fingertips. There is only the boy and his uncle in the house down the hill, and Aunt Bessie in the evenings, and even though he goes to sleep in the center of his empty bed he always wakes up at the edge, and sometimes he lies down in his clothes because not even an entire blanket is as warm as Lance’s belly pressed against his back.
He is emptying the tenth load when he hears the bus in the hollow at the bottom of 38 where it curves around his uncle’s land. His uncle looks up from the liniment he is rubbing into the neck of a particularly tall brown Guernsey with a face like the sole of an old leather boot. The Guernsey’s neck has been chafed by the boom collar, and his uncle pushes the salve into the patches of pink skin with fingers as blunt-tipped as the shovel in the boy’s hands.
Go on, get your shoes on.
Just a couple more loads, Uncle Wallace.
Donnie’ll get em. Don’t keep the bus waiting. Hold up a minute, his uncle says then, and when the boy turns back his uncle is digging in his pocket. His hand emerges with three quarters, two dimes, more pennies than the boy can count at a glance. Who’d you end up with this morning?
That black-faced Ayrshire, the boy says. The one with the white ears, he adds, not sure if his description is adequate.
The one with the nigger lips? How much you get from her?
Two gallons maybe. Maybe two and a half.
His uncle hesitates a moment, then plunks two quarters in the boy’s hand.
Gotta be more selective when you set the ladies up. Ayrshires ain’t the best milkers. High milkfat, and they tend to last a year or two longer than the other ladies, but if it’s volume you want go for a Holstein every time. The boy is not sure but he thinks his uncle winks at him. Who knows, maybe you’ll get Dolly one-a these days.
Aunt Bessie has packed the boy a lunch and left it with his books on the kitchen table. He drops the quarters in the shoe can—$3.60!—and grabs his lunch and his books and his old shoes and runs out the front door just as the bus pulls up to the T-intersection of 38 and Newry Road between his house and the Flacks’. As he dashes under the line of elms in front of his uncle’s house he sees that their branches are dotted with leaf pips as pale as lima beans and curled like … like orecchiette, he remembers, one of the twenty-seven different pastas he’d stocked at Slaussen’s Market. Babies’ ears, Mr. Krakowski called them. Smaller than conchiglia but bigger than orzo.
The memory stops the boy in his tracks. He is standing there looking up at the leaves and trying to remember the names of other noodles—linguini, capellini, tortelloni, lasagna, manicotti, ravioli over in frozen foods—when Kenny and Flip Flack come around the front of the bus. Kenny has his younger brother in a headlock and is administering an Indian burn.
Hey hillbilly, Kenny says, looking at the shoes the boy is carrying. They go on your feet.
Hey hillbilly! Flip squeezes out of his brother’s grip and runs onto the bus.
The boy shakes himself and gooses Flip as he walks past him down the aisle, and it is only when he gets to his seat in the middle of the bus that he realizes he has forgotten socks, and he curses the old man for the thousandth time. He doesn’t realize he’s sworn aloud until Julia Miller turns around and regards him over the back of her seat. She tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear, pale brown, not blonde like Joanie’s—and not half as pretty to the boy’s mind.
They might talk that trash down in New York City but we use clean English up here.
I’m not from New York City. I’m from Long
Is
land.
Well you
sound
like Jimmy Cagney and
he
was from New York City.
I’m from
Brent
wood. It’s on Long Island.
Well
I’m
from Greene County. My people used to own
your
uncle’s house.
The boy pauses. He knows this has something to do with the metal sign that is posted in front of his uncle’s house just east of the driveway—the pole
He is emptying the tenth load when he hears the bus in the hollow at the bottom of 38 where it curves around his uncle’s land. His uncle looks up from the liniment he is rubbing into the neck of a particularly tall brown Guernsey with a face like the sole of an old leather boot. The Guernsey’s neck has been chafed by the boom collar, and his uncle pushes the salve into the patches of pink skin with fingers as blunt-tipped as the shovel in the boy’s hands.
Go on, get your shoes on.
Just a couple more loads, Uncle Wallace.
Donnie’ll get em. Don’t keep the bus waiting. Hold up a minute, his uncle says then, and when the boy turns back his uncle is digging in his pocket. His hand emerges with three quarters, two dimes, more pennies than the boy can count at a glance. Who’d you end up with this morning?
That black-faced Ayrshire, the boy says. The one with the white ears, he adds, not sure if his description is adequate.
The one with the nigger lips? How much you get from her?
Two gallons maybe. Maybe two and a half.
His uncle hesitates a moment, then plunks two quarters in the boy’s hand.
Gotta be more selective when you set the ladies up. Ayrshires ain’t the best milkers. High milkfat, and they tend to last a year or two longer than the other ladies, but if it’s volume you want go for a Holstein every time. The boy is not sure but he thinks his uncle winks at him. Who knows, maybe you’ll get Dolly one-a these days.
Aunt Bessie has packed the boy a lunch and left it with his books on the kitchen table. He drops the quarters in the shoe can—$3.60!—and grabs his lunch and his books and his old shoes and runs out the front door just as the bus pulls up to the T-intersection of 38 and Newry Road between his house and the Flacks’. As he dashes under the line of elms in front of his uncle’s house he sees that their branches are dotted with leaf pips as pale as lima beans and curled like … like orecchiette, he remembers, one of the twenty-seven different pastas he’d stocked at Slaussen’s Market. Babies’ ears, Mr. Krakowski called them. Smaller than conchiglia but bigger than orzo.
The memory stops the boy in his tracks. He is standing there looking up at the leaves and trying to remember the names of other noodles—linguini, capellini, tortelloni, lasagna, manicotti, ravioli over in frozen foods—when Kenny and Flip Flack come around the front of the bus. Kenny has his younger brother in a headlock and is administering an Indian burn.
Hey hillbilly, Kenny says, looking at the shoes the boy is carrying. They go on your feet.
Hey hillbilly! Flip squeezes out of his brother’s grip and runs onto the bus.
The boy shakes himself and gooses Flip as he walks past him down the aisle, and it is only when he gets to his seat in the middle of the bus that he realizes he has forgotten socks, and he curses the old man for the thousandth time. He doesn’t realize he’s sworn aloud until Julia Miller turns around and regards him over the back of her seat. She tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear, pale brown, not blonde like Joanie’s—and not half as pretty to the boy’s mind.
They might talk that trash down in New York City but we use clean English up here.
I’m not from New York City. I’m from Long
Is
land.
Well you
sound
like Jimmy Cagney and
he
was from New York City.
I’m from
Brent
wood. It’s on Long Island.
Well
I’m
from Greene County. My people used to own
your
uncle’s house.
The boy pauses. He knows this has something to do with the metal sign that is posted in front of his uncle’s house just east of the driveway—the pole
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