Newman turned and walked past the candy store, his eyes fixed straight ahead. A few houses past the store stood Mrs Depaw in the center of the sidewalk. As though preoccupied, Newman stepped into the gutter and started across the street. He was heading for the opposite curb and was just in the center of the macadam …

‘You! You ought to be ashamed of yourself!’ Her shrill old-woman’s scream seemed to reach across to him and scratch at his neck, but he went on to his sidewalk without turning and walked steadily to his house. When he got inside he stood clenching his right hand which was trembling. Staring in thought he walked into the dining room and stood looking into the mirror that hung over a potted plant.

He watched the scene that ensued that evening from his high front porch: before the house next to the candy store on the corner a dilapidated open truck was backed up. Behind it hung the setting sun as red as a skating ball. Mr Finkelstein’s head was showing above the side panels of the truck, and he was haloed by the sun as he directed the moving men who were edging a chifferobe to the truck’s tailpiece. It was an old chifferobe – the father-in-law’s furniture had finally arrived.

Motionless, Newman sat watching. In the back of his house his mother was settled at last at the open door of the kitchen trying to read the Times. He had just finished arguing with her for the fourth time today, for she could not understand why he refused to go back and make Finkelstein exchange the paper for an Eagle, and especially why he had taken a Times in the first place. He stuck to his new contention that the Times was better for her and had left her muttering in the kitchen.

Sitting in the heat now he wondered how he was going to pass the newsstand on the corner without taking his paper tomorrow. Of course he might simply stop and buy it as always, just as though nothing had happened. After all, he owed the poor Jew nothing, certainly not an explanation. But it was just possible that Fred or Carlson would be coming along as he was paying Finkelstein …

Through the corner of his eye he noticed a person stopping across the street. Carlson, he saw. The lean man, with a garden spade in his hand, was looking toward the corner at the unloading of the truck. He turned to Newman and with a jerk of his head toward the truck said, ‘Invasion’s on.’

Quickly, over-amiably, Newman called back across the street to him,’ So I see.’

They exchanged a mournful shake of the head and Carlson went up to his house.

Mrs Depaw stood in front of her house which was four nearer the corner than Carlson’s, and watered her lawn with a fine spray. Close to her cane sat her female spaniel lightly raising its muzzle toward the cooling water. Now and then Mrs Depaw glanced across the street at Newman. She never sprayed this late in the day, he knew.