DISCLAIMER: Crying beans! I don't own any of the characters from Newsies!
Seriously, now. Is this necessary? Obviously I don't! In any case, they
belong to that place called Disney that likes to ruin movies by making
sequels for them. : ) Anywho, the 52 other characters in this story are
MINE! And yes, I said 52. And then, Dimples owns herself. ^_^
*~*~*~*~THE BROOKLYN BOYS~*~*~*~*
52 Newsies, 1 Lodging House, Countless Stories
As any learned individual would eventually detect, a family simply isn't a complete one if the unit lacks what so many like to deem 'outcasts'. If Manhattan is the home of affable lower-class chaps, and the Bronx is a haven for the morally corrupted, then Brooklyn is without a doubt the refuge for those socially unaccepted. Whether it be for our beliefs, character, or stamina, we have for generations been the recluses among New York's paper-peddlers.
The leaders of other boroughs speak of me and my boys as if we're ghastly beasts from some horror tale, creatures that should be avoided at all costs. The high-born aristocrats of the state have no problem with purchasing a morning or afternoon edition from any other newsboy, but I many times catch the hesitation in their eyes when buying one off a Brooky. The indecision sparks in their irises like a wavering flame while their minds try to process whether they really want to involve themselves with a street rat.
I see the women clutch their purses more tightly as they rummage through its insides for a penny, the men making sure their wallets are safe and snug in the pockets of their pants. The mothers grip their children's hands so firmly, I notice the red marks around the fingers once they quickly walk off and unlock the attachment. It's as if they think we ruffians wish to seek revenge upon them for being blessed with a well-off life; I've never seen anything more ridiculous.
Yet even so, I love sensing the inward shudders of my enemies when someone hisses the name 'Brooklyn'. It's an adrenaline rush when some gutless weakling cowers away from one of my boys when the hint's dropped that they're from my infamous borough. We've worked hard to fortify a reputation for Brooklyn, and we're pretty damn proud when that same reputation drives fear into others' souls.
That being said, I believe it of the utmost necessity to note the various ways in which Brooklyn's developed its rough edge. My Birds gave the borough its central knowledge; the half-pints gave it its often disguised gentleness. My troublemakers gave it the brave valiance we're known for in brawls, but it was my outcasts who graced us with an unmatchable individuality.
Piper, Scapegoat, and Caper were the counterparts to the intolerable Maverick, Renegade, and Tyrant. While the latter trio was driven by a passion to hate, Piper and company instead were like the older brothers to the juveniles. They were kind, caring, defensive, and always ready to offer advice to those who needed it. And good advice it was! Half the time I even found myself asking them pressing inquiries that ate away at my subconscious. They were like the three Wiseman of the biblical stories, somehow more experienced in life even though their age did not mirror such treasured attributes.
Because of their understanding of life and how it sometimes did not act in our favor, however, they were many times made fun of by their rivals. Maverick was especially cruel towards them. He had, and this is an exact count, five times beaten Scapegoat-the quietest of the bunch-into a mound of bloody flesh on the basis that "the loser was gettin' on everyone's nerves". I don't even think it was in Scapegoat's nature to bother anyone if he felt they weren't in the mood, but it was the defense Maverick held to nonetheless.
Piper would at like times coach the younger boys in how to deal with Maverick's abuse, standing up to the fire of opposition no matter what. He would often receive death threats from Renegade, promises that he'd corner him one night and make him wish his "whore of a muddah" never gave birth to him. Perhaps because Piper never retaliated with warnings of his own, he was immediately labeled an exile.
Maverick and his foolish comrades believed violence was the solution to every hardship, but Piper's group added to our notoriety with their own principles. "Brooky's don't get revenge, they's get even." And this getting even would never incorporate using our fists if they had anything to do with it.
I'm quite sure that if Piper, Scapegoat, and Caper were fortunate enough to have the means by which to attend college, they would have gone on to do great things in life; maybe even win the Nobel Prize for Peace awarded to those exceptional individuals who changed society in the twentieth century. They started an admirable movement in Brooklyn, whatever the case, and taught many of my newsboys that the mind was a far more powerful tool than any God-given strength.
The best gambler in New York among the ones crawling about the first rung of the social ladder definitely would have to be the Manhattan Italian called Racetrack. True he may not have ever won a placed bet at the tracks, but if one were to see the obsession with which this kid chased after money, one would know in a heartbeat that he loved taking a chance on the stakes. But each borough is known for its own card players, and in Brooklyn, first prize went to two seventeen-year olds whom we called Ace and Rebel.
Enter this pair into a hostelry for a game of poker and one already knew beforehand that the night's winnings would go to them. There was one problem, though. Ace and Rebel weren't exactly what a righteous man would call 'fair' players. Armed with their own personal deck of cards concealed in an inside pocket of their jackets, they would habitually trade cards with each other under the table, or result to their own pack to wheedle their way out a heated match.
They were brothers, the older Ace having a fierce look upon him that simply dared you to defy his way of life. He was a good fighter, one of the best I had ever seen, and this worked to his advantage when the truth behind the siblings' scam was found out one winter night in the Queens lodging house.
I knew nothing of their cheating, but I remember catching Ace give his brother a meaningful look well into the fourth round of the game. Glancing towards Rebel to obtain the gesture's purpose, I caught the Brooky casually fumbling with a button on his sweater, his fingertips delicately closing onto what I knew to be a card. Before he had a chance to free the card from its confines, the dealer told him to add a wage to the center money pile and Rebel snapped back into position with a suspicious quickness.
