Written for Newsies Pape Selling Competition/Circulation One
Task 1: Write about a newsie gaining their freedom from a bad situation. The situation can be anything, be it a place or a family member.
Prompts for Task 1: (Word) Darkness/(Color) Red/(Texture) Rough/(Object) A stick
Word Count: 1,611
I apologize to my team and other teams because (as usual) I am a last minute Lucy and because this story is not what I wanted it to be. I hope my team members can forgive me and that the readers can as well! Thank you for reading!
There was a thin layer of ice on the barred window which distorted his view of the world outside. The weak rays of sunlight only made the damp, freezing bunk room feel even more dreary. Every so often there'd be a brittle cough or a groan but otherwise there was only the tense, familiar silence that occurred as each boy awoke to find himself in the same exact situation as the day before as a prisoner in the Refuge. In a few moments he knew the guards would appear, gruffly rousing each shivering form out of bed and line them up along the ends of the bunks for roll call.
The boy beside him in the bunk was motionless but Swifty had already realized hours ago that the kid was gone. Dead. Lips that had once been stained red with blood from his consumptive fits were now tinged the same icy blue as his skin and fingernails. Swifty had done what he could to help. That wasn't true. He could have done more, he should have done more.
"Thompson!"
A few more scraps of bread, another blanket. Maybe he could have even snuck down to the kitchen and pilfered some of the food he knew they kept just for the warden and the guards.
Swifty jerked back as one of the guard's fists caught him behind the ear. He looked blankly up into the snarling face opposite and couldn't even bring himself to be angry.
"What's the matter with this one?" The guard sneered as he nudged at the dead boy with the cudgel he held in his right hand.
Swifty opened his mouth to speak but he found he couldn't make a sound.
"Let's go, boy!" As the guard continued to harass the dead kid, Swifty's hands clenched into fists but he stuffed them into his pockets. It wasn't the time.
"He's dead," Swifty mumbled.
"What'd you say?"
"He's dead." The words sounded strange and Swifty urged himself to think of something else, anything else to escape the finality of those two words. For some reason he went back to the time before he'd earned his nickname and trade as a rake. It had not been his intention to become a common thief but he'd found the options for an runaway on the streets were few. He supposed he still owed a debt of gratitude to the man who had taught him how to improve his skills as a pickpocket. It had saved him from starving to death in the streets, until the day he'd been caught and thrown into the Refuge. Swifty tried to recall the sound of the tiny bell as it jangled when he failed to reach into one of the numerous pockets on the jacket his mentor had worn to help train him to lift items without the victim even noticing. Each flap had a bell sewn onto it and each time Swifty worked as a pickpocket he thought about that sound. But standing there in that bitterly cold bunk room all he could hear was the word 'dead' repeated over and over in his mind.
Swifty was almost relieved by the mind-numbing nature of the morning religious education classes and even more so by the afternoon hours he spent weaving pieces of cane together and standing shoulder to shoulder with about fifty boys doing the exact same thing. It gave his mind something to concentrate on other than his grief. His guilt alone was almost crippling and it wasn't until the entire group was released to the outer yard that he was able to speak about it.
"He was my brother." Swifty's jaw was sore from clenching it so tightly all day and he had to work it back and forth before he could even get the words to come out.
"What?" The kid next to him eyed him suspiciously as there was a clear hierarchy within the Refuge walls and Swifty was a stranger.
"There was a kid who died this morning. He was my brother," Swifty repeated without emotion.
"Sorry." The other boy shrugged and gave him a half-hearted pat on the shoulder before moving away. The yard was practically filled to capacity with sickly, poorly dressed boys who appeared capable of doing little but pacing around in the half-frozen mud in misery. As Swifty glanced from one boy's face to the next he began to panic and his thoughts ran wildly when he considered his brother's fate and how it might soon be his own.
