Nineteen years ago, when Maud discovered that Doz and Siss wanted to have five children, she warned them that just one would give them a plenty to worry about the rest of their lives. Doz replied that they were looking forward to that and Siss, that Maud would be worrying about them worrying about their children. The three older children had been distracting them from the younger two, who gave them no apparent cause for worry. Healthy, happy and bright, Jimmy had enough musical and Christy enough artistic talent to distinguish them from children their age. Sensitive to music from Bach to Debussy, he played chords larger than his hands could reach and arpeggios that required complicated and rapid fingering. Consisting mostly of parents and friends, but also a few accomplished musicians, the audiences who attended the annual recitals organized by his teacher, Sharon Koznecky, applauded him more than politely. Far from disturbing his concentration, their attention inspired a more fervent execution than when he played only for her or his family. Although no one dared to say so, Jimmy Chinski just might become a concert pianist. Christy awakened similar dreams by the originality of her perspective, her skill in drawing and her sensitivity to color. Mark had selected her painting of Bertrand jumping over Fulbert for an exhibition of children's art at the Museum, where it attracted many admirers including the art critic of the Vigilant. It displayed a sequence of imbricated images forming a blurred arc, which represented Bertrand approaching on the run, springing upwards, flying over Fulbert, landing on the other side and continuing to run. Christy had captured the action of his legs, the flapping of his ears and the intensity of his eyes. His red tongue constrasted with the white splotches on his russet coat, or were they russet splotches on his white coat? Looking at the work, first children and then adults swung their heads from right to left, the direction of the leap, seeking to actualize the virtuality of the painting. Although Christy had entitled it "Bertrand's Leap," the elderly Fulbert was an essential part of the composition, since he formed a sedate contrast with his offspring's youthful energy. He stood there calmly viewing his viewers with his red tongue out. The painting represented an incident at Five Sides where Bertrand, dashing back and forth as usual, found Fulbert in his way and took the shortest path to the other side. The white and russet of their coats, and even the green of the grass sparkled with a brillance that Christy had achieved by painting every hair and every blade of grass 

____________________________________________________________

with a separate stroke of her smallest brush. The patience, concentration and determination of a ten-year old girl astonished everyone.

Yet all was never well, as Doz and Siss were old enough to realize. Though only twelve years old, Jimmy was dedicating his life to the piano, taking little interest in anything else despite his parents' efforts. He had few friends at an age when children needed them, indeed he had little sympathy with his contemporaries whom he found preoccupied with trivia. The contempt was mutual between him and other boys who worshipped sports, and girls who disapproved of him because he didn't resemble the boys. Even his fellow music students kept their distance, confusing envy with a feeling of superiority founded on their interest in other things. His affection for Christy and the rest of his family seemed to satisfy him, but his parents wondered how long that would last and whether it would handicap him. They also worried about his ambition, since worrying about children was no longer a joke. How many young musicians dreamed of a virtuoso career without realizing this ambition? Didn't the vast majority end up teaching? Sharon arranged for him to turn the pages for pianists at concerts, "a wonderful opportunity" that sometimes resulted in a brief but exhilarating conversation with the professional. Although Doz and Siss approved, they noticed how humble their little black boy looked providing this service to white adults, and especially when he retreated furtively as they bowed to applause. Would white children ever turn pages for him?

Although Christy had a plenty of friends, her wit made enemies of contemporaries with pretentions, who particularly resented it when it made adults laugh. If you exposed people's vanity, Siss explained, you offended them and, if you made a habit of it, you only antagonized them without diminishing their pride. Leave their illusions alone unless you have a legitimate reason to expose them. Yet Christy took pride in exposing vanity, the vanity of all vanities. A black girl in her class named Parry Closets bragged of her painting, which showed a small white family in a big new SUV followed by a large black one in a rusty old sedan. Both had oversized windows so you could see the people inside. Between his teeth, the grinning driver of the SUV clenched a cigar which trailed black smoke, while a cigarette butt dangled from the lips of the driver in the sedan. Though dressed for church, the family in front wore new 

____________________________________________________________

clothes and the one in back, old clothes, as you could tell by the contrast between bright and faded colors. The artist, who had entitled this painting "Sunday Morning," kept telling her classmates that art should show things as they were. The first two times Christy heard it, she followed her mother's advice, but, the third time, she decided that she had a legitimate reason: "When you go to church next Sunday, see how many black families you can find in big cars and how many white familes you can find in little cars."

Parry's eyes swelled with fury: "You think you are sooo smart!"

With hands on hips: "Only a whitey would think a dog is five dogs every time he jumps!"

ZU allowed fraternities and sororities to pledge only after Christmas vacations. Three fraternities were rushing David and four sororities were rushing Suzy. The brothers liked his congeniality and urbanity, while the sisters loved her conviviality. Although none of either mentioned race, family or wealth, Suzy warned David that they were essential considerations for all seven houses. The fraternities treated her and the sororities treated him cordially, but subtle hints revealed that neither really liked his or her companion. These hints worried David and amused Suzy. If he pledged, he told her, he would prefer Mu Nu Psi. He liked and admired Stanford, her friend as well as his. With him and his brothers, he had much in common. Yet rivalry with similar white fraternities, such as the two that were rushing him, and even with cultivated white students in general worried him. He knew the Mu Nu Psi brothers considered him a black with white skin. Although he didn't think he would mind being the only white in a black fraternity, he could never accept segregation from other whites. Devoted to a family whose skin varied from beige to brown, he wanted to live in an integrated society. While the two white fraternities emphasized intellectual, cultural and social values too, he found the level inferior to that of Mu Nu Psi and they had no brothers like Stanford. One 

____________________________________________________________

attracted young men from cities, Mapleton in particular but also Mammoth, and David had known some of them in high school. The membership included a few blacks who rushed him a little too eagerly. Young men from towns like Nevers predominated in the other white fraternity, which had no black members. Their friendly rusticity charmed him, yet without hiding a clever and persistent proselytism intended to inveigle him. When he complained to Suzy, she told him that the dean of students was exerting pressure on all-white fraternities and sororities to diversify their membership. That was one of the reasons why four sororities were rushing her.

