• • •

“Harry, how about a quick one?” His father tells the bartender, as always, “Let’s make it a Schlitz.”

“Whisky sour,” he says. Summer is over, the air-conditioning in the Phoenix has been turned off. He asks, “How’s Mom doing?”

“As good as can be hoped, Harry.” He nudges a conspiratorial inch closer. “That new stuff really seems to do the job, she’s on her feet for hours at a time now. For my money, though, the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question is what the long-range effects will be. The doctor, he’s perfectly honest about it. He says to her when we go on in to the hospital, ‘How’s my favorite guinea pig?’ ”

“What’s the answer?” Rabbit abruptly asks.

His father is startled. “Her answer?”

“Anybody’s.”

His father now understands the question and shrugs his narrow shoulders in his faded blue shirt. “Blind faith,” he suggests. In a mutter he adds, “One more bastard under the ground.”

On the television above the bar men are filing past a casket, but the sound is turned off and Rabbit cannot tell if it is Everett Dirksen’s funeral service in Washington or Ho Chi Minh’s ceremonies in Hanoi. Dignitaries look alike, always dressed in mourning. His father clears his throat, breaks the silence. “Janice called your mother last night.”

“Boy, I think she’s cracking up, she’s on the phone all the time. Stavros must be losing his muscle.”

“She was very disturbed, she said you’d taken a colored man into your house.”

“I didn’t exactly take him, he kind of showed up. Nobody’s supposed to know about it. I think he’s Farnsworth’s son.”

“That can’t be, Jerry’s never married to my knowledge.”

“They don’t marry generally, right? They weren’t allowed to as slaves.”

This bit of historical information makes Earl Angstrom grimace. He takes, what for him, with his boy, is a tough line. “I must say, Harry, I’m not too happy about it either.”

The funeral (the flag on the coffin has stars and stripes, so it must be Dirksen’s) vanishes, and flickering in its place are shots of cannons blasting, of trucks moving through the desert, of planes soundlessly batting through the sky, of soldiers waving. He cannot tell if they are Israeli or Egyptian. He asks, “How happy is Mom about it?”

“I must say, she was very short with Janice. Suggested if she wanted to run your household she go back to it. Said she had no right to complain. I don’t know what all else. I couldn’t bear to listen; when women get to quarrelling, I head for the hills.”

“Janice talk about lawyers?”

“Your mother didn’t mention it if she did. Between you and me, Harry, she was so upset it scared me. I don’t believe she slept more than two, three hours; she took twice the dose of Seconal and still it couldn’t knock her out. She’s worried and, pardon my crust for horning in where I have no business, Harry, so am I.”

“Worried about what?”