Almost to Santa Fe
In the cloud of darkness and dust that shrouded the mornings in the South West, three men stood huddled against a wall of an empty train station. Jack tapped the bottom of his heel against the rickety wood of the ticket booth wall, as he nervously lit his third cigarette of the morning. Spot rolled his eyes at the twitching foot as he snapped his fingers in the act of opening an imaginary pocket watch. Even though David stood paces away with his back turned to Spot, he still reacted to the movement by pulling out his own pocket watch.
"It will be here by six." David sighed as he leaned over the platform and searched the horizon for a train.
"It ain't like the morning papers Dave, these trains don't ever come on time. Not out here." Jack muttered bitterly as he flicked the tip of his burned out cigarette towards his anxious companion.
The three men stood in silent impatience as the sleepy town of New Mexico awoke around them. A bell struck somewhere, a singular isolated sound that sharply reminded the men they were no longer in a booming center of international business. Jack nervously ran his fingers through the tangled mess that was his long locks before he stretched out his arm to reach into his pocket. Spot shot out his hand and caught his friend's wrist with an iron like grasp that the old leader usually only reserved for young newsies who had dared crossed him.
"If you smoke through our entire last pack before we even board the train Kelly, I swear…" Spot didn't even bother to finish his threat as he let go of Jack's hand. David didn't need to turn around to address the potential fight behind him. He knew that the two men would at some point in the morning beginning their bickering, just like they did whenever they left one town for another. But David also knew that Jack and Spot had long ago outgrown their need to fight off their anxieties and now strictly resorted to empty threats and muttering insults.
"You'll what Conlon?" Jack taunted as he shoved Spot's grip off his wrist.
"I might pop you one for good measure Kelly." Spot growled. Jack controlled the quirk of his lip knowing that his oldest friend would lose his patience with him if he smiled at his anger. Ducking his head down, Jack stared down at his feet and shuffled his hands back into the inside of his jacket. Spot's hand twitched but remained steadily at his sides as his blues eyes glared at Jack's movements. But Jack didn't pull out any more of the cigarettes; instead the man clutched a bundle of paper.
"Have you read it yet?" Spot sighed running a hand over his tired face. Spot closed his eyes as he turned his glare away from the man that had been a constant pain in his life. After a lifetime as friends, Spot Conlon couldn't avoid the sadness that plagued Jack Kelly but he could avoid starring at it so blatantly.
"She's angry." Jack shrugged defeated.
"That's better than when she wasn't writing at all." Spot offered effortless finding the benefit of the girl's anger.
"Does she say she's angry?" David questioned finally leaving his watch on the edge of the platform.
Jack unfolds the letter and his brown eyes scan the words slowly, taking in each stroke. The old newsboy uses his fingers to guide him along the sentences, as if he was scanning for a headline. But as he reaches the end, the other two newsboys know that there was nothing to prove his point. At the same time, all three men made a living from reading in between the lines and understanding what was never printed.
"She never did like to be left behind." Spot shrugged.
"Critter made her write this letter." Jack frowned dissatisfied.
"He does have a way with words, something about brute force." Spot grumbled bitterly.
"Are we sure he was right?" David whispered the question, he had so often thought. The monstrous noises of a train pulling into the station began to sound in the distance. Jack pushed his body off the rickety wooden wall, as he propelled towards the train with a false excitement. Jack Kelly had learned to ignore unpleasant questions, long before he had met the walking mouth that was David Jacobs.
"Critter O'Connell ain't never been wrong in his life." Spot sighed bitterly. What Jack couldn't count on, or even guess at was when Spot would decide to ignore the pestering insightfulness that David stirred. "Besides, even out in the middle of these deserts Laces would have found trouble."
"Maybe I shouldn't have left." Jack muttered as he stared out at the tiny western town they were leaving. Towns out west were starting to alarmingly appear the same, a blur of places without distinction in the young man's mind.
"You'd still be a newsboy if you hadn't left." Spot pointed out bluntly. Jack sucked at his front teeth in annoyance at the truth in Spot's words. Manhattan had made Jack Kelly a newsboy and in Manhattan, Jack knew he'd always remain a newsboy. It was what he knew, it was what he was and it was as inescapable as the morning sunrise.
"Other guys have stopped being newsboys." Jack gritted out stubbornly.
"Yeah to work in factories or join a gang and die before they turn 25." Spot shrugged nonchalantly aware of the future they had escaped.
"We could have done something different." Jack insisted.
"We did do something different." David pointed out. Jack growled as he clutched to the letter still in his hand. His eye caught the curve of a question mark and he reread the sentence that preceded the symbol.
"She asks when we'll get to Santa Fe." He informed his companions.
"You sure it ain't just you asking Kelly?" Spot yawned.
"We're closer than we've ever been." Jack practically whined.
"But we haven't heard of any work there." David frowned.
"How do we know the tip in California is right, how would Critter know anything about this Rose parade all the way in New York?" Jack challenged. The eldest of the three glared at Spot, daring him to yet again come to the defense of his oldest mentor.
"Like I said Kelly, Critter O'Connell ain't never wrong." Spot shrugged.
"We did ask about it in town, people did say it was a good tip." David tried to reason with Jack. Both Spot and David knew it was going to be a fight to convince Cowboy to travel away from Santa Fe, the one place the man had been dreaming about seeing since he was a boy. But it had to be done. The work in California for the Rose Parade was too good to pass up, an opportunity to work through the winter season.
"You think it's true, about the spring in the winter?" Spot asked suddenly intrigued by their newest venture. Jack rolled his eyes as he flattened out the letter still in his hand and he set about to pulling out a new piece of paper.
"It's got to still be cold. But maybe their flowers bloom in the winter?' Jack wondered aloud.
"What's the name of the town Dave?" Spot demanded. David pulled out his train ticket, the first legitimate train ticket the young man had ever held in his life. Up until this point, the three men had been hopping trains and sitting in cargo cars until they thought they were going to be discovered. Five months they had been traveling like that, from town to town across the Great American Desert. But after months of steady work and the prospect of more work, the three young men had succumb to the luxury of being counted passengers on the Santa Fe Line to California.
"Pasadena." David responded reading the name carefully printed on his ticket.
"What kind of name is Pasadena for a town?" Spot demanded.
"Spell that out Dave," Jack prompted as he started writing.
"Tell her we heading to a place with a stupid name." Spot suggested.
"She won't be able to send a letter addressed to a place with a stupid name." Jack sighed. The train whistle blew loudly over their heads and in a lurch motion the train started moving forward. Jack stared out the window observing the way the land blurred into a painting. Taking only a moment to watch before turning his attention to the blank piece of paper, he began to write furiously. Jack Kelly rolled the crude piece of charcoal he used as a pencil in between his fingers letting it stain his skin. Allowing his hands to take on the familiar coloring of graying and black, giving the inanimate object the power to remind him of home in all the ways it could.
Author's Note: I want to apologize for seemingly falling off the face of the planet. I don't really want to talk about how painfully long it took me to write this tiny section of the story, that in retrospect almost seems like it wasn't needed but of course that's just the annoyed writer in me. Taunting me for taking so UNBELIEVABLY long. That being said, please know I've fought my battle with the distraction puppets and intend to win every sword fight in the upcoming days in order to have another section (longer, probably) up in the next few days.