Author's Notes: My ongoing attempt at writing something not totally wracked by angst (because, as it's known, I am the Angst Whore™) and incomplete continues. Chapters 1-4 have been revised...again (and so have the Author's Notes, yay). Hopefully there aren't any more errors. Please review! It's muchly appreciated.
Ain't Quite the Same Sky
Chapter One
So, here he was. Jack Kelly was in Santa Fe. It had taken him twenty-one long years to get there, but all that mattered now was that he was here. He looked up at the city's blue sky, free of blemishing spots of white, and thought of Sarah Jacobs.
He had come alone, much to her dismay, to earn money for them to live on before they got married. A nest egg, he had called it. Jack had stayed a newsie until he was nineteen, and for the two years after that, he had helped Kloppman run the Lodging House. But now that he was here, he didn't know what he was going to do with his life. Jack Kelly, one of Manhattan's most famous newsies, was now reduced to being a nobody standing in the Santa Fe Railroad Depot with his entire life packed away in a suitcase.
"Hey, mister!" called a boy standing near the platform where Jack had been lingering.
Jack blinked at the boy, the first person to address him since he had arrived. "Yeah, kid?"
"Want to buy a paper?" He held one up for Jack to see.
Jack smirked. A Santa Fe newsie. This was something to write home and tell the boys about.
"What's da headline?" he asked the boy.
"Buy one and find out for yourself," came the cryptic, maybe even slightly arrogant, reply.
"Dat ain't woith a penny." He was tempted to add his credentials to show that he knew what he was talking about, but the newsie was too impatient and cut off any intention he may have had.
"Then I guess you'll just be doing without," the boy told him as he stepped off the platform and into the crowd, just as strangely as he'd come. "Papers, newspapers!" Jack could hear him briefly before his voice was drowned out by the growing distance and the crowd.
Now that he thought about it, a newspaper might have been a good idea. But it was too late for that, and he had places he needed to be. Jack Kelly picked up his suitcase and, after pushing his way through the mass of people, left the station.
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Jack now stood in front of a three story, brown brick building, free of ivy and any other kind of overgrowth. Three large concrete steps lead up to a wooden doorway with a carefully painted sign fixed above it: Bennett Boarding House. This was the place Kloppman had told him to go to; he had been friends with its former owner and told him it was a good place to make a temporary home if he was just starting out. Yet the building looked uninhabited, except for a teenage boy sitting on the top step with a cap over his face. When Jack put his foot on the first step, the sound of his shoe hitting the concrete caused the boy to sit up with a start, his hat falling to his feet.
"Hey there," he said. He looked about fourteen, younger than the boy Jack had met before at the station, with a shock of red hair on his head and a splash of freckles across his nose. He stood and revealed what he had been sitting on -- a stack of newspapers. Another newsie. "Want to buy one?" he asked, gesturing to the papers. "Only a penny."
"Headline?" he inquired, not sure whether or not he was grinning of gaping. This was starting to get a little strange.
"Cowboy gives birth to new herd. Page four."
Jack blinked and chuckled. Racetrack alone would have a field day with that headline and its double meanings.
"What's so funny?"
"Nothin', kid, nothin'."
"Are you gonna buy one or not?"
"Yeah, I'll buy one." He reached into his pocket just as the door opened. A tall, young, and serious-looking woman emerged, dark eyes staring heatedly at the redheaded newsboy.
"Topper!" she barked. "What did I tell you about harassing the boarders?"
"He's not a boarder, Miss Cate!" Topper whined, trying to salvage his sale. "He's not!"
"I will be if ya takes me," Jack offered.
"Good enough for me," Miss Cate said, smiling at him briefly before turning her attention back to the boy. "Topper, go!"
The redhead signed and scooped up his papers. "He was gonna buy one, too, Miss Cate!" he grumbled as he jumped from the top step to the street.
"Go sell somewhere else!" she called after him, but then turned to Jack. "I'm sorry about Topper. I tell him every day not to harass the boarders, but it's in one ear, out the other with him."
"It's all right," Jack assured. "I used ta be a newsie too."
"Really?" She smiled politely. "Not here, I'm sure…I'm afraid I didn't catch your name."
"Jack Kelly." He held out a hand. She took it; Jack was surprised the woman's strong grip.
"Catharine Bennett. Everyone calls me Cate. I own the Boarding House. You said you were looking for a room?"
