Work Text:
For many decades now, Tevye the Milkman had delivered the milk across the shtetl in Anatevka. He had lifted the heavy jugs of milk without complaint, carrying them up steps and delivering them upon the stoops of the whole of the village, rain or shine.
He had done it without any trouble, and if he kvetched about it, it was only in the privacy of prayer or for the ears of the horse. The mare listened well, but she didn’t speak Yiddish. Surely then he was safe from being considered too much of a whiner. Besides, it was good to complain to god once in a while. Tradition dictated that, nu?
But now his limbs had become creaky with age and labor, and with worrying over his blessings — his daughters, that is — each of them finding her own kind of problems in life. What a blessing that a man should have so many daughters, each of them to suffer her troubles so.
Speaking of trouble, his feet had begun to disturb him during these last few years. They hadn’t the money for the doctor, but the longer it went on, the worse it became. He had tried stubbornly to argue with Golde that he could deliver the milk as usual without any changes.
Finally in the last year, his wife had convinced him to take up a cane for climbing the steps to the houses. It hadn’t done much for him, and got in the way more than it helped.
He had replaced it with a forearm crutch, but it was still very difficult to lift the jugs with only one hand. Tevye brought the crutch on his deliveries with him because he wanted it to help, but more often than not it lay abandoned on the cart.
More recently, he had acquiesced to using a wheelchair to reach the cart at home. This helped reduce his walking at least on the way to his route. He also agreed that she or one of their daughters could help him lift up the milk onto the cart and complete the route with him, so that they could also help him put the milk onto onto the porches of their customers.
Therefore, it was not such a sacrifice to give up one of his arms to the crutch, and he found that it did quite steady him. For the later houses, more often than not, the clever women set him to a task that kept him in the cart while they delivered the milk without his assistance at all.
These were meaningful tasks, calculating profits on the cheeses, organizing their production, or planning repairs for the fences of the fields where the cows grazed. In this way, Tevye was able to rest his feet when they were too tired to continue, while still working.
When they arrived back home, he would transfer from the cart to his wheelchair and lead the horse back to the stall. He liked to rest a while there with the horse, imagining all the torah he still might one day learn to read.
The horse would butt his hand gently as he leaned with the other on his crutch or on the wall. Sometimes, she would ask for treats. Tevye felt fortunate that the money was good enough now that he had enough to give his horse a treat, even if there wasn’t enough for the doctor. She had earned it; she worked as hard as he did, after all.
When he had finished settling the horse in, he would return to the house, wheels sometimes sticking in the mud, but always carrying him home in the end. They would all have dinner together, exhausted but happy. He would rest his feet on the couch, while the others sang and knitted and talked of things too sophisticated for his understanding.
He closed his eyes. It wasn’t quite time to retire to bed, but surely a nap in such good company could do no harm.