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would work, because he wanted to keep the money. But this time it was not real. It wasn’t a real game at all. It was only playlike. It wasn’t $2,000 at all, it was only a quarter and two half dollars both.
    And there was Mother watching him who didn’t think he loved her anymore. He could almost see her. Mother thought he was going to be like Tom. He could almost see her looking at him if he took the money.
    “Dad,” John said, looking at the silver moons. “Here, Dad,” he made himself extend his arm. “I don’t want your money.”
    His father stood looking down at him, his big face and the muscles around his eyes getting a crinkledy look that frightened John, and his eyes seemed to go out of focus and swing around back and forth behind themselves, from one side of John to the other. Then he took the coins and looked at them and put them in his pocket.
    “All right, buddyboy,” he said in a voice John could hardly hear. “Good night, old man.” Carefully with his big hands, gently, he turned off the light and went out of the room and slowly shut the door.
    That look on his father’s face still scared John a little, but it gave him great pleasure to know he was not like Tom. Mother would be proud of him. He can’t buy my affection, John thought proudly. I’m not like Tom.

The Way It Is
    Frederick L. Allen printed this one in the June 1949 Harper’s. We argued so much over it that Allen sent me back free the ms of the other story he bought, “Just Like the Girl,” saying he wasn’t up to it a second time. We argued over things like the fact that Allen wrote into my story a paragraph explaining it was Hawaii and Pearl Harbor. I refused to allow this. We argued over things like the abbreviation of lieutenant. I didn’t want a period after it. Allen wanted a period after it. We compromised by spelling it out.

I SAW THE CAR COMING down the grade and got up from the culvert. I had to push hard with my legs to keep the wind from sitting me back down. I stepped out into the road to stop him, turning my back to the wind, still holding the mess kit I had been scouring. Some of the slop of sand and grease dripped out of it onto my leg.
    Then I saw Mazzioli was on the running board and had his pistol out and aimed at the driver’s head. I tossed the mess kit, still full, over against the culvert and got my own pistol out.
    I couldn’t see the driver. It was hard to see the car in the red air of the dusk against the black of the cliff and with the cold wind pouring against my eyes. It was a foreign make, a runabout with strange lines and the steering wheel on the right-hand side. When it stopped Mazzioli jumped off the running board and motioned with his pistol.
    “All right,” he said in that thick voice. “Get out of there, you.”
    I knew the man when he climbed out. He used the road every day. He could have passed for a typical Prussian with his scraped jowls and cropped bullethead. He wore a fine tweed jacket and plus-fours, and his stockings were of ribbed wool and very fine. I looked down at my legging and kicked off the gob of sand and grease. It didn’t help much. I hadn’t even had my field jacket off for three weeks, since the bombing.
    “What’s up, Greek?” I said, peering through the deepening dusk. I had to yell to make it heard above the wind.
    “I hopped a ride down the hill with this guy,” he said woodenly. “All the way down he was asking me questions about the position. How many men? How many guns? Was there a demolition? What was the road-guard for? I mean to find out what’s the story.” He looked offended.
    I walked over to him so I could hear above the wind. He was a little Wop but very meaty. His father ran a grocery store in Brooklyn.
    “What do you figure on doing?” I asked. I thought I had seen the Junker before someplace, and I tried hard to make my mind work.
    Mazzioli waved his pistol at the standing man. “Git over there, you, and put your back to the cliff,” he