"What's all this?" Kloppman murmured worriedly, putting on his spectacles and bending over Itey. The boy was pale and still unconscious; a sheen of sweat had broken out on his forehead and his body would spasm every so often as if he were fighting off invisible demons.
Skittery and Specs exchanged glances and shrugged. "Skitts found him, Kloppman," Specs explained. "Itey ran past him without stopping, like he was runnin' from something… but there was nothing as far as you could see, right, Skitts?"
"Nothin' was followin' him, at least," Skittery answered. He narrowed his eyebrows and concentrated on Itey's face. "He looked all confused-like… like he was sleep-walkin' or somethin'. When I stopped him, he was babblin' a lot, and then he passed out."
Kloppman frowned. "What was he saying?"
"Um, lemme see…" He bit his lip and tried to remember as closely to the word as possible, afraid to leave out a crucial piece of information. "He kept callin' Snitch a dumbass," he said finally.
Kloppman waited a moment for further explanation. None came. "And? What else did he say?"
"Ah, yeah…" Skittery scratched the back of his head. "That was pretty much the gist of it."
"That Snitch… is a dumbass," Kloppman reiterated slowly, disbelieving.
"Yessir. He was pretty insistent on that." Skittery looked from face to face. "He seemed pretty scared," he added, hoping that would help.
It didn't.
"What a bunch o' stupid kids," Kloppman muttered, dipping a rag in cold water and pressing it against Itey's head.
Sarah Jacobs sat in her family's rocking chair, knitting one thing or another with little attention. Something was bothering her; it had been bothering her all morning.
A moan from the room across the hall erupted again, passing easily through the paper-thin walls and increasing Sarah's headache.
"Ooooooohh… uuuuuuuuughhh…"
Her back stiffened and she eyed Les carefully. He was playing with some marbles on the floor in his night clothes; he'd been "too sick" to go to school that morning, but seemed in pretty high spirits as long as their mother wasn't in the room. For now she was at the store, and the unwritten code of sibling behavior dictated he was free to play as he wished. Whenever the moaning occurred, he'd glance in its direction and shrug, returning his focus to the game at hand.
Sarah breathed in relief. The last thing she needed was explaining to her ten-year-old brother what happened when two people fell in love, and got married, and rented an apartment together and apparently didn't have jobs to go to and could spend the whole day doing that without regard for their neighbors…
Her thoughts drifted to Jack. Jack, with his beautifully untamed hair. Jack, with his shirt open and his bandana falling lightly on his collarbone. Jack, with his smiling lips and dancing eyes and arms slung around her brother. Jack, always with David and never with her, his fiancée.
"Oooooohhh… errrrrruuuugh!"
Sarah bit her lip and pressed her fingertips against her temples. There was suddenly a violent crash in the other room, like a piece of furniture falling to the ground, followed by silence.
Is it finally over? she dared ask herself.
"OOOOOOOOH," joined another voice, louder this time.
"That's it," Sarah declared, standing up. "Les, we're getting out of here."
"Really?" The boy's eyes lit up. "But what about Ma?"
"Don't worry about her. I'll leave a note saying… saying you needed medicine, and you came with me so the chemist could choose what would be best for you." She scribbled all this down as she spoke and left it on top of the dining table.
Les tugged on his shoes and they walked out the door, into the hall.
"Where are we goin'?"
Crash. Bang. Moaning. Les's head jerked toward the neighbors' apartment, alarmed, and so he forgot to close their own front door.
"Far from here," Sarah grumbled, grabbing him by the hand and also forgetting about the door.
"What's goin' on, Jack?"
"Yeah, why ain't there no people around? I can't sell to no one!"
"I got a full thirty papes and I don't know what I'm gonna do…"
"Please, Jack, tell us…"
Jack heard their cries and saw their worried faces. The gathering at Tibby's hadn't been this full of newsies since the days of The Strike, and it brought a special feeling to his heart. It swelled with pride as he smiled upon his brothers, their business-savvy brains already calculating the possible losses in profit.
"Look, I know you guys are concerned… let's just relax for a sec, please. Quiet down." He waved his hands and they hushed immediately, looking up from their empty tables. None had dared buy anything; selling had never been this poor before because there had always been someone to sell to, no matter how bad the headline. And no one had any idea how long it would last, including Jack. It made him feel a little uneasy.
Racetrack sat beside him, nervously shuffling and re-shuffling a deck of cards. The familiar noise was soothing to Jack – the flickering of paper, the patting down and clicking against the table – and lifted his spirits slightly. He looked back to the crowd.
"So we know that this block and a few blocks up are still pretty normal, right? Not a lot of sellin' goin' on, but not licked yet." There was a general murmuring of assent. "How is it south from here?"
Blink, sitting on the other side of him, raised a hand as if asking permission to speak. Jack nodded, granting him the right, and Blink stood up to address the group, hoisting up his pants as he did so.
"It's good – not great, but good." He sat down. Mush clapped him on the back supportively.
"Okay. And how's it farther north?"
Silence. Shuffling of feet, avoidance of eye contact. A cough here or there.
"How's it farther north?" Jack repeated, this time with more urgency in his voice. Still nothing.
"Don't tell me none o' you ain't been north. Who usually goes up there?"
"Snitch!" someone yelled.
