Then they sat silent for a while. Nick wanted to ask this odd duck about himself, but he didn’t know where to begin. If Joel had never been in a place like Willard, Nick had never come across a boy like this one. In his experience, Dartmouth boys were skiers and outdoor men. This one seemed like another breed.

“You ski?” he asked tentatively.

“Couldn’t afford it.”

“But college—must be a lot going on there.”

“Maybe. But I’m interested in living—and I don’t mean acquiring a mind like a computer.” It was Joel’s turn to feel needled. “I did well in high school, but I couldn’t get turned on at college. Those professors—a bunch of stuffed shirts. Grades, grades … the point is they don’t seem to realize that a revolution is going on. I bet not one of them has ever been in a city ghetto. They have a few specimen Blacks, you know, just to be able to show the visiting liberals. People live in cities, Nick. That’s where the problems are.”

Nick nodded.

“I should have gone into VISTA, but my stepfather, the bastard, said that was for rich boys—and where would it lead?”

Nick turned this idea over in his mind. “Seems like those people in the slums might not want people to barge in.

Joel gave him a haunted look. Under his bravado, Nick could tell, he was running scared. Touch him and he would leap like a frightened animal.

“In Willard, we live in a way,” Nick ventured, “if you’re interested in living.”

But Joel let this pass. And Nick turned the truck round and started for home. He had done an awful lot of talking, it seemed to him, and he was feeling the strain. His instinct was to pass the problem over to his mother. She was the talker after all.