"Should I ask why?"

"Oh I don't know. A combination of things. It seemed safer to be in a place I know."

"You didn't come back to protect your wife?"

Rabbit is wordless at the idea.

Eccles continues, "You speak of this feeling of muddle. What do you think it's like for other young couples? In what way do you think you're exceptional?"

"You don't think there's any answer to that but there is. I once did something right. I played first—rate basketball. I really did. And after you're first—rate at something, no matter what, it kind of takes the kick out of being second—rate. And that little thing Janice and I had going, boy, it was really second—rate."

The dashboard lighter pops. Eccles uses it and quickly returns his eyes to his driving. They've come down into the outskirts of Brewer. He asks, "Do you believe in God?"

Having rehearsed that this morning, Rabbit answers without hesitation, "Yes."

Eccles blinks in surprise. The furry lid in his one—eyed profile shutters, but his face does not turn. "Do you think, then, that God wants you to make your wife suffer?"

"Let me ask you. Do you think God wants a waterfall to be a tree?" This question of Jimmies sounds, Rabbit realizes, ridiculous; he is annoyed that Eccles simply takes it in, with a sad drag of smoke. He realizes that no matter what he says, Eccles will take it in with the same weary smoke; he is a listener by trade. His big fair head must be stuffed with a gray mash of everybody's precious secrets and passionate questions, a mash that nothing, young as he is, can color. For the first time, Rabbit dislikes him.

"No," Eccles says after thought. "But I think He wants a little tree to become a big tree."

"If you're telling me I'm not mature, that's one thing I don't cry over since as far as I can make out it's the same thing as being dead."

"I'm immature myself," Eccles offers.

It's not enough of an offering. Rabbit tells him off. "Well, I'm not going back to that little soppy dope no matter how sorry you feel for her. I don't know what she feels. I haven't known for years. All I know is what's inside me. That's all I have. Do you know what I was doing to support that bunch? I was demonstrating a penny's worth of tin called a frigging MagiPeeler in McCrory's five and dime!"

Eccles looks at him wide—eyed. "Well that explains your oratorical gifts," he says.

This aristocratic sneer rings true; puts them both in place. Rabbit feels less at sea. "Hey, I wish you'd let me out," he says. They're on Weiser Street, heading toward the great sunflower, dead in day.

"Won't you let me take you to where you're staying?"

"I'm not staying anywhere."

"All right." With a trace ofboyish bad temper Eccles pulls over and stops in front of a fire hydrant. As he brakes racily, something clatters in the trunk.

"You're coming apart," Rabbit tells him.

"Just my golf clubs."

"You play?"

"Badly. Do you?" He seems animated; the cigarette bums forgotten in his fingers.

"I used to caddy."

"Could I invite you for a game?" Ali. Here's the hook.

Rabbit gets out hugging his great ball of clothes and stands on the curb and sidesteps, clowning in his freedom. "I don't have clubs."

"They're easy to rent. Please. I mean it." Eccles leans far over, to speak through the door. "It's hard for me to find partners. Everybody works except me." He laughs.

Rabbit knows he should run, but the thought of a game, and an idea that it's safest to see the hunter, make resistance.

Eccles presses. "I'm afraid you'll go back to demonstrating peelers if I don't catch you soon. Tuesday? Tuesday at two? Shall I pick you up?"

"No; I'll come to your house."

"Promise?"

"Yeah. But don't trust a promise from me."

"I have to." Eccles names an address in Mt. Judge and they call goodbye at the curb. An old cop walks with a wise squint along the pavement beside the shut, stunned Sunday storefronts. To him it must look like a priest parting from the president of his Youth Group, who is carrying a bundle of clothes for the poor. Harry grins at this cop, and walks along the sparkling pavement with his stomach singing. Funny, the world just can't touch you once you follow your instincts.

Ruth lets him in, a pocket mystery in one hand. Her eyes look sleepy from reading. She has changed into another sweater. Her hair is loose and seems darker. He dumps the clothes on her bed. "Do you have hangers?"

"Say. You really think you have it made."

