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afternoon he got a haircut and on Sunday night he did a couple of loads of wash. All that week he was up before me. By the time I crawled out of my berth, he'd already shaved, combed his hair, and put on his best shirt and pants. When I came back from running in the afternoon, he'd be at the table in the cabin circling ads in the help-wanted section of the
Seattle Times.
    Wednesday night the fat guy from the marina office came down onto the pier. "You've got a phone call," he called to my dad. "Salmon Bay Gravel."
    My dad hustled up the pier to the office. When he came back, he didn't say anything, so I asked. "What was that
about?"
    "I've got an interview tomorrow. Cement work."
    About a hundred questions popped into my head, but I knew to keep my mouth shut. He wouldn't want to talk until he actually had the job, and I didn't blame him.
    Thursday morning he shaved, and then shaved again. He took my math book and used it to smooth out some of the
creases on his gray shirt. "You look fine, Dad," I told him. "You really do."
    All day at school I kept thinking of him at that interview. I couldn't figure how it could go wrong. He hadn't had a drink all week. And when he wasn't drinking, my dad was an OK guy and a good, hard worker. Besides, it wasn't like he was applying to be a brain surgeon.
    When school ended, I hurried back to the marina. As soon as I stepped onto the boat, I called out for him. "You here, Dad?" I said, climbing down into the cabin. On the table sat an empty bottle of beer. In the trash were a half dozen more.
    It made me angry. OK, my dad drank. OK, he didn't have any great work record. But he was good enough to fight in Kuwait. Why couldn't he catch a break just one time?
    I was angry all the next day at school, which is probably why I ended up shooting off my mouth in Arnold's class. All week he'd been having us read famous speeches. Some I'd heard of, like Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, and Kennedy's Inaugural Address. Others, like Pericles' Funeral Oration, were new to me.
    That day, he read us Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. Arnold has a radio-announcer's voice, and he used it.
"We here highly resolve,"
he said, reaching the end of the speech,
"that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
    There was a long moment of silence. Then Arnold closed the book and looked out over the class. "That speech is less
than three hundred words long, but it is without doubt the greatest speech in American history, and one of the greatest speeches in world history."
    "It's also a bunch of crap," I muttered, too loudly.
    "What did you say?" Arnold asked, his eyes flaring in anger.
    "Nothing," I said.
    Heather Carp looked at me, and then at Arnold. "He said Lincoln's full of crap."
    Arnold stiffened. "This is a classroom. I'd appreciate it if you'd use appropriate language."
    "I didn't say Lincoln was full of crap, Mr. Arnold," Heather said, grinning. "He did."
    The class laughed. Arnold turned to me.
    "Explain what you mean, Chance."
    "I didn't mean anything."
    He glared at me. "You didn't mean anything. You sit in the back of the room and say nothing for weeks, and then you say Abraham Lincoln is full of crap, but you refuse to explain yourself. That's not going to cut it. I want you to tell me why you said what you did, and I want you to do it now."
    I could feel everyone's eyes on me. Any other day and I would have just sat there until he gave up. But the anger I'd been carrying all day boiled over.
    "You want to know what I mean?" I said. "OK, this is what I mean. It isn't rich kids getting killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, is it? It's not government of the people. It's government of the
rich
people. The poor get screwed over from the day they're born to the day they die."
    As soon as I finished, I felt stupid. I should have kept my