“Yeah,” Stuart murmured, maintaining ‘his remoteness, doing his duty only, no more; he pushed the cart and that was all. Just because I’m pushing you, he thought, doesn’t mean I have to converse with you.

“The first time it happened,” the phoce went on, but Stuart cut him off.

“I’m not interested.” He added, “I just want to get back and see if they fired off the rocket yet. It’s probably in orbit by now.”

“I guess so,” the phoce said.

At the intersection they waited for the light to change.

“The first time it happened,” the phoce said, “it scared me.” As Stuart pushed him across the street he went on, “I knew right away what it was I was seeing. The smoke and the fires… everything all smudged. Like a mining pit or a place where they process slag. Awful.” He shuddered. “But is this so terrffic the way it is now? Not for me.”

“I like it,” Stuart said shortly.

“Naturally,” the phoce said. “You’re -not a biological sport.”

Stuart grunted.

“You know what my earliest memory from childhood is?” the phoce said in a quiet voice. “Being carried to church in a blanket. Laid out on a pew like a—” His voice broke. “Carried in and out in that blanket, inside it, so no one could see me. That was my mother’s idea. She couldn’t stand my father carrying me on his back, where people could see.”

Stuart grunted.

“This is a terrible world,” the phoce said. “Once you Negroes had to suffer; if you lived in the South you’d be suffering now. You forget all about that because they let you forget, but me-they don’t let me forget. Anyhow, I don’t want to forget, about myself I mean. In the next world it all will be different. You’ll find out because you’ll be there, too.”

“No,” Stuart said. “When I die I’m dead; I don’t have a soul.”

“You, too,” the phoce said, and he seemed to be gloating; his voice had a malicious, cruel tinge of relish. “I know.”

“How do you know?”

“Because,” the phoce said, “one time I saw you.”