Dean Bakopoulos

Cougar, Zeke’s little brother, will be home on Labor Day weekend. Cougar’s in Iraq, and this lends Zeke an air of authenticity when he marches around campus demanding peace. He has a personal stake in the war. He isn’t some pansy from a long line of liberal professional peaceniks. Zeke’s blue-collar. His father was in Vietnam and made hot dogs at the meatpacking plant for twenty-six years. His mother manages an Old Country Buffet by the mall. And his brother is a Marine in Baghdad. When he waves his sign that says regime change begins at home, it’s about brothers. It’s about blood.

When he was twenty-nine years old, Charlie Pappas left Vermont and moved back to Detroit after suffering from what—in a more innocent, big-band-playing, hat-wearing era—would have been called a crack-up.