Juba! by Walter Dean Myers

baskets.
    â€œWhere’s the Bishop?” the man asked.
    â€œHome with a cough,” Stubby said.
    â€œWeak,” the man replied. “Old and weak!”
    He had to be as old as Jack, and in the early-morning light he didn’t look any healthier. He and Stubby talked for a while about how calm the sea was and what it meant. The fisherman said it meant there was a storm coming up. After a while they agreed on a price, and Stubby wrestled a basket of oysters onto the cart.
    â€œI’m buying three of them,” he said.
    I loaded the next two as Stubby paid the man. As we pulled off, the oyster man called out to us to tell Jack to rub some warm tallow onto his chest.
    Then we went to another fellow and bought two baskets of different kinds of fish. Stubby looked pleased, but it just added to my misery.
    â€œWe did good,” he said. “Those fish are so fresh, they’re still talking to each other.”
    â€œStubby, I don’t want to spend the rest of my life selling fish or cooking them,” I said. “You’re a good man, but I don’t see doing what you do.”
    Stubby didn’t answer, and I thought I might have hurt him, which I didn’t mean to do.
    It was getting lighter by the time we rolled the cart back to Baxter Street. The corner lamp man was walking down the street with his ladder, and I watched him as he leaned the ladder against a pole, climbed up it, and put out the lamp. People had all kinds of jobs, from fishing to lighting lamps at night and putting them out in the morning. There was nothing wrong with any of them, but they just weren’t for me.
    We took the oysters upstairs to the roof, and I started building a fire to smoke them. Stubby left with the cart to sell what he could. Jack Bishop’s dog, John Tyler, came through the roof door and over to where I sat waiting for the chips to start burning evenly. He sniffed at me and sat down, and I shovedhim away. The dumb dog just turned and looked at me, then came back and sat down next to me again.
    I pushed him away again.
    Next to come up to the roof was Margaret. She came over, picked up a stick, and poked through the chips, evening them out on the grill.
    â€œJack told me you were all beat up inside,” she said.
    â€œI don’t care what he told you,” I said.
    â€œYou think you’re the only one in the world who ran over a bump in the road?” she asked.
    â€œNo, but I’m the only one wearing my skin who’s had a hard time,” I said.
    â€œI grew up with three sisters and two brothers,” Margaret said. She was rubbing the back of John Tyler’s head. “Two of the girls and one of the boys died before they were six. That was what it was like. If you got sick, you prayed to Saint Blaise. If he didn’t help you, then you died. It wasn’t a huge thing for a child to die, but it was hard to get used to.”
    â€œAm I supposed to feel bad about that?” I asked.
    â€œGlory, no!” Margaret looked at me sidewise. “You already have a mouthful of sour lemons—how could you fit any more in there? And let me tell you something about life, my black friend: you’re just about old enough for your piss to get a little smell to it. There are going to be days when the auditions will look like a Sunday picnic to you!”
    She was right, but it didn’t help me any. When she went downstairs, John Tyler started to go with her, then turned around and came over to me again. “John Tyler, you are stupid—even for a dog you are stupid!” I said.
    By the time the bells in the church on Mott Street rang ten o’clock, I had finished smoking most of the oysters and was ready when Stubby came up to the roof. He asked me how I was doing, and I told him I didn’t need him looking out for me.
    â€œI’m looking out for the oysters,” Stubby said. “How are you doing with the oysters?”
    â€œOkay,”