Part 28 (2/2)
”If you want. ”
”I'm closer to you than anyone's been since your grandmother. Isn't that true?”
”Yeah. ”
”I should call you Dwight. In fact, I'm closer to you than your grandmother was. ”
”I guess so. ”
”And you know me better than anyone else does. ”
”Do I? I suppose I do. ”
”Then we need special names for each other. ”
”So call me Dwight. I like it.”
”And you call me-Billy. ”
”Billy?”
”Billy James Plover. ”
”Where'd you get that?”
”I was born with it. ”
”You changed your name?”
”Just like I did the accent. ”
”When?”
”A long time ago. ”
”Why?”
”I went to college up North. Didn't do as well as I should have done. Didn't get the grades I deserved. Finally dropped out. But by then I knew why I didn't make it. In those days, Ivy League professors didn't give you a chance if you spoke with a drawl and had a redneck name like Billy James Plover. ”
”You're exaggerating. ” ”How would you know? How in the h.e.l.l would you know? You've always had a nice white Anglo-Saxon Protestant Northern name. Franklin Dwight Bollinger. What would you know about it?”
”I guess you're right. ”
”At that time, all the Ivy League intellectuals were involved in a conspiracy of sorts against the South, against Southerners. They still are, except that the conspiracy isn't so broad or so vicious as it once was. Back then, the only way you could succeed in a Northern university or community was to have an Anglo-Saxon name like yours-or else one that was out-and-out Jewish. Frank Bollinger or Sol Cohen. You could be accepted with either name. But not with Billy James Plover. ” be accepted with either name. But not with Billy James Plover. ”
”So you stopped being Billy. ”
”As soon as I could. ”
”And did your luck improve?”
”The same day I changed my name. ”
”But you want me to call you Billy. ”
”It wasn't the name that was wrong. It was the people who reacted negatively to the name. ”
”Billy ...”
”Shouldn't we have special names for each other?”
”Doesn't matter. If you want. ”
”Aren't we special ourselves, Frank?”
”I think so. ”
”Aren't we different from other people?”
”Quite different. ”
”So we shouldn't use between us the names they call us by. ”
”If you say so. ”
”We're supermen, Frank. ”
”What?”
”Not like Clark Kent. ”
”I sure don't have X-ray vision. ”
”Supermen as Nietzsche meant. ”
”Nietzsche?”
”You aren't familiar with his work?”
”Not particularly. ”
”I'll lend you a book by him.”
”Okay. ”
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