IS4
GEORGE DEAUX
signed petitions, the message of which was always the same: "Dear
Mr. President [Senator, Bishop, Ambassador, etc.]: For God's sake,
why don't you put into operation the values you profess? Sincerely,
A Troubled Friend." He'd even gone himself once to help out, but
after two years doing some sort of research into bean production,
he'd fallen into heavy despair, taken to drinking five martinis on the
way home and finally quit. At the university again he'd lectured
wittily and ironically, made speeches before the faculty senate pro–
moting good causes, sent two students into the Peace Corps, sat-in
several times, freedom-rode once, taught-in, read-in and marched,
not to mention the voting and, of course, always the letters, letters,
letters. He had begun to put on a little weight and to suspect that
nothing much was going to come of it all. They didn't seem to be
listening out there. He began to get a little queer: he wore orange
silk shirts occasionally, and once in the fall he'd read poetry to the
rush-hour commuters on the Paoli local (dressed up in a cowboy
suit - "This is a stick-up!" he shouted and whipped Yeats out of
his holster). But even then, he felt himself to be A Troubled Friend:
The Loyal Opponent. Then one afternoon last week he'd discovered
two dreadful things. He could not remember his children's names.
And he just did not feel like a troubled friend any more. He did not
feel friendly at
ail.
And it began to dawn upon him that he might
have to declare war.
He'd gone to bed with a heavy cold, but on the third morning
he rose up and, while
his
wife was at work, dyed a suit of long
underwear in the bathtub. He moved some clothes, books and a
sleeping bag into the garage, made himself a bed in the back seat of
the car, stuck his feet out the window and spent the day reading
comic books. His wife was distressed to find him there, and questioned
him about the sleeping bag, the coffee brewing on a Coleman stove
in the front seat of the car, the suit of long underwear hanging from
the rafters, dripping black dye onto the floor. He'd answered to the
effect that it was semester break and he'd take his vacation right
there if he felt like it. When she pleaded with him to return to the
house, he explained that "cowboys don't kiss girls," and threatened to
set fire to himself if she should be foolish enough to summon his
so-called friends to reason with him. She, Paula, Mrs. Flowers, nee
Button, had lived with him for seventeen years already, so she told
