gonna find work," says the boy, and the man in the shadows laughs again."Ain't we all," he mutters.
"Never mind Fred. He's just out of sorts ’cause we ain't eaten much lately."
"I got a loaf of bread in my pack."
"We'd be obliged," says Jim.
The man named Fred steps out of the shadows. He is bigger than he'd seemed and his face is covered with pockmarks. One arm of his jacket is pinned up and empty. He stands too close and makes David uncomfortable. He can smell the sweetish, unwashed scent of him.
"I'd say you're no more than fourteen, boy," he says. "Young and pretty."
"Leave him alone, Fred. He's just a kid."
Jim puts his arm around David's shoulder and says, "Let's just take a look at what all you've got in there, son." Then he takes hold of the pack. For a second they are both holding it, then Jim's arm grows tighter around his shoulder and the man begins to turn him toward the open door. The train has picked up speed and the ground is a blur.
"Nothing in here can be that important, now, can it?" Jim says, and Fred moves to the boy’s other side.
He lets go. The two men kneel down and rummage in the knapsack.
"Well, looky here," says Fred. "Mama put a right nice parcel together. Cheese and bread and clean shorts and all. Bet she even told you to keep your money in your boot, now, didn't she?"
"That true, son?" says Jim.
Jim holds him down while Fred strips off his boots.
"My, my, my," says Jim. "There's five dollars here. We can't let you walk around with that in your boot. You might get a blister."
Fred laughs and bites into a hunk of cheese.
"You bastards," David hisses.
"Ah, now he don't like us anymore. And after you helped him up into the car and all. That's gratitude for ya."
"Guess you won't want to stay, then," says Jim.
The train comes to a bend and there is a long slope outside the door. As it slows down a little, they push him out. He lands on his shoulder and rolls. As he scrambles upright, tears streaming down his face, they throw out the half-empty pack and his boots.
He wants to go home then, but knows he will not. He knows this is the way the world is. He understands there will be many more moments like this one, when he will be aching for his brothers and for his own bed and the hay-sweet smell of the barn and the sound of the dog barking and the feel of his father’s hand on the back of his neck and the lull of his father saying a blessing over the bread.
It begins to drizzle.
He limps down the line and picks up his boots and pack. He wipes the tears away with the back of his hand, leaving a smear of blood on his cheek. And to think he'd laughed at Isaac, who had insisted he pin two one-dollar bills in his shorts.
4
May 1930
It was Sunday afternoon, and Rory Cameron, Margaret’s younger brother, sat on the porch with Douglas, while Irene and her mother made supper. Douglas sat on an old cane chair that he meant to repaint someday. Rory sat on the top step, his back resting against the support post. Rory had a wide forehead and thick hair that came to a widow’s peak in the middle. He was dark-haired and blue-eyed, like his sister, but where she was pale as watered milk, his skin was ruddy, with the early evidence of lines around his eyes.
It was a warm day, thick with the smells of melting snow and the winter’s debris that lay beneath.
“How are things going down at the factory?” said Douglas as he sipped his whisky.
“Not so good.”
“Oh?”
“There’s been some layoffs, and more to come.” He took a long drink of beer.
“What about your job? Are you all right?”
“We’ll see,” Rory said. It was hard to explain, but he’d be almost relieved to find a pink slip waiting for him in his pay envelope. There were no other jobs to be had these days, but Rory didn’t mind so much, if the truth be told. He hated the box factory. He hated the big building on King Street that looked more like a prison than a factory. He hated the enormous arm-eating machines, the noise, the poisoned fog of blue smoke that hung in the air, the acrid smell of the printers’ ink. He hated seeing the children working there, no more than twelve some of them, working on “need permits,” which meant the government recognized they had to support themselves. Rory’s job was to feed cardboard flats into the jaws of one of the cutting machines and then to withdraw his hands before the press came down and pulled them in along with the paper. So far he’d been lucky, but the noise was deafening, and after only six months on the machines he had a ringing in his ears day and night. He worked from 8:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday to Saturday and earned ten dollars a week.
“What are you two talking about?”
Margaret stood in the doorway, wiping her hands on a red-and-yellow tea towel.
“Nothing, Peg, just moaning about the job.” He didn’t want to say more to her about his troubles. He could see the signs of strain in her face, the circles under her eyes.
“There have been layoffs,” said Douglas.
“You’re not going to lose your job!”
“Mum, what is it?” Irene peeked out from behind her mother. The look on her face was so much like her mother’s, thought Rory. His sister clutched the girl to her, in a gesture more dramatic than he thought necessary, and Irene stiffened, not pulling away but not clinging to her mother either.
“Now, Peg, it’s all right. I won’t lose my job.” Rory hated it when his sister got like this; there was something selfish about the level of worry, like she wanted everyone to stop their own worrying and console her.
“What would you do if you lost your job? You’d have to move in here. How would we cope?”
“I haven’t lost my job, for Christ’s sake!”
“But you could, anyone could!”
He thought this would be a perfect time for Douglas to do something, but Douglas never seemed to do anything. Rory stood up and went over to hug his sister. Irene scuttled out from the embrace like a mouse narrowly escaping a trap.
Margaret clung to him for a moment, and then stepped back. The angry look on her face surprised him. Her moods changed so quickly these days. She’d always been prone to fits of temper, even when they were children. He used to find it sort of funny, even though he had a bit of a hair-trigger himself. But he didn’t think it was so funny now. She went back inside the house and Irene followed her. Rory looked toward Douglas, but he was staring down into his glass.
As Irene left the house one
