the chair, yawns, inhales and exhales. "It dawns upon me," he says, "that you have a white gentleman's concept of the police and their exemplary works. There is nothing, let me repeat no thing, that gives them more pleasurable sensations than pulling the wings off of witless poor black men. First the fingernails, then the wings. Truly, they are constituted for that very sacred purpose. To keep me off your back and under your smelly feet, right?"

 

"This isn't the South," Rabbit says.

 

"Hee?yah! Friend Chuck, have you ever considered conning for po?litical office, there can't be a county clerk left who believes the sweet things you do. The news is, the South is everywhere. We are fifty miles from the Mason?Dixon line where we sit, but way up in Detroit they are shooting nigger boys like catfish in a barrel. The news is, the cotton is in. Lynching season is on. In these Benighted States, everybody's done become a cracker." A brown hand delicately gestures from the shadows, then droops. "Forgive me, Chuck. This is just too simple for me to explain. Read the papers."

 

"I do. You're crazy."

 

Jill horns in. "The System is rotten, Harry. The laws are written to protect a tiny elite."

 

"Like people who own boats in Stonington," he says.

 

"Score one," Skeeter calls, "right?"

 

Jill flares. "What of it, I ran away from it, I reject it, I shit on it, Harry, where you're still loving it, you're eating it, you're eating my shit. My father's. Everybody's. Don't you see how you're used?"

 

"So now you want to use me. For him."

 

She freezes, white. Her lips thin to nothing. "Yes."

 

"You're crazy. I'd be risking jail too."

 

"Harry, just a few nights, until he can hustle up a stake. He has family in Memphis, he'll go there. Skeeter, right?"

 

"Right, sugar. Oh so right."

 

"It isn't just the pot bust, the pigs think he's a dealer, they say he pushes, they'll crucify him. Harry. They will."

 

Skeeter softly croons the start of "That Old Rugged Cross."

 

"Well, does he? Push."

 

Skeeter grins under his great ball of hair. "What can I get for you, Chuck? Goof balls, jolly beans, red devils, purple hearts. They have so much Panama Red in Philly right now they're feeding it to cows. Or want to sniff a little scag for a real rush?" From the gloom of the chair he extends his pale palms cupped as if heaped with shining poison.

 

So he is evil. Rabbit in his childhood used to lift, out of the same curiosity that made him put his finger into his belly?button and then sniff it, the metal waffle?patterned lid on the back yard cesspool, around the corner of the garage from the basketball hoop. Now this black man opens up under him in the same way: a pit of scummed stench impossible to see to the bottom of.

 

Harry turns and asks Jill, "Why are you doing this to me?"

 

She turns her head, gives him that long?chinned profile, a dime's worth. "I was stupid," she says, "to think you might trust me. You shouldn't have said you loved me."

 

Skeeter hums "True Love," the old Crosby??Grace Kelly single.

 

Rabbit re?asks, "Why?"

 

Skeeter rises from the chair. ` Jesus deliver me from puking uptight honky lovers. She's doing it because I been screwing her all afternoon, right? If I go, she comes with me, hey Jill honey, right?"

 

She says, again thin?upped, "Right."

 

Skeeter tells her, "I wouldn't take you on a bet, you poor cock?happy bitch. Skeeter splits alone." To Rabbit he says, "Toodle?oo, Chuck. Goddam green pickles, but it's been fun to watch you squirm." Standing, Skeeter seems frail, shabby in blue Levis and a colorless little Army windbreaker from which the insignia have been unstitched. His ball of hair has shrank his face.

 

"Toodle?oo," Rabbit agrees, with relief in his bowels, and turns his back.

 

Skeeter declines to go so simply. He steps closer, he smells spicy. He says, "Throw me out. I want you to touch me."

 

"I don't want to."

 

"Do it.

 

"I don't want to fight you."

 

"I screwed your bitch."

 

"Her decision."

 

"And a lousy little cunt she was, too. Like putting your prick in a vise."

 

"Hear him, Jill?"

