“Not bigoted,” Harry said. “I know bigoted. I was playing in an NCAA regional when I was in college, and we had this black kid on the team. The country club—this was down in Kansas City—got all out of joint because they didn’t know there was a black man in the field. Didn’t allow black guys on the course unless they had a rake in their hands. Seen a lot of that shit over the years; half my McDonald’s kids are black and they tell me about it.”
“But young people—they seem to me like anybody else, sort of all over the place,” Virgil said.
Harry nodded. “Some of them are. Maybe most of them, Idon’t know. But I get three types at my McDonalds. I got kids who want to make money for a whole lot of reasons, and they’re serious about it. They want to buy a car or go to college, or whatever. They hang in there, and they’re determined and they’ll work hard until they get what they want. Or a better job. Good kids. Hate to see them go, but they always do. Then I got the kids who don’t have any choice. Maybe they’ve got to work to eat, maybe they’re bright enough to work at McDonald’s but don’t have a lot more going for themselves. I like those kids because I’ve had some of them stay with me for twenty years. But the third type: they’re no goddamn good.”
“How’s that different than it’s always been?” Virgil asked.
“It is, believe me. There have always been kids who were no damn good, but now it’s everywhere.Everywhere.It’s kids who know they’re not going to be millionaires or billionaires or movie stars or famous singers or in the NBA, and it’s all they want. They can’t see past that. It’s like they’re not alive if they’re not on TV. They don’t want to be doctors or dentists or lawyers or businessmen, they want to be rich and famous right now. They don’t want to work. All they want is to be a celebrity. Then at some point they realize it ain’t gonna happen. They’re not talented enough or smart enough, and they sure as shit don’t want to work at getting to be famous. When they figure that out, that it ain’t gonna happen, they turn mean.”
“Mean?” Virgil said.
“That’s right, mean,” Harry said. “You get kids who’ll kill you for no reason. To feel important. What’s more important than killing somebody? You say, you’ll go to prison. They don’t care. They don’t even care if they die. They’ll tell you that. ‘Go ahead and kill me, I got no life.’”
“You believe that?”
Harry drank half his beer down. “Virgil, I once got all pissed off at one of these school shootings, one of these massacres. I told one of my girls, one of my employees, that when they convict the guy, they ought to haul his ass out of the courthouse, make him kneel down on the steps, and then shoot him in the back of the head. You know what she said?”
“That you’re nuts?”
Harry laughed. “No. What she said was, ‘If you did that, the guy would be on TV. He’d be happy. He’d be famous. He was on TV.’ Being on fuckin’ TV. Being on the internet. She’s right. I know some of those kids.”
Virgil finished his beer, said, “On that cheerful note, I’m going to bed.”
“I’m here most every night,” Harry said. “Let me know how you’re doing. And Virgil—it’s a young person.”
—
Virgil spent the rest of the evening watching a ball game from the West Coast and went to bed at ten o’clock, like a farmer. At ten minutes after ten, his cell phone rang.
It was Trane. “You awake?” she asked.
“Yeah. Barely.”
“We need to go back to the Quill house,” Trane said. “I thought of a reason he might have been listening to ‘Home on the Range.’ I’ll meet you there at eight.”
“Well, tell me,” Virgil said.
She did, and Virgil said, “I believe that, Margaret. I mean, maybe you’re wrong, but I believe it right now.”
“Eight o’clock,” she said.
Virgil turned off the lights again, dropped his head back on the pillow. Was she right? Or was it a silly fantasy? Why hadn’t he thought of it when he was standing right there?
And then he worried a little about Harry.
CHAPTER
SIX
Katherine Green was sitting in the coffee shop in the Coffman Memorial Union when she saw one of her students going through the line.
He’d gone to India with her on a summer research trip with six other students. He was older than the others, more her age, she thought. She’d been tempted at the time to give him a mild hit, to see what happened. He was nice-looking: square shoulders, square jaw, neatly trimmed hair, crisp shirt, carefully ironed chinos. He was quiet, soft-spoken, often with a touch of humor.
One of her better students, even though she sensed an underlying skepticism about Cultural Science.
When he finished the line, he looked around for a seat. He saw Green, and she pointed at the chair opposite her. He smiled and came over and sat down.
“Professor Green...”
