Orchard Street, NYC, 1906

Written for Sunday Whirl Wordle. Our host is
Brenda Warren; her words for this week are
shown below. Here’s where they took me.

fright ~ runner ~ potatoes ~ road ~ drifting ~ twisted
pinch ~ glassy ~ prickled ~ neck ~ shifted ~ still

The first thing Moe Slutsky noticed about the boy was how still he was standing; everyone else on the street moved, haggled, shifted from foot to foot, but this one just stood there staring at the potatoes like in a trance.

A pinch of suspicion prickled at the back of Moe’s neck. He’d run this stand for six years and knew the rhythm of honest customers. This wasn’t it.

He turned to help a woman with her cabbages, keeping the boy in the corner of his eye. That’s when it happened. Quick as a bookie runner from up in Harlem, the kid’s hand darted out, twisted an apple and two potatoes into the folds of his jacket, and he was already drifting away down the crowded road before Moe could even shout.

“Hey! Hey, you!”

The boy bolted. Moe came around the cart fast, nearly upending a basket of onions, but the crowd swallowed the thief whole …. just another fast-moving shape weaving between pushcarts and pedestrians.

“Oy a shrek! What a fright!” Moe swore quietly. He stood there, breathing hard, a flash of anger mixed with sadness twisting in his chest. Three potatoes and an apple. Pennies, really. But it wasn’t about the pennies.

He thought of his own boy at home, hungry sometimes, in years past. Maybe that kid had a mother waiting …. or maybe no one waiting at all.

Moe sighed deeply, adjusted the cart, and went back to arranging his vegetables …. a little poorer, a little wearier, but still standing at his post on Orchard Street, same as always.

NAR©2026
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This is Fruit Trader” by John Mellencamp

Wordle 761

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