'That's a bunch of shit.'
'Don't swear in front of your mother.'
'Who, Miss Sensibility with the virgin ears? How can it offend her? I'm just a chip off the old block.'
'That's enough out of you,' Mr.Hughes shouted.
'I told you he wouldn't understand,' Mrs.Hughes said. 'He's never even tried to appreciate...'
'Oh, excuse me, Mother. My humble apologies. Am I allowed to come home from the hospital for an afternoon to gather my junk together before I leave? I don't want to be pushy and inconvenience you or anything.'
'Cut it, Kirk. Your mother and I certainly expected to see a little more gratitude from you than this.'
'To tell you the truth, Father, the more I compare the thought of rotten institutional food, sleeping in a dorm and getting up at dawn to march around a muddy field with the alternative, I'm not altogether displeased. Thanks for the visit, parents, and all the good news.'
'Kirk, I wish you'd try to...' Mrs.Hughes began.
'Forget it, Mother. Just leave me alone.'
'Listen, Kirk. I know you don't have many expenses here in the hospital, but there's twenty bucks in case anything should come up,' Mr.Hughes said.
'The old buy-him-off-with-money routine, huh? Gee, thanks a lot, Father. Maybe I'll buy a canteen for military school.'
'We'll visit again soon,' Mrs.Hughes said.
'I won't hold my breath.'
'You know, we do care about what happens to you, Kirk,' she said.
'What, by long distance? Just leave me alone, huh?'
Kirk's parents left. Brent looked up and watched them go. He felt sad for Kirk. Brent had had so many good times with his own folks, their summers in Maine and all; he wished he could have shared some of them with Kirk.
Amy came into the room a few minutes later.
'I couldn't seem to get a nap. It doesn't seem like hospitals are ever very quiet. Was that your parents I just saw waiting at the elevator, Kirk?' she asked.
'It sure was. We were having one of our sessions of mutual admiration.'
Amy sat down on the foot of Brent's bed.
'It's a shame you don't get along with them better,' she said. 'Have you gotten into much trouble in the past? Why are they so down on you?'
'Not much trouble really. It doesn't make much difference. They think I have. I even got drunk for the first time when I was six,' Kirk said, laughing. 'They didn't think much of that.'
'You're kidding,' said Brent.
'No, really. I did. My mother was really ticked off, I can tell you that. I don't think she liked me much even then.'
'What happened?' Amy asked. 'It sounds like a story we ought to hear.'
'Oh, we were just little kids. We didn't even know what we were doing. A friend of mine named Mike and I were just messing around at his house one afternoon. It was around August or something like that. Anyway, there was nothing much to do.'
'So what's new?' Brent said.
'We found a grungy old winepress in Mike's garage. At least we thought it was a winepress. I think it was really a manure spreader or something. So old Mike says, 'Hey, Kirk, let's make some wine.' I thought it was a pretty great idea, especially seeing as how these two old ladies lived across the street and had about twenty million grapes hanging all over an arbor they had. We grab a couple of bushel baskets and head over there and start picking away like our lives depended on it. We didn't want to be caught. We were afraid if the old ladies saw us they would call the cops and we would be arrested for grape larceny, which is at least a felony. I don't even think the grapes were ripe yet or anything, but all we knew was that you needed grapes to make wine, and we sure as hell were going to make some wine even if it killed us - which it almost did.
'So anyway, we fill the baskets up and lug them back across the street and pull out the filthy old press and dump the grapes into it.
'Just then a little girl from next door wanders over. She was maybe four or something. Her name was Sally. She says, 'What are you going to do?' and we say something cool like, 'Make wine, stupid. Haven't you ever seen wine made?' She allowed as how maybe she never had but she sure would like to help, so she pitched in too.
'Mike must have seen some special on television about wine making or something, but he figures he knows just what to do. We pour the grapes into the old press and take off our shoes and socks and go stomping and slutching around in the grapes. If I remember, our feet weren't all that clean to begin with, and the grapes were no things of beauty, being half ripe and crawling with bugs and ants and things. Some brown juice started pouring out of the bottom of the press into a big jug Mike had put beneath it. We all thought that was pretty neat. Sally just laughed and giggled until Mike told her to shut up. We didn't think so much of little girls from next door named Sally, if I remember correctly.
'So when we got all done stomping and jumping, we had a mostly full jug of the foulest brown crud you've ever seen. Mike went running into the house and brought out three glasses. We poured them full and took a swig. It's a wonder we didn't barf on the spot, because it was the grossest tasting stuff that had ever passed my lips, and take my word for it, some pretty gross stuff had passed my lips when I was a kid.'
'Yeah, but it couldn't have made you drunk,' Brent said. 'There wasn't any alcohol in it.'
'I know. But we were too smart for our own good. Mike says, 'You know, when my dad has a drink he puts stuff in it from the liquor cabinet.'
''Go get some,' I said. 'If we're going to have wine, we might as well do it like the big guys do.' Sally just jumped up and down squealing, spilling brown grape juice down her front. She wasn't real cool.
'So Mike runs up to his house and brings down a bottle of gin or vodka or something. We didn't know the difference then, so we fill our glasses the rest of the way up with the booze, swish it around a little and down the hatch it all goes.'
Amy shivered and laughed.
'It didn't taste any worse with the gin in it. Nothing could have tasted worse. And maybe the booze even killed some of the bugs and germs that must have been floating around in there. So we guzzle it down and run around the yard and have another glass and lick the scum off the bottom of the press and stuff like that. Before you knew it, we were flying high. Sally could barely walk, she was so stoned. I don't know about Mike, but the whole world was spinning around me.
'All of a sudden Mike yells that he wants to swing. They had an old tire hanging on a rope from a tree in their backyard. We stagger over to the tire and Mike hops on and I start to spin him. Sally just keeps on squealing and trying to jump up and down, although she spent most of the time down by then. Mike gets going faster and faster and I'm spinning him for all I'm worth and we're all laughing like crazy. And then all of a sudden Mike gets sick and the twirling tire is like some sort of freaky living fountain; and I can barely stand up myself by that time, and Sally is eating dandelion puffs and they're stuck all over the corners of her mouth, and I can tell you, we were a real mess when Mike's mother came out of the house a few minutes later. Sally's mother wasn't too pleased either, but I really think underneath they thought the whole thing was kind of funny. And believe me, we learned our lesson. I must have been sick for a week.'
'That's funny, Kirk,' Amy said. 'What did your parents say about it?'
'Well, that's what I mean. They didn't think it was real funny at all. My father almost went out of his bird screaming about what would the neighbors say and I was a disgrace to his name and all that kind of shit. And he should talk! I heard about it for years. So even back then they weren't the most understanding of people. God, you'd think I had robbed a bank or something instead of just being a stupid kid who didn't know any better.'
'It's too bad,' Brent said. I can't even imagine what it would be like to grow up with parents like that, he thought.
'Well, it's no skin off my back. I haven't stopped drinking since,' Kirk said with a grin.
'My folks were always pretty good,' Brent said. 'They seemed to understand things fine. As far as I can
