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But what about the turkey?

“I think I’m gonna get off the wagon up ahead a bit,” Francis told Rosskam, who looked at him with a squinty eye. “Gettin’ near the end of the day anyway, ‘bout an hour or so left before it starts gettin’ dark, ain’t that right?” He looked up at the sky, gray but bright, with a vague hint of sun in the west.

“Quit before dark?” Rosskam said. “You don’t quit before dark.”

“Gotta see some people up ahead. Ain’t seen ‘em in a while.”

“So go.”

“‘Course I want my pay for what I done till now.”

“You didn’t work the whole day. Come by tomorrow, I’ll figure how much.”

“Worked most of the day. Seven hours, must be, no lunch.”

“Half a day you worked. Three hours yet before dark.”

“I worked more’n half a day. I worked more’n seven hours. I figure you can knock off a dollar. That’d be fair. I’ll take six ‘stead of seven, and a quarter out for the shirt. Five-seventy-five.”

“Half a day you work, you get half pay. Three-fifty.”

“No sir.”

“No? I am the boss.”

“That’s right. You are the boss. And you’re one strong fella too. But I ain’t no dummy, and I know when I’m bein’ skinned. And I want to tell you right now, Mr. Rosskam, I’m mean as hell when I get riled up.” He held out his right hand for inspection. “If you think I won’t fight for what’s mine, take a look. That hand’s seen it all. I mean the worst. Dead men took their last ride on that hand. You get me?”

Rosskam reined the horse, braked the wagon, and looped the reins around a hook on the footboard. The wagon stood in the middle of the block, immediately across Pearl Street from the main entrance to the school. More children were exiting and moving in ragged columns toward the church. Blessed are the many meek. Rosskam studied Francis’s hand, still outstretched, with digits gone, scars blazing, veins pounding, fingers curled in the vague beginnings of a fist.

“Threats,” he said. “You make threats. I don’t like threats. Five-twenty-five I pay, no more.”

“Five-seventy-five. I say five-seventy-five is what’s fair. You gotta be fair in this life.”

From inside his shirt Rosskam pulled out a change purse which hung around his neck on a leather thong. He opened it and stripped off five singles, from a wad, counted them twice, and put them in Francis’s outstretched hand, which turned its palm skyward to receive them. Then he added the seventy-five cents.

“A bum is a bum,” Rosskam said. “I hire no more bums.”

“I thank ye,” Francis said, pocketing the cash.

“You I don’t like,” Rosskam said.

“Well I sorta liked you,” Francis said. “And I ain’t really a bad sort once you get to know me.” He leaped off the wagon and saluted Rosskam, who pulled away without a word or a look, the wagon half full of junk, empty of shades.

o o o

Francis walked toward the house with a more pronounced limp than he’d experienced for weeks. The leg pained him, but not excessively. And yet he was unable to lift it from the sidewalk in a normal gait. He walked exceedingly slowly and to a passerby he would have seemed to be lifting the leg up from a sidewalk paved with glue. He could not see the house half a block away, only a gray porch he judged to be part of it. He paused, seeing a chubby middle-aged woman emerging from another house. When she was about to pass him he spoke.

“Excuse me, lady, but d’ya know where I could get me a nice little turkey?”

The woman looked at him with surprise, then terror, and retreated swiftly up her walkway and back into the house. Francis watched her with awe. Why, when he was sober, and wearing a new shirt, should he frighten a woman with a simple question? The door reopened and a shoeless bald man in an undershirt and trousers stood in the doorway.

“What did you ask my wife?” he said.

“I asked if she knew where I could get a turkey.”

“What for?”

“Well,” said Francis, and he paused, and scuffed one foot, “my duck died.”

“Just keep movin’, bud.”

“Gotcha,” Francis said, and he limped on.

He hailed a group of schoolboys crossing the street toward him and asked: “Hey fellas, you