“We’d sure admire to do that, ma’am. But we can’t. We got to make a dime do all of us.” And he said embarrassedly, “We ain’t got but a little.”
Mae said, “You can’t get no loaf a bread for a dime. We only got fifteen-cent loafs.”
From behind her Al growled, “God Almighty, Mae, give ’em bread.”
“We’ll run out ’fore the bread truck comes.”
“Run out, then, goddamn it,” said Al. And he looked sullenly down at the potato salad he was mixing.
Mae shrugged her plump shoulders and looked to the truck drivers to show them what she was up against.
She held the screen door open and the man came in, bringing a smell of sweat with him. The boys edged in behind him and they went immediately to the candy case and stared in—not with craving or with hope or even with desire, but just with a kind of wonder that such things could be. They were alike in size and their faces were alike. One scratched his dusty ankle with the toe nails of his other foot. The other whispered some soft message and then they straightened their arms so that their clenched fists in the overall pockets showed through the thin blue cloth.
Mae opened a drawer and took out a long waxpaper-wrapped loaf. “This here is a fifteen-cent loaf.”
The man put his hat back on his head. He answered with inflexible humility, “Won’t you—can’t you see your way to cut off ten cents’ worth?”
Al said snarlingly, “Goddamn it, Mae. Give ’em the loaf.” The man turned toward Al. “No, we want ta buy ten cents’ worth of it. We got it figgered awful close, mister, to get to California.”