McKenna looked up at the ceiling tiles. “When I was a boy, I stayed with an uncle for a time. Can’t remember if he was on me mother’s side or me da’s, but he was gray Irish trash just the same. No music to him a’tall, no love, no light. But he had a dog, yeah? Mangy mutt, he was, and dumb as peat, but he had love, he had light. Sure he’d dance in place when he saw me coming up the hill, his tail awagging, dance for the sheer joy of knowing I’d pet him, I’d run with him, I’d rub his patchy belly.” Eddie drew on his cigar and exhaled slowly. “Became sick, he did. Worms. Started sneezing blood. Time comes, me uncle tells me to take him to the ocean. Cuffs me when I refuse. Cuffs me worse when I cry. So I carry the cur to the ocean. I carry him out to a point just above me chin and I let him go. I’m supposed to hold him down for a count of sixty, but there’s little point. He’s weak and feeble and sad and he sinks without a noise. I walk back into shore, and me uncle cuffs me again. ‘For what?’ I shout. He points. And there he is, that feeble brick-headed mutt, swimming back in. Swimming toward me. Eventually, he makes it to shore. He’s shivering, he’s heaving, he’s sopping wet. A marvel, this dog, a romantic, a hero. And he looks at me just in time for me uncle to bring the axe down on his spine and cut him in half.”

He sat back. He lifted his cigar from the ashtray. A barmaid removed half a dozen mugs from the next table over. She walked back to the bar, and the room was quiet.

“Fuck you tell a story like that for?” Danny said. “Fuck’s wrong with you?”

“It’s what’s wrong with you, boy. You’ve got ‘fair’ in your head now. Don’t deny it. You think it’s attainable. You do. I can see it.”

Danny leaned in, his beer sloshing down the side of his bucket as he lowered it from his mouth. “I’m supposed to fucking learn something from the dog story? What—that life is hard? That the game is rigged? You think this is news? You think I believe the unions or the Bolshies or the BSC stand a spit of a chance of getting their due?”

“Then why are you doing it? Your father, your brother, me—we’re worried, Dan. Worried sick. You blew your cover with Fraina because some part of you wanted to blow it.”

“No.”

“And yet you sit there and tell me you know that no reasonable or sensible government—local, state, or federal—will ever allow the Sovietizing of this country. Not ever. But you continue to get deeper and deeper into the BSC muck and further and further from those who hold you dear. Why? You’re me godson, Dan? Why?”

“Change hurts.”

“That’s your answer?”