ramaro0112

@@@@@Before he leaves, Lefty gives him the secret handshake You're okay, kid, I'm gettin' out next year an' I'll look ya up Back to his street and the new sports fitting his ageHitching rides on trolleys is commonplace, stealing from stores is a source of incomeThe real sport is holding onto the tailgate of a fast freight truck and highballing it fifteen miles out of townHis mother makes him get a job working as delivery boy in a butcher store, and he does that for a couple of years When he is thirteen one of the women to whom he delivers meat seduces him Oh, hello, she says, opening the door, you're MrsCzienwicz's son, lady Yeah, I know your mother Where you want the meat, lady? Over thereHe puts it down, looks at her Sit down, you must be tired Naah, I got a lot of ordersYeah, all right, maybe I will Afterward, he feels as if his education is completedHe has known for a long time that there is no man you can trust, but women have not concerned himNow he is positive that women too are as unreliable as the altering sands of mutual advantage You can call me Gertrude He has not thought of her as possessing a nameSomething, a door at which he drops meat It is only hours later that the advantages, the beauties, the absorptive recollections of this act he has known by name for so long catch up with himThe next day he drops in to see her, is there often for the rest of the summer His years elapse, and he grows older, even wiser within the rigid gamut of his wisdom, but he hardly altersHe goes from job to job, becoming a butcher, working in the stockyards, even chauffeuring a car for some people who live on the North Side, but he exhausts the possibilities of the jobs very soon, knows their limitations almost before he has begun