That night, a Staten Island kid named Dag was seated beside me and sometime during the final round, he had unsheathed his pocketknife and had expertly flung it Rebel's way, the blade piercing Rebel's coat sleeve and prohibiting his arm from moving. The Brooky looked up startled but couldn't conceal in time the King of Hearts dangling from his fingers when there were already five cards of his own before him. Everyone knew without a word having to be said that he had participated in dishonest gaming.
The others were in an upheaval. Dag wrenched his knife free from the table's wood, placed it back in his boot, and seized Rebel like a violent parent scolding his child. Ace and I jumped to our feet and tried to talk the newsboy out of soaking the kid, but everyone else was all for seeing the cheater to his end. One broken arm and three black eyes later, we were back in Brooklyn.
The other boroughs hated Ace and Rebel for the event, and thereafter would never invite the brothers to hosted poker games. But Brooklyn celebrated their scheming triumph with outstretched arms. Two more outsiders to add to our brood of misfits.
Snack, Gospel, Slick, Shakespeare, Digger, and Conscience are next on my list. Unlike the ones who precede them in this narration, never did they work together. They were Brooklyn's loners. They didn't speak unless spoken to and seemed to have a desire to alter not a thing about their friendless lifestyles. They kept to themselves whenever possible and only uttered words when selling their papers, to which I'm grateful, of course, for it merely meant I'd have to put up with less noise in the lodging house.
Snack was rather overweight for his age. Contrasting the well-built and tall figures we Brooky's tend to have, he was short, stocky, and wouldn't turn down food for the world. As strange as it seems, I seriously always saw him with a taster of some sort in his hands, munching away while ridding himself of his editions, even licking off the excess crumbs on his fingers with salacious appetite.
But some downfall of society has injected into our subconscious a natural inclination to taunt and mock those who differ in appearance to us, and so Snack was the object of many Brooklynites' jeers during his stay in our borough. He wasn't one of the athletes, or the slingshot professionals, or the fighters...to them, that left him to be nothing at all. A waste of life that was better off being excommunicated. And that is what they did. No one acknowledged him, cared for him, or offered so much as a glance his way if ever he was in trouble. It troubled me to see him emotionally struggle much as I had back in the day, but I knew my aid and pity would only make the fellows hate him all the more.
There was one fourteen-year old in whom I placed my total reliance when dealing with the pressures of defending one forced to endure a position like Snack's. He had come to Brooklyn during my third, and last, year of leadership in 1901. With a wild mass of caramel-colored hair and bright blue eyes that looked like sapphires, his name was Gospel and his heart was with the Truth. With a leather-bound bible always under his arm and a cross hanging on a chain about his neck, he was constantly evangelizing about unconditional love and promises that never died.
And he didn't shove the material down anyone's throat like missionaries I had known before. He accepted others' refusal of his beliefs, even expected it half the time. He was patient and never pressured one into submitting to anything unless you encountered it and knew it had to be yours as well. A fine example of a virtuous young man was Gospel.
Best of all, he was a Brooky during a time when Maverick and crew had moved on to be factory workers, thus making my days smoother ones. No one ever bothered Gospel; no one even laid a finger on him in a harmful manner. If anything, my boys took a rare sort of liking to him. True his zealous speeches about faith were like random babbling to their ears, but there was something about Gospel that made our borough whole. It was as if his presence was required before anyone was willing to face another day of hell.
Gospel had a great influence on us as well. Like his predecessor, Piper, he lived to endorse peace and unity in the streets, and often times it was his message alone racing in the back of our minds that prompted us to step away from a forthcoming fight and deny our enemies the chance to riot like hollow scabs.
Slick...a kid who made a mistake I had almost made myself. He had fallen for a girl, and was subsequently ridiculed for his sappy dialogues with the dollface and his ever-present wish to see her whenever he could.
I was careful in constructing guards and defenses that kept my heart from being stolen from anyone. I had almost failed upon entering a relationship with a spirited brunette called Dewey, but in time she tired of my cavalier act and walked out the door while I had been too immature to speak the three words she had wanted to hear.
Getting back to Slick's dilemma, he had it bad for a sweetheart he had met while in Manhattan. An ex-girlfriend of Jack Kelly's, the girl was named Dimples for reasons apparent once she smiled and it hadn't been too long following their first conversation until they had hooked up. Three months later, they still hadn't shared a kiss, and therein dwelled Slick's problem, for the boy didn't know how to go about embracing a girl as so.
Logically, full well knowing that his Brooklyn leader was much experienced in the area of charm and lust, Slick came to me in all honesty and beseeched me to indulge him with any tips I had learned from the trade. I shared with him everything I had learned since my sixteenth birthday, and a few days later the sly dog was returning from Manhattan with a lopsided- grin and glazed over eyes. He had finally won his first kiss.
"Could ya be any more schmaltzy?" one of the boys had called out.
"Oh look, lover boy's finally nailed 'is goil!"
Some of the younger boys made kissing noises, giggling and feigning a swoon with award-winning dramatization.
Slick ignored them all. He could care less whether they allowed him admittance into the popular clichés in Brooklyn. It meant nothing to him...a fleeting daydream that would only last a handful of years until each Brooky went his own way, found a new job, and raised a family. But Slick...he was in love. And though he was aware of how foolish he was being for someone his age, Dimples was his new world.
Shakespeare was just another flat-out oddball. Having learned how to read when he was a child, Shakes (as we called him when we were feeling lazy) spent the most of his days secluded in a bunkroom, engulfed in a created world that was almost like a trance to him. He would become so connected with any one character from a particular play that their way of speaking and conducting themselves would rub off on him.
