19

New Customers

GRACE was right in her guess that I was beginning to grow again. I’d weighed seventy-two pounds before Father died, in 1910, and I still weighed seventy-two pounds when I got the job in the D & H Grocery at the beginning of 1912. But by the end of February I was up to eighty pounds, and Mother said she believed I’d grown an inch taller. I don’t think it was the candy that did it, because I’d only eaten a piece or two a day—after the first week. But it might have been because Mr. Haushalter brought me a big piece of cheese and a handful of crackers almost every day. Or it might have been that I’d ridden too many rough horses while we lived in Colorado, or that the altitude was too high for my leaky heart. Whatever it was, I must have started growing from the first day I went to work in the store.

But Mother was losing weight a lot faster than I was gaining. Most of it, I think, was more from worry than hard work. Each week she and Grace had Mrs. Humphrey’s and Mrs. Sterling’s laundry to do, and each week it brought in about eight dollars, but she didn’t get any new customers. Then, too, the whole month of March was cold and blustery. We’d have a thaw for a day or two, then it would turn cold again, and we had one real blizzard. Our first ton of coal lasted only until the first of the month, and we’d burned two more before April Fool’s Day. On days when there was washing to be dried I had to keep the furnace fire high, but on the other days I kept it banked with cinders, and the house just warm enough at night that the water pipes wouldn’t freeze.

Before March was over we were having baked beans four or five times a week, and meat only on Sundays. Grace and I knew that Mother was as near being discouraged as we’d ever seen her, but she would never mention it and, of course, we didn’t either. Only those who knew Mother as well as Grace and I did could ever have guessed that things weren’t going along fine for us. At church she was even more pleasant than usual, and when Mr. Vander Mark asked her how she was getting on, she said, “Splendidly, Doctor; splendidly! The children have all fitted right into their new schools nicely, and our laundry customers seem well satisfied with our work. As soon as we’ve picked up one or two more, I shall feel that our little business is well established.”

Mrs. Humphrey and Mrs. Sterling were at church every Sunday, and each time they visited with Mother a few minutes after the service. Two or three times I heard one or the other of them tell her they had recommended her work to some of their friends, but that was as much as we had ever heard about any new customers.

The first Sunday in April Grace asked me to go for a walk with her as soon as dinner was over. We were barely out of sight from the house when she told me, “I’m going to find myself a job. Tomorrow I want you to find me some excuse for being away from home for a few hours; somebody’s baby to tend, or something like that. And then I want you to tell it to me at the table when you come home for lunch. That way it won’t be a lie, because I’ll already know it isn’t so, and you won’t be lying to Mother because you’ll be talking to me, and she’ll just be overhearing it.”

“That wouldn’t work,” I told her. “Where would you find a job in a few hours that would pay as much as you make by helping with the business we already have? You remember how hard and how long Mother hunted for work before she found any, don’t you?”

“Sure I do, and I remember where she found it, too. I can now iron stiff-bosomed shirts and collars and cuffs, and other fancy things as well as anybody else. And if Mother could get a laundry job without experience, I’ll bet I can get one with.”

“You’re not going to do anything of the kind!” I told her. “About all you’d have to do would be to walk through Edgeworth a couple of times, alone and after dark, and you’d be a gone goose. I’m going to quit school and go to work full-time. Even if they don’t need me full-time at the store, the man in the lumberyard is my friend. We shook hands and said so, and I’ll bet he’d give me a job anytime—and maybe for as much as four dollars a week. That’s pretty near as much as you’d make in the laundry if you had to pay carfare both ways.”

“Don’t be silly!” Grace told me. “You’re a boy, and boys have to get an education if they’re going to amount to anything. You could do Mother more good by staying in school till you’ve learned enough to hold down a better job than working in a lumberyard. You still try to spell cat with a K.”

When Grace had her head set on something it took more than me to stop her, so I didn’t argue any more, but she got stopped anyhow. That Sunday afternoon Mother read to us for a little while, but she couldn’t seem to keep her mind on her reading, and she lost her place two or three times. The parlor wasn’t really cold, but it was sort of chilly, and once Mother told me to go down and open the furnace drafts a little. But before I got as far as the kitchen she called me back and told me to never mind, that we’d have to make this last ton of coal stretch just as far as it would go. She read another page or two, lost her place again, and then said, “Why don’t we all go to church this evening? I don’t know what it is, but something keeps telling me that we ought to go. Elizabeth would sleep very nicely in my arms, and if Hal should go to sleep I’m sure no one would mind.”

