“Hello, hello,” Rabbit says, ignored.

Nelson turns and says, “Hey Dad. Robert Williams is back in this country.”

“Who the hell is Robert Williams?”

Skeeter says, “Chuck baby, he’s a man going to fry your ass.”

“Another black Jesus. How many of you are there?”

“By many false prophets,” Skeeter tells him, “you shall know my coming, right? That’s the Good Book, right?”

“It also says He’s come and gone.”

“Comin’ again, Chuck. Gonna fry your ass. You and Nixon’s, right?”

“Poor old Nixon, even his own commissions beat on him. What the hell can he do? He can’t go into every ghetto and fix the plumbing himself. He can’t give every copped-out junkie a million dollars and a Ph.D. Nixon, who’s Nixon? He’s just a typical flatfooted Chamber of Commerce type who lucked his way into the hot seat and is so dumb he thinks it’s good luck. Let the poor bastard alone, he’s trying to bore us to death so we won’t commit suicide.”

“Nixon, shit. That honky was put there by the cracker vote, right? Strom Stormtrooper is his very bag. He is Herod, man, and all us black babies better believe it.”

“Black babies, black leaders, Jesus am I sick of the word black. If I said white one-eightieth as often as you say black you’d scream yourself blue. For Chrissake, forget your skin.”

“I’ll forget it when you forget it, right?”

“Lord I’d love to forget not only your skin but everything inside it. I thought three days ago you said you were getting out in three days.”

“Dad, don’t.” The kid’s face is tense. Mom was right, too delicate, too nervous. Thinks the world is going to hurt him, so it will. The universal instinct to exterminate the weak.

Jill rises to shield the other two. Three on one: Rabbit is exhilarated. Faking and dodging, he says before she can speak, “Tell the darker of your boyfriends here I thought he promised to pull out when he got a stake. I have twenty bucks here to give him. Which reminds me of something else.”

Skeeter interrupts, addressing the air. “I love him when he gets like this. He is the Man.”

And Jill is saying her piece. “Nelson and I refuse to live with this quarrelling. Tonight after supper we want to have an organized discussion. There’s a crying need for education in this household.”

“Household,” Rabbit says, “I’d call it a refugee camp.” He persists in what he has been reminded of. “Hey, Skeeter. Do you have a last name?”

“X,” Skeeter tells him. “42X.”

“Sure it’s not Farnsworth?”

Skeeter’s body sheds its shell, hangs there outfeinted a second, before regathering hardness. “That Super Tom,” he says definitively, “is not the slightest relation of mine.”

“The Vat had your last name as Farnsworth.”

“The Vat,” Skeeter pronounces mincingly, “is a Fascist rag.”

Having scored, you put your head down and run back up the floor; but with that feeling inside, of having made a mark that can’t be rubbed out. “Just wondering,” Rabbit smiles. He stretches out his arms as if from wall to wall. “Who wants a beer besides me?”