"Look, you won't be a snitch if you tell us who—"
Race touched Jack's arm and said quietly, "Nah, Jack, I think they mean that Snitch usually goes uptown."
"O-oh. Oh yeah." Jack threw back his hair and nodded affirmatively. "And who's his sellin' partner?"
"Itey," someone else responded.
"Why aren't they answerin' for themselves? They ain't here?"
People muttered and looked at each other, shrugging.
"Maybe they just didn't hear about the meeting," Blink suggested.
"Alright then. This is kinda unusual, I give ya that. But if anyone sees 'em, fill 'em in," Jack ordered. "Who else goes uptown?"
The names of Skittery, Specs and Dutchy were offered, but seeing as they were also absent from the conference, none of it was very useful.
Suddenly the door was flung open, the little bell clanging sharply, and Swifty entered. He was panting and coughing as if he'd been running for blocks – and in fact, he had been.
"Where have you been?" Jack demanded, though not unkindly.
"Say, Swifty," Snipeshooter called from the back, "don't you sell uptown?"
Swifty nodded, looking bewildered.
"So what's it like up there? Any people?"
Swifty held onto the doorframe for support, took a deep breath and said, "It's dead up there."
"So what do we do now?" Specs asked, jingling the few pennies in his pocket over and over and over and over—
"Specs, can ya please stop doin' that?" Skittery asked through gritted teeth. "It's drivin' me crazy."
He thought he saw Specs's face fall slightly, but he pretended he didn't. Either way, Specs complied.
"'At's not an answer, by the way," he muttered.
"Well, I don't know what do do, Specs. You're the smart one here."
Specs looked at him in surprise. "Whaddya mean? You're smart."
Skittery shrugged and stared at the ground to avoid his embarrassment. He didn't believe it, or he chose not to, or there was something a little flattering about that and he didn't want to think about it so he just kicked a rock and watched it travel down the road. It landed at a pair of ragged shoes – if they could still be called shoes – that were just barely held together by having shoelaces wrapped around them tightly, keeping the soles attached. Skittery looked up.
"Teef?"
"'At's wha' dey call me," the boy said, an air of defiance permanently fixed upon his face. A Long Island accent as thick as Pulitzer's wallet and a mouth that would rival Racetrack's, Teef was a legendary newsboy who truly lived by the credo, "Carryin' the Banner."
"Who's this?" Specs muttered warily.
"It's Teef! Long Island newsie; sleeps mostly in the gutters. Haven't seen him in awhile." Skittery smiled at the newcomer. "Whaddya doin' around here, Teef?"
Teef was only a year or two younger than they were, but judging by his size he looked about nine years old. He had a boyishly round face, but it was aged and hardened by life on the street, making him appear to be more of a shrinking elderly man. The paradox of his age and countenance cut quite an intimidating figure.
"'At ain't none o' yer business, Skitts." He spat on the ground, a yellowish, dark splatter of God knows what. It vaguely resembled his skin – brown with dirt, the circles under his eyes black from sleepless nights. The clothes scarcely clinging to his small frame were filthy, hole-ridden and smelled strongly of tobacco and body odor. Specs pinched his nose as Teef stepped closer, eyeing them with suspicion.
"Why ain't you'se two at dat meetin'?" When he spoke, his cracked lips revealed only a few dark teeth still affixed in his gums. The rest had rotten away, assuredly due to malnutrition, and left him incapable of pronouncing certain words and sounds correctly – hence his name.
Specs and Skittery exchanged looks. "Whaddya mean? What meeting?"
Teef gave a condescending grin. "Dat 'Hattan meetin'. Yer Jack Kelly is hostin' some meetin' over at, ah, Telly's or some shit like dat."
"Tibby's?" Specs submitted.
"Yeah, dat dump."
"Guess we better get over there," Skittery said after some thought. "Say, Teef, where ya goin'? There ain't no one to sell to up in that direction." He motioned to the stack of papers Teef was gripping firmly under his arm.
"Don' tell me where ta sell, mac!" Skittery held up his hands in apology, trying not to breathe in the boy's scent as Teef got closer, jabbing him in the chest. "An' anyway, what I don' sell ends up bein' my bed fer da night, somethin' you sure as hell wouldn' understand." Teef spat as punctuation, this time landing it just beside Skittery's shoe. "You fuckin' pansy-ass 'Hattaners an' yer damned lodgin' houses."
He shoved past them and continued stomping up the street. Specs gave Skittery a look.
"So that's Teef, huh?"
"Yeah. Helluva guy, really."
And they made their way toward Tibby's.
Dutchy became dimly aware, after awaking in a pool of his own blood, that he was being beaten over the head with his own arm.
Dutchy resented this intensely. First, because of how demeaning the act was. Second, because of how incompetent his assailant was at the act of murder. Third, because this guy was preventing him from ingratiating himself with Specs, and he'd be damned if he'd just lie down and take a beating while Skittery was winning over what was rightfully his.
This third thing was what prompted Dutchy to stand up (shakily, and in an overwhelming state of pain), swing his right fist into his attacker's nose (breaking it with a satisfying crunch), and retrieve his arm after a victorious kick to the testicles. The man crumpled to the ground, moaning strangely.
Dutchy could see that the damage he'd done would only temporarily detain his aggressor, and so – with his arm in hand – he fled the scene, trailing blood and whispering Specs's name in determination.