DISPENSERS

’ll jump ahead. It doesn’t matter about picking up the U-Haul and having the rental guy eye me like I might go down to El Paso, pick up illegal aliens who’d trekked from Honduras and Nicaragua, and bring them back to America in a way that they might live a grand life, living not much more than slaves in pup tents, picking fucking apples and peaches in the upstate of South Carolina in order to send a few dollars back to their starving family members so they could afford two cobs of maize daily. He asked for my driver’s license, studied my American Express card about ten seconds too long, said, “I feel like I know your face from somewhere,” though he pronounced it “summer.” He looked out to my Jeep, where Mazie sat, undergoing a rare hangover. By “rare” I mean she got so drunk at an end-of-year faculty party, hosted by us, she quit. Mazie made a big point out of quitting, though when she blurted it out it came out sounding like “I’m Quentin,” and I thought she plain made allusions to a Faulkner character. It’s not like it hadn’t happened before, drunk or sober.

I needed to visit a number of school district warehouses to buy up vintage school desks too compromised and wobbly for today’s oversized students—those brown, stained oak desks with enough carved or inked graffiti to mesmerize a child for two days. I’d come up with this idea, kind of lowering my bar for the normal one-of-a-kind furniture people bought from me, rich people, out in California, up in New York, way out in Montana. One man in France whose thirteen-year-old kid spoke fluent Spanish, Russian, and Greek, but for some reason couldn’t get English down. Mazie and I planned to camp at state parks, drive around places between our house and Shreveport, celebrate our tenth anniversary. Traditional tenth-year anniversary gifts are aluminum, as it turns out. I planned on searching through state park and KOA campground receptacles, pulling out the beer cans, stomping on them, taking them back home to the closest junkyard, getting my fifty cents a pound or whatever, then buying Mazie, maybe, a book on how to find the job you really want.

She made a point to tell me that she wished to visit junk shops, thrift stores, and yard sales along the way, in search of vintage cocktail shakers, swizzle sticks, cigarette cases, and the like—something about her wish to open up a Museum of Recent Vices, I don’t know.

Here’s the story: I cut the desk tops off into perfect twelve-by-twelve squares and sold them to people overseas so they could either use them for paneling or flooring. Or at least that’s what I thought this story might entail. Their small foreign children could spend time poring over their walls and learn things in English like, GO COCKS, PAYTON ♥ REAGAN, GO DAWGS, KA SUCKS, GO TIGERS, GUTHRIE ♥ HANNAH FAY, SMOKE MORE DOPE, and FUCK TRUMP. Then there were the curse words and the racist epithets. Lots of cheating—state capitals, presidents in order, main characters of novels, math equations. Do you know how much rich foreign daddies pay to encapsule their children with the written foreign word? Answer: $20 a square foot, plus shipping. When buying in bulk—at least a hundred desks at a time—I got desks for three bucks each. Then I drove to the closest campground, pulled out my Sawzall, and severed the not-needed desk parts right there.

Julian Walker Outdoor Furniture’s my normal company. I needed to come up with a subsidiary name that didn’t have “Desk Top” in it, which would confuse too many people.

Anyway, we made it to somewhere off I-85, near Gainesville, Georgia. We pulled over. I can’t remember if Mazie had to pee or throw up. I jerked the wheel to the right and said, “Hold on!” like that. One or the other. I jerked the truck over. It happened to be at a nice veer toward one of those beautiful scenic runways not seen on most American runways.

I remember my wife yelling out, “I’m okay, motherfucker, I’m okay.” Like I should have kept on going down I-85 and not veered off. Who does that?

And why is she calling me “motherfucker”? I could only assume that my better half stored up a couple decades’ worth of bad language she wanted to use in the classroom, and now it would come out directed toward me, as if I were the sounding board to a Tourette’s Syndrome spouse.

I don’t know what made me drive forward, off the interstate’s exit, until I hit a restaurant called Rabbittown Diner. I pulled into the parking lot thinking a few things. First off, Mazie needed some hash browns to soak up whatever booze and coffee she consumed the night before. And it wouldn’t be a bad thing to pick up some extra napkins to keep in the U-Haul, just in case something askew occurred later down the road that involved an alimentary canal.

Mazie rolled down her window and said, “I’ve always had a problem with car sickness when it comes to anything larger than a regular car or truck.”

