Rock Island Line by David Rhodes (most life changing books txt) 📗

them up, but the man dashed at him, surprisingly quick for his size, and swung a leg up to kick him like a dog. “Beat it,” he yelled. July dodged him and fled up the stairs and outside. But on the way by the stand, abandoned as soon as the fat man had heard from a friend coming up that there was someone down on the docks peddling papers, he took a handful and sped across Broad Street and past the movie theaters. Two blocks later, after he’d stopped running, he counted them. Only five. He sold them all outside a delicatessen and produce market, bought a bag of caramel corn and some french fries and went exploring for the rest of the afternoon and evening, until he could safely return to his room. That night, just before he went to bed, when he’d come out to take a leak beside the tracks, he saw a wolf that looked like a man walk down into the tunnel across on the other side, on two legs.

The following day he learned that he could get newspapers off the company truck—whole bundles at a time—for four cents a copy, and that he wouldn’t have to pay for them until the end of the week, and if he got up early enough in the morning to catch several stands of seven-to-seven-thirty bus riders, or stood in front of the big offices at eight, he could easily sell seventy-five or a hundred. If he had a good day, he could sell the rest of his bundles by noon and be finished for the day. On a slow day—when it was raining and the pages were soggy and there was nothing but gossip in the headlines—he could work for all he was worth and not sell half a bundle. After a while, when he could see one of those days unfolding before him, he would throw it in, let the company share the loss (they never charged him for papers he couldn’t sell, but didn’t pay him for trying tosell them either) and go to a movie on 14th Street, where in the dark of the theater he would plan how he could manage to sell beneath City Hall without getting caught by the oaf who’d paid $5000 for the territory.

He saw many of the other paper boys getting their own corners from older boys who’d finally get out of the business, buying them, which in the paper company’s mind, and most certainly in their own, gave them exclusive right to a whole block, where it was possible to try for every paper man’s dream: steady customers who know you and always buy from you—enough to keep you afloat even in lean times and still give you a crack at the good days when you might sell four hundred papers. These corners cost usually between $100 and $200. July didn’t buy one for two reasons: first, he liked the feeling of being able to go anywhere to sell, the thrill of hitting it rich in a new neighborhood; and secondly, if he was going to have his own place, it was somehow going to be beneath City Hall.

He worked each day and, except for very unfortunate ones, could depend on making $6.00. Two of the six, no matter what, he put into a glass jar, for a savings fund. It cost him between $1.50 and $3.00 to eat, depending on what he felt like, and the rest he spent on furnishings for his room, and clothes as he needed them. The days grew colder and he was forced to save for a pair of warm socks, a secondhand coat with a fur collar, two more blankets, and gloves.

In some of the places he frequented to eat, the help got to know him, and one old woman who lived in Germantown told him about how he could use the restrooms and showers in the basement of the civic center. Most of the panhandlers and street-walkers knew him by sight because of his wide area of circulation. Every once in a while he’d get a free meal at the mission and one of the men would secretly give him a snort from a bottle of wine. He began keeping cats, but it was difficult and a little heart-rending because every so often one would disappear without a trace, leaving only gloomy fantasies of what might havehappened and frightening him into imagining someone had found his room and was coming in while he was away selling papers to steal cats and look for money and guns. But luckily July came upon a cat one night climbing roofs, a big black-and-orange tom with long hair and half of its left ear missing, that never disappeared after he’d taken it home.

What a difference it made to have that cat! He couldn’t believe how lonely he must have been before. He looked back on himself before the cat as a different person altogether, morose and a little stupid. Sometimes he would go to a movie after dinner, just because he wanted to get back to Butch so badly—in order to draw it out and make himself feel more important, so that he would come back full of excuses as to why Butch, sitting disdainfully in his cardboard-and-blanket house, had to wait so long to be fed. They slept together, and if it wasn’t snowing Butch would occasionally accompany him on his paper rounds. Naturally, no one at first believed a cat would follow anyone around—not purposely; but, nevertheless, There goes July Montgomery, the paper kid, who lives nobody knows where with his cat was what even Boz Green clear over by Fairmount Park thought when he’d look out from his crackerbox studio and see them, and sometimes (though he was nearly broke himself) would leave his painting, go out on the street and call him over and get a paper.

“What’s up?” asked Boz.

“That depends what you’re after to be up, Mr. Boz,”