Spring Journey

I

IT had been warm when he started out from town. Mild and barren, with the feel of spring, and maple buds beginning to turn red against a thin sky. ‘You got a nice day, Pop,’ Emily said. She came to the door and sniffed the spring-burning smell. ‘You ought to be able to walk instead of bussing so much today.’

‘Dat’s so,’ Schmidt had answered boldly, ‘Vy not?’ and stepped out quickly; but the pans clanged together and pulled the straps crooked on his shoulders. A package of spoons bounced out. Ben picked them up and boosted the pack in place. ‘I bet you come back with this whole basket empty, Gramp, I bet.’

‘Shure. Vy not?’ Schmidt said. ‘I come back with a basket full of dolla’ bills instead of old pots!’

Benny had walked beside him holding on to the basket handle and heaving it up with pride. ‘I bet lots of people will want them pans and beaters. I bet Ma ‘ud like them herself to cook in. Whyn’t you leave some of them pans for us to use? Leave us some and then you won’t have so many to carry for other folks!’

‘ I got to sell’m, Benny. I leave your ma a new saucepan and she won’t have nothing but water to put inside it. Maybe you’d rather have new eggs in an ol’ pan than nothing in a new pan, maybe?’

‘I’d ruther have new eggs in a new pan,’ Ben said. ‘I’d ruther have both!'

‘Vell, you can’t,’ Schmidt said. He patted the little boy on the head, and hoisted the pans. ‘Maybe when you ain’t so liddle you’ll catch on why.’

They went along the earth path toward the car stop, Ben holding on to the basket or walking behind to boost up the pack, his shoes making a faint flop on the dry ground, and the broken strings dangling when he jumped. ‘You’ll be home for supper, won’t you?’ he kept asking. ‘You ain’t going to stay all night in the country, are you?’

‘Shure, I come back,’ Schmidt said. ‘ I come back and dump all the nickels on your supper plate — splosh! all the nickels go falling in your soup!’

Ben hopped with excitement and shouted, running ahead on the car line and waving his arms at nothing. Schmidt followed him, grinning, and sat down heavily in the cinders by the track to wait. Benny poked in the basket and pulled out a spoon, and then burst out laughing.

Schmidt shook his fist. ‘You git away from those pans, boy!’ Benny was peering at his reflection, his sliver of a face, so close that he almost rubbed his nose against the spoon. ‘Say, Gramp,’ he shouted, ‘look how big I got now! I got a big face now in here! You save this big spoon, Grampop—you hide this spoon down low and maybe you won’t need to sell him. I want to show Ma I ain’t so liddle in the spoon-bottom now. I look real fat in there!’ He turned the spoon upside down and burst out laughing.

Schmidt grinned. ‘Yah, maybe I bring it back, Benny. All by itself in the basket. So cold. So lonesome. Poor spoon! Maybe we make your ma a present of it! ‘

Benny jumped up and down like a monkey and peered at his round reflection, and then screamed excitedly when he saw the streetcar, a good way off but lurching toward them like a yellow and wooden caterpillar. ‘Here she comes!’ he shouted. He ran toward Schmidt and hustled him to his feet, the pots and pans jangling together. Schmidt walked to the tracks and held up his hand, waving for attention. ‘You vatch him stop for me, Benny. All I got to do is wave, and he stops!’ Ben watched, marveling, while the streetcar slowed awkwardly to a stop and his grandfather climbed inside, the pack banging loudly against the doors. He waved at the old man through the window, making signs and pointing at the pans; and Schmidt held up his old black purse and measured out with his hand to show how much it would swell.

When the car heaved forward again, and Ben was out of sight, he settled back with a sigh. There were so many pots and pans and beaters and spoons and whippers and cullenders it would take a long time to get rid of even half, and the farmhouses were a long way apart. He planned, though, to hustle himself and get back by suppertime, coming in to dump all the quarters down in a heap on the tablecloth and watch Ben’s face when he stacked them up.

The car line went three miles out in the country from Jordleden, and stopped and turned around again. Schmidt got off at the end, stared around a little uncertainly, shifting his basket and heaving the pack in place, and then started off toward the farms.

The air felt good — mildly cool and clean. He noticed an early dandelion open, and picked it and put it in his pocket for Ben. Crows were cawing and gathering in the open fields, and he saw a rabbit, fat and winter-furred, crouched under the willow thicket. He thought perhaps he ought to creep up and bounce him on the head with a potato masher and take him home to Emily for supper, but was half glad when the rabbit leaped suddenly and scuttled across the road. ' Maybe I sell the potato masher and buy something don’t go so fast,’he thought. ‘A nice stew-bone — wit’out legs!’

