"Aw Christ, another one a these college liberals." Vinny smirked.

"Nah, I mean..."

"Hey look, Stony, I don' wanna give you no lectures." Eddie grabbed his wrist. "Forget that crack about college liberals, I'm talkin' to you man to man. Now I'm not sayin' you ain't smart or anything. Look, for all I know you're smarter than all a us here put together, but one thing that you don't got is—"

"Experience," Stony finished for Eddie.

Eddie bobbed his head in confirmation.

"Now you talkin'." Vinny winked.

"You see, Stony"—Eddie shook Stony's wrist every few words for emphasis—"when we talk about this degenerate that's goin' around, we're talkin' as fathers, as husbands, you know what I mean?"

They nodded in unison. Stony nodded too.

"You know? An' when you go equatin' Nixon and Hitler..." He shook his head sadly. "Look, Nixon mighta been a prick, I dunno, but... O.K., look at it this way. You always read about the hard hats did this an' the hard hats did that, beatin' up war protestors an' that shit, but how many a those kids ever put their lives on the line for their country? I was at the invasion a Sicily. Those fuckin' Germans had that whole goddamn beach cross-coordinated, you know what that means? That means any time those fuckin' Krauts saw a cluster of men on the beach all they had to do was fix the coordinates on their guns and wham! Six a your best friends crawling up the beach, ten yards to your right, vanished—not even a goddamn corpse ... But we kept comin' an' we took that motherfuckin' beach."

Vinny interjected. "You know Artie? Fat Artie? Artie saw his own brother jump on a grenade in Korea, so four other guys wouldn't get killed." Eddie grabbed Stony's wrist again. "Now what's a guy like Artie, or me, or any of us, whatta we supposed to think, whatta we supposed to do when we see some long-haired eighteen-year-old prick come marchin' down the street with a North Vietnamese flag? I'm askin' you serious, what a' we supposed to do?"

Stony felt moved but confused. He didn't give two shits about Vietnam either way, and he didn't understand what that had to do with the Parkchester Pervert. But the story about Artie La Russo's brother made him want to cry. He imagined himself jumping on a live grenade to save Albert. Then he pictured Albert molested by some forty-year-old sex maniac in the stairway outside the apartment. His mother's face. Albert crying. Derek and Tyrone in their wheelchairs terrified of him. Albert with tears on his face. Derek and Tyrone. Marie. Albert. Derek. Tyrone. Stony. Him. Thomas De Coco Jr. Junior.

"...I'm askin' you, Stony, whatta we supposed to do when some kid comes marchin' down the street with a Vietnamese flag?"

Stony looked at Eddie, at Vinny, at Tooky and Jimmy O'Day.

"Well, it's plain as the nose on your face. You take the goddamn flag, break it in two, then you shove one part down his throat and the other part up his ass. Right? I mean, really, whatta you gonna do, salute? Teach him a fuckin' lesson he'll never forget. I guarantee you, someday he'll be grateful, right? You know how kids are, right?"