The Complete Stories of Morley Callaghan: Volume One by Morley Callaghan

Author:Morley Callaghan
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781550963410

The Shining Red Apple

It was the look of longing on the boy’s face that made Joe Cosentino, dealer in fruits and vegetables, notice him. Joe was sitting on his high stool at the end of the counter where he sat every afternoon, looking out of the window at the bunches of bananas and the cauliflowers and the tomatoes and apples piled on the street stand, and he was watching to see that the kids on the way home from school didn’t touch any of the fruit.

A skinny little boy, who was wearing a red sweater and blue overalls, stood near the end of the fruit stand by a pyramid of big red apples. With his hands linked loosely together in front of him, and his head, with the straight, untidy brown hair that hung almost down to his blue eyes, cocked over to one side, he stood looking with longing at the apples. If he moved a little to the right, he would be out of sight of the window, but even so, if he reached his hand out to take an apple, Joe, sitting at the end of the counter and watching, would surely see the hand. The sleeves of Joe’s khaki shirt were rolled up, and as he sat on his stool he folded his hairy forearms across his deep chest. There wasn’t much business, there seemed to be a little less every day, and sitting there week after week, he grew a little fatter and a little slower and much more meditative. The store was untidy, and the fruit and the vegetables no longer had the cool, fresh appearance they had in the stores of merchants who were prosperous.

If the kid, standing outside, had been a big, resolute-looking boy, Joe would have been alert and suspicious, but as it was, it was amusing to sit there and pretend he could feel the kid’s longing for the apple growing stronger. As though making the first move in a game, Joe leaned forward suddenly, and the boy, lowering his head, shuffled a few feet away. Then Joe, whistling thinly, as if he hadn’t noticed anything, got up and went out, took his handkerchief and started to polish a few of the apples on the pile. They were big, juicy-looking apples, a little overripe and going soft. He polished them till they gleamed and glistened in the sun. Then he said to the kid, “Fine day, eh, son?”

“Yeah,” the kid said timidly.

“You live around here?”

“No.”

“New around here?” Joe said.

The kid, nodding his head shyly, didn’t offer to tell where he lived, so Joe, chuckling to himself, and feeling powerful because he knew so surely just what would happen, went back to the store and sat down on the stool.

At first the little kid, holding his hands behind his back, shuffled out of sight, but Joe knew he would go no farther than the end of the stand; he knew the kid would be there looking up and down the street

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.