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Show Anting Alone Page 330 pale worm of a finger objecting merely to Spikey's category? Or could the worm have been stimulated into motion by Chaplain Wagstaff Bopp's "secular homily," that rang so clearly in Sam's ear now? Within arm's reach of Spikey, Sam's nose was sending urgent danger signals upstairs, and, in response, Sam's brain had kicked back into hypnogogic states as a means of passive self-defense. Sam's brain was no longer distinguishing between spoken language and tacit thought, nor between Sam's own speech/thought and that which spurted so randomly from the little rosebud of Bopp, amplified so shrilly over the cheap Franciscan PA system. Bopp and Edwine began to form a very incongruous, half-spoken, half-thought mixture. And Sam's equivocation over this moment's morality, or lack thereof, began to take • * * a form similar to the following: It is true, sisters, that we feel not even one single twitch of compassion for this Marine stegosaurus, nor, verily, for any Marine stegosaurus you'd care to point out on the street or on the artillery range. For we, as Christians, cannot abide these military types, not even the distinguished ones like Sgt. Spikewell here, whom our own countrymen revere as heroes, saints almost. Spikewell's unfortunate case, we fear, is somewhat similar to that of the Vietnam vets who whine that nobody in America loves them. Why love, why even abide them? What possible excuse, sisters, could the vets have for their behavior? They killed people, you know. Let us give them every possible benefit of the doubt. Let us say that they were brought up in some hideously deprived household (as was our unfortunate Spikewell here): say, a remote farmhouse lorded over by an |