South Street Read Online Free PDF

to lay them down on the counter, that she was going to have to take them from his hand. She looked at him. Rayburn smiled. Slowly she extended her hand until it hung trembling over his, then her fingers darted like a drunken hawk and snatched the coins away. She went quickly to the register to make change. Rayburn followed her, stood easily across the counter as she punched the keys. “We ain’t got much cash this time of night,” she said.
    “What’s the matter?” said Rayburn. “Ain’t you got change for a quarter?”
    The girl glared at him, punched a button, and, as the cash drawer sprang out, snatched at the money, finding the dime easily but fumbling for an instant for the three pennies, whirling awkwardly and slamming the drawer shut with her hip. “I gotta close up now,” she said.
    “Ain’t nothin’ to me,” said Rayburn. He held his hand out. The girl dropped the change into it from high altitude. Rayburn turned toward the door. “I sure hope your boyfriend can get his judo workin’ on some a them nasty folks out there in the street. Why, while we was in here safe together he coulda got killed three times, deadern hell.” He smiled at her acidly. “Here,” he said, tossing her the dime, “put it in your piggy bank.”
    Rayburn walked across the street to the bank, stood by the concrete pillars, staring through the broad plate-glass windows at the carpeted floors and the tellers’ stations and the leather chairs for people to sit in while they waited for assistant managers to discuss loans for cars and homes and color TV sets. Rayburn thought about the money inside, behind the doors, behind the heavy cover of the vault. He would have liked to have seen it, to see what all that money looked like. Just once. Rayburn stepped back, out from under the pillar-supported overhang, looked up at the building, at the glass windows mounting higher, growing smaller, stretching his neck until he could see the executive suites at the top. Rayburn’s job was to clean those suites, and he often stood in the carpeted, wood-paneled, leather-upholstered chambers and looked out over the city. Looking down through the dark and the smog, he could sometimes make out the row of dim lights that was his own block. Rayburn dropped his head because looking up at the tall spire was beginning to hurt his neck. He was tired. It was late. He wanted to go home.
    He turned toward the corner, feeling his pocket for the dime and the three nickels. He did not want to walk, although it was not far. He stood on the corner, tapping the sidewalk with the toe of his shoe, staring down into the gutter. He looked up and peered down the street. He felt an insistent tugging at his sleeve, turned to see a fat old woman with a dark moon face looking up at him. Her skin had a strange cast in the light spilling through the windows of the bank. “Won’t you give to the Indian children?” she said, holding up a tin can covered with paper and shaking it in front of his nose. Coins rattled flatly.
    “No,” Rayburn said.
    “Please, sir, they need your help so much. They’re hungry. Some of them are starving. Won’t you give to the Indian children?”
    “Go to hell,” Rayburn said.
    “Please,” said the woman, catching hold of his arm. “Have you no children? Can you imagine what it means to be a child, hungry and alone?”
    Rayburn whirled around and threw his change against the bank’s glass windows, where it struck with a ringing sound of metal on glass and fell tinkling to the pavement. “Pick it up!” he shouted. “You wants it so goddamn bad, you pick it up!” He shoved the woman away from him and stalked away.
    It was closing time at Lightnin’ Ed’s. “Buy it now,” yelled Leo, “bar’s closin’ down.”
    “Aw, shit,” muttered Big Betsy.
    “Whad he say?” asked the deaf wino.
    “He says you gotta get the hell outa here,” Big Betsy told him.
    “Like hell I do,” said the wino. “It’s