"Make haste!" he would occasionally say to himself when he was running out of time to sell his morning editions. Another famous line was one he'd reiterate to Maverick time and time again when the foul troublemaker blathered on about how he was invincible...a perfect human; God's gift to mankind. Shakes would only roll his eyes from wherever he was seated and say in a singsong voice, "Golden lads and girls all must, as chimney- sweepers, come to dust."
Then there's Digger, one of the most complicated kids I've ever come across. He had long black hair that trailed past his shoulders in waves and brandy-colored eyes that reddened whenever he grew angry. His occupation prior to becoming a newsie was one any person of sound mind would immediately deem bizarre. Digger worked for an eccentric elderly man who made a living by collecting archaic treasures that he would pawn off for money. What was the source of these fortunes? The graves of deceased aristocrats.
For two bits an hour, Digger would rummage through cemeteries after midnight with a lantern and knapsack of tools and would excavate the coffins of those corpses his boss specified with the help of his co- workers. The night I discovered the shameful act, Digger had already separated from his companions and was lounging about against a tombstone examining his newest prize, a gold medallion adorned with gems.
I happened to pass him on my walk to visit my mother's grave, at first not noticing he was there. But when he called out to me in greeting, I spun around so quickly I almost toppled down onto a mound of freshly dug dirt. How I hate strolling through graveyards in the darkness of the night alone...
Digger and I got to talking and when an hour elapsed, we had bonded in a way I can only call absurd. After all, what lunatic dallies about past curfew upon ground where feet below lay the dead, and then meets an acquaintance with whom he'll be friends for years to come? Why, Spot Conlon, of course! And it shouldn't take one too long to figure that a close comrade of mine simply must be an outcast of some sort.
Ah, and now we come to Conscience's story. In all honesty, this kid scared the hell out of me. He was first brought to my attention when a few of my boys had witnessed him strangle to death an ambassador from Staten Island.
"Why'd ya do it, ya lil' guttersnipe piece a' shit?" I hissed at him, boiling with revulsion for the kid who had just ruined any alliance Staten Island and Brooklyn would have otherwise formed that day.
He only shrugged. "Cause 'e took me father's watch out me pocket and ran off like da amateur 'e is."
"Yea, well maybe if I rearrange ya face three times over, youse'll have a different outlook on things, huh?" I circled him like a vulture scrutinizing the decaying matter it was about to eat, my eyes burning into him and my hands folded behind my back as if I were a school teacher.
"Yea, well I don't see dat happenin'," he replied with a grin. "Especially if I end up fixin' youse up real good 'fore ya know what even hit ya!"
I arched an eyebrow at this, thinking him stupid for speaking his mind and not knowing to whom his gibberish was being directed. "Oh yea?" I got up right in his face and looked down at him condescendingly, trying to work with whatever ounce of weakness I might've found in his brown eyes. "Gimme one good reason why I'se shouldn't bust ya face open right now."
He shrugged again. "Why should ya? The kid aint no newsie of yours, so why are youse so worried 'bout it? From what I hear, da kid was from Staten Island, right?" He jerked his head to the right as if motioning towards something. "Well maybe I just did ya'll a favor. Ya Brooky's been tellin' me e' was comin' fer a truce meeting, but Staten Island isn't necessarily known for their loyalty. Fer all ya know, da scab coulda been a spy!"
I stepped back, unimpressed by his analysis. It wasn't an unknown fact that leaders took chances when inviting an ambassador from another borough over for a meeting! I had been prepared if the kid had turned out a traitor. "Yea, well lemme let ya in on how things woik around dese parts." I shoved him back a foot and came after him menacingly. "If youse aint got an order from me tah kill someone, ya don't do it. I don't care who the hell ya think ya is."
"Listen," he said to me with a hard look of his own. "If I'se were tah repeat this day, I wouldn't change nothing 'bout it. I woulda killed dat bastard just like I did tahday. I don't take orders from no one, especially some street rat wid a dog's name!"
I lunged for him, but four of my boys held me back. It took them half an hour to finally calm down my nerves, and even then, just looking at the kid who was so stupid as to stand up against someone like me unleashed uncontrollable fire within me. I wanted so very much to indent his face, or at least fracture a few of his bones. Later that day, he was once again asked whether he felt any remorse for having killed the Staten Island newsboy.
"I sure as hell don't," was all he would say. We named him Conscience... because he didn't have one, and a few weeks later when the factory where he worked burned down, he came crawling back to Brooklyn looking for a job.
The last five of the countless newsies I've written of taught me an imperative lesson about family and cherishing the ones you love. I had already learned through the others that we're all misshapen pieces that must unite together to form the big picture, and that our difference is what made life worth living. I already knew that I had to accept people no matter who they were, and that variety was essentially the spice of life- something I had longed for while suffering through the tedious days at St. John's.
But something I didn't comprehend until meeting the following five individuals was that family had nothing to do with blood relations, heritage, or ancestry. Family wasn't a graph of descent or a record of one's antecedents. Some families are birthed from hardships, not from a common mother. Some families unite out of need, not because they're forced to. And this reasoning is perhaps what Brooklyn needed most during its growth.
Second-Story was yet another misguided result of physical abuse in the home. Only thirteen years of age when I had first met him, he had lived through a nightmare no fanatical poet could ever connive. His short brown hair more closely resembled a dying garden with patches of decay here and there, all the times his mother had seized his locks and ripped them out in her hysteria. His silver eyes were half blind from a time in which his father had thrown a liquefied cleaning chemical into his face and by looking upon the boy's bare back, one would think he had sometime in his past been a slave, for whip lashes scarred his back like unworldly animal stripes and haunted those who encountered the grisly sight.
