The proprietor took my shears out of my hand before asking my name. He tested their weight, examined the blades, and nodded toward a spare place at the cutting table. By noon I had nearly persuaded myself that skill could carry no history. Then a delivery man recognized me. He spoke quietly beside the office door, but I saw the proprietor turn his head. My unfinished piece lay beneath my palm, and I knew better than to cut another inch.
He asked whether I was the fellow mixed up in the trouble at Feld's. I said I had worked there. “That's not what I asked.” Around us the other cutters went on measuring, their silence more careful than conversation. I could deny having struck anyone, and it would be true in a narrow, useless way. Instead I said I had helped make the trouble before trying to stop it. He laid my shears beside me and told me to pack.
He paid for the morning, counting coins onto the edge of the table rather than into my hand. Outside, I wrapped the shears and stood wondering how many shops the delivery man visited. I knew places where Bell's name could still open a door. I also knew the taste of a meal bought that way, the relief of being greeted as somebody whose difficulties would be handled. I spent a little of the morning's pay on bread and kept walking.
Near a warehouse a foreman was arguing with a driver over bundles that had to be unloaded before another wagon arrived. I asked if he needed hands. He looked at my coat and then at my gray hair. “You ever carried anything?” I almost told him what I used to be. Instead I put my tools beneath his desk and lifted the nearest bundle. He pointed to a space inside. By the time I reached it, my knee was shaking.
The younger men carried loads against their shoulders and talked while they walked. I needed both arms around mine. The coarse wrapping scraped my chin, and sweat collected beneath my collar despite the cool air at the open doors. After the third journey I tried to shift a bundle without setting it down. My right hand bent beneath the weight. A hot pull ran through my palm. I lowered the load badly, earning a curse from the driver.
“Leave it if you can't manage,” the foreman said. I straightened slowly. Leaving would have been sensible if another place waited, but none did. One of the young men nudged a smaller bundle toward me with his boot. He did not smile or offer advice. I took it. For the rest of the afternoon I carried what I could lift cleanly and made more journeys than the others. Nobody asked me to keep order, settle an argument, or watch a door.
When the wagon was empty, the foreman paid us near the entrance. My right fingers would not close properly around the coins. I used my left hand and kept the other out of sight. With the morning's wages added, I could pay my room and offer Ruth something. Not enough to make her months of promised labor vanish. Enough to begin paying her for the work she had already done without wages. I asked the way to her street.
I had learned her lodging address through an acquaintance only after asking that a message be sent to her first. Now I stood below the steps and requested that the landlady ask whether she would see me. The woman left me outside. Ruth came down wearing an apron I did not recognize. Her eyes went first to my wrapped tools, then to my hand. “What happened?” “Loading.” She waited. “I found a day's work,” I said, and offered the money.
She counted it on the flat top of the railing. “What's this against?” “What you worked without pay.” “Not Feld's debt?” “Mine to you.” She separated the coins, pushed some back, and named the amount she would accept that evening. I started to say she deserved more. She stopped me. “You don't decide what I take home anymore.” A tenant came down behind her, and I moved off the steps to let him pass. Ruth remained where she was.
“This doesn't mean you come up,” she said. I closed my left hand over the money she had returned. “I know.” She asked me to send word before coming again. Then she went inside, carrying only what she had agreed to receive. I stood long enough to see the door latch, not long enough to invent an invitation in the sound. When I turned toward my lodging, my right hand throbbed. I had enough money left for only my room.