Chapter 3
They slept late. Jarrod rolled out of bed before Heath did and had taken care of his ablutions and gotten dressed before Heath emerged from his room, looking like a man who had forgotten where he put his brain when he went to bed the night before.
"Morning," Jarrod said. He was sitting on the sofa and reading the morning paper, which the hotel delivered to each door during the night.
Heath managed to open one eye fully and saw that Jarrod was dressed in casual clothes – just pants and a long-sleeved shirt, no tie. His brown jacket was draped across the back of the sofa. "No suit this morning?" Heath asked.
"Not where we're going," Jarrod said. "We might get a bit roughed up. Don't want to wreck the good clothes."
"You're expecting a fight?"
"Not necessarily, but could be. Could be just some shoving. Could be nothing. We'll see."
Heath yawned and went about his own morning clean-up routine. He cut himself shaving more than he usually did but he chalked that up to trying to shave with his eyes closed. "I need some coffee," he said before he even tried to get from his nightshirt to his clothes.
Jarrod pointed to the coffee pot and cups on the small table near the window. "It won't be steaming hot, but it ought to be drinkable."
Heath went to it, poured himself a cup and wolfed it down. It was just a bit hotter than lukewarm, but that was good enough. Jarrod continued to read the paper while Heath dressed.
Heath was a bit more awake when he came out in his clothes. "I got my pocket knife," he said.
"Good," Jarrod said, folding the paper and placing it on the sofa as he got up. "I've got mine too, but we probably won't need them. They're not that helpful in a knife fight anyway."
"I can't remember when I was in a knife fight last," Heath said. "I did manage to get mine out and did all right with it."
"Good," Jarrod said. "I'm not a knife fighter."
"Can we go get something to eat?"
"Sure, but we'll need to put most of our money in the hotel safe before we leave here," Jarrod said. "We don't want to carry a lot with us this morning."
"Where we going?"
Jarrod headed for the door. "Breakfast – lower east side – Bowery – "
Heath had heard about the Bowery. Tough, tough gang activity there. And the lower east side was full of poor people from places in Europe like Germany, Italy, even Greece. As Jarrod headed out the door, Heath followed, asking, "What all do you expect we'll run into?"
"How the other half live," Jarrod said. "How people scrape to get by, and they do get by. It might be a lot different than you've seen before."
Heath nodded, saying, "Why are we going in the morning? Why not later?"
They walked across the hall and took the stairs down. "The later in the day, the less you'll see of actual people. The gangs come out and the regular people go in. I want you to see the regular people – and I want to minimize the chance that we'll get into trouble we can't get out of."
"I assume this is something else we don't tell Mother about."
"Good assumption."
They didn't even eat until they had walked several blocks and the view began to change. The buildings began to be less ornate, more tightly pushed together, and less well maintained. Kids started to appear in the streets, dirty and unsupervised, even little kids barely on their feet and not out of diapers. The older kids started pulling at Heath and Jarrod, begging for money.
"Come on, Mister, you can afford it!"
"Got a nickel? Just a nickel, come on!"
Jarrod ignored them, so Heath did too, although he felt a bit guilty about it. Then little hands started digging into his pockets. "Hey!" he said and swatted them away, like flies.
Like flies, he thought. I'm treating children like flies.
One tiny kid got into Jarrod's pocket almost up to his elbow. Jarrod grabbed him under the arm and lifted him off the ground. "Hit the road, pal!" he said and plopped him down again.
The kids went off laughing without taking any money and continued playing happily, mostly a stick and ball game. As they walked further toward the river Heath could see in the distance, the number of people on the street increased, and so did the number of people hanging out the windows of the buildings. Laundry lines with wet clothes began to stretch from one place to another. Languages other than English began to mingle together in a symphony of sound. Heath started shaking his head.
Jarrod smiled a little. He nodded toward a woman sitting partly in and partly out of a window three stories up in a narrow building seemingly squashed between two others. "They hang out of the windows because they literally can't get air into their homes. The alleys are foul and foul-smelling, and opening windows in the backs of these houses can make people sick, so they don't do it until they have to. The kids are out on the street because that's where the air is, and the parents don't want them underfoot, and because that's just what kids do here. As soon as they're weaned, they're out the door as much as possible."
It was not the heat of summer, but Heath immediately started to think about that. "What do they do when the weather really gets hot?"
"Then everybody's out here, if they can move, of course. The elderly and the sick are stuck inside, where they often just die from the heat. When it gets cold, it's pretty much a disaster for the elderly and the sick. Staying indoors, they just get sicker, and the kids get sick, and even the adults."
Jarrod's voice trailed off. Heath could tell he didn't like thinking about such things, much less talking about them. Injustice was at the bottom of all that suffering, and Jarrod could not stomach injustice.
Jarrod pointed ahead, where the river loomed only a couple blocks away. "There are open air markets down by the river, where the boats come in. At least these people can get some pretty decent food, assuming they can afford it. You can't afford all you need when you have ten kids and the father's out of work."
