190
GEORGE DEAUX
around his shoulder and whispers in his ear. The lean man barber
winks over at the polite wen, who whispers into the ear of the cor–
porate image, who shakes his head in stern disapproval as he tightens
his tie and slips his glasses back on. He takes his change quickly and,
more or less clucking, pulls on his jacket.
The razor flashed as Charlie drew
it
over the leather. The
professor wonders, Can the flesh really sharpen the steel? But he has
turned from his old pacifism and reform politics. The time has come
to act the hero. As he wiggles out of his pants under the sheet. The
razor tugs at the hair over his ears.
"Not too high over the ears now."
"Vou wannit to last, don't you?"
"How about it, Sambo?" the salesman says. He has somehow
enveloped the boy in his arm and the folds of his jacket. He leans his
head down and whispers at him. The pimpled high-school hero has
climbed into the chair, instructs the barber how to cut and warns
him away from a boil below his ear; he too leans forward to observe
the action. Charlie speaks softly in the professor's ear as he wipes
away the soap with a warm towel: "Mr. Mercer, now he's got a
peeculiar predilection." They all watched with heavy interest. Mercer
himself, he wink to one and all. The boy squirms, reaches out for
the five, draws back, thinks again, reaches out.
This is a job for the Worm. It's time for the Worm to enter
the picture.
Pulling his arm out of the last sleeve now under the sheet, un–
beknownst to all, he still lay low in dere, but he
ready,
man. Just wait
his chance to leap out and strike a blow for freedom in this reaction–
ary pit.
A balI of hair rolls down over the sheet as Charlie makes the
final combings, and the professor, remembering his years committed
to teaching the Truth and speaking out against injustice, shoulders
his stone once more up that mountain. Skin magazines and dandruff
remover, fat men with thick eyes and luxurious hair in their noses,
courageous old men in diapers leading the armies of the young from
their control booths on the hill, he has spoke out against them all.
And still they come. Well, even though he know in his underwear
what to think of
speech,
still he do speak out one again last time;
saying, "See here, Mercer, if that's what your name is, it's men like
