Harrison McNelly enjoyed his job.

Cleaning streets wasn’t precisely what anyone would mistake as high-income work. Quite the contrary — he knew a number of thieves and ne’er-do-wells that, week for week, drew in a better income than he.

What his job lacked in income, however, it made up for in stability. Streets were simple business. Pick up trash, sweep and shovel. A bad day merely meant he’d perhaps fallen in the back of the mucking cart. A bad day as a thief, however, likely indicated you were now living in a tiny little room — or worse, sporting shiny, pointy accessories in your gut.

There was an unspoken courtesy he’d learned from his father to extend, one returned by those same brigands. Steam-powered vehicles were displacing horse-drawn carriages for highbrow elite executives who could afford such extravagant luxury. For the rest, real flesh and blood horse-power was still a part of life, and horses soiled the streets. Someone had to clean it up. Those ‘unsavory’ elements didn’t mess with the man who did the cleaning up, so long as he didn’t mess with them.

Harrison’s son gazed at the bustling streets as their cart bumped and heaved down the cobblestone roadway. Today was Thomas’ first day on the job with his father. He’d been babbling endlessly about it for a week. He’d worn his best coveralls, much to his mother’s chagrin. But he was enthusiastic about finally working with his father.

The old mare pulling their cart snorted at the gentle tug on her reins, obediently drawing to a stop. Sliding off the cart, Harrison reached up lift Thomas to the ground. Instead, the young boy crossed his arms and shook his head.

“I can do it myself!” he insisted, demonstrating that, while he could, he should not — by half-climbing, half-falling off the cart. The leg of his coveralls caught a rough iron corner in the ladder, slicing the fabric as he slipped the last few inches to the cobblestone. “Uh-oh.”

“Your mother’s going to have some words for us about that,” Harrison chided, lifting a youngling-sized pushbroom off the side of the cart. “But don’t you worry about that right now. Now, this area here, you just sweep it to the back of the cart, and I’ll shovel it in—“

Glass rained down from above. Harrison looked up in surprise with the rest of the pedestrians as a prize-winning watermelon of a man emerged from the broken top floor window, screaming as he flapped his flabby arms in a fruitless attempt to mimic a pigeon. And, as Harrison would think days after the fact, a watermelon slamming into the ground when thrown from a top-story window was quite similar in the sound it made on impact.

And a week after that, he’d stop to consider that the inside of the watermelon was also quite similar.

Thomas stared at the executive who’d been quite literally removed from his office. There was no hiding it from him; it had happened mere feet away from the boy. After a brief time, he held his little pushbroom up for his father to take back. Before Harrison could ask if he wanted to go home, little Thomas looked at Harrison with those sincere, young eyes, and proved once and for all that street sweeping was in his blood.

“I need a bigger broom,” the boy spoke.

The above is courtesy of Derek Jacobs at Blue Vulpine; a group of writers at the webfiction guide decided to get together, trade lots, and write each other’s stories for April 1st. Links to the other writers and exchanges can be found here; my own contribution to this project (provided for the excellent Tapestry series) can be found here; it’s entitled ‘Conversations With A Horse’.

Thanks for reading!