“You think they’ll ever try?”
“That,” Coley answered, coming around his desk in the dark and standing beside Hank, “is not the question. The question is, Could they if they tried. And the answer is, They could. So long as that’s the answer, Hank, we need you where you are.”
“That’s your opinion?” Henry stared. “It’s darn beautiful out there.”
“Darned congested, too, Hank. And darned inflammable, if you want to think of that.”
The square, firm head of the chief accountant of a chain of hardware stores, the head of a father of a family, a husband, a citizen and a good neighbor was fixed for a while so its eyes could drink in the view; then a hand scratched its grizzled hair. “I know. I know all that stuff. I know it so well it sounds sometimes like jibberish. As if the meaning had gone out. Blast, heat, radiation, fire storm—all that. Nuts.”
“Nuts is the perfect word. Insane. Completely mad.”
“You mean people?”
“I mean people.”
Henry hardly knew how to say all that was on his mind. His deep respect for Coley Borden made him prefer to appear the easy-going, almost “folksy” kind of individual for whom he was generally taken. Lacking much formal education, he hesitated even to display the insights he had gained through reading and observation. Finally he put a question. “Know much about psychology, Coley?”
“Read a lot of books. Seems the psychologists don’t know too much themselves! Keep arguing…”