"I made you," he says. "I made you and the sun and the stars." Squeezing her in his arms it seems that he did. She is tepid and solid in his embrace, not friendly, not not. The filmy smell of soap lifts into his nostrils while dampness touches his jaw. She has washed her hair. Clean, she is clean, a big clean woman; he puts his nose against her skull to drink in the demure sharp scent. He thinks of her naked in the shower, her hair hanging oozy with lather, her neck bowed to the whipping water. "I made you bloom," he says.

"Oh you're a wonder," she answers, and pushes away from his chest. As he hangs up his suits tidily, Ruth asks, "You give your wife the car?"

"There was nobody there. I snuck in and out. I left the key inside."

"And nobody caught you?"

"As a matter of fact somebody did. The Episcopal minister gave me a ride back into Brewer."

"Say; you are religious, aren't you?"

"I didn't ask him."

"What did he say?"

"Nothing much."

"What was he like?"

"Kind of creepy. Giggled a lot."

"Maybe just you make him giggle."

"I'm supposed to play golf with him on Tuesday."

"You're kidding."

"No, really. I told him I don't know how."

She laughs, on and on, in that prolonged way women use when they're excited by you and ashamed of it. "Oh my Rabbit," she exclaims in a fond final breath. "You just grab what comes, don't you?"

"He got hold of me," he insists, knowing his attempts to explain will amuse her, for shapeless reasons. "I didn't do anything."

"You poor soul," she says. "You're just irresistible."

With keen secret relief, he at last takes off his dirty clothes and changes into clean underwear, fresh socks, and suntans. He left his razor at home but Ruth has a little curved female one for armpits that he uses. He chooses a wool sports shirt, for these afternoons in spring cool off sharply, and puts his suede shoes back on. He forgot to steal any other shoes. "Let's go for that walk," he announces, dressed.

"I'm reading," Ruth says from a chair. The book is open to near the end. She reads books nicely, without cracking their backs, though they cost only 35¢. She has combed her hair and put it back in a roll at the nape of her neck.

"Come on. Get out in the weather." He goes over and tries to tug the mystery from her hand. The title is The Deaths at Oxford. Now what should she care about deaths at Oxford? When she has him here, wonderful Harry Angstrom.

"Wait," she pleads, and turns a page, and reads some sentences as the book is pulled slowly up, her eyes shuttling, and then suddenly lets him take it. "God, you're a bully."

He marks her place with a burnt match and looks at her bare feet. "Do you have sneakers or anything? You can't wear heels."

"No. Hey I'm sleepy."

"We'll go to bed early."

Her eyeballs turn on him at this, her lips pursed a little. There is this vulgarity in her, that just couldn't let that just go by.

"Come on," he says. "Put on flat shoes and we'll get your hair

"I'll have to wear heels, they're all I have." As she bows her head to pinch them on, the white line of her parting makes him smile, it's so straight. Like a little birthday girl's parting.

They approach the mountain through the city park. The trash baskets and movable metal benches have not been set out yet. On the concrete—and—plank benches fluffy old men sun like greater pigeons, dressed in patches of gray multiple as feathers. The trees in small leaf dust the half—bare ground with shadow. Sticks and strings protect the newly seeded margins of the unraked gravel walks. The breeze, flowing steadily down the slope from the empty bandshell, is cool out of the sun. The wool shirt was right. Pigeons with mechanical heads waddle away from their shoetips and resettle, chuffling, behind them. A derelict stretches an arm along the back of a bench to dry, and out of a gouged face daintily sneezes like a cat. A few toughs, fourteen or younger, smoke and jab near the locked equipment shed of a play pavilion on whose yellow boards someone has painted in red TEX & JOSIE, RITA & JAY. Where would they get red paint? He takes Ruth's hand. The ornamental pool in front of the bandshell is drained and scum—stained; they move along a path parallel to the curve of its cold lip, which echoes back the bandshell's silence. A World War II tank, made a monument, points its empty guns at far—off clay tennis courts. The nets are not up, the lines unlimed.