Gaudy book in hand, the boy looks toward his father for rescue. “I feel stupid.”

Rabbit says, “Read, Nelson. I want to hear it.”

He turns for help elsewhere. “Skeeter, you promised I wouldn’t have to.”

“I said we’d see how it went. Come on, your daddy likes it. He has an open mind.”

“You’re just poking fun of everybody.”

“Let him off,” Rabbit says. “I’m losing interest.”

Jill intervenes. “Do it, Nelson, it’ll be fun. We won’t turn on Laugh-In until you do.”

The boy plunges in, stumbling, frowning so hard his father wonders if he doesn’t need glasses. “No matter,” he reads, “though every party should be torn by dis-, dis—”

Jill looks over his shoulder. “Dissensions.”

“—every sest—”

“Sect.”

“—every sect dashed into fragments, the national compact dissolved—”

Jill says, “Good!”

“Let him ride,” Skeeter says, his eyes shut, nodding.

Nelson’s voice gains confidence. “—the land filled with the horrors of a civil and a servile war—still, slavery must be buried in the grave of infantry—”

“Infamy,” Jill corrects.

“—in-fa-my, beyond the possibility of a rez, a razor—”

“A resurrection.”

“If the State cannot survive the anti-slavery agitation, then let the State perish. If the Church must be cast down by the strugglings of Humanity, then let the Church fall, and its fragments be scattered to the four winds of heaven, never more to curse the earth. If the American Union cannot be maintained, except by immolating—what’s that?”

“Sacrificing,” Jill says.

Rabbit says, “I thought it meant burn.”

Nelson looks up, uncertain he should continue.

The rain continues at the windows, gently, gently nailing them in, tighter together.

Skeeter’s eyes are still closed. “Finish up. Do the last sentence, Babychuck.”

“If the Republic must be blotted out from the roll of nations, by proclaiming liberty to the captives, then let the Republic sink beneath the waves of oblivion, and a shout of joy, louder than the voice of many waters, fill the universe at its extinction. I don’t understand what any of this stuff means.”

Skeeter says, “It means, More Power to the People, Death to the Fascist Pigs.”

Rabbit says, “To me it means, Throw the baby out with the bath.” He remembers a tub of still water, a kind of dust on its dead surface. He relives the shock of reaching down through it to pull the plug. He loops back into the room where they are sitting now, within the rain.

Jill is explaining to Nelson, “He’s saying what Skeeter says. If the System, even if it works for most people, has to oppress some of the people, then the whole System should be destroyed.”

“Do I say that? No.” Skeeter leans forward from the mossy brown wings, reaching a trembling thin hand toward the young people, all parody shaken from his voice. “That’ll come anyway. That big boom. It’s not the poor blacks setting the bombs, it’s the offspring of the white rich. It’s not injustice pounding at the door, it’s impatience. Put enough rats in a ’cage the fat ones get more frantic than the skinny ones ’cause they feel more squeezed. No. We must look past that, past the violence, into the next stage. That it’s gonna blow up we can assume. That’s not interesting. What comes next is what’s interesting. There’s got to be a great calm.”