- Meanwhile, around 8:00 p.m., Mrs. Springer calls Lucy Eccles looking for Jack.
- Lucy then calls around everywhere for him.
- Joyce hears all the dialing and comes down twice and is sent back to bed.
- When Joyce doesn’t come back down, Lucy feels bad, like she banished the only person in her corner. She doesn’t like being a minister’s wife just then, after 10 p.m.
- She is embarrassed. She remembers that she was drawn to Jack because he was happy and fun. Other people get all his fun now.
- “She hates” all those religious people, and wishes for communism to come and sweep religion away.
- She thinks things might be better if religion had vanished “a hundred years ago.”
- The she thinks maybe “our weakness needs” religion. Jack comes home just before eleven.
- He’d been at the drugstore all that time, having fun talking to kids about sex and Jesus.
- He can see she is past mad.
- She gives him the message from the Springers.
- He doesn’t stop to console her but runs, excited that the moment he’s been waiting for has come, and makes a phone call.
- He prays to God he’ll get an answer, but he isn’t happy with the prayer because he can’t make phones and God seem connected.
- Yay. An answer. It’s a man. He thinks it isn’t Rabbit, so he asks for him.
- After Eccles identifies himself, Rabbit says: “Hi.”
- Rabbit was sleeping, or, er, something.
- Eccles tells him Janice is in labor and feels like all of his work as a minister is being judged by whether Rabbit goes to her or not. He says he will go.
- Rabbit declines a ride and says he will walk. Eccles expresses his pride for Rabbit.