We rolled down windows halfway for our newish mixed-breed mutt Spook, named because he showed up July fifth after idiots out there in the country where we lived thought it necessary to shoot their automatic weapons into jugs of tannerite, yee-haw-we-love-America.

Then I went back to the U-Haul, turned the ignition and air conditioner on in case a do-gooder saw a dog in seventy-degree weather with the windows down and thought it inhumane, and made a point to sit inside the diner with a view for possible truck-jackers.

I said, “Stay,” to the dog. I said, “We’ll be right back.”

Then I said nothing. I got Mazie inside. We sat at a four-top, next to two gray-bearded men, wearing black ballcaps. They worked on plastic model airplanes, and the smell of airplane glue infiltrated our space. I’m talking it smelled like we chose to dine inside a huffer’s bedroom.

The waitress came over, plopped down two menus and two plastic glasses of water without ice. She set down two straws and said, “Coffee?”

I said, “For me, yes. For her, tomato juice,” not because I happened to be one of those men who man-decisioned the best options for everyone at the table, but because I knew that my wife held a half-pint flask in her handbag and she needed a Bloody Mary. I said, “Also, do you, by any chance, have a celery stalk back there, maybe some green olives, some Tabasco, a lime wedge?” A pepper shaker stood on our table.

The waitress looked like one of Aunt Bee’s friends on the Andy Griffith Show, either Clara or Martha, pursed lips and slight frown, one fist on the hip.

One of the men next to us took a pair of tweezers and held a small, gray, plastic wing strut. He said to his friend, “Like I said, I’ll never be able to forgive myself.” He wore a one-pocket T-shirt with PRESIDENT printed across the front. His baseball cap advertised VAGINA in block capital letters.

The other man wore the same hat, and a T-shirt that read TREASURER. I didn’t know what these T-shirts and hats meant, but imagined that I liked these guys. He said, “Like I’ve said, I pretended that it wasn’t Cambodia I flew over.”

I’d never realized the strength of airplane glue, really. I kind of whispered to Mazie, “I’m having a flashback.”

Truth: My father possessed a thing about model cars. He cherished his time with a group of grown men who met monthly to construct model cars, Chevys and the like. Ford Fairlanes. Comet Calientes. Lots of Corvette Stingrays. The occasional MG Midget, Corvair, Nash Rambler.

The President of VAGINA said, “We would’ve won had we owned the same goddamn guns that every goddamn person in America can buy today to kill off schoolchildren and 7-Eleven cashiers. Innocent concert-goers. Gay people not doing nothing more than dancing with each other. Innocent soldiers down in Florida.” He mentioned about another twenty or fifty mass-shooting instances.

They kept a battery-operated police scanner on the table with them. It crackled and buzzed and rose in static. Someone on it said, “I imagine it was her that started the fight.”

The waitress showed up and kind of slammed down Mazie’s tomato juice. The glass didn’t include celery, lime, or olives. She didn’t say, “I heard you, but we didn’t have them things.” She said, “Y’all ready to order?”

Mazie said, “Do you have shrimp and grits?”

The waitress shook her head no.

“Pheasant steak?” my wife said, which made me know that she was reviving.

“No,” said the waitress.

I said, “I got a hankering for some liver mush...”

“We got that,” the waitress said.

“But I’d like it if and only if it’s slathered in Hollandaise sauce. You got Hollandaise sauce? Even Béarnaise sauce would be okay.”

Those two model-making men overheard all of this and one of them said, “Try sawmill gravy, son.”

Someone on the police scanner said, “Stolen vehicle.” I jerked my head back to the box truck to check on Spook.

I said, “I want four eggs, sunny-side up, maybe some white bread toast. I want them runny. Hell, tell the cook he or she doesn’t even need to put those things on the grill. Y’all don’t have pizza by any chance, do you? Maybe pizza with anchovies and chicken livers?” The waitress stared at me. “I want four pretty-much raw eggs. Just wave the eggs, shell and all, over the grill a couple times. And a side of creamed corn.”

The mention of “raw eggs”—and I did this on purpose—sent Mazie to the women’s room. She said, “I’ll remember this day, Julian” on her quick trot away.

The waitress said, “Name’s Mena.” She pointed at what had to be a salesman’s sample of a nametag. It actually read NAME, but Mena’d taken a Magic Marker and written a 3 over the N, a 4 over the A, a 1 over the M, and a 2 over the E.

