Читать книгу The Bones of Plenty - Lois Phillips Hudson - Страница 9

Otto Wilkes trotted his showy team of matched dappled-gray Percherons across the railroad tracks, nearly catapulting his two youngest and lightest boys off the back end of the wagon. A gelding and a stallion the horses were, and they weighed a ton apiece. He had hated to geld the one, but the other, being three years older, was already mature and a proven sire, so he had had no choice. Otto didn’t want to try to manage a team of two Percheron stallions.

He pulled up before the dusty window that read “HOEFENER’S EUREKA HARDWARE, Agent for John Deere Tractors & Equipment.”

“All right boys,” he said. “You can come in with me.”

He lifted the smallest of the four, who was scarcely able to walk yet, and they all lined up behind him and followed him into the store.

Zack saw them as they pulled up, and he shoved his dark brown bottle under the cash register. He didn’t know who made him sicker—Otto with his brassy, pickthank ways, or Otto’s numberless, shivering, dirty-nosed children breathing loudly through their mouths.

Otto bought a box of rivets for some harness repair he was doing and some other harness fittings. The whole purchase came to just under a dollar, but Otto wrote out a check for five.

“I’m not no bank!” Zack objected when he saw the check. “Why don’t you ever come in town on a weekday and get your cash over at the bank? Is this thing gonna bounce on me? I’m a pretty mean man when I get a rubber check.”

“Oh come on, Zack. I got to have a little cash. We’re all out of coal and you know I can’t get coal without cash.”

Zack cashed it, mostly to get the pestilential brood out of his store. He just couldn’t stand to have that grimy bunch of kids fingering everything in sight.