It was only nine, but he felt hungry already and fingered the sandwich in his pocket uncertainly. Then he pulled back his hand with determination.

When the road reached the hill crest, he could look down on five or six farms and a stretch of oak woods with the winter leaves still brown and glistening a little. The Aley place was near, and one time Mrs. Aley had bought two cullenders and a knife, and given him a big jar of plums. The plums had seemed slightly overripe, but sweet. Mrs. Aley was a good woman. He hoped she would offer him something to eat, but maybe it was too early to expect.

He reached the gate after what seemed almost an hour of walking. It had looked nearer from the hill, but he was afraid to cut across the pastures, and the barbed fences were too dangerous to climb. He opened the gate cautiously, afraid of the dog’s loud clamor; but only a mild collie came around the house and nosed his shoes. He knocked hesitantly on the door and waited. Mrs. Aley might buy lots of things and then he wouldn’t have to walk so far. He uncovered the basket and rubbed a saucepan with his sleeve. Then the door opened and Mrs. Aley stuck her head out. ‘Why, Schmidt!’ she said. ‘If it ain’t Mr. Schmidt!’ She came out on the porch and pushed up a chair. ‘Rest yourself a little,’ she said. ‘You been a long time away. I didn’t expect you back this year!’ She talked fast and didn’t give him a chance to answer for a long time. It seemed that she was trying to fill up all the talk space before he could get a word in edgewise. Then suddenly she stopped and looked at his basket. ‘Those’re nice pans, Mr. Schmidt,’ she said — he thought a little nervously, but kind. ‘See!’ Schmidt hauled out the biggest cullender he could find. ‘Just like the one you bought last year! Mebbe you need a new one now?’ He cocked his head and looked at her anxiously.

Mrs. Aley wiped her hands on her apron. ‘Well, you see it’s this way, Mr. Schmidt. . . . We do a lot of running in and out of town these days, and when I need something — I need it. And so Mr. Aley he gets what I need right away — and we trade at the big stores where we can get some credit. You see how it is, Mr. Schmidt?’

Schmidt bowed his head in a kind of nod. ‘Yes, I guess that’s so, Mrs. Aley. I guess that’s so.’ He picked up the basket and shuffled toward the steps. ‘Well, I guess I’ll be getting on,’ he said. ‘You say hello to Mr. Aley when he comes home. Mr. Schmidt said hello.’

‘I’ll do that,’ Mrs. Aley said. She wiped her big dry hands back and forth on her apron and watched him go.

Out in the road again he stopped, not certain what to do. He felt sick in his stomach and suddenly very angry. ‘She ain’t no bizness buying from big stores!’ he said aloud — and then was seized with an awful panic. Suppose all the other farmers had bought from the stores already? Suppose they were on their way now into town to buy just those things he was toting on his back? Suppose he was too late everywhere! ‘Oh, my Gott, I haf to hurry!’ he whispered. ‘I got to get around fast!’ He started shuffling forward, the pots clanging together and the pie pans making a slipping noise.

II

The next farm was half a mile away and out of sight behind a thick maple grove, red now with sap, and the ground strewn with gray winter leaves around it. In the shallow ruts a few old maple leaves were scattered like dry stars, but Schmidt scuffled them aside without seeing now, all his thoughts concentrated on reaching the next place and the next after that, and all the farms beyond, before it was too late.

Once a car passed him, with a farmer driving; and he stepped aside, peering suspiciously after it, fearful that here was a Kline or Kemper bound with all speed toward the store and a frying pan. He thought of waving one of his pots as a signal, but was too timid; and the man wheezed past him without stopping.

He reached the Kempers’ at last, hot and breathless. The beagle hounds sent up a loud nasty barking and nipped at his heels, circling around him, out of reach of his flapping basket. He waved it wildly, and a beater fell out on the grass, and before he could stoop to get it one of the hounds had snatched and worried the rickety hoops out of shape against the stones. He put down his basket, shouting, and grabbed for the battered handle. The beagle snarled, but dropped it and ran toward the porch, still barking. Schmidt wiped it off and tried to straighten the hoops, but the dents were still there, no matter which way he bent it. ‘Mr. Kemper’s got to pay me for this, by Gott! He’s got to buy this off me, for what his old houn’ done!’ he mumbled. He started to walk up to the door holding out the beater indignantly in his hands, but instead stopped and put it back carefully under all the other pans and folded his old coat down on top.

