"I wasn't thinking about that. I was thinking about how silver's going to go down."
"Oh, what do we care if it does? Everything's just a gamble anyway."
Bless that dope, still trying. The daughter of old Fred Springer, local high roller. Rolled himself into a satin-lined coffin. In the old days they used to bury the silver and put the corpses in slots in the wall.
"I'll walk down to the car with you," Janice says, worriedwifely. "I have to get my packages back from that bitch as you call her. How much did you want to go to bed with her by the way?" Trying to find a topic he'll enjoy.
"Hardly at all," he confesses. "It's terrifying in fact, how little. Did you get a look at her fingernails? Sccr-ratch."
The week between the holidays is a low one for car sales: people feel strapped after Christmas, and with winter coming, ice and salt on the road and fenderbenders likely, they are inclined to stick with the heap they have. Ride it out to spring is the motto. At least the snowmobile's been moved around to the back where nobody can see it, instead of its sitting there like some kind of cousin of those new little front-wheel-drive Tercels. Where do they get their names? Sounds like an Edsel. Even Toyota, it has too many o's, makes people think of "toy." Datsun and Honda, you don't know where they're coming from. Datsun could be German from the sound of it, data, rat-tat-tat, rising sun. The Chuck Wagon across Route 111 isn't doing much of a business either, now that it's too cold to eat outdoors or in the car, unless you leave the motor running, people die doing that every winter, trying to screw. The build-up is terrific though of hoagie wrappers and milkshake cartons blowing around in the lot, with the dust. Different kind of dust in December, grayer and grittier than summer dust, maybe the colder air, less lift in it, like cold air holds less water, that's why the insides of the storm windows now when you wake up in the morning have all that dew. Think of all the problems. Rust. Dry rot. Engines that don't start in the morning unless you take off the distributor cap and wipe the wires. Without condensation the world might last forever. On the moon, for example, there's no problem. Or on Mars either it turns out. New Year's, Buddy Inglefinger is throwing the blast this year, guess he was afraid of dropping out of sight with the old gang, getting the wind up about the trip to the islands they're taking without inviting him. Wonder who his hostess is going to be, that flat-chested sourpuss with straight black hair running some kind of crazy shop in Brewer or that girl before her, with the rash on the inside of her thighs and even between her breasts you could see in a bathing suit, what was her name? Ginger. Georgene. He and Janice just want to make an appearance to be polite, you get to a certain age you know nothing much is going to happen at parties, and leave right after midnight. Then six more days and, powie, the islands. Just the six of them. Little Cindy down there in all that sand. He needs a rest, things are getting him down. Sell less than a car a day in this business not counting Sundays and you're in trouble. All this tin getting dusty and rusty, the chrome developing pimples. Metal corrodes. Silver dropped two dollars an ounce the minute he bought it from that bitch.
Nelson, who has been in the shop with Manny fussing over the repairs to the Chrysler, the kid wanting a break on the full $18.50 customer rate and Manny explaining over and over like to a moron how if you shave the rate for agency employees it shows up in the books and affects everybody's end-of-the-month incentive bonus, comes over and stands by his father at the window.
Harry can't get used to the kid in a suit, it makes him seem even shorter somehow, like one of those midget emcees in a tuxedo, and with his hair shaped longer now and fluffed up by Pru's blowdrier after every shower Nellie seems a little mean-eyed dude Harry never knew. Janice used to say when the boy was little how he had Harry's ears with that crimp in the fold at the tip like one of the old-fashioned train conductors had taken his punch, but the tips of Nelson's are neatly covered by soft shingles of hair and Harry hasn't bothered to study his own since at about the age of forty he came out of that adolescent who-am-I vanity trip. He just shaves as quick as he can now and gets away from the mirror. Ruth had sweetly small tightly folded ears, he remembers. Janice's get so tan on top an arch of tiny dark spots comes out. Her father's lobes got long as a Chinaman's before he died. Nelson has a hotlooking pimple almost due to pop in the crease above his nostril, Harry notices in the light flooding through the showroom window. The slant of sun makes all the dust on the plate glass look thick as gold leaf this time of year, the arc of each day is so low. The kid is trying to be friendly. Come on. Unbend.
Harry asks him, "You stay up to watch the 76ers finish?"
"Naa."
"That Gervin for San Antonio was something, wasn't he? I heard on the radio this morning he finished with forty-six points."
"Basketball is all goons, if you ask me."
"It's changed a lot since my day," Rabbit admits. "The refs used to call travelling once in a while at least; now, Christ, they eat up half the floor going in for a lay-up."
"I like hockey," Nelson says.
"I know you do. When you have the damn Flyers on there's nowhere in the house you can go to get away from the yelling. All those apes in the crowd go for is to see a fight break out and someone's teeth get knocked out. Blood on the ice, that's the drawing card." This isn't going right; he tries another topic. "What do you think about those Russkis in Afghanistan? They sure gave themselves a Christmas Present."
"It's stupid," Nelson says. "I mean, Carter's getting all upset. It's no worse than what we did in Vietnam, it's not even as bad because at least it's right next door and they've had a puppet government there for years."
"Puppet governments are O.K., huh?"
"Well everybody has 'em. All of South America is our puppet governments."
"I bet that'd be news to the spics."
"At least the Russians, Dad, do it when they're going to do it. We try to do it and then everything gets all bogged down in politics. We can't do anything anymore."
"Well not with young people talking like you we can't," Harry says to his son. "How would you feel about going over and fighting in Afghanistan?"
The boy chuckles. "Dad, I'm a married man. And way past draft age besides."
Can this be? Harry doesn't feel too old to fight, and he's going to be forty-seven in February. He's always been sort of sorry they didn't send him to Korea when they had him in the Army, though at the time he was happy enough to hunker down in Texas. They had a funny straight-on way of looking at the world out there: money, booze, and broads, and that was it. Down to the bones. What is it Mim likes to say? God didn't go west, He died on the trail. To Nelson he says, "You mean you got married to stay out of the next war?"
"There won't be any next war, Carter will make a lot of noise but wind up letting them have it, just like he's letting Iran have the hostages. Actually, Billy Fosnacht was saying the only way we'll get the hostages back is if Russia invades Iran. Then they'd give us the hostages and sell us the oil because they need our wheat."
"Billy Fosnacht – that jerk around again?"
"Just for vacation."
"No offense, Nelson, but how can you stand that pill?"
"He's my friend. But I know why you can't stand him."
"Why can't I?" Harry asks, his heart rising to what has become a confrontation.
Turning full toward his father beside the gold-dusted pane, the boy's face seems to shrink with hate, hate and fear of being hit for what he is saying. "Because Billy was there the night you were screwing his mother while Skeeter was burning up Jill in the house we should have been in, protecting her."
That night. Ten years ago, and still cooking in the kid's head, alive like a maggot affecting his growth. "That still bugs you, doesn't it?" Rabbit says mildly.
The boy doesn't hear, his eyes lost in those sockets sunk as if thumbs had gripped too deep in clay, trying to pick up a lump. "You let Jill die."
"I didn't, and Skeeter didn't. We don't know who burnt the house down but it wasn't us. It was the neighbors, their idea of a Welcome Wagon. You got to let it go, kid. Your mother and me have let it go."