188
GEORGE
DEAUX
~iberal,
yes, but I give way to no man in my staunch anti-Com–
munism." Why does he say this? For form only, because it's an old
speech - a reflex which surprises even him.
"You hear him say 'peace'?" The salesman glared with reddened
eye.
"Well, if I was there, you're gonna see some gooks fry." The
boy stands up and holds open his suede jacket. On his shirt pocket is
pinned an orange badge that says "KILL THE CONG."
"You one of those commie fink peace creep professors?" the
salesman asks, eyes closed now to get his eyebrows trimmed.
"It's terrible. Just terrible." The professor leans forward to
answer them all, all, and takes the sci£sor point in the flesh of his
ear. "Ouch," he say with embarrassment, and Charlie: "Oh watch
it man!" While he stumbles around. A spot of blood blossoms, but
the hero speaks again, his wounds forgotten. "I'm no pacifist. We
must meet evil with sufficient force to quell it." The room seems to
echo the phrase: "Quell it. Quell it. Quell it." "But where is our
humanity? Our compassion? Our humility?" He chum up his emo–
tional volumes, he preach now out of the long experience he never
have in storefront churches, street corner rallies, but all he can tune
in is: "We should be ashamed!"
Claude leans back and surrenders to the barber, who dabs at
his ear with a piece of cotton soaked in alcohol. He watches the long
days of his hope stretch out before him: the clasping hands, men
sharing a common cup, brothers in the field at hay time, muscles
straining, voices raised in song. Through it he hears the echoes, the
clamor, the buzzing clippers resonating in his skull, the slap of the
razor on leather.
"A liberal is a socialist is a commie is a spy," the salesman said.
His voice comes out of a long and ancient corridor.
"Well,
I'm
no coward," the master barber announces. "I think
they oughta let us old guys go. I'd go tomorrow even if I am sixty-two
years old. Yes, we could go and let our boys stay home. What's it
matter if some old guy like me gets killed? Who's gonna care if a
poor old guy gets killed?" He marches into battle, is hit, staggers
and falls, wounded in the wen.
"If
I didn't have this basketball scholarship for next year, I'd
sign up in a minute," says the kid. "Man, you'd see them commies
shit then. Pow. Pow."
