Short Story
The Salesman
by alan gregor (Dundee, Scotland)
Horses and carts
Out in the street, the horses stand quiet in the chilly morning air, thin wisps of steam suspended over their backs. White blazes, stockings, bright in the early light. Sometimes they neigh or snort in an outbreak of spirited frustration as the rough men harness them, buckles chink. He looked out the window; the Clydesdales were only the width of the pavement away. They kicked at the cobbles with their iron-shod hooves. In the darkness of winter tiny sparks would fly. Chill, noises, drift in under the open sash; a waft of the warm wet blanket smell that hangs around the horses, similar to the damp tedious smell filling the back room in the winter when his mother dried clothes in front of the fire.
Today, a May morning, a new year begins, a time of year when the sun's light returned, a time more new than January the middle of winter. The boy Malcolm would not have thought chronologically with the passing of the gloomy months. What went on in his head then, was how the light brightened, went on brightening, filled his eyes and the inside of his head and body – the dark decline driven out. A primitive sensation he experienced even now in his late-teen sophistication. The early summer light new, new every year.
Carters with big bellies put the lustreless black leather collars over the horses' heads. The silver metal on the collars and straps glinted in the morning light, rising ever higher over the high grey tenements. Sometimes a horse would piss; in the morning sun, a golden arc of yellow entwined with shadows splattered on the dark stoned street. He heard the stream hitting the cobbles. Malcolm stood on the cold linoleum, yawning, stretching, engaged in all the activity as the chill crept up his legs – though he had watched this similar scene on many mornings.
Very little light or heat from the sun reached the ground floor tenement flat. Most of the day all year round the cold and damp hung in the air. Only in the hottest part of summer, if it was hot, did they not have to light a fire in the grate. Even in the worst of summers on the east coast of Scotland, he persuaded himself, there were at least one or two weeks when the sun's heat passed through the dampness. Still, the house never became warm. Built of inferior sandstone the tenements held moisture like a sponge.
Maybe if Jeff Callaghan, his father, didn't drink so much they could live somewhere better. If he were here all the time then he would know what dampness was like, every day. Malcolm stared hard out the window; for a moment the scene outside became the chinless minister at St James's intoning at Easter. Hope we have as an anchor came to his thoughts and took the light away. Ministers! Priests! Holy Willies!
Things will work out! He thought of his mother's simplistic words. He knew them to be words tinged with real, not religious hope. She worked hard and out of her constancy she spoke them. The minister's words are sentimental, she had said, but they are true. Without hope, what is there, son? Who will rid us of these prating prelates? he had pronounced in a show-off way. Less of the gloom and doom and the intellectual stuff, she was forever telling him.
The neighing of the horses brought him back. He laughed at the way the horse stood nonchalantly while pissing; no preparatory, awkward movements of cocking legs; a solid standing there, like a living statue and not like men, all that shaking afterwards.
The rising sun highlighted more and more of the street. Horses and men stood out as the morning shadows fled away. From one carter a shout of, ' Ye mad beast get aff mah foot.' Another grunted, laughed and swore loudly at his horse for being stubborn; another for not moving as he cried, 'Move, ye brute!'
Today, a May morning, a new year begins, a time of year when the sun's light returned, a time more new than January the middle of winter. The boy Malcolm would not have thought chronologically with the passing of the gloomy months. What went on in his head then, was how the light brightened, went on brightening, filled his eyes and the inside of his head and body – the dark decline driven out. A primitive sensation he experienced even now in his late-teen sophistication. The early summer light new, new every year.
Carters with big bellies put the lustreless black leather collars over the horses' heads. The silver metal on the collars and straps glinted in the morning light, rising ever higher over the high grey tenements. Sometimes a horse would piss; in the morning sun, a golden arc of yellow entwined with shadows splattered on the dark stoned street. He heard the stream hitting the cobbles. Malcolm stood on the cold linoleum, yawning, stretching, engaged in all the activity as the chill crept up his legs – though he had watched this similar scene on many mornings.
Very little light or heat from the sun reached the ground floor tenement flat. Most of the day all year round the cold and damp hung in the air. Only in the hottest part of summer, if it was hot, did they not have to light a fire in the grate. Even in the worst of summers on the east coast of Scotland, he persuaded himself, there were at least one or two weeks when the sun's heat passed through the dampness. Still, the house never became warm. Built of inferior sandstone the tenements held moisture like a sponge.
