Manhattan Transfer Read Online Free PDF Page B

on new sidewalks along a row of yellow brick apartment houses, looking in the windows of grocery stores, Chinese laundries, lunchrooms, flower and vegetable shops, tailors’, delicatessens. Passing under a scaffolding in front of a new building, he caught the eye of an old man who sat on the edge of the sidewalk trimming oil lamps. Bud stood beside him, hitching up his pants; cleared his throat:
    ‘Say mister you couldnt tell a feller where a good place was to look for a job?’
    ‘Aint no good place to look for a job, young feller… There’s jobs all right… I’ll be sixty-five years old in a month and four days an I’ve worked since I was five I reckon, an I aint found a good job yet.’
    ‘Anything that’s a job’ll do me.’
    ‘Got a union card?’
    ‘I aint got nothin.’
    ‘Cant git no job in the buildin trades without a union card,’ said the old man. He rubbed the gray bristles of his chin with the back of his hand and leaned over the lamps again. Bud stood staring into the dustreeking girder forest of the new building until he found the eyes of a man in a derby hat fixed on him through the window of the watchman’s shelter. He shuffled his feet uneasily and walked on. If I could git more into the center of things…
    At the next corner a crowd was collecting round a high-slung white automobile. Clouds of steam poured out of its rear end. A policeman was holding up a small boy by the armpits. From the car a redfaced man with white walrus whiskers was talking angrily.
    ‘I tell you officer he threw a stone… This sort of thing has got to stop. For an officer to countenance hoodlums and rowdies…’
    A woman with her hair done up in a tight bunch on top of her head was screaming, shaking her fist at the man in the car, ‘Officer he near run me down he did, he near run me down.’
    Bud edged up next to a young man in a butcher’s apron who had a baseball cap on backwards.
    ‘Wassa matter?’
    ‘Hell I dunno… One o them automoebile riots I guess. Aint you read the paper? I dont blame em do you? What right have those golblamed automoebiles got racin round the city knocking down wimen an children?’
    ‘Gosh do they do that?’
    ‘Sure they do.’
    ‘Say… er… kin you tell me about where’s a good place to find out about getting a job?’ The butcherboy threw back head and laughed.
    ‘Kerist I thought you was goin to ask for a handout… I guess you aint a Newyorker… I’ll tell you what to do. You keep right on down Broadway till you get to City Hall…’
    ‘Is that kinder the center of things?’
    ‘Sure it is… An then you go upstairs and ask the Mayor… Tell me there are some seats on the board of aldermen…’
    ‘Like hell they are,’ growled Bud and walked away fast.
    ‘Roll ye babies… roll ye lobsided sons o bitches.’
    ‘That’s it talk to em Slats.’
    ‘Come seven!’ Slats shot the bones out of his hand, brought the thumb along his sweaty fingers with a snap. ‘Aw hell.’
    ‘You’re some great crapshooter I’ll say, Slats.’
    Dirty hands added each a nickel to the pile in the center of the circle of patched knees stuck forward. The five boys were sitting on their heels under a lamp on South Street.
    ‘Come on girlies we’re waitin for it… Roll ye little bastards, goddam ye, roll.’
    ‘Cheeze it fellers! There’s Big Leonard an his gang acomin down the block.’
    ‘I’d knock his block off for a…’
    Four of them were already slouching off along the wharf, gradually scattering without looking back. The smallest boy with a chinless face shaped like a beak stayed behind quietly picking upthe coins. Then he ran along the wall and vanished into the dark passageway between two houses. He flattened himself behind a chimney and waited. The confused voices of the gang broke into the passageway; then they had gone on down the street. The boy was counting the nickels in his hand. Ten. ‘Jez, that’s fifty cents… I’ll tell ’em Big Leonard scooped up