INTRODUCTION

We were both foreigners, really.

He was a half-breed; I was not born on American soil. We would have liked to think of ourselves as people, true New Yorkers, but often times it was not that easy. To most people, people recruit for jobs, we were not fit to address the public. Perhaps working at a factory, sweating blood and breathing death would better suit us.

We could not have that, no. Swifty was too delicate, I suppose. It had to be his mother's side. Don't know much about her except that she had gone into California before the banning of Japanese immigration. Must have been a child, raised among a strict family. Must have made some mistakes in life, indeed.

He was probably her best mistake. By any account he was my closest friend, and would not have been brought into the world without her.

Sitting across from me, he was also lazily passing the summer afternoon along. Nearly a year had elapsed since the strike, though nothing had changed at all. Time grew still for most of us, though both Swifty and I were almost becoming too old to keep up hawking the headlines.

It had been a bad day for business, and between the two of us there had only been around one-hundred sold. Most likely the selling spot had something to do with the lack of customers. More likely, though, we were not small or cute, sweet or gullible. By his reckoning, Swifty was eighteen. I was probably somewhere around the same age, though admittedly I did not know for sure.

"It ain't fair."

The words caused me to look up, braking out of my thoughts. Mouth had drawn itself into a firm line, and he tugged his hat off, wiping his forehead dramatically. The temperature was high, not record braking by any means, but probably one of the hottest days the summer of 1900 had seen.

Without waiting for my response, Swifty continued on. "Even on a day like today. It ain't fair at all."

"It'll be okay," came my murmured reply, not knowing if my words could really be believed. Wiping a layer of cool sweat from the back of my neck, I was shocked into goose bumps as a small breeze brushed by the both of us. "I mean, he'll make sure we're all right."

He. Swifty's features darkened at the mere thought of him. "He's a traitor, Bumlets."

"Jack is our friend." Wetting the dry skin of my lips, I had to turn away from him to assert myself. "I'm sure he'll be back, like last time." For the truth was that our leader, the head of all of the Manhattan newsboys, had disappeared without a spoken word. There had been only the pamphlet on Santa Fe; it had been clear the young man had left on his own accord.

It was concerning to me, but perhaps more concerning was the envy in Swifty's eyes. Santa Fe was New Mexico, unclaimed land was plentiful. The West, wild and savage, did not seem appealing to me. But to Swifty, I knew the exact connotations. His mother, her family... they had all lived in California. Perhaps there would be a place for him there. That is, if anyone knew of his existence.

Like Jack, he felt caged. New York was not where he belonged, he had often confessed. In dreams he knew a place where the sky was clear and there was grass, real green grass all around. New York in its squalor and grime and filth was the reverse of everything the free American had come to desire. I knew no other life, could hope for nothing else than what I had.

It was not probable, my escape from such a life.

Noticing that Swifty had lost himself in thoughts, I tried to resume conversation. A fly whizzed past my ear, and though my lip curled I was used to the sensation. "Anyway, we're independent. We don't need anyone except ourselves, and each other."

The words spread a small indication of happiness across the troubled features of my best friend. Dark brown hair was exotic, especially in combination with the refined almond-shape of his eyes. It was enjoyable, sitting there looking at his face, but when I noticed his face's transformation into wonder I looked away subtly. Indeed, we were as best friends should have been.

"Until you find the right girl," Swifty quipped, scratching his hair through his hat this time.

"As if either of us has the money to support a wife," I shot back, trying to harness my lack of interest as if it were truly just glum awareness of my financial status. Eyes lingered upon my own fingers. Perhaps if I had been raised with prosperity, they wouldn't have seemed so overworked. Callus and dirt took away any handsomeness they would have had.

Where he had once been sitting up, leaning forward, Swifty shifted against the hard, baking concrete of the stair-ledge, lying on his back. The change in position allowed him to look up to the sky, and as he did so he seemed to fly away. "Some day," breath was short as he imagined, "I'm going to be rich, and I'm going to have my own place. And no one is ever going to call me names again."

Both of us knew that if Swifty ever became rich, it would probably be through some fluke. There was such a thing in America as upward mobility, but starting from the barrel's bottom would not help our odds. After all, a newsboy had no chance for being hired by a serious company. He had no clothes, no belongings, and (in most cases) no family to support him.

However, it was in my best interest to take the game as a grain of salt in a sea of sand. "And I will make sure Kloppman has a proper retirement, and that I have a new suit for each day of the week. And that I've got my house next door to yours."

"Of course." Some sort of laughter exited Swifty's mouth, but it was not the loud kind, nor was it the overly-cheerful giggle that was usual for him.

An odd silence enveloped us once more, and this time I had no heart to break it. Standing up, I hit the tip of my wooden stick against the decorative grass next to the cement. It was not the kind for walking on, but the kind for celebrating the authority of its owners.

"Fifteen minutes until the afternoon editions," lamely, my voice did not want to come out. It was like a dream, the one whose nature was immobility, about disability. I often had dreams where I could not speak, could not move. "We should go back to the distribution office."

We were both foreigners, really, and despite our friendship I knew nothing about how to approach the mess I was creating inside my head.