Yet even so, Second-Story remained devoted to his younger siblings, defending them at all costs so that they might not be the next victims of his parents' wrath. When his father came home drunk at two in the morning, the boy would make sure to run down the stairs and greet him so that the man's beatings would affect only him and not his sleeping brothers. When his mother wanted to say "I love you" and embrace someone in a way no child should know with the one who brought him into the world, the boy would make it his business to be the one crying those days, while his brothers were off in the streets playing ball.
In a time when we were taught to forget those closest to us and save our own skin, Second-Story persevered in assuring his brothers they'd soon see a brighter future, even if it meant his death. When he stumbled upon our lodging house one day and saw it as the outlet from all his troubles, he joined our brood and claimed he would return with two siblings of his. Not thinking it too big a deal, I nodded in agreement and saw him on his way.
Had he told me that leaving his house was more like planning a great escape, had he told me that his father was a tyrannical dictator who would sooner see his own sons starve to death than use his 'beer money' for groceries, had he told me that he was going back not for revenge but to rescue the brothers he loved so dearly...I would have been there at his side and might have been able to prevent the accident that occurred.
But he went on his own, not knowing then that it would prove his greatest folly. His mother was gone from home, as she had been for the past three weeks, most likely selling herself at the bordello where lust was her life...but his father-perhaps his number one fear-was present and downing a decanter of whiskey in the sitting room of their dilapidated apartment. The boy crept through the entranceway, which lacked a door as most the apartments did in that God-forsaken building, and tiptoed his way into his brothers' quarters.
He was in the process of waking them when his father barged into the room in a stagger and threw his beer bottle across the room in with less than accurate precision.
"What de' hell d'ya think ye' doin', huh?" the man asked in a slur of words.
"Father, please," the Brooky replied, "don't do this. You don't need us, you don't even want us. We're leaving now..." He roused his brothers to their feet and beckoned them to follow him out the door, but their father stood in the way.
"Oh, ye' some kinda hero now, eh? Finn! Aaron! Go into de' sittin' room and wait for me there. Ye' even think of escaping again and I'll kill ye both, ya hear me!?" The two younger boys nodded solemnly, tears streaming down their dirtied faces, and hurried out of the room.
"Father...why are you doing this?"
"You, shut up!" the man yelled, jabbing a finger into the boy's face. "Ye think we're not good enough for ye, eh? Ye want to live on de' streets? Well, that's damn fine with me!" He snatched the boy by the neck and proceeded to close his hands on him as if meaning to strangle the youth, but for whatever reason he gave up this attempt and instead shoved the boy towards the room's only window where he slammed him onto the ledge and held him upside down, half his body in midair.
"Father, please! I'm sorry, I'm sorry! Don't do this!"
The man grinned sinisterly, and loosened his grip. The boy, in turn, fell from the second-story window onto the piles of rubbish and trash below that's usually cluttered about the sides of building stoops. He cracked a few ribs, twisted an ankle, and shattered an arm bone...but he's ever thankful to God that he didn't lose his life that day. And imagine this: Second-Story still thinks of his brothers and vows to take them into his possession at age eighteen once the social worker he met up with not too long ago presses the charges of abuse against the boys' father.
Patriot and younger sibling Half-and-Half came to be with our borough sometime after the 1898 Spanish-American War. Their uncle had served in the army and had lost his life during a siege. He was their last known relative, a respectable and kind man, and when news reached them of his passing, they were devastated. What set them apart from my other Brooky's- and probably all other newsboys as well-was that they weren't ashamed to cry in public. They had loved their uncle deeply, and not being with him any longer broke their hearts.
This made me thankful for having my younger cousin Lucas as my constant companion. I realized that some were cursed to be orphans for life, but that I was truly fortunate to have a family of my own. Hearing Patriot pour his soul into the war tales he told of his uncle made me want to feel the same way for my own relatives, just as he and his brother did. At least, it is my assumption Half-and-Half felt the same way.
Some of the things he spoke made us wonder about his allegiance to our great nation. He acknowledged the fact that America was his free homeland, but it was his concern that the press sometimes exaggerated or even lied about war news. Which is why he received his name. Half of him (his heart) was with his allies, but the other half (his rationalization) pitied his enemies.
Lastly, there's Tremor and Wizard. Tremor was from the West and was named so because he had a keen sense about him that allowed his subconscious to perceive the underground movements of earth below him-or so it is what he claimed. It was his story that twice he had predicted the coming of an earthquake, and both times his predictions had been accurate. He was orphaned at eleven when the last earthquake he had ever experienced claimed both his parents' life.
Wizard had once been the apprentice of a renowned magician and relentlessly practiced the trade whenever he could find the time. A wanderer during his early adolescence, he had been taken in by a band of gypsies and had made their family his own. But tragedy struck when some racist bastards opened fire on the defenseless group and killed all but Wizard and young Neeko, only because the boys had meanwhile been out purchasing food.
Upon returning and seeing the dead bodies of the ones they loved, they mourned for weeks together...until Neeko contracted pneumonia one winter's night and passed away in his sleep, leaving Wizard on his lonesome. The young magician was sprawled out upon a cardboard box of a deathbed when I had found him in a Manhattan alley and had taken him in. His was a heartrending story, but do consider what is more tragic. Losing the family you so desperately loved, or losing them before you had learned to appreciate their company?
I'm grateful that I haven't fallen prey to the latter circumstance. To me, each of my boys is a newsie, a friend...a brother. I treat them all with equal respect and together we form a brigade to be reckoned with. We defend each other with fierce fidelity and would sooner lay our own lives down before ratting out on a comrade. We're kin though not related; we're a unit though of separate parts. And when we unite as the Brooklyn family, you better watch out, for the need for Love is what binds us...the greatest need of them all.
