“Money! What’s the use o’ money when yuh can’t blow ’t in?” It was the day after pay-day, and “Shine” had his pocket full. “I’d sooner be deckin’ on three a week.” In the course of his varied career as boot-black, wharf-rat, Bowery boy and member of the “Con. Scully Association,” he had once held a “spring line” on a Coney Island excursion boat. He remembered the cool breeze that had blown in a porthole of the forward cabin when the deckhands sat playing pedro there, of an afternoon. He remembered midnights on the Bowery, when the boat had been tied up to her pier, and he had been free ashore with his month’s wages in his pocket. “Yuh weren’t chained up to a doghouse like this, all day an’ night,” he said.
Sturton grunted, unconvinced.
“Shine” chewed and swallowed sullenly, until his little puckered eyes set in the open stare of a cow revolving its cud. He smiled. He followed that expression with a scowl and bit into his apple; and, the memory of strong drink being a thirst in his mouth, the mild cider-juice of the bruised fruit came as an insipid aggravation to a longing palate. He flung the apple overboard. “If it wasn’t fer th’ ol’ woman,” he said, “I’d chuck the damn job.”
Sturton’s jaw stopped. Whenever he had a nightmare, he dreamed that he was discharged from the department. “What’d yuh do?”
“Do?” “Shine” cried. “I’d do anythin’. I’d go an’ make a pitch on Coney fer the summer.”
“Make a what?”
“Take a front—set up a show—fake ’em, fake ’em! All the suckers ain’t been stung yet.... An’ if I didn’t have the money fer that, I’d go boostin’ fer a start. I had fifteen boosters ’n under me onct. Youse guys that think th’ on’y way to collar the cush is to go sweat fer it, like niggers—yuh make me tired!”
“Turk” shook his head darkly. “This ’s good enough fer mine.”
“Sure, it is,” “Shine” sneered. “Yuh don’t know any better. Yuh’ve never drew any better. If yuh’d been with me an’ Goldy Simpson when we had the front on Tilyou’s Walk, we’d ’a’ showed yuh life—life!” He polished another apple on his shirt sleeve and sank his teeth in it savagely. Sturton did not reply. They ate in silence.
“Shine” was bare-footed. He had taken off his shoes to reach the apples, standing on a stringer that was awash. He drew his knees up to his chin now, to keep his feet within the narrow cover of the shade, and he sat like a monkey in a cage, looking over the bulwarks enviously at the free life on the open river.