Above them a fiery blue sky. He kept looking up at it, while next to him the boy struggled with the handcart. Josef was training him. The boy was supposed to handle the deliveries on his own soon, then Josef could go back to the heated print shop.

As often as they’d delivered to the American Nazi Party’s headquarters, every time they went the address seemed to have moved a few buildings down. His eyes searched the storefronts. Sam’s Famous Pizzeria. Barber shop. Smoke shop. Then finally Nancy’s Beauty Parlor, a salon that specialized in hair straightening. In the doorway it smelled of food. Without a word, the hairstylist, a Negro woman, pointed to the back. He touched a finger to the brim of his hat. They had to go one floor up. A nest of cigarette butts on the floor helped him find the door. No sign anywhere. The Party operated in secret.

He knocked four times—that’s what they’d worked out with Stahrenberg. The door opened. Stahrenberg extended his hand in the Hitler salute. Josef stared at his tiepin, a metal swastika. The boy hastily placed the bundle of flyers on the table. Josef had Stahrenberg sign.

In the hair salon a toddler had appeared and was pressing his nose against the windowpane. He turned to them and pointed an outstretched finger at Josef, laughing. “We used to print greeting cards,” Josef said sheepishly to the hairstylist. She didn’t respond.

Smoke hung in the air. The metallic winter sun was like a molten lump of coal in the sky. At the 116th Street subway station they carried the cart down the rusty stairs.

The train was packed. He told the boy to lean against the doors and keep a firm grip on the handcart. He himself stood in the middle. With effort he reached a grab handle and hung on tight as the movement of the train pulled his ribs apart.

It was just six stations, but when they reemerged into daylight, suddenly the old world had been swapped out for a new one, poor for rich, shabby for ornate. They stood in a ravine of twelve-story buildings that radiated might. Turrets and gables, castles soaring into the sky. Park Avenue.

He was nervous. A flyer meant for the Negro leader Samuel Jordan, DON’T BUY WHERE YOU CAN’T WORK, had been sent by mistake to the elegant Mrs. Dollings, director of the Park Avenue Patriots, while their flyer, AMERICA FOR WHITE PEOPLE, had been sent to Jordan. The boy had mislabeled the parcels. Arthur had screamed at the boy so viciously that he hadn’t said a word since.