Orphan Train(14)

I feel the sting of truth in his words, but I lift my chin. “At least I’m not a criminal.”

He laughs. “That’s what I am, am I?”

“You tell me.”

“Would you believe me?”

“Probably not.”

“No point then, is there.”

I do not respond and we three sit in silence, Carmine awed into stillness by the boy’s presence. I look out at the severe and lonely landscape drifting past the window. It’s been raining off and on all day. Gray clouds hang low in a watery sky.

“They took my kit from me,” the boy says after a while.

I turn to look at him. “What?”

“My bootblack kit. All my paste and brushes. How do they expect me to make a living?”

“They don’t. They’re going to find you a family.”

“Ah, that’s right,” he says with a dry laugh. “A ma to tuck me in at night and a pa to teach me a trade. I don’t see it working out like that. Do you?”

“I don’t know. Haven’t thought about it,” I say, though of course I have. I’ve gleaned bits and pieces: that babies are the first to be chosen, then older boys, prized by farmers for their strong bones and muscles. Last to go are girls like me, too old to be turned into ladies, too young to be serious help around the house, not much use in the field. If we’re not chosen, we get sent back to the orphanage. “Anyway, what can we do about it?”

Reaching into his pocket, he pulls out a penny. He rolls it across his fingers, holds it between thumb and forefinger and touches it to Carmine’s nose, then clasps it in his closed fist. When he opens his hand, the penny isn’t there. He reaches behind Carmine’s ear, and—“Presto,” he says, handing him the penny.

Carmine gazes at it, astonished.

“You can put up with it,” the boy says. “Or you can run away. Or maybe you’ll get lucky and live happily ever after. Only the good Lord knows what’s going to happen, and He ain’t telling.”





union   Station, Chicago, 1929


We become an odd little family, the boy—real name Hans, I learn, called Dutchy on the street—and Carmine and I in our three-seat abode. Dutchy tells me he was born in New York to German parents, that his mother died of pneumonia and his father sent him out on the streets to earn money as a bootblack, beating him with a belt if he didn’t bring enough in. So one day he stopped going home. He fell in with a group of boys who slept on any convenient step or sidewalk during the summer, and in the winter months in barrels and doorways, in discarded boxes on iron gratings on the margin of Printing House Square, warm air and steam rising from the engines beneath. He taught himself piano by ear in the back room of a speakeasy, plunked out tunes at night for drunken patrons, saw things no twelve-year-old should see. The boys tried to look after one another, though if one got sick or maimed—catching pneumonia or falling off a streetcar or under the wheels of a truck—there wasn’t much any of them could do.

A few kids from Dutchy’s gang are on the train with us—he points out Slobbery Jack, who has a habit of spilling on himself, and Whitey, a boy with translucent skin. They were lured off the street with the promise of a hot meal, and here’s where they ended up.

“What about the hot meal? Did you get it?”

“Did we ever. Roast beef and potatoes. And a clean bed. But I don’t trust it. I wager they’re paid by the head, the way Indians take scalps.”

“It’s charity,” I say. “Didn’t you hear what Mrs. Scatcherd said? It’s their Christian duty.”

“All I know is nobody ever did nothing for me out of Christian duty. I call tell by the way they’re talking I’m going to end up worked to the bone and not see a dime for it. You’re a girl. You might be all right, baking pies in the kitchen or taking care of a baby.” He squints at me. “Except for the red hair and freckles, you look okay. You’ll be fine and dandy sitting at the table with a napkin on your lap. Not me. I’m too old to be taught manners, or to follow somebody else’s rules. The only thing I’m good for is hard labor. Same with all of us newsies and peddlers and bill posters and bootblacks.” He nods toward one boy after another in the car.


ON THE THIRD DAY WE CROSS THE ILLINOIS STATE LINE. NEAR CHICAGO, Mrs. Scatcherd stands for another lecture. “In a few minutes we will arrive at union   Station, whereupon we will switch trains for the next portion of our journey,” she tells us. “If it were up to me, I’d send you in a straight line right across the platform to the other train, without a minute’s worry that you’ll get yourselves into trouble. But we are not allowed to board for half an hour. Young men, you will wear your suit coats, and young ladies must put on your pinafores. Careful not to muss them now.