I felt lucky that Mazie’d not seen it, or she’d’ve gone into a long-winded explanation of the Chicago Manual of Style, and transposition signs, and so on. She’d’ve asked for rubbing alcohol, erased the 1, 2, 3, 4, and performed a perfect, swoopy swap-these-letters-around-here-so-it-reads-right mark.

I said, “I guess just bring her a fried egg sandwich on white bread, the egg over hard. Mayo and mustard. And no creamed corn. I changed my mind. I’ll have the same.”

“I couldn’t help but overhear y’all,” I said to my next-door tablemates. I said, “You mentioned Cambodia, so I assume y’all were in Vietnam. I’ve been trying to figure this out. Do y’all like it, or not like it, when complete strangers come up all guilt-ridden and say, ‘Thank you for your service’? I’ve heard both ways. I’ve heard that some veterans appreciate it, and others feel as though the person saying ‘Thank you for your service’ is doing so just to feel better about himself—like because he didn’t go to war. Like, maybe,” and Mazie told me a thousand times not to bring up politics with strangers, or friends, for that matter—and certainly not Chinese men who bought my pornographic desk tops—but she wasn’t around, “some guy who got his father to pay off a doctor into saying he, the eighteen-year-old draft dodger, had bone spurs.”

The Treasurer of VAGINA said, “Not me. I don’t really like it. Hell, they don’t think about how it automatically causes flashbacks.”

“I don’t really care one way or the other,” the President said. “I know that people mean good by saying it. I don’t see them calling up our politicians and doing anything about the VA, though. I’d rather they do that than thank me for killing people I didn’t know, fighting for a war I didn’t quite comprehend.”

I didn’t know what to say. I expected just a yes or no. The Treasurer said, “Last month my grandson got aholt of my stepson-in-law’s AR-15, took it to school, and pulled it out during band practice. Not marching band. Orchestra practice. He’s in the marching band, but he plays clarinet in marching band. In the orchestra, he plays cello. That’s how he got the AR-15 into the school in the first place, inside that big fiddle case. He shot the kid playing cymbals. Well, not the kid, but the cymbals. They say you could hear it all the way over into Winder. Boy ended up getting expelled for the year.”

I wondered if the mention of flashbacks caused this turn in conversation.

“You don’t see a lot of people play both clarinet and cello,” the President said. “You see maybe clarinet and trumpet, maybe flute and clarinet. You see cello and stand-up bass, but not one of the woodwinds and one of the strings.”

On the police scanner, a man blurted out, “We need the K-9 out here on 441.”

The Treasurer tilted his head to one side. He rotated his B-52 a quarter turn. “I think something happened when his parents divorced. I’m still friends with my daughter’s first husband. You met him. Keith? The one who drank lye? We still get together about once a month. I talk and he writes out answers on napkins and whatnot.”

I said, “I just don’t know. If I say, ‘Thank you for your service’ to this waitress, will it lessen what I mean for a veteran? What if I say it to my septic tank guy, or exterminator?”

Mena brought out two plates. The waitress said, “I know you changed your order, but I asked anyway. We didn’t have them sauces you mentioned. The cook made up something out of mayo and Thousand Island and Worcestershire, if you want it.” She pronounced it “Wuh-sure.”

I almost said, “Thank you for your service,” but caught myself.

“Anyway,” the President said to the Treasurer, “Well. I forgot what we were talking about.”

Mena called over, “Y’all ready for more?”

The President said, “Maybe I was about to say this: I hope I don’t start crying. Anyway, the one reason I wish I still had a gun is because I had to put my old dog down last week.”

“I wondered why you didn’t have Napalm with you out in the truck,” the Treasurer said. He said, “I’m so sorry. Man’s best friend and all. I loved Napalm.”

I looked out the plate-glass window as if I were mesmerized by traffic. I felt like an eavesdropper. I thought about how I could bring up Spook, who sat out in the parking lot while his new owners bludgeoned any kind of social graces there inside a diner with two VAGINA hat-wearing veterans.

“‘Cause I ain’t got no gun no more, I looked on this website for something called the Hemlock Society. They had some pointers about how I could kill myself, but not much else,” the President said.

“Yeah?” said the Treasurer.

