Centaur by John Updike

Author:John Updike [Updike, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub

“There’s a little rattle in the back,” I said, “like two cog wheels spinning and just brushing against each other.”

Mr. Rhodes blinked at me and brushed back his forelock. “It might be something in the axle. I’d have to get it up on the rack and take apart the whole rear assembly. Do you live far?”

“Way the hell down in Firetown,” my father said.

Mr. Rhodes sighed. “Well, yes. I’m sorry I couldn’t be more help.” A long scarlet Buick, its paint a swirling cosmos of reflections, nosed in from the street and honked its horn: the blast totally possessed the low concrete cavern and Mr. Rhodes’ attention was deflected from us.

My father said hurriedly, “Don’t apologize, mister. You’ve told me what you think is the truth and that’s the greatest favor one man can do for another.” But outside the garage, again walking in the night, he said to me, “That poor devil didn’t know what he was talking about, Peter. I’ve been a bluffer all my life so I can spot another. He was what they call talking through your hat. I wonder how he got to be manager of an important place like that; I bet he doesn’t know himself. He acted just the way I feel half the time.”

“Where are we going now?”

“Back to the car.”

“But it doesn’t go! You know that.”

“I know it and yet I don’t. I have the feeling it’ll go now. It just needed a rest.”

“It isn’t just the motor being cold, it’s something in the body!”

“That’s what that man was trying to tell me but I can’t get it through my thick head.”

“But it’s nearly ten o’clock. Shouldn’t you call Mother?”

“What can she do? We’re on our own, kid. The devil take the hindmost.”

“Well I know perfectly well if the car didn’t move an hour ago it won’t move now. And I’m freezing.”

As we walked down Seventh, I hurrying and continually failing to close that gap of a step which was always between us, a drunk slipped out of a dark doorway and capered along beside us. For an instant I thought he was the hitchhiker, but this man was smaller and further gone in degeneracy. His hair was wild like the mane of a muddy lion and it stood straight out from his head like the rays of the sun. His clothes were preposterously tattered and he wore a frazzled old over coat around his shoulders in the manner of a cape, so that its empty arms waved and bobbled about him as he pirouetted. He asked my father, “Where are you going with this boy?”

My father obligingly slowed his walk so that the drunk, who had stumbled in skipping sideways, could keep pace with us.

“I beg your pardon, mister,” he said. “I didn’t hear your question.”

The drunk exercised an elaborate, pleased control over his intonation, like an actor marvelling at his own performance. “Oh ho ho,” he rumbled softly but distinctly. “You dirty, dirty man.” He waved his finger back and forth in front of his nose and peered at us roguishly through this wind shield-wiper action.

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