186
GEORGE DEAUX
decay!" he says. "We oughta take people like that...." The barber
plucks at his jowls and the rest of the sentence is lost. "It's because
of all those fairies in Washington.
If
we was as great a country as we
think we are, we'd castrate the cocksuckers." He settles his head
against the cushion and closes his eyes again as the barber snips the
hairs out of his nose.
"Karate's my game," says the
Times.
He strikes a pose under
the barber's sheet, then brings a hand down hard upon the arm of
the chair. "I've got this chop," he said, "that can permanently para–
lyze a man, just like that" - with a snap of the fingers. "One quick
chop and you'd be crippled for life." He smiled at them, one by one.
Charlie whispers into the professor's ear. "I can see me fix
that dude. He's dancing around with his wrists all out of joint getting
ready to give me the chop and I walk up real cool and I pole him
one time in the snot locker. He come all apart like one of those
break-away movie chairs or something. Like inna cartoon. He lays
there
in
chunks. His wrists still all cocked out of joint." It amused
him so much he laughed, inhaled a mouthful of loose hair himself and
turned away, spitting and choking.
An alarm goes off in the professor's skull: an old alarm too long
ignored. Like water faintly dripping late at night - the sound that
grows to block out sleep, the thunder of a leaking faucet or mortality
or injustice - the old alarm arouses him with its intolerable ham–
mering. And he unbuttons his shirt under the sheet and feels inside
his secret underwear. Surely it is time. The violence, this incredible
grass-roots violence! The Worm must always....
Claude reminds himself that he is still who he is: associate
professor, father and husband, owner of house, keeper of yard. But
he loosens his belt and one more button. He is ready to get ready.
He is a cautious man, not at all given to precipitous turnings.
So although he is no longer A Troubled Friend, or any other kind
of friend to
them,
and although he knows that the
l~tters
in their
bottles have all drifted out to sea only to sink, and even though he
has no faith in the word any more, he makes his little speech. He
addresses his barber, country Charlie with the ducktail hair and the
fat hand; the middle man, lean, choleric; and his patient, fat and
sanguine; the first-chair owner, old maid with powdered wen; and
the corporate image with head tilted to side to check the gray temples;
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