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Soon after arriving at Frau Schmidt’s and paying for his room, Lenert went out to look for a job. He thought he might be able to get one with a store, loading and unloading inventory in the back, perhaps even making deliveries that would get him outdoors part of the time. He walked first toward the river, but all he saw for block after block were warehouses.
They were busy, noisy places, moving cargo from ships to horse-drawn wagons. He walked up to one man who sat lazily holding the reins of his horses while his carriage was loaded. “Are there jobs for horsemen?” Lenert asked, trying to sound as American as possible.
“Not now the banks are failing,” the man said. “Too many good men out of work.”
He walked for blocks and blocks, asking everyone he saw, and getting the same answer. He remembered that Isaac had said his father worked near the docks as a painter. Would he pass the man by on the street, neither of them recognizing the other?
Then he remembered that Isaac’s father had broken his arm and could not work. Isaac had wanted to visit him, but had postponed the trip until Graybill’s visit. Now that Lenert had deserted him, he would not be able to leave the lock.
So many consequences for each small action, he thought. How many ways had he hurt Isaac by abandoning him without any notice?
When he came to the railroad yards at Oregon Avenue, he turned inland, peering at store windows for signs advertising jobs. The butcher’s shop needed an apprentice, and Lenert had done some butchering back home on the farm, but the last line on the sign read “No black or Irish need apply.”
If they didn’t like blacks or Irish, they probably wouldn’t like a German, either. He kept on walking. He turned a corner, and the stench rising from a leather goods store was nearly overwhelming – he couldn’t see himself working with so many vile-smelling hides. He doubled back and headed up South Front Street, which was busier with stores and offices serving the riverfront.
Almost immediately he spotted a sign for a salesclerk, in the window of a store that sold embroidery and upholstery trimmings. But he peered through the window and saw only women working and shopping there. They wouldn’t want a big man trying to sell fancy cloth to women. And his numbers weren’t good enough to calculate prices and give change.
He kept going on South Front Street, miles, it seemed, past the Swedish church. But everywhere it was the same. There were few signs offering work, and none of them right for someone of Lenert’s abilities.
He passed a young family out for an afternoon stroll. The father, nearly Lenert’s age, held a small boy on his shoulders, and the mother walked with her hand in that of a young girl. They were dressed as if on their way to or from church.
Lenert’s heart ached. He would never have a family like that, as he had envisioned when he was a boy. God in his heaven had made him differently, so he looked down at his feet and shuffled forward.
By midday he was tired, his leg hurt, and he was hungry. He stopped at a small restaurant near the docks, where ate a generous platter of fried fish. No jobs there, though he asked.
The afternoon was no different. At a glazier’s, he was told that he would need experience handling delicate glass before he could be hired. “Where I get experience?” he asked.
“Become an apprentice,” the man said. “But you are too old. You must start at twelve or thirteen.”
At a bakery, he was told the job had already been filled, though the woman behind the counter made no attempt to take down the sign.
The tobacconist’s shop was too narrow, and Lenert was too tall and broad-shouldered to be able to move around inside. He remembered that Jonas had gotten a job at a similar store. At least he was small and thin.
After constant walking for most of the day, his leg began to ache as he approached the boarding house. As he walked up the steps, a dapper man who appeared to be in his forties caught up with him. “You are new here?” he asked in German, with a strange accent. “I am Wolfgang, from Swabia.”
“Lenert. From East Prussia.”
“And both of us here in Philadelphia,” Wolfgang marveled. “What strange ways the world has.”
They walked into the lounge on the first floor. “Do you work?” Lenert asked. From his fine clothes, he had to have a good job. Maybe he would know of one for Lenert.
They settled into armchairs. “I work in an apothecary shop on Market Street in the center of the city.” He sighed. “It is a beautiful store, very fancy,” he said. “Right now I am unpacking boxes in the back room, stocking the shelves. But I hope to move out front soon.”
“How did you find this job?” Lenert asked.