He knocked on the back door; but no one came, and the shades were down in the kitchen. He knocked again, loudly, and listened, but heard no sound inside at all. Then he stumped around to the woodshed, and back to the barns, and peered inside the stalls. The horses were in, and their harness up on the wall, but the shed door where they kept the car was open, and nothing inside but an oily rag and a tire tube on the floor.

Very slowly Schmidt began to realize he was wasting his precious time. The Kempers were out, and no telling when they would return. They might have needed nine bowls and a cake pan for all he would ever know or the good it would do him now. He grunted and sighed, easing the pack on his shoulder, and started off again, followed as far as the gate by the beagles, quiet now but snuffing close at his heels. By the fence he stopped and picked up a winter apple dropped from the truck and partly eaten, but mellow, and chewed it hungrily, spitting its skin along the road. He fingered the sandwich again, but decided to make one other farm before he sat down to eat it. There was a nice hill up above Kovens’ and a spring, he remembered. He saw himself sitting there in the late winter sun, with the heavy pack and basket on the ground, and his shoulders against a stump, and the sandwich being stuffed piece by piece in his mouth.

Maybe the Kovens would offer him something to eat when they bought their pans. They had nine children, and pans wore out fast, Mrs. Koven said. She had bought three from him last year, and showed him the year-before’s, worn thin as paper, and all of their handles bent. She had seemed right glad for him to come, although he remembered uneasily that she spoke of how Koven made trips into town every day with the milk and did her messaging for her.

It was almost noon when he reached the house, but it had not seemed far, walking in the mild air between the spring-wheat fields. Willows, he had noticed, were yellow along the pasture streams, and the young grass in places a new green, very thin, with the dark earth showing in between. He had walked quickly, drumming a march tune on one of the stouter pans whenever the road was level enough to let go of his strap awhile. ‘T’ree pans, twenty cents . . . sixty cents for t’ree pans, t’ree pans sixty cents togedder,’ he drummed, puffing a little in between the lines — and thought of Benny, and wished he were along.

Mrs. Koven was at the stove when he knocked, her hair hanging limp around her face, and the baby was crying loudly. Five of the children ran up to him and peered in the basket, pointing and giggling at the pans. Mrs. Koven picked up the baby and came to the door. She had a thin, heavy face, but it lifted and looked younger when she smiled. She waved at the porch rocker and shoved turnip sacks out of his way. ‘Sit down, Mr. Schmidt. Rest yourself. That’s a big pack you got.’

‘It won’t be so big going back, I t’ink,’ Schmidt said. He dropped the pack and sat down heavily. ‘I ain’t so young as you, Mrs. Koven. My legs keep curling up under me. The legs is what age gets first. The legs, and then up top here.’ He grinned and pointed up toward his cap.

Mrs. Koven laughed. ‘You ain’t so old then, Mr. Schmidt. You get about; you ain’t nobody’s fool old grampaw sleeping in the corner!’

‘Not yet, thank Gott, I ain’t. Not while I got this way to help.’

Mrs. Koven shifted the baby uneasily. ‘Lemme get you some milk, Mr. Schmidt. Nady, you go get some milk for Mr. Schmidt. Get him a glass off the table.’ When the door opened, Schmidt smelled the stew plainly, meat and turnips boiling together, but Mrs. Koven didn’t offer him any.

‘I had my lunch a way back,’ he said loudly, ‘but maybe I could find a liddle room for the milk.’

‘ Yeh, we always got room for the milk, I reckon,’ Mrs. Koven said. If she didn’t believe him about the lunch, she gave no sign.

Nadine brought the milk in a heavy glass, and Schmidt drank it quickly, afraid something might happen before he got it inside him. Then he wiped his mouth and smiled happily. Half an apple and a glass of milk, and a sandwich still to come! Things were turning out good.

He started then to pick out the best saucepans and a couple of pie plates to show her. ‘I got some new kind of tins this year, Mrs. Koven. Fat ones maybe will last you longer!’ He looked up at her expectantly, but was astonished at her face. It had got quite hard and setlooking, and she was frowning.

‘I should’ve told you right away, Mr. Schmidt,’ she said. ’I can’t buy nothing.’

Schmidt opened his mouth, but she started talking again very fast before he could speak. ‘We’re down right to bottom. Paul took all the week’s cash for a winter jacket — one of those woollined things. He had to have it. I can’t buy nothing — I can’t buy even a spoon off you. That’s a fact, Mr. Schmidt. There’s not any use of you hauling any more stuff out of your basket there.’

