“Get up, Moyer! Old man’s lookin’ for you.”
“W-What?”
“You’re supposed to be up before light.”
Enoch blinked up at Joe McVey.
“Goin’ to catch hell if you lay a-bed,” said Joe, smirking at the younger boy. Joe’s red hair framed his grinning freckled face.
Enoch propped up on his elbows, while Joe walked away under the loft’s roof joists. “Why didn’t you wake me up, Joe?”
“Cause I ain’t your momma.” Joe tossed the taunt over his shoulder. He added in a high voice, “Time to get up, little Enoch, dear.”
Enoch Moyer sat, scrambled for his clothes, and found them strewn on the loft’s bare plank floor. He pulled on shirt and socks, but when he stood to pull up his pants, his head banged on a low rafter. Splinters stung his scalp.
“Momma, momma,” he sank back down on the bed, face in hands, fingers wet with tears until the pain subsided.
Momma would have laid out pants and shirt, socks and underclothes, freshly washed and folded. He would have caught the scent of her fresh rolls wafting up from the kitchen.
Never again, he thought.

Last week his future broke apart in a lawyer’s office. While the adults bargained away his life, Enoch looked outside at the horse and wagon traffic on courthouse square and let his mind wander. Arguing was pointless.
Attorney McKee’s voice droned on, glasses perched on his baldhead. McKee faced a semicircle of people – little Enoch, Momma, Uncle George, and the master himself, Leopold Cohen. McKee read the contract, an apprenticeship between his family and the master. They never asked his opinion.
Enoch recalled the words; each one rang like a bell tolling the death of his youth.
“This indenture witnesseth that Enoch Moyer, age fourteen, hath voluntarily and of his own free will and accord put himself apprentice to Leopold Cohen, merchant, in the borough of Lewistown in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, to learn the art, trade, and mystery of merchandizing…”
Enoch’s stomach felt hollow. Four years of apprenticeship, to live among strangers, to stop school, to earn nothing except “a small allowance.” A fate no better than slavery.
Everything important was gone. Games, school, and the comfort of his widowed mother.
“…until he shall attain the full age of eighteen. During which time the said apprentice shall faithfully serve, keeping the master’s secrets …”
Uncle George had forced him into apprenticeship, overruling Momma and Miss Book, his teacher. They survived only from the uncle’s support. Momma daubed her eyes with a lace handkerchief. Enoch fidgeted, against the tight collar and tie.
“…shall not play at cards, dice, or any other unlawful game…”
Enoch looked across at the man, Leopold Cohen, soon to be his master. A dark beard, like a mask, hanging from cheeks to chest, shrouded the man’s face. So much face covered, how could you tell what he was thinking? Cohen wore his hat unlike other men who doffed theirs indoors. Between beard and hat, his eyes blazed like fired coals.
Cohen sat forward on the office chair, concentrating on the lawyer’s words. Massive shoulders bulged under his jacket. Enoch wondered how a shopkeeper got such big muscles.
“…in witness whereof, the said parties have interchangeably set their hands and seal hereunto. Dated the second day of September in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and eighty.”

“Enoch Moyer, I expected you to breakfast an hour ago.”
A voice jolted him awake from last week’s memory of the law office. Cohen’s broad shoulders filled the loft’s narrow stairs; eyes glared under the hat. “Get now down to the store.”
The boy jumped off the bed, fastened pants, slipped on shoes, and fled past the master downstairs to the second floor.
Enoch spun around the hallway, confused about stairs down to the store. Racing around a corner, he bumped into a young woman, carrying laundry. Clothes spilled onto the floor.
“Oh, the new apprentice,” she said.
He squatted down to help pick up the garments. She smiled over the pile and asked, “Do you want breakfast?”
Enoch looked back at the master.
“No time for that, Lena. Store is soon open. Work wants done. Get along, boy.”
“Then, I’ll bring bread and jam down to him.”
“No, wife,” his voice sharp. “He’d only smudge good cloth. All eating must be upstairs, remember?”
The woman stood to face the master. A head shorter than he, her finger wagged in the man’s face.
“Does not the contract call for three meals a day, dear husband?”
Her hands took firm hold of Enoch’s shoulders and turned him past the master into a dining room. Closer, he realized she stood no taller than he did.
“Sit here beside little Arthur.”
She offered a chair beside a bay window. A child about three years old sat in a high chair eating porridge, cereal slopped around his mat. Nearby, a baby lay swaddled in a crib. The woman disappeared into her kitchen.
Enoch looked out dining room windows, facing over the Lewistown’s back streets. Morning sun light streamed through lace curtains. He saw over the tops of low buildings and back streets, to the junction of the Pennsylvania canal, Kish Creek, and the Juniata River. Many industries belched smoke into the morning air. Beyond the town, the colors of fall began to tint the forest on Blue Mountain.
Enoch looked around the room. Walls held paintings of flowers, mountains, and ruins of Greek temples. Etched globes covered gas light fixtures. Cabinets displayed decorative porcelain, cups and figurines while a side table held a silver tea service. Damask cloths covered every cabinet surface. The dining table and chairs stood on an oriental carpet that extended to the walls. The room looked more like a lady’s magazine than his mama’s plain home.