ELANTHEROS, THE MAN

WHO IS FREE by Herbert Hartrum

He sat on the step behind the black iron fence next to the gate. He wore old shoes, trousers, concealed from the hips up by his shirt, its sleeves rolled up over fat, hairy arms, its fabric straining over his protruding belly.

He sat there in the tiny courtyard of grey concrete in New York and thought of himself. He would look at the drain situated about the middle of his hard, cracked courtyard. He would look down at the little dog next to him. He would touch the animal and say "Ginger," to which the animal would respond with a look up at him, a thrust of a tongue, a succession of gasps, and a flutter of a tail.

He would look from the animal toward Lexington Avenue, its traffic, its pedestrians, and half see the church squatting like a secure fortress on the corner across the avenue, and the even more permanent appearing building on another corner, consisting of columns and the inscription "New York School of Design." He was no part of these buildings nor of the institutions they housed.

He sat there comfortably on his substantial haunches, there on the hard concrete, not needing to think, not now, in New York, where he had a job, a place to live, $72 saved in the bank since he had arrived, and people were nice to him . . . his boss, the landlady, the bus drivers, the good grey newsdealer at the corner.

So he sat there alone, but not lonesome, and leaned against the hard iron spokes of the fence, not feeling them against his fleshy back. All New York was his friend and he could sit there as long as he wished... free from crossexaminations, looks, silences, criticisms, scorn... free from the ridicule of backwoods small-town barbed wire. He felt a glow, an exhilaration as he remembered that he was rid of the hate and bitterness he had so long endured at the hands of those who "loved" him.

As he patted his pet Ginger's head, three boys came around the corner and strutted down his street. He looked at them out of the corners of his eyes. They did a saunter dance as they moved along. It was a New York walk, he thought. Their gleaming shoes were six points, carried forward by six thighs, tightly panted and as heavy as their waists. Their hair was carefully disheveled across their foreheads. Their young, slovenly lips emitted grunts, mono-syllabic noises as they communicated their rapport, comradeship, their bravado, their safety in numbers.

He fingered Ginger's head and looked at them, but he did not turn his head. When they were out of sight, his right foot, suspended in air near the knee of his left leg, jumped of its own accord. He looked at the foot. He sighed. He breathed inward and licked his lips. Ginger at his side panted vigorously and wagged its tail.

He got up and walked between the buildings which delimited the courtyard of his new kingdom, turned to his dog and motioned him to come, waited for him to come along, opened the black door to his castle back between the

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