Maybe if Jeff Callaghan, his father, didn't drink so much they could live somewhere better. If he were here all the time then he would know what dampness was like, every day. Malcolm stared hard out the window; for a moment the scene outside became the chinless minister at St James's intoning at Easter. Hope we have as an anchor came to his thoughts and took the light away. Ministers! Priests! Holy Willies!
Things will work out! He thought of his mother's simplistic words. He knew them to be words tinged with real, not religious hope. She worked hard and out of her constancy she spoke them. The minister's words are sentimental, she had said, but they are true. Without hope, what is there, son? Who will rid us of these prating prelates? he had pronounced in a show-off way. Less of the gloom and doom and the intellectual stuff, she was forever telling him.
The neighing of the horses brought him back. He laughed at the way the horse stood nonchalantly while pissing; no preparatory, awkward movements of cocking legs; a solid standing there, like a living statue and not like men, all that shaking afterwards.
The rising sun highlighted more and more of the street. Horses and men stood out as the morning shadows fled away. From one carter a shout of, ' Ye mad beast get aff mah foot.' Another grunted, laughed and swore loudly at his horse for being stubborn; another for not moving as he cried, 'Move, ye brute!'
Baxter Jute Mills, Dundee, late 1940s
His mother had gone to her job in the factory; she would return in the late afternoon with the dull smell of jute on her clothes. The work siren called her while it was still dark, claimed her life for another day so she and her family could stay together. He had heard her getting up, opening the door and saying, 'Bye, Malcolm. See you when I get home.' Ever that contented stoicism in her voice.
He would organize his brother to get off to school and himself to the Corporation's Commercial College. Bob, was already up; he could hear him running about in the other room which looked out on to a grassy square, long, straight, grey, cracked washing poles as high as the three storey building, lean-to sheds, the bins and the concrete air raid shelters, which had never been used. The mass of long spears of grass were never cut and even in winter always seemed to be the same length. These observations, which passed through his mind, were placed in the mental box labelled "The Fatuous Mysteries of Life."
'Hey, I'm going out to the lav,' his brother Bob shouted from the front room.
Malcolm's thoughts now concerned his father a soldier in Africa, fighting the Mau Mau. Bob would say his Dad would be using the machete he brought home while he was on leave before going to Africa. It was for chopping your way through the thick jungle vegetation. And killing people, his brother had said. His father said nothing.
Jeff told his young son the proper name for the big knife. Machete. Bob had said it for weeks and was forever telling his pals about the machete, and his dad fighting in the jungle. In Malcolm's dictionary, the entry stated that machete originally meant club. War! Films and books, staged war, the only place Malcolm knew of war.
Maybe he drinks to forget.
He dressed, went next door and lifted Bob's warm sheets from the floor and folded them up with his brother's pyjamas, the blue-striped ones he had worn at his age. He then turned up the settee bed. When his father came home on leave his brother slept in the front room with him. Pulling the table into the space where the bed had been, he turned to the stove and began making porridge for his brother. While he stood at the gas stove stirring the oats, his brother came back with the white enamel chamber pot, on his head. Every time he took the pot out to empty, he came back with it on his head. His mother would say, 'One of these days that'll get stuck on your head, you daft thing.' They would laugh, especially Bob, at the picture of himself with the pot on his head.
'I hope you rinsed that,' Malcolm said as he stirred, the porridge's milky aroma arising from the bubbling pot.
'Of course I did. Just like you showed me. In the next flush water.'
'Maybe one day you'll forget. There'll be a dribble of wee running down your neck.'
'Ugh!'
'Eat your porridge. And you'll be a tough enough Scotsman to take anything like that.'
'Like Dad?'
'Yes, like Dad,' Malcolm said softly.
'Malcolm! Do you think that man selling the books will come back soon?'
'Well, Kate gave him 10 bob deposit, after you went on about those encyclopaedias.'
'They looked so good. Didn't they Malcolm. An' they'll help us to speak proper and know all about the British Empire. They're always telling us that in school.'
'They definitely seem to have some interesting articles in them. You already speak proper. At least you know how to. Mum always taught us that if we wanted "to make something of ourselves" we shouldn’t speak in "the common dialect".' Their mother's admonition was spoken in her quaint Scots accent.
'By the way, squirt, you shouldn't start a sentence with a conjunction, especially not a contracted conjunction.'
