Read Online The Maples Stories by John Updike - Free Book Online Page A

opened. The march turned left down Charles and began to press against itself, to link arms, to fumble for love. He lost sight of Joan in the crush. Then they were treading on grass, on the Common, and the first drops of rain, sharp as needles, pricked their faces and hands.
    ‘Did we have to stay to hear every damn speech?’ Richard asked. They were at last heading home; he felt too sick to drive and huddled, in his soaked, slippery suit, toward the heater. The windshield wiper seemed to be squeaking
freedom
,
free-dom
.
    ‘I wanted to hear King.’
    ‘You heard him in Alabama.’
    ‘I was too tired to listen then.’
    ‘Did you listen this time? Didn’t it seem corny and forced?’
    ‘Somewhat. But does it matter?’ Her white profile was serene; she passed a trailer truck on the right, and her window was spattered as if with applause.
    ‘And that Abernathy. God, if he’s John the Baptist, I’m Herod the Great. “Onteel de Frenchman go back t’France, onteel de Ahrishman go back t’Ahrland, onteel de Mexican, he go back tuh –”’
    ‘Stop it.’
    ‘Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t mind them sounding like demagogues; what I minded was that godawful boring phony imitation of a revival meeting. “Thass right, yossuh. Yos-
suh
!”’
    ‘Your throat sounds sore. Shouldn’t you stop using it?’
    ‘
How
could you crucify me that way?
How
could youmake this miserable sick husband stand in the icy rain for hours listening to boring stupid speeches that you’d heard before anyway?’
    ‘I didn’t think the speeches were that great. But I think it was important that they were given and that people listened. You were there as a witness, Richard.’
    ‘Ah witnessed. Ah believes. Yos-suh.’
    ‘You’re a very sick man.’
    ‘I know, I
know
I am. That’s why I wanted to leave. Even your pasty psychiatrist left. He looked like a dunked doughnut.’
    ‘He left because of the girls.’
    ‘I loved Carol. She respected me, despite the color of my skin.’
    ‘You didn’t have to go.’
    ‘Yes I did. You somehow turned it into a point of honor. It was a sexual vindication.’
    ‘How you go on.’
    “‘Onteel de East German goes on back t’East Germany, onteel de Luxembourgian hies hisself back to Luxembourg –”’
    ‘Please stop it.’
    But he found he could not stop, and even after they reached home and she put him to bed, the children watching in alarm, his voice continued its slurred plaint. ‘Ah’ze all raht, missy, jes’ a tetch o’ double pneu
mon
ia, don’t you fret none, we’ll get the cotton in.’
    ‘You’re embarrassing the children.’
    ‘Shecks, doan min’ me, chilluns. Ef Ah could jes’ res’ hyah foh a spell in de shade o’ de watuhmelon patch, res’ dese ol’ bones … Lawzy, dat do feel good!’
    ‘Daddy has a tiny cold,’ Joan explained.
    ‘Will he die?’ Bean asked, and burst into tears.
    ‘Now, effen,’ he said, ‘bah some un
foh
-choonut chayunce, mah spirrut should pass owen, bureh me bah de levee, so mebbe Ah kin heeah de singin’ an’ de banjos an’ de cotton bolls abustin’ … an’ mebbe even de whaat folks up in de Big House kin shed a homely tear er two….’ He was almost crying; a weird tenderness had crept over him in bed, as if he had indeed given birth, birth to this voice, a voice crying for attention from the depths of oppression. High in the window, the late-afternoon sky blanched as the storm lifted. In the warmth of the bed, Richard crooned to himself, and once cried out, ‘Missy! Missy! Doan you worreh none, ol’ Tom’ll see anotheh sun-up!’
    But Joan was downstairs, talking firmly on the telephone.

THE TASTE OF METAL
    METAL, STRICTLY, HAS no taste; its presence in the mouth is felt as disciplinary, as a
No
spoken to other tastes. When Richard Maple, after many years of twinges, jagged edges, and occasional extractions, had all his remaining molars capped and bridges shaped across the gaps, the gold felt chilly to his cheeks and