A Bandit's Tale Read online

  (If you’ve been here yourself, you’ll know what I’m talking about. In any case, for your edification, I’ve included a map at the end of this history, so this may be a good time to peruse it. I drew it myself, so it’s a bit rough, but at least you’ll get a feel for the lay of the land.)

  I kept heading south, and before long I reached the northeast corner of Central Park, at 110th Street and Fifth Avenue. I considered sleeping in the park under some rock or bush, but the thought of my hidden stash of money and a roof over my head kept me moving. I knew of lodging houses where you could rent a bunk with a locker for fifteen cents. For twenty-five cents, you could even get a tiny room to yourself.

  But I wanted to make my money last as long as I could. I’d head for a place Carlo had once pointed out to me: Happy Jack’s Canvas Place, on Pell Street, where for seven cents you could sleep on a strip of canvas that was hung like a hammock. That would be just fine for me. I put my head down and kept on.

  The wind and rain battered me from all sides, slashing my skin like needles. My hair felt as heavy as a cold, soaked rag. It was hard to keep my eyes open without being stung by raindrops, so at first I almost didn’t notice the copper up ahead. Quickly I stepped inside a doorway and waited for him to turn the corner, shaking my head like a dog.

  I hadn’t wanted to go through Central Park; it was so enormous I was afraid I’d get lost. Now I wondered if I might be safer there than on the streets. Getting turned around and losing time was a risk I’d have to take. I didn’t want a copper noticing my coat and asking me any questions.

  A little farther along, I found an entrance and followed a walking path into Central Park. Around me, giant trees swayed. Their bare branches screeched and clicked above me. I imagined them as giants fighting with each other. Whenever there was a big crack! I jumped, afraid some tremendous limb might fall on my head.

  My socks and shoes were soaked through; my pants clung to my legs. I couldn’t stop shivering; it was as if I was shaking from the inside out. All at once I remembered I’d stuffed my cap in my pocket. Stupid! I should’ve thought of that sooner. I dragged it out with red, shaking fingers and pulled the brim down low. At least now I could see a little better.

  But what I saw frightened me. Central Park was so wild—bushes bending in the wind, tree branches knocking overhead, rivulets of water streaming down hills and making giant puddles on the walkways. In all the months I’d been in America—in my whole life—I’d never been alone in a storm like this. Every so often, I caught sight of one or two people in the distance, but they always had their heads down. As the afternoon wore on, I saw fewer people. Everyone had fled to the safety of home.

  Everyone but me. I pressed on, step by step, head down, placing one foot in front of the other. I tried to stay on paths close to Fifth Avenue, on the east side of the park. Sometimes, with so many twists and turns, I got turned around. I just did my best to keep heading south. Whenever I realized I was walking in circles, I stopped, got my bearings, and started out again.

  I lost track of time. It seemed like hours before I came to the boundary wall. I had made it through the whole park! But this corner didn’t look familiar. It wasn’t where I’d come in last summer with Tony and Carlo. I walked to the sidewalk and looked up at the street sign: Seventh Avenue, two wide blocks west of where I’d started. I had crossed the park from east to west.

  It would take me longer now since I’d gone out of my way. It’s all right, I told myself as I passed the corner of Fifty-Eighth Street and Seventh Avenue. My destination was still more than sixty blocks away. In good weather, it might take me less than two hours of walking. Now? I had no idea. I would just follow Seventh Avenue down for a while, then cut over on Bleecker Street to the Lower East Side. At least, I hadn’t gotten completely lost—or been knocked down by a falling branch.

  I plodded on. It was late afternoon and colder than ever. I was no longer worried about being spotted: I’d never seen the streets of New York so deserted.

  Then, suddenly, everything changed. All at once the ground seemed to slide out from under me. Whoosh! In a second, I was flat on my back, slammed against the sidewalk.

  Ice! The rain had become sleet, making the ground slick and slippery. Drops of frozen rain slashed at my face like my padrone’s sharp knife. I got to all fours, then slowly to my feet, trying to balance as best I could. I tested the pavement, moving one foot out slowly. Cautiously feeling my way along the sides of buildings wherever I could, I slid along. At this rate, it would take me hours to get to Mulberry Street.