 

"Hey. Rabbit. That's what they used to call you, right? Your mamma's a whore, right? She goes down on old black winos behind the railroad station for fifty cents, right? If they don't have fifty cents she does it free because she likes it, right?"

 

Remote Mom. The guilty scent of her room, medicine, bedwarmth. Of all those years when she was well he can only remember her big bones bent above the kitchen table with its four worn places; she is not sitting down, she has already eaten, she is feeding him supper, he has come home from practice late, it is after dark, the windows are glazed from within.

 

"Your daddy's a queer, right? You must be too to take all this shit. Your wife couldn't stand living with a queer, it was like being balled by a mouse, right? You're a mouse down there, hey, ain't that right, gimme a feel." He reaches and Rabbit bats his hand away. Skeeter dances, delighted. "Nothin' there, right? Hey. Rabbit. Jill says you believe in God. I got news for you. Your God's a pansy. Your white God's queerer than the Queen of Spades. He sucks off the Holy Ghost and makes his son watch. Hey. Chuck. Another thing. Ain't no Jesus. He was a faggot crook, right? They bribed the Romans to get his carcass out of the tomb 'cause it smelled so bad, right?"

 

"All you're showing me," Rabbit says, "is how crazy you are." But a creeping sweetness, rage, is filling him solid. Sunday school images ? a dead man whiter than lilies, the lavender rocks where he was betrayed by a kiss ? are being revived in him.

 

Skeeter dances on, he is wearing big creased Army boots. He bumps Harry's shoulder, tugs the sleeve of his white shirt. "Hey. Wanna know how I know? Wanna know? Hey. I'm the real Jesus. I am the black Jesus, right? There is none other, no. When I fart, lightning flashes, right? Angels scoop it up in shovels of zillioncarat gold. Right? Kneel down, Chuck. Worship me. I am Jesus. Kiss my balls ? they are the sun and the moon, and my pecker's a comet whose head is the white?hot heart of the glory that never does fail!" And, his head rolling like a puppet's, Skeeter unzips his fly and prepares to display this wonder.

 

Rabbit's time has come. He is packed so solid with anger and fear he is seeing with his pores. He wades toward the boy deliciously and feels his fists vanish, one in the region of the belly, the other below the throat. He is scared of the head, whose glasses might shatter and slash. Skeeter curls up and drops to the floor dry as a scorpion and when Rabbit pries at him he has no opening, just abrasive angles shaking like a sandpaper machine. Rabbit's hands start to hurt. He wants to pry this creature open because there is a soft spot where he can be split and killed; the curved back is too tough, though knuckles slammed at the hole of the ear do produce a garbled whimper.

 

Jill is screaming and with her whole weight pulling the tail of his shirt and in the ebb of his sweetness Rabbit discovers his hands and forearms somehow clawed. His enemy is cringing on the floor, the carpet that cost them eleven dollars a yard and was supposed to wear longer than the softer loop for fifteen that Janice wanted (she always said it reminded her of the stuff they use in miniature golf courses), cringing expertly, knees tucked under chin and hands over head and head tucked under the sofa as far as it will go. His Levis are rumpled up and it shocks Rabbit to see how skinny his calves and ankles are, iridescent dark spindles. Humans made of a new material. Last longer, wear more evenly. And Jill is sobbing, "Harry, no more, no more," and the door chime is saying its three syllables over and over, a scale that can't get anywhere, that can't get over the top.

 

The door pops open. Nelson is there, in his spiffy new school clothes, fishbone?striped sport shirt and canary?yellow slacks. Billy Fosnacht is behind him, a hairy head taller. "Hey," Skeeter says from the floor, "it's Babychuck, right?"

 

"Is he a burglar, Dad?"

 

"We could hear the furniture being smashed and everything," Billy says. "We didn't know what to do."

 

Nelson says, "We thought if we kept ringing the bell it would stop."

 

Jill tells him, "Your father lost all control of himself."

 

Rabbit asks, "Why should I always be the one to have control of myself?"

 

Getting up as if from a bin of dust, one careful limb at a time, Skeeter says, "That was to get us acquainted, Chuck. Next time I'll have a gun."

