Only the town's two
saloons prospered. The saloon keepers sold their wares for cash and, as the
men of the town and the farmers who drove into town felt that without drink
life was unbearable, cash always could be found for the purpose of getting
drunk.
Hugh McVey's father, John McVey, had been a farm hand in his youth but
before Hugh was born had moved into town to find employment in a tannery.
The tannery ran for a year or two and then failed, but John McVey stayed in
town. He also became a drunkard. It was the easy obvious thing for him to
do. During the time of his employment in the tannery he had been married
and his son had been born. Then his wife died and the idle workman took his
child and went to live in a tiny fishing shack by the river. How the boy
lived through the next few years no one ever knew. John McVey loitered in
the streets and on the river bank and only awakened out of his habitual
stupor when, driven by hunger or the craving for drink, he went for a day's
work in some farmer's field at harvest time or joined a number of other
idlers for an adventurous trip down river on a lumber raft. The baby was
left shut up in the shack by the river or carried about wrapped in a soiled
blanket. Soon after he was old enough to walk he was compelled to find work
in order that he might eat. The boy of ten went listlessly about town at
the heels of his father.
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