  This really wasn’t like any storm I’d ever seen. It was something else entirely. It was dangerous. I could die out here, I realized. I would die if it got much colder, if I stopped moving, or if I fell and hit my head. I could imagine myself lying alone in the gutter, just like a forgotten cart horse.

  That thought scared me. I felt a sob catch in my throat. I shook my head hard. I wouldn’t cry. I hadn’t, not once, not even when Signor Ancarola flashed his silver knife. Besides, crying wouldn’t help. There was no one around to hear me.

  I took a long, shuddering breath to steady myself. The image of Old Biter popped into my mind. I imagined him plodding steadily behind me. Clop clop, clop clop.

  I would be like Old Biter. I wouldn’t let this storm frighten me. One breath, one step. Left, right. My heart stopped racing. I was still miserable and shivering, but the panic slipped away.

  —

  And that’s how it went. The wind attacked me ferociously, as if it wanted to pick me up and throw me down again. But I managed to shuffle slowly along, inch by inch, foot by foot. Forty-Fourth, Thirtieth, Twenty-Sixth. The street signs kept me going.

  The gas lamps barely glowed as the darkness deepened. With my head bent low, I almost bumped into a telegraph pole. Clinging to the pole to rest for a minute, I calculated my route. I was still on Seventh Avenue, just below Fourteenth Street. I would stay on Seventh for about ten more blocks, then in Greenwich Village take a left on Bleecker Street to head east, back across town, and finally down to Little Italy. I can do this, I told myself.

  I let go of the pole and ventured carefully forward again, my feet making a sort of swish, swish rhythm on the icy sidewalk. It was all so slow! I hadn’t gotten far when I caught the sound of a voice behind me.

  Is someone hollering? I turned my head.

  It can’t be true!

  But it was. Even in the gloom and the sleet, I knew that red scarf, that clear, strong voice, those urgent, waving arms.

  Meddlin’ Mary.

  And, as usual, Mary Hallanan was hollering. This time she was hollering at me.

  CHAPTER 20

  A surprising instance of my rising to the occasion

  “Hallo there! Can you hear me? Come back!”

  Of course it was the crazy Irish girl. Who else would be out in this weather?

  I hesitated. I was, after all, an escaped inmate. I couldn’t take the risk of talking to people. Maybe I could pretend I hadn’t seen her, that I hadn’t heard her voice.

  “Help! I need help! Horses! My father!”

  Her father. That would make talking to her even more dangerous. Any grown-up would be likely to turn me in.

  “Please,” she cried, cupping her hands around her mouth to be heard, “my father’s hurt!”

  Out of the blue, a thought came to me: If my sisters, Anna or Emilia, were somewhere stranded in a storm, I’d want someone to help them. If Papa was hurt in an accident in the field, I’d want someone to bring him home safely.

  This was Meddlin’ Mary, who wouldn’t walk away from an animal in need. I couldn’t leave her. I heaved a big sigh and turned around.

  Mary shuffled to meet me, grabbing at my arm for balance. The wind tore her words to shreds. “Oh, thank you. Thank you! I was afraid you couldn’t hear me at first. They’re just a little ways over here on Fourteenth Street. I was getting so scared.”

  Her feet slipped. She flailed, she lunged, she pulled me down w
ith her. We both tumbled hard to the icy ground. Slush covered my hands.

  “Hey!” I sputtered.

  “Sorry!” Mary was on her feet first. She didn’t have gloves on either. She grabbed my hand and pulled me up. “Gosh, your hand is cold. Why did you fall? You were supposed to hold me up!”

  Me? I was already regretting my decision.

  —

  We crept along icy Fourteenth Street until, up ahead, I saw our destination. An empty omnibus stood deserted on the side of the street, two horses still in the traces. Nearby, a burly man of about forty leaned against a building, head bowed, half bent over as if in pain.

  “One of the mares reared,” Mary began, talking so quickly I could barely follow. “Da fell backward and twisted his ankle bad. He got the wind knocked out of him and couldn’t breathe for a minute or two. He could have cracked his head! The driver took off—said he’d come for the horses later. Understand?”

