to the pavement and spilling its contents within moments. The last of the milk was splashing onto the paving stones when the foreman, Mr. Jones, strode down the alley to investigate the commotion. When he saw the gurgle onto the cobblestones, Johnny spotted him and threw himself against the wagon, grasping his lower back with both hands and sliding down the wheel to sit. “Oh, me back,” he cried, his eyes clenched shut and his cap falling off.
Jones got up close to him and, smelling the whiskey over the odor of dung from the stable, waved his hand in front of his face and roared, “Whew! You drunken idiot! I thought you were soused when you came in! Just went from the bar straight to work again, eh? Well, this is the last time,” he said, as Johnny scrambled to his feet. “Get the hell out of here, you drunken Mick! You’ve spilled your last can of milk here! Get out!” Jones shouted, as Johnny trotted down the alley, pulling his cap down tightly on his head in the pre-dawn cold. The rest of the men turned back to loading their wagons, some checking that their whiskey bottles were carefully stashed and shaking their heads for poor Johnny as he went past.
The veins in his neck still straining, Jones looked around at the line of wagons being loaded and then back at the stable where Joe stood with the shovel. “You! Brogan!” he hollered, making the boy jump and wonder what to do with the shovel in his hands. “You know his route, boy?” he said, pointing to the horse at the head of Johnny’s wagon.
“Yea, yes,” Joe stammered.
“Well, it’s your route now,” Jones proclaimed. “Get it done right and you might keep it,” he said, stomping back towards the office.
Joe thought about what had just happened. One second, he’s shoveling shit in a stable, then, the route’s his for the taking. Johnny was a drunk, no doubt about it. He wouldn’t have made it to work many a time except for Joe, and this wasn’t the first job he’d lost from the drink. Joe then realized that he had school that morning after stable work. No time for that now, he thought, being a twelve-year-old crammed into a desk meant for six-year-olds. He knew how to read and do his figures already, and he could learn the rest on his own, no need for the embarrassment of going to school with children, no matter what his mother would say. Da would understand; he went to work as a boy younger than Joe.
He finished loading up the wagon with the heavy cans of milk. At first, he tried to swing the cans up onto the wagon bed by the handles like the bigger men did, but after two of them, his strength failed, and the cans banged against the tailboard a few inches from clearing. Not asking for help, and fearing a fate like Johnny’s, he began wrapping his arms around the cans near the bottom, squeezing them with all his might. Holding his breath, he lifted them up to the wagon bed with his legs. After three or four, he would climb up in the bed and drag the cans toward the front of the wagon, then hop down to load a few more. The other drivers went about their own work, leaving the boy to fail or succeed on his own. The last to finish loading, Joe hopped up on the seat and stirred the big Belgian to lumber forward, following the other drivers down the alley to Niagara Street, still breathing heavily and fearful of looking over at the office door where Jones stood watching. When the wagon reached Niagara, the drivers would split up and head for their various routes on the city’s West Side. The horse pulling Johnny’s wagon was named Bismarck, and he was an old horse, but the streets were flat and Joe was his friend. On their way up Niagara, Joe stopped just past a produce stand that was opening up, bought some carrots, and stashed them in the back of the wagon for later.
When they approached Forrest Avenue, Joe didn’t even have to turn Bismarck at the corner; the horse knew his job by heart. I can do this! Joe thought, doling out the milk to the regular customers and collecting the bills like clockwork from people who were Irish, like Joe; Germans, who gave Bismarck sugar; and Italians, some of whom spoke no English. They met him out on the street with their pitchers for him to ladle the milk, giving Joe four pennies for each dipperful.
Towards the end of his route, Joe turned onto Bidwell Parkway and his stomach got tight. On the right hand side was one of his last stops, the Worths, who lived in a blue house with white columns in front. They had a green lawn, and Joe had seen a black man trimming their hedges. Joe had heard Mr. Jones telling Johnny to get the money the Worths owed the dairy many times, but the first time he knocked on the door, they told him he was to go around back, where Johnny would talk to the cook or the maid and never come back with any money. “They say they’ll be sending a man around with a check,” Johnny would say. “Very grand people, you see.”
Every time Johnny came back with nothing, holding his cap in his hands before Jones, Jones would fume.
“What?! Send a man with a check? Rubbish! Next time, tell them we want the cash and don’t take no for an answer!”
This time, Joe had an idea, one he had gotten from reading the newspapers to the old ones on the front porch of his house. He parked the wagon right in front of the house, went directly up to the front door, and, leaving his cap on, pounded loudly on the door, ignoring the twistable doorbell and knocker. A maid answered, a girl with a round, open face with pale, acne-ridden skin; thick legs; and big bright blue eyes, who whispered in an Irish accent for him to pipe down and come around to the back door.
“I’ll not,” he said. “I’ve come to talk about business to the Worths.”
In the background, he could hear a woman say in a high tone, “Eileen, tell the young man the tradesmen must all go to the back door.”
“I did, Missus,” Eileen said, “But he says he has business with you,” at which point the door flew open and a skinny, silver-haired lady wearing a starched white blouse and pearls around her neck came up. She saw the wagon in front and Joe on the step.
She turned to the maid and said, “Take Harold to the nursery, Eileen,” who then pushed a little boy, who was watching, up a wooden staircase.
Then, turning to Joe, she said, “Young man, if Cooper’s Dairy wishes to continue having our business, you will pull that wagon away from the front of our residence, and you will go to the back door.”
Taking a deep breath, Joe spoke, “Mrs. Worth, if you don’t pay the Cooper Dairy seven dollars and eighteen cents right now, Mr. Jones is going to have your name printed in the newspaper with the other people who don’t pay their bills.”
Mrs. Worth clenched her fists at her side and tried to stare the boy down, but he only looked her back in the eye. After a few seconds of this, she spun on her heel and stomped off, ordering Eileen to come with her, which she did, smiling behind her hand.
Joe waited on the doorstep for what seemed an eternity, worrying that he had to get the wagon back, but the door was still ajar. Finally, Eileen came back with the money, which she carefully counted out and left on the table by the door, insisting, almost as haughtily as the mistress, that he write out a receipt before getting it. He wrote the receipt, and after counting the money himself, shoved it in his coat pocket, thinking he caught a glimpse of a smile on Eileen’s face at the last moment. He tripped back to the wagon, where Bismarck was nodding his head, impatient to get home.
Whistling on his way back to the dairy, Joe sat straight so all the people on the West Side could see him. He was glad he could read, and even gladder that the old folks would have him read all the newspaper to them, from the news of the war in the Philippines, to the column where they listed the bad creditors, for there was no better amusement than to read where some important person had fallen and had gotten embarrassed publicly, especially if he had an English name.
On the way down Niagara Street, Joe remembered the carrots and stopped by the firehouse. He asked a fireman named Herman, who was sitting at the watch desk sporting a mustache that a walrus would envy, for some water. There were horses in wire cage stalls along the inside walls of the firehouse, munching
