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Shoe Girl
The tenements loomed toward the sky on either side of the alley like glowering giants, but they'd keep the wind off. There was plenty of trash in the narrow space between them. It stank to high heaven, but, then, so did he. He began to burrow into the heap like a rat. A number of rodents squawked and scrambled away. Hell's bells! He hoped they wouldn't bite him while he was asleep. Rat bites hurt like fury For a moment he stopped digging, but the freezing air drove him farther in. He tried to warm himself by cursing his pa. The words inside his head were hot as flaming hades, but they didn't fool his hands and feet, which ached from the cold.
He'd heard of people freezing to death in their sleep. It happened to drunks all the time. He sometimes wished it would happen to his pa, although he knew it was wicked to wish your own pa dead. But how could Jake be expected to care whether the brute lived or died? The man did nothing but beat him. Dead, he wouldn't beat me or steal all my pay for drink—and then beat me for not earning more.
He was keeping himself agitated, if not warm, with hateful thoughts of the old man when he heard light footsteps close by. He willed himself motionless.
It was a small person from the sound, and coming right for his pile. You can't have my pile. This one's mine. I already claimed it. I chased the rats for it. I made my nest in it.... He began to growl.
"Who's there?" It was the frightened voice of a child—a girl, if he wasn't mistaken.
"What do you want?" He stuck his head out of the pile.
The girl jumped back with a little shriek.
Stupid little mouse.
"Who are you?" she asked, her voice shaking.
"It's my pile. Go away."
"I don't want your pile. Really, I don't." She was shaking so hard, her whole body was quivering. "I—I just need to look in it—to find something."
"In here?"
"I think so. I'm not sure."
He was interested in spite of himself. "What did you lose?"
"My—my shoes," she said.
"How could you lose your shoes?"
"I guess I sort of hid them."
"You what?"
"I know," she said. He could tell she was about to bawl. "It was stupid. I really need new ones. But Mamma said Anna had to stand up all day on the line and she needed shoes worse than me. I thought if I lost mine ... It was stupid, I know." She began to cry in earnest.
"Okay, okay, which pile?" He stood up, old bottles, cans, and papers cascading from his shoulders.
She put her left foot on top of her right, to keep at least one stockinged foot from touching the frozen ground. "You smell awful," she said.
"Shut up. You want help or not?"
"Please," she said. "I'm sorry."
They dug about in the dark. At length, Jake found the first shoe, and then the girl found the other. She nodded gratefully, slipped them on her feet, and bent over to tie what was left of the laces.
"You didn't lose them so good."
"No. I guess I knew all along I'd have to find them." She gave a little sigh. "But thank you." She was very polite. He figured she went to school even in shoes that were more holes than leather. "You can't sleep in a garbage heap," she said.
"And why not?"
"You'll freeze to death is why." Somehow with her shoes found, she didn't seem like a scared mouse after all.
"I done it before. Besides, where else am I gonna go?"
"You might—you can sleep in our kitchen." She blurted the words out, and then put her hand quickly to her mouth.
"Your folks might notice," he said. "Besides I stink. You said so."
"We all stink." She grabbed his arm. "Come on before I change my mind."
They went in the alley door of one of the buildings and climbed to the third floor. "Shh," she said before she opened the door. "They're all asleep."
She led him between the beds in the first room and then into the kitchen. There was no fire in the stove, but the room was warmer than a trash pile.
"You can lie down here," she said. "We don't have an extra bed—not even a quilt. I'm sorry."
"I'll be okay," he said. He could hardly make out her features in the dark room, but he could tell that she was smaller than he and very thin, with hair that hung to her shoulders.
"I'll be up before your pa wakes," he said
.
"He's dead. Nobody will throw you out."
Still, the first stirring in the back room woke him the next morning. A kid was crying out and a woman's voice was trying to shush it, though Jake reckoned it to be a hunger cry that could not be hushed with words.
He got silently to his feet. There was a box on the table. He opened it to find a half loaf of bread. He tore off a chunk, telling himself they'd never miss it. Then he stole back through the front room, where someone was snoring like thunder, and out the door and down the stairs and on down the hill to the mill and to work. No danger of freezing there. He never stopped moving. Why, even on these frigid winter mornings, he was sweating like a pig by ten o'clock.
Later he remembered that he hadn't even asked the girl her name or told her his.
"Short Pay! All Out!"
"Short pay!" It was one of the Italians. Halfway back hn the line waiting for his pay envelope, Jake felt a thrill of fear or excitement, he couldn't have said which. All week the men had talked of a strike. The Italians had passed around a petition. If you signed it, you were promising to walk out if the threatened pay cut came through in Friday's envelope. None of the Irish, who were mostly management or skilled, nor any of the other native-born, had signed it. But Jake had put his X on it, mostly because his pa had threatened to kill him if he went out on strike "with those wops," and Jake, as usual, had been furious with him. The sot had drunk up all of Jake's last pay envelope so that he had had to spend the past two weeks stealing food and sleeping in garbage dumps just to stay alive.
At first the non-Italian workers seemed confused. Should they walk out or stay put? Several started back toward their stations, then changed their minds and followed the Italians. Paddy Parker, the Irish floor boss, had planted himself at the head of the escalator, trying to block anyone's attempted exit with his huge body. Billy Wood, owner of half the mills in town, was uncommonly proud of that escalator. It got the workers from the ground floor to the upper stories of the mill in record time. That, with the speeded-up machines, was swelling the profit margin at the Wood Mill.
"Strike! Strike!" another worker cried, racing back and forth between the rows of spindle frames. Someone pulled a switch, and the belts slowed and stopped.
