When You Were Young

"Please, sir, give me a chance to prove myself," he pleads, but no one listens. He's too small. He's too weak. His clothes are too torn and stained. He smells too foul. He has too little education.

He manages to pick up work here and there. One day in a tannery, another in a counting house. Each time he thinks he's found a new home, a new beginning, but each time something goes wrong. He asks too many questions. He makes too many suggestions for changing what doesn't need changed. Each time he ends up back here, on the street, grubbing for food.

As he finishes the rancid apple-including the core-he stares at a ship docked nearby. The crew scurries about, getting it ready to set sail. Other men and women in drab gray clothes mill about. Passengers to some unknown destination. One is so monstrously fat he mistakes her for two people.

He hates this mountainous woman. She's never known hunger. She's never worked a day in her pampered life. She's never had to sleep on hard ground or in a dirty alley with the rats. He wants to go up to her and spit in her fleshy face.

He gets halfway there before he stops himself. What good would it do? She'd have him locked away in prison. At least they might feed me there, he thinks. But he couldn't stand to be locked in a dark cell with nothing to stare at but blank walls. He would go insane within a week.

The fat woman is leaning close to a much thinner man like a small child. He looks about old enough to be her father, at least until he bends down to kiss her on the lips and whisper something into her ear. Wendell's fists curl with rage at this fat pig with her loving husband. He starts towards them again.

The husband looks in his direction and Wendell expects him to shout a warning to stay back. Instead, the fat woman's husband says, "You there, can you give me a hand with this trunk?" He gestures to a wooden trunk big enough for Wendell to fit into.

"Me?" Wendell asks in disbelief.

"Yes, if you aren't on more pressing business."

"Where do you suppose Molly's gotten off to? If she isn't here soon-" the fat woman's face turns red and she seems on the verge of tears. Her husband kisses her on a flabby cheek.

"There's no need to worry. She'll be here. You know how flighty that girl can be." He reaches into his pocket to press a schilling into Wendell's hand. "This strong young lad and I will take the trunk below. You wait here for Molly."