Ignatius J. Reilly studies the crowd at the D. H. Holmes department store, searching for “signs of bad taste in dress” while he waits for his mother (6). She is late returning from her visit to the doctor’s, and he is becoming uncomfortable. As he ponders a broken arcade game, a police officer approaches and demands to see identification. Ignatius replies angrily and strikes the policeman with his recently purchased sheet music. Mrs. Reilly, Ignatius’s mother, talks to a salesperson in the bakery about her travails. The policeman wants to take Ignatius to the precinct; an old man in the crowd accuses him of being a “communiss” (9). Mrs. Reilly breaks up the fracas. Ignatius is 30 years old, unemployed, and working on a “lengthy indictment against our century,” pausing only to make cheese dips (10). Ignatius and his mother slip away from the chaotic crowd. They slip into a bar on the way home and order two beers, though Ignatius warns that he “may not drink it” amid the threat of an imminent police raid (13). He recounts a familiar story of a doomed bus ride to Baton Rouge.

The old man from the department store sits on a bench in the police station.