David: "All three drink and smoke too much, but Mu Nu Psi does it with refinement and elegance at least."

"Yes, and I would have to put up with it for three and half more years."

"You would?"

"I'm sorry Suzy... I don't know what you see in a wimp like me."

"... I don't guess I want to join any of those fraternites."

"I hope you aren't doing that for me."

"Why would they do that?"

"I thought you liked your parents."

Laugh: "Yes, you have told me that a few times."

"Hunh?"

"I have never been in love before."

____________________________________________________________

"Neither have I."

Although Suzy and David's decision disappointed a lot of sisters and brothers, friends like Stanford and Sadie, who had joined a sorority, treated them as cordially as before. They already knew other students who preferred independence to affiliation and they found them entirely congenial. Independents threw parties that Suzy liked more and David disliked less because, though just as wild, they were more spontaneous. You never knew who would throw one, who would show up, what would happen or even where it would go since a party depended less on a place than an unpredictable assembly. The hosts invited their friends without trying to exclude others, the more the merrier. You not only met friends, but also strangers, some of whom you liked and some you didn't. At one party, a Saudi was telling such wonderful stories that they cut the music off, which was unprecedented. The stories fascinated them all the more because they lacked the usual occidental ingredients, such as sex and vice. They always happened in a desert. In one, a prince was driving his G Class with tinted windows, and his women and children in back. All they had seen for hours were a rabbit scampering away and a hawk circling overhead. Then the head of a Bedouin popped up over a rise in the terrain and soon his camel and a few others behind him came into view. Leaning out of his window, the prince asked the Bedouin: "How fast are they?"

"As fast as Allah allows."

The Bedouin pointed at a rock silhouetted against the sky about a mile away: "Any one of them can beat your G Class to that rock."

"How about the price?"

"I will pay the price that Allah, in his wisdom, moves you to ask. But you aren't going to win."

The Bedouin smiled: "With Allah, everything is possible. How are we going to start?"

"OK."

"Two are faster... My camels for your Mercedes?"

"What good is a G Class without women and children in back?"

"No, they give them bad habits."

They shook hands and each went his own way.

This was the only time David and Suzy heard an Arab storyteller at an independent party, but they heard other ethnic storytellers, a Mexican for instance. Most of the stories told had no ethnic content and exaggerated the experience of a fellow student eager to amuse his listeners, either at the expense of others or, more rarely, his own. Although David had a plenty of experience that he might have exploited, he didn't want to tell any stories, even when Suzy urged him to, as she often did. She could 

____________________________________________________________

tell stories that made everyone laugh, but she preferred to let others do it since she was usually the listener they wanted most to entertain. She yielded only to overwhelming demand, which she never disappointed, maximizing her deliberately meager material by a naughty observation that implied more than it stated. Such as a friend whose boy friend took her for a ride on his motorcycle. Since she had never ridden on a motorcycle before, the noise, the vibration, the wind and the speed with which the parked cars and trees on either side of them approached and passed scared her. She panicked when they leaned to one side or the other weaving their way through the cars in front of them. The more she panicked, the tighter she clutched her boy friend and the tighter she clutched him, the wilder he drove. He was following a truck and trying to find an opportunity to pass it when the brake lights on the truck went on and, as he braked, the inertia threw her even harder against him, loosening her grip. Slipping down in front of him, her hands found "his gear shift in the up position." Though shocked, David laughed along with the others.

Would B, B and B have recognized the noise as music? It indicated the life of a party and beaconed its existence for a mile in every direction. Although some parties were born, lived and died in one place, most moved a few times and some almost continuously. One that started at one end of the Lawn and ended at the other wasn't unusual. The death of a party sometimes happened suddenly with the departure of many couples, but more often gradually as the number declined to a few. They usually died early in the morning before dawn. As couples drifted away, some tried to find a secluded spot, which took a lot of imagination, while others went home together or separately. During the first semester, David and Suzy had each gone to his own dormitory; beginning with the second one, however, they took turns going to his or hers. His mother reached him one evening at the telephone in his room. She asked him whether the new shirt she had sent him was long enough. He knew that she didn't like the current fashion of leaving shirttails out. After a momentary hesitation, he laughed and said he knew it was long enough because Suzy kept sneaking up behind him and jerking it out.

"What's so funny about that?" The whispery voice had hoarsened slightly.

"Come on, Mom, I bet you jerked Dad's shirttail out."

"I never jerked your father's shirttail out... [Softly:] I only pulled it gently.. once."

"Worse?... Why?"

"You kid a little roughly. Why do you think pulling a shirttail gently is worse than jerking it out?"

"You don't even know what intimate is like."

"... Well, at least you aren't jerking her shirttail out."

Siss hung up. Doz found her in tears.

The zeal that had enabled Reg to make the football team also enabled him to make the basketball team. He could sink a high percentage of shots near the basket, but he was only six feet tall and couldn't jump high enough to touch the rim. Although he couldn't sink three-pointers consistantly, he could pass and dribble well enough to play guard in practice. As in football, however, he could perform miracles, such as running down a loose ball before it went out of bounds, snatching the ball from a player who had just rebounded it and intercepting a long pass on a fast break. Yet his attempts also resulted in fowls, turnovers and scores by players left unguarded. Taking the opposite tack of the football coach, the basketball coach let him play a few minutes when the team was twenty points behind. In one such game, he ran behind a guard dribbling away from him, stole the ball, dribbled down to the other end and scored on a layup. If this attempt had failed, however, the guard would have had an open lane. Yet this steal unnerved the other team and the starter for whom Reg had substituted returned to lead a rally that won the game. He didn't like being a secret weapon saved for use only when victory seemed otherwise impossible. He wanted to be the starter who actually won the game. His frustration resulted in bad humor, which troubled his family. At dinner one evening, Christy asked him: "Reg, why are you so grumpy?" The others were giving all their attention to their food. 

