The Dream Merchant by Fred Waitzkin Read Free Book Online

wife and pauper children. Doing the work of the farm, which he understood would someday pass on to the eldest of his twelve brothers, was futility and malaise. Nathan chased his urges and stole small favors, whenever he had the chance.
    One fall afternoon, before Jim turned seven, Nathan announced that they would have to leave the farm, Grandpa couldn’t afford to keep them around anymore; he couldn’t feed everyone in the big house and keep it warm. It was something called hard times. Jim wondered why his uncles could stay for hard times and they couldn’t. He worried about leaving the cows but then decided he’d be returning soon. He couldn’t imagine not coming back to where he’d lived his whole life.
    The family took a bus to a tiny village outside of Edmonton, about seven hundred miles to the west. Nathan had heard there was work there. They found a small house in the country and rented it for eight dollars a month. The front room had a dirt floor. In the kitchen there was a little wood stove. There were three other rooms, but only the kitchen was heated as long as they had wood to put in the stove. There was a toilet but no bath and not a stick of furniture in any room. They would have to sleep on the floor. It was a cold, forlorn place.
    Sally spread some blankets and then, sitting beside a flickering candle, she showed Nathan her money saved over the span of five years, a little more than two hundred dollars. She counted it out slowly, with a hesitation, wanting to please him, but also feeling the urge to pull it back and knot it away again—her secret life dissolving with this pile of dollars and loose change on the blanket. But maybe he would love her again now that he was away from the farm. That was her hope. Nathan was astonished at such a sum, and sobered to discover that his wife had kept this big secret. She saved her pennies milking cows, mopping, digging, planting, cooking, cleaning, sixteen hours a day without ever taking a holiday. She kept it from him and now they had it. He called her a good girl and hugged her on the cold floor. There was enough money for Nathan to go and buy furniture and a new stove for the kitchen, to put food in the pantry and to buy cotton for Sally to sew new shirts for the kids to wear on their first day in school, so they wouldn’t be embarrassed, and make curtains for the front room and the kitchen. She wanted to make it a cheerful place. Then when he had a job they would put in a wood floor in the front room. That would help. They would manage until he found work.
    Nathan brought home meager provisions for the kitchen—a few cans, some cereal, milk, enough for a few days—but next to nothing sitting on a shelf made a desolate picture. While she waited for the furniture to arrive, Sally did what she could around the house and ran after the kids.
    For weeks, Nathan looked in Edmonton for work, but he couldn’t find a thing, not one day’s labor. Thousands of men were looking.
    Nathan told Sally he was going to ride the trains and look for work farther west. During depression times many men were riding the freights. Sally was impatient. Where were the furniture and her new stove? They would be delivered to the house in a few more days, he said. She didn’t want to wait for Nathan to find employment and start sending her money—he wasn’t a good bet. Sally had already talked to a few neighbors who agreed to buy her fresh-baked bread, and occasionally she would sell them some cookies and a cake. Sally was a resourceful and energetic worker—she wanted to get started and needed the stove. In her mind her little business was already taking shape. But now they had next to nothing in the house. They needed to make some money fast. The kids had big holes in their shoes. She tied rags around their shoes and sent them off down the road to school with a couple of pieces of bread and jam.
    The night Nathan left on the train she