Then Miss Hester stopped smiling. “You best git on back up front, Eddie.”

“No,” said Eddie. “I’m goin’ home.”

“You ain’t quittin’?” said Miss Hester.

“Yeah.”

“What for?”

“I donno. I just gotta go home.”

“But don’t your folk need the money?”

“No,” Eddie said.

He took off his blue smock and laid it on the big pile of fifty-pound potato sacks. “I’m goin’ home,” he said again. He did not look at his brother. He walked through the door and Thomas watched him walk slowly down the produce aisle and then out the front door, without looking at anything at all.

Then Thomas went over to the stack of potato sacks and pushed the blue smock off the top sack and into a basket on the floor next to the stack. He picked up a fifty-pound sack and lugged it over to the cart and tore it open with his fingers, spilling its contents of big and small dirty brown potatoes into the cart. He could feel Miss Hester’s eyes on him, on his arms and shoulders and hands as they moved. He changed the weights on the scale and began to put the potatoes into five-pound bags. He could feel Miss Hester’s eyes on his back as he worked. He worked very quickly and looked out the window into the store. Big Funk was supposed to come this afternoon. Thomas had finished seven five-pound bags before Miss Hester moved from where she had been standing behind him, and he knew she was about to speak.

“You going to quit too, Tommy?”

“No,” he said.

“I guess your folk do need the money now, huh?”

“No,” he said. “We don’t need the money.”

She did not say anything else. Thomas was thinking about Big Funk and what could be done with the time if he did not come. He did not want to think about his brother or his mother or the money, or even the good feeling he got when Milton Feinberg saw them buying the Saturday night groceries. If Big Funk did not come, then perhaps he could catch another glimpse of Do-funny before he left the store. The Rich Old Lady would not come again until next week. He decided that it would be necessary to record the faces and bodies of new people as they wandered, selectively, with their shopping carts beyond the big window glass. He liked it very much now that none of them ever looked up and saw him watching. That way he did not ever have to feel embarrassed or guilty. That way he would never have to feel compelled to nod his head or move his mouth or eyes, or make any indication of a greeting to them. That way he would never have to feel bad when they did not speak back.

VI