Finally he sat down on a bench in the Children’s Zoo and gazed at the silent, empty cage of the fallow deer. He was exhausted. He did not know what he would do tomorrow, or the next day, or any day after that.
After a while he rose and walked up the stairs to Fifth Avenue. A sidewalk newsstand stood to his left and he stopped to buy a newspaper, more as a gesture of tribute to his father than anything else, remembering how on that day long ago when he was still a child his father had defended the blind newsdealer, how he had struck out in the wild and hopeful gesture of a questioner of Cain.
Reardon pulled a ten-dollar bill from his wallet and placed it in the newsdealer’s hand. “ Daily News, please.”
“A single, sir?” the newsdealer asked.
Only then did Reardon see that the man was blind. For a moment he stared at the white, sightless eyes and the slight palsied trembling of the hand that held the bill.
“Yes,” he said, then, with an inexplicable feeling of resistance and renewal, “yes, it’s a single.”
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