Ch.17 The Rally
The house was bursting with activity. In the lobby people were making signs saying Strike or Unfair, and Kloppman went around checking their spelling. Upstairs the boys were freshening themselves up for the rally. I figured that they really just wanted to make a good impression on Medda, the singer that owns the theater, where the rally would be held. I left Smudge with a newsie named Specs who had taken quite a shine to the kid. He promised me that he would watch him while I got ready. I waited oh so patiently for the boys to vacate the upstairs and at last Kid Blink came trailing down the stairs. I asked, " You the last one up there?" He gave me a huge grin and said, " Sure, now it's your turn beautiful." I scowled at him and continued my way up the stairs. A thought struck and I asked Blink another question, " Have you seen Copper lately, I gotta talk to him." I still needed to apologize to him. Blink informed me that he hadn't seen him all day. Once upstairs I dropped the package, which I had been lugging around all day, onto a bed. I untied the string surrounding the box and tore off the paper. Inside the box was a pale green dress. It wasn't to fancy and as I looked closer it was almost a copy of the dress I had on. For a minute I thought about returning it to Spot but quickly changed my mind. After all he I really needed something new to wear, especially for the rally tonight. I looked down to see that I had a shameful amount of leg showing and decided to keep it. I washed up quick so I could help make signs or something. I slipped into the green dress and tried to make my curly hair look nice. I was tempted to throw the old dress away, but kept in case I had to do something dirty. I hugged myself; it felt wonderful to be so clean.
I retrieved Smudge from Specs and tried to clean him up bit. He didn't want to leave and wiggled around so much that I only managed to wash his face. We went looking for Jack so he could tell us what to do. I found that the boys had done most of the work while we were away for the afternoon. He advised me to go to Medda's early so that we could get a good seat. I took his advice because the theater was going to full of newsies in less than an hour. He had a boy named West take us to Medda's seeing how I'd never been there before. West was two years older than me and made for pleasant conversation all the way to the theater. He left the kid and I at the door to tend to some other business. It was the first theater I'd ever been in. There were large staircases and balconies. I picked two seats close by the stage. I entertained Smudge by taking him up to the balcony to see the whole view, and up on the stage to meet Medda. She was older woman with fiery red hair like mine. She was real nice to Smudge and told him he could have all the sweets he wanted. We met up with the candy man Tony and the kid filled his pockets with chocolates and hard candies. We returned to our seats as the first trickle of newsies showed up. The rally started when every inch of the theater was filled up with newsies from all over New York. I could see boys from Harlem, the Bronx, and Queens right from my seat. Jack, David and Spot walked to the center of the stage and officially started the rally. Both Jack and David thought it was important for all the New York newsies to stick together. I agreed with them because people just can't ignore that much protest. Our biggest problem was what to do about the scabs. David believed that we had to leave them alone, but most other newsies thought we had to soak them. Spot was one of them, but I believed that he just liked violence. Unfortunately I missed the rest of the speech because Smudge had to go the bathroom. By the time I we got back Medda was on stage. The guys started hooting and howling; behaving like little boys. The song was very uplifting and soon everybody was singing along, even me. Suddenly the bulls burst into the theater and everything went down hill from there.