____________________________________________________________

"Me?" protested Reg.

"I'm not a girl."

Sabby: "That's not what Christy meant."

"... "

Mom: "Exceptional ability is exceptional, Reg. You can't get it by trying hard."

"Who says I don't have it?"

"I'm only fourteen."

He stood up, knocking his chair over, ran out of the room and, a few seconds later, slammed the door to his room.

Glancing at Dad, Mom told Jimmy: "Take his milk and go with her."

After a few minutes of silence, Sabby protested: "He's just wasting himself!"

The team was shooting baskets to warm up for practice. Their shouting and the pounding of the balls on the floor echoed throughout the gym. Watching from half court, Coach noticed that they were trying crazy shots and stunts with the ball. Glances by them behind him turned him around and he saw a dark girl with black hair sitting halfway up in the bleachers. She wasn't pretty, but she looked "sexy," as he had heard them mumbling, and a little too old for middle school. So that was why they were making fools of themselves! He blew his whistle and they gathered around him. "What's wrong with you guys? When we have a game, there are all kinds of people in the stands and you play basketball. This girl comes in here and you bounce around like loose balls." To restore discipline, he started a standard drill in which three of them participated, while the others waited their turn in line. The first one passed across the 

____________________________________________________________

court to the second one and ran behind him as that one passed to the third in a continuous weave down the court towards the basket. It usually took four passes to reach the basket for a layup, but Coach noticed that the girl's presence inspired a fifth pass. "Hey! What's that extra pass for? You want to turn the ball over? You show off like that and you sit on the bench!" Hearing a commotion behind him, he turned around and saw Chinski threatening his center, six inches taller and thirty-five pounds heavier. "Now what?"

After an embarrassed silence, the big man confessed, pointing over his shoulder with his thumb: "I didn't know she was his sister."

He looked down: "I'm sorry."

"What?" yelled Sabby, who had learned the rule about charging from Reg.

"He had both feet on the floor!"

____________________________________________________________

"He did?" Coach was half surprized and half amused. The players were staring. Coach turned to the guard: "You just gave up a point." And he continued the scrimmage.

Sabby was sitting on the front steps of the gym waiting for Reg. Preceding him, a few players noticed her. Instead of making a show of ignoring them, she gave them so scornful a stare that they dropped their gaze and hurried away. When Reg appeared, the stare softened without losing its intensity. "I'm going to give you a ride."

"Thanks!"

"Nobody ever talked to Coach like that before."

"No."

"Too bad?"

"I am doing my homework."

"... I get it done."

"Before I finish high school, I'm going to start."

"How do you know?"

"Nobody is going to work as hard as me."

He clenched his jaws.

"Let me out!"

Instead of opening the door, however, he stared through the windshield.

"Me?"

"You and all those other slaves, all over the country, millions of boys who want to star in sports. Every one of you is trying to work harder than all the others to entertain people and earn your coach a salary. You are right: it isn't fair."

"It's a part of my education."

He gave her a look, but the anger was gone.

After brooding a minute: "Thanks for the ride!" He got out and shut the door gently. Showing up in time for supper, he looked a little tired and didn't want to talk about it.

The good-humored extrovert was brooding and keeping to himself. Since he had lots of friends, girls as well as boys and whites as well as blacks, some wondered why and some even worried. On the afternoon after an evening game, Coach let them go early so the first team could rest. In the shower, one of the players on the second team was telling the other about his father's antique Mustang which he kept like new. Vick had found the keys in a secret compartment of the rolltop desk his father had inherited from his grandfather. Chuckling over the secrecy of the compartment, they noticed that Reg wasn't listening. Vick: "Hey Reg! How about a ride in a Mustang?"

"You don't have a driver's licence."

"Who needs a driver's licence," scoffed Breck.

"Hey Reg! You got two feet?"

Grinning: "I'm going to kick you in the ass and let you decide."

"Will I get a turn?"

____________________________________________________________

Vic's father kept her in the garage, leaving the other two cars outside, but they were gone since he and Mrs. Duhenny drove them to work. Red with just enough orange to let you know, she gleamed in the sun as soon as Vick raised the door. Painted, waxed and polished with tender loving care, she appealed all the more to youth because the old man -- who may have been forty -- wouldn't let anyone touch her. Vic had enraged him a few years ago by leaving a finger print on the fender. Every Saturday morning, the proud owner gave her a thorough check from tire pressure to oil level, and tuned the motor, which never needed it. Then he took her out on the safest and smoothest roads for an hour or two. You may think that antique car owners delight in such excursions, but Vick's old man drove in fear of a threatening noise up front or impudent droppings from overhead. He let his son come along only when he was in favor (not very often). Yet he had attuned Vick's ears to the sighing of air, the tapping of valves and the rumbling of eight cylinders modulated by stainless steel exhaust pipes. The more he fondled his mistress, the more his son coveted her; the greater his vigilance, the greater his son's determination to circumvent it. Vick had not only learned to drive by sneaking the Mustang out, but also to gallop and kick her heels on loose gravel. All Reg knew about driving came from watching others do it.

Team members programmed to lose by their coach accumulated a lot of frustration. Showing his friends what he could do with a Mustang soothed Vick's wounds, but it also incited their envy. First, he whipped it through his favorite residential labyrinth, careening around curves and corners, throwing his passengers this way and that, laughing at them when he took them by surprise. Then he opened her up on a straight section of a country road, hit 100 and, grinning, pointed it out to them. He took his eyes off of the road just long enough to wander close to the edge, but he steered away from it just in time and burst out laughing: "She's trying to kill us!" On the front seat, Breck laughed just as loudly and a little less mirthfully, while Reg, on the back seat, managed no more than a tight grin. "Hey Reg!" shouted Vick, who had seen him in the rearview mirror, "don't worry! You will go to heaven."

