The Wanton Troopers by Alden Nowlan

and placed them on the table, next to the sink, their freshly scrubbed chimneys gleaming.
    â€œWell, Mar,” Judd grunted.
    â€œHi, Judd. Pretty hot day at the mill.”
    â€œHot enough.”
    Judd threw his smock and overalls on a chair by the door and rolled up his shirt sleeves. Tiny bits of sawdust were caught in the reddish hair on his arms. He washed in cold water, head low, eyes shut, panting and spluttering.
    Kevin enjoyed watching his father wash. It was much more exciting to watch him shave, but that ritual he performed only on Sunday mornings. Kevin could almost tell the day of the week by the length of his father’s whiskers. This being Friday night, the whiskers were at their longest: a thick, reddish-brown moustache and beard.
    The man and the boy would have eaten in silence if the woman had not prodded them. Sometimes she spoke because their silence made her nervous and lonesome and sometimes simply because their quiet annoyed her.
    â€œScampi made a hundred in his test today,” she said.
    Judd ate with his face only inches from his plate, his shoulders rounded almost protectively over his food. He did not look at her when she spoke.
    â€œHe did, eh?”
    Kevin’s ear lobes burned. He was beginning to be embarrassed by his mother’s pet name. And, before his father, he was ashamed of his successes at school, sensing that the man despised such things. He had heard him say, scornfully, that if a calf were taken to school and kept there for twenty years it would still be a calf when it left. Judd himself had left school in Grade V, and when he said that a man acted like a college boy he meant that he was both a weakling and a fool.
    â€œYes,” Mary said. “He made a hundred in history.”
    â€œHuh.”
    â€œAren’t you proud of him?” she insisted.
    Kevin wished she would let the matter drop. He hated her nagging moods, the times when she would not let well enough alone.
    â€œIt ain’t nothin’,” he interjected.
    â€œGit me some more beans will yuh, Mar?” Judd asked, not as though he were trying to change the subject but as if he had already forgotten what the subject involved and had allowed it to slip out of his mind because, after all, it did not concern him.
    Without speaking, she rose and refilled his plate. Kevin hoped she would not speak of the test again. At the same time he felt hurt that his father had dismissed the matter so indifferently. In his father’s presence, he tacitly agreed that school work was a childish thing that deserved no share in the conversations of adults. But that afternoon he had run almost a mile, coming home from school, to wave his test paper under his mother’s eyes. The memory of that triumph remained. In spite of himself, he wished that his father would condescend to share in it.
    â€œJune Larlee was in today,” Mary said.
    â€œEh?”
    Judd had not been listening. When he ate, all his attention was concentrated on his food. He ate with his whole body, like a healthy animal.
    â€œI said June Larlee was in today.”
    â€œOh.”
    â€œShe said mebbe you and me’d like to go with her and Larry Hutchinson over to the dance in Larchmont tonight.”
    He scowled, picking his teeth with a fingernail.
    â€œShe did, eh.”
    â€œI said to stop in when she was going by. Mebbe we’d go. Anyway I’d talk it over with you, I said.”
    He rose abruptly and crossed to the cot where he sat down and unlaced his rubbers.
    â€œA man works all day in the mill he don’t feel much like kickin’ up his heels at a dance, Mar.”
    He removed his rubbers, kicked them under the cot, and lay down, grunting.
    â€œBut it’s just this once, Judd. You can get cleaned up in no time and I’ll press your suit and Grammie can stay with Scampi and —”
    He shut his eyes, cutting her off, pushing her out of his consciousness.
    Kevin stopped eating. His