“I am so, too,” Reggie said, looking at both of us. Words were beginning to arouse emotion and link with emotion. The sneer was no longer imitation. He stood bearing his weight on his left foot, his hands in the pockets of his khaki shorts, the whiteness of him showing in a streak just below the hairline, the rest of him—bare trunk, bare legs—tanned almost to the color of my son. “No, son,” I said, as much to the one as to the other. I think I felt sorry for Reggie too. I do now at any rate, thinking back. “You are not,” Conway said, and straightened. “My daddy says you aren’t.” “You don’t go to my school, you don’t go to my church, you don’t go to the movies I go to. I bet you never even seen Tim Holt,” he put in parenthetically, “and that’s because you’re not good enough. Yah-yah!” Reggie said. “Niggers work for us, niggers work for us, you’re a nigger and Trixie’s a nigger and Trixie works for us.” It was a shrilling singsong. “Yah-yah nigger nigger, go peddle your papers, nigger!” With this he ran off, back, I suppose, to Trixie, who worked for him because she was a nigger. Conway did not cry, but in his eyes was the look of a wound, and I knew how it could grow, become infected and pump its poison to every tissue, to every brain cell. He stayed close to me while I made market. On the way home, he said savagely, “I hate this car!” It did not seem like any kind of entree to what I knew I must talk about, and the sooner the better. When what happened to him happens it makes a nasty wound which demands immediate attention. You want a knife to do the job quickly, deftly, cleanly, but the only instruments in the surgery kit are words. So when I wanted to know what was wrong with the car and why he hated it, and he said, “Why can’t we have a good car, a new one with a radio, and a bigger one—like Reggie’s?” I tried to explain to him that it was wartime, that cars were scarce and prices high, and that in order to get a new car you had to do something a little underhanded, something that was not much different from stealing or cheating. “Did Reggie’s father steal?” “I wouldn’t say that,” I said, “but I wouldn’t put it past him. He’s not a good man.” “How do you know? You don’t know him, do you?” “No,” I said, “but I don’t have to know him to know he’s not a good man.” I put it as simply as I could. I told him that parents are frequently reflected in their children. I made him laugh a little by reminding him of the time, when he was six, he had acutely embarrassed his mother and me by telling one of our friends, “I think you have store-bought teeth,” which was exactly what he had heard me say about the friend. “Those things Reggie said today, his father said to him. That’s how I know Reggie’s father is not a good man.” “He wasn’t telling the truth, was he?” “No,” I said, shaking my head. “I mean about him being better?” “No,” I answered. “Then why can’t I go to his school and to his movies?”