He saw rickety steps mounting upward and heard the heels of people tapping past along a sidewalk. Carefully he went up to a door and peered through the keyhole and saw a glass window at the front; a wan sun shone in the street; people passed to and fro and now and then a fragment of laughter or the whir of a speeding auto came to him. He squinted closer and saw yards of mosquito netting covering piles of pears, lemons, oranges, bananas, peaches, and plums. His mouth watered. Was anyone in the place? Naw; they would’ve heard me by now. . . . He pried off the lock and stepped inside. Across the front window, in reverse letters, was: NICK’S FRUITS. . . . He laughed, picked up a big, ripe, yellow pear and bit into it; juice squirted out of the corners of his mouth. A pleasant tingling set up in his throat as his saliva glands reacted to the acid of the pear. He ate three pears, then gobbled two bananas, and made away with several oranges, taking a big bite out of the tops and holding them to his mouth and squeezing them as he sucked the juice.

He found a faucet, turned it, and pursed his lips under the stream until his stomach seemed about to burst. He straightened and belched, feeling satisfied for the first time since he had been underground. He sat upon the floor and rolled and lit a cigarette, his blood-shot eyes squinting against a drifting film of smoke. Sitting, he watched the sky turn red, then purple. Night fell and he lit another cigarette, brooding over the insoluble questions which the experiences of the underground had given him. Restless melancholy made him rise and stand in front of the door; he hovered between the world aboveground and the world underground, pinioned upon the edge of a decision. He wanted to go out, but sober judgment urged him to remain; he spoke aloud in an agonizing voice: “Naw, I can’t go out! They’ll kill me . . .” Then he did a strange thing; he took out the crowbar and pried the lock loose with one swift twist of the wrist. The door swung outward and through the waning light he saw two people, a white man and a white woman, coming down the sidewalk; he stood immobile in the shadowy doorway and waited for them to pass. But they came directly to the door, paused, confronted him, smiling.

“I want to buy some grapes,” the woman said to him.

He stepped back into the store, terrified. The man who accompanied the woman stepped to one side and the woman entered the store.

“You’d better give me a pound of the dark ones,” the woman said, pointing.

“Why don’t you turn on the light in here?” the man asked.

“Were you just closing?” the woman asked quickly.

“Yes, ma’am,” he stammered. For a moment he did not breathe; then he stammered again: “Yes, ma’am.”