“Lucky? Reverend, lucky? Listen, this ‘truth’—what’s so good about it? The people on the hill are happy, now. They’re Negroes, and they can’t go to the movie in town, and they can’t go to the restaurants in town, and they can’t get jobs in town. They’re ignorant and dumb and poor—but, Reverend, listen, they’re happy. Isn’t that something? I only wish to God I could be that way. Look at my own brothers! You think it bothers them they’ve got to live in this filthy neighborhood? You think it bothers Albert?”

“Get it out, Joey.”

“Albert’s the happiest kid I know. He has a ball all day long.” Joey flipped the cigarette away. “Well,” he said, “isn’t that what it’s all about? I mean, so, all right, so we show Albert the ‘truth.’ We tell him he’s got all the rights the white people do. He’s just as good. ’Course, he doesn’t believe it, at first—because, don’t kid yourself, he’s prejudiced—the most prejudiced people I know live all around me. They know they’re coons and they know coons are inferior. That’s the way it is. So what? All right; so we get Albert all hipped with the truth, and then, finally, maybe he believes it. Maybe he gets to thinking he is as good as anyone else. Then he goes into town and tries to order a milk shake at the drugstore. What happens then, Reverend?”

The preacher was silent.

“Can’t you see?” Joey said, letting it all spill out now, all the things he’d felt and thought. “Albert’s going to get mad when they pull him down off of that stool and kick his behind. He’s going to get mad. I mean—oh, lookit, they’re happy. The truth isn’t going to do anything but make them miserable for the rest of their lives!”

Reverend Finley Mead removed a large handkerchief and blew his nose. He was quiet for a while, making a small sound in his throat that sounded like “Um-hmm, um-hmm.” A worried, nervous sound. “I don’t think you ever heard me say that the truth was easy,” he said, very slowly. “Maybe it’s the hardest thing in the world, I don’t know. But where do you suppose we’d be without it?”

Joey smiled, without amusement. “Well, where are we, Reverend?” he said.

“Who do you mean by ‘we’? You and me? I’m talking about the world.”

“This is the world!” Joey said, sweeping his hand toward the dirt road and the wooden shacks and the crumbling apartments.

“You don’t really believe that.”

“They do. Ask Mr. Yates over there. Ask Jimmy Budlong.”

“No. I’ll ask you. Is it?”

Joey was silent.

“I wonder, Joey—do you still believe in God?”

He looked up at the big man, startled by the question.