I stood up. Jones, making a gesture that clearly set him apart, put a quarter on the flat collection stone as he got up to join me. We strolled off through the dusk in the park, quietly. Jones, even in a state of some unease, was a comfortable presence. Over on the Broad Street side of the Yard, we sat down on a bench. "Don't rightly know how to begin," Jones said, scratching his head with a fielder's-mitt-sized hand, "but--Ed, I expect you noticed something funny about Stanley? Or maybe about me?" "I noticed that sometimes I see Stanley and sometimes I don't. And that sometimes you act as though you see him when he positively is not there." "Um, yes. Makes you kind of unusual too, Ed. Because with Stanley it is mostly like this--when he is around, I mean. There are people who see him; a few. But most people, they can't see Stanley at all. With you, seems like it changes. Uptown you can't see him; down here you can." "What?" "Now me, I see him most all the time. All the time when he's around, that is; when he hasn't gone off someplace, like tonight. But most people, what you might call really normal people--no offense, Ed--they can't ever see Stanley." * * * * * It sounded silly. But Jones said it with a calm conviction that carried weight. If I couldn't believe it exactly, I didn't disbelieve him either. You hear plenty of queer stories on skid row--dreams, nightmares, nonsense. There used to be one crummy, rummy old bum around called Gov'nor who used to claim he really had been a governor. He drank down some office duplicator fluid and died. Police routine checked. He was an ex-governor. Probabilities eliminate no remote possibilities; if you flip a coin long enough, someday it will stand on edge. "How do you figure that?" I asked Jones. "I don't want to sound like I think I am a brain," Jones said. "I only read some. But these men down here--you might say, couldn't you, that they are maybe men who don't have much of a hold on the world any more?" "True." "And the world holds them mighty lightly. They are nothing. Nobody pays them attention. They are outside of everything. They are pretty much outside the world, even. Now you, Ed--you are mostly a part of the normal world. But one time you were all the way on down here, right? So you--" "I have a feeling for it? Something like that?" "Something like that. And so down here you are like the others; you can see Stanley. Uptown, you couldn't see him." "Sounds nuts. But how? Why?" "That goes back, way back. Stanley and me, we were kids together. Stanley, his people were what down there they call 'trash.' Fourteen, fifteen kids. Who was whose pa, who would know? Or care? And Stanley, he was kind of the runt of the whole litter. Nobody paid him any mind. He never talked much 'cause nobody listened. Got to be a real dopey, dreamy, moody kid. Not ever sick, but sickly. He was more like nothing than any kid I ever did see.