Post by Topper on Sept 13, 2010 19:53:47 GMT -5
He left home early in the morning, as soon as could to avoid eating breakfast with his aunt and cousin, before the sun had fully risen. Louis hadn’t achieved a proper sleep, so it was with bleary vision that he untangled from the sheets and sat up. Louis blinked at the bathroom mirror, feeling like his eyes could fall out of his head at any moment. After rubbing them, his face appeared in honest before his line of vision, and he suppressed a chuckle despite himself. The sight was ridiculous. But he had no time to deal with it. Louis boxed his worn top hat into shape and flattened his matted hair with it.
Work was twenty-two blocks down the road, and for the rest of the walk, Louis fought off the desire to sleep. He walked stiff-backed, in his usual manner. Assorted nuts and water was the order of breakfast. Louis would have been overjoyed at eat a table with an actual tablecloth, like a real actual factual gentleman, but then he would have to eat alone. That just wasn’t proper. The air felt as frigid as it looked. Eventually they chose the grass over a bench or table, and Louis ignored the dew as he sat down to munch on his food.
Jam. The terrible, terrible things he would do for a jam sandwich right now.
The city of New York has over a thousand young shoe shiners working on the streets for about 15 cents a shine. Louis, a fearful marionette, had found a place among them. Resentfully, he began crying his wares. “The perfect shoe shine!” he called out across the quad, smiling brightly, though he was very aware of the attention he was calling to himself, in his ugly brown pants. Disgusting. Revolting.
“The first things the ladies notice are your shoes! Come on, leather polishing and spit shine!”➊➋➌➍➎
"World's going right straight to Hell, I tell you." Mister Bellman had a stomach like a swollen bag, like he had too much fat for too little skin. His face matched it, with a drooping chin under a wide mouth, and perpetually bored eyes under the bill of his peaked cap. A cigar sprouted from his mouth like an elongated tooth and it wiggled up and down as he talked. As far as Louis knew, Mister Bellman had never taken that cigar out. Officer Bellman was a typical cop in New York.
Louis busied himself over Ward's black shoes. They sat sluggishly on the wooden edges of Louis's little square shoeshine box, and would rock and back forth as Louis tried to work his rag over them. He didn't say anything, but gave a quick nod. The Officer liked to talk, and Louis wanted nothing more than to listen.
"And this weather? Mother Mary, when it's not raining enough to drown you, it's so cold you'll freeze to your bed." His eyes flicked down to regard Louis Thelliot. "You know what I mean, sonny?"
"Yes, sir. You’re right, sir." Topper agreed. Seventeen-years-old, second son of a Southern family, small and calloused, Louis knew how to be polite. With the other boys in Midtown he sold wares in the morning or shined shoes in the afternoon. He was unaffected and mechanical and somewhat liked, and he was decent enough with his fists to avoid trouble, but found politeness was often more effective in keeping him safe. "It's darn cold in our apartment."
"I'll wager it is. But you don't have to go walking the streets, looking for trouble, defending good old Midtown from whatever scum and sin the devils and thieves that live here care to think up." Officer Bellman leaned back on his seat on bench beside a streetlight, looking up at the clustered, rust-marked metal buildings. "And after what I saw this morning, I'm inclined to believe the devil's winning."
Heavily-laden clotheslines lent marks of color between the buildings, little veins of vitality. The streets were packed, with peddlers, fruit-stands, vagrants and thugs jostling together on the sidewalk, and automobiles and wagons rolling in a rattling mass along the street. The air was crisp and cold, and Louis shivered in his patched corduroy coat, faded tie and dark felt vest, a hand-down from his uncle. He pulled his top hat down over his ears, which always seemed too large for his comfort. He stayed quiet, hoping Mister Bellman would continue.
"Some thugs got a little rowdy sometime before midnight last night. Decided they’d get some women they could handle and cause a racket. But before that, the booze wasn’t even out, and someone busted into their place, gutted the two fellows on the couch, and then spent a good three or four hours enjoying their women."
Now Louis risked a question. "Do you know who done the awful thing, sir?" he asked.
The officer shrugged, his fat shoulders rising to frame his head. "It’s not the first case to get ignored. Whores die. And so do scummy, vile men with booze. Remember that." He belched.
"Of course, sir. You ain’t wrong." Louis replied, somewhat exasperatedly.
But Officer Bellman snorted. "Don’t get lippy, sonny. If we cared about sleazy men and their whores, I'd get paid more than I do, and I don't." He looked down at his shoes. Louis had done a passable job, and that was all the slovenly cop wanted. Bellman stood up, rubbing bits of cigar ash off his double-breasted uniform. "How much you charge, sonny?" he asked, though he knew the price.
"Twenty cents, sir."
Officer Bellman tossed him a nickel. Topper struggled to catch it. "Your people are greedy enough without me encouraging them, sonny." Bellman tipped the brim of his hat. "Good day to you." He walked off into the ground, already scuffing the toes of his boots.
Topper came to his feet and pulled his jacket close. He removed his top hat and ran a hand through his dark hair, unwashed since yesterday. It would be pointless, he knew, to complain to anybody about Bellman's behavior. But his family needed every cent, especially now that his aunt had another mouth to feed. He had been on his knees all day and there was enough in his cup to pay for some strawberries. He could have done a little more now, but his knees cracked when he stood up and that was it. This was filthy, this was. His real job, his most important job, would be better than this
He began to pack a crate with tins of different metallic colors and rags, each grimier than the last. Unable to suppress a slight twinge of jealousy—after all, Louis had only his estranged friends and his cramped room to look forward to— he thought he wouldn’t mind Bellman’s job at all.
Word Count: 1180
