“We are looking for a job, sir,” I began. “Can you give us a chance to work?”
“No, I can’t, —— you! Out you go, now!” And then to a man near the door: “—— your soul, Kelly, I’ve told you to keep these bums out of here. If you let in another one I’ll fire you, as sure as hell.”
“OUT YOU GO, NOW.”
The hour was nearly up, and there was apparently nothing for it but to start north in accordance with Clark’s plan and in hope of better fortune. I felt as though I could not go. I was fairly faint with hunger, and a curious light-headedness had possessed me. The sights and sounds about us took on a strange unreality, and I could not rid myself of the feeling of moving and speaking in a dream. Again and again I was conscious of a repetition of identical experience, recalling the same circumstances in some faintly remembered past, and even before I spoke at times, I had an eerie sense of having uttered the coming sentences before under precisely similar conditions. The one fact to which consciousness held with unshaken certainty was the strong craving for food. And this was not so much a positive pain, as it was a sickening, benumbing influence. My hand would all but go out in reach for fruit that lay exposed about me, and the thought that the act would be wrong, and would get me into trouble, followed the impulse afar, and was forced into action as a checking conviction by a distinct effort of the will.
We turned into one shop more. The pavement in front was heaped with crates packed with oranges, and bound around the centre and the ends with iron bands. Three high they stood on end, and four and five in a row along the curb, while backed up against them were two empty trucks with slats sloping capaciously at the sides.
There was confusion within the shop. A dealer and two drivers were swearing loudly, each on a line of independent grievance. Two or three shopmen were bustling about in zealous execution of orders. Men who may have been customers were waiting impatiently for attention, and clerks added to the confusion as with papers in hand they passed quickly in and out of offices at the rear. It appeared the most unpromising place for us that we had entered, and we were prepared for a refusal more than commonly emphatic, when to our almost overwhelming surprise the dealer hailed us:
“Say, you men, do you want a job? Go out and load them oranges, and I’ll give you fifty cents apiece.”
We did not stagger nor clasp each other’s hands in an ecstasy of relief; we simply turned without a word, and hurrying to the street, we began to lift the heavy crates into the box of an empty truck.
Clark was the first to speak.