"Everybody says it's a nice place," agreed Breck glancing back at Reg with a big smile.

____________________________________________________________

After a few miles, Vick turned off on a gravel covered parking area, where he accelerated backwards and forwards, spinning the car this way and that. After a few tries, he succeeded in spinning her 180° and grinned at his passengers. Now Breck wanted a turn.

If Reg hadn't already begun to worry about the turn he would have to demand, the argument between Vick and Breck would have amused him. Vick wanted to appear generous and let Breck convince himself that he couldn't drive as well as he could. Yet Vick was afraid that Breck might injure or kill his old man's mistress. Breck wanted to show that he could drive as well as Vick and maybe even better. Yet he was afraid he might make a fool of himself or wreck a car he wasn't even supposed to be riding in. Finally Vick changed places with Breck, who lurched out onto the macadam kicking up the gravel behind him and tore off down the road. Watching the speedometer, his two passengers saw that he was trying to go over 95, but didn't have the nerve. Humiliated, he aimed at a rabbit crossing from right to left, just missing him as he hopped off the road. To stay on the road, he jerked the wheel to the right making the car swerve to the left, so he jerked it to the left making her swerve to the right and she fishtailed down the road as he oversteered her with each swerve. Finally screeching to a halt, he burst out laughing, but his laugh rang with fear.

"Hey, Asshole! You just scraped a half inch of rubber off of my old man's tires." Both angry and scared, Vick tried to make it sound as if he were angry and not scared.

"He didn't even get the rabbit!" cackled Reg, whose voice quavered with relief.

Desperate to get Breck out of the driver's seat, Vick told him it was time to let Reg have a turn. Wouldn't a better basketball player drive better? Vick had forgotten the chances Reg took, which sometimes succeeded and sometimes didn't. Although Breck protested that he had just begun to drive, Vick insisted that he had to get the car back in time to wash it and let the motor cool. His old man was always checking up on it and, if he saw anything... anything... Despite the profanity and obscenity they were hurling at each other, Breck didn't really want to drive any more and Vick

____________________________________________________________

just wanted to take the car home, while honor condemned Reg to take his turn. He knew he had to push the pedal on the left side down, pull the lever on the steering column back and push it up, then push down on the long pedal on the right while releasing the pedal on the left. He had even noticed that you had to coordinate the clutch with the accelerator, but who ever got it right the first time? Despite his efforts, he only achieved the usual forward jerks, which incited peels of derision by his passengers, repeated even more loudly when he shifted into second and third. The humiliation concentrated his attention on shutting them up. Vick had hit 100, he was going to hit 110 and he did, although it shook the car ominously. Pointing at this figure, the shaky little needle silenced his passengers laughter, while the motor roared. Approaching the same graveled area, Reg slammed on the brakes nearly throwing the car into the same kind of fishtailing, but Reg had learned from Breck's mistake, so he could dampen the swerves by turning the wheel in sync with them. Encouraged by his passengers' silence, he turned off onto the gravel and jerked the wheel hard, so that the car spun even further than 180°. When she came to a stop, she rocked over on two wheels, fell back on all four and bounced on her springs. Reg dreaded having to shift gears again.

"OK Shumacher!" shouted Vick, "I got to take this buggy home."

He started to open his door, but Reg stomped on the clutch, jerked the shift into first, pushed down with his right foot while raising his left and lept back on the road, banging all three heads on the ceiling. Vick had ignored his seatbelt and the others had followed his example. Reg headed for a one-lane underpass beneath a railroad into which the road curved at right angles on either side. Although signs warned that the tunnel wasn't wide enough for two cars to pass, he remembered his father saying that they probably could with a few inches to spare. Dad had said it to reassure Mom. Approaching from the side with the priority, Reg swerved around the curve and roared into the tunnel as his passengers shouted at him. So he had scared them! Turning around in a filling station on the other side, he sped back around the curve and into the tunnel again, where he saw a car approaching from the other side. All he could remember from then on was slamming on the brakes and trying to steer as far to the right as possible. She had stuck in the tunnel with the right

____________________________________________________________

front wedged against the right wall and the left rear, against the left. The driver of the other car had been going slow enough to stop before entering the tunnel. The Mustang had not caught on fire and, to everyone's amazement, neither the driver nor the passengers were in danger of losing their life. Thrown against the back of the right front seat, Breck had suffered little more than loss of wind and a bruised chest. Vick, whose head had hit the windshield, was bleeding enough to scare others more than himself. The dashboard had smashed Reg's right knee, which took over an hour of surgery to repair.

"Will I be able to play basketball?" he asked the surgeon.

"I won't be able to play football either?"

Witt psychology may have helped a little, but the family found Reg in a foul humor. The women stood in line, from the oldest to the youngest, to kiss him. Sitting on the bed to see better, Christy insisted on inspecting both of his knees.

"If I had known that you wanted to drive," said Dad, "I could have found a way for you to do it. A friend in the Kindergarden has a farm and he lets his son drive a car around the property.

"We could have bought you one of those virtual reality things," said Mom. "You could have driven to your heart's content, even in that Indianapolis thing. Why didn't you tell us?"

"I thought you were only interested in basketball," said Sabby.

"When I gave you a ride last week, all you had to say was 'show me how.' There's an abandoned mall out on Gotchtalopee Boulevard with a huge parking lot. I have seen people practicing there."

____________________________________________________________

We compete with each other so much that each of us wanted to do something the others couldn't do. I did that a few times, but... I guess my luck ran out."