What they were both now looking back on was the evening a man selling encyclopaedias came to the door. A man, engulfed in a navy coloured, woollen overcoat that almost touched the flagstones in the passage, wearing a black Homburg that appeared to be consuming his head: Malcolm's lasting image.
He knew his brother would be excited about the pictures of, 'sportsmen, animals, airplanes, Red Indians and all sorts of great stuff.' Bob's breathless words, which spilled out when the man showed them a mock-up of the books. A moment of disappointment flashed in his brother's eyes as he watched the man putting the sample back in his scuffed, brown attaché case. Bob was never down. It annoyed Malcolm his brother could be constantly cheerful. He knew his brother's liveliness delighted his mother. He himself could be moody, worrying about matters for too long.
'Malcolm, why do you call Mum Kate?' His brother's voice broke into his thoughts.
'I've told you before, it's her name and she likes me calling her Kate,'
'But you do love her, don't you?'
'Of course I do.'
His brother, placated, carried on eating his breakfast. Kids seem to be easily satisfied.
In the evening, they were sitting before the range, the coals glowing. A smell of fish supper lingering in the air, mixed with the heat, gave the room a warm intimacy. A cream-coloured Murphy's radio on a high plant stand hummed and crackled. 'The Black Museum' on Radio Luxembourg would be broadcast later. Kate Callaghan sat enjoying her first cigarette since coming home from work, tidying the house, looking at Bob's homework and asking Malcolm how his day at College had been. His brother had a pile of DC comics on his lap; The Dandy and The Beano were for kids, said Bob. Malcolm sat at the table, the tea things cleared. He should be looking at the history book from the library before him, instead he studied his mother. Contented stoicism, a phrase he thought up to describe her method for getting through life.
On the news the announcer said, "Mau Mau rebels in Kenya have burned down Tree Tops." None of them said anything. Bob and Malcolm looked at Kate who simply smiled reassuringly and stared straight ahead. The newsreader went on to explain that Tree Tops was the hotel where our present Queen Elizabeth had been staying on her honeymoon with the Duke of Edinburgh in 1952 when she heard that she was to be queen.
Right now, his gran and granddad would be nodding to one another in appreciation of this act. His mother's family were Communists and against the Monarchy.
'Gran'll be cheering,' said Bob, who did not understand why his grandparents hated the Queen, and that, 'lang skinny Greek she married.' The hatred Malcolm found confusing; beneath the crowned heads were flesh that would bleed if you shot them. Bleed to death, in the case of the Romanovs.
'Your granddad will be saying how he wished those two were in the fire at the time,' pronounced Kate.
'What about you, Mum, do you wish that?' asked Malcolm.
Bob noticed he did not call her Kate this time.
Before she could answer, there was knocking at the door.
'It's the books,' shouted Bob.
The three of them went to the door. Bob, who arrived first, opened it. His mother switched on the hall light.
The same tall smooth man in his long navy blue, heavy overcoat and black Homburg hat, holding an attaché case, stood with head bent looking at them. Light from the house slanted over his form. Above him to the right hissed the gas lamp that lit the entrance to the tenement. Definitely, thought Malcolm, a Dickensian image.
'Good evening, Mrs Callaghan, how are you this nice May evening?' His English accent was southern, Malcolm remembered − Essex he had thought. Jeff his father was from Essex. There was no sign of any books.
'Have you brought the books?' Bob asked keeping his hair on, just.
'Now young man, I'm not as young as I used to be and all those books would be too much for me. How-wev-ver,' he went on, tapping the worn case, the corners of his mouth turning up and an unreal smile flickering for a second, 'I've brought you a sample, which you can keep free of charge.' The words slithered and coiled from his mouth like those adders he had seen in the glass case in Jackie's Pet Shop. He kept looking over their shoulders as if he expected to be invited in or he was wondering where the man was. This time Malcolm knew his mother would not allow him in.
'If you haven't got the books, what do you want?' said his mother, aggressively. Malcolm and Bob looked at her.
'You know dear, the books will arrive by carrier when they do come, which should be quite soon. So I've come to accept a further instalment as per our agreement.'
'Not another penny until we see the first book.'
'Why, yes, of course, madam, but our agree...'
Kate shut the door. Bob looked up at her,
'Ach Ma! You didnae even tak' the sample.'
'I don't think he had a sample lad,' his mother said. 'And it is, "But mother, you did not even take the sample." Not that noise you made.'
'Yes, Mum.'
