Crutchie was never much of a morning person. He preferred to spend the hours before the sun rose in his own little pocket of the world-or just outside the world, for that matter. A little pocket where both of his legs could take him wherever he wanted to go.
He didn't need a crutch or anything as demeaning as that in his little pocket, just the solid reliability of his own two feet that he longed for every day. So why would he ever want to wake up earlier, to face the reality that he only had half of the reliability he wanted even sooner?
No, mornings were too rough, because for a small lingering moment, he could almost imagine that there was feeling in his gimp leg. A tingling of life, almost undetectable but most definitely there. Mornings were a slap in the face, so he liked to avoid them until Jack shook him awake and back into the too-real world of the newsies.
But this morning was different, and Crutchie could tell. There was something stirring in the air, something that told him he would want to catch all of the daylight he could while it was still there. And so he rose before even the sun, sitting still for a moment, bracing himself for the energy it would take to lift himself up onto his one good leg. Maybe it was better to be up early today, anyway.
His gimp had been causing him more trouble than usual lately, and he never liked to admit when it started acting up. It usually resulted in the other newsies occasionally taking pity on him, switching shifts with him to give him a break or slipping him an extra penny if they could. As much as he appreciated their concern, he didn't want to be the charity case among a group who could all be considered charity cases themselves. It was sometimes almost like they expected him to drop dead any day. And if he was really honest, Crutchie was afraid of that himself.
Most days he was fine, and barely had any trouble at all. But days like these were hard on him, and he couldn't help but scare himself silly with his own thoughts. What if whatever had caused leg to go dead decided to take the rest of him, too?
He'd heard the murmurs in the hospital when he was younger, right after his ma had passed away. Polio, they'd said. Polio had taken his leg. Crutchie didn't have the first clue what polio was, but he knew from personal experience that it didn't do anything good for a person. The most he could decipher from the doctor's intellectual babble was that polio was a sickness, a disease. So why couldn't it come back and finish him off? What if it had never left him in the first place?
The way Crutchie saw it, his leg served dual purposes: reminding him that he was strong, that he could pull through anything if he had a little help, from friends or otherwise, but it also reminded him that he wasn't as invincible as he would have liked to have people believe. Jack was the invincible one, not him.
For as long as he had been at the lodging house, Crutchie had never once seen Jack Kelly falter, waver, or hesitate in any way. He was always so sure of himself, always knew exactly what to do in any situation. Jack was the elder brother figure that the majority of the newsies never had and would never admit they needed. But regardless of whether or not they said it out loud, Jack always seemed to know exactly what they needed-he had that kind of intuition.
So Crutchie was not surprised in the least to hear Jack stirring across from him as he slowly rose with the help of his crutch and began to dress, slipping on his vest and tugging his hat onto his head. Of course Jack would have heard him, it was that intuition again.
"Hey!" Jack called softly, propping himself up on his elbow. "Hey, where are you goin'? The bell ain't rung yet, go back to sleep!"
"I wanna beat the other fellas ta the streets," Crutchie explained, adopting a sheepish look on his features. "I don't want anyone ta see I, uh, ain't been walkin' so good." He hobbled over to the ladder, and Jack rose to his feet. "Aw, quit gripin'," he reprimanded the younger boy, who rolled his eyes in return. "Ya know how many guys fake a limp? That bum leg of yours is a gold mine!"
There it was again- The Moneymaker Excuse. Crutchie heard it all day, every day about how lucky he was to have a real disability, as opposed to all the fakers out there who pretended to have gone through the same agony of losing a limb that Crutchie had actually experienced, all to sell a few extra "pity papes". His fellow newsies employed The Moneymaker Excuse on a daily basis, so Crutchie couldn't have a chance to feel lesser than the others even if he wanted to.
It outlined that he was just as valuable as they were, maybe more, all because of the limp. The limp didn't set him back, it put him ahead of the rest. And Crutchie understood that, he really did. It was rare for the other newsies to do him any extra favors, only if they knew he was really struggling. But just for once, he would have liked to complain and not be bombarded with The Moneymaker Excuse.
He couldn't tell the others about that, of course, especially not Jack. After all they had done for him, he supposed that in all honesty, he didn't really have the right to complain.
