Hi, all!
I'm really grateful Raggs extended the due date for this one. Things have been crazy! Schools up and running, dance is up and running, choir is up and running, everything is up and running.
Anyway, this was inspired in part by a post I saw on tumblr about how "one of the themes of Newsies is how they won't screw up the world the way the older generation did and they didn't screw up the world because WWI happened". They would have been in the sweet spot for enlisting and the draft once the US joined the war. I can't find the exact post, but credit goes to the person who came up with it.
This is crossed over (as per the circulation challenge) with the musical Annie, which takes place in 1933. Personally, I head-cannon Crutchie as 15-16, so in this fic he is around 49-ish. Not really necessary information, but I felt like I should share.
So, I hope you all enjoy my first cross over fic, and stay tuned for a mini-history lesson at the end.
Requirements:
Task: Annie
Word count: 1389
It was an abysmal evening in an abysmal place. Low clouds hung in the air around the Hooverville, shrouding it in silence. The usual clatter of many people confined to a small space seemed to have been silenced by the weather.
Very few people were about, most trying to take shelter in the shacks they called home. Those that were outside, for one reason or other, kept to themselves.
Crutchie sighed, looking at the stained paper in his hands. He could just make out the date: Friday, September 15, 1933. Today marked the fifteenth anniversary of the end of the Battle of Saint-Mihiel.
He dampened the edges of the paper slightly, before slapping it over a hole in the wall of his ramshackle hut. It had poured earlier that day, and the mist that still hung in the air made the paper refuse to stick. Peeling away from the hole, the newspaper rolled off the wall and landed in a puddle. The water obscured the date, and Crutchie was glad of it. He didn't want any reminders of what day it was.
Crutchie bent down to grab the paper from the puddle. He supposed he could wad it up, shove it in the hole and be done with it. Maybe this time the patch would last for more than a week. He straightened, set his too small crutch against the wall of the shanty, and started rolling the paper back and forth in his hands.
A small part of him felt guilty at balling the newspaper up. The pages had so many uses besides being reduced to paste. But he reminded himself that he had found it in the gutter, discarded by someone who could actually afford a newspaper, and that it was at the end of its life cycle anyway.
The quiet of the Hooverville was broken with a high-pitched shriek, followed by the sound of things falling over and several profanities. Crutchie whipped around trying to find the source. He had no idea where it had come from, and more sounds added to the cacophony.
The next thing he knew, Crutchie was on his back being savagely licked by a giant bear covered in spaghetti.
"Hey, mista, are you alright?"
Pushing the beast off him, and rather surprised at how light the thing was, Crutchie rolled into an upright position. Before him stood a young girl with a shock of red hair, looking concerned.
"Sandy didn't hurt ya too badly, did he?"
"Sandy?"
"My dog."
Crutchie looked at the creature beside him. It was a dog, not a bear, and the spaghetti was really just matted clumps of yellow fur.
"No, 'm alright. He just startled me. But you might want to hold on to him better in the future."
"I was holding on to him! The string just broke."
Around the dog neck was a piece of twine with a frayed end that had clearly once functioned as a leash.
"I can get you something to use until you get home. So he won't get away again," offered Crutchie.
"Thanks, mista."
Crutchie slowly stood, grabbed his crutch, and went inside to grab his ball of string. It didn't take long to locate it among his few possessions, and he quickly cut off a length with rusty kitchen shears.
When he returned outside, the girl was sitting on the ground, petting Sandy and staring thoughtfully at his wall.
"Here." He tossed her the string.
"Thanks. By the way, you have a big hole in your wall."
Crutchie snorted. "So I've seen."
"You know, you can fix it with newspapers. It'll work for a little while."
"I know. That's what I was doing when your dog attacked me."
"Oh. Sorry. Sandy's sorry, too."
"It's fine. Wasn't like it was working anyway."
She laughed at that, before introducing herself. "I'm Annie."
"Crutchie."
"That's a funny name."
"It's a nickname."
"Really? Why?"
"'Cause I walk with a crutch."
"That makes sense. Why do you go by your nickname, anyway?"
"Because it's what people've called for a long time. I use Charlie at work. Well, when I worked."
"Is Charlie your real name?"
"Yes. Look, Annie, don't you need to be headin' home?"
"Nah. I got a while before I need to head back."
The way she said it, like she desperately wanted it to sound normal for her not to need to get home, caught Crutchie's attention. It was all too familiar.
"Won't your family be looking for you?"
"I don't got a family. Not with me anyway. I'm an orphan. My parents… they left me when I was a baby. I have a letter, saying they'll come back, but sometimes I'm not so sure. " Annie stared hard at the ground, whether from shame or anger, Crutchie wasn't sure.
Her explanation made sense with the fact that she was in a Hooverville around dinnertime and didn't need to get home. It also explained why her phrasing was familiar. Crutchie was sure he'd said the same thing years ago. But in his case, there had been people who would look for him.
"Geez, kid, even orphans can have families."
"You've got a funny idea of what orphan means then."
"Well, maybe not blood families. But I'm an orphan, and I had a family. I don't mean through marriage or kids either."
"What do ya mean?"
