Make Room! Make Room! Read Online Free PDF Page A

to force himself not to turn and look as he waited, imitating patience, for the man to notice him.
    “What do you want, kid?” the dispatcher said, finally looking up, speaking through tight, pursed lips reluctant to give anything away, even words. A man in his fifties, tired and hot, angry at a world that had promised him more.
    “Could you use a messenger boy, mister?”
    “Beat it. We got too many kids already.”
    “I could use the work, mister, I’d work any time you say. I got the board money.” He took out one of the ten-dollar bills and smoothed it on the counter. The man’s eyes glared at it quickly, then jerked away again. “We got too many kids.”
    The bench creaked and footsteps came up behind Billy and a boy spoke, his voice thick with restrained anger.
    “Is this Chink bothering you, Mr. Burgger?” Billy thrust the money back into his pocket and held tightly to it.
    “Sit down, Roles,” the man said. “You know my rule about trouble or fighting.”
    He glared at the two boys and Billy could guess what the rulewas and knew that he wouldn’t be working here unless he did something quickly.
    “Thank you for letting me talk to you, Mr. Burgger,” he said, innocently, as he felt back with his heel and jammed his weight down on the boy’s toes as he turned. “I won’t bother you any more—”
    The boy shouted and pain burst in Billy’s ear as the fist lashed out and caught him. He staggered and looked shocked but made no attempt to defend himself.
    “All right, Roles,” Mr. Burgger said distastefully. “You’re through here, get lost.”
    “But—Mr. Burgger …” he howled unhappily. “You don’t know this Chink….”
    “Get out!” Mr. Burgger half rose and pointed angrily at the gaping boy. “Out!”
    Billy moved to one side, unnoticed and forgotten for the moment, and knew enough not to smile. It finally penetrated to the boy that there was nothing he could do and he left—after hurling a look of burning malice at Billy—while Mr. Burgger scratched on one of the message boards.
    “All right, kid, it looks like you maybe got a job. What’s your name?”
    “Billy Chung.”
    “We pay fifty cents every telegram you deliver.” He stood and walked to the counter holding the board. “You take a telegram out you leave a ten-buck board deposit. When you bring the board back you get ten-fifty. That clear?”
    He laid the board down on the counter between them and his eyes glanced down to it. Billy looked and read the chalked words:
fifteen cent kickback
.
    “That’s fine with me, Mr. Burgger.”
    “All right.” The heel of his hand removed the message. “Get on the bench and shut up. Any fighting, any trouble, any noise, and you get what Roles got.”
    “Yes, Mr. Burgger.”
    When he sat down the other boys stared at him suspiciously but said nothing. After a few minutes a dark little boy, even smaller than he, leaned over and mumbled, “How much kickback he ask?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Don’t be a chunkhead. You kick back or you don’t work here.”
    “Fifteen.”
    “I told you he would do it,” another boy whispered fiercely.
    “I told you he wouldn’t keep it at ten….” He shut up abruptly when the dispatcher glared in their direction.
    After this the day rolled by with hot evenness and Billy was glad to sit and do nothing. Some of the boys took telegrams out, but he was never called. The soylent steaks were sitting like lead in his stomach and twice he had to go back to the dark and miserable toilet in the rear of the building. The shadows were longer in the street outside but the air still held the same breathless heat that it had for the past ten days. Soon after six o’clock three more boys trickled in and found places on the crowded bench. Mr. Burgger looked at the group with his angry expression, it seemed to be the only one he had.
    “Some of you kids get lost.”
    Billy had had enough for the first day so he left. His knees were stiff from