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migrate to one’s lapels unobserved, or when he made change, which after thirty-seven years still required all his concentration. Particularly when he was daubing at the indigo stain on the rayon lining of Corporal Taylor’s tunic with a sponge dipped in a mixture of mineral spirits and naphtha—his own blend—he wondered about the bizarre lapse. There was no Army Air Corps installation near Detroit. Both the 182nd and the 177th Field Artillery regiments had shipped out months ago, leaving only the Quartermaster Corps at Fort Wayne to receive and store military vehicles produced at the automobile plants. Perhaps the young man had served overseas and been wounded, either physically or mentally, and was confused about details. Certainly there was an air about him that suggested something vital was missing.
    Rotten war. They were all rotten. It didn’t matter if they were endorsed by governments or cheap punk crooks. They were thieves of life and youth. They left ugly stains that all the mineral spirits and naphtha in the world could not eradicate.
    He left the tunic to hang overnight, inside out to dry completely and dispel the fumes, locked up, and struck off to board the streetcar home, carrying the White Owl cigar box with the Luger inside. He had become another of those old Jewish shopkeepers plodding along the sidewalk with their shapeless hats pulled low and all their ambitions reduced to the next square of concrete. Lately he had ceased even to think about that, had begun to become what he had beheld. His kind blended into the gray city background like lichens on a stump.
    He would never get used to the quietness of the street at that early hour of the evening. The day shift at the plants had let out an hour and a half ago, the night shift was well along. Gas and tire rationing had erased the weekday shopping and entertainment traffic from his neighborhood as effectively as alcohol erased tomato sauce from cotton. If he closed his ears to the bleating of the odd horn over on Woodward, the hollow whistles of the trains shuttling iron pellets and coils of copper wire and donated scrap back and forth across the grounds of the sprawling Rouge plant, he could imagine he was back in St. Petersburg, delivering bread and paper collars to customers of the shops in the narrow twisted streets that had known nothing but horses, carts, and sore feet since before Tamerlane. There, as here, the sudden scrape of a strange heel on pavement echoed off the brick walls as if it were immediately behind him, making the hair on the back of his neck prickle. His fingers tightened on the cigar box. It calmed him with its tactile reality, the reassuring weight of the German automatic resting inside.
    He heard the steps for a long time, not increasing in pace but faster than his so that they must overtake him unless he ran, and this he would not do, not at his age and station in life, not while he had a weapon. He assumed they belonged to someone who, like him, was on his way home from work. The man was in a hurry. A young man, then, with a wife awaiting him whom he loved. Probably his route was long and he was walking to save fuel and rubber and wear and tear on his automobile. Sid, who was not so pressed—why hasten home to empty rooms?—slowed his own pace and moved in close to the wall to give the fellow room to pass.
    When the footsteps behind him slowed as well, he turned to look over his shoulder. He felt relief when he saw the man was in uniform. It was only a G.I. hurrying to catch the streetcar and be back in barracks before taps. Then he recognized Corporal Taylor, and for some reason he felt a twinge of apprehension. He stopped and turned to confront it—and him.
    “Your uniform will be ready in the morning,” he said. “It must dry overnight, and then I need to press it. There is no use your hurrying what takes time to correct.”
    The young soldier had stopped in front of him. His briefcase was open and he had one hand