It wasn’t too much warmer in the church than it was in our own parlor, but Mr. Vander Mark preached a real good sermon and I was glad we were there. I was even more glad when the sermon was over. As we walked down the aisle I noticed that Mrs. Humphrey was standing by the vestibule door, talking to two ladies I didn’t remember having seen at church before. We had nearly reached them when Mrs. Humphrey looked up and said, “Oh, Mrs. Moody, you’re just the one I’m looking for! I’d like you to meet some friends of mine.”

Grace took Elizabeth out of Mother’s arms, and we went on to the vestibule while she stopped to be introduced. Almost everyone had left the church before Mother came out, and she looked ten years younger than she had when she went in. She didn’t say a word until we were well away from the church, but Grace poked me with her elbow and nodded. Neither of us was much surprised when Mother said, “My, those were charming ladies! And they’re both going to try our work. The taller one was Mrs. Nickerson, the wife of our Superintendent of Schools. Philip, with four baskets to be picked up tomorrow afternoon, you’ll have to hurry right straight home from school.”

“Now that all the snow is gone, he won’t be able to use his sled,” I told Mother, “so I guess I’d better ask Al Richardson if we can borrow his cart. He has a good one, almost new, that he uses for his morning paper route, but his evening route is light enough that he doesn’t really need a cart for it.”

“No!” Mother said. “No, we are not going to be borrowers! If you boys hurry right home from school tomorrow noon you will have plenty of time to pick up Mrs. Humphrey’s basket. It won’t be so heavy but what you should be able to carry it, and the other three will doubtlessly be light enough that Philip and Muriel can manage with them. If these new customers should prove to be profitable ones, we will have to consider buying a cart of our own. I wonder how much they cost.”

“Three ninety-five,” I told her. “That’s what Al’s cost, and it’s a good one.”

“My!” Mother said. “That’s quite a lot of money! But then, we can’t run a business without equipment, and we will need a good sturdy cart. Well, that’s a bridge we’ll have to cross when we come to it. For the present you children will just have to carry the baskets by hand.”

“Well,” I said, “if I can find a dump where there’s an old baby carriage with good wheels, I could get a big box and make . . .”

“No,” Mother told me. “No, Son! If we are going to run a first-class business we must have first-class equipment. We’ll simply have to wait about a cart until we see how these new customers are going to work out. You know, they might send us only a very few garments at the beginning. Now let’s hurry right along. With a big week’s work before us, we must all go right to bed and get our rest.”

Except for the first week, when we had the big blizzard, Mrs. Humphrey’s basket had never seemed to be terribly heavy. And, with the sled to carry it on, the half-mile from her house to ours had never seemed very far. But before Philip and I got her basket home that Monday noon the distance seemed like ten miles, and the basket dragged down on our arms as if it had been filled with rocks. We had to rest at every corner, and it took us so long that I had to run all the way to school to keep from being late.

We couldn’t have been the only people in Medford who’d had to spend more money than they’d expected to for coal that winter, or who had been eating baked beans during March. When I went to work that Monday afternoon, there were half a dozen customers in the store, one whole side of the floor was lined up with filled grocery baskets, and Mr. Durant was still putting up orders. I pitched right in to help Mr. Haushalter with the customers, and when we both had to go back to the kerosene barrel at the same time, I asked him, “Where did all the business come from?”

“First of the month,” he told me, “and folks has got their pay checks. With April here they ain’t savin’ out much for coal, and I calc’late they’re fed up on beans. Always comes about this way after a hard winter. You hyper along and get them baskets took out for John; I’ll take care of the store trade.”

I was so busy for the next couple of hours that I didn’t have any time to think about home, or about anything else except pumping the old bicycle as fast as I could make it go. I’d delivered an order, way over on the Fellsway, and was hurrying back to the store when I saw Philip and Muriel about a block ahead of me. They were trying to carry a basket that was bigger than both of them put together, and were having to set it down every five or six steps. I couldn’t stop to help Philip home with the basket, but I took nearly half of the laundry ahead on the bike.

I was a little late in getting home from work that night because of all the grocery baskets I had to deliver, and when I came in supper was on the table. Mother didn’t say a word about business until I’d asked the blessing and served the plates. Then she looked up at me and asked, “Ralph, do you know where Al Richardson bought his cart?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I told her, “at the hardware store at Medford Square. They have nearly a dozen of them, all lined up by the wall; some blue and some red and some brown.”

“Mmmm, hmmm,” Mother hummed. “If I were to have sandwiches ready when you come home from school tomorrow noon, do you think you boys would have time to run up there and buy us one? That is, if they’re good and sturdy. Philip will need a good sturdy cart if we’re to continue getting these heavy baskets.”