The Bow Legged Man

He knew a man, a bow legged man, who wore potato sac trousers and limped to one side like a listing metronome. He claimed to have found the missing whore’s glove, the one missing from behind the Jewish grocer’s. Knowing that the shamble leg man had the right glove he offered to barter with him for the left one, the one he had found, where, he would not say. The bow legged man was a secretive man, and very seldom did he let on that he knew anything for fear of being held accountable for his knowing something that perhaps he shouldn’t; and as he had a metal shim in his head he could seldom differentiate between what was real and what was phantasm or trickery.