Schmidt sat back on his heels and stared up at her in distress. ‘You don’t need nothing at all, Mrs. Koven? No spoons or nothing?’ He fumbled with the basket handles uncertainly.

’I told you, Mr. Schmidt, I couldn’t buy nothing. I need ‘m, all right. I need a new saucepan and I need a knife, and a spoon that ain’t broken off at the end, and a fork that don’t cut your mouth with its leg every time, and a cheese strainer without a hole broke in the bottom — and I’d like one of them beaters that don’t catch when you turn it round, and I’d like —’ Then suddenly she turned her back on him and started crying.

The children stood around, whispering and frightened, and the baby began to howl again. Old Schmidt stood up, clumsy and embarrassed. ‘Don’t cry, Mrs. Koven,’ he said foolishly. ‘Maybe I can bring you some next year. Maybe Paul can get you some cheaper in town by Christmas.’ He stood wiping his mouth and face on his sleeve, nervously, and patting Nadine on the head.

Mrs. Koven turned around then, her face streaked red and her mouth still working. She had stopped crying, though, and shook the baby gently to shut it up. ‘ I wish I could buy something off of you, Mr. Schmidt.’ Her hot face struggled to get some dignity back, but the tears kept trickling down, out of control. ‘It’s awful to send you off with all that big pack, and all them things I need and you want to sell. It ain’t right for neither of us! ‘

‘No, it ain’t right,’ Schmidt repeated lamely. ‘Don’t worry about me, though, Mrs. Koven. Maybe by the time I git home they’ll be sold, and nothing but money to tote around. Money don’ weigh as much as pans.’ He stuffed everything back again, and hooked up the pack on his shoulders. ‘That was good milk, Mrs. Koven. I thank you. Next year I come back again, and things are better. Maybe by next year everybody can have some pans. Maybe by then you and I and Mr. Koven have something to say of what we get. You wait and see!’

Mrs. Koven looked vague. ‘That’s what Paul says, Mr. Schmidt. Says we ought to have things, too, if there’s so much lying around. I dunno . . .’

Schmidt shook his head and crept off carefully, the straps seeming to pull more, and the pans no longer fitted together so neatly. Mrs. Koven waved the baby’s hand at him, and then she and the children went inside and shut the door. For a little way up the road the smell of stew followed him, mixed with the smell of smoke and freshploughed earth.

III

By late afternoon his feet began to hurt and his shoulders were aching. He had sold nothing at all at the near, small farms, and began to feel frightened. He remembered a big cluster of places out near Chester, but he would have to take a bus to get there and back by night. Around here the answers were all the same: they couldn’t afford to buy nothing just now — they had already bought it cheap in Jordleden — the missus wasn’t home — just didn’t have no cash to spare. . . . No cash to spare. . . . Schmidt opened up his old crabshaped purse and counted out the bus money. It would cost him a lot, but those were big farms along toward Chester, and he ought to sell enough to make over. He tried not to think of the dogs they kept out there.

Clouds had come up, and the air was getting colder. Schmidt shivered a little, waiting for the bus, and the pans felt chilly when they bumped against his bare hands. He sat on the ground by the road, waiting, and was almost too stiff to get up and wave at the bus when it bulged in sight.

‘Fares gone up, yeah,’ the driver said. He grinned at the lurching pans. ‘I bet you haven’t sold nothing to folks around here. They couldn’t buy secondhand cigarette butts if they wanted ‘m!’

Schmidt hesitated and then shook his head. ‘No, I ain’t sold anything — yet,’ he admitted — and was glad the engine’s roar drowned out whatever answer the driver might have made.

At Chester he got off and started on foot again. A wind was beginning to come up, and the maple branches were whipped together in sudden gusts. The pond waters licked forward in small waves, leady gray and cold. Chester County was flat and not so much climbing, but the farms were a good way apart. He trudged down a side road off the highway, seeing the Zugsmiths’ house as a small speck in the fields, the road twisting in long curves between him and their gate. He walked on patiently, even starting to sing once, knowing there was no one in miles to hear him, and then felt a spit of rain on his face, and looked up in panic at the sky. The clouds were close together and low, a hard shower falling suddenly. He hurried forward, puffing and muttering, the pack jerking to and fro on his shoulders, and flattened himself against the trunk of a giant elm. The tree was bare, and its buds sharp against the sky, but the trunk was broad enough to protect him if the rain came slanting from the west. He rested, panting, and peered up at the sky and the gray, joined clouds. The rain was only a gust, though, and passed, leaving the air sharp and chilly, and a few spots on the stones.

