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Each takes him by the arm. Ben resists as they force him toward an automobile parked nearby. Another guy sits at the wheel. I am against the wall, watching. Ben calls out to me.
    I know the guy who slapped the girl. His name is Barney. He has been bragging a great deal about how tough he is. And how when it comes to women, he’s Rudolph Valentino. How he buys them Pink Ladies and pousse-cafés at the Blind Pig and then takes them to bed. Ben laughs at him. I know why. I have seen my brother, arm in arm, with any number of Barney’s girls, on his way to Dixieland. I have seen Barney,
turning around and around, bewildered and furious. And alone. On these occasions, as I lean against the wall, I always cross my fingers. I’m afraid Barney may do something desperate.
    Barney says he’s a member of the 42s; and Ben is gonna get it. Ben finds this brag and threat amusing. He tells me Barney is just a loudmouthed fake. Ben laughs; the 42s aren’t that desperate; they haven’t scraped the bottom of the barrel yet.
    The 42s are junior members of the Syndicate. It’s a farm club. What the Toledo Mud Hens are to the New York Giants. They graduate, if they prove their worth, into the big league. I have no actuarial table at hand, but I’ve a hunch 42 alumni seldom reach the biblical age of three score and ten. Ben may not have been scared a moment ago, but he is now. So am I.

    Two of my classmates at McLaren, Jimmy One and Jimmy Two, talk of one day achieving recognition in this society. They dream of the 42s as North Shore matrons dream of the social register. An older brother of one and a young uncle of the other, 42 alumni, are in the employ of Al Capone, one of our city’s most highly regarded citizens. The uncle, a few years later, was seen floating down the drainage canal. And no water wings. It was a strange place for him to have gone swimming. The waters were polluted even then.
    My companions chatter incessantly. They confide in me all their Horatio Alger dreams: hard and fanciful work, with its concomitant, the rise to the top, Virtue rewarded.
    I have no idea why they have chosen me as their confidant. Why not the parish priest? Perhaps it is because, during examinations, I shove my paper slightly to my right as I move in my seat slightly to my left. Jimmy One, who is seated behind me,
moves slightly to his right and leans forward, brow furrowed. He is properly attentive as he glances downward. When his paper is completed, he shoves it slightly to his right, as he moves in his seat slightly to his left. Seated behind him is Jimmy Two.
    Miss Henrietta Boone is delighted, though somewhat surprised, that Jimmy One and Jimmy Two do so well on these occasions. They pay so little attention during the rest of the semester. She prophesies: “In my crystal ball, I see three boys who will be successful young Americans, of whom we’ll all be proud.” She is Jeane Dixon.
    How have her predictions come out? Jimmy One and Jimmy Two graduate from McLaren and the 42s into the greater society of the Syndicate. Jimmy One, according to Billboard ’s latest communiqué, is doing well in the jukebox industry. Occasionally, he makes the financial page of the metropolitan daily. He is the grandfather of seven, and the father-in-law of a young physicist.
    Jimmy Two was doing magnificently in the field of fire and bomb insurance. His clients were, in the main, restaurants and taverns. One day, he met with an unfortunate accident. No one quite knows what happened. What is known is that Jimmy Two was found lying in some Chicago alley. The newspaper photograph, slightly fuzzy, shows him quite comfortable: He is staring up at the sky, though it is doubtful whether he sees much of its blue.
    And I, the third of Miss Boone’s favorite boys, am doing what I’ve done most of my life: listening to what people tell me.
    Aside from moments of perversity, which I find difficult to explain, I am agreeable to most people most of the time. I find in