~*~*~*~*~
One more chapter! ^_^ Please review!
*~*~*~*~THE BROOKLYN BOYS~*~*~*~*
52 Newsies, 1 Lodging House, Countless Stories
As any learned individual would eventually detect, a family simply isn't a complete one if the unit lacks what so many like to deem 'outcasts'. If Manhattan is the home of affable lower-class chaps, and the Bronx is a haven for the morally corrupted, then Brooklyn is without a doubt the refuge for those socially unaccepted. Whether it be for our beliefs, character, or stamina, we have for generations been the recluses among New York's paper-peddlers.
The leaders of other boroughs speak of me and my boys as if we're ghastly beasts from some horror tale, creatures that should be avoided at all costs. The high-born aristocrats of the state have no problem with purchasing a morning or afternoon edition from any other newsboy, but I many times catch the hesitation in their eyes when buying one off a Brooky. The indecision sparks in their irises like a wavering flame while their minds try to process whether they really want to involve themselves with a street rat.
I see the women clutch their purses more tightly as they rummage through its insides for a penny, the men making sure their wallets are safe and snug in the pockets of their pants. The mothers grip their children's hands so firmly, I notice the red marks around the fingers once they quickly walk off and unlock the attachment. It's as if they think we ruffians wish to seek revenge upon them for being blessed with a well-off life; I've never seen anything more ridiculous.
Yet even so, I love sensing the inward shudders of my enemies when someone hisses the name 'Brooklyn'. It's an adrenaline rush when some gutless weakling cowers away from one of my boys when the hint's dropped that they're from my infamous borough. We've worked hard to fortify a reputation for Brooklyn, and we're pretty damn proud when that same reputation drives fear into others' souls.
That being said, I believe it of the utmost necessity to note the various ways in which Brooklyn's developed its rough edge. My Birds gave the borough its central knowledge; the half-pints gave it its often disguised gentleness. My troublemakers gave it the brave valiance we're known for in brawls, but it was my outcasts who graced us with an unmatchable individuality.
Piper, Scapegoat, and Caper were the counterparts to the intolerable Maverick, Renegade, and Tyrant. While the latter trio was driven by a passion to hate, Piper and company instead were like the older brothers to the juveniles. They were kind, caring, defensive, and always ready to offer advice to those who needed it. And good advice it was! Half the time I even found myself asking them pressing inquiries that ate away at my subconscious. They were like the three Wiseman of the biblical stories, somehow more experienced in life even though their age did not mirror such treasured attributes.
Because of their understanding of life and how it sometimes did not act in our favor, however, they were many times made fun of by their rivals. Maverick was especially cruel towards them. He had, and this is an exact count, five times beaten Scapegoat-the quietest of the bunch-into a mound of bloody flesh on the basis that "the loser was gettin' on everyone's nerves". I don't even think it was in Scapegoat's nature to bother anyone if he felt they weren't in the mood, but it was the defense Maverick held to nonetheless.
Piper would at like times coach the younger boys in how to deal with Maverick's abuse, standing up to the fire of opposition no matter what. He would often receive death threats from Renegade, promises that he'd corner him one night and make him wish his "whore of a muddah" never gave birth to him. Perhaps because Piper never retaliated with warnings of his own, he was immediately labeled an exile.
Maverick and his foolish comrades believed violence was the solution to every hardship, but Piper's group added to our notoriety with their own principles. "Brooky's don't get revenge, they's get even." And this getting even would never incorporate using our fists if they had anything to do with it.
I'm quite sure that if Piper, Scapegoat, and Caper were fortunate enough to have the means by which to attend college, they would have gone on to do great things in life; maybe even win the Nobel Prize for Peace awarded to those exceptional individuals who changed society in the twentieth century. They started an admirable movement in Brooklyn, whatever the case, and taught many of my newsboys that the mind was a far more powerful tool than any God-given strength.
The best gambler in New York among the ones crawling about the first rung of the social ladder definitely would have to be the Manhattan Italian called Racetrack. True he may not have ever won a placed bet at the tracks, but if one were to see the obsession with which this kid chased after money, one would know in a heartbeat that he loved taking a chance on the stakes. But each borough is known for its own card players, and in Brooklyn, first prize went to two seventeen-year olds whom we called Ace and Rebel.
Enter this pair into a hostelry for a game of poker and one already knew beforehand that the night's winnings would go to them. There was one problem, though. Ace and Rebel weren't exactly what a righteous man would call 'fair' players. Armed with their own personal deck of cards concealed in an inside pocket of their jackets, they would habitually trade cards with each other under the table, or result to their own pack to wheedle their way out a heated match.
They were brothers, the older Ace having a fierce look upon him that simply dared you to defy his way of life. He was a good fighter, one of the best I had ever seen, and this worked to his advantage when the truth behind the siblings' scam was found out one winter night in the Queens lodging house.
I knew nothing of their cheating, but I remember catching Ace give his brother a meaningful look well into the fourth round of the game. Glancing towards Rebel to obtain the gesture's purpose, I caught the Brooky casually fumbling with a button on his sweater, his fingertips delicately closing onto what I knew to be a card. Before he had a chance to free the card from its confines, the dealer told him to add a wage to the center money pile and Rebel snapped back into position with a suspicious quickness.
That night, a Staten Island kid named Dag was seated beside me and sometime during the final round, he had unsheathed his pocketknife and had expertly flung it Rebel's way, the blade piercing Rebel's coat sleeve and prohibiting his arm from moving. The Brooky looked up startled but couldn't conceal in time the King of Hearts dangling from his fingers when there were already five cards of his own before him. Everyone knew without a word having to be said that he had participated in dishonest gaming.