Schmidt waited a few minutes and then shuffled on, Zugsmiths’ place seeming to come no nearer with every turn. He reached it at last, though, and heard the dogs barking, and the loud rattle of a chain as the setter tugged and leaped back and forward inside the yard. Cole Zugsmith was coming up from the barn and stopped Schmidt before he had reached the house. ‘Hello, Schmidt,’ he boomed. ‘What you got there in the sack?’ He towered over the little man, and thumped a dishpan with his hammer. ‘More pots, eh, Schmidt? Nothing but kitchen bowls, I bet! Got any corn knives or buckets for a calf?’

Schmidt burrowed down under the pile and searched stubbornly, knowing he didn’t have them, yet praying that one might suddenly appear or have crept in by mistake. He emptied the whole basket, but brought out only one paring knife and a little handleless pan, bucketshaped but hardly big enough for a cat to drink from. ‘That un wouldn’t do, I guess? ‘ He stared around at the strewedout pans and up at Zugsmith.

Cole shook his head and laughed. ‘Wouldn’t do at all, Schmidt. Sorry you ain’t got exactly what I need.’

Schmidt picked up the little knife and held it out. ‘Your wife could maybe use something like this,’ he suggested.

‘Don’t doubt she could, Schmidt, but there’s no use temptin’ her. We’re living on the fence edge now. Up goes what we sell — up goes everything we buy. Bah! ‘

Schmidt knelt down and scooped up his stuff again, and Cole helped fasten the bundle on the old man’s back. He fingered a little beater and twirled the wheel. ‘She’d like that. Her old one’s busted.’ He watched the whisk spin around, and then stuffed it down in the basket quickly. ‘Maybe some other time — maybe next year. Well, goodbye, Schmidt . . . luck . . . good-bye.’ He turned abruptly and walked off toward the house.

Schmidt tried two more places. It was getting late and he felt stiff with chill. There was a sore spot on his shoulder where the strap pressed, and he had to keep stopping to ease himself. Nobody could buy anything. They wanted, but they couldn’t buy. It was getting darker, and lights started burning up in the windows a long way apart. He’d have to get back to the highway before the bus had stopped running, and then change to a streetcar back at the junction. He thought of the carfare and Benny’s face and the broken beater. . . .

‘I got to sell something quick!’ he muttered in a panic. ‘I got to sell a whole lot of things togedder!’ He stopped and looked around desperately and back toward the highway. There was one place, he remembered — a place on the way back, the Wardens’ place, a sort of estate with a house made like a German castle, and a park fence all around, and terraces. They could buy his whole basket if they wanted to. There were lights on all over the house, and the gate was open when he reached it.

He went up the gravel drive and around to the back. He knocked loudly and heard slow steps, and then the door was opened a small space, and the housekeeper stood looking at him with suspicion. She was a Mrs. McGill, and he remembered her from his last year’s trip, and the dishpan she had bought for a dollar. She had seemed large and purple-faced then, but with a kind-enough manner, and looked even larger now, her eyes sleepy and piglike.

She said, ’Well? ‘ and waited for him to speak, but before he spread out the pack she stopped him and shook her head. ‘We don’t need nothing,’ she said. ‘ I got stuff now I don’t expect to get around to using even once. I got two pans for every cake I turn out. I got three spoons for every batter I ever stirred. I got gadgets enough to drive me loony!’

‘But I got to sell something!’ old Schmidt burst out. ‘I got to sell something or I lose my job!’

Mrs. McGill looked at him calmly, then jerked her thumb. ‘ Step inside here a minute. Wait’ll I show you!’

Schmidt put down his pack and shuffled into the kitchen. ‘Sit down and look around,’ Mrs. McGill said — proudly and with exasperation. Schmidt looked at the white stove and the walls covered with pots and pans and spoons of every size, and shelves stocked up with bowls enough to start out another store, and the pans lapping over each other and shiny as fish scales. ‘Take a good look, Mr. Schmidt. What’d I do with your cheap old stuff? Whyn’t you go places where people need what you got to sell? Go out to some of them patch-nail farms off the Link Road where they all eat out of the pan they stew in. I seen them myself. I know!’

‘I already been there,’Schmidt mumbled. He felt too tired to explain, and sat slumped down in his chair, staring around at the room full of kitchenware. He could see himself reflected in the bottom of a dishpan, distorted and broadened out like a pear. It made him think of Ben, and the spoon for Emily.

