"It's Willie Thompson," the guard said to Warden Jeans.

Jeans braced himself. He knew Thompson, too well. A reckless, arrogant lifer, his one interest was in stirring up trouble. "What now?" the warden asked.

"Nothing serious! It's his birthday. He wants permission to buy extra cigarettes and snacks for the boys at his table!"

"His birthday–?" The warden stopped short. He hadn't told anyone that it was his own birthday, too; he hated the celebration and the fuss. But within him, he couldn't help feeling that the day was something special. Odd that Willie Thompson should feel it, too.

Jeans rose. "It's okay. I'll tell him myself. I've been meaning to talk to him!"

Thompson looked up from his cot but didn't move as the warden came in. The prisoner's hair was unkempt, his face unshaven. Only his eyes seemed alive, with a burning blaze of murder and hatred.

"H'lo, warden!" he muttered insolently. "Sorry I can't get up. It's my leg. Always gets bad in wet weather."

"Hurt it?" Jeans asked. Having lived and used guns as casually as handkerchiefs, many of the convicts still suffered from old wounds.

"Yeah, but not the way you think! I broke it going downhill on a sled–when I was a kid!"

Willie's voice was flat and monotonous. Still his words made the warden quiver. For they made him remember another episode: an icy hill … children pulling their red-and-yellow sleds … and then, suddenly, a blinding stab of pain that had twisted and paralyzed his shoulder for months.

"Really?" the warden said at last. "Funny! I fell off a sled, too, when I was a kid! And by the way, I hear it's your birthday."

"Yeah! Thirty-nine! Ain't it a scream, keeping track, in this hole? Must be a habit. My mother started it!"

"She did?"

"You bet! I still remember the summer I was twelve! The old lady was pretty sick, and we were in the country! There weren't even any other kids! But came my birthday–"

"She got out of bed, and made you a party, anyway?"

Now it was Willie's turn to be surprised. "How'd you know?"

But Jeans couldn't answer. He couldn't tell this killer that he, too, had been away on his twelfth birthday–it might have been the same day!–and that his mother, suffering from the illness that later took her life, had smiled her weak, brave smile, and insisted that only the party mattered.

"Mothers are like that! … Well, Thompson, about those cigarettes and things–it's all right! I'll send over a carton myself!"

He was glad to leave the cell. Somehow, the thought of Willie Thompson, born, perhaps, at the very same moment as he had been and leading a life so strangely similar to his own, made his skin crawl. But he couldn't forget, and an hour later, in spite of himself, he was rummaging through the files for the records on Willie Thompson.