“Ended up, I went out and bought some ice cream, and curled up a nice dollop on one them sugar cones. Napalm licked it and licked it. He wagged his tail nonstop. I cried and cried. When he got done, I said to him, ‘You want to take a bath, you want to take a bath?’ I’ve never known a dog wanted to take a bath so much. Listen, he could barely walk. I had to carry him out in the mornings and stand him up in the monkey grass to do his business. Anyway, old Napalm limped into the bathroom and got his front paws up on the bathtub. I followed behind and helped him in. Then I put the plug down, and got a nice lukewarm water going like he liked it. He sat down. When the water got up to about his leg joint he laid down and started licking at the water like he always did.”

I didn’t want to hear this story. The last thing I wanted was to hear a story about a Vietnam War veteran kneeling on a bathroom floor, taking his dog by the neck, and drowning him. The Treasurer said, “I’m so sorry.”

“I had to go back into the bedroom and get this plug-in clock radio I don’t even use no more for an alarm or nothing. I wasn’t even sure this would work! I thought it might be one them lies about how people accidentally died. Anyway, I plugged it in the socket, turned it on full blast to the classic rock and roll station I believe Napalm liked, looked the other way, and threw it into the water. Blowed out my fuse box, but it killed my dog.”

“That’s a 10-4,” a woman said on the scanner.

The Treasurer turned to Mena and yelled, “Yeah, we ready for more pancakes.” He said to me, “Y’all should’ve ordered the pancake special. All you can eat on Thursdays. We come here on Thursdays. We eat all we can eat, seven in the morning until closing time.” He said, “Hey, I believe you got a blueberry dispenser on your table. Mind if I borrow it?”

I handed it over and said, “We’re not from around here. Just driving through.” In my mind I saw a beagle, or a German shepherd mix. I thought to myself, erase this vision from your memory, erase this vision from our memory.

Mazie finally came out of the women’s room. She sat down and stared at her egg sandwich. I said to the President, “I have to ask.”

The Treasurer placed his F-101 Voodoo on the far edge of his table.

The President took his right index finger and traced it, right to left from my vantage point, across the bill of his cap. He said, “VAGINA? Not what you think. It stands for Veterans Against Guns in North America. If you one of them Second Amendment hammerheads, just go on your way. We believe in fists, like the old days.” He said, “I’m Terry Terrell. You might’ve seen me on MSNBC or CNN. Sometimes I get interviewed.”

Mazie turned to these men and smiled. She said, “I just spent ten minutes of my life wishing I were dead, that’s how sick I felt. You just gave me reason to live.” She said, “I’d kiss both of you, if I’d’ve been able to brush my teeth a couple times.”

The Treasurer said, “I used to be an accountant. I’m retired. That’s why they voted me in as treasurer. Terry’s president, I’m the treasurer, and we got a secretary down in Atlanta, plus a parliamentarian up in Chattanooga.” He wiped his mouth with a paper napkin, then wiped his forehead. “I ain’t ever been on TV, officially. One time they showed a USO show back for Walter Cronkite, and my momma said she saw me in the crowd whooping it up for Ann Margaret, but I ain’t ever seen it.” He rose his hand as if he wanted to ask a question. “Billy Glane.”

Terry Terrell said, “Me and Billy come here and eat our pancakes, and work on ways to make America great again. And I don’t mean like this lying son-of-a-bitch president says he’s making America great again. I mean, great like it was when people didn’t kill each other at random. We’re starting off by trying to get it so only the militia and the police can have guns the other side of deer hunting. Both Billy and me are widowers, and we had to start up something or another. You hear how they did it in Australia? That’s our aim.”

“Like maybe somewhere between the War of 1812 and the Civil War,” Billy the Treasurer said. “Minus slavery. We’re from around here, you know, but in a way I guess we’re not from around here. Make America great like it was in 1850, minus the slavery.”

Terry Terrell nodded. “And we’re going to start up a museum to show off our model airplanes. If we live long enough. Right now we got us about nine, nine hundred fifty members. Most of them live in more liberal, right-thinking states when it comes to gun control. California, mostly. Oregon, Massachusetts.”

“Lots in Hawaii, but they can’t usually afford to come to the annual meeting,” Billy Glane said.

I thought Mazie might talk about how she wanted to open a museum that showcased snuff tubes, but she said nothing about it. “Goddamn I wish that I didn’t feel so puny,” Mazie said.

I looked at my wristwatch. I said, “You want to take that sandwich for later down the road?” I didn’t wait for Mazie’s response. I unfurled two more napkins and began the wrapping process.

I set down three dollars on the table for a tip. Mazie said, “It was nice talking to y’all,” and I went to the register to pay cash money.

