The late afternoon was warm and damp as spring slid toward summer. Slaughter Alley had a rotting ripeness. “Charlie says I could work at the boiler,” Nino said. “When I’m too old for the papers.” “You could come with me,” Violet said. “Work on a farm. It’s got to be better than smelling like Charlie.” He smiled. “You know that kid Bobo? He’s got those bruises all the time from some kind of sickness?” She nodded. She’d seen the boy around Nino’s building, his skinny legs blotched yellow and purple. “He tried,” Nino said. “No Italians they said. No Chineses, Negroes, Jews, Spanish, Turks. No Russians, neither.” “So? You could hop the train anyway.” “I never even seen a alive cow,” he said. “What would I do on a farm?” “I don’t know. Same as me. Eat good. Run around. It can’t be that hard to pick corn.” He shook his head in dismissal. With Nino she could leave her mother. How could she leave them both? She kicked a bag of ash, which spewed coal dust in the courtyard, eliciting a string of Italian screams from the women pounding on their washboards.
