A/N: The first of a few 1899 vignettes. Let's start with the origins of Dutchy.
Disclaimer: Don't own. Will never own. Sad, really.
~*Dutchy*~
He had never gone to school. That was one of the only things he would say to the other newsboys about himself. he said it was because his family couldn't afford it and he had been working since he was old enough to walk, which was partially true but didn't explain everything.
It went like this:
He had never gone to school because when he first came to New York he didn't know English. His father knew enough to get a job at a factory and his mother didn't need to know any to clean the houses of the rich women of the city.
He and his sister never really played outside because the neighborhood kids would always make fun of them, mangling their beautiful language until she was almost in hysterics and he had to calm her down. His family had always said that she was a sensitive child.
He had met his first newsboy when he was eight-years-old. That newsboy was the person who taught him more English than, "hello my name is_" and "where is the bathroom?"
The newsboy taught him how to speak the language and, eventually, how to read it. However, when the newsboy asked him what his name was, he couldn't pronounce it and asked what language he spoke at home.
He had to think on that one for a little while. Had to think about what the American word for it was. He finally settled on, "Dutch."
He was the first newsboy to gain his nickname before he joined the ranks of the newsies.
The older newsboy kept trying to convince him to sell papers with him so he could have some extra money (which was not the full reason. Little kids drew in more customers than 16-year-olds.) He was sorely tempted, but whenever he brought up the prospect with his father, he got torn down with the words, "one day you will go to school."
One day the older newsboy told him that he was getting a real job. At a factory. His parents thought that he needed to make more money than he could as a newsboy. He never learned the newsboy's name.
One day his mother got sick. Then his father. And finally, after days of crying, his sister got sick as well. He didn't.
When all was said and done, the last of their savings going to a burial and him running away from the cops trying to put him in an orphanage, he realized that he had no where to go.
Then he remembered the newsboy that taught him how to survive in New York and thought that he owed that newsboy something.
He stumbled upon the lodging house, almost by accident, after weeks of living on the streets, selling papers when he could afford to. The old man running the house set him up comfortably and told him where to find the papers that he was to be selling.
When the other newsboys, "newsies" he learned they called themselves, asked his name, he thought of them laughing at not being able to pronounce it.
"Dutchy," he said, voice only quavering the slightest bit on the still almost unfamiliar words of the English language.
"My name is Dutchy."