He enters the house to find Jim and Lucy arguing over something, as usual. “But Mom, the World Bank only lends them money if they grow cash crops that the bank approves of, and so then they don’t do subsistence farming and they can’t feed themselves, and then the cash crops market disappears, and so they have to buy their food from the World Bank, or beg for it, and they end up owned by the bank!” “Well, I don’t know,” Lucy says, “don’t you think they’re just trying to help? It’s a generous thing to give.” “But Mom, don’t you see the principle of the thing?” “Well, I don’t know. The bank lends that money with hardly any interest at all—it really is almost like giving, don’t you think?” “Of course not!”

Dennis goes back to the bedroom to change clothes. He doesn’t even want to have the day’s debate clarified. Jim and Lucy argue like that constantly, Lucy from the Christian viewpoint and Jim from the pseudo-socialist, both mixing large matters of philosophy with questions of daily life, and making a mash of everything. Lord. It’s just theoretical for the two of them, like debaters going at it to keep in practice; just one more part of their constant talk. But Dennis hates arguments, to him they’re no more than verbal fights that can make you furious and upset you for days after. He gets his fill of that kind of thing at work.

They’re still at it when Dennis comes back out to read the daily news on the video wall. WAR IN BURMA SPILLS INTO BANGLADESH. “Stop that,” he says to them.

They eye each other, Jim amused, Lucy frustrated. “Dennis,” she complains, “we’re just talking.”

“Talk, then. No bickering.”

“But we weren’t!” Still, Lucy gives up on it and goes to prepare dinner, telling Jim about members of her church, with Jim asking highly informed questions about people he hasn’t seen in ten years. Dennis scans the news and turns the wall off; tomorrow the headlines’ll say the same thing, artfully altered to appear original. WAR SPILLS INTO (pick country)—

They sit down to dinner, Lucy says grace, they eat. Afterward Jim says, “Dad, um, sorry to mention it, but the old car is tending to shift lanes to the right whether I want it to or not. I’ve done what I could to check the program, but … I didn’t find anything.”

“The problem won’t be in the program.”

“Oh. Ah. Well, um … could you take a look at it?”