Dad: "There's nothing wrong with trying to do something other people can't do as long as it's worthwhile and doesn't endanger lives. Maybe you should try golf." The more they consoled him, the worse he felt.

David and Suzy visited him the next day. It took an effort to thank them for driving down from Concordia just to see him and another one to show his appreciation for their concern. The obligation to tell his story all over again, as if it didn't embarrass and bore him, tried his patience. A visit by David alone, he thought, wouldn't have bothered him as much. The debt he owed Suzy for teaching him how to dance weighed on his conscience. She was treating him as if he were already her brother-in-law or something. Hell! David hadn't even proposed yet, as far as Reg knew, and he wasn't sure he wanted him to. Suzy irritated him the way she took no interest in why he had done something dumb, as if to avoid hurting his feelings. Who was she to avoid hurting his feelings? Did she really have to fluff his pillow up? The nurses did that for you. She brought him a pepsi and he had to drink it to be polite although he preferred coca-colas. She wanted to know what he would like to read so she could run downstairs and get it for him. Like Sports Illustrated? There she went again, snapshotting him! Maybe he had had enough of being a jock, maybe he didn't want to read anything. Well, OK, and he opened the drawer in the table beside his bed to get some money.

"No, this is on me!" She left in a hurry.

"She likes you," said David.

When Suzy returned with Sports Illustrated, she found the brothers engrossed in a discussion of the planet Mars, which each had seen from his bedroom window that night.

"Thanks, Suzy! I really appreciate it."

David: "It will take a year to get there, a year to get back."

Suzy: "Maybe they should limit the crew to couples."

"What if one of those couples had a kid?"

____________________________________________________________

"Why not limit it to women?"

"Don't men need extra things too?"

"They have to shave, for instance."

David was thinking that women have to shave too.

"Doesn't every ounce and every cubic inch require pounds and cubic feet of fuel?"

"They do? Like what?"

Like sanitary napkins, David was thinking.

Suzy and David laughed.

Suzy: "Don't you need a mirror to shave?

David: "Maybe your knee would keep you from going."

"All you need is a girl friend to take with you."

The couple laughed again.

This time, they laughed to tears.

After looking at the photos in Sports Illustrated, he had begun to read an article about Kobe Bryant when Vick and Breck entered. To his surprise, they were glad to see him. Soon all three of them were laughing so hard that people were staring as they went by in the hall. Vick's description of 

____________________________________________________________

his father's  tantrum had started them off. The old man had really blown his top, bellowed like a buffalo and the veins in his temples had puffed up. Vick had wondered whether they would burst and spurt blood. He had chased him around the house twice and, when Vick let him catch him, he grabbed him by the arm and made terrible threats, none of which he carried out. No less enthusiastic, Breck described the astonishment of the police, the rescue squad, the press and the people in the other car: how could anybody have survived a crash like that? The wreck, which appeared in the Vigilant and on Channel Eight, made everybody wonder. Prying it loose from the walls of the tunnel and dragging it out had taken half an hour. The right front and left rear had collapsed into those respective corners of the passenger compartment, which had, luckily, withstood the compression enough to protect them. The tires had left four black streaks on the road. "They must be bare to the thread," chortled Vick. Neither the Duhennys' nor the Chinskis' insurance was going to pay a dime, but Reg's old man had talked to Vick's and they had agreed that there was no use in throwing money away on lawyers and stuff. Instead, they had decided to split the cost of a new antique car and they were looking at Corvettes. They were gee-whizzing over catalogues like old buddies and Vick's old man had never liked blacks before. Enthusiastically Breck announced that all three of them were charged with reckless driving and driving without a permit.

"How did they know you were being reckless, how did they know you were driving?"

"I had already shook that neighborhood up before. They recognized the Mustang. How could they miss it?"

"How about you?" asked Reg looking at Breck.

"The idiot told them!" scoffed Vick with an overtone of appreciation. "He wasn't going to let us take the rap alone."

"What kind of shit is that?"

"You just wanted to show off."

"We will have to wait even longer to get driving licences."

"Reg, you don't need a driving licence!"

The buildup took place during the winter when business was slow. The war began in spring with an offensive by Treble and N & I. Both the name and the acronym appeared in gold letters on a dark-blue background everywhere Mapletonians looked or looked away from, in television ads of course, but also in junk mail, on billboards, walls, buses and taxis. Radio stations broadcast suave messages in General American promising: "N & I Treble will take your furniture swiftly and safely anywhere you want to go, any time you want to leave. Moving and storing with us isn't just convenient; it's also fun." A clip that appeared repeatedly on all local channels featured a handsome, muscular young man and a pretty, fully-rounded young woman, both in well-tailored and well-ironed dark-blue uniforms with "N & I Treble" in big gold letters on the back and their names, "Jack" and "Jill", in small letters in front on the left side. Their toothpaste smiles suggested that he lifted more dumbells than rocking chairs like the one in his hands and she wrapped more gifts than glass and chinaware like those in front of her. Asking him to place the rocking chair on the screen porch, a cute old lady, who peered over her bifocals, pinched his biceps. Then a cute little girl brought the young woman her doll glass and chinaware. At the end of the ad, "N & I Treble" appeared in gold on a dark-blue field, while a suave voice intoned: "Moving and storing with us isn't just convenient; it's also fun." Without even remembering where they had heard it, salespeople adopted the slogan: "It isn't just convenient; it's also fun." Whereupon they opened their eyes wide and grinned like the young man or woman in the ad. Others who did remember imitated them satirically. Nelly, in particular, made everyone laugh.

