“He wanted to know how I come to get a job there,” Skippy answered dolefully. “Wanted to know how I had nerve enough an’ said I was there as a spotter for my father’s gang probably. An’ before he finished he said it was lucky there hadn’t been a robbery there or he’d handed me right over to the police then an’ there. Me—me that ain’t done him a bitta harm an’ that wouldn’t! Gee, Big Joe, ain’t it enough that he helped put Pop where he is? Can’t he see how I am?”
“None o’ ’em can see anythin’, kid,” Big Joe answered, bitterly. “That’s the trouble with me and Toby and every man in this Basin. Sure ’tis ’cause the likes o’ Skinner can’t see. They don’t even give us a chance, they don’t ’cause we’re river folks. They tell us so much that we’re crooked that we wind up that way whither we want to or not, so we do. They make us be crooked. And now they be startin’ in on you, kid. ’Tis a dirty shame, so ’tis.”
“I’ll get some other place,” Skippy was defiant. “They’re not gonna make me crooked when I don’t wanna be.”
“Skippy, kid,” thought Tully from the depths of his river front wisdom, “I ain’t so sure, I ain’t so sure.” But what he said was: “Sure and that they’ll not, Skippy me boy, that they’ll not.”
CHAPTER XXI
WHAT NEXT?
Weary week after weary week passed for Skippy until the winter months had come and gone. March arrived, cold, blustery and disappointing, for he hadn’t yet been able to hold a job longer than it took his employers to find out just who their office boy was. And as gossip spreads quickly along the river front, the discouraged boy seldom drew more than a few days’ pay at a time.
He had learned upon being dismissed from his last job the reason why employers had no use for his services. He demanded to know.
“Is it ’cause my father’s in prison?” he asked wistfully. “’Cause if it is nobody is fair in the world. You’ve heard, I bet, that lots of innocent people are in jail so can’t you believe maybe my father could be one of them? And anyway, does that prove that I’m....”
The employer, thus confronted, protested.
“No,” he said in that self-righteous tone that was beginning to wear on Skippy’s nerves, “we think that you, yourself, mean to be honest but we know that you can’t hold out long against such home conditions as the Basin offers. A wage such as a boy like you with your limited education can earn isn’t enough to provide you with all you want. And sooner or later, your association with a person like Big Joe Tully will have its effect on you.”