"Yeah. I just came heah from New Yawk, so I'm tryin' ta get on my feet."
"Most of our boarders come right from the train," Catharine smiled. "You're welcome to stay, of course. The first night is free, but after that it's twenty-five cents a night, no bargaining. It was my father's rate, and I stick with it." Her voice was confident and firm when speaking about the boarding house.
"I can afford dat," replied Jack. "Soon as I finds a job, dat is."
"You might want to try the Santa Fe Dispatch offices," Catharine offered. "That's our newspaper. They're always hiring for all kinds of things…I don't think you'd want to be a newsie again, though."
"Are there a lot of 'em around heah?"
"Not as many as in other cities, I've heard. But they manage to sell their papers every day. I buy one from Topper each morning, myself. I guess that's where he gets to thinking I'm soft." She smiled, something Jack noticed she seemed to like to do. "Please, come in," she said, opening the door. "I'll show you do your room."
"Thanks…" he said as he entered.
The sitting room of the house was plain, decorated with simple wooden furniture and a large, circular, darkly colored rug, but it was still nicer than some of the places Jack had been…the Refuge in particular.
"I don't like to be fussy," Catharine told Jack as she mounted the narrow staircase. "Your bedroom will be just the same way -- bed, dresser, rug, lamp. It's my father's way."
"You seem really fond of your father," Jack noted as he followed her upstairs.
"Yes." Two small children rushed down the stairs. Catharine leaned back on the railing so they could pass. "Be careful, you two!" she scolded gently before turning her attention back to Jack. "It was always him and me in the house. I helped him take care of it and the boarders, and he taught me how as we went." She offered no more information than that as she took him to the second to last room on the left side of the hallway and unlocked the door with a key she removed from the pocket of her apron. "You'll be staying here. Your neighbors are the McAllisters and the Connors. Mr. and Mrs. Connor have a newborn, little Alexander, but he doesn't cry much, so he shouldn't be a bother."
The room was just as simple as Catharine had described, but to Jack, it was better than he had ever expected.
"Thanks a lot," he said graciously, setting his suitcase down just inside the doorway.
Catharine smiled and handed him the key. "It's no problem! It's my job to do this, after all." She paused as if she were recollecting something. "If you want to go down to the Dispatch building, you'd better go quickly. The main office closes at six, which isn't too long from now."
"Can you tell me where it is?" Jack asked, tucking the key into his pocket.
"Try Topper. He knows the way there better than I do. Besides," she added with a smile, "he always comes back about twenty minutes after I shoo him off."
"I guess ya do have a soft spot for 'im, den."
"I suppose. Now go! I have cleaning to do."
"You really don't take no time off."
"Someone's got to do it." Catharine gently pushed him towards the stairway.
Jack chuckled and mounted the top step. "I get the hint!"
When he finally opened the front door, he found Catharine was right -- Topper was sitting right there, but this time with no papers. The redheaded boy looked up as Jack stepped out of the boarding house and onto the concrete steps.
"Sell 'em all?" Jack asked him.
"It was a good day for the headline," Topper informed him, no trace of humor on his face despite the headline he had told Jack.
"What kind of headlines d'ya usually get?"
"Usually stuff from the big cities. Some local stuff, too, if it's worth mentioning." He yawned. "Either way, it's a living. Is Miss Cate coming out?"
"She told me she had woik ta do, so I don't think so."
"'Woik'?" asked Topper, imitating Jack's accent with a trace of what Jack observed to be glee.
"I'se from New Yawk."
"I can tell."
"Listen, kid, enough wit da mockin'. Catharine told me youse could take me to da Dispatch buildin'."
"Why would you wanna work there?"
"'Cause papes is the only life I know."
"'Papes'?"
"Newspapahs. Jesus, ain't youse evah hoid an accent befoah?"
"Not one like yours."
"Listen…Toppah, right?" Topper nodded. "Just take me dere, okay?"
"Yeah, yeah, fine." He stood and dusted off his slacks. "This way," he said, taking his same jump from the top stoop and onto the street. Jack took the steps one at a time like an adult and he wondered if he was ever as impatient as this newsie was. At least he said what he needed to clearly, unlike the one he had met at the train station.
