The Informer by Liam O'Flaherty

Author:Liam O'Flaherty [O'Flaherty, Liam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2013-11-10T00:00:00+00:00

13

NICK went past the Merchant’s Lunch and on through the market.

Men were unloading rattlesnake melons from a truck, relaying them from hand to hand to a pile of them on the produce house floor. Cantaloupes were being unloaded from a semi, crates of them, big and yellow, and rich with the smell of ripeness. A potato rig had come in along the line and the sacks were being tumbled down and carted into storage bins. There were loads of celery and lettuce from Salinas and Thompson seedless grapes from Reedley, and loads of nectarines and peaches and pears. The market was a medley of smells that somehow separated and identified themselves when Nick looked at the different crops. Across the way from Levi-Zetner’s a truck load of turnips and green onions had come in and the unloaders were stacking the bunches in a neat high mound around the lamp post. By now grocery trucks were beginning to appear in the market and the early buyers were prowling the streets, looking over the morning’s wares, picking what they wanted. A man leaned out of a new red truck that had the sign San Mateo Market Basket on its sides. “Got any persimmons, Sam?” he shouted. No there were no persimmons. Nor were there any apples. In all the market there was not a single fancy eating apple. Just a few boxes of cooking pippins that were mottled and shrunk from being held in cold storage. Nick began to feel better as he walked along the street, looking for apples and not finding any. The load of apples he had brought in had frightened him, but now he was not frightened any longer. He knew he would sell them for good money. How much money, he could not say, but it would be good; that he knew.

Where Washington ran into Front Street was the waterfront. The Embarcadero was dark and empty. The few trucks that came through ran fast, not stopping. The fog horn was blasting somewhere out at the end of a wharf, guiding ships that passed in the harbor. The air was wet with fog. Water glistened on the web of railroad tracks that ran along the waterfront. The air was cold. Nick began to feel lonely and sick again and he headed back toward the little cluster of lights that was the market. He tried to make himself think of all the produce houses without any apples, of the markets and the grocery stores that did not have any, of the people in the city waking in the morning with a hunger for apples and himself with the only load in town. He tried to make himself think of the apples being sold and of the money lining his pockets. He tried to make himself feel good, thinking of money, but somehow he had forgotten about Ed and now he remembered him and began to think of him, where he was, what he was doing, if the truck had broken down and if he was stalled.

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