Read Online Eggs by Jerry Spinelli - Free Book Online Page A

decided not to have a bait business after all, so there was no market for worms. Primrose was still twenty dollars short on paint money, and the customers strolling by the tables were mostly the same ones she saw every week. “Lookers, not buyers,” John called them.
    Lookers drifted sideways toward the table, never facing it squarely, never quite standing still, moving along even as they eyed the goods. Sometimes they gave a quick glance and were gone, sometimes a slower broom-sweep of the eyes. Occasionally a pair of eyes would land on a particular object, stare a moment, then look up at Primrose, as if to see what sort of oddball would actually ask money for such a thing. Even more rarely, someone would pick up an object and say, “How much?” Primrose’s heart would quicken as she told them the price, and sink as they set it back down and walked off.
    Early in the summer Primrose had taken John’s advice and treated each table approach like a golden opportunity. She would rise from her chair, stand smartly behind the table and smile as the person looked over the merchandise and walked off. As the summer went on she dropped first the smile, then the smart pose. Now it took the sight of an open wallet to get her out of the chair. She slumped and grumped and stared into outer space and muttered with the regularity of a grandfather clock, “This business sucks.”
    Half the morning had gone by on this day when a shopper finally held up something — the Coke bottle — and said, “How much?”
    “What do you care?” Primrose snarled.
    The shopper gaped disbelievingly at the slouching girl, set the bottle down, and left.
    To the next one who said, “How much?” Primrose answered, “A thousand dollars.”
    By eleven o’clock she was challenging nearly everyone who came near the table.
    “You gonna look or you gonna buy?”
    “You touch it, you buy it.”
    “Whatta
you
lookin’ at?”
    When he wasn’t laughing, John was begging her to stop: “You’re ruining my business.” Meanwhile, word about the rude teenager spread across the fleet of tables.
    Primrose’s behavior was neither new nor entertaining to David, so he occupied himself by eating. Every half hour he visited the vending truck. By eleven o’clock his stomach was stuffed, his pocket empty of all but a dime.
    What could he buy for a dime?
    He wandered among the tables, scanning the goods: clothes, knickknacks, books, tools, toys, utensils. When he came to a table half-covered with framed black-and-white photographs, he barely gave it a glance — then stopped cold. He came closer. The pictures were all of people’s faces. The frames were fancy, tinted with gold or silver. They came in many sizes.
    At least half of them — ten, he counted — were pictures of the same man, like TV sets in a store all turned to the same channel. And here was the shocker: each one looked exactly like the little one in Primrose’s pocket and the bigger one on her dresser in her four-wheeled room. The same handsome face. The same mustache. The same sly, slightly tilted smile. The same black, shiny, combed-back hair.
Primrose’s father.
    What was a picture of Primrose’s father doing here? Why were they selling it? Why would anyone other than Primrose or her mother want to buy it?
    “See something you like?” said the lady behind the table.
    David didn’t know what to say.
    “Looking for a present for somebody?” The lady was eating a hot dog. A spot of mustard gave her upper lip a yellow mole. “Your mother maybe?”
    “No.”
    She let him look awhile. She bit into the hot dog. “This ain’t used junk like most of the tables. This stuff’s new.”
    David said nothing.
    She pointed with the hot dog. “That there’s a nice one you’re looking at. Only three bucks.”
    Three bucks for Primrose’s father’s picture.
    “Okay, for you, two-fifty.”
    David said, “How come you’re selling his picture?”
    “I’m not,” said the lady. Her tongue,