Urchin by Kate Story

Author:Kate Story
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Running the Goat, Books & Broadsides
Published: 2021-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Stronger Than Sense

By the time I made it to the bottom of Signal Hill I was truly gut-foundered. I felt the world coming too close to me, invading me—sounds, lights, people—then receding away mirage-like, heat shimmers over a summertime rock. The walk past the waterfront was worse than a crawl; I thought it would never end.

But that fifty cents in my pocket was a king’s ransom. I made a slight detour up Church Hill, stopping at the Henry Street factory where Wood—the fellow about to open the fancy restaurant and soda shop on Water Street—manufactured candies, syrups, jellies, and marmalades. If you were lucky and asked nicely, they’d sometimes sell direct. I procured enough candy to make my pockets bulge: barley sugar, pear drops, humbugs, liquorice allsorts, and more… I shoved a stick of rock into my gob and drowned my tongue with sweetness.

It was now about one o’clock, and Jack Kelly had to figure out how to get home without alerting either of Dorthea’s parents, or anybody else in the neighbourhood. As emboldened as I’d been fooling Clinton, I didn’t care to press my luck.

The Long Bridge felt like it more than lived up to its name, hungry as I was.

Coming off the south end of it, I saw several neighbour ladies clustered together having a natter. I pulled my cap low, and forced myself to break into a run.

They didn’t give me a second glance.

Next I had to toil up the Hundred Steps and make it past the Range. Just my luck; the steps were maggoty with Taylors. The entire extended clan seemed to be out for the day: women bashing mats, children playing Hiding and Away, men soaking in a little of the weak, winter sunlight and smoking their pipes.

Nothing draws attention like a stranger. Eyes were upon me. I kept my head down.

“Who’re you?” a little girl asked. She looked enough like Clare that even a stranger would have spotted her for a sister.

“Clare in?” I grunted, thinking it best not to answer the question directly. Men—and boys—often didn’t, I’d noticed. It was a maddening tendency when one was a girl. As a counterfeit boy, I was finding the tactic extremely useful.

“She’s up at the house.” I caught the bold barnacle staring beady-eyed at the stick of rock I had out the side of my mouth like a cigarette. I fished around in my pocket and held out a handful of pear drops. She stared at me with delight, took them in her cupped hands, opened her mouth wide, and began running round and round in circles making a noise like a whistling tea kettle. She then pitched over onto her back, still making that same breathless scream, raised her hands into the air like a chute, and unclenched her fists so that the candies cascaded into her mouth. Her eyes, green like Clare’s, stared into the sky, then her eyelids closed in ecstasy as she mumbled and sucked at the sweets.

A child after my own heart, I thought as I made my way up the side of the house and into the back door.

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