Free Yonnondio: From the Thirties by Tillie Olsen

henhouse, she heard it descend upon the earth, gentle
     and grieving. Perhaps after a while she slept. A half sleep into which voices came.
     “Now. Push hard now, Anna. Did you boil the spoon? I have to use it. Hard, Anna.”
    Then a cry, ecstatic, profound, shattered the night, and a thin wail wove it under.
     It was dawn. Her father’s arms were carrying her into the housethrough the gray and lonely light, his voice saying, “looked … so long … you tired?
     Big-eyes … I had to leave you in the rain…
    The sleep still lay on her eyes, or was it sleeplessness? Yellow light flowered before
     her eyes in the warmth of the kitchen. “Her breasts cracked, so it’ll be no fun feedin
     the youngun,” someone was saying, and “Where’d you find her, Jim?”
    Bess cradled her. “You really set on leaving, Jim?”
    “You know it’s no use to stay.”
    “But what if you cant get on at the slaughter-house?”
    “I’m goin anyhow. Soon as Anna’s fit to. We cant stay here.”
    “Things wont be better, Jim. They cant be … You go to sleep now, Mazie. Everything’s
     all right.”
    “They cant be worse. Anyway, I’ve got to try.”
    “Life,” heavily from Ellen Burgum. “Life’s no bottle of perfume. I’m tired enough
     to die.”
     
    Two figures moving with pain in the dawn darkness, in the vapor mist. Two voices lashed
     by a dry and savage wind, bringing strangely the scent of lilac.
    “Almost time now, Anna. We’d better go.”
    “Yes, it’s so quiet now, Jim.”
    “Mr. Burgum’s waiting.”
    “You’d think you could hear somebody’s rooster.Doesnt seem like other mornin’s we woke up to work in.”
    “No. C’mon, Anna. Let’s go. Now.”
    “Funny how Will cried all last night, and Mazie wouldn’t sleep but in the hay. You’d
     think children wouldn’t care.”
    “Anna—they’re waiting.”
    “This hay smells good. I’d like to breathe it in so’s not ever to forget.”
    “Right away now, or we’ll miss the train.”
    “Right away now Jim…. What’s the matter, life never lets anything be? Just a year
     ago … I tried for us to have a good life.”
    One word, austere. “Anna.”
    The two figures blur into one, gnarled and lonely. Very low he says: “You’re shivering.
     Cold?”
    “Awful cold. Lets go. Now.”
    “But you cant take it lyin down—like a dawg. You cant, Anna.”

FIVE
    Myriad and drumming, the feet of sound move always through these crooked streets,
     trembling the shoddy houses, jerking the skeleton children who scream and laugh so
     senselessly to uneven rhythms they themselves know not of. Monster trucks shake by,
     streetcars plunge, machinery rasps and shrieks. Far underneath thinly quiver the human
     noises—weeping and scolding and tired words that slip out in monosyllables and are
     as if never spoken; sighs of lust, and guttural, the sigh of weariness; laughter sometimes,
     but this sound can scarcely be called human, not even in the mouths of children. A
     fog of stink smothers down over it all—so solid, so impenetrable, no other smell lives
     beside it. Human smells, crotch and underarm sweat, the smell of cooking or of burning,
     all are drowned under, merged into the vast unmoving stench.
    That stench is a reminder—a proclamation —I rule here . It speaks for the packing houses, heart of all that moves in these streets; gigantic
     heart—pumping over the artery of viaducts the men and women who are the streets’ lifeblood,
     nourishing the taverns and brothels and rheumy-eyed stores, bulging out the soiled
     and exhausted houses, and multiplying into these children playing so mirthlessly in
     their street yards where flower only lampposts. (They say this heart pumps lifeblood
     far and far—thin and blue the vein—to nourish a rare and cherished few in purest air
     where scents flower under glass and in hundred-dollar perfume bottles.)
    A man’s face, heavy and sullen (strange and bright the blue of his eyes), moves here
     awhile