Bugs (White)
by John White

THE STORY: As Harry Gilroy of The New York Times describes the author's handling, ”He starts with the living room of a plain little house, brightened with careful housekeeping and with the presence, in blushing pink curlers and dress of the lady of the house.

Then her blundering son comes home from the 'school'—really a correctional institution where he has been put for accidentally shoving a woman off a bridge, although he dived in vain to save her.

The young man is obsessed with bugs, 'huge big bugs,' that always come at him just when he is trying to think big things about God or something.

His mother and a pitiful weak flower of a girl want to help him.

His father, fanatically devoted to his beer and newspaper when he comes home from the soul-destroying job in a factory, never notices him.

At the end a social worker comes to take the young man back to his school.

The mother and girl go to the church that gives them the only hope there is in life.

The father impotently circles the room in a raging cry for freedom from all nuisances and finally hurls himself on a couch in a kind of apoplectic fit that will one day, certainly, carry him off.”