The joke amused Fossez customers and the campaign didn't impede their usual increase in business at that time of year, but Doz guessed that it had raised Treble's volume by a record amount. Until that spring, both companies had relied on modest advertising in the phone directory, on the walls of their buildings and the sides of their vehicles. Doz happened to be discussing the need for more with Fuss when he got a call from Zel Jeter, who had been trying to sell Fossez on more and better advertising for years. She told him that N & I had never aired the TV clip shown in Mapleton before and the company had always made a point of its ethnic diversity. At least one black and one white employee had appeared in all 

____________________________________________________________

of its previous ads, while the customers often included an Asian. "Did you notice that Mr. and Miss America, Grandma and L'il Annie were all lilly white?"

"... No, I didn't."

"I heard he fired most of his blacks. We hired three of them. Both our employees and our customers have always been diverse. We must be the best integrated company in Mapleton. Maybe you could shoot some clips for us to show that."

"Zel?"

"I wouldn't be satisfied with clips like the other N & I ones you mentioned. A slick ad showing blacks and whites being nice to each other wouldn't go far enough, especially if it appeared over and over again like Horace's. I would like to see real employees doing their job on-site and talking to real customers. Instead of refining one artificial scene, you would have to catch several authentic and interesting ones as they occur. No special clothes for the occasion, but the ones they wear every day. No clever talk and action programmed in advance, but natural circumstances. People will see how courteous and skillful we are."

"They probably would, but people like appearing on television and I would give the customers a discount."

"Yes, they certainly do. Add that where you see fit. Let me have some proposals and some estimates. How soon can you do that?"

Doz arranged for Zel to make her proposals at a meeting of the board called for the occasion. They chose the least expensive one, which would allow for testing and refining over a trial period of three weeks. Zel 

____________________________________________________________

proposed to hire Langley Hawthorn, a young cameraman who had a temporary job with Channel Eight. If he shot ten different scenes at three different locations, they should be able to choose three of them to air on that channel. Since both Lang and Channel Eight had an interest in seeing what he could do, both agreed to discounts for the three-week trial. Mark suggested that Lang shoot at least one clip at the Mapleton Museum, where two Fossez employees were moving paintings into and out of storage. Such a clip would remind the public that the company, unlike Treble, could move and store unusually valuable, bulky and fragile goods safely. The board approved and Zel left to get started, while Doz kept them to discuss another project to combat Treble. He needed their approval for a project to build a modern warehouse and, when it was finished, convert the old one into a self-storage facility where customers who wanted to do their own storage could rent space. The store-it-yourself business had long since begun to supplement the move-it-yourself business, but Doz thought that advice and observation by an experienced and reputable moving and storage company would attract a substantial number of do-it-yourselfers. Especially young people who hadn't earned enough money or accumulated enough furniture to hire professionals. If satisfied, many of them would choose Fossez later on when they needed to hire professionals. Meg said she divided her life into the do-it-yourself half and the let-others-do-it half, but, shifting her voice to the next lower octave: "the first half lasted a hell of a lot longer than the second one!"

Fuss: "That was because you were a hell of an actress!"

Doz: "If you had had any money, you would have run off with a bad actor!"

Mark: "We wouldn't have the Kindergarden."

Nelly: "Hey! You guys leave Meg alone! She told Frank off, she gonna tell Horace off too."

Maud: "Maybe we should send her over there right away."

Siss: "Let the feathers fly!"

Freddy: "I'm supposed to crack the jokes around here."

A week later, they met with Zel and Lang, who had eleven clips to show them. They chose the following four:

____________________________________________________________

1. A black mover was going back to the truck to get another piece of furniture. A little white boy followed by a littler white girl approached:

"May I have my bicycle, please?"

"May I have my tricycle, please?"

"No, Sir."

"No, Sir."

2. A white mover was bringing a stove into the kitchen on his back and a black one, a refrigerator, while a black customer in her forties looked around hesitantly. "I'm sorry, maybe you better put them down. I thought I had decided where they should go. Now, I'm not so sure." They put the appliances down and looked around. 

The white one said: "You need a 220 volt outlet for the stove. There's one in front of the window. It looks like the stove was there before, but here's another outlet over here." He pointed at the wall opposite the window.

"You could put it over there," said the black one, "but, if you do, where are you going to put the refrigerator? It's too high for the window and, if you put it in that corner, you couldn't open the door all the way."

Each mover put his appliance in its place and plugged it in. "Take a little time and see how this suits you. If you change your mind, just let us know and we will move them."

3. Two movers on a truck and three on the ground were unloading a tall wardrobe painted blue with orange decorations. Three were white and two were black. In his fifties, the nervous white customer explained that "Colmar" on the right door and "1853" on the left referred to his 

____________________________________________________________

ancestors' marriage. Another take showed two men at either end easing the wardrobe through a bedroom door, while the customer stooped, stood on his toes, leaned this way and that to check the clearances. In a final take, one of the black movers, who was taping a paper to the back of the wardrobe, explained to the customer that he had written and skeched instructions on how to handle it in any future move. The expression on the customer's face would have convinced the most skeptical viewer of his satisfaction.

4. A closeup displayed some ancient Greek vases in all of their splendor. A white packer was wrapping them and putting them in a steel trunk. A series of short takes showed the trunk being loaded on a truck, the truck driving to the special storage facility, the trunk being unloaded and stored along with other such trunks. Then a title announced: "Two years and three months later." The trunk followed a reverse itinerary and a black packer unpacked the same vases. A split-screen closeup demonstrated that they were in the same condition as when the other packer had packed them. Someone off-camera paid her a compliment and she smiled: "We treat everybody's goods like that."

