In the corner by the old stove brought forth so many memories. She had slept there as a baby and the young lodgers had often huddled there for warmth after a long day on the streets during the winter. She and her young friends had helped Racetrack pick a last name by rolling a die there in that same corner. Spot had been mad at the younger boy for winning a penny from him at a cockfight and had been the one to suggest Higgins as a last name. Chance had it that the clearly Italian boy would end up with an Irish last name instead of an Italian one. She also recalled one night when they had stayed up well past their normal bedtime telling each other ghost stories only to become too frightened to sleep. Cap had kindly allowed them all to bring their blankets into his room and sleep on the floor.
The rickety old table where many poker games had been played still stood in the middle of the room, surrounded by the same mismatched old chairs that had been there when she was a child. How many games of poker had she and her friends secretly played while hiding under that table? How many conversations had they eavesdropped on when the older boys forgot that they were in the room because they had been hidden under that same table? How many forts had they made by throwing their blankets over the table?
She moved slowly into the kitchen and smiled as she remembered the one and only food fight in history of the old building. There had never been any food to waste for the occupants of the building, and there hadn't been on that occasion. She, Spot and Jack had received a good scolding for wasting that food and she had gotten a spanking. The man who had raised her had never spanked any of the boys, but on that occasion he had threatened to.
The large table had only seen shared meals on special occasions when people such as the Roosevelts had brought food to these forgotten children. But it had seen many nightmares silently shared over a mug of warm milk┘and had the nightmare been especially bad, a small bit of chocolate sometimes found its way into the milk.
The next stop on her tour of memories was a small room of the kitchen┘a closet really. It had been her first bedroom, and here that she first met Jack. He had crawled through the window trying to get away from Snyder, the warden at the Refuge. She had made fun of his real name and that night Francis Sullivan died and Jack Kelly had been born. In a rare moment of kindness for her at that age, she had offered to share her last name with him. A few years later she had wondered what had possessed her to make such an offer.
She turned and went back to the front room before climbing the ancient stairs. The voices of boys racing down the stairs and out the door seemed to echo through the old building. Pausing for a moment, she carefully sat on the top step. Many conversations had been eavesdropped upon from this very spot and it was here that she had made the decision to leave her Manhattan home and move to Brooklyn with Spot. She could still hear Jack's voice on that night as he told the story of his escape from the Refuge with the help of none other than Teddy Roosevelt. Had she stayed in Manhattan she might never have met the man who was now her husband.
Sighing softly, she stood and made her way down the hallway to the last room she had occupied when she lived here. Shortly after Jack first arrived at the lodging house she had insisted that she was old enough to use the second small bedroom upstairs. Looking back on it now, she knew they had done it just to humor her and because they knew that they would not get any peace until they did. She stepped inside and was surprised to find that the room hadn't changed much at all. The only thing missing was the old rocking chair that had once stood in the middle of the room. Kloppy had given it to her nearly two years ago when her daughter had been born.
Hearing the delighted squeal that only a toddler could give, she walked over to the window and looked outside to where Beau and Hannah waited. He tossed their daughter in the air and she squealed again. Hannah had them both wrapped around her little finger, but especially her daddy whose black hair and dark eyes she had inherited. They had always considered Hannah a blessing, but even more so in the last few months since they had lost their second daughter. Little Mary had been stillborn.
She nearly jumped out of her skin when a hand rested lightly on her shoulder, but settled when she heard the familiar voice. "You know┘I'm not old enough to be a grandfather," he told her, as he so often had. She felt some comfort at the familiar words. The man who raised her often teased her with those words, though he doted on Hannah like any adoring grandfather would.
She turned to look up at him, her face stained with tears she hadn't realized that she had been shedding. "Oh Cap┘I still can't believe he's really gone." The news of Kloppman's death had hit her hard a few days before and even now she still found it hard to believe.
He wrapped his arms around her in a gentle hug. "He was old when I first met him twenty-five years ago. He was ready to go." Kloppman had been the only father he had ever known and he missed the old man. But he also knew the man had been hiding his illness from his "boys" for several years.
She clung to him for several minutes, needing the comfort only her father's arms could offer. "What happens now?" she asked, her head still resting on his shoulder. "What happens to the boys living here?"
He sighed deeply. "They were all sent to find other places to live." He would have gladly taken them all in if he could, and he was confident that she knew that. But right now it just wasn't possible for him to do that. He could afford it, but the children he and his wife had in their care now were hard enough to deal with, without adding another two dozen to their number┘two dozen boys who had been on the streets, some for several years, and would not easily adjust to having a real guardian once again.
"That's not fair, Cap┘isn't there someone else to take over for Kloppy? What is going to happen to this building?" Kloppy had spent most of his life running the lodging house out of that building. It wasn't fair for it to be closed now.
"They are going to tear it down next week," he told her. He understood how she felt, but there was nothing he could do. The building had been condemned for a couple years now, but the old man had somehow convinced the city to keep from destroying it until his death. "Kloppman may be gone, honey, but those of us who knew him will always have a little part of him inside of us." When her gaze traveled back out the window to watch her husband and daughter, he left her alone with her thoughts.
She reached out and touched the window. Not all of the boys that Kloppman had taken it turned out well, but most of them had done alright for themselves. One had gone on to be a newspaper reporter that had helped the newsies during their strike. His younger brother had become a doctor who was giving his life to serve the underprivileged in Brooklyn. Cap had not only formally adopted her and her older brother, but also their two younger brothers when they had been found. He had also taken in the family of the young man she would later marry after they moved to Brooklyn when their father died. Cap was right┘Kloppy would live on in each of the children he had invested his life into. Their lives, and the lives of their children, were a fitting legacy for the old man.