It was damned cold, Spot reflected as he walked down the empty streets. He still had a ways to go till he reached the Brooklyn Bridge, and already he was shivering. Maybe I shoulda stayed in Manhattan. But no sooner had the thought entered his mind than he dismissed it. I'm the leader of the Brooklyn newsies. Hell, I'm Brooklyn herself! I can't go spending the night other places. Who knows what those bums would get up to without me?
A small grin did cross his angular face as he thought of the hundreds of newsies, many older than his fifteen years, many much stronger, who followed his orders and jumped when he said jump. There were so many that he'd had to designate subleaders to keep them all under his heel. He'd have been impressed with you, Spot; you did what he wanted, though not in the way he expected.
Spot could almost see him now: a tall, gruff man with a thick brown beard, always impeccably dressed. He'd always let Spot climb onto his – No, that wasn't right, he'd always let Patrick climb onto his lap and look at his pocket watch...
Patrick was always a very small boy, and sometimes he had the uncomfortable feeling that his father had wanted someone bigger and tougher, but when sitting on his father's lap, the older man had never seemed to mind. After all, he imagined his father thinking, he's only five years old – There's time. He'll grow.
Whenever Patrick looked at the back of the shiny pocket watch, he could see a distorted image of his face. Whenever his father wasn't looking, though, he would angle the watch so he could see his father's face instead. That way, whenever his father was yelling at people – Patrick's mother, or grandparents, or employees (just about anybody, really), Patrick could pretend he wasn't paying attention. Then he could just sit and watch his father, but not stare, which would have been rude.
On this particular occasion, his father had been reprimanding a clumsy worker for spilling some cloth in the mud. After deducting the cost of the cloth from the patient's salary and dismissing the shaking girl, his father had looked down at him before he had a chance to move the watch and caught his fascinated gaze in the reflection.
The deep, booming laugh rang through his father's luxurious office. "Ahh," his father had said, wiping his streaming eyes. "If ever I needed proof that you are my son, Patrick, you have just provided it. You've learned a valuable lesson all on your own: always watch people, my son. If you can watch them without them knowing, you'll find out what they really want, who they really are. You may be small, Patrick, but you are a true O'Connell."
Little Patrick positively glowed as his father lifted him from his lap and gave him a great bear hug. When he could breathe again, he gasped out, "Is that why all of your employees do what you tell them, Papa?"
"Well," his father lowered him to his lap again, a conspiratorial twinkle in his eye, "That's part of it, yes. But aside from watching them, you have to control them. Find out what they want, what they fear. Offer rewards, threaten punishments. That girl," he nodded out the door, "didn't spill the cloth on purpose, of course she didn't, but the punishment will make her be extra careful in the future, you see if it doesn't, my son. She'll never make that mistake again. Or if I see an employee working very hard, Patrick, I give him a bonus. He'll be wanting that bonus again, so he shows up and works hard every day in hopes of getting my attention again."
Patrick nodded. "I have a question, Papa. If... if he doesn't get your attention again, would he keep working so hard? Or would he get lazy?"
"That's a good question, Patrick. He knows that I see," here his father lowered his head, his intense eyes boring into Patrick's, "he just doesn't know when I see. And if I see a worker being lazy, he loses his job. With safe, dependable jobs so scarce these days, the common worker cannot afford to lose a job, else they'll be sleeping out on the streets in their own filth. Keep them wondering, boy, keep them fearing that you might be watching. Preachers put the fear of the Almighty into the wicked, my son. We simply put the fear of the Almighty – that is, of the O'Connells – into my employees."
Then Patrick's mother had walked into the office and started giving his father a piece of her mind for, in her words, "trying to make my sweet little boy into a master manipulator and a self-proclaimed god."
Patrick wasn't listening to his parents argue, and for once, he wasn't looking through his father's pocket watch. His young mind was buzzing with everything his father had told him. Dimly it came to him that he needed to remember this information, this talk. He would one day control men, just like his father. He was an O'Connell.
And now there was a lady, some crazy woman, running all around New York, looking for a Patrick. It couldn't be him, certainly. Patrick was a common enough name, especially with the floods of Irish that had entered the country in recent decades. I'll bet there're hundreds of Patricks all over the city. Thousands, even. And how many of them are runaways? Lots. It's not me she wants. I'm not Patrick O'Connell anymore. I'm Spot Conlon. The Spot Conlon. That's all anybody knows. Patrick O'Connell is dead. It couldn't be my mother. My mother is...
"Carryin' the banner, Spot!" The cheerful voice broke into his reverie and brought him out of the past.
He looked down at the short newsie beaming up at him. He didn't recognize the kid, but it was no wonder the kid recognized him: every newsie in the city knew Spot Conlon. Every single one.
"Carryin' the banner, kid," he replied wearily. "What're you doin' out so late in this weather?"
"Not very much, Mister Conlon Sir," the boy said, visibly excited to be talking to Spot. "I'se just goin' back to my home. Ma and Pa'll be gettin' worried."
So this was one of those newsies with a home and a real family. It did happen, but the majority of Spot's newsies were sturdy boys, boys who were orphans or ran away from home as soon as they realized they could. Spot regarded the boy with some interest. He did look better kept than the average newsie; more like the Mouth had been when he had met the Cowboy. He hadn't even had a newsie name, just "David Jacobs." These days, though the Mouth had been selling lots of papers with the Cowboy, his father had been pressuring him to go back to school, and he'd been sleeping in the Manhattan Lodging House more often than not. Spot snorted inwardly. School was worse than The Refuge. School was a prison just as much, except that school expected its prisoners to learn, and punished them if they did not.
"Hey, kid," he asked suddenly. "You go to school in the mornings?"
"Yes, sir!"
"And your teachers let you talk like a newsie in school? Or do ya really talk normal-like?"
When the boy responded, the heavy accent and atrocious grammar was gone. "No, sir. My parents wouldn't let me. Neither would my teachers. It's much more fun to speak like a newsie, though!"
"True." Spot was silent for a minute. "Speak like us as much as you dare, kid. Suckers on the street are more likely to be generous if they think you'se really poor and dumb."
Spot nodded slightly and started to walk away, but stopped himself. "Hey, kid," he called back, "what's your name?"
"John."
"Not that name."
"Oh!" the boy grinned happily. "Name's Sparky, sir. I move upwards of seventy-five papes a day!"
Sparky? "Well, Sparky-boy, maybe stop by Brooklyn sometime. Got lots of papes need sellin' there."
"Yes, sir!" If Sparky had been excited before, he was positively ecstatic now.
"Now get goin'. It's cold." The younger boy saluted jauntily and continued on in his direction with a spring to his step. That little newsie will be the envy of his friends for days, all because Spot Conlon spoke to him, responded to him. Hear that, Papa? I control them, but unlike you, I don't even need to promise rewards. My mere presence is reward enough. I am a Conlon.