  I shook my head, confused. Wind? Knocked? Driver? It was as if she had started in the middle of some story. What did she want?

  When I didn’t answer, she pinched the skin of my wrist—hard. “Are you stupid?”

  I yelped and turned to her. Her cheeks were red and chapped from the wind. Her dark hair was half tucked up inside a knit cap, though curly tendrils stuck out all over. “Do you understand English?”

  “Yes!” I spat through chattering teeth. It was the first word I’d spoken since leaving Officer Reilly. “I…I just…What do you want me to do?”

  “Help Da unhitch the horses, of course.” She rolled her eyes, then leaned close again to yell in my ear. “We need to get them home to Barrow Street. It’s too dangerous for Da to ride. The horses might not even be used to a rider. Da will have to limp along.

  “I just hope his ankle isn’t broken,” she added. She slipped and almost pulled me down again. This time I was ready. I planted my feet and kept her steady. Our faces came close and our eyes met.

  I was afraid for a second she might recognize me as the boy she’d pelted with snowballs a year ago. Or maybe she’d remember seeing me get arrested for stealing the locket. Maybe she’d guess I was a runaway.

  But no. Mary wouldn’t remember one boy.

  “We need to go to Nine Barrow Street. It’s only ten blocks or so.” Mary was hollering again. Even a ferocious storm can’t keep her from chattering, I thought. Her eyes and cheeks were red, and not just from the wind and sleet. She’d been crying too.

  “Oh, this is all my fault! We shouldn’t have gone out. We…well, I really wanted to say goodbye to Mr. Bergh,” she said with a shaky breath. “I made Da take me. Mr. Bergh…he’s so ill. They say he’s dying. I know he’s old, but…I don’t like it when people die. He lives at Fifth Avenue and Thirty-Eighth, but it’s taken us hours to walk back. Hours!

  “Then we came across the driver and this omnibus. If we hadn’t come out, we wouldn’t have found the horses, so I suppose that’s good, isn’t it? The poor horses. I don’t blame the mare for rearing—all this garbage blowing around. That scares them, you know.

  “The driver threw up his hands and walked away. Said he was done in and they could die for all he cared,” she babbled on. I could barely catch her words in the wind. “I bet he’ll come to the stable looking for them later. And won’t give a thought to how we got them there—or that my da got hurt after he abandoned his own horses.”

  Her voice rose, and I sensed she was on the edge of panic. I grasped her arm. I found myself saying, “It’ll be all right. We can do it. I’m strong. Your father can lean on me.”

  I saw tears start in her eyes. She was scared. “Oh, thank you. I’m Mary Hallanan. What’s your name?”

  Now, this was when I should have lied, I suppose. Instead, I just blurted out my name. “Rocco. Rocco Zaccaro.”

  Then I said again, “It will be all right. We can do it.”

  And why not?

  After all, I’d already stolen a boat, escaped across a river, and walked miles through a wild and icy Central Park. Getting an injured man and a couple of horses home should be easy.

  When we reached Mary’s father, she pointed at me. “Da, this is Rocco. He can help.”

  Mr. Hallanan straightened up and reached out to shake my hand. “Good lad. Well, what do you think will work here? I got to admit that fall has addled my brains a bit.”

  He was asking me for my opinion! If a grown man needed my help, that meant he might be suffering from cold and shock. Back home in Calvello, Mama had occasionally treated men who’d been hurt, usually in the fields, or sometimes in fights. I knew pain could make it hard to think straight. And I also knew just what we should do.

  “Sir, if you lean on me, you can unhitch the horses safely. Mary can lead one horse,” I suggested. “And we’ll follow. I can support you so you don’t have to put much weight on your leg.”

  “Good plan.” Mr. Hallanan nodded. “I’m not stopping till I’ve got my feet up by the fire and a cup of hot tea and brandy in my hand.”

  Putting an arm over my shoulder, he braced himself against me. I tried to be as steady as I could, though he was quite a bit heavier than me. He took a deep breath and tested his right leg, wincing as he did. “Now, laddie, let’s move to the horses, slow and steady.”

  He groaned with every step, yet his fingers were sure as he unharnessed the horses. Even hurt, he was probably faster than either Mary or I would’ve been. The animals seemed to accept his gentle touch now, though they shifted their feet whenever a hard blast of wind hit them. They were nervous and restless, their eyes wide and frightened.

