“Letting who run wild?”

“You know fucking well who, read the papers, these old ladies can’t even go outdoors in broad daylight with a pocketbook.”

Showalter, supple, worried, sidles around and intrudes himself. “White neighborhood isn’t exactly the point, we’d welcome a self-respecting black family, I went to school with blacks and I’d work right beside one any day of the week, in fact my company has a recruitment program, the trouble is, their own leaders tell them not to bother, tell them it’s a sellout, to learn how to make an honest living.” This speech has slid further than he had intended; he hauls it back. “If he acts like a man I’ll treat him like a man, am I way out of line on that, Eddie?”

Brumbach puffs up so his shirt pocket tightens on his cigarette pack; his forearms bend at his sides as if under the pull of their veins. “I fought beside the colored in Vietnam,” he says. “No problems.”

“Hey that’s funny you’re a Viet veteran too, this guy we’re kind of talking about—”

“No problems,” Brumbach goes on, “because we all knew the rules.”

Showalter’s hands glide, flutter, touch his narrow lapels in a double downward caress. “It’s the girl and the black together,” he says quickly, to touch it and get away.

Brumbach says, “Christ those boogs love white ass. You should have seen what went on around the bases.”

Rabbit offers, “That was yellow ass, wasn’t it? Gook ass?”

Showalter tugs at his arm and takes him aside, some steps from the mailbox. Harry wonders if anybody ever mails a letter in it, he passes it every day and it seems mysterious as a fire hydrant, waiting for its moment that may never come. He never hears it clang. In Mt. Judge people were always mailing Valentines. Brumbach at his little distance stared into space, at TV-aerial level, knowing he’s being discussed. Showalter says, “Don’t keep riding him.”

Rabbit calls over to Brumbach, “I’m not riding you, am I?”

Showalter tugs harder, so Harry has to bend his ear to the man’s little beak and soft unhappy mouth. “He’s not that stable. He feels very threatened. It wasn’t my idea to get after you, I said to him, The man has his rights of privacy.”

Rabbit tries to play the game, whispers. “How many more in the neighborhood feel like him?”

“More than you’d think. I was surprised myself. These are reasonable good people, but they have blind spots. I believe if they didn’t have children, if this wasn’t a children’s neighborhood, it’d be more live and let live.”

But Rabbit worries they are being rude to Brumbach. He calls over, “Hey, Eddie. I tell you what.”

Brumbach is not pleased to be called in; he had wanted Showalter to settle. Rabbit sees the structure: one man is the negotiator, the other is the muscle. Brumbach barks, “What?”

“I’ll keep my kid from looking in your windows, and you keep yours from looking in mine.”