This sort of stuff depressed everybody, but it depressed the shit out of Bobby.
"Why are people so goddam mean?" he asked me one day. We were at the summer place in New Hampshire, it was late August, and most of our stuff was already in boxes and suitcases. The cabin had that sad, deserted look it always got just before we all went our separate ways. For me it meant back to New York, and for Bobby it meant Waco, Texas, of all places... he had spent the summer reading sociology and geology texts - how's that for a crazy salad? - and said he wanted to run a couple of experiments down there. He said it in a casual, offhand way, but I had seen my mother looking at him with a peculiar thoughtful scrutiny in the last couple of weeks we were all together. Neither Dad nor I suspected, but I think my mom knew that Bobby's compass needle had finally stopped swinging and had started pointing.
"Why are they so mean?" I asked. "I'm supposed to answer that?"
"Someone better," he said. "Pretty soon, too, the way things are going."
"They're going the way they always went," I said, "and I guess they're doing it because people were built to be mean. If you want to lay blame, blame God."
"That's bullshit. I don't believe it. Even that double-X-chromosome stuff turned out to be bullshit in the end. And don't tell me it's just economic pressures, the conflict between the haves and have-nots, because that doesn't explain all of it, either."
"Original sin," I said. "It works for me - it's got a good beat and you can dance to it."
"Well," Bobby said, "maybe it is original sin. But what's the instrument, big brother? Have you ever asked yourself that?"
"Instrument? What instrument? I'm not following you."
"I think it's the water," Bobby said moodily.
"Say what?"
"The water. Something in the water."
He looked at me.
"Or something that isn't."
The next day Bobby went off to Waco. I didn't see him again until he showed up at my apartment wearing the inside-out Mumford shirt and carrying the two glass boxes. That was three years later.
"Howdy, Howie," he said, stepping in and giving me a nonchalant swat on the back as if it had been only three days.
"Bobby!" I yelled, and threw both arms around him in a bear-hug. Hard angles bit into my chest, and I heard an angry hive-hum.
"I'm glad to see you too," Bobby said, "but you better go easy. You're upsetting the natives."
I stepped back in a hurry. Bobby set down the big paper bag he was carrying and unslung his shoulder-bag. Then he carefully brought the glass boxes out of the bag. There was a beehive in one, a wasps' nest in the other. The bees were already settling down and going back to whatever business bees have, but the wasps were clearly unhappy about the whole thing.
"Okay, Bobby," I said. I looked at him and grinned. I couldn't seem to stop grinning. "What are you up to this time?"
He unzipped the tote-bag and brought out a mayonnaise jar which was half-filled with a clear liquid.
"See this?" he said.
"Yeah. Looks like either water or white lightning."
"It's actually both, if you can believe that. It came from an artesian well in La Plata, a little town forty miles east of Waco, and before I turned it into this concentrated form, there were five gallons of it. I've got a regular little distillery running down there, Howie, but I don't think the government will ever bust me for it." He was grinning, and now the grin broadened. "Water's all it is, but it's still the goddamndist popskull the human race has ever seen."
Chapter 4
"I don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about."
"I know you don't. But you will. You know what, Howie?"
"What?"
"If the idiotic human race can manage to hold itself together for another six months, I'm betting it'll hold itself together for all time."
He lifted the mayonnaise jar, and one magnified Bobby-eye stared at me through it with huge solemnity. "This is the big one," he said. "The cure for the worst disease to which Homo sapiens falls prey."
"Cancer?"
"Nope," Bobby said. "War. Barroom brawls. Drive-by shootings. The whole mess.
Where's your bathroom, Howie? My back teeth are floating."
When he came back he had not only turned the Mumford tee-shirt right-side out, he had combed his hair - nor had his method of doing this changed, I saw. Bobby just held his head under the faucet for awhile then raked everything back with his fingers.