The Dead

gymnastics. The inquisitors were saddled with the Sermon on the Mount whether they liked it or not. And it showed in their work. They could never be wholehearted about murder-at least without totally rejecting their faith.

“But what restrains atheists? According to their own lights, they can do whatever they please. True, most cling to morality as tightly as any believer; but then there are the rational ones. The ones who act on their assumptions. Like Pol Pot. And if you wanted a preview of Hell, you couldn’t do better than Cambodia in 1976.”

Gary looked at Buddy. It was plain that his uncle had never encountered such a steamroller before; Buddy’s eyes shone with awe and hatred. Gary knew from Dennis that Buddy considered himself a kind of rough-hewn philosopher-an unfortunate self-image for such a lout.

“You really think you know it all, don’t you Max?” Buddy demanded.

“No,” Max replied.

“Think you can walk all over me because you’re a college boy?”

“Hey, I thought you were going to hurt my feelings.”

“You want me to hurt your feelings?” Buddy asked loudly.

Seeing how ugly things had gotten, Gary began to feel genuinely uncomfortable.

“No,” Max said.

“You want me to ride roughshod over you, college boy?” Buddy asked. “I’ll tell you what I really think. I think that Catholic religion you believe in is pure garbage.” He grinned smugly, as if he had just landed a truly devastating blow.

“Wow,” Max said.

“You know what else I think? I think all those priests and nuns you kiss-ass to are a bunch of fags and dykes.”

“Hey Buddy, come on,” Dennis said. “That’s enough.”

“Your broad-mindedness is impressing me no end,” Max told Buddy.

Just then a hand clapped down on Buddy’s shoulder. Buddy turned. So did Gary and Dennis. Max stared down into his Heineken.

Standing in front of Buddy was a massive bull-necked fellow with short bristly hair on a bullet skull, his short- sleeved shirt revealing two long muscular arms.

“You know,” the bruiser told Buddy, “I’ve been listening to you, loudmouth, and I think you’d better shut your trap. I’m a Catholic. And my sister’s a nun.”

“How about your mother?” Buddy laughed.

“Why don’t you just leave my mother out of this? Isn’t it enough that you called my sister a dyke?”

“Well, what do you want me to do? Apologize?”

“Why don’t you keep your fucked-up opinions to yourself?”

“And what if I don’t?”

The man folded his bulging arms on his chest. “You’re gonna find yourself wearing your jaw for a hat.”

“Really? Think you can do it to me yourself? Won’t you have to call your sister? I hear those dykes are pretty tough-”

Buddy barely got the last word out when the man’s malletlike right fist struck his cheek with a meaty smack. Buddy rocked sideways onto Gary, then slid to the floor. The man came forward; Gary put himself between him and Buddy, who was trying to get back to his feet.

“Just hold on now-” Gary began.

The man hit him in the left eye.

Shocked by the pain, Gary responded with a clumsy right. The man blocked it, grabbed Gary by the lapel, and pounded him repeatedly in the stomach.

Suddenly the blows stopped. Someone had the fellow by the arm. Left eye already closing up on him, Gary looked to see who it was. It was Max. Letting Gary go, pulling his arm from Max’s grip, the bruiser turned to face him, growling.

“Why don’t we just call this quits now, huh?” Max asked, stepping back. “One Catholic to another?”

The other answered with a scream, charging, but Max stopped him dead with a straight right to the nose, which the guy clapped two beefy hands over…Max hit him in the stomach, the hands came down, and the man doubled over with a belch. Max straightened him with an uppercut to the chin, then drove three trip hammer jabs into that already wrecked beak, each one landing with a mushy quish…the reeling recipient, nostrils streaming red, reached groggily for a beer-bottle on the bar, but before his fingers could close on it, Max hit him with another uppercut that lifted him clean off his feet. The man sailed backward to the floor, unconscious.

“Get him!” someone cried.

Max turned. Gary, who’d gotten to his feet by this time, saw three goons who’d been sitting with Max’s victim now rushing toward Max. Max moved to meet them, kicking a chair out of his way. Heading for the one in the center, he veered at the last moment toward the man on the left, blasting him down with a right cross before giving the middle guy an elbow to the cheek and flinging him aside. The last unfortunate caught a straight kick below the ribcage, and, cheeks puffed out as the air blew from his lungs, went back with a distinct bootprint in his shirt…He landed on a table, tipping it over, and bringing a small avalanche of half-empty glasses clattering down on him. Beer splashed everywhere as he thumped to the carpet and lay still.

The fight was over before Gary and Dennis could join in. Max looked round at them.

“We were going to help, really,” Dennis said.

“I believe you,” Max said. “Let’s get out of here.”

“What about the damages?” the bartender demanded.

Max squinted at him. “What damages?”

“The glasses on that table.”

“Chickenshit,” Max answered. “Besides, I didn’t start the damn fight.”

“Oh, what the hell,” Uncle Dennis said, went to the bartender, and handed him a fifty.

The man who’d been kicked in the chest moaned. Max trained his eyes back on him. The fellow got up and stumbled for the door. His friends were still out cold.

Uncle Buddy, however, had come round by that time; Gary and Dennis helped him out to the car. Dennis drove.

“Hey Max,” he said, “they teach you to fight like that in the Marines?”

“You got it the wrong way round,” Gary said. “He taught them.”

“What was he, a hand-to-hand instructor?”

“Yep. They decided he had a real vocation after he put his instructor in the hospital at Camp Lejeune. Isn’t that right, Max?”

“Yeah,” Max said. “Not bad for a college boy, huh?”

Dennis laughed appreciatively. Buddy just mumbled.

They reached home. The women made a great deal of fuss over Gary’s and Buddy’s hurts. Thoroughly humiliated, Buddy went down into the rec room with a beer, an ice-pack, and a bottle of Advil.

Some time afterward, Gary sat down on the living-room couch beside Uncle Dennis.

“So how did you like Max’s arguments?” he asked.

“He handled Buddy pretty well,” Dennis said.

“Yeah. But that’s no big deal if you ask me.”

“I’ve never been able to answer him that way,” Dennis replied. “He just starts with his jokes and insults, and I get confused. He knows more about history than I do, too. But Max sure let him have it.” He chuckled. “You know, it might not sound like it, but I really love Buddy.”

Gary looked at him sidelong.

“I really do,” Dennis insisted. “He’s my brother, and I guess I can see some things in him that other people can’t.”

“Aunt Lucy loves him,” Gary admitted, and glanced out into the kitchen. The women were talking heatedly about something; Linda noticed him looking their way, and smiled.

“But even though I love him, I think he has a lot to learn,” Dennis went on. “And I have to admit, I like