From out of the house into which the furniture was being moved came the old man with the gray beard. Following him, Morton and Shirley burst out of the house and ran screaming to Finkelstein who was standing beside the truck. He slapped Shirley, nine years old, and she ran into the house. Morton, who was eleven, stood watching the movers beside his father and grandpa.

And now – Newman nodded knowingly as he watched them – the old man will bring his chair out onto the front grass and read a Jewish paper, and in a few months another family will move in and in a year-people on the block will be selling their houses. Perhaps Fred was right; they had to be gotten out of the neighborhood. And yet they did have a right to live where-ever …

A screen door slammed close to his ear. He turned to see Fred from next door lumbering out of his house, hitching his pants up over his hard bulging stomach. A new cigar was in his mouth; he had just finished supper. Arching his back for comfort he stood looking toward the truck at the corner. Then he turned to Newman whose porch was separated from his by a low brick barrier. To Newman he always looked stuffed after eating, and somehow brutal with the new cigar tilted upward and the teeth showing under the squinty, puffed eyes.

Facing Newman he just jerked his head once toward the truck. Newman set his lip angrily and shook his head.

Without a word Fred came to the railing and slinging his. thigh onto it settled with his back against the house.

Uneasiness took hold of Newman. His palms grew slimy against the arms of the beach chair.

‘Have a chair,’ he said to Fred, one neighbor to another, and took off his glasses.

Fred swiveled around on the brick barrier and came over. He sat lithely on the other beach chair and leaned back looking at the sky over the flat line of roofs across the street. The sun was down now behind the truck, which cast a long shadow from the corner. Fred blew smoke which hung around his head, then turned and brought his buried eyes to bear on Newman’s face. Newman felt his heart starting ahead. He had never been able to tell what Fred was feeling because his eyes showed only glints.

‘Got yourself some specs, eh?’ Fred suctioned a particle of food from between two teeth, eyeing the glasses.

‘Yeh, just got them,’ Newman replied lightly, turning them in his hands.

Fred stretched out his legs and crossed them. ‘I can read signs a mile away. I eat vegetables.’ He gazed over the roofs again.

‘Vegetables ? They never helped me,’ Newman said, eagerly.

‘Raw, I mean. Ever notice dogs? When they start losing sight they go and eat grass. Watch my dogs sometime.’

‘I thought they ate grass for constipation.’

‘Constipation always goes with bad sight,’ Fred said with authority.