Sleep blurring his aged eyes, Rudolph shuffled to the window. The ragged slippers chaffed his bunion and made him swear. Few things didn’t make him swear these days. But at least his hearing was good, and he wanted to know what the commotion was in the alley.

Rudolph carefully nudged aside the lace curtains, the ones his wife Gertie, God rest her soul, had insisted be put up in the den. Down in the alley stood an impressive young man, a pack slung over his shoulder, and an eager looking crowd hanging on his every whispered word. With a sort of half snort, Rudolph went back to his project.

He knew the man. Everyone in the neighborhood did, young Everett the dreamer, the radical, the thinker. Rudolph just chuckled at the vain and silly nonsense the boy must be up to. It’s not that Rudolph disagreed, quite the opposite. But as he sat at his desk, now turned workshop, he knew the boy’s efforts would be pointless. It would all be pointless once he finished his project.