Read Online Rabbit Redux by John Updike - Free Book Online Page A

"Let's swap then. Shut up and eat," Rabbit says. He looks across to see that Janice and Stavros are having the same thing, a kind of white pie. They are sitting, to his printer's sense, too close, leaving awkward space on either side. To poke them into adjustment he says, "I think it's a swell country."
                Janice takes it up, Stavros chewing in silence. "Harry, you've never been to any other country."
                He addresses himself to Stavros. "Never had the desire to. I see these other countries on TV, they're all running like hell to be like us, and burning our Embassies because they can't make it fast enough. What other countries do you get to?"
                Stavros interrupts his eating grudgingly to utter, "Jamaica."
                "Wow," Rabbit says. "A real explorer. Three hours by jet to the lobby of some Hilton."
                "They hate us down there."
                "You mean they hate you. They never see me, I never go. Why do they hate us?"
                "Same reason as everywhere. Exploitation. We steal their bauxite."
                "Let 'em trade it to the Russkis for potatoes then. Potatoes and missile sites."
                "We have missile sites in Turkey," Stavros says, his heart no longer in this.
                Janice tries to help. "We've dropped two atom bombs, the Russians haven't dropped any."
                "They didn't have any then or they would have. Here the Japanese were all set to commit hari-kari and we saved them from it; now look at 'em, happy as clams and twice as sassy, screwing us right and left. We fight their wars for them while you peaceniks sell their tinny cars."
                Stavros pats his mouth with a napkin folded squarely and regains his appetite for discussion. "Her point is, we wouldn't be in this Vietnam mess if it was a white country. We wouldn't have gone in. We thought we just had to shout Boo and flash a few jazzy anti-personnel weapons. We thought it was one more Cherokee uprising. The trouble is, the Cherokees outnumber us now."
                "Oh those fucking poor Indians," Harry says. "What were we supposed to do, let 'em have the whole continent for a campfire site?" Sorry, Tonto.
                "If we had, it'd be in better shape than it is now."
                "And we'd be nowhere. They were in the way."
                "Fair enough," Stavros says. "Now you're in their way." He adds, "Paleface."
                "Let 'em come," Rabbit says, and really is, at this moment, a defiant bastion. The tender blue flame has become cold fire in his eyes. He stares them down. He stares at Janice and she is dark and tense: án Indian squaw. He'd like to massacre her.
                Then his son says, his voice strained upward through chokeddown tears, "Dad, we're going to be late for the movie!"
                Rabbit looks at his watch and sees they have four minutes to get there. The kid is right.
                Stavros tries to help, fatherly like men who aren't fathers, who think kids can be fooled about essentials. "The opening part's the dullest, Nellie, you won't miss any of the space parts. You got to try some baklava for dessert."
                "I'll miss the cave men," Nelson says, the choking almost complete, the tears almost risen.
                "I guess we should go," Rabbit tells the two other adults.
                "That's rude to Charlie," Janice says. "Really rude. Anyway I won't be able to stay awake during this interminable movie without coffee." To Nelson: "Baklava is really yummy. It's honey and flakes of thin dough, just the kind of dry thing you love. Try to be considerate, Nelson, your parents so rarely get to eat in a restaurant."
                Torn, Rabbit suggests, "Or you could try that other stuff you wanted for