It wasn't very long when Heath began to see the markets Jarrod mentioned. Some places were cooking food that smelled exotic to Heath. Oh, he'd seen some places like this in San Francisco, but never so many, and never with the scents he was experiencing here.
Jarrod stopped at a place that was selling some kind of sandwich and bought two of them. He paid for them and gave one to Heath, then started to eat.
"What is this?" Heath asked.
"I honestly don't remember what they call it, but it's lamb on a flat kind of bread, from Eastern Europe. Take a bite, it's good."
Heath did take a bite. It was good.
They strolled a bit and tried to ignore the vendors who practically thrust food into their faces, begging for sales. Jarrod did stop and accept a couple pieces of a drippy meat from a man who wore a tight cap on the top of his head.
"God bless you," the man said. "But you I have not seen before."
"Haven't been down here lately," Jarrod said. "Has business been good?"
The man shrugged. "Today not so good. Yesterday not so bad."
"Any good fruit come in fresh this morning?"
"A block down, maybe," the man said. He saw Heath struggling with the drippy meat. "A first for you, eh, young man?"
Heath was trying to eat without getting food on his shirt, so he only smiled and shrugged.
"You come back in a few days," the man said. "You come back."
Jarrod paid him and said a few words to him in a language Heath didn't remotely understand, and they kept walking and eating.
"What did you say to him?" Heath asked.
"Just thanked him. He's a Jew," Jarrod said. "I picked up a little Yiddish when I was here last. It kind of sticks with you."
When they finished the meat, Jarrod found a place that offered fresh fruit. Jarrod bought a couple things that looked like apples – but weren't apples. Softer, sweeter, drippier. Juice ran down the front of Heath's shirt.
"Another reason not to wear a suit," Jarrod said.
Heath stopped to clean himself off a bit, and he looked around. All the dirty children playing in the street, all the steam rising from the stalls where food was sold, all the women haggling over fruit and vegetables with the vendors who sold them, all the ships in the river. All the noise! Jarrod noticed him taking it in.
"Come on," Jarrod said, leaning toward Heath so he could hear better. "There's something I want to see myself, down in the river."
Heath followed along. When they got to the river, they began walking toward some strange unfinished structures that were poking out of the river, between this island of Manhattan and some land further to the east. Heath had no idea what they were looking at. Jarrod stopped and pointed.
"When it's done, it's going to be the longest suspension bridge in the world," Jarrod said.
"Suspension bridge?" He remembered the day he first met a Barkley, meeting Nick on that rickety suspension bridge over the river that collapsed under the weight of the two of them and their horses. But this – "How can anybody build a suspension bridge that long?"
"It'll be high and wide, too. I don't really understand all the engineering involved, but somehow there will be metal cables that will run from tower to tower – that's what we're looking at mainly, the towers that are going to rise up hundreds of feet in the air. These cables will have the bridge suspended from them, like a regular suspension bridge. They've got a long way to go to finish it, and they've been working on it a long time. A lot of men have died already – the towers have to have foundations deep, deep under the river and getting the foundations built has been daunting and dangerous. Bad air and something about being that deep in water is bad for a man, but you could see, the men around here can be desperate for work. And of course, this type of thing costs so many fortunes it's unbelievable. I hear they've actually rented out space deep in the vaults in some of the foundations so the wealthy can store their wine. Lots of interesting ways to raise money for a project like this."
"Where's it going to over the other side of the river there?"
"Brooklyn. Lovely area, so I've heard. Never been there myself. This bridge is going to be something when it's done. I suspect San Francisco will have bridges like it someday, running from the peninsula to the mainland. Not sure either of us will live to see them, though."
Jarrod turned and they began to walk back into the city. Lots of kids and lots of noise everywhere again, so much that Heath was beginning to NOT hear it. His mind was blocking it out. Before long Jarrod leaned toward him and said, "This is the Bowery. If we run into trouble, it'll be here, so keep your eyes open."
Heath did. He saw more adults on the street now, men in suits and bowler hats, going into places of business and coming out, talking to one another on the street corners. The traffic continued up and down the streets, but the number of children was rapidly declining, and so was the sound of their happy voices.
Heath noticed that Jarrod was carefully scanning the streets and the people around them. Well, that figured, Heath thought. Jarrod spends a lot of time in San Francisco. He's more used to knowing what to look for in places like this and how to look for it.
Suddenly, they both noticed a group of four men approaching them head on, staring straight at them.
Jarrod said, "I think we have a problem here."
"How do we handle it?"
"Don't go for that pocket knife. It won't help. Just keep your eyes on these guys and let's see how it plays out."
"And don't tell Mother about it?"
"Absolutely don't tell Mother about it. If she finds out I took you into a place like this just so you could see if we could avoid getting killed, she'll murder me herself."
They kept walking as they had been, moving toward the men who were moving toward them.
