On Mondays, the rag man came. He walked down the street calling, “Rags! Rags for sale!” His rags spilled from pails attached to a wire pole that he carried across his shoulders. He wore rags too, the rag man. Tied around his head, his neck, his waist, his wrists and ankles. The rag man was colorful, a burst of brightness every Monday afternoon. Josephine looked forward to hearing him call out his arrival, and always felt disappointed if he failed to come, which happened from time to time because the rag man was a drunk.
The coal man came on Tuesdays. Covered in soot, with grime in every crease and hole, the coal man drove his dirty red truck up and down the streets, spilling coal as he went. The neighborhood children ran behind the truck, collecting the pieces that fell. Josephine didn’t like the coal man. She didn’t like the way black grime lay beneath his fingernails, or how he blew his nose, releasing a stream of black snot into a dirty handkerchief. The coal man coughed and sniffed and cleared his thick phlegmy throat. Josephine imagined he cried black tears and urinated black piss. Still, when her daughter Isabella gave her a lump of coal that had fallen from his truck, Josephine buried it in a secret place, believing that, if left alone, it would turn into a diamond. Even now, she liked things that sparkled.
On Wednesdays, Tino the Turnip came with his horse-drawn wagon filled with fruits and vegetables. He was called Turnip because he was long and thin and covered in warts. Still, he always had the freshest fruits and vegetables. And he always brought something exotic: peaches or grapefruit. The prices for these were especially dear, but he was known to give them away for free at the end of the day, along with any bruised or half-rotten fruit he hadn’t sold. Josephine would ask him to save her anything that no one else wanted, and late Wednesday afternoons, Tino the Turnip would come and leave her a basket of red peppers gone soft, string beans that were too thin, smashed raspberries. Once, he left her a mango. Another time, a green vegetable with hard, bumpy skin that even Tino didn’t know the name for.
Jacques LaSalle came by noisily and early on Thursday mornings. He sharpened knives, bought and sold pans, shod horses, collected cans. Anything metal, Jacques took care of. Josephine avoided him if she could, and never let her children roam the streets until she heard him clink away. Jacques did not button his pants and let his penis swing free. He was simpleminded, everyone said. He meant no harm, he was just an idiot. But Josephine didn’t like to see that long, pencil-thin penis hanging out. When he moved, climbing in or out of his cart, bending forward to set the sharpening wheel spinning, his penis swung left and right. Once, Josephine noticed it was partially erect, and she felt queasy around him after that.
Fridays were the best. On Fridays, the ice man came. In a way, he was the complete opposite of the coal man, everything about him sleek and clean and cold. Where the coal man was black, the ice man was blue. He swung enormous blocks of ice from his truck with large metal tongs, smooth and easy. Josephine liked watching him work his way up the street toward her house, liked his smooth, tanned hands, the half-moon of his fingernails. His name was Alfredo Petrocelli, and he came from a village in the Old Country not far from her own. Josephine looked forward to his arrival. When she saw Alfredo, she knew it was Friday, and another week was coming to an end.
But in June of that summer of 1918, right after her son, Carmine, left for Coney Island to make his fortune, Alfredo Petrocelli did not come with ice. Josephine was already feeling all wrong inside. How else could a person feel after her only son decided to leave home for a strange place like Coney Island?