"Well, if someone gets the idea I can't make it on my own, they'll lock me up in the Refuge for good!" Crutchie argued instead, plopping down at the foot of the ladder. He knew he had a one-up there, because the Refuge was a real threat to him, to all of them. It must have been to Jack, too, because he seemed to have no retort ready, and simply continued to dress himself as Crutchie prepared to climb down the ladder.
The ladder proved to be a daily challenge for him, especially with the dead weight of his bad leg trying to drag him down. And of course, since today was a bad day for him and the gimp, it was looking like it was going to be even more difficult than usual.
Crutchie tried to feel for a rung on the ladder, but his foot only just grazed the top of the next metal bar. Sighing internally, he resigned himself to the fact that today, he was going to need more assistance than usual.
"Be a pal, Jack, help me down!" A last futile attempt at reaching the ladder rung resulted in his foot slipping, sending Crutchie almost dropping down to the hard ground below. He gripped the top of the ladder, sheer panic acting as a reflex as he dangled precariously, hearing Jack cry out in surprise above him. He felt a hand grip his wrist so hard it almost hurt, and began to feel himself being hauled back to the roof.
"No, c'mon Jack, I wanna go down!" Crutchie protested, trying out his best pair of innocent doe eyes on his older friend. Jack showed no sympathy, however, making sure the younger boy sat safely on the roof again before harshly dropping his arm.
"You'll be down there soon enough!" he scolded, whacking Crutchie on the head and walking over to the railing. "Take a moment, drink in my penthouse. High above the stinkin' streets of New York."
"You're crazy," Crutchie scoffed, but joined his friend at the railing nonetheless. Leave it to Jack to turn the rusty, dirty roof of the lodging house into a penthouse...
"What, 'cause I like a breath of fresh air? 'Cause I like seein' the sky and the stars?" Jack retorted, leaning on the railing and gazing out over the city with a look of almost contempt and disgust on his face. What did he have against New York all of a sudden? Where had this nonsense about nature come from?
"You're seein' stars, alright..." Crutchie mumbled, rolling his eyes at his friend's fantasies. Jack had always been a particularly passionate individual, making sure everyone knew exactly what his opinions were on any given subject. He had seemed a little funny recently, grumbling about street conditions-how smoggy, how crowded, how dirty everything was. Crutchie had known all of this before, it was impossible not to as a newsie. But hadn't Jack told him not five minutes ago to stop griping about his leg? So why was he being such a hypocrite now, whining about about things he couldn't fix if he tried?
By now, Crutchie had accepted that he was in New York to stay, and he was happy with that. It wasn't as if he could get very far in his condition, anyway. And New York was where all of his friends were, it was where Jack was. So he was fine with Manhattan and the newsies-in fact, he couldn't imagine anything better. Why couldn't Jack see that?
"Them streets down there, they sucked the life otta my old man. Years of rotten jobs, stomped on by bosses, and when they finally broke 'im, they tossed 'im to the curb like yesterday's paper. Well they ain't doing that to me!" Jack ranted, directing his last shout at the streets below.
Crutchie stood for a moment, a bit taken aback by his surrogate brother's sudden anger. Jack remembered his father that well? Or had he just been told about him? Either way, he had never mentioned his real family before, and Crutchie had never felt that it was right to ask. After all, he only remembered his mother, and that was only from a few hospital visits clouded by the thick fog of sickness.
Mentions of any real family members usually drug up bad memories for most of the newsies, and as a result they had all learned when to leave well enough alone. But did Jack really blame The Big Apple, The City That Never Sleeps, for what had happened to his father? Wasn't this the city where dreams turned into reality?
"But everyone wants to come to New York," he ventured softly, hoping that maybe pointing that out to Jack would help to calm his anger. But Jack merely scowled deeper, and Crutchie resisted the urge to shrink back away from him. Jack could be pretty darn intimidating when he wanted to be, and Crutchie had no desire to feel the older boy's wrath.
"New York's fine," Jack spat out, clearly not meaning the words. "For people who got a big, strong door to lock it out. I'm telling ya, Crutch...there's a whole 'nother way out there. You keep your small life in the big city. Give me a big life in a small town."