The others were in an upheaval. Dag wrenched his knife free from the table's wood, placed it back in his boot, and seized Rebel like a violent parent scolding his child. Ace and I jumped to our feet and tried to talk the newsboy out of soaking the kid, but everyone else was all for seeing the cheater to his end. One broken arm and three black eyes later, we were back in Brooklyn.
The other boroughs hated Ace and Rebel for the event, and thereafter would never invite the brothers to hosted poker games. But Brooklyn celebrated their scheming triumph with outstretched arms. Two more outsiders to add to our brood of misfits.
Snack, Gospel, Slick, Shakespeare, Digger, and Conscience are next on my list. Unlike the ones who precede them in this narration, never did they work together. They were Brooklyn's loners. They didn't speak unless spoken to and seemed to have a desire to alter not a thing about their friendless lifestyles. They kept to themselves whenever possible and only uttered words when selling their papers, to which I'm grateful, of course, for it merely meant I'd have to put up with less noise in the lodging house.
Snack was rather overweight for his age. Contrasting the well-built and tall figures we Brooky's tend to have, he was short, stocky, and wouldn't turn down food for the world. As strange as it seems, I seriously always saw him with a taster of some sort in his hands, munching away while ridding himself of his editions, even licking off the excess crumbs on his fingers with salacious appetite.
But some downfall of society has injected into our subconscious a natural inclination to taunt and mock those who differ in appearance to us, and so Snack was the object of many Brooklynites' jeers during his stay in our borough. He wasn't one of the athletes, or the slingshot professionals, or the fighters...to them, that left him to be nothing at all. A waste of life that was better off being excommunicated. And that is what they did. No one acknowledged him, cared for him, or offered so much as a glance his way if ever he was in trouble. It troubled me to see him emotionally struggle much as I had back in the day, but I knew my aid and pity would only make the fellows hate him all the more.
There was one fourteen-year old in whom I placed my total reliance when dealing with the pressures of defending one forced to endure a position like Snack's. He had come to Brooklyn during my third, and last, year of leadership in 1901. With a wild mass of caramel-colored hair and bright blue eyes that looked like sapphires, his name was Gospel and his heart was with the Truth. With a leather-bound bible always under his arm and a cross hanging on a chain about his neck, he was constantly evangelizing about unconditional love and promises that never died.
And he didn't shove the material down anyone's throat like missionaries I had known before. He accepted others' refusal of his beliefs, even expected it half the time. He was patient and never pressured one into submitting to anything unless you encountered it and knew it had to be yours as well. A fine example of a virtuous young man was Gospel.
Best of all, he was a Brooky during a time when Maverick and crew had moved on to be factory workers, thus making my days smoother ones. No one ever bothered Gospel; no one even laid a finger on him in a harmful manner. If anything, my boys took a rare sort of liking to him. True his zealous speeches about faith were like random babbling to their ears, but there was something about Gospel that made our borough whole. It was as if his presence was required before anyone was willing to face another day of hell.
Gospel had a great influence on us as well. Like his predecessor, Piper, he lived to endorse peace and unity in the streets, and often times it was his message alone racing in the back of our minds that prompted us to step away from a forthcoming fight and deny our enemies the chance to riot like hollow scabs.
Slick...a kid who made a mistake I had almost made myself. He had fallen for a girl, and was subsequently ridiculed for his sappy dialogues with the dollface and his ever-present wish to see her whenever he could.
I was careful in constructing guards and defenses that kept my heart from being stolen from anyone. I had almost failed upon entering a relationship with a spirited brunette called Dewey, but in time she tired of my cavalier act and walked out the door while I had been too immature to speak the three words she had wanted to hear.
Getting back to Slick's dilemma, he had it bad for a sweetheart he had met while in Manhattan. An ex-girlfriend of Jack Kelly's, the girl was named Dimples for reasons apparent once she smiled and it hadn't been too long following their first conversation until they had hooked up. Three months later, they still hadn't shared a kiss, and therein dwelled Slick's problem, for the boy didn't know how to go about embracing a girl as so.
Logically, full well knowing that his Brooklyn leader was much experienced in the area of charm and lust, Slick came to me in all honesty and beseeched me to indulge him with any tips I had learned from the trade. I shared with him everything I had learned since my sixteenth birthday, and a few days later the sly dog was returning from Manhattan with a lopsided- grin and glazed over eyes. He had finally won his first kiss.
"Could ya be any more schmaltzy?" one of the boys had called out.
"Oh look, lover boy's finally nailed 'is goil!"
Some of the younger boys made kissing noises, giggling and feigning a swoon with award-winning dramatization.
Slick ignored them all. He could care less whether they allowed him admittance into the popular clichés in Brooklyn. It meant nothing to him...a fleeting daydream that would only last a handful of years until each Brooky went his own way, found a new job, and raised a family. But Slick...he was in love. And though he was aware of how foolish he was being for someone his age, Dimples was his new world.
Shakespeare was just another flat-out oddball. Having learned how to read when he was a child, Shakes (as we called him when we were feeling lazy) spent the most of his days secluded in a bunkroom, engulfed in a created world that was almost like a trance to him. He would become so connected with any one character from a particular play that their way of speaking and conducting themselves would rub off on him.
"Make haste!" he would occasionally say to himself when he was running out of time to sell his morning editions. Another famous line was one he'd reiterate to Maverick time and time again when the foul troublemaker blathered on about how he was invincible...a perfect human; God's gift to mankind. Shakes would only roll his eyes from wherever he was seated and say in a singsong voice, "Golden lads and girls all must, as chimney- sweepers, come to dust."
