Бетти Смит - Maggie-Now

"All kidding aside," said the boy. "I'm quitting Saturday night. I'd quit now but I don't want to leave you holding the bag."

Ceppi snatched a toot of soup greens out of Denny's hand. "Go! Go now!" he said passionately. "Beat it!"

"I'll stay to the end of the \veek. You uptight have trouble getting another boy."

"Ha! You think? Oh, to! ~ here's plent' more loafers where you come from."

Denny came home with half a vveek's pay. f 3811 "Oh, well, you were going to leave Ceppi's anyhow, Denny," said his sister.

"Sure! But he didn't have to kick me out while I was resigning. And he didn't have to give me that loafer and reform-school routine, either. But I'll show him! I'll show them all," vowed Denny. "I'll be the best damned butcher in the whole damned Borough of Brooklyn!"

That was Denny's version of his father's far-flung challenge to the world: "I'll bury youse all! "

5< CHAl'TER FIFTY-SIX ~ To DENNY'S disappointment, he wasn't allowed to cut meat right away. Winer said he had to work his way up from the bottom and he meant it literally. Winer, like many a lonely person, was scrupulously neat about himself and the store and first Denny had to learn to carry out Winer's ideas of neatness.

Each night, after the store closed, the sawdust had to be swept out and fresh sawdust sprinkled on the floor. Each day, the marble block that was the store window's floor had to be scoured and rubbed with a cut lemon; the cutting block had to be cleaned daily, with salt and a wire brush; the knives had to be washed and honed daily. The meat-grinding machine had to be taken apart and washed after each usage, and it was used ten or fifteen times a day. The counter scrubbed; the store window washed once a week; the walls swabbed down every so often. Clean, scrub, polish. . Winer was fanatically neat.

Winer tossed all fat scraps into a barrel. Winer sold the fat to a soap manufacturer. Once a week, Denny risked getting a double hernia carrying that barrel Otlt to the curb to be picked up by the soap people.

And Denny loved e very bit of w ork connected with the butcher shop.

The second week, Winer let him cut meat from bones and cut up scrap meat and grind it into hamburger, which was called 1,''7~1

chopmeat in the neighborhood. It fell to Denny to place the sprig of parsley in the center of the artistically arranged swirls of ground meat on the grey agate platter.

Winer let him sell soup bones: a marrow bone, a knuckle bone and a straight bone, all for a nickel. He let him slice bologna. He let him give away dog meat and dog bones free — hut only if the customer made other meat purchases.

"When they ask for dog meat," instructed Winer, "you must say should you wrap it or do they want to eat it here."

"But that gag's got hair on it," said Denny. "It's that old."

"Just the same, the customers like it. It belongs with giving away dog meat."

Now Denny knew that hamburger was one hundred per cent profit; being made from meat that couldn't be used any other way. He asked Winer wouldn't it be better to urge the already ground hamburger on a customer when she asked for a pound of chuck or round ground to order.

"That's out of date," said Winer. "Here's how you sell chopmeat off the plate. A lady wants a pound of round ground. You make out like you're very happy to do this.

You grind it right in front of her. When you put it on the scale, you look mad like you grind too much meat. You take a lumper off and throw it on the choprneat in the showcase like vou don't care. The lady and any other ladies in the store will tell theirselves: I should pay thirty cents for ground round when I can get the same off the plate for eighteen cents. And I know it's the same. I saw the butcher put some on the plate from my thirty-cents-a-pound ground round."

The bane of Winer's life was a woman coming in and asking for half a pound of sirloin or one lamb chop or any other quality meat which meant cutting into a whole side of meat for little profit. Winer instructed Denny.

"A lady comes in and wants only half pound sirloin, it should be cut thick. You then go in icebox and come out and you are carrying a side of beef on your shoulder. You make your legs bend like is the beef very heavy. You put it on block and put hand over your heart like it hurts a little from carrying. Then is the lady so ashamed, all that trouble for half a pound, she says she may as well take whole pound steak."

~ 3~3] Winer instructed further. "People buy kidneys and hearts and pigs' feet. Maybe they is shamed they buy such.

They all make the same fun about it but all thinks he made up the fun in the first place. Like a lady says: 'You got kidneys?' " "So I tell her," said Denny, "not to get personal?"

"No. That's fresh. Y on say, like this: 'I hope sot' then you smile and make a wink. They think, ain't he fresh!

But they like it ail the same. Also on all the old ladies and middle ones, you should smile and make a wink even without the kidneys."

"Yeah. But I don't see you winking, Otto."

"That I cannot do. They think I got dirty feelings because I am a widder man living by myself in the back.

But for you what is so young and nice-looking, it is a present, the wink, to the ladies what ain't so young no more."

Just then, Denny saw Maggie-Now turning in to the store. He knew that Winer did not know Maggie-Now. He said, "Otto, let me try the wink and the smile on this customer." Otto gave permission.

Denny gave his sister a big wink. To Otto's consternation, the lady winked back. "What can I do for you, Tootsie?" asked Denny.

Otto, shocked, whispered: "Say 'Missus.'" "Missus Tootsie." said Denny. "What's yours?"

"Do you have spareribs?" she asked.

He made a great to-do about clutching his ribs and feeling his back. "I thought I had some," he said. "But I

must have left them home, hanging up in the closet."

That was better, thought Otto. He beamed. Denny weighed and wrapped the ribs and Maggie-Now asked, "How much?"

"I'll let you have them for a nickel," said Denny, "if you'll give me a big hug and a big kiss."

"You go too far!" shouted Otto. "Excuse, lady," he said to Maggie-Now, "but the boy is new here."

"That's all right," smiled Maggie-Now. "I'm his sister."

"No! "

"This is Maggie-No~v. I'm her baby brother."

"He is lucky baby, Missus Now," said Winer gallantly.

Denny laughed. "Mrs. Bassett. We just call her Maggie-Now.' "By me," said Winer, "she is always Missus Now."

[354] Winer had never come across the word "lagniappe." Yet he and many other storekeepers observed the custom. The bulk of the shopping was done by children sent to the store by their mothers. The kids patronized those shopkeepers who gave them little treats. The Chinese laundry man gave a lichee nut, the baker, a cookie, the druggist a sweetwood stick to suck on, the butcher a slice of bologna and so on.

"Every kid what buys gets piece of bologna," Winer told Denny. "A kid what comes in the first time, you know, she did not come here before? She gets click slice worst to knush on. She comes in again, it should be dimly."

Denny asked about the alleged custom of weighing the thumb with the meat. Winer was indignant.

"The thumb, it is not meat. We don't weigh that. You only weigh the thumb when you don't want the customer to come back no more."

"I don't get it, Otto."

"Like that lady. You see how she comes in yesterday?

She says: 'Take back this weal stew what you sold me this morning. It ain't fit a dog should eat it, especially my husband. So now give me one pound without no bones or gritzel or fat.' So I put the meat on the scale and I make out I don't see so good and I look near to see how much it says on the scale and I put my hand on the scale, it should stand still, then I press the thumb down. Hard."