Snipeshooter had mostly avoided the school room at the Manhattan Lodging house for years. It hadn't mattered that it was a long-standing rule of lodging to be schooled nightly when Jack Kelly had presided as leader. Rules, for Kelly, had always been suggestions used as artful tools in how he controlled a rowdy group of newsboys.
Even in his early days, when Jack had insisted on the schooling or later when Kelly had enforced the rule as a result of Snipes gambling trouble, Snipeshooter had never been early to lessons. But this evening Snipeshooter had arrived on the third floor long before the rest of the lodging house.
The brash leader of Manhattan sat perched on the piano in the corner of the teaching platform, starring out the window. He had heard from one of the birds when he was out selling the afternoon edition that she would be here tonight.
Snipeshooter wasn't one for sentimentally. He didn't often indulge in memories but he couldn't deny the trembling excitement and fear that rolled through him. It was how he had felt as a child when Jack Kelly had accidentally tripped over a snot-nosed smart mouth seven-year-old the older boy had immediately taken him in. The first few weeks in the lodging house, Snipeshooter clung to Kelly. The familiar feeling in his gut wasn't hunger or any ailment, it was the same feeling from his youth when he waited for Jack to appear every night. He wouldn't admit it, not to any living soul, but Snipeshooter missed Jack Kelly. And if anyone in the city could bring the man's memory to life it would be Laces.
Snipes impatiently rubbed at a pair of worn dice in his fingers. He dropped them in a practiced and lazy way, itching for a game of craps and resentfully hearing Kelly chastise him. He heard the carriage, watched her descend with her fashionable hat and glide up the steps into Number 9, Duane Street. He strained to hear the murmurs of the fake introduction to Kloppman and dropped his dice again. Hearing each clack and clip of rich heels upon the worn wood planks of the lodging house steps, counting in his head as he used to when Jack Kelly arrived years ago.
Snipeshooter knew there were two women coming in to teach this evening, Miss Audrey Kai and Miss Elizabeth Samson. And it wasn't until he heard the two women reach the third level that he thought he might not have planned this moment correctly. The door was being pushed open and Snipes dropped his dice once more, nervous and clumsily.
"Good Evening Miss, it gets warm in the school room you may want to take off your coat. It looks like it's got a 100 buttons and it might take you some time." Sand's voice bounced with youthful innocence and curiosity. "Are those made of nickel?"
Snipeshooter glared at the dice he had dropped, not either a 7 or 11 and thus a bad roll for him. But also because maybe the bothersome little Sand watched him too closely and apparently understood him.
"You haven't been out gambling?" Laces hushed voice couldn't conceal her accusation. He scooped up his dice and jumped down from the piano, feeling his stomach settled as he locked on her eyes. She had the same color eyes as Kelly himself.
"Not since Kelly left." He shrugged, shoving his hands into his pockets. She smiled, the way she always had, before almost running across the room to him. She outstretched her arms and Snipeshooter ducked into them, still a head shorter than the woman.
She gave him a tight squeeze and released him as quickly as she had gathered him up. She smelled of flowers and pastries and maybe a warm tea. Nothing like she had smelled before. Snipeshooter stepped away from her and grinned. Miss Audrey didn't look much like Laces had but there was no mistaking the woman was the same as the girl.
"I've never been in this room." She whispered, letter her eyes wander the space.
"No, you wouldn't have been. I bet you were surprised to find out there was schooling at all in the lodging house." Snipes strode towards the tables pushed against the back walls.
"You've been in here?" She asked curiously, following him. She walked softly, in a way she never had when she had lived in this lodging house.
"Jack never suffered fools well, and he was fond of learning himself." He explained.
"The Children's Aid Society explained it was required of all the lodgers." Laces frowned, instinctively reaching out to grab the end of a table Snipeshooter intended to move. Laces had always jumped to help, to do anything the boys were doing but Miss Audrey couldn't.
"Miss Kai," Snipeshooter quietly warned looking down at her hands, "Don't you want to remove your coat?"
"I learned how to read in this room when I first got here. Jack sat in lessons every night with me for weeks, until I could read the whole front page of the evening edition." Snipes explained nonchalantly as Miss Elizabeth and Sand entered the room with Kloppman trailing behind them.
