His mother stepped about her kitchen, complaining in a low voice;
all day his father sat stooped at a sewing machine.
When he went to high school Webber was in his class.
Webber lived in a neighborhood where the houses are set in
        lawns with trees beside the gutters.
The boys who live there, after school, take their skates and
        hockey sticks and play in the streets until nightfall.
At twelve o’clock the boys ran out of school to a lunchroom around the corner.
First come, first served, and they ran as fast as they could.
Webber would run up beside him and knock him against the wall.
He tried not to mind and thought Webber would tire of it.
One day he hit Webber’s side; his fist fell off Webber’s overcoat. 
        Webber turned with a glad shout and punched him as he cowered.
His home was in a neighborhood of workingmen where there were few Jews.
When he came from school he walked as quickly as he could,
his head bowed and cap pulled low over his face.
Once, a few blocks from home, a tall lad stopped him.
“Are you a Jew? I knock the block off every Jew I meet.”
        “No,” he answered.
“I think you’re a Jew. What’s your name?” He told him,
glad that his name was not markedly Jewish and yet foreign 
        enough to answer for his looks.
“Where do you live?” He told him and added, “Come around 
        any old time and ask about me.” So he got away.
When he was through high school he worked in the civil
        service as a typist, taken on until a rush of business was over.
He took the test for a steady job, but his standing on the list was low,
unlikely to be reached for a long time, if ever before the new list.
Looking for work, he always came upon a group waiting for the job.
He was short and weak-looking, and looked peevish. 
        He could not get work for months.
At last an old German storekeeper wanted to hire him and
        asked at what he had been working. He told him.
“It doesn’t pay me to break you in, if you are going to leave
        me. Have you taken another civil service test? Are you 
        waiting for a new appointment?”
“No,” he answered.
In a few months a letter came to his home from the civil 
        service board, asking him to report for work as a typist, a
        permanent appointment.
There was no hurry, but his father did not know and so 
        brought the letter to the store.

There had been a boy in his class at school whose name was Kore.
Kore was short, too, but he had the chest of an old sailor and
        thick, bandy legs. He shouted when he spoke and was always laughing.
Kore moved into the block. With Kore he was not afraid to
        stand on the stoop after work or go walking anywhere.
Once they went to Coney Island and Kore wanted to go    
        bathing. It was late at night and no one else was in.
They went along the beach until they came to the iron pier the steamboats dock at.
Kore boasted that he would swim around the pier and slid 
        away into the black water.
At last the people were gone. The booths were long darkened.
He waited for Kore at the other side of the pier, watching the 
        empty waves come in.