Mrs. McGill was standing at the sink, wiping her hands. ‘You got to get out now, Mr. Schmidt. I got to get supper started. This ain’t my day in for callers.’

Schmidt got up and pinned his sweater in place. ‘ I don’ suppose you could use a big spoon or fork even?’ he suggested hopefully.

She jerked out a drawer for answer, and showed him a tray full of kitchen spoons. Five sizes of wooden ones, and steel spoons of every shape.

Schmidt looked at them, and pulled out his basket. ‘I got a bigger spoon than any of them things in the drawer. It’s the cheapest thing I got in the pack for sale. It’s a good spoon to stir up the chicken mash, or scrape out buckets for the calf . . .'

‘I don’t have nothing to do with the chickens or calves,’ Mrs. McGill said. ‘How much is this big spoon?’

Schmidt fumbled in his basket and brought out the spoon and held it under the light. ‘Twenty cents,’he said. ‘It’s the cheapest thing I got in the pack!’

Mrs. McGill went over to the pantry and pulled down a black pocketbook from behind the soup plates. ‘Lord knows what I’ll do with the thing, but I’ll take it!’ She shoved the spoon in the drawer, and held out the money. ‘You’d better get out before the tea’s over and the old woman comes out to order breakfast. You’re a tramp, you know, Mr. Schmidt, and tramps are dangerous. Out in the country, specially. Old Mr. Warden keeps a gun in his den, and it ain’t for sparrows!’

Schmidt pulled the basket over his arm, and felt humiliated and sick and yet grateful, and was angry at himself for his gratitude. ’I think you’ll find it a good spoon, Mrs. McGill. I think maybe Mrs. Warden will be glad that you bought it for her.’

‘Maybe so, maybe not,’ Mrs. McGill said. ‘Good night, Mr. Schmidt.’

Schmidt said good-bye and started off in the dark. It was beginning to rain again — fine, thin gusts that came and stopped at uncertain intervals. A cold wind twisted the black elm branches, and the clouds were heavier now.

At the highway he had to wait for the bus, and the rain began to come harder, with a sleety sound on the concrete. The old man crouched on the ground with his back to a telephone pole. There were no trees near, and up to the road nothing but stretches of cold mud and stones. He felt his cap getting soaked, and the wet creeping to his hair and trickling down the back of his neck — quick, icy drops that made him shiver violently. He thought of grippe and pneumonia, and saw himself huddled up useless in the rocker, a rheumatic old man for the folks to feed and take care of till he died — crippled as an old one-legged rooster. ‘I ain’t gonna get sick!’ Schmidt muttered loudly. ‘I won’t, by Gott, I won’t!’ He pulled out a bowl from the pack and turned it upside down in the mud against the telephone pole; then he unwrapped a stewpan and put it on his head. The rain splashed on the pan and bounced across his shoulders, but the drops stopped trickling down his spine and hair. Schmidt smiled grimly. He wished that Benny could see his grampa — looking like an old fool, miles out in the country, with a stewpan on his head.

He sat this way, with the wrapping paper over his knees and his feet in the basket, until he saw the bus lights coming; and then got up stiffly and collected all his things together in nervous haste. He signaled the bus, and left the stewpan on his head until the doors were opened and he was safely inside.

The bus driver grinned and held out his hand for the fare. ‘You look like a loony,’ he remarked, but Schmidt only pulled the pan off carefully and counted out his change. He hoped the bus driver wouldn’t ask him about his sales, and went as far back as he could and sat down in the dark. The bus was dry but cold, and there was only one other passenger along — half asleep, and hunched together with his arms folded,

Schmidt felt deathly tired, but too cold and hungry for sleep; and as he sat there the whole day and the despair came over him like a wet, sick flood inside. ‘ I go bist Link Road — bist Zugsmiths’ — bist Chester — the streetcar and walking — and then the bus — and then walking again . . . all morning, all afternoon ... I go back on the bus and pay . . . and on the streetcar and pay — and vot do I sell? Vun big spoon! Vun big spoon for twenty cents! Oh, Gott in Heaven! ‘

He wanted all at once to slump down and let the end be now — puff out like old Allen or Reich or Casey, or any of all those snugly sleeping in the ground, not cold or empty or damp any more, and having no hope or hunger left. But instead he sat upright in his seat, and went on riding back into town — knowing there was Emily, and Benny, and all the rest of his little years to face.