He crossed the street to the opposite sidewalk and went on, ignoring the gawking, the one who applauded. He passed a billiards parlor and the smell of fried meat but it was brightly lit and full of men and youths and he felt leery and strange, without his pins straight beneath him. He went on uphill away from the river and closer toward the main street and found a small café with a sign in English and sat at a bench-laid table and ordered a plate of beans and ham from the woman and ate it with sliced loaf-bread. Then went on filled and more at ease into the brightly lit central part of the city and near the opera house found an open drugstore with a soda fountain and he loafed there awhile, leafing through magazines off the rack and eyeing people at the counter. They seemed to him much the same as Randolph people and he made no effort to join them or even to sit at the counter. They all knew one another and he knew this was not where he belonged, knew he’d find the like of them everywhere and each place would be the same to him. And knew there was something else running through this town and all others where he’d fit and flourish but did not yet know what it was. The youth behind the counter was watching him now and so was an older man behind the cash register. So he walked to the counter and purchased a pack of Chesterfields and a box of matches and tipped his forefinger to his forehead and went out into the night.

Back in the neighborhood of his rooming house he slowed down, watching the movement and flow on the street. After a time he went up an alleyway where others entered and came right back out and there bought a pint of whiskey from an old woman who sat in a rocking chair in a darkened doorway while three younger men sat at a table behind her smoking, their faces blank as she took his money and reached into a rag-covered basket by her feet for the pint. On the table before the men was a cashbox with iron straps, a coffeepot and tin cups, a young puppy sleeping on its side and a baseball bat. He put the whiskey in his coat pocket and sat on the steps of a rooming house two doors down from his own and broke open the cigarettes and smoked one slowly. From time to time he dipped his head down to his coat and sipped at the whiskey. After a time he went up the sidewalk to the house where he’d seen the girl in the navy dress. There was a family out on the stoop but she was not among them. He tried to talk to them but they had no English. The woman was suckling an infant and she turned her head away from him and it seemed to him her shame was not her breast but something of his query.