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been in the sixth grade, he had walked home with Lucy. Now, he puffed his cigarette, and the sneer went off his face. He thought of the March day when he had walked home with her. He had walked home with her. All along Indiana Avenue, he had been liking her, wanting to kiss her. Now, he remembered that day as clearly as if it had just happened. He remembered it better than the day when he was just a punk and he had bashed the living moses out of that smoke who pulled a razor on him over in Carter Playground, and a gang of guys had carried him around on their shoulders, telling him what a great guy he was, and how, when he grew up, he would become the white hope of the world, and lick Jack Johnson for the heavyweight championship. He remembered the day with Lucy, and his memory of it was like having an awful thirst for a drink of clear cold water or a chocolate soda on a hot day. It had been a windy day in March, without any sun. The air had seemed black, and the sky blacker, and all the sun that day had been in his thoughts of her. He had had all kinds of goofy, dizzy feelings that he liked. They had walked home from school, along Indiana Avenue, he and Lucy. They hadn’t spoken much, and they had stopped every little while to look at things. They had stopped at the comer of Sixtieth, and he had shown her the basement windows they had broken, just to get even with old Boushwah, the Hunkie janitor, because he always ran them off the grass when they goofed on their way home from school. And she had pretended that it was awful for guys to break windows, when he could see by the look in her eyes that she didn’t at all think it so terrible. And they had walked on slow, pigeon-toed slow, slower, so that it would take them a long time to get home. He had carried her books, too, and they had talked about this and that, about the skating season that was just finished, and about the spelling match between the fifth- and sixth-grade boys and girls, where both of them had been spelled down at the first crack of the bat, and they had talked about just talk. When they came to the elevated structure near Fifty-ninth, he had shown her where they played shinny with tin cans, and she said it was a dangerous game, and you were liable to get your shins hurt. Then he had shown her where he had climbed up the girder to the top, just below the elevated tracks, and she had shivered because it was such a dangerous brave thing to do, and he had felt all proud, like a hero, or like Bronco Billy or Eddie Polo in the movies. They had walked home lazy, and he had carried her books, and wished he had the price to buy her candy or a soda, even if it was Lent, and they had stood before the gray brick two-story building where she lived, and he had wanted, as the devil wants souls, to kiss her, and he hadn’t wanted to leave her because when he did he knew the day would get blacker, and he would feel like he did when he had been just out of his diapers and he used to be afraid of the night. There had been something about that day. He had gone on in school, wishing and wishing for another one like it to come along. And now he felt it all over again, the goofy, dizzy, flowing feelings it had given him.
    He puffed, and told himself:
    Well, it’s so long to the old dump tonight!
    He wanted to stand there, and think about Lucy, wondering if he would ever have days with her like that one, wondering how much he’d see of her after she went to high school. And he goddamned himself, because he was getting soft. He was Studs Lonigan, a guy who didn’t have mushy feelings! He was a hard-boiled egg that they had left in the pot a couple of hours too long.
    He took another drag of his cigarette.
    He wanted that day back again.
    He faced the mirror, and stuck the fag in the right-hand comer of his mouth. He looked tough and sneered. Then he let the cigarette hang from the left side. He studied himself with satisfaction. He placed the cigarette in the