In these ads, "Fossez" caught your eye on the sides of trucks, the backs of movers, the letterhead of the paper taped to the wardrobe and a sticker used to seal the trunk. A final message urged: "Move anywhere in Mapleton with Fossez, anywhere in the US with Fossez and Cross-Country." As soon as these adds ran on television, they brought compliments for Lang, Zel, Doz and Fossez by telephone, fax, e-mail and ordinary mail. Customers took pleasure in recognizing movers who figured in the ads and the movers appreciated the attention. An upsurge in business enabled Doz to continue the policy, replacing one of the ads in circulation by a new one every ten days. Yet Horace's ad campaign was improving his business too. A whispering campaign was also reinforcing the all-white casting of his ads by describing Fossez as all-black. Blake Erskin, whom Doz encountered at a meeting of the Kindergarden, confirmed the existence of this campaign. He owned and managed Touchdown Sportsware with stores in Mapleton, Concordia and Mountain Ridge. He was planning to open another one in Mammoth, where he had had lunch with Janet recently. An MBA in finance, she

____________________________________________________________

had a job with Midwest Insurance, which paid her well, but exhibited her as a woman in a managerial position without allowing her much influence over policy. Her superiors, who relied on an aging wealthy clientele for income and clung to investments in traditionally low-risk bonds and real estate, laughed at her youthful alarm over the future of the company. Blake: "They are lucky she didn't beat them up."

Doz: "Sooner or later."

"May I speak to Janet Fitzgerald, please?"

"You recognized my voice! I recognized yours too."

The insurance industry and life in Mammoth had refined the woman who had played football with men. Janet dressed, spoke and behaved like a lady from a big city when she came for the customary visit in which a company and a candidate for an opening look each other over. She made an excellent impression on the board, whose questions she answered to everyone's satisfaction, except Siss's. The latter had heard about Janet without sharing Doz's enthusiasm and, at the meeting, she asked pointed 

____________________________________________________________

questions about the duties she would yield to her. Not that she minded giving them up since she already had too many herself, but she detected a personality clash even before Janet and the other members of the board. Taking Doz aside after the meeting, Maud urged him to distinguish as clearly as possible between the jurisdictions of the two women.

"Why does Siss dislike Janet?"

"... Should I talk to her?"

"Yes. Why?"

"Oh!"

An article about Janet's return to her home town and her new job with Fossez appeared in the Vigilant with a photo of her. Peggy Rogunda, whose interviews on Channel Eight had aged as gracefully as she had, not only questioned her about her move, but also the football she had played with Doz Chinski, Blake Erskine and Taylo Malvern. As time began to run out, she asked her for her fondest memory of Mapleton and, without hesitation, she replied:

"It happened several times: Doz threw me the ball and... I caught it!"

"What am I going to do about losing customers to Fossez?"

"Nothing?"

"Anything you do about that interview will only make you look bad. Just keep on showing your lilly-slick ads. People will forget about Janet Fitzgerald and all this diversity crap. I got nothing against blacks, I used to wrestle with one, he was the bad guy and I was the good guy, we used to kid each other in the shower. I called him a God-damned nigger and he called me a whitey bastard. You should have heard us laughing! You got to seduce the white majority who have more confidence in a white mover than an integrated one, which means black to them. Your ads will slowly but surely win them back. The only lesson you still have to learn is the most important one: patience."

The proposed construction of a new N & I warehouse eclipsed the interview a few weeks later. As the press echoed the enthusiasm over this boost to business and employment, new orders declined to the usual upward curve in spring at Fossez. An article about the warehouse in the business section of the Vigilant and an interview with Horace on Channel Eight's "Dollars and Sense" eclipsed the news about Janet. No sooner had Horace begun to savor this success, however, than word of talks between Fossez and Cross-Continent spoiled it. Fossez wanted to build a new warehouse similar to others built by Cross-Continent at the same cost and yet paint their own name and colors on the walls instead of CC's. After a week of negotiations, the CC delegation requested and obtained a recess, ostensibly for consultation with top management, but, in reality, to pressure Fossez. Instead of offering concessions, however, Doz took an entirely different tack. Horace had bragged of striking a hard bargain with the architect and builder of his new warehouse; Doz met with them. A similar warehouse, he learned, could be built for Fossez at a lower cost than any discussed with CC. When the chief negotiator for CC proposed to resume their talks with Fossez, Doz replied that he had just signed a contract for the construction of a warehouse dissimilar to the CC model. That very evening, "Dollars and Sense" revealed that the architect and builder of the Treble warehouse would build a similar warehouse for Fossez. Unlike the former, the latter would have an observation deck and a rotating restaurant at the top, exterior passenger elevators and walls covered with a textile design. A neon panel on one side of the rotating glass dome would display "Fossez" in dark red letters.

____________________________________________________________

Horace threw a third tantrum more violent than the other two, while top management at N & I and CC tried to keep their anger secret. N & I had approved of Horace rejecting the observation deck and restaurant, the exterior passenger elevators and the textured walls because of the extra cost. Replying to complaints by Cross-Continent, Doz proposed to add the name of the national carrier in smaller letters in the lower right-hand corner of the rotating neon sign, a concession he had foreseen. The project delighted the city and the business community, since it would not only contribute to the economy like the Treble building, but also enhance the architecture of the city as well as recreation and tourism. The observation deck would provide Mapletonians with an extraordinary view of their city and the surrounding country with the meanders of the Gotchtalopee, which flowed in on one side and out on the other. Although older buildings rose as high and one even higher, none of them had an observation deck, to say nothing of a rotating restaurant. The eccentric location in Wheatfields would ensure an unobstructed view and invigorate this highly-skilled, hard-working and unglamorous section of Mapleton.

