"Technology," Skeeter explains with exquisite patience, the tip of his joint glowing red as he drags, "is horseshit. Take that down, Jilly."
But Jill is asleep on the sofa. Her thighs glow, her dress having ridden up to a sad shadowy triangular peep of underpants.
Skeeter goes on, "We are all at work at the mighty labor of forgetting everything we know. We are sewing the apple back on the tree. Now the Romans had technology, right? And the barbarians saved them from it. The barbarians were their saviors. Since we cannot induce the Eskimos to invade us, we have raised a generation of barbarians ourselves, pardon me, you have raised them, Whitey has raised them, the white American middle-class and its imitators the world over have found within themselves the divine strength to generate millions of subhuman idiots that in less benighted ages only the inbred aristocracies could produce. Who were those idiot kings?"
"Huh?" says Rabbit.
"Merovingians, right? Slipped my mind. They were dragged about in ox carts gibbering and we are now blessed with motorized gibberers. It is truly written, we shall blow our minds, and dedicate the rest to Chairman Mao. Right?"
Rabbit argues, "That's not quite fair. These kids have some good points. The war aside, what about pollution?"
"I am getting weary," Skeeter says, "of talking with white folk. You are defending your own. These rabid children, as surely as Agnew Dei, desire to preserve the status quo against the divine plan and the divine wrath. They are Antichrist. They perceive God's face in Vietnam and spit upon it. False prophets: by their proliferation you know the time is nigh. Public shamelessness, ingenious armor, idiocy revered, all laws mocked but the laws of bribery and protection: we are Rome. And I am the Christ of the new Dark Age. Or if not me, then someone exactly like me, whom later ages will suppose to have been me. Do you believe?"
"I believe." Rabbit drags on his own joint, and feels his world expand to admit new truths as a woman spreads her legs, as a flower unfolds, as the stars flee one another. "I do believe."
Skeeter likes Rabbit to read to him from the Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. "You're just gorgeous, right? You're gone to be our big nigger tonight. As a white man, Chuck, you don't amount to much, but niggerwise you groove." He has marked sections in the book with paper clips and a crayon.
Rabbit reads, "The reader will have noticed that among the names of slaves that of Esther is mentioned. This was the name of a young woman who possessed that which was ever a curse to the slave girl – namely, personal beauty. She was tall, light-colored, well formed, and made a fine appearance. Esther was courted by 'Ned Roberts,' the son of a favorite slave of Colonel Lloyd, and who was as fine-looking a young man as Esther was a woman. Some slaveholders would have been glad to have promoted the marriage of two such persons, but for some reason Captain Anthony disapproved of their courtship. He strictly ordered her to quit the society of young Roberts, telling her that he would punish her severely if he ever found her again in his company. But it was impossible to keep this couple apart. Meet they would and meet they did. Then we skip." The red crayon mark resumes at the bottom of the page; Rabbit hears drama entering his voice, early morning mists, a child's fear. "It was early in the morning, when all was still, and before any of the family in the house or kitchen had risen. I was, in fact, awakened by the heart-rendering shrieks and piteous cries of poor Esther. My sleeping place was on the dirt foor of a little rough closet which opened into the kitchen -"
Skeeter interrupts, "You can smell that closet, right? Dirt, right, and old potatoes, and little bits of grass turning yellow before they can grow an inch, right? Smell that, he slept in there."
"Hush," Jill says.
"-and through the cracks in its unplaned boards I could distinctly see and hear what was going on, without being seen. Esther's wrists were firmly tied, and the twisted rope was fastened to a strong iron staple in a heavy wooden beam above, near thefireplace. Here she stood on a bench, her arms tightly drawn above her head. Her back and shoulders were perfectly bare. Behind her stood old master, cowhide in hand, pursuing his barbarous work with all manner of harsh, coarse, and tantalizing epithets. He was cruelly deliberate, and protracted the torture as one who was delighted with the agony of his victim. Again and again he drew the hateful scourge through his hand, adjusting it with a view of dealing the most pain giving blow his strength and skill could infict. Poor Esther had never before been severely whipped. Her shoulders were plump and tender. Each blow, vigorously laid on, brought screams from her as well as blood. `Have mercy! Oh, mercy!' she cried. `I won't do so no more.' But her piercing cries seemed only to increase his fury." The red mark stops but Rabbit sweeps on to the end of the chapter. "The whole scene, with all its attendant cir
cumstances, was revolting and shocking to the last degree, and when the motives for the brutal castigation are known, language has no power to convey a just sense of its dreadful criminality. After laying on I dare not say how many stripes, old master untied his suffering victim. When let down she could scarcely stand. From my heart I pitied her, and child as I was, and new to such scenes, the shock was tremendous. I was terrified, hushed, stunned, and bewildered. The scene here described was often repeated, for Edward and Esther continued to meet, notwithstanding all efforts to prevent their meeting."
Skeeter turns to Jill and slaps her sharply, as a child would, on the chest. "Don't hush me, you cunt."
"I wanted to hear the passage."
"How'd it turn you on, cunt?"
"I liked the way Harry read it. With feeling." – "Fuck your white feelings."
"Hey, easy," Rabbit says, helplessly, seeing that violence is due.
Skeeter is wild. Keeping his one hand on her shoulder as a brace, with the other he reaches to her throat and rips the neck of her white dress forward. The cloth is tough; Jill's head snaps far forward before the rip is heard. She recoils back into the sofa, her eyes expressionless; her little tough-tipped tits bounce in the torn V.
Rabbit's instinct is not to rescue her but to shield Nelson. He drops the book on the cobbler's bench and puts his body between the boy and the sofa. "Go upstairs."
Nelson, stunned, bewildered, has risen to his feet; he moans, "He'll kill her, Dad." His cheeks are flushed, his eyes are sunk.
"No he won't. He's just high. She's all right."
"Oh shit, shit," the child repeats in desperation; his face caves into crying.
"Hey there Babychuck," Skeeter calls. "You want to whip me, right?" Skeeter hops up, does a brittle bewitched dance, strips off his shirt so violently one cuff button flies off and strikes the lampshade. His skinny chest, naked, is stunning in its articulation: every muscle sharp in its attachment to the bone. Rabbit has never seen such a chest except on a crucifix. "What's next?" Skeeter shouts. "Wanna whup my bum, right? Here it is!" His hands have undone his fly button and are on his belt, but Nelson has fled the room. His sobbing comes downstairs, diminishing.
"O.K., that's enough," Rabbit says.
"Read a little bitty bit more," Skeeter begs.
"You get carried away."
"That damn child of yours, thinks he owns this cunt."
"Stop calling her a cunt."
"Man, wasn't this Jesus gave her one." Skeeter cackles.
"You're horrible," Jill tells him, drawing the torn cloth together.
He flips one piece aside. "Moo."
"Harry, help me."
"Read the book, Chuck, I'll be good. Read me the next paper clip."
Above them, Nelson's footsteps cross the floor. If he reads, the boy will be safe. "Alas, that the one?"
"That'll do. Little Jilly, you love me, right?"