"This is it."
"Got some other place to go?"
"I suppose."
"Body a loved one?"
"Not exactly."
"That's good news. Cheer up, young fella. Insurance'll cover most of it."
"Do I have insurance?"
"Had a mortgage?"
Rabbit nods, remembering the little slippery bankbook, imagining it burned.
"Then you had insurance. Damn the banks all you will, they look after their own, you'll never catch them damn Jews short."
This man's presence begins to seem strange. It has been months since anything seemed as strange as this man's presence. Rabbit asks him, "How long you staying here?"
"I'm on duty till eight."
"Why? "
"Fire procedure. Prevent looting." The two of them look wonderingly at the dormant houses and cold lawns of Penn Villas. As they look, a distant alarm rings and an upstairs light comes on, sallow, dutiful. Still, looting these days is everywhere. The geezer asks him, "Anything precious in there, you might want to take along?" Rabbit doesn't move. "You better go get some sleep, young fella."
"What about you?" Rabbit asks.
"Fella my age doesn't need much. Sleep long enough soon enough. Anyway, I like the peacefulness of these hours, have ever since a boy. Always up, my dad, he was a great boozer and a late sleeper, used to wallop the bejesus out of me if I made a stir mornings. Got in the habit of sneaking out to the birds. Anyway, double-hour credit, time outdoors on this shift. Don't always put it in, go over a certain amount, won't get any social security. Kill you with kindness, that's the new technique."
Rabbit stands up, aching; pain moves upward from his shins through his groin and belly to his chest and out. A demon leaving. Smoke, mist rise. He turns to his front door; swollen by water, axed, it resists being opened. The old man tells him, "It's my responsibility to keep any and all persons out of this structure. Any damage you do yourself, you're the party responsible." .
"You just told me to take out anything precious."
"You're responsible, that's all I'm saying. I'm turning my back. Fall through the floor, electrocute yourself, don't call for help. Far as I'm concerned, you're not there. See no evil is the way I do it."
"That's the way I do it too." Under pressure the door pops open. Splintered glass on the other side scrapes white arcs into the hall floor finish. Rabbit begins to cry from smoke and the smell. The house is warm, and talks to itself, a swarm of small rustles and snaps arises from the section on his left; settling noises drip from the charred joists and bubble up from the drenched dark rubble where the floor had been. The bed's metal frame has fallen into the kitchen. On his right, the living room is murky but undamaged. The silver threads of the Lustrex chair gleam through an acid mist of fumes; the television set's green blank waits to be turned on. He thinks of taking it, it is the one resaleable item here, but no, it is too heavy to lug, he might drop himself through the floor, and there are millions like it. Janice once said we should drop television sets into the jungle instead of bombs, it would do as much good. He thought at the time the idea was too clever for her; even then Stavros was speaking through her.
She always loved that dumb bench. He remembers her kneeling beside it early in their marriage, rubbing it with linseed oil, short keen strokes, a few inches at a time, it made him feel horny watching. He takes the bench under his arm and, discovering it to be so light, pulls the driftwood lamp loose from its socket and takes that too. The rest the looters and insurance adjusters can have. You never get the smell of smoke out. Like the smell of failure in a life. He remembers the storm windows, Windexing their four sides, and it seems a fable that his life was ever centered on such details. His house slips from him. He is free. Orange light in long stripes, from sun on the side of him opposite from the side the sun was on when he and Nelson walked here a long night ago, stretches between the low strange houses as he walks down Vista Crescent with the table and the lamp tugging under his arms. Peggy's Fury is the only car still parked along the curb: a teal-blue tailfinned boat the ebb has stranded. He opens the door, pushes the seat forward to put the bench in the back, and finds someone there. A Negro. Asleep. "What the hell," Rabbit says.
Skeeter awakes blind and gropes for his glasses on the rubber floor. "Chuck baby," he says, looking up with twin circles of glass. His Afro is flattened on one side. Bad fruit. "All by yourself, right?"
"Yeah." The little car holds a concentration of that smell which in the mornings would spice the living room, give it animal substance, sleep's sweetness made strong.
"How long's it been light?"
"Just started. It's around six. How long've you been here?"
"Since I saw you and Babychuck pull in. I called you from a booth up on Weiser and then watched to see if you'd go by. The car wasn't you but the head was, right, so I snuck along through the back yards and got in after you parked. The old briar patch theory, right? Shit if I didn't fall asleep. Hey get in man, you're lettin' in the air."
Rabbit gets in and sits in the driver's seat, listening without turning his head, trying to talk without moving his mouth. Penn Villas is coming to life; a car just passed. "You ought to know," he says, "they're looking for you. They think you set it."
"Count on the fuzz to fuck up. Why would I go burn my own pad?"
"To destroy evidence. Maybe Jill – what do you call it? O.D.'d."
"Not on the scag she was getting from me, that stuff was so cut sugar water has more flash. Look, Chuck, that up at your house was honky action. Will you believe the truth, or shall I save my breath for the pigpen?"
"Let's hear it."
Skeeter's voice, unattached to his face, is deeper than Harry remembers, with a hypnotic rasping lilt that reminds him of childhood radio. "Jill sacked out early and I made do with the sofa, right? Since getting back on the stuff she wasn't putting out any of her own, and anyway I was pretty spaced and beat, we went twice around the county unloading that bullshit car. Right? So I wake up. There was this rattling around. I placed it coming from the kitchen, right? I was thinkin' it was Jill coming to bug me to shoot her up again, instead there was this whoosh and soft woomp, reminded me of an APM hitting in the bush up the road, only it wasn't up any road, I say to myself The war is come home. Next thing there's this slam of a door, garage door from the rumble of it, and I flip to the window and see these two honky cats makin' tail across the lawn, across the street, into between those houses there, and disappear, right? They had no car I could see. Next thing, I smell smoke."
"How do you know these were white men?"
"Shit, you know how honkies run, like with sticks up their ass, right?"
"Could you identify them if you saw them again?"
"I ain't identifying Moses around here. My skin is fried in this county, right?"
"Yeah," Rabbit says. "Something else you should know. Jill is dead."
The silence from the back seat is not long. "Poor bitch, doubt if she knows the difference."
"Why didn't you get her out?"
"Hell, man, there was heat, right? I thought lynching time had come, I didn't know there wasn't twelve hundred crackers out there, I was in no shape to take care of some whitey woman, let Whitey take care of his own."