Malcolm wondered how her workmates viewed his mother in the mill, or the factory, as she called it. Same as the way they saw him, speaking his posh. Predictably, she would smile when taunted and ignore the derision.
Back in the front room, none of them mentioned the salesman. Malcolm took coal out of the bunker, which was under the window, and ran the tap in the sink next to the store, to keep the dust down. Late screeches from the constant gang of seagulls told him someone had put food debris in the bin and forgotten to replace the lid.
As he filled the scuttle, he looked out at the air-raid shelter, which blocked the light. All they did was block the sun, his mother said every so often. It was one of those Churchillian things; building them caused people to concentrate on the war effort, like taking down the iron railings around schools and other buildings; to make people feel as if they are contributing. Make believe we are doing something for the war effort, was how his granddad put it.
Now he was older he realised tangible things, existent, material objects had question marks over them. Perhaps the visible was not always true as he in his innocence once believed it to be. Churchill was another of his grandparents' pet hates. Malcolm remained unsure and had his own thoughts on the subject as he did concerning Royalty. One of his uncles, every time there were family arguments on the class system, would say that they were all human beings, and a man couldn't help into which class he was born, just as he couldn’t help where he was born or what sex he was. This naturally caused more argument. And Malcolm realised that not all working families were Reds, as Bob would be in his time.
The Black Museum on Radio Luxembourg would be on soon. Malcolm made toast for them. Over the glowing coals sinking in the grate he held the bread on a fork, his hand wrapped in a sock to protect it from the heat. Darkness pressed in at the window, the fire and a small table lamp, the only light, shadows still against the walls.
Big Ben chimes, from the pale plastic radio: The Black Museum, the repository of death . . . and the voice of Orson Welles smouldered through another grisly tale of murder. Bob sitting in his pyjamas fell asleep. Malcolm and his mother lifted him and put him in her bed in the alcove, sliding him gently to the wall side so Kate could slip in later. Tonight Malcolm would fold down the bed settee and they would all lie in the same room, now warm and filled with the promises of sleep.
That night in bed, Malcolm lay wondering about the future. Bob and his mother were going to Germany soon. Jeff his dad had written from Africa to say he was being posted to Germany after their regiments' stint in Kenya was over. A place called Minden. Malcolm would stay with his grandparents to continue at Trade and Commercial College.
The salesman never returned. His mother never allowed another one into the house. His father threatened to sue somebody when he came home.
Bob carried on as if nothing had ever happened. He went to the library, looked up Minden and discovered, 'the River Weser runs through the town' and 'it's near Hamelin, where the Pied Piper drowned millions of rats and then stole all the children 'cause the cheating politicians wouldn't pay him his golden ducats…' As his brother rattled all this off at top speed Malcolm knew he would be unbearable until he and his father were on the actual spot where the sleek rats slid into the river.
He would organize his brother to get off to school and himself to the Corporation's Commercial College. Bob, was already up; he could hear him running about in the other room which looked out on to a grassy square, long, straight, grey, cracked washing poles as high as the three storey building, lean-to sheds, the bins and the concrete air raid shelters, which had never been used. The mass of long spears of grass were never cut and even in winter always seemed to be the same length. These observations, which passed through his mind, were placed in the mental box labelled "The Fatuous Mysteries of Life."
'Hey, I'm going out to the lav,' his brother Bob shouted from the front room.
Malcolm's thoughts now concerned his father a soldier in Africa, fighting the Mau Mau. Bob would say his Dad would be using the machete he brought home while he was on leave before going to Africa. It was for chopping your way through the thick jungle vegetation. And killing people, his brother had said. His father said nothing.
Jeff told his young son the proper name for the big knife. Machete. Bob had said it for weeks and was forever telling his pals about the machete, and his dad fighting in the jungle. In Malcolm's dictionary, the entry stated that machete originally meant club. War! Films and books, staged war, the only place Malcolm knew of war.
Maybe he drinks to forget.
He dressed, went next door and lifted Bob's warm sheets from the floor and folded them up with his brother's pyjamas, the blue-striped ones he had worn at his age. He then turned up the settee bed. When his father came home on leave his brother slept in the front room with him. Pulling the table into the space where the bed had been, he turned to the stove and began making porridge for his brother. While he stood at the gas stove stirring the oats, his brother came back with the white enamel chamber pot, on his head. Every time he took the pot out to empty, he came back with it on his head. His mother would say, 'One of these days that'll get stuck on your head, you daft thing.' They would laugh, especially Bob, at the picture of himself with the pot on his head.
