sight that made his throat turn over. As he drove by, the man was looming up in front of him, standing, hands in pockets, on the lawn and wearing a veteran's organization jacket. It meant he had come through the worst part of the Normandy campaign, knew how to hold his breath in foxholes for hours at a time and then sneak out to slit a throat in silence. He was skilled as a foot fighter and went always with deadly[Pg 53] accuracy to a man's groin. Stern pictured him at veteran beer parties, drawing laughs with stories of the kike who'd moved in down the way a mile. He'd probably had one in his outfit, a thin and scholarly dark fellow who'd slowed down campaigns. No amount of brotherhood shows would ever make a dent in his veteran's jacket.

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Frightened of the jacket, Stern realized that he had never really seen the man's face, that he knew only the heaviness of his arms, an inclination of the head, and a certain wetness at the mouth. A mailbox lay opposite the man's house, and one night Stern saved a letter and stopped his car on the corner near the box. His glasses off, he inflated his chest for an appearance of power, flexed his soft arms, and trotted to the mailbox, where he slipped in the letter, and then, facing the man's house now, trotted back to his car. Stern, his glasses on the seat, could see only that the man was hooked over his car engine and that, as he trotted back to the car, the man came out of his hook and inclined his head. But, trotting as he was, Stern could make out no details of the man's face and remained in ignorance of his features. Another night the man was nowhere in sight and Stern's eyes fixed on the license plates of his car, the two first letters registering "GS." For some reason, Stern, though he looked at the plates for several nights running, could not commit the numbers to memory. But he remembered the letters and made up a organization they might have stood for, Guardian Sons, a group of twenty who sat around on Monday nights and cackled over kikes. Each time Stern saw a prewar car with "GS" letters he was certain it was the man, just coming from a meeting, his glove compartment filled with leaflets. He seemed to see such cars everywhere. Driving past the man's house, he wondered whether he might be able to steal back in dead of night and destroy the car, dismantling the wiring, and[Pg 54] then make it back to his own house undetected. Or could police always pick up evidence of footsteps and tire tracks? And was the man a light sleeper, nerves sharpened by combat, waiting coiled and ready to leap forward and slit throats with commando neatness?

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