Discouraged by his lack of employment options, the protagonist walks the streets one winter day. After buying roasted yams from a street vendor, a Southern food that makes him homesick, he comes across an elderly Black couple being evicted from their apartment by Irish policemen. A crowd gathers, angry at the way the tenants are being treated. The onlookers become increasingly angry and threaten violence when one of the policemen pulls out a gun. The protagonist gets in front of the crowd and makes an impromptu speech to try and calm the onlookers down. His words, although they seem to be urging the crowd to comply with the police, are actually intended to shame the police for throwing the couple out into the cold, and the crowd rushes the policeman with the gun, causing him to run away. The crowd picks up the elderly couple’s belongings from the street and take them back in to the apartment.

More police officers arrive to subdue the crowd, and the protagonist slips away from the scene into the apartment building, where a White woman tells him how to get to the building’s roof. She tells him he can travel from roof to roof until he gets safely away, and makes a cryptic reference to the speech he made outside, saying that he’ll be more “effective” if he gets away from the police (284).