"Well, friends. People you're really close to can be sisters or brothers."
"Really?"
"Yeah. That's the nice thing 'bout being an orphan, I guess. You can make your own family. Growing up, I had lots of brothers and some sisters. Not one of us was related. I chose them, and they chose me."
Annie sat there for a moment, petting Sandy and staring at his wall again. He could tell she was thinking; mulling over what he had said and trying to determine his credibility. After a while, she spoke up again.
"So, I can choose my own family, if my parents don't come back for me?"
"You can choose your own family even if they do come back for you."
She smiled at that, before frowning again.
"You said 'had'."
"What?"
"You said you had a family."
"Yeah, I did."
"What happened to them? Your family?"
Crutchie sighed. Should he really explain what happened to a kid? He supposed he should. Annie needed to know that they didn't leave him by choice.
"Different things. They're all dead or gone. I guess I still have one left, but he doesn't remember me much, and I haven't seen him in years. There were illnesses, accidents. But most of them… You heard of the Great War?"
"Yeah."
"All my brothers joined up. Even those with families and jobs. Kath—one of my sisters—she somehow made sure they were all in the same regiment. She was a reporter, and she followed their unit around as a war correspondent. There was this big battle that lasted five days in the last year of the war. Only one of them came back, and he's at Welfare Island."
"He's where?"
"Welfare Island. It used to be called Blackwell's island until the twenties. There's a bunch of hospitals, and Davey is at the insane asylum there."
"Oh. I'm sorry."
"It's been fifteen years. I'm just glad they were together. You must find it silly, a grown man still upset about something that happened ages ago." He gave her a smile that didn't reach his eyes.
"It's not odd. You lost your family. You should be able to be sad for as long as you want. I'm sad and I never even knew mine."
"Thank you, Annie."
Annie looked at the sky. "I got to get going, or Ms. Hannigan's going to find out and get mad. Thank you, Mr. Crutchie."
"You're welcome. I hope you find your family."
Annie hugged Crutchie, startling him, before running off through the rows of shanties. She and her dog were too far away to hear when Crutchie spoke again.
"And I hope you get to keep them."
Here are the things I learned while writing this fic, as well as things I think you should know. They jump around a bit, so I tried to keep them in (very) rough chronological order.
1) As many of you know, WWI (also called the Great War, and the War To End All Wars) took place July 28, 1914 – November 11, 1918. The US got evolved in early 1917
2) The Battle of Saint-Mihiel was a WWI battle fought from 12–15 September 1918, involving the American Expeditionary Forces and 110,000 French troops under the command of General John J. Pershing of the United States against German positions. The battle resulted in Allied victory.
3) During World War I there were three military registrations in the US. The first, on June 5, 1917, was for all men between the ages of 21 and 31. The second, on June 5, 1918, registered those who attained age 21 after June 5, 1917. (A supplemental registration was held on August 24, 1918, for those becoming 21 years old after June 5, 1918. This was included in the second registration.) The third registration was held on September 12, 1918, for men age 18 through 45.
4) During the Battle of Saint-Mihiel there where 7,000 casualties on the allied side. There where 4500 Allied soldiers KIA (Killed in action), and 2500 WIA (Wounded in Action). There where 22,500 casualties on the German side. 2000 KIA, 5500 WIA, and 15,000 POW (prisoner of war).
5) In 1828, the City of New York bought Blackwell Island for $32,000. Initially, it served as a center for castaways and necessitated a formal penitentiary, which was established in 1832. The Blackwell Island penitentiary was constructed of gray granite reflecting feudal-style architecture with a fortress or castle-like appearance. It stood six hundred feet long and four stories high at the north end of the island providing 800 cells for inmates. Just seven years after its grand opening though, the New York City Lunatic Asylum, as it was named, housed 1,700 patients. The 800 cells of the penitentiary were subsequently filled to the brim. In the early 1900s, journalist Nelly Bly exposed the unacceptable conditions of the asylum—inmate overcrowding, favoritism, and drug dealing—which prompted much needed social reforms. The plans to clean up the penitentiary and update and revive the island's castaway-characteristic resulted in its name change from Blackwell's Island to Welfare Island in 1921. The first step to reform was the transfer of inmates from Blackwell's to Rikers Island, which, in reality, did not happen until further outrages in the 1930s absolutely necessitated it.
6) A "Hooverville" was a shanty town built by homeless people during the Great Depression. They were named after Herbert Hoover, who was President of the US during the onset of the Depression and widely blamed for it. The term was coined by Charles Michelson, publicity chief of the Democratic National Committee. There were hundreds of Hoovervilles across the country during the 1930s and hundreds of thousands of people lived in these slums.
7) There where two notable Hoovervilles in New York City:
Central Park, New York City: Scores of homeless families camped out at the Great Lawnat Central Park, then an empty reservoir. Riverside Park, New York City: A shantytown occupied Riverside Park at 72nd Street during the depression.
8) The musical Annie, has a song called "We'd Like to Thank You, Herbert Hoover," which takes place in a Hooverville beneath the 59th Street Bridge. In the song, the chorus sings of the hardships they now suffer because of the Great Depression and their contempt for the former president