Doz was taking a substantial risk by borrowing several million more to pay for the extras, but he had the support of his board, except for Siss. Janet kept the risk to a minimum by negotiating good terms for the loan and she was finding ways to save money without hurting performance or offending customers or employees. Her management of insurance and taxes, on which Doz and Siss had collaborated, paid for her salary. Fossez prospered that summer, but so did Treble, although Horace took little satisfaction in it because he wanted to succeed at the expense of his rival. While Doz had more success with his advertising campaign than Horace did with his, the improved skill of the Treble workforce erroded Fossez's advantage in this respect. The prestige of the museum and theatre business and the profits Fossez earned from it didn't tempt Horace because he considered it one of the two niches to which he was trying to relegate Doz, the other being black customers. Yet Fossez's racial congeniality attracted many customers and especially those who disapproved of Treble's clandestine racism. Militant blacks who critisized Fossez for associating a superior race with an inferior one had no other company to move with. When the IBLD organized Treble, Fossez would 

____________________________________________________________

enjoy another advantage over the rival company as long as it remained unorganized. Thus Doz expected the union to start a campaign, with Horace's support, to organize his employees. Indeed, Horace's enemies at N & I and disgruntled Treble employees revealed that he had made a deal with Dennis Froosie, the president of the IBLD, to help the union organize Fossez in the fall, provided that Dennis wait until the end of the summer to organize Treble. Doz had continued Fuss's policy of paying higher wages and providing better fringe benefits for his employees than those obtained by the IBLD throughout the industry, hence the dedication and enthusiasm of his employees. Exploiting her connections with the insurance industry, Janet increased the coverage of their accident and health insurance with little additional cost to them or the company. She also improved and diversified the pension plans available to them to supplement Social Security at retirement. Her most remarkable innovation was a plan that enabled employees to dedicate a portion of their salary to purchase of Fossez stock at a discount. If continued long enough, it would accumulate enough equity to send a child to college or supplement retirement income. At a meeting, she explained that it would allow them to invest in the company they worked for and diversify their savings.

At the same meeting, Doz reminded them that he had begun to work for Fossez as an unskilled young employee the day after he immigrated to the US. An orphan, he had always considered the company a family and still did even now although he had a family of his own. Fossez seemed like a happy family to him since they all knew and respected each other, while working together to make a decent living and give their customers the best possible satisfaction. Although the company had grown, he wanted them to know that they were free to discuss any problem they might have with Lawrence, Carver, Peter Paul, Nelly, Janet, Siss or Doz himself. Fuss had said that they could even talk to him if they liked. Fossez had a reputation for good relations between management and employees: Doz wanted to keep it that way. "You have heard me say all this before, but I'm repeating it now because I expect a drive by the IBLD in the fall to organize you. Horace Treble will support the union, not because he cares about you, but because he wants to handicap your company. It wouldn't be the first independent company that N & I and 

____________________________________________________________

the IBLD have hurt. That's why I hope you will talk to us before you talk to them. But you are free to do as you please. In fact, that's the way I want it."

Doz always got applause when he spoke and Nelly, jeers and cackles, yet both enjoyed the same degree of popularity. Once laborers like them, they hadn't forgotten what labor was like and they occasionally pitched in and helped. Nelly treated them as roughly as she always had and they loved it.

"Hey! What's Momma doing up there?"

"The IBLD ain't no motherhood!"

"She's going to scare them to death!"

"I'm glad she's on our side!"

In other drives, Doz told them, IBLD organizers had sent employees a lot of mail, phoned them, accosted them, rang their doorbells, invited themselves inside and even insisted on talking to wife and family. They used clever arguments to show how their employer was mistreating 

____________________________________________________________

and deceiving them. Nor did they neglect the advantages, as they saw them, of belonging to the union. They had a right to make their case, but not to infringe on people's privacy. Even worse, they didn't hesitate to make subtle threats against the employee, his wife and his children, attributing the danger to their employer. Doz would appreciate hearing about all of this propaganda. Fossez employees should expect picket lines manned by Treble employees and led by IBLD agents near work sites and the Fossez depot in Wheatfields. Usually they shouted slogans, waved placards and accosted movers, ostensibly to reason with them but, in reality, to interfere with their work. Employees who wanted to listen should beware of attempts to extract a commitment from them and those who didn't should make their refusal clear from the start. Doz wanted to know about any threat or use of violence against them, because he intended to protect them and punish any harm done to them by all the means at his disposal. Chief Kemper had told him that he would enforce the law even if a lot of people were breaking it. Everyone knew that Doz, as chairman of the mayor's Committee for Relations between the Police and the Public (CRPP), had access to Stony Kemper. The press, he continued, had reported convictions of IBLD agents for everything from aggression to manslaughter. Union officers had served time in prison for manipulating elections, stealing pension funds and collaborating with organized crime. Perhaps the IBLD would learn an overdue lesson in Mapleton.

The IBLD seemed already to have learned that lesson, however. While using all the tactics Doz had foreseen, the organizers were as courteous and tactful as possible for them. The efforts of tough men to be gentle amused Fossez employees, who guessed that the union had urged restraint. Rumors revealed that Dennis Froosie had sent his chief organizer, Greg Distic, to run the drive. Greg had risen to this position by his success in organizing reluctant workers. Yet the courtesy and tact failed to impress Fossez employees. Few allowed an organizer in the house and none allowed one to meet his family. Most were polite but firm in answering telephone sollicitations and crossing picket lines, while some were contemptuous or sarcastic. "I'm not interested!" the organizers heard again and again in every tone from indifference to resentment. Trash collectors noticed a lot of unopened mail from the IBLD when 

____________________________________________________________

they made their rounds. Irritated with or outraged by the union, Fossez customers and friends were making remarks and asking questions: "Next time I want to move, I will call Fossez." "Why don't you mind your own business?" They mocked the slogans on the placards: "Fossez unfair to the IBLD? You got it backwards!" An adolescent imagined a different meaning for the acronym: "Idiots, Bullies, Loudmouths and Dummies!" Soon everyone was repeating this backtalk, including Vigilant and Channel Eight reporters. Sent to cover the IBLD drive, they discovered a far more interesting story in the spontaneous resistance to it. Small crowds of hecklers harrassed pickets and jeering children followed organizers ringing doorbells in their neighborhood. The bad publicity disconcerted Greg, but a decline in Treble's business, far worse than usual in the fall, scared Horace. Fossez's business had improved.