.Chapter Five
Mush woke up with a headache, again. He had sat there with the others last night, thinking, shocked at the irony of the situation. The man who they had thought about, cried for, almost felt some kind of love for, was the one man who's views had conflicted so much with theirs. It had fuelled them with the passion that had given them the courage to stand up to him and stick to what they believed in, to risk everything. That was a power much bigger than that of the press that Pulitzer talked of so much. Over and over again the thought recurred in his head, but this was the old man dat wanted us dead! But then he would recollect again, no, Jack was right. We are better than him. This was their chance to prove it. They had to show Joe the sympathy that he wouldn't show them.
As the teenage newsboy sat there Davey also sat awake in his small apartment next door to the offices of the Sun. The maturity of those boys never failed to amaze him. They were still children but they were not naïve, they had no chance to be. So many of their hopes had been shattered, their dreams crushed, they had learnt quickly to expect nothing and not get disappointed. Oh well, it was for the best in their situations. He lay back and stared at the ceiling. He wasn't quite sure when his troubled thoughts became his troubled sleep but he woke up the next morning, blinking into the light, with the same worries running constantly through his head. He had woken up with the songs that his mother used to sing him to sleep with in his head. That had made him feel better, he put this constant act on all the time, he could only break down when he was by himself.
Mush still lay awake, he couldn't sleep with this on his mind. He was famous for being an idealist, he was the hopeful one. He knew that some people just thought he was gullible but he just had a genuine belief that things would get better. Maybe because they couldn't get any worse. Well he wasn't getting any sleep like this. He slid out from under his covers and landed on the floor, shuddering as the cold floor touched his feet. He made a decision, he was going to go and see Pulitzer, it seemed so scary but he had to do it before the guy died.