'I hope you rinsed that,' Malcolm said as he stirred, the porridge's milky aroma arising from the bubbling pot.
'Of course I did. Just like you showed me. In the next flush water.'
'Maybe one day you'll forget. There'll be a dribble of wee running down your neck.'
'Ugh!'
'Eat your porridge. And you'll be a tough enough Scotsman to take anything like that.'
'Like Dad?'
'Yes, like Dad,' Malcolm said softly.
'Malcolm! Do you think that man selling the books will come back soon?'
'Well, Kate gave him 10 bob deposit, after you went on about those encyclopaedias.'
'They looked so good. Didn't they Malcolm. An' they'll help us to speak proper and know all about the British Empire. They're always telling us that in school.'
'They definitely seem to have some interesting articles in them. You already speak proper. At least you know how to. Mum always taught us that if we wanted "to make something of ourselves" we shouldn’t speak in "the common dialect".' Their mother's admonition was spoken in her quaint Scots accent.
'By the way, squirt, you shouldn't start a sentence with a conjunction, especially not a contracted conjunction.'
What they were both now looking back on was the evening a man selling encyclopaedias came to the door. A man, engulfed in a navy coloured, woollen overcoat that almost touched the flagstones in the passage, wearing a black Homburg that appeared to be consuming his head: Malcolm's lasting image.
He knew his brother would be excited about the pictures of, 'sportsmen, animals, airplanes, Red Indians and all sorts of great stuff.' Bob's breathless words, which spilled out when the man showed them a mock-up of the books. A moment of disappointment flashed in his brother's eyes as he watched the man putting the sample back in his scuffed, brown attaché case. Bob was never down. It annoyed Malcolm his brother could be constantly cheerful. He knew his brother's liveliness delighted his mother. He himself could be moody, worrying about matters for too long.
'Malcolm, why do you call Mum Kate?' His brother's voice broke into his thoughts.
'I've told you before, it's her name and she likes me calling her Kate,'
'But you do love her, don't you?'
'Of course I do.'
His brother, placated, carried on eating his breakfast. Kids seem to be easily satisfied.
In the evening, they were sitting before the range, the coals glowing. A smell of fish supper lingering in the air, mixed with the heat, gave the room a warm intimacy. A cream-coloured Murphy's radio on a high plant stand hummed and crackled. 'The Black Museum' on Radio Luxembourg would be broadcast later. Kate Callaghan sat enjoying her first cigarette since coming home from work, tidying the house, looking at Bob's homework and asking Malcolm how his day at College had been. His brother had a pile of DC comics on his lap; The Dandy and The Beano were for kids, said Bob. Malcolm sat at the table, the tea things cleared. He should be looking at the history book from the library before him, instead he studied his mother. Contented stoicism, a phrase he thought up to describe her method for getting through life.
On the news the announcer said, "Mau Mau rebels in Kenya have burned down Tree Tops." None of them said anything. Bob and Malcolm looked at Kate who simply smiled reassuringly and stared straight ahead. The newsreader went on to explain that Tree Tops was the hotel where our present Queen Elizabeth had been staying on her honeymoon with the Duke of Edinburgh in 1952 when she heard that she was to be queen.
Right now, his gran and granddad would be nodding to one another in appreciation of this act. His mother's family were Communists and against the Monarchy.
'Gran'll be cheering,' said Bob, who did not understand why his grandparents hated the Queen, and that, 'lang skinny Greek she married.' The hatred Malcolm found confusing; beneath the crowned heads were flesh that would bleed if you shot them. Bleed to death, in the case of the Romanovs.
'Your granddad will be saying how he wished those two were in the fire at the time,' pronounced Kate.
'What about you, Mum, do you wish that?' asked Malcolm.
Bob noticed he did not call her Kate this time.
Before she could answer, there was knocking at the door.
'It's the books,' shouted Bob.
The three of them went to the door. Bob, who arrived first, opened it. His mother switched on the hall light.
The same tall smooth man in his long navy blue, heavy overcoat and black Homburg hat, holding an attaché case, stood with head bent looking at them. Light from the house slanted over his form. Above him to the right hissed the gas lamp that lit the entrance to the tenement. Definitely, thought Malcolm, a Dickensian image.
