Disclaimer: Not mine.

Author's Notes: Something I wrote a few days ago and forgot about. The speaker isn't any specific newsie. Feedback is appreciated.


May He Rest


He was sick. We didn't know.

The doctor came. We didn't see him come.

He sent the doctor away. We didn't see him go.

He was like our father. Even for the ones that already had fathers, he was still a father. That we knew and understood. He always took care of us. If Racetrack gambled all his money away at the track that day, or if Mush spent his last nickel on the latest love of his life, he'd give them a bed anyway and gently remind them to pay tomorrow, and they would, because letting him down would be like letting down some kind of blessed saint. He helped us spell and write, kept by us during the strike, and always covered for us when the bulls came around. He knew what it was like.

He knew what it was like.

He had been an immigrant's child, Scottish and French and Spanish and Italian all in one. A purebred European mutt, born on American shores. He had never sold newspapers, he told us, but he worked in the cigar-rolling factory for barely beans until he almost died from the dust getting into his bad lungs. Maybe that's the reason he never let Racetrack or Cowboy smoke inside. After the factory work, he sailed the seas to help his lungs, hauling ropes and dragging nets up and down the coast to earn his stay. Later he became an assistant, a first-mate, finally a captain. That's probably why he always treated Spot so well when he visited: Brooklyn spends his days at the harbor, and he's got a soft spot for watery people.

As we knew him, he was always the owner of the Lodging House. He called it his fortune's gift; he even bought it from ten years worth his sailing wages, and spent seven more fixing it up to live in. He had owned it for twenty-nine years when the first of our guys, Skittery, came, and even then Skitt was only nine. And Skittery is our witness: he says that he was good to him from the very first second. It's just the way he always was.

He had a wife long past and two sons, something he told us in passing a few years back. We never met them, and we don't know where they live. They may never know.

Even if he wasn't a father to those two kids, which he was hesitant to tell us about, he was a father to dozens, maybe even hundreds more, and if anything, we all hope they realize that quicker than we did. He did so much for us, and we never gave him anything in return. He would have given the world for us boys, and he did so many times over. But the whole time we were too caught up in our stupid, petty lives -- the ones that are only important now because he made them possible -- to see our mistakes. To know and understand the sacrifices.

He wasted away in front of us. He wasted away over minutes, hours, days, months, maybe even years.

We didn't realize it. We never did.

We did nothing when we could have.

The thought of it still makes me numb.

He lay there in his bed; it was the first time most of us had seen him do anything other than standing. His body was flat and stiff, and he couldn't even move without help. He was breathing slow and steady, and it was getting slower but less steady with each moment. His eyes closed longer each time he blinked. He said nothing. Neither did we. He let the air out of his mouth gradually, let his eyelids fall to blink again…and then he was gone.

He was gone, just like that.