Now Mr Newman was coming down the street in his direction. He saw him slowing before his neighbor – the hunter’s – house and look at it. Then Mr Newman turned and looked across the street at Mr Carlson’s house. After a moment he came on down the street toward Mr Finkelstein, his eyes scanning the garbage cans as he passed them.

He had never seen Mr Newman so upset. The man’s right hand was half raised as he walked, and it shook visibly. Mr Finkelstein watched as he drew nearer. His distraction was so terrible that Finkelstein could not help but feel sympathy. When Newman came to within ten yards of the stand, Finkelstein assumed the blank stare which he had lately learned to cultivate, and waited for Newman to pass him by. But the man halted beside him.

Leisurely, Mr Finkelstein looked up. Newman’s lower lip, he saw, was quivering like a live clam. His eyes were blinking rapidly as though to clear away a dream.

‘They kicked mine around too,’ he said, and motioned toward his own garbage pail which stood twenty feet away.

Mr Newman looked at Finkelstein’s garbage pail and then turned back to him. He started to speak but his throat clogged. He cleared it and whispered huskily,’ Who did it?’

Finkelstein laughed. ‘Who? Who always does it? The Christian Front.’

He studied the jerky squirming of Mr Newman’s lower lip.

‘You think they did, eh?’ Mr Newman said, absently.

‘Who goes around kicking over garbage pails but those bums? Decent people don’t do that.’

‘It could have been some children,’ Mr Newman said, his voice deadened.

‘It could have been but it wasn’t,’ Mr Finkelstein laughed. ‘I didn’t go to sleep till one o’clock last night and I got up before five … I shaved this morning. Between one and five you don’t find children going around the streets. Don’t worry, it was the Front.’

Mr Newman’s face started getting red. And Mr Finkelstein could not tell whether it was anger or fear pumping up his blood. He decided to risk the question.

‘But you got nothing to worry about, Mr Newman. By you it was probably a mistake.’

Mr Newman turned to him quickly. But he saw that Mr Finkelstein’s little black eyes were filled only with curiosity and no conviction at all that it was a mistake; he, too, was merely asking. Newman stood there, absently smoothing down his vest, and then walked on toward the subway.

Finkelstein watched him go. A very neat and tidy man, he thought, as he watched Newman in his immaculate blue suit disappearing around the corner – a clean man. It probably only bothers him because they dirtied his yard.

He smiled to himself again and sat on his camp chair. After the morning rush was over he took the yellow paper out of his shirt pocket, unfolded it carefully, and adjusting his horn-rimmed glasses to midway down his nose, read it again.

‘Jew, if you don’t get out of this neighborhood in five days you’ll wish you never was born.’