2

Breaking in a Bike

ALL the way up and down Spring Street, and even before I got up that morning, I’d been planning and rehearsing just what I’d say when I asked for the job, but the minute we were inside the store I forgot every word of it. I tried to remember some of it as the children looked into the candy case, making up their minds what they wanted, but the fat man didn’t give me much chance to think. As soon as he’d said, “Good morning,” he asked, “Newcomers in the neighborhood?”

“Yes, sir,” I told him. “We just got here last night.”

“Well, well, well, is that so?” he said, with sort of a little chuckle. “Where from? The West? You don’t talk like you come from raight around these parts.”

I’d noticed that he—and even Uncle Frank—talked a bit different from the people in Colorado, a little bit flatter or something; but I didn’t know how the man could tell we’d come from the West, so I just said, “Yes, sir. Colorado.”

“Where you livin’?” he asked.

“Well, right now we’re staying with my Uncle Frank—Mr. Gould, on Lawrence Street,” I told him, “but Mother has gone to see if she can find us a house of our own.”

“Well now, that’s good. Hope she finds one close by. What does your pa do?” he asked.

“He died nearly two years ago,” I told him. Then I thought that might be about as good a time as any to ask him about a job, so I said, “That’s why I’m looking for a job. I’ve worked on ranches for the past four summers, and we’ve always had at least one horse of our own, and I know how to take good care of them, and to mend harness, and to keep wagon wheels greased, and I could do a real good job of driving your delivery wagon, and I’d work for fifty cents a day, and I don’t care how long the hours are.”

“Well, well, well,” he said, and chuckled some more, “that’s pretty good for a little shaver like you, but. . . .”

I thought I’d better head him off before he had a chance to say I was too small for the job, so I broke right in. “I know I’m not very big, but I’m a lot stronger than I look, and I can handle a full-grown steer at the end of a rope. Last summer I worked a hundred straight days on Batchlet’s Home Ranch, and he paid me a dollar a day—full cowhand wages.”

“My, my, my!” he said that time, and his chuckle came awfully close to being a laugh. “You look a mite small for a cowhand. Come ’round here to the scales, and let’s see how much you weigh.”

I knew how much I weighed: seventy-two pounds. I’d weighed the same for three years, but I’d grown nearly three inches and was a lot stronger than when I was nine. I got my mouth open to tell the man, and then I thought better of it. It seemed to me that if I went around there behind the counter and let him weigh me I’d be at least part way in, and that I’d have a better chance of getting the job.

After I’d told the children they could pick out anything they wanted, up to five cents’ worth, I went around and stood on the big scale beside the potato bin. The man tapped the weight along with one finger until the beam balanced, then dropped his glasses down off his forehead, peered at the beam, and said, “Seventy-two pounds, raight on the mark. How old be you?”

“Thirteen,” I told him, “three weeks ago, but I’m strong for my age.” There was a bushel basket, nearly full of potatoes, sitting in front of the bin, so I lifted it knee-high to show him.

“Well, well, well,” he said again, “you are pretty stout for a little shaver, but I couldn’t hire you to drive our delivery wagon, ’cause we ain’t got one. Can you ride a bicycle?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I never tried to ride one, but I guess I could. I’ve ridden some pretty mean horses.”

That time he laughed right out loud. “A bicycle can be a mean critter, too, when you’re first learnin’ to ride it,” he told me. “How much did you say you wanted?”

“Fifty cents a day, and I don’t care how long the hours are,” I said.

“Well, well! Now don’t you think that’s a little steep for a boy before and after school?”

“Mother doesn’t make me go to school when I can find a job that pays fifty cents a day or more,” I told him.

“Hmmm, hmmmm, well,” he said, “your ma wouldn’t have much to say about that here in Mass’chusetts: they’d have the truant officer after you.”

I didn’t know what a truant officer was, but I could see there wouldn’t be much chance of my staying out of school, so I said, “Well, I could come as early as you wanted me to in the mornings before school, and stay as late as the store is open after school, and work all day on Saturdays, and I could do that for half price.”

“Dollar and a half a week?” he asked.

