Read The Outcasts for Free Online Page B

another.”
    â€œGod-damn right I don’t weep for Hiroshima. It saved ham a mill—half a million lives.”
    â€œNagasaki, then.”
    â€œThat too.”
    â€œThey were ready to surrender.”
    â€œThey why didn’t they?”
    â€œYou had to forestall the Russians.”
    â€œNot me. I was in a hospital in France. And what’s wrong with sore—with forestalling the Russians? I don’t want to kill people!” Morrison was suddenly shouting; the old waiter stirred. “I hate killing! I never killed anybody and I don’t want to kill anybody!”
    The guitarist was flat on the floor and apparently unconscious. The room heaved and buckled. Goray swam toward him and away. Morrison was covered with sweat and his own hot fat.
    â€œWell, I know that you would not hesitate to drop one on a colored country. I suppose you might even drop one on a white country. And then enjoy an orgy of self-recrimination.”
    â€œYou must hate us,” Morrison said. Tears rose to his eyes; they brimmed. Ridiculous. “We did hesitate. We do hesitate. Who’s we? I hesitate. There. I sure God hesitate.”
    â€œBut who are you?”
    Morrison brightened. “Now that’s a question I can answer. I am Bernard Morrison, master of civil engineering and acknowledged worrier. Full of banana brandy, and sure of only one thing in life: it is time to go home. I know that. In my blood and my bones I know it. And my belly.”
    Goray was gone and the night was starry; stars swooped and swam. Morrison’s arm was around Philips’s shoulders, and when he looked down there was the billygoat, sneering and yellow-eyed.
    â€œThe devil,” he said. “That was it. When I was a boy, they told me what the devil looked like, and there he is.”
    â€œJust a little he-goat,” Philips said soothingly.
    â€œYou’re a great help. Where were you when I needed you? You let that fat bastard tromp all over me.”
    â€œThis way,” Philips said. “Easy now.”
    Outside the hotel Morrison shook him off.
    â€œForty years ago,” Philips said, “they hanged his father for political reasons.”

3
    Then was his head puffed up and his heart minished, an ague upon him and his very corpuscles reeking banana. Philips woke him at five; he thrashed his way reluctantly to the surface of his shame, and masked the shame in groans and grumbles, and sat on the bed rocking and keening like a crone bereaved. “This is primitive. Barbarous. Undeveloped. Waking a sick man at five in the morning.”
    â€œTake a shower,” Philips said. “I will order breakfast.”
    â€œCoffee. Just coffee. Forgive me. This is terrible.”
    â€œNew lands, new drinks,” Philips said. “A shower. Brush your teeth.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œIt was that brandy,” Philips said. “We drank two bottles.”
    â€œAnd you drank almost none.”
    Philips smiled faintly. “And I drank almost none. I rarely drink much. When I do, you will know it. I fight and shout, and the next day I lie dying all day long. No one has a monopoly on mistakes, as I believe you stated last night.”
    Morrison noticed, squinting and blinking, that the whites of Philips’s eyes were clear, and seemed to remember that they had been clear after that first morning. “Had you been drinking the night before I got here?”
    â€œYes. And then up at three to do my duty.”
    â€œGod.” Morrison shuddered, truly: his body quivered. “Sorry. If you felt anything like this you must have hated me.”
    Philips made no answer.
    â€œDid I insult Goray?”
    â€œNo,” Philips said shortly. “Goray likes you.”
    â€œThen he is a man of great tolerance and easy affections. I was shouting at one point.”
    â€œYou were shouting at several points. Shouting is normal and natural, and better than