 

Rabbit taunts, "I thought at least I'd see some nice karate chops from basic training."

 

"Afraid to use 'em. Break you in two, right?"

 

"Daddy, who is he?"

 

"He's a friend of Jill's called Skeeter. He's going to stay here a couple days."

 

"He is?"

 

Jill's voice has asked.

 

Rabbit sifts himself for the reason. Small scraped places smart on his knuckles; overstimulation has left a residue of nausea; he notices through the haze that still softly rotates around him that the end table was upset and that the lamp whose base is driftwood lies on the carpet awry but not smashed. The patient fidelity of these things bewilders him. "Sure," he says. "Why not?"

 

Skeeter studies him from the sofa, where he sits bent over, nursing the punch to his stomach. "Feeling guilty, huh Chuck? A little tokenism to wash your sins away, right?"

 

"Skeeter, he's being generous," Jill scolds.

 

"Get one thing straight, Chuck. No gratitude. Anything you do, do for selfish reasons."

 

"Right. The kicks I get in pounding you around." But in fact he is terrified at having taken this man in. He will have to sleep with him in the house. The tint of night, Skeeter will sneak to his side with a knife shining like the moon. He will get the gun as he has promised. FUGITIVE FROM JUSTICE HOLDS FAMILY AT GUNPOINT. Mayor Vows, No Deals. Why has he invited this danger? To get Janice to rescue him. These thoughts flit by in a flash. Nelson has taken a step toward the black man. His eyes are sunk in their sockets with seriousness. Wait, wait. He is poison, he is murder, he is black.

 

"Hi," Nelson says, and holds out his hand.

 

Skeeter puts his skinny fingers, four gray crayons, as thick at the tips as in the middle, in the child's hand and says, "Hi there, Babychuck." He nods over Nelson's shoulder toward Billy Fosnacht. "Who's your gruesome friend?"

 

And everybody, everybody laughs, even Billy, even Skeeter contributes a cackle, at this unexpected illumination, that Billy is gruesome, with his father's skinny neck and big ears and a hint of his mother's mooncalf eyes and the livid festerings of adolescence speckling his cheeks and chin. Their laughter makes a second wave to reassure him they are not laughing at him, they are laughing in relief at the gift of truth, they are rejoicing in brotherhood, at having shared this moment, giggling and cackling; the house is an egg cracking because they are all hatching together.

 

But in bed, the house dark and Billy gone home, Skeeter breathing exhausted on the sofa downstairs, Rabbit repeats his question to Jill: "Why have you done this to me?"

 

Jill snuffles, turns over. She is so much lighter than he, she irresistibly rolls down to his side. Often in the morning he wakes to find himself nearly pushed from the bed by this inequality, her sharp little elbows denting his flesh. "He was so pathetic," she explains. "He talks tough but he really has nothing, he really does want to become the black Jesus."

 

"Is that why you let him screw you this afternoon? Or didn't you?"

 

"I didn't really."

 

"He lied?"

 

Silence. She slides an inch deeper into his side of the bed. "I don't think it counts when you just let somebody do it to you and don't do anything back."

 

"You don't."

 

"No, it just happens on the surface, a million miles away."

 

"And how about with me? Is it the same way, you don't feel anything, it's so far away. So you're really a virgin, aren't you?"

 

"Shh. Whisper. No, I do feel things with you."

 

"What?"

 

She nudges closer and her arm encircles his thick waist. "I feel you're a funny big teddy bear my Daddy has given me. He used to bring home these extravagant Steiff toys from F.A.O. Schwarz's in New York, giraffes six feet high that cost five hundred dollars, you couldn't do anything with them, they'd just stand around taking up space. Mother hated them."

 

"Thanks a lot." Sluggishly he rolls over to face her.

 

"Other times, when you're over me, I feel you're an angel. Piercing me with a sword. I feel you're about to announce something, the end of the world, and you say nothing, just pierce me. It's beautiful."

 

"Do you love me?"

 

"Please, Harry. Since that Go............