Of course I knew that, at a dollar and a half a week, I’d be throwing in a full day’s work on Saturday at the same price as a school day, but I wanted the job—even if they didn’t have a horse—so I said, “Yes, sir, I’d make a deal that way if I could count on having fifty cents a day when school vacation time comes.”

Instead of answering me the fat man called to the other one, “John, there’s a boy here wants to hire out to us for a dollar and a half a week. He’s a little shaver, but stout for his size, and from the way he goes about makin’ a dicker I calc’late he’d turn out to be a good merchant. What you think?”

The other man stopped his work just long enough to look at me for half a minute over the top of his glasses, then called back, “He appears awful small for a delivery boy, but use your own judgment, Gus.”

I was too close to let the chance get by, so before the man named Gus could say anything, I made my best offer. “I’ll work a week for nothing,” I told him. “That way, it won’t cost you anything to find out that I can handle the job.”

I think that’s what got me the job, and I’m sure it was what got the children a whole bag of candy for nothing. He picked a piece out of every tray in the case, then passed the bag to me and said, “That’s to bind the bargain; you be here at seven o’clock tomorrow mornin’ to sweep up and bag some coal.” Then, as we were going out, he called me back and said, “If you want, you could come ’round about six o’clock this evenin’ and get the bicycle, so’s to get in a little practice on it.”

I was so happy about getting a job my first day in town that I wanted to dance, but I wouldn’t let myself, because I didn’t really have it for sure; just sort of on a week’s trial. I got thinking about that as soon as we were outside the store, and it seemed to me that the best thing I could do to get ready for my new job was to learn the street names, so I walked the children all around that end of Medford till noon.

In the afternoon the children were too tired to go out at all, but Grace made me go and find out which school we’d go to and what the teachers’ names would be. I found that Philip and Muriel would go to the James School, and that I’d go to the Franklin. Hal wasn’t old enough to go, and Grace wasn’t going. She’d been in the eighth grade when Father died, but after that she had to stay at home to help Mother.

That afternoon seemed ten times as long to me as the forenoon had, mostly because I didn’t have much of anything to do, and because I was anxious for six o’clock to come, so I could find out whether or not I could ride the grocery store bicycle. I’d seen plenty of people ride bicycles—some of them girls, and some of them sitting up straight and riding no-hands—so I knew it couldn’t be very hard, but I wanted to be real sure I could do it before I started my new job.

Partly because I was worried about Mother, and partly because I wanted to have another look at the bicycle down at the grocery store, I went to meet every train that came in after four o’clock. It was half-past-five before Mother came, and when she stepped down from the car she looked tired and worried. I ran right to her, took the bundle she was carrying, and told her about my new job. I didn’t tell her that it was only for a week’s trial, or that I’d said I’d work that week for nothing.

She laid her hand on my shoulder and said, “You’ve done a great deal better than your mother has, Son. From what I’ve been able to learn, most of the larger hotels in Boston launder and stretch their own lace curtains, and the others pay so small a price that we couldn’t make a living by doing their work. On the other hand, rents are terribly high here, and I didn’t see a stick of used furniture that was worth anything like the price they were asking for it. I shall look again tomorrow, but it may be that we will find Medford is not the right place for us.” For a minute or two she walked along with her lips pinched tight, then she said sternly, as if she had forgotten I was there, “We shall not impose on Frank and Hilda; they have all they can do to take care of their own little ones.”

I don’t know what more she might have said if Uncle Frank hadn’t called, “Hi, Mary Emma!” from in back of us. Until Mother turned I didn’t know it was Uncle Frank calling, or that the call was for her. Father had always called her “Mame,” so had all her best friends in Colorado, and I wasn’t used to hearing her called “Mary Emma.”

Uncle Frank had been on the same train Mother came on, but had ridden back in the smoker, so she hadn’t seen him. I ran back to meet him, and told him about my new job and the bicycle, but when we caught up to Mother they talked about lace curtains. She didn’t say a word about the high prices of rents, or that Medford might not be the right place for us.

