The two men sat in the Coffee Corner, with their hats pushed back on their heads.
“‘Waal, if they don’t, I will,’ many would say. And I’m not sure I would, but I can’t discount it. In the right circumstances. An’ it’s one thing come acrost a thing, you follow: see a fellow in the act, and stop him …” They nodded.
“There in the heat, eh …?”
“… Yeaauh,” they said, and nodded.
“… in the heat. Or even after. Look: I can’t discount it. A man need to see some justice done. ’Ven after. I can see that. Take out your pistol, bam. A man’s got feeling. ’N’ I want to tell you something.” He hitched his chair closer to the counter.
“All the laws in the world, and all the religion, to one end: to try to legislate …”
“… uh huh,” they said.
“… keep these feelings in check. Well. Fine. You mizewell …” He shrugged, and his hand searched the air for the perfect comparison, the cigarette in the hand like a part of it, his fingers like yellow morocco leather, stained by nicotine, the nails huge and cracked. “… you mizewell …”
“… water in a sieve,” a friend said.
He pointed his finger at the friend, to say, “You have hit it exactly?”
“All the laws in the world,” he continued, “all the laws in the world, Jesus Christ himself, in the heat of a blood passion …
“Because, boys, wait a second,” he said. “Because what we are talking about here is Human Nature. And you tell me that that’s not a mystery? And self-control? How many, you think, ’s in there armed? Any meetin’? Any …”
The others murmured.
“… mm?”
“That’s right,” a friend said.
“… ’n’ you tell me that’s not an instance?”
“… self-control …”
“… waal, I don’t know it’s self-control …”
“What is it, then?”
“… self-”
“… what?”
“Waal, I’m telling you, you’d listen to me,” the man said, as the other men at the counter waited, as at a long-watched and long-appreciated comedy turn.
“I think that it is equally a desire. Mm? To be part of a group. Wait: not to violate …”
“… that’s right,” the other man said.
“… to … hmm? To put the interests of the group before himself?”
“… before who?”
“That man with a gun. Mm? That man, as you said, who’s out there, who, in the interests of his group, to which he belongs—or, or, wait a second, to the urge not to be ostracized, out of the group, that’s all right—refrains from the action, eh, which would ostracize him. Mm? That’s self-control. Or not, as you may choose to put it. I don’t know what it is. You finish your coffee you c’n tell me.”
Frank walked by the Coffee Corner, and he looked in at the men.