These Dreams of You

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Zan knows he’s not the only one contemplating this. He’s not the only one nursing a fear terrible enough that no one wants to name or give voice to it, just as few could stand to name or give voice to the fear that accompanied another prospective president forty years ago whom Zan, as a freshman, saw in the campus quad. Something about such men lets loose in the country a fury which no one names and to which no one gives voice; but then if it comes to pass, will everyone be left to wonder whether it would have been better to say it out loud after all? Now some do, in whispers so that fate might not overhear. From the flattest part of the Texas Panhandle, Zan’s anarchist friend writes, I can’t stand him — and I pray for him every day.