Miss Elizabeth looked delighted by Sand, as the boy animatedly explained a recent geography lesson to her. Sand hadn't outgrown the evening lessons, much preferring them to roam the streets of the city cold and bored in the evening. Audrey had started unbuttoning her long coat, darting glances at Snipeshooter every couple of seconds.
"Jack taught you to read?"
"Nah, Jack just had the patience to sit and listen to me. Then he made sure I learned enough arithmetic to do basic sums, understand how to give change back for a nickel or a dime." Snipes smiled sheepishly. She tilted her chin signaling a nod before turning her face to her companion and Snipeshooter saw what the whispering had been about for weeks. The movements, the cues, and the silence. Miss Audrey Kai was unmistakably a bird now.
Snipeshooter stared at the woman, collecting her into his memory the same way he had once done with Jack Kelly. But now he found himself taking stock of Miss Audrey against Laces. Her hair was not plaited or tucked messily under a cap, her cheeks were clean and rosy, and her hands were covered by gloves and not ink. He had seen her twice in the last year. Once on the shore when Slingshot, Bottle Cap and he had pretended with her. And once in the lodging house when she had looked so lost and broken that Snipes wondered if she would ever be whole again.
Miss Elizabeth was excitedly checking the piano after Sand expressed a liking to music classes. She was busily asking the boy about how the lodging house lessons usually worked. While Miss Audrey danced around the room, bold and effortless, arranging chairs and speaking lightly to her teaching companion and Sand.
Boots trudged into the room carrying two large bags, as Kloppman moved to help Snipeshooter with the tables. Audrey clapped joyously and as if she were surprised her bags appeared. Snipeshooter snorted more surprised to see the older newsboy appear, if he hadn't been to lessons in over a year, Boots had avoided them longer. It seemed secrets traveled fast these days.
"I brought a brownie with me, do you boys think you might stand for a photograph for me?" Audrey asked in excited polite tones.
"To show others how the poor live to your society ladies, like Jacob Riis did?" Snipeshooter found himself retorting without thinking. The very mouth Jack Kelly had enjoyed but always tried to curb for the boy's own good from going off without permission. Sand and Boots glared at their leader, debating mutiny no doubt
"Well Snipeshooter, was it? Mr. Jacob Riis didn't ever much like to dance with us society ladies, as it were." Miss Audrey flashed a brilliant smile before taking her bags from Boots. "But no, I've just gotten this brownie as a birthday trinket and I'm trying out my hand at photography. The catalogs say anyone can do it."
"Mr. Longfellow is such a dear to have given it to you, Miss Audrey," Elizabeth exclaimed. She seemed a nice enough lady, Snipeshooter mused the kind that would buy the last paper and give you an extra penny if she saw you on the street.
"I've got a friend, a gentleman in the newspaper business out west that has a fancy for photographs and I want to surprise him with some of my own work," Audrey explained brightly, conspiratorially, completely straight-faced.
Snipeshooter dropped the chair he had been holding onto his own foot. She was talking of Kelly. Audrey Alexandra Kai, Laces wanted to send Jack Kelly a memory across the United States. His mouth was open, he knew it was. His eyes were probably bulging, in that way he'd learn to hide years ago to win a bet on a lie. Sand and Boots had moved towards him, on either side and now a sharp and rather forceful elbow pressed into his throat. Sand was still too short to catch his jaw.
"Miss Audrey's asked us to stand here, you could look less like a codfish Snipes." Sand teased. Boots smirked at Snipes, before pulling his hat up just enough that his own curls popped out onto his forehead. Curls that always helped identify Snipeshooter in a crowd.
"There you boys, look right like gentlemen now. Stand still for me for the count of ten?" Audrey asked as she opened the lens on the front of her box camera.
Snipeshooter grinned like a fool, with his arms around Boots and Sand. There weren't many of Jack's boys left, so many of the older boys had left, grown up at the same time. But Jack Kelly had found these three young street urchins, and Snipes knew the man would appreciate seeing them whole and healthy and in all places a schoolroom.