The book is six chapters long . Chapter one is entitled " Tricky comforts a troubled citizen " . In the chapter , the citizen in question is concerned with William Calley 's killing of twenty-two Vietnamese villagers at My Lai , but he is " seriously troubled by the possibility that Lieutenant Calley may have committed an abortion " . Throughout the chapter , Dixon defends the notion that Calley may have killed a pregnant woman , covering many factors ; If the pregnant woman was showing or not , if Calley could have communicated with her , if he really did know she was pregnant , whether the woman asked Calley to give her an abortion or not , etc . Trick E. Dixon manages to defend Calley well until the citizen asks if Calley could have given her an abortion against her will , as " an outright form of murder " , and Dixon gives the following answer , which is supposed to reflect his background as a lawyer and his hard-to-pin-down nature : Well , of course , that is a very iffy question , is n't it ? What we lawyers call a hypothetical instance — is n't it ? If you will remember , we are only " supposing " there to have been a pregnant woman in the ditch at My Lai to begin with . Suppose there " was n't " a pregnant woman in that ditch — which , in fact , seems from all evidence to have been the case . We are then involved in a totally academic discussion . In chapter two , entitled " Tricky holds a press conference " , Dixon takes questions from reporters with names to suit their respective personalities . The reporters are called Mr. Asslick ( who , as his name suggests , " sucks up " to the President ) , Mr. Daring ( who poses , as suggested , the more daring suggestions in the style of investigative journalism ) , Mr. Respectful ( who acts rather meekly compared to some of his compatriots ) , Mr. Shrewd ( who , being slightly more daring than Mr. Daring , suggests President Dixon may be giving voting rights to the unborn for purely political reasons ) , Miss Charming ( the typical female reporter often stereotyped in media as ' charming ' indeed ) , Mr. Practical ( concerned not with the politics of the situation , but the when and the how much of the situation )
My Lai
My Lai Massacre
Our Gang (novel)