He straightened the lapel of his jacket, which had once been quite elegant but was now well-worn. “I worked in many fancy stores in Augsburg, but no matter where I worked, there was always someone with a better name, wealthier family, or better education than I had, and I could never move up.”
He leaned back in his chair and spread his legs out in front of him. “My last position was in a men’s clothing store, where I met the owner’s daughter, a lovely young woman of my age, and we talked together sometimes as we worked.”
Lenert leaned forward, hoping to hear good advice.
“My boss was afraid that she would want to marry me, so he offered to write a letter on my behalf to his cousin here in Philadelphia.”
Wolfgang shrugged. “I knew he would never let me marry his daughter, so I accepted the letter, sold everything I owned and bought my passage here.”
“You are happier?” Lenert asked.
“I have more opportunity. Right now I share a small room here, because I am saving all my money so that when I am given better job, I can afford new clothes. Then I will get a place of my own and begin to look for a wife.”
He looked at Lenert. “You are here how long?”
“One year and a half, perhaps,” Lenert said. He explained about working on the barge, then the lock. “But the man who runs the canal, he is very bad, cheating people and making threats. So I decide to leave.”
“There is always a job for a man who will work hard,” Wolfgang said.
“Are there people who will not hire Germans or Prussians?” Lenert asked. He explained about the sign he had seen.
“The blacks and the Irish, people think they are lazy, so won’t hire them. They know we Germans work hard, so there is not so much prejudice.” He pursed his lips. “Maybe you will be happy in Germantown,” he said. “This is a neighborhood maybe six miles from here, many Germans there.”
Lenert wasn’t willing to pick up and move to another area so quickly after landing at Frau Schmidt’s, and besides he had already paid for a week in advance, but Wolfgang wrote down the directions how to get there, if he decided to explore.
Other men came and went, and Lenert joined several of them for dinner at a tiny café a few blocks away. He asked each of them for advice. There was little to be given, once they learned about his bad leg. Most of them said to rest, and then look for work at the docks as soon as he was able.
It was only after he returned to the boarding house that he allowed himself to think of Isaac. What was he doing then? He had worked all day at the lock, certainly. Lenert hoped he had been too busy to think much of Lenert, and that he understood why Lenert had to leave.
He counted out the coins in his pocket. He had enough to pay for another week at Frau Schmidt’s, and if he was careful he could afford to eat a single meal each day. But after that? He decided that if he could not find a job that day or the next, he would have to consider going out to Germantown.
Sunday morning there would be no stores open, so he went to a park a few blocks away and sat there in the shade of a tall elm tree, watching squirrels chase each other through the high branches. A blue jay lit on a branch just above him and stared down. The bird’s colors were so vibrant and reminded Lenert of the blue of Isaac’s eyes.
He shuddered as he realized he would never look into those eyes again. Never feel Isaac’s gentle touch on his arm, nor Isaac’s eager mouth on his cock. No more of any of that.
He could not allow himself to feel those feelings anymore—not for Isaac, or for any other man. He forced himself to stand up. He could not luxuriate in the past, nor could he waste energy on regret. He had to keep moving forward.
He returned to the boardinghouse, and surprised Frau Schmidt in the living room as she was assembling a pile of bandages. “Is someone ill?”
She looked up at him. “Many people do not approve of him, but he is still a human being. And he is pain.”
Lenert cocked his head. “Who?”
“Solomon Smith. You must know him. He worked on the barges.”
“Of course. What is wrong with him?”
“The man he worked for beat him, and he had no money for a doctor, so the wounds have become infected. I am going to take care of him.”
“Let me help you. Solomon was always kind to me along the canal.”
She handed him a pitcher of water. “Here, then, carry this for me,” she said. “I have some medicine for him that I got yesterday before the apothecary closed. Together we will see if we can bring him back to health.”
It would be good to do something for someone else, Lenert thought. That would take his mind off the hurt he had caused Isaac, and the pain that remained in his chest.
