LOUIE/Hughes and rather tender looking skin. Somehow, in the old clothes, he seemed out of his element. He pushed up his horn rim glasses and listened intently to the News. Both windows in the bedroom were open but the air wasn't moving at all. Louie sat under one of the windows and a thin slice of sunlight dropped almost directly down on him. A fly landed on his cheese sandwich which was lying on waxed paper next to his open lunch bucket. Louie jerked out his hand and the fly jumped up and then drifted away. The draft sent tiny saw dust particles swirling up into the shaft of sun. He picked up his cup and sipped at the coffee and listened to Paul Harvey. "New anti-Viet Nam demonstrations today," Harvey said, and then after a hesitation, "That's right. You thought the college kids were vacationing didn't you? Well, it looks like some of them are getting bored again. Two hundred sign bearing, beard wearing college students paraded today in front of the White House. Come all the way from Ohio. They carried signs reading "Stop needless killing," and "Must Johnson's war go on?" Paul Harvey, timing himself carefully, hesitated again and then rapidly said, "Someone along the way reportedly yelled out to them, 'Why don't you kids get a job and do something worthwhile? Or are you too lazy?' A heated argument followed. It ended when the demonstrator for peace used his sign to club the heckler over the head." Once again there was a long pause and then Harvey slowly and dramatically added, "Maybe he's right kids. Why don't you try to get a job? Many of us are tired of your riots for peace. Or are you too lazy?" The news-cast came to an end shortly after that and as a singing commercial started Vern turned the radio off. "He's right, by god," Louie said. "Just a bunch of goddamn lazy kids prob'ly got a rich old man puttin' 'em through college." "Scared little bastards are just afraid they'll have to go over there and get shot at, that's all," Vern said. "goddamn rights," Louie answered. He shut the lid to his lunch bucket and fastened the catches and then leaned back against his board, "goddamn right." Jerry was whittling a stick he had picked up off the floor into a tooth pick. "That old Paul Harvey comes up with some real good points sometimes," he said. "goddamn rights he does. I been listenin' to 'im for a long time. You just listen to 'im, He knows what the hell he's talkin' about." There was a silence which seemed to indicate agreement by all and then Dennis suddenly said, "Gees, Louie, he's just a man. It's just his opinion. Maybe he's wrong did you ever think of that?" He hestitated and looked at the other men. Vern was looking at him rather disinterestedly. "Well, take what he just said, for instance. You just can't generalize like that. Maybe a lot of the demonstrators are just lazy kids, but I'll bet there are just as many who are really convinced that they are doing a good thing. Maybe they are wrong but that's another question. They at least have the right to voice their opinion and bring attention to what they believe in." Everyone was looking at Dennis, but he noticed no real reaction. Suddenly he felt rather silly about the little speech he had given, but he added, "At least they are thinking about our problems and trying to do something about them. I have to respect them for that." "Do somethin'?" Louie broke in, half smiling. "Oh god, that's a good one. So they're tryin' to do somethin'? If you ask me they ought to quit actin' like a bunch a damn fools and start doin' somethin'. They ought to get a job that's what they ought to do." "Well, Louie, you just can't judge others by your own standards. You believe in work, which is your right, but everyone should be able to decide for themselves what they want to do with their time. They apparently think that what they are doing is more important than work. They are trying to do something towards gaining peace." "What the hell good is marching around the White House going to do?" Jerry said. "They can march the rest of their lives and that ain't going to bring us one bit closer to having peace." Dennis started to answer, but Louie boom- 36 ed out with a "goddamn rights" that completely submerged what he was saying. He decided for a moment to give up. He sat quietly, feeling that his face and ears were hot. He pushed up his glasses and wiped the sweat off his forehead with his fingers. He looked at the grain in the plywood subflooring and rehearsed what he would like to say. Then Vern said, "Myself, I feel just like Louie does about it. They would be doin' a hell of a lot more for their country by doing some work. I just don't think they got the guts to act like men." Louie agreed in his usual manner, nodding and swearing. Dennis held his urge for a few seconds, but then he gave in and decided to make one last statement. "Well, that's not the point," he said. It came out more loudly and strained than he expected. He went on more casually, "The point is that they have the right to do what they feel will do some good. Maybe they are way out in left field, but at least they are thinking. They aren't sitting around listening to some radio announcer like he was the one source of truth on earth. How else are we going to make progress if someone doesn't question what is going on and then cause others to think by drawing attention to the subject?" He had started to talk loudly again by the time he finished and he noticed it and cut himself off. He leaned back against the wall and decided to say nothing more. Louie took a long look at Dennis. He sucked once against the back of his front teeth and spit out a little particle of food. It fell where his coffee cup had stained the plywood in several circles. Dennis stared at the marks and avoided Louie's eyes. "We got us a college boy here," Louie said. "Sure glad he's here to tell us how things are. We're just dumb bastards that work for a living. We never went to college." He laughed and then added, "Ain't that right Dennis?" Dennis knew that in his own clumsy way Louie was trying to smooth things over, be friendly, but it irritated him all the more. He didn't answer. He pulled one leg up and looked down at the lacing on his boot. No one spoke. Only the fly was buzzing around up by the ceiling, occasionally tapping against the glass of the window and then flying away again. Finally Jerry said, "Well, anyway, while us dumb bastards are working, I hope to hell that the college boys end all these wars so I won't have to keep paying these high goddamn taxes." The three of them laughed and that seemed to end the matter. The conversation rambled to all sorts of things and Dennis listened but said nothing. Louie finally got around to summarizing his opinion on the Negro problem. Dennis had heard him say the same things in the same words literally dozens of times practically every day. He took his glasses off and wiped his face with the palm of his hand. He wan't going to give in this time he had said enough. "We didn't have all this trouble with the niggers until Kennedy came into office," Louie said. "He asked for trouble, by god, and now Johnson's doin' the same thing." Dennis looked at Vern. He was leaning back comfortably, his legs crossed in front of him at the ankles. He seemed to be paying no attention to what Louie was saying. Jerry was picking his teeth with the toothpick he had whittled, and looking past Louie rather than at him. Dennis suddenly felt himself shudder. "Oh come on, Louie," he blurted out. "All that trouble in Little Rock was while Eisenhower was still President." "The hell it was," Louie said, not looking at Dennis and sounding very sure of himself. "Louie think about it. That's been years ago. That was long before Kennedy came in." "No by God. That happened right after Kennedy got President. He asked for it too." "Louie, I can prove it if I have to," Dennis said. He sounded angry and a tense silence was apparent until he spoke again. "I get sick of you just saying anything you please and thinking it will be that way just because you said so." Dennis was trying to justify himself, but he was sorry he had said anything. He knew he would still have to work with them the rest of the summer and it would only make things worse. He watched a lady bug crawl along the leg of his overalls until the silence made him look up. Vern was staring at him seemed to be accusing him with his serious (continued on next page) 37