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side of her mouth. “That boy’s a handful, I don’t mind telling you, a heavy burden, an’ it’s not just the name that does the tormentin’.” Wilson held the rear door open and Mrs. Fillmore backed in, found the rear seat, settled back for a moment, then lifted her heavy ankles around. “We’re not kin, if that’s what you’re thinking, Mr. Wilson,” she confided as they drove out of the parking lot. Willard Fillmore, next to Wilson in the front seat, small shoulders erect, sat alert on the edge of the seat as if being in front were a rare privilege. “Wouldn’t that be something?” his mother added in a girlish aside to her suspicious blond companion. “Being in Wash’n’ton an’ being kin to President Millard Fillmore?”
    â€œHa ha,” Willard said.
    There was a momentary delay from the rear seat as Mrs. Fillmore gathered her ordnance together. Leather creaked and an instant later Willard Fillmore took a salvo in the back of the head, delivered by a purse swung by its strap. “Don’t smart-talk me, mister,” his mother warned. “I done told you—I had enough.”
    â€œI heard tell of stranger things,” replied her companion fatalistically.
    â€œTell Mr. Wilson what President he was, Willard,” Mrs. Fillmore commanded.
    â€œThe thirteenth President,” Willard answered expertly, “only his name was Millard.” He turned to watch Wilson suspiciously.
    â€œWas he Republican or Demo—”
    â€œThere wasn’t no Republicans in them old days,” Willard said, the hostile eyes still fastened to Wilson’s face, awaiting his reaction.
    â€œHe’s sure got it learned by heart, don’t he, Mr. Wilson?” Mrs. Fillmore called in her loud beautician’s voice, the one she used for talking to a customer under a hair dryer five chairs away. “We was on Okinawa when Millard was born.”
    â€œWillard,” her son said immediately. “My name’s Willard.”
    â€œWillard. Did I say Millard? Lordy, I done forgot what I said. There I go again.” Mrs. Fillmore chuckled, but Willard’s expression didn’t change. “Anyway, like I was saying, we was on Okinawa when Willard was born and the names kinda went nice together, you know, the way they do sometimes, bein’ on the tip of your tongue that way, like Sears Roebuck.…”
    Wilson also heard Willard’s whispered voice from alongside, a seditious undertow attempting to drag him away from these backseat humiliations: “ Where’d you get this car, sucker? ”
    â€œâ€¦ an’ then when my husband Albert decided they just went together, that was that. So we named him Willard Fillmore, right there on Okinawa, not knowing all the time it was Millard Fillmore, the thirteenth President of the United States, we was thinking about all that time, something we clean forgot, me an’ Albert both.”
    Mrs. Fillmore laughed. “ You’re a loser, ” Willard was whispering, “ same as this here car. ”
    â€œâ€¦ an’ so we just had the birth certificate made up like that, right on Okinawa, right at the base hospital—Willard Fillmore.”
    â€œThem Japs don’t know nothing,” her companion said truculently.
    â€œâ€¦ an’ it wasn’t till we got back stateside that someone in the PX nursery school told me it wasn’t Willard I’d been thinking on at all back on Okinawa, but Millard—Millard Fillmore. Don’t that beat all, Mr. Wilson? I wisht I’d knowed my history better, don’t you? You ever lived overseas, Mr. Wilson?” Her voice drew closer as she held her cigarette out. “Here, pinch that out the winder for me, would you, son?”
    â€œYes, m’am.”
    Wilson opened the dashboard ashtray but Willard ignored it and pretended to blow lusty smoke rings for the benefit of a passing