Sparrow Falling by Gaie Sebold

Pritchards are church, they always go out Sundays. The Pritchards got seven, or maybe eight, the Glucks had a boy and a girl, and now they just got a girl, she don’t talk much, and the Farleys, half theirs are off to work ’cept Bert cos Bert’s back went bad on him and he can’t walk no more, he waves at me through the window sometimes. There’s the Stones, they’ve five, no, four, he’s scammered all the time. Gin,” Bat said solemnly. “She don’t half yell when he lays on. And there’s the Huntridges, they en’t been here so long as the others, they got maybe six, I can’t keep ’em all straight. There’s more go in and out, but I dunno the names.”
    “Any visitors?”
    “Juicy Peg gets lots,” he said. “And Loaf’s Ma gets a few, men, mainly. She turns Loaf out when they come, unless it’s the draper man come to pick up the shirts. Sometimes Loaf comes to the crossing. He tried to take my broom, I had to yell and his Ma come for him.”
    “You do all right holding on to it like you do, how’d you manage?”
    “Oh most of the time s’all right, cos they know me round here, but sometimes a bigger boy’s tried to have it off me and I kicks ’em. I kick good, and I bite.” He wrapped his hands protectively around the broom. “But Loaf’s real strong, his Ma says what didn’t go into his head God put in his body. He’s all right, mostly, he’s sort of like a dog. Anyways... That’s mostly it.”
    “What about toffs? Landlords and that?”
    “Oh, them .” There was a wealth of scorn and distrust in the word. “There’s Bowler, and the Viper. The Viper don’t come often himself, mostly he sends Bowler. I don’t like ’em. Time they came together they used my crossing, Bowler looked at me like I was a pie, only he wasn’t sure what was in it, and he said to the Viper did he think I’d do, and the Viper told him he was a flat. Bowler only guv me a fadge and it was clipped.”
    “So the Viper, he’s the landlord?”
    “’S’right.” Bat was looking at the remains of Evvie’s pie with a ravenous eye.
    “Here,” she said. “I’m full.” She wasn’t, but she reckoned he was earning it. “Why’d you call him the Viper?”
    “S’what everyone calls him, Viper Stug. I asked Juicy Peg once and she said it was cos he’s the devil himself in disguise, not that this was the Garden of Eden she said, I din’t understand that bit, only anyway she called him a... she said I wasn’t to say it. I dunno what it means anyways.”
    “Why’d she say he was the devil?”
    “She says he’s bad luck and carries evil with him.”
    “Why’s that then?”
    Bat shrugged, picking the last crumbs of pie off his filthy trousers with a wetted finger. “I dunno, miss.”
    “But often he doesn’t come himself, you said, he sends Bowler? Who’s Bowler?”
    “He’s the Viper’s nobbler, miss. You don’t pay up, he gives you a basting. We calls him Bowler on account of his hat – never seen him without it, miss. I don’t like him. He’s...” The boy seemed to choose, and reject, several words, possibly ones Juicy Peg had told him not to use, before settling on, “bad, miss. Proper bad. I reckon he’s the devil, not Viper. There was horns under that hat of his I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.”
    “Well, well. You’re a noticing one, you are. You all done? I gotta take these mugs back to the shop.”
    He handed her his mug.
    “You been a proper help to me,” she told him. “You keep this hidden and don’t go flashing it about, you hear?”
    Bat gave a wide stare at the handful of coins she slid into his small palm and nodded vigorously. “Right you are, miss.”
    “Good boy. Here, you know when the Viper was here last?”
    “Not for ages, miss. But Bowler was here two days back.”
    “Everyone paid up?”
    “S’far as I know, miss. He was right nettled.”
    “Why’d he be nettled?”
    “He likes it when they can’t pay up, miss. Makes him happy, that does. Like I