'Good evening, Mrs Callaghan, how are you this nice May evening?' His English accent was southern, Malcolm remembered − Essex he had thought. Jeff his father was from Essex. There was no sign of any books.
'Have you brought the books?' Bob asked keeping his hair on, just.
'Now young man, I'm not as young as I used to be and all those books would be too much for me. How-wev-ver,' he went on, tapping the worn case, the corners of his mouth turning up and an unreal smile flickering for a second, 'I've brought you a sample, which you can keep free of charge.' The words slithered and coiled from his mouth like those adders he had seen in the glass case in Jackie's Pet Shop. He kept looking over their shoulders as if he expected to be invited in or he was wondering where the man was. This time Malcolm knew his mother would not allow him in.
'If you haven't got the books, what do you want?' said his mother, aggressively. Malcolm and Bob looked at her.
'You know dear, the books will arrive by carrier when they do come, which should be quite soon. So I've come to accept a further instalment as per our agreement.'
'Not another penny until we see the first book.'
'Why, yes, of course, madam, but our agree...'
Kate shut the door. Bob looked up at her,
'Ach Ma! You didnae even tak' the sample.'
'I don't think he had a sample lad,' his mother said. 'And it is, "But mother, you did not even take the sample." Not that noise you made.'
'Yes, Mum.'
Malcolm wondered how her workmates viewed his mother in the mill, or the factory, as she called it. Same as the way they saw him, speaking his posh. Predictably, she would smile when taunted and ignore the derision.
Back in the front room, none of them mentioned the salesman. Malcolm took coal out of the bunker, which was under the window, and ran the tap in the sink next to the store, to keep the dust down. Late screeches from the constant gang of seagulls told him someone had put food debris in the bin and forgotten to replace the lid.
As he filled the scuttle, he looked out at the air-raid shelter, which blocked the light. All they did was block the sun, his mother said every so often. It was one of those Churchillian things; building them caused people to concentrate on the war effort, like taking down the iron railings around schools and other buildings; to make people feel as if they are contributing. Make believe we are doing something for the war effort, was how his granddad put it.
Now he was older he realised tangible things, existent, material objects had question marks over them. Perhaps the visible was not always true as he in his innocence once believed it to be. Churchill was another of his grandparents' pet hates. Malcolm remained unsure and had his own thoughts on the subject as he did concerning Royalty. One of his uncles, every time there were family arguments on the class system, would say that they were all human beings, and a man couldn't help into which class he was born, just as he couldn’t help where he was born or what sex he was. This naturally caused more argument. And Malcolm realised that not all working families were Reds, as Bob would be in his time.
The Black Museum on Radio Luxembourg would be on soon. Malcolm made toast for them. Over the glowing coals sinking in the grate he held the bread on a fork, his hand wrapped in a sock to protect it from the heat. Darkness pressed in at the window, the fire and a small table lamp, the only light, shadows still against the walls.
Big Ben chimes, from the pale plastic radio: The Black Museum, the repository of death . . . and the voice of Orson Welles smouldered through another grisly tale of murder. Bob sitting in his pyjamas fell asleep. Malcolm and his mother lifted him and put him in her bed in the alcove, sliding him gently to the wall side so Kate could slip in later. Tonight Malcolm would fold down the bed settee and they would all lie in the same room, now warm and filled with the promises of sleep.
That night in bed, Malcolm lay wondering about the future. Bob and his mother were going to Germany soon. Jeff his dad had written from Africa to say he was being posted to Germany after their regiments' stint in Kenya was over. A place called Minden. Malcolm would stay with his grandparents to continue at Trade and Commercial College.
The salesman never returned. His mother never allowed another one into the house. His father threatened to sue somebody when he came home.
Bob carried on as if nothing had ever happened. He went to the library, looked up Minden and discovered, 'the River Weser runs through the town' and 'it's near Hamelin, where the Pied Piper drowned millions of rats and then stole all the children 'cause the cheating politicians wouldn't pay him his golden ducats…' As his brother rattled all this off at top speed Malcolm knew he would be unbearable until he and his father were on the actual spot where the sleek rats slid into the river.
Irwin Lengel (Lakeland, FL): Great story. You really paint a picture of the surroundings you write about which allows the reader to imagine they are right there in the room with the characters they are reading about.
I enjoyed the story very much. I should be so good with descriptions.
Thanks.
I enjoyed the story very much. I should be so good with descriptions.
Thanks.