Then there's Digger, one of the most complicated kids I've ever come across. He had long black hair that trailed past his shoulders in waves and brandy-colored eyes that reddened whenever he grew angry. His occupation prior to becoming a newsie was one any person of sound mind would immediately deem bizarre. Digger worked for an eccentric elderly man who made a living by collecting archaic treasures that he would pawn off for money. What was the source of these fortunes? The graves of deceased aristocrats.
For two bits an hour, Digger would rummage through cemeteries after midnight with a lantern and knapsack of tools and would excavate the coffins of those corpses his boss specified with the help of his co- workers. The night I discovered the shameful act, Digger had already separated from his companions and was lounging about against a tombstone examining his newest prize, a gold medallion adorned with gems.
I happened to pass him on my walk to visit my mother's grave, at first not noticing he was there. But when he called out to me in greeting, I spun around so quickly I almost toppled down onto a mound of freshly dug dirt. How I hate strolling through graveyards in the darkness of the night alone...
Digger and I got to talking and when an hour elapsed, we had bonded in a way I can only call absurd. After all, what lunatic dallies about past curfew upon ground where feet below lay the dead, and then meets an acquaintance with whom he'll be friends for years to come? Why, Spot Conlon, of course! And it shouldn't take one too long to figure that a close comrade of mine simply must be an outcast of some sort.
Ah, and now we come to Conscience's story. In all honesty, this kid scared the hell out of me. He was first brought to my attention when a few of my boys had witnessed him strangle to death an ambassador from Staten Island.
"Why'd ya do it, ya lil' guttersnipe piece a' shit?" I hissed at him, boiling with revulsion for the kid who had just ruined any alliance Staten Island and Brooklyn would have otherwise formed that day.
He only shrugged. "Cause 'e took me father's watch out me pocket and ran off like da amateur 'e is."
"Yea, well maybe if I rearrange ya face three times over, youse'll have a different outlook on things, huh?" I circled him like a vulture scrutinizing the decaying matter it was about to eat, my eyes burning into him and my hands folded behind my back as if I were a school teacher.
"Yea, well I don't see dat happenin'," he replied with a grin. "Especially if I end up fixin' youse up real good 'fore ya know what even hit ya!"
I arched an eyebrow at this, thinking him stupid for speaking his mind and not knowing to whom his gibberish was being directed. "Oh yea?" I got up right in his face and looked down at him condescendingly, trying to work with whatever ounce of weakness I might've found in his brown eyes. "Gimme one good reason why I'se shouldn't bust ya face open right now."
He shrugged again. "Why should ya? The kid aint no newsie of yours, so why are youse so worried 'bout it? From what I hear, da kid was from Staten Island, right?" He jerked his head to the right as if motioning towards something. "Well maybe I just did ya'll a favor. Ya Brooky's been tellin' me e' was comin' fer a truce meeting, but Staten Island isn't necessarily known for their loyalty. Fer all ya know, da scab coulda been a spy!"
I stepped back, unimpressed by his analysis. It wasn't an unknown fact that leaders took chances when inviting an ambassador from another borough over for a meeting! I had been prepared if the kid had turned out a traitor. "Yea, well lemme let ya in on how things woik around dese parts." I shoved him back a foot and came after him menacingly. "If youse aint got an order from me tah kill someone, ya don't do it. I don't care who the hell ya think ya is."
"Listen," he said to me with a hard look of his own. "If I'se were tah repeat this day, I wouldn't change nothing 'bout it. I woulda killed dat bastard just like I did tahday. I don't take orders from no one, especially some street rat wid a dog's name!"
I lunged for him, but four of my boys held me back. It took them half an hour to finally calm down my nerves, and even then, just looking at the kid who was so stupid as to stand up against someone like me unleashed uncontrollable fire within me. I wanted so very much to indent his face, or at least fracture a few of his bones. Later that day, he was once again asked whether he felt any remorse for having killed the Staten Island newsboy.
"I sure as hell don't," was all he would say. We named him Conscience... because he didn't have one, and a few weeks later when the factory where he worked burned down, he came crawling back to Brooklyn looking for a job.
The last five of the countless newsies I've written of taught me an imperative lesson about family and cherishing the ones you love. I had already learned through the others that we're all misshapen pieces that must unite together to form the big picture, and that our difference is what made life worth living. I already knew that I had to accept people no matter who they were, and that variety was essentially the spice of life- something I had longed for while suffering through the tedious days at St. John's.
But something I didn't comprehend until meeting the following five individuals was that family had nothing to do with blood relations, heritage, or ancestry. Family wasn't a graph of descent or a record of one's antecedents. Some families are birthed from hardships, not from a common mother. Some families unite out of need, not because they're forced to. And this reasoning is perhaps what Brooklyn needed most during its growth.
Second-Story was yet another misguided result of physical abuse in the home. Only thirteen years of age when I had first met him, he had lived through a nightmare no fanatical poet could ever connive. His short brown hair more closely resembled a dying garden with patches of decay here and there, all the times his mother had seized his locks and ripped them out in her hysteria. His silver eyes were half blind from a time in which his father had thrown a liquefied cleaning chemical into his face and by looking upon the boy's bare back, one would think he had sometime in his past been a slave, for whip lashes scarred his back like unworldly animal stripes and haunted those who encountered the grisly sight.