We made it outside. Our dog looked as though he had his head stuck halfway out the window and couldn’t figure out whether to jump out or pull back. I yelled out, “Spook! Spook!” I yelled for him to get back inside.

Listen, I got brought up differently than most of my comrades in South Carolina. My parents didn’t go to church, for one. They didn’t allow racist terms to come out of our lips, ever. Hell, when I got to college some white guys said terms I’d never even come across. I knew the N-word, but not much else.

“What the fuck’s your problem, man?” an African-American guy, maybe thirty years older than I, said as I approached the U-Haul. He’d just parked right beside it and gotten out of his car, a vintage black 1964 Comet Caliente. I knew the make and model from days when my father made me tag along with his model car people. I approached the guy, all smiles. He zipped up a windbreaker and said, “You calling me Spook?”

I said, “Man, that’s a nice car.” I pointed at my dog.

Mazie said, “I never thought about this.” She said to the man, “I apologize. We have to rename our dog.” She pointed at Spook, too.

The man looked over. He reached inside the open driver’s side window of his car and pulled a hat off the dashboard. He said, “You better, my man. Name that dog Whitey.” Then he turned away and went on a roll: Cracker, White Trash, Honky, Ofay, Peckerwood.

He wasn’t smiling. He put his hat on—one of the VAGINA hats. He didn’t say goodbye, or watch out, or anything else. He headed toward the diner.

I opened the passenger door for my wife. She grunted her way in and held her right palm out for me not to slam the door. As I walked around the front of the truck, the door to Rabbittown Diner flew open and Terry Terrell yelled out to me, “Excuse my manners, buddy! I forgot. Thank you for your syrup.” Maybe he thought I didn’t hear him. He screamed louder, twice, “Thank you for your syrup! Thank you for your syrup!”

Mazie rolled the truck window up another inch or two and got out without my even saying anything about how we needed to explain ourselves.

•

Oh, sure, it could’ve been white guilt, but I found it necessary to re-enter the Rabbittown Diner, stride toward the now-three VAGINA men’s table, and say, “This man’s pancakes are on my tab.” I slid into my old seat, Mazie into hers. I said, “I owe you, man. I’ve been trying to think up a name for this little side company I have—well, a side company that’s ended up making more money than my normal company—and you just gave it to me.”

Terry Terrell said, “I can’t say for certain, but I bet y’all can just order some pancakes and you won’t get charged. I bet you paid more for your breakfast than what it would cost the All You Can Eat option.”

I said, “Peckerwood!

“Hold on now, brother,” Treasurer Billy Glane said. He held up his left hand. It appeared as though airplane glue soldered his thumb and index finger together.

I introduced myself, and Mazie, and apologized for what happened in the parking lot. Terry Terrell pointed across the table and said, “This is our director of communications, Bob White.”

Oh, man, how hard did I have to hold back saying, “Really? Like the bird?”

Bob White stuck out his hand to shake. He didn’t smile. He said, “Don’t say it. Don’t ask me to whistle. They don’t call me Bob White, anyway. I’m Static.”

Bob White! If I’d’ve named Spook Whitey, I’d’ve gotten in trouble still.

“Bob was a radioman over in ‘Nam. Worst job you can have, pretty much. You know who the enemy wants to kill more than a general? Radioman. He’s heard it all.”

“Turn that thing off,” Bob White said, pointing to the police scanner. “I heard it all, so I don’t need to hear more.”

Mena returned. She said, “Y’all look familiar.”

Bob White said, “They buying my pancakes.”

I said, “I just want coffee.”

“Pancakes for me, too,” said Mazie. “But no syrup. They’re for the dog.”

“Promise dog don’t bite, bring it on in,” said Mena. She looked around. “Got a collar, leash, rabies tag, bring dog in.”

“I’d like to meet your dog,” Terry Terrell said. “I had a dog till not that long ago.”

“What happened to Napalm?” Bob White asked. I told Mazie to go get Spook,” though I said, “Go get Sp…ort.” Fuck. I wanted a dog named Sport about as much as I wanted a dog named Spot, or Fido, or Lindsey.

Terry Terrell leaned into Bob White. Billy Glane moved into Terry Terrell. They kind of whispered to each other for a moment and I couldn’t make out what they said. Then they put their hands on top of each other, like in some kind of basketball huddle, and said, simultaneously, “Vagina…” and rose their hands up in the air like fluttering doves, “…rules!”

