Calabash Sorghum & Smelt Co.

The harridan’s great-great uncle worked for the Calabash Sorghum & Smelt Co. in Newcastle Newton, retiring to Braga Bragg New Westminster. She remembered shirts offal with fish gore and oily scalloped hands that her great-great uncle was forever rubbing one against the other. He wore a fishmonger’s apron and a Sorghum pitcher’s cap and long ever so long thick wool socks, the purpose of which was to keep his ankles and shins from getting too cold. He hummed and fiddled with the brace on his hammer-belt, the hammer never quite fitting snuggly into the loop. He gave her his first fishmonger’s apron, the one with two pockets, one for his knife and one for his scalper, and his Sorghum picker’s cap, which she kept in a doll’s box stowed under her bed. She wore the cap on Ship Day and every second Saturday, depending on the size of the sun and her temperament.

‘…the gypsums are coming…!’ hollered the alms man, his face red as a fall apple. ‘…don’t you mean the gypsies?’ said the legless man. ‘…them too!’ Battling the cursed wind, railheads biting into the soles of his feet, the gyp-rock man pushed his gyp-cart, the cart overflowing with dusty white rock. The day before Ship Day the gyp-rock man made his rounds of the town, the townsfolk eager to buy dusty white rock to fill the holes in their ramshackle shacks. Some called it hovel-rock, others shanty-stone and some called it plain old white rock that cost more than a tooth extraction. He parked his cart in front of the church, nailed his sign to the door, Gyp Stone and Fixings, and lit a pocketed half-smoked, taking long slow pulls off the wetted tip.