Yet even so, Second-Story remained devoted to his younger siblings, defending them at all costs so that they might not be the next victims of his parents' wrath. When his father came home drunk at two in the morning, the boy would make sure to run down the stairs and greet him so that the man's beatings would affect only him and not his sleeping brothers. When his mother wanted to say "I love you" and embrace someone in a way no child should know with the one who brought him into the world, the boy would make it his business to be the one crying those days, while his brothers were off in the streets playing ball.
In a time when we were taught to forget those closest to us and save our own skin, Second-Story persevered in assuring his brothers they'd soon see a brighter future, even if it meant his death. When he stumbled upon our lodging house one day and saw it as the outlet from all his troubles, he joined our brood and claimed he would return with two siblings of his. Not thinking it too big a deal, I nodded in agreement and saw him on his way.
Had he told me that leaving his house was more like planning a great escape, had he told me that his father was a tyrannical dictator who would sooner see his own sons starve to death than use his 'beer money' for groceries, had he told me that he was going back not for revenge but to rescue the brothers he loved so dearly...I would have been there at his side and might have been able to prevent the accident that occurred.
But he went on his own, not knowing then that it would prove his greatest folly. His mother was gone from home, as she had been for the past three weeks, most likely selling herself at the bordello where lust was her life...but his father-perhaps his number one fear-was present and downing a decanter of whiskey in the sitting room of their dilapidated apartment. The boy crept through the entranceway, which lacked a door as most the apartments did in that God-forsaken building, and tiptoed his way into his brothers' quarters.
He was in the process of waking them when his father barged into the room in a stagger and threw his beer bottle across the room in with less than accurate precision.
"What de' hell d'ya think ye' doin', huh?" the man asked in a slur of words.
"Father, please," the Brooky replied, "don't do this. You don't need us, you don't even want us. We're leaving now..." He roused his brothers to their feet and beckoned them to follow him out the door, but their father stood in the way.
"Oh, ye' some kinda hero now, eh? Finn! Aaron! Go into de' sittin' room and wait for me there. Ye' even think of escaping again and I'll kill ye both, ya hear me!?" The two younger boys nodded solemnly, tears streaming down their dirtied faces, and hurried out of the room.
"Father...why are you doing this?"
"You, shut up!" the man yelled, jabbing a finger into the boy's face. "Ye think we're not good enough for ye, eh? Ye want to live on de' streets? Well, that's damn fine with me!" He snatched the boy by the neck and proceeded to close his hands on him as if meaning to strangle the youth, but for whatever reason he gave up this attempt and instead shoved the boy towards the room's only window where he slammed him onto the ledge and held him upside down, half his body in midair.
"Father, please! I'm sorry, I'm sorry! Don't do this!"
The man grinned sinisterly, and loosened his grip. The boy, in turn, fell from the second-story window onto the piles of rubbish and trash below that's usually cluttered about the sides of building stoops. He cracked a few ribs, twisted an ankle, and shattered an arm bone...but he's ever thankful to God that he didn't lose his life that day. And imagine this: Second-Story still thinks of his brothers and vows to take them into his possession at age eighteen once the social worker he met up with not too long ago presses the charges of abuse against the boys' father.
Patriot and younger sibling Half-and-Half came to be with our borough sometime after the 1898 Spanish-American War. Their uncle had served in the army and had lost his life during a siege. He was their last known relative, a respectable and kind man, and when news reached them of his passing, they were devastated. What set them apart from my other Brooky's- and probably all other newsboys as well-was that they weren't ashamed to cry in public. They had loved their uncle deeply, and not being with him any longer broke their hearts.
This made me thankful for having my younger cousin Lucas as my constant companion. I realized that some were cursed to be orphans for life, but that I was truly fortunate to have a family of my own. Hearing Patriot pour his soul into the war tales he told of his uncle made me want to feel the same way for my own relatives, just as he and his brother did. At least, it is my assumption Half-and-Half felt the same way.
Some of the things he spoke made us wonder about his allegiance to our great nation. He acknowledged the fact that America was his free homeland, but it was his concern that the press sometimes exaggerated or even lied about war news. Which is why he received his name. Half of him (his heart) was with his allies, but the other half (his rationalization) pitied his enemies.
Lastly, there's Tremor and Wizard. Tremor was from the West and was named so because he had a keen sense about him that allowed his subconscious to perceive the underground movements of earth below him-or so it is what he claimed. It was his story that twice he had predicted the coming of an earthquake, and both times his predictions had been accurate. He was orphaned at eleven when the last earthquake he had ever experienced claimed both his parents' life.
Wizard had once been the apprentice of a renowned magician and relentlessly practiced the trade whenever he could find the time. A wanderer during his early adolescence, he had been taken in by a band of gypsies and had made their family his own. But tragedy struck when some racist bastards opened fire on the defenseless group and killed all but Wizard and young Neeko, only because the boys had meanwhile been out purchasing food.
Upon returning and seeing the dead bodies of the ones they loved, they mourned for weeks together...until Neeko contracted pneumonia one winter's night and passed away in his sleep, leaving Wizard on his lonesome. The young magician was sprawled out upon a cardboard box of a deathbed when I had found him in a Manhattan alley and had taken him in. His was a heartrending story, but do consider what is more tragic. Losing the family you so desperately loved, or losing them before you had learned to appreciate their company?
I'm grateful that I haven't fallen prey to the latter circumstance. To me, each of my boys is a newsie, a friend...a brother. I treat them all with equal respect and together we form a brigade to be reckoned with. We defend each other with fierce fidelity and would sooner lay our own lives down before ratting out on a comrade. We're kin though not related; we're a unit though of separate parts. And when we unite as the Brooklyn family, you better watch out, for the need for Love is what binds us...the greatest need of them all.
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One more chapter! ^_^ Please review!