The Crane Bridge Runner

I know a woman who is a runner at the Crane Bridge Market.  Like all runners, she wears a rounded box strapped to her back and the front of her navy blouse is lined with pockets.  While everyone else is jostled along, she can find a whisper of space between two woman shoulder to shoulder in front of her, or step back into the dying laugh of a boy just about to stop and tug at his sock.

It is her job, like all runners, to bring the goods to restock the market stalls.  One runner for each stall.  The pepper stall, crammed with jars of white, gray, or a red to make your fingers itch and burn.  The paper stall, with its parchments smelling of someone else's history. Or in my friend's case, the stall of gloves.  Gloves fur lined to protect painted nails.  Gloves, thick and coarse to pull burrs from fur.  And there, up high in the corner, one pair of kid gloves she slipped on long ago when she thought that all these gloves were a kind of invitation, a million fingered invitation to the days to come.

My friend doesn't stop.  None of the runners stop.  There is no room for them.  Just room for buyers and goods and a small table with a money box and a cup of tea half drank besides it.  The runners pass off their pouches of vanilla tobacco or rattling jars of copper buttons or stacks of green silk fans to men who resemble the fathers who stood here a generation ago.  But perhaps there is a little less wisdom on their foreheads.  Less flash of a decision in their eyes.  My friend says her man has less temper in the hands and luck in the wallet.  But she never frowns when she says this. 

Most people think this is the runners work, to keep the stalls filled with goods.  But this, I think, is the least of their work.  For I have watched my friend, watched her leave one honeyed mint beside the tea cup to ease a caugh her husband didn't even suspect had begun to crawl into his throat.  I have watched her drop a pile of crushed lavender petals under the table because the onion man was lumbering ever closer.  I have watched her and wondered how it must feel, to recognize need in this way.  To see the empty spaces that others mistake for simply nothing at all.  I know a woman who is a runner at the Crane Bridge Market.  Like all runners, she wears a rounded box strapped to her back and the front of her navy blouse is lined with pockets.