Page 10 (1/2)

Three blocks down Main we pull up to the curb, this tier’s Pharmacy I repeatthe co "Stay!"

Another Try

As if the six-inch gap will entice passing customers in, the front door of the phar it wider and looking around Except for a scrawny orange cat on the counter, the shop appears vacant "Mr Stenger?" I call again louder, and a short, roundhead and one lazy eye co white cloth coat with a crooked red bow tie, and the store s sweet, probably Lilly of the Valley Toilet Water (I used to buy it here in better days)

"Oh, hello I didn’t hear you come inIs that Becky Myers? Nurse Becky! I heard you were back" He leans his ht arm outstretched and I shake his soft hand My hands were soft once too, but as I look down I notice a little gri water, I’ve becoer asks "Is the doc all right? I heard he’d suffered some sort of fall"

"No, not a fall We don’t know of any injury Soht have had a stroke Others say it’s catatonia, a neurological condition brought on by hysteria orwas at the State Asylum for the Insane in Weston You’d see those people, the catatonics, walking around carrying a doll or dancing with a broohosts"

"Yes, that’s what he’s like, a ghost of himself It’s pitiful really"

The pharmacist shakes his head and leans on the counter "So what can I do for you, Miss Becky?"

"I need to find work" I don’t lead up to it this tiht in

"Whew! You and everyone else in the good old USA Papers say twenty-five percent of the nation is uneinia it’s worse" He indicates the headlines in the Charleston Gazette on a newspaper rack in the corner: UNEMPLOYMENT REACHES 80 PERCENT IN UNION COUNTY

"That’s like no jobs at all Eighty percent! Most of the mines have shut downHear about the strike in Toledo?" He pushes last week’s paper across the counter AUTO-LIGHT STRIKE IN TOLEDO 2 DEAD 200 INJURED, reads the headline "Six thousand union strikers fought fifteen hundred National Guarder, I know it’s bad all over, but I’m desperate Can you think of any work at all?" The pharmacist turns back to his mop and bucket "I wouldn’t ask you, but we’re almost out of money We have no supplies put ahead and"

In better tier sets the mop aside and reaches under his white pharmacist coat for his wallet

"No, I didn’t mean that! I have never asked for handouts I just need a job" He pulls out a two-bit piece and forces it into my hand I have no choice but to accept it or the coin will fall in his bucket