As Topper lead him down the main street, Jack noticed that Santa Fe was a small city, or, at the very least, much smaller and less cramped than New York. There were no buildings that aspired to touch the sky, and the streets, wider than the usual fare, were filled with people on foot, on horseback, or in horse-drawn buggies. It was very different from any novel that had been placed into Jack hands during his youth, but one of the things he had learned was true -- the sky was bigger, and so was the sun. In his mind, Sarah reminded him that they were the same in both cities. In a way, she was right, but New York lacked the dimensions of this azure covering, with its undetectable limits and much brighter, harsher sun.
"The Dispatch," Topper announced as he gestured to the five-story building he had stopped in front of. "Happy?"
"Thanks, kid," Jack said, looking up and considering what would be waiting for him inside.
"Now that I'm done with you, maybe Miss Cate will let me come in and stick around for dinner…" he mumbled, and he took off in the direction from which he came before Jack could ask him anything more. He sighed.
"Well…I guess it's now or never," he said to himself. He opened the main door of the Dispatch and walked in. Waiting for him inside was an old, salt-and-pepper-haired woman who sat primly at her desk, her eyes traveling over a newspaper laid out on the surface in front of her.
"May I help you?" she asked, adjusting her glasses as if she couldn't believe he, a young, roughed-up man who had only gotten off the train hours before, was standing in front of her.
"Yeah," Jack told her. "I'se heah for a job."
The woman smiled, and Jack could detect a small degree of smugness in the curl of her lips. "You'll want to see Mr. Grayson, then. I'll tell him someone is here to see him. Your name, dear…?"
"Jack Kelly," he said, silently resenting being called 'dear'.
"All right, Mr. Kelly. I'll be right back." She disappeared up the adjacent stairway. Fifteen minutes later, she returned, looking as if she had been laughing. "Mr. Grayson will see you. Third floor, third office on the right."
"Thank you," he managed to mumble before going up the stairwell. Her stuffy features and mocking smile burned in his back the entire way up. Third floor, third office, she had said. Alvin Grayson's door had a golden plate next to the door with his name engraved on it. He entered without knocking.
Mr. Grayson was a man who looked his name -- bald and graying. He was not quite as old as the building's secretary, though he was plumper. Grayson did not look surprised that Jack had entered without first alerting him that he was at the door. Jack silently wondered if the secretary had told this man about him, that he was the cause of her laughter.
"Mr. Kelly, I assume?" he asked. "Take a seat, please." Jack sat in the wobbly wooden chair set in front of his desk, making his back stiff and setting his hands firmly on his knees. "Mrs. Samson says that you're here looking for a job." Jack nodded. "What's your experience?"
"Well, foist," he began, starting with what he believed to be the most important fact, "I can read an' write. When it comes ta papes, I was a newsie in New Yawk for five years, and for the past two, I'se been helpin' ta manage the Newsboys Lodgin' House with its ownah, Mr. Lemuel Kloppman. Three yeahs ago I led the newsie strike against Joe Pulitzer," Jack told Grayson proudly. "I want a job so I can bring my fiancée heah from New Yawk."
Mr. Grayson's brief pause was only long enough for him to decipher Jack's accent, and certainly not to think over the credentials presented to him. "We don't give positions to former newsboys with no formal education," he informed Jack.
"I'se too old ta sell papes, Mr. Grayson. I ain't gonna starve heah just because you don't think I'se good enough to woik at yer office."
"Then go somewhere else," he said simply and sharply.
"Mr. Grayson!" A man in his thirties charged into the office. Grayson was suddenly considering getting a complicated lock for his door. "They've done it again."
"'They'?" Grayson asked. The man nodded. "Those little terrors…" he growled. "There's no chance of him…?" The man shook his head. "I see. Thank you." The man left as quickly as he had come. "Sometimes I think I should just get rid of them all…" he mumbled, more to himself than the younger man in the room with him. "…It might just save me money, who knows."
"Mind if I ask what's goin' on?" inquired Jack.
"Those damned newsboys ran out another employee again." Grayson frowned. "Third one this month. If I could find someone to handle them…" He suddenly began to study Jack more intently. "You said you were a newsie, correct, Mr. Kelly?" Jack nodded. "Then I think we may have a job for you after all."
"Yeah?"
"Will you take it?"
"'Course," Jack agreed immediately. He needed this job, no matter what it was. "I'se'll start tomorrah, even."
"Then you'll be our new morning distributor…every morning you'll be the one to sell the papers to the newsies. Good luck."
Jack paused as this sunk in. If this job was what Mr. Grayson said it was, then…
Jack Kelly was now the Weasel of Santa Fe. He could barely believe it.