Aunt Hilda and Grace had supper ready when we reached the house, but it was so near six o’clock that I didn’t dare stop to eat. I carried the bundle inside, then ran right back for the bicycle. I didn’t try to get on it, but pushed it, and that was hard enough. It must have weighed just about as much as I did, there was a big basket strapped to the handle bars, the tires were made of solid rubber, and the snow hadn’t been shoveled off more than half of the sidewalks.

Uncle Frank said he’d help me with learning to ride the bicycle, but not until after I’d eaten my supper, so I poked down the plateful Aunt Hilda had saved for me just as fast as I could. Then Uncle Frank helped me shovel off two of the neighbors’ walks, so that I’d have a good clear stretch of sidewalk to ride on.

As soon as the walks were cleared he stood the bike at one end of the runway we’d made, and said, “Now I’ll ride it a little piece to show you how. There’s only one trick to it: when you feel it beginning to tip toward either side, turn the handle bars that way and you’ll straighten it right up. Now you watch how I do it.”

As he was talking he lifted the hind wheel off the sidewalk, reached down, and turned the foot pedal on his side around until it was straight up. Then, after he’d told me to watch him, he stepped up on it, threw the other leg over—just as if he’d been mounting a horse—and away he went. I couldn’t see that he turned the handle bars at all, but he went right down the middle of the sidewalk, turned the bicycle around, and pedaled it as straight back to me as if he’d been riding on a tightrope.

Before I tried to get on I was careful to lift the hind wheel and turn the pedal around just as he had, but when I stepped up onto it the bike came over onto me quicker than a horse that’s stepped into a gopher hole. It was lucky that there was a good high snow bank along there, so I didn’t get hurt a bit. When I’d picked myself up and got the snow out of my ears, Uncle Frank said, “Don’t pull the handle bars toward you when you go up; leave them straight. It’s time enough to turn them when you get rolling.”

I tried it the same way three more times, but each time the bike pitched me into the snow bank before we’d gone a foot. I found out what the trouble was on that third fall. “I know what I’m doing wrong,” I told Uncle Frank. “With a strange horse you always pull his head way around toward you before you go up. That way he can’t rear, or start off too quick and dump you. Next time I’ll remember not to pull the handle bars around as I’m going up.”

I didn’t pull them, but I must have pushed. Anyway, the bike ran into the snow bank on the other side of the walk, and I dived head-first into a low hedge with a million little thorns on it. I didn’t get scratched up very much, but I was pretty sore at myself for not being able to do something that lots of girls could do. Uncle Frank helped me get untangled from the hedge, and asked, “Are you hurt?”

I wasn’t, but I wouldn’t have let on if I had been. “No, sir,” I told him, “but I wish there was some way to put a gunny sack over this critter’s eyes, the way they put one over a horse’s eyes in a roundup. Then they can’t buck till you’re all on and have both feet in the stirrups.”

He told me he’d be the gunny sack, so he stood in front of the bike on my next try, holding the handle bars with his hands and the wheel between his knees. Everything went fine until he stepped away, and for about six feet after that, then the bike decided to go one way just as I decided to go the other, and I was in the hedge again.

On my fourth try after that I made as much as twenty feet before it pitched me off again, going down the sidewalk as if both the bicycle and I were drunk.

“That’s fine! That’s fine!” Uncle Frank told me as he came to help me out of the hedge. “Your only trouble is that you don’t turn the handle bars quick enough when you begin to tip, and then, when you do turn them, you turn too far.”

“I know it,” I told him, “but I don’t know what to do about it. I can always tell which way a bucking horse is going to jump by the way he turns his ears, but this thing doesn’t give you any warning.”

I was scratched up from the hedge more than I thought, but I guess I looked a lot worse off than I really was. When I wiped my mitten across my face it came away with a red smooch on it, and Uncle Frank said, “That’s enough for one lesson. Those solid tires and the basket will always make it tough to ride, but after another day or two you won’t have to think anything about keeping it balanced. I’ll drop in at the store in the morning and tell Gus Haushalter that you’re going to make out all right, but that you’d better deliver your orders on Shank’s mare for the rest of this week.”

There were plenty of days on the ranches when I worked a lot harder than I had that day, but I don’t remember ever being any more tired. That evening Uncle Frank tried to teach me how to play cribbage, but I went to sleep right in the middle of a game.