“However,” the teacher went on, “I do think I have a right to expect the very best you’re capable of. Whatever you may have thought about English up to now, however deadly dull you may have considered it, I think you’re going to change your minds. For I happen to believe that English is not only one of the most important subjects in the world, but also—”

“Niggers get the hell out!”

The voice filtered in sharply through the open window. Miss Angoff stiffened, but went on. Joey watched her.

“Sentence construction will be abandoned in this course, and we will instead concentrate on—”

“Harley Paton’s a no-good nigger-lovin son of a bitch!”

Miss Angoff paused; then, calmly, she walked to the window, closed it, and returned to her place by the desk.

Her voice was a bit strained now, and forced. “We will concentrate instead on usage. Correct usage.”

Joey gripped the edge of the desk and said nothing. His blood was on fire, but he said nothing.

If this woman could control herself, so could he.

For a while, anyway. . . .

Tom McDaniel returned to the Messenger office in a hurry. He opened the door and walked over to the old man who’d worked in the building as long as there had been a building.

“Jack.”

The room looked more like a stationery store than a news­paper office. There were two glass display cases, each containing pen and pencil sets, erasers, maps of the town, rulers, typewriters. Tom’s den was in a small room to the right. The secretaries worked behind the store.

“You have a customer this morning?” Tom asked.

Jack Allardyce looked up. “What?”

“Did you have a customer today?”

“Yeah. Young fella. He was waiting when I opened.”

“Young fella. With dark hair, a dark suit on?”

“Uh huh.”

“What’d he buy?”

“Why—some poster paper, I think. Yes. And some ink. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Tom said. He wheeled and walked quickly into his den.

He moved the mountainous debris on his desk aside, inserted a yellow sheet of paper into the typewriter, and thought for a moment. Then he typed: The Way We Look At It. And paused again.

He ripped the paper out, spinning the platen, and crushed it into a yellow ball in his hands.

He lit a cigarette.

Calm down, he told himself. What are you getting so excited about? You expected a display, didn’t you? A bigger one than this. It was perfectly orderly, wasn’t it?

Calm down.

Just a little reaction, nothing else to it. Never write when you’re mad. Think things out. Then write.

Everything’s fine. . . .

In a short while he was breathing regularly again. Then Jack Allardyce poked his thatched head in. “How’d it go?” he asked.

“What? Oh. A little shouting, that’s all. It went all right.”

“It did, huh? I’ll be damned.”