This week, our suggestion is to go to a fall festival. This past Saturday was Apple Harvest Day in Dover, New Hampshire. Also, the Mystic Seaport Chowderfest in Mystic, Connecticut, and the National Cranberry Festival in Carver, Massachusetts. So why not find out what's happening in your neck of the woods and take in a little warm weather while it lasts and buy some homemade jam or pickles? I don't know. Why not?
This week brings us to Kirsten Feldman's story "Shiny." Kirsten B. Feldman has written for The Boston Globe and many other area publications. She has just finished her second young adult novel, and her agent is shopping her first. She lives in Newton, where her trash day is Friday.
Shiny
Gertie woke up to her favorite Friday morning sound, Mister Crow clink, clink, clinking down her street. Careful not to wake Ma, she wiggled out of bed and slipped into the bathroom. She made as fast as she could, wiped a little, and pulled up her Elmo undies. She dribbled some water over her hands and took one more look at her snoring mother.
As usual no one else was on the street. The neighbors were sleeping off the night shift or the night drunk. She took her seat on the steps leading up to the bigger apartments, the ones with windows.
Mister Crow came into view, his cart bumping over the ragged pavement. The ones Gertie got with her mother at the superette always had one wheel dogged. Ma said that was just their luck.
He had on his black jacket over his black shirt and black cargo pants. On his feet he wore black combat boots that looked like they had seen just that. His eyes glittered in a face the color of dried mustard when he saw her.
“You up wery early dis morning, Miss Gertie.” Mister Crow inclined his head. “That is good. It healthy get out and start your day.” She loved it when he did that, talked to her like a big girl.
His name wasn’t really Mister Crow. It was something long and hard to pronounce. He’d said how about a nickname then, what she think? She’d replied, quick as a cat in the rain, “Mithter Crow. You look like one, all black and then a little thiny.”
She smiled, showing the holes where her teeth used to be.
“How’th the haul thith week? Kin I thee?” She scrambled up and over to the cart. She wore one of her mother’s old white shirts from the restaurant as a dress.
“Not too shabby. People too lazy take their bottles back, I happy do it for them.”
“Not the bottleth, thilly. You know.” She eyed him carefully to see if he was fooling.
“Oh, you mean special things.”
Gertie nodded vigorously, her matted curls bouncing along as best as they could.
“I have found one thing, Miss Gertie, since las’ week, but I couldn’t bring it with me. Too fragile.” He pronounced the word as if it too might break.
Her smile faded. “No fair. I want to thee. You said I could thee them all.”
He looked down at her. He narrowed his eyes while he thought. He looked up and down the street, still no one.
“Aw right, but we must be quick.”
“Wide.”
He looked at her questioningly. “Wide?”
“Wide.” She climbed on the cart to show him. When he saw what she meant, he gave her a boost into the seat.
“It’s a wery good idea. We go faster this way.” They set off down the block with no resistance from the cart’s wheels.
She told him about the goings-on on the street, and he whistled a little bird song. One whistled back.
“Tell me what you found, the thiny thing.”
“No, no, you must be patient. It’s–” The sound of the back-up lights interrupted their chatter. His eyes clenched shut and then sprung open.
“Early. You must do I as say. Run home. Run straight home.” He struggled to lift her out, her legs catching in the cart as she held on to the front bar.
“No fair! No fair! You thaid!” she wailed.
He focused all his efforts on picking her up.
“What we have here, Jappy, collecting somethin’ ‘sides bottles?” One tall and wiry with a cap on backwards, the other shorter and thicker with a half-dollar bald spot, two men jumped off the garbage truck and sauntered to where Mister Crow and Gertie stood next to the bulging cart.
Mister Crow turned to look at Gertie. “Go home. Go home, I say.”
“That’s right, you run your pretty little self along home. Your momma’ll be looking for you,” the balding one crooned in a singsong voice.
Gertie looked to the side, away from the shiny spot. “He wath going ta thow me his thing, his thiny thing.”
“Was he? Well, that’s a whole ‘nother matter. Git.” He glanced at the thin one who took a few steps toward her. She crossed the street, and when he looked away, she hid behind the truck.
The shiny one was talking slow and low. “Well, now. First you’re takin’ our business, and now you’re showing your stuff to little girls? We don’t take kindly to that ’round here. Give her ten years and we’ll be lookin’, but you, man, you’re just sick.”
The blows came from nowhere and everywhere. Mister Crow said nothing, his one eye staring out from the level of the sidewalk, the other closed with the blood running from his head.
“Throw that f-in’ cart in there. This is trash day.” Shiny laughed at his own joke while Skinny heaved up the cart. One wheel stuck on the edge. Skinny jumped lightly up on the truck and tried to pull.
“That’th his thtuff. That’th not trath!” Gertie pulled with all her might on the wheel of the cart.
Skinny lost his balance and fell onto the switch that operated the crusher. The sound he made when it hit his leg brought the whole neighborhood awake.
“Jesus! What in the Christ was that?”
“Did’ya hear that?”
Women pulled on robes and men pants. Children were told to stay inside. Cell phones appeared like flies at a barbecue.
One woman called to Gertie where she stood holding the wheel. “Come on up here, quiet like.”
Gertie went.
Missus Keeney had nine kids; she didn’t waste her words. “I see you out there Fridays. You ain’t done one thing wrong.”
Gertie just stood, head down, trying not to cry.
“I knew your da. He’d a been right proud o’ you. You run home to yer mum. Grief’s hard, but she’s got you.”
Still Gertie said nothing, just stood.
Missus Keeney looked at her appraisingly. “You don’t see no difference in people’s color, just their insides.”
Gertie smiled. “He’th my friend.”
“Can’t have too many friends.” Missus held out a scone fresh from the oven. “And here’s one fer yer mum.”
Gertie turned to look at Mister Crow, still lying so still. Someone had propped a shirt or a jacket beneath his head, and another covered his back. Shiny stood with his back against the truck. Three burly men from the neighborhood penned him in. Skinny wept quietly.
She crossed the street and threaded her way among the milling people. She knelt down and slid a little wood-framed mirror Mister Crow had given her into his jacket pocket. Its shiny face winked at her. She looked back at Missus Keeney.
“He’ll be all right. Listen, I hear the sirens now.”