Mena brought my coffee and slid a stack of six pancakes the size of mid-sized Frisbees over to Mazie’s side. The men beside me got to work on their B-52s and such. I looked at my watch and tried to calculate when I needed to leave in order to hit the school desk auction down in Cumming, Georgia. Then I started thinking about people from that area calling home and saying things like “I’m about five minutes from Cumming,” or driving to, say, Waleska, Georgia, and having to call someone to say, “I just got through Cumming and am on my way.”

I’d probably make more Adirondack chairs if I didn’t get so distracted. Twig chairs fashioned from ironwood and mountain laurel. Love seats. Personalized cornhole sets.

Mazie walked back in with Spook leading the way. She said to the men from VAGINA, “If y’all can think of a better name, go for it.” She said, “This is a good dog. This is a good, explosive-fearing dog. Y’all are against guns, and I admire you immensely for it.”

She bent down to pet Spook’s left shoulder. Spook panted and looked at the men from VAGINA. Mazie wore some kind of loose-fitting tank top. I could see one of her boobs, and I bet the VAGINA men could see both of them.

“That’s a nice-looking dog. I’d say pit bull and boxer mix,” Billy Glane said. “Pit bull and, I don’t know, retriever.”

“German Shepherd, poodle, schnauzer,” said Terry Terrell. “Keep petting that dog. I want to look at them.”

“Yellow lab, black lab, bulldog, coon dog, and that other one. Beagle,” Billy Glane said.

The three men went off on some kind of argument about my ex-stray’s pedigree until Bob White finally said, “Goddamn. It doesn’t matter. Great dog. Listen.” Then he scooted his chair in and started whispering again. The only words I made out were “pawn shop,” and “gun show,” and “the time is right,” and “that senator’s going down,” and “goddamn it, I’ll bet you a hundred dollars that the Braves are going to make it to the World Series.” I might’ve missed some things in between.

I looked over at Mazie to make sure she heard the same things I heard. She scrunched up her shoulders. She said, “I don’t know what it is about pancakes, but suddenly I don’t feel so nauseated,” and sliced her fork into the stack. Our now-nameless dog looked on. If there was a voice balloon above his head it would’ve read “What, me worry?” like on that old magazine cover.

I turned to the men of VAGINA and said, “Peckerwood. Thanks for giving me the business name.”

Bob White pointed at my table and said, “Let me borrow that a minute.” I handed over the blueberry syrup. He didn’t say, “No matter how hard or how much you want to be in a group fighting against gun ownership in the United States, you don’t have the background.” He didn’t say, “You can write your senators and congresspeople, and the president for all I care, but nothing’s going to change unless you’ve had a bullet extracted from your neck.”

My wife held out a forkful of syrup-less pancake to our dog. She said, “Here you go, Quentin,” out of nowhere.

I looked at my watch. I said, “We have to go.” The VAGINA men seemed to have a plan brewing. I said something about how I wouldn’t mind helping out in a number of ways.

I’ll jump ahead. We traded names and numbers and addresses. We promised to keep in touch. They taught me a secret handshake, maybe.

Outside, I turned the ignition. I looked at my unemployed wife and unnamed dog. I thought about this man named Xi in China, who I called Eleven in my mind, a man whose child would one day know how to say nothing but curse words, racist epithets, and mathematical equations. I don’t know how big Xi’s house happened to be, but he’d ordered enough vintage school desk tops for me to throw money toward a meaningful nonprofit.

The dog got settled between us. In my mind I went over all the steps I needed to take in order to back out so as not to perform about a twenty-seven-point turn.

Mazie said, “How odd life is. You lose a job, you gain a purpose.” She said, “I’m going to stay in touch with those men. I want to go full force against the Second Amendment.”

I didn’t say, “Oh, you’ll change your mind when the next shiny cause comes along,” even though I’d seen Mazie—and me, for that matter—get caught up in pro-choice petitions, anti–Big Pharma protests, pro–alternative energy investments, anti–plastic bag rants, pro-coyote sponsorship. We’d volunteer at the soup kitchen and to take people to the voting booth. We’d sworn off, gone back to, sworn off, and gone back to beef, chicken, pork, and turkey. We’d driven to the state capital so we could dispense pamphlets about education reform, marijuana legalization, something about clean water, something about minimum wage, something about insecticides vis-a-vis fireflies and honeybees. So I just said, “I agree.”