Trees darken; pavilions slide downhill. They walk through the upper region of the park, which delinquents haunt at night, scattering condoms and candy—bar wrappers. The beginning of the steps is almost hidden in an overgrowth of great bushes tinted dull amber with the first buds. Long ago, when hiking was customary entertainment, the city built stairs up the Brewer side of the mountain. They are made of six—foot tarred logs with dirt filled in flat behind them. Iron pipes have since been driven, to hold these tough round risers in place, and fine blue gravel scattered over the packed dirt they dam. The footing is difficult for Ruth; Rabbit watches her body struggle to propel her weight on the digging points of her heels. They catch and buckle. Her backside lurches, her arms swim for balance.
He tells her, "Take off your shoes."
"And kill my feet? You're a thoughtful bastard."
"Well then, let's go back down."
"No, no," she says. "We must be halfway."
"We're nowhere near half up. Take off your shoes. These blue stones are stopping; it'll just be mashed—down dirt."
"With chunks of glass in it."
But further on she does take off her shoes. Bare of stockings, her white feet lift lightly under his eyes; the yellow skin of her heels flickers. Under the swell of calf her ankles are thin. In a fond gesture he takes off his shoes and socks, to share whatever pain there is. The dirt is trod smooth, but embedded pebbles stab his skin with the force of his weight. Also the ground is cold. "Ouch," he says. "Owitch."
"Come on, soldier," she says, "be brave."
They learn to walk on the grass at the ends of the logs. Tree branches overhang part of the way, making it an upward tunnel. At other spots the air is clear behind them, and they can look over the rooftops of Brewer into the twentieth story of the courthouse, the city's one skyscraper. Concrete eagles stand in relief, wings flared, between its top windows. Two middle—aged couples in plaid scarves, bird—watchers, pass them on the way down; as soon as this couple has descended out of sight behind the gnarled arm of an oak, Rabbit hops up to Ruth's step and kisses her, hugs her hot bulk, tastes the salt in the sweat on her face, which is unresponsive. She thinks this is a silly time; her one—eyed woman's mind is intent on getting up the hill. But the thought of her city girl's paper—pale feet bare on the stones for his sake makes his heart, pumping with exertion, swell, and he clings to her broad body. An airplane goes over, rapidly rattling the air.
"My queen," he says, "my good horse."
"Your what?"
"Horse."
Near the top, the mountain rises sheer in a cliff, and here modem men have built concrete stairs with an iron railing that in a Z of three flights reach the macadam parking lot of the Pinnacle Hotel. Ruth and Rabbit put their shoes back on and, climbing the stairs, watch the city slowly flatten under them.
Rails guard the cliff edge. He grips one white beam, warmed by the sun that now is sinking away from the zenith, and looks straight down, into the exploding heads of trees. A frightening view, remembered from boyhood, when he used to wonder ifyou jumped would you die or be cushioned on those green heads as on the clouds of a dream? In the lower part of his vision the stonewalled cliff rises to his feet foreshortened to the narrowness of a knife; in the upper part the hillside slopes down, faint paths revealed and random clearings and the steps they have climbed.
Ruth's gaze, her lids half—closed as if she were reading a book, rests on the city.
O.K. He brought them up here. To see what? The city stretches from dollhouse rows at the base of the park through a broad blurred belly of flowerpot red patched with tar roofs and twinkling cars and ends as a rose tint in the mist that hangs above the distant river. Gas tanks glimmer in this smoke. Suburbs lie like scarves in it. But the city is huge in the middle view, and he opens his lips as if to force the lips of his soul to receive the taste of the truth about it, as if truth were a secret in such low solution that only immensity can give us a sensible taste. Air dries his mouth.
His day has been bothered by God: Ruth mocking, Eccles blinking – why did they teach you such things if no one believed them? It seems plain, standing here, that if there is this floor there is a ceiling, that the true space in which we live is upward space. Someone is dying. In this great stretch of brick someone is dying. The thought comes from nowhere: simple percentages. Someone in some house along these streets, if not this minute then the next, dies; and in that suddenly stone chest the heart of this flat prostrate rose seems to him to be. He moves his eyes to find the spot; perhaps he can see the cancer—blackened soul of an old man mount through the blue like a monkey on a string. He strains his ears to hear the pang of release as this ruddy illusion at his feet gives up this reality. Silence blasts him. Chains of cars creep without noise; a dot comes out of a door. What is he doing here, standing on air? Why isn't he home? He becomes frightened and begs Ruth, "Put your arm around me."
She carelessly obliges, taking a step and swinging her haunch against his. He clasps her tighter and feels better. Brewer at their feet seems to warm in the sloping sunlight: its vast red cloth seems to lift from the valley in which it is sunk concavely, to fill like a breast with a breath, Brewer the mother of a hundred thousand, shelter of love, ingenious and luminous artifact. So it is in a return of security that he asks, voicing like a loved child a teasing doubt, "Were you really a hooer?"
To his surprise she turns hard under his arm and twists away and stands beside the railing menacingly. Her eyes narrow; her chin changes shape. In his nervousness he notices three Boy Scouts staring at them across the asphalt. She asks, "Are you really a rat?"
He feels the need of care in his answer. "In a way."
"All right then."
They take a bus down.
Tuesday afternoon, overcast, he takes a bus to Mt. judge. Eccles' address is at the north end of town; he rides past his own neighborhood in safety, gets off at Spruce, and walks along singing in a high voice to himself the phrase, "Oh I'm just wild about Harry" – not the beginning of the song, but the place at the end where the girl, repeating, goes way up on "I'm."
He feels on even keel. For two days he and Ruth have lived on his money and he still has fourteen dollars left. Furthermore he has discovered, poking through her bureau this morning while she was out shopping, that she has an enormous s checking account, with over five hundred dollars in it at the end of February. They have gone bowling once and have seen four movies – Gigi; Bell, Book and Candle; The Inn of the Sixth Happiness; and The Shaggy Dog. He saw so many snippets from The Shaggy Dog on the Mickey Mouse Club that he was curious to see the whole thing. It was like looking through a photograph album with about half familiar faces. The scene where the rocket goes through the roof and Fred MacMurray runs out with the coffee pot he knew as well as his own face.
Ruth was funny. Her bowling was awful; she just sort of paddled up to the line and dropped the ball. Plok. Every time, in Gígi, the stereophonic—sound loudspeaker behind them in the theater would blare out she turned around and said "Shh" as if it were somebody in the theater talking too loud. In The Inn of the Sixth Happiness every time Ingrid Bergman's face appeared on the screen she leaned over to Rabbit and asked him in a whisper, "Is she really a hooer?" He was upset by Robert Donat; he looked awful. He knew he was dying. Imagine knowing you're dying and going ahead pretending you're a mandarin. Ruth's comment about Bell, Book and Candle last night was, "Why don't you ever see any bongo drums around here?" He vowed secretly to get her some. A half—hour ago, waiting for the bus on Weiser Street, he priced a set in the window of the Chords 'n' Records music store. $19.95. All the way out on the bus he was beating bongo patterns on his knees.