Faking death had never worked and any boy in the Refuge had a story about someone they once knew who had tried it. The punishment for trying to escape by faking one's death made the alternative almost preferable. Since Swifty's imprisonment he'd seen at least half a dozen boys escape, or at least try to escape. The most unoriginal was the poor boy who had clearly been driven mad as all he did was try to scale the ten foot wall that separated the Refuge from the rest of the island and was caught before he could get three feet off the ground. In terms of successful escape attempts there was always the infamous story of one boy who had escaped during the much anticipated visit from Theodore Roosevelt by hitching a ride in the man's carriage. Bedsheets out the window, hitching a ride amongst the crates and barrels brought by the Sister of Charity, setting one's bed on fire and escaping in the bedlam were some of the more successful ways to avoid capture and subsequent beatings by the guards. As Swifty stared up into the darkness of the dank bunk room he realized every attempt he considered had one similarity, they'd all been tried during the summer. Escaping during the winter was unheard of, completely out of the question given the weather conditions and the fact that the Refuge was separated from the rest of the city by a river flooded with ice and snow. But something had finally broken open in Swifty when he'd returned to his bunk that night and not found his brother there beside him. It was as though all that time he had still held on to the slight chance that his brother would miraculously recover and Swifty would be able to fulfill the promise he'd made to somehow get them out of the Refuge.
Swifty crept along the dark hallway, feeling along the rough stone walls to keep track of where he was and listening for the sound of the guards footsteps. Luckily it seemed that most of the guards had given up on their posts and congregated in the dining hall given the level of noise coming from that direction. Rats scattered before him as Swifty headed closer to his victim, a rather meek guard that rumor had it was new and not yet used to the way the Refuge was run.
"Hey," the guard called out. He reached for the whistle that hung around his neck but Swifty held out his hands and put on his most pitiful look.
"Wait, please. Just wait, okay?" Swifty urged and was grateful to see the hesitation on the guard's face. "My brother d-, he died today and I just wanted to see him one last time. Please, just let me see him one last time."
The guard frowned as he listened but Swifty could see he was at least a little bit empathetic and that was all he needed. As the guard considered his options Swifty noticed the set of keys hooked onto the guards belt. Swifty moved slightly closer, within arm's reach and moved so slowly so he wouldn't frighten the guard.
"I-I don't think we're allowed to do that," the guard stammered. He looked past Swifty and in that moment Swifty took his chance, snagging the keys off the guard's belt and settling them into his pocket before the guard could feel it.
"I understand," Swifty told him, dropping his head down in mock sadness. Before the guard could fully register what was happening Swifty turned and acted as though he was headed back down the hallway to the bunk room but he had an entirely different destination in mind.
A few weak rays of sunlight illuminated the morning sky when Swifty appeared outside the gate of the Refuge for the first time in almost a year. There wasn't much time to sit and ponder before he raced toward the riverbank and stared down into the swirl of ice, snow, and water. It would only be a few minutes before his absence was noticed and an even shorter amount of time before the guards would begin chasing him. Swifty pried a stick out of the half-frozen mud and poked hesitantly at the ice that edged the river bank. It seemed solid enough but he knew that most likely wouldn't be the case the further out into the river he traveled. There was a piercing whistle and Swifty made his decision without even thinking, leaping out onto the ice and nearly losing his footing. His heart was pumping wildly and he relied on the very trait that had given him his nickname, his swiftness as he leapt from one ice flow to the next. The sound of the guards yelling and jeering began to fade as he desperately fought his way over the ice to freedom. It had all been too much, it had cost him everything and he knew even if he ended up drowning or freezing to death, escaping the horrors of the refuge and the pain of losing his brother was worth it in the end.
Author's Note: OK, so I based this story on an article I read (and of course, can't find now...grrrr) about a boy who showed up and claimed he had escaped the Refuge by leaping across blocks of ice on the river that separated the real House of Refuge on Randall's Island from NYC. Of course, that makes my story a little AU because (as we all know) in the movie the Refuge is not on an island and is easily accessible (well, kind of) by Jack/David/Race/Mush/etc. Hope you enjoy it and thank you sooo much for reading!