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against a brick wall below the brownstone stairwells, laying down the money they’ve garnered from some underhanded racket for a chance to double it playing craps and faro. And bigger kids come by with rapacious intentions and punching the wee ones to extract their own sort of protection money, preparing themselves for the big show on the docks later in life as it’s the Dinnies who are the heroes on the lips of these shorn-headed, floppy-hatted lads.
    The first liner I ever see fall into dock, scraping its keel against the wooden pier with a swoosh and a gulp, is a Scandinavian girl named The Halkinnean full with a load of crated birch shingles weighing close on seventy pounds each. The flag has gone up in the waterfront steam, the old signal for labormen to gather. And the whistle from the pier house blows as men amble out of their tenements and from the saloons for the need to work. No more than a skinny stripling standing in line with larger men of much might, I am lost among the crowd and quickly can’t find my uncle. As I look around in a fright, I hear the callings of the cattle pushers.
    â€œTo Pier Six wit’ ya’s!” They yell. And quickly the hopefuls begin running up the cobblestoned street, a rough road lined with freight tracks along the pier houses that break the waterfront view, “Run! Go! Who’s the best among ya!”
    As we pile into the landing at Pier Six, a new voice yells at us to run north again. “Up to da bridge’n back, first ten mens guaranteed woik!”
    Scrambling, men in dirty suits with broken shoes and hats in their back pockets fight amongst one another for the lead. Their suit ties are in tatters and dirt-rimmed collars flap mistakenly over their bedraggled coat as they take to the wind in hope of winning work for a day. Unknown faces spilling strange languages from their gobs and with eyes empty and bellies falling out of them with hunger to summon strength from their deflated reserves, they clamber with patchwork humility in the early-morning gales. Some men cheat and turn around for the final stretch before making it to the bridge. They are met then with shoulder bumps that put their faces in the ground and kicks that leave them moaning heavily in the cobble mud. Eventually we are led by the Dinnies all the way back where we started and lined up again. Breathing heavy. Breathing deeply with our hands on our knees, we look for the Dinnies and quickly straighten up to show how we are not in the least affected by the sprinting and fighting.
    â€œOn the line! Fix ya’self on the line, ya bunch o’ spalpeen layabouts,” I hear one of the Dinnies yell out.
    â€œGet there! Get there. Quick, quick . . .”
    â€œYa nothin’ but a bunch a rotten navvies!”
    â€œShape-up boyos, who’s the man of the men here?”
    â€œWho’s the bee’s knees, then?”
    As I look up, four of the men barking at the mass of hopefuls push themselves through the group and make a separation to reveal their leader. And in he come. From the grimace of his toughs they clear the way for the chieftain of the dock clans.
    Look at the man. Mid-twenties he strides across the face of us with a prominent stare and a fixed grin as his cronies shrink behind him, arms crossed. He does not have a happy grin though. This grin is that of a man staring into the sun. This man who emerges from the parting crowd, he who knows that each pale staring face that peers upon him is desperate for work, does not give the glaring eyes a notice as it’s he who looks upon our shoddy like to see how much work can be wrung from us. How hard we’ll give. He looks in each face. In each eye and if he finds fire, he moves on. If he finds passivity, moves on. If he finds reason, he chooses. But reason without muscle of course, he moves on.
    Lost in the crowd as was I, one of his sluggers approaches and grabs me by both shoulders, pushes me between two men that