The last warm bucket, by Bryony Quist

An original short story extract set in the twentieth century.

Reuben Wride drove the council ash cart through our street every Thursday in the winter of 1928. His horse was called Captain, though it had never been near a battle. Reuben walked beside it on the steep part of the hill and put a folded sack beneath its collar before the climb. He would not empty a bucket while anything in it still glowed. Instead he chalked a cross on the handle and came back after his dinner. The women saved newspapers for him, which he rolled tightly and passed to his brother, a market gardener, for lighting the greenhouse stove. Reuben carried a separate wooden box for broken glass and kept a pair of leather gloves hanging from his belt. At the corner he always stopped to let an elderly woman cross, even when she was still fumbling with the latch of her gate. Captain waited without being told.

List five things you learn about Reuben in this extract.