When Clinton heard voices in the kitchen, he had to excuse himself; he went to the dining room to listen at the door, behind which his parents whispered hoarsely at each other:

“Has it never occurred to you,” Annabel was saying, “that your son might wish to use his own bed on Christmas Eve, and how many diseases do you suppose these men are carrying around with them?”

“Berry-berry’s not gonna use that bed tonight or any other night and . . .”

“How do you know that at this very moment he is not racing toward this house at sixty miles an hour?”

” . . . and when a man is jobless that doesn’t mean he’s got diseases. They check ‘em over at the mission house before they let ‘em in, so . . .”

“I’m sure he’d love to walk in and find those filthy . . .”

“Before you make up any more excuses that make you sound like an ignoramus, why don’t you drink a glass of water and think about what it says in the Bible?”

“Thank you, Ralph, you don’t have to waste your time telling me what you think of my mind. It has long ago been conceded that the brains . . . ! Can you dare quote the Bible to me! Ralph, that is one area, I serve you warning, there are sacred matters that . . .”

” ‘There was no room at the inn.’ “

“You have an absolute contempt for the Bible and yet you dare . . .”

“I do not have contempt for the Bible. I have never in my life . . .”

” . . . you have the gall to hide behind Jesus Christ, just for the sake of those persons in the living room! Jobless, my big toe; why, do you know what they are? I’ll tell you what they are!”

“The Bible is one thing and religion is another. Now, you can take every religion in the world and you can wrap them all up in one big hairy package, and then you can take ‘em and . . .”

“Ralph, I warn you! You can have your Communism and your atheism and every other absurdism you can find, and I’ll leave you perfectly at peace with them, but I promise you . . .”

“You know goddam well what I think of Russia!”

“Ralph Williams, you don’t fool me one bit, you don’t care about those three tramps. If you did you’d give them some money and leave them alone. Do you know what it costs to fumigate a house?”

“They don’t want money. They want to spend the night in a warm house, in a good comfortable bed, and they want to eat some good food and drink some good liquor. So get some sheets and blankets on those beds and keep still.”

As Clinton heard the clinking of glasses he moved swiftly away from the door. Ralph passed him on his way to the living room. “Forgot all about you, Clint,” he said. “Go fetch yourself a glass.”