  Mary stood nearby so her father could hand the reins of the first horse to her. “Careful as you go, lass. We’ll be right behind you.”

  She nodded, her attention already on the horse. We got the second horse free and were soon following her, back along Fourteenth Street to the corner of Seventh Avenue.

  “Steady, girl!” Mr. Hallanan called to our mare.

  Then he bent down and said in my ear, “Dratted ice! Let’s hope she doesn’t go down and bring us with her. I swear, if it’s the last thing I do, I’m gonna work on those rubber horseshoe pads I told Mr. Bergh about.”

  The warmth of moving and the relief of heading home seemed to have revived him. The sleet and wind were fierce, but now he was talking too, and began to tell me about his idea for an invention to help keep horses safe on ice. Mary must get her love of gab from her father, I thought. Every time I’d seen Mary she was talking or, sometimes, yelling. I didn’t know how they were even speaking. By now every muscle in my body felt tense, my teeth were chattering, and my lips were numb.

  We’d never had long conversations at home, though Mama liked to sing while she cooked. Not Papa. I used to walk beside him to the fields each morning. Most days, we wouldn’t say ten words to each other.

  Mary Hallanan seemed so fond of talking she barely noticed whether the person next to her understood a thing she said. And now here was her father, blathering on about some sort of shoe made of rubber—whatever that might be—when so far as I could tell, we might die before we got warm again.

  Just ten blocks or so. It felt like miles. We stayed close behind Mary, who kept a slow but steady pace, stopping often to turn and yell, “Are you all right, Da? Almost there.”

  I sensed a change in the sleet that slashed at me. The drops became smaller, icier.

  It’s not stopping, I realized. Officer Reilly was right. This is all about to change to snow.

  —

  At last, Mary turned into Barrow Street. Mr. Hallanan threw up his free hand to point. “That’s it. Follow Mary through the archway under the sign: MICHAEL HALLANAN BOARDING AND STABLE. Designed the blacksmith shop and stable myself, I did.”

  Then the horses’ hooves were clopping on the brick walkway that led from the street to the rear. Under cover of the arch overhead, Mr. Hallanan stopped, removed his hat, and shook the ice from it.

  “Rocco, was it? You can stay tonight,” he said. “I’ve
got a cot out back for Tim, my stableboy. He’s at home with his family since it’s Sunday. We’ll soon get the horses brushed and fed, and some hot soup in our own bellies.”

  He touched my coat and looked into my face. Our eyes met. His voice was quiet. “You’ll be safe with us, lad.”

  He knows! I thought. Somehow, he knows. But how? Does he recognize this as a House of Refuge uniform?

  There was nothing I could do. I couldn’t go back out in the storm. Not tonight.

  “Thank you, sir,” I mumbled, swallowing hard.

  “We’re just glad you turned up to help,” the blacksmith replied.

  Then he winked and raised his voice, loud enough for Mary to hear.

  “Good thing you came to our rescue, Rocco. Knowing my daughter, she might’ve left me out there to freeze while she brought the horses home.”

  CHAPTER 21

  A lot of snow and a lot of lies

  “Never seen anything like it since I came over from Galway,” said Mr. Hallanan the next morning, staring out the window. “Why, I doubt there ever has been a storm to match this in a century. And to think no one knew it was coming.”

  No one, I thought, except Officer Reilly.

  It had started to snow the night before, after we’d brushed the horses, picked the ice from their hooves, and fed and watered them. It was already snowing hard when we tumbled into sleep. Now it was a full-on blizzard.

  Outside, the world was a whirlwind of white. The snow blew sideways, driven by furious gusts that beat against the glass. Drifts would soon be up to the windowsill if this kept up. Luckily, there was a hallway leading from the family’s living quarters back to the stable. After helping Mary with the chores, I hadn’t had to venture out to get to the kitchen. I couldn’t even imagine going outside.

  “I just hope there aren’t any drivers trying to take horses out in the storm,” Mary said, for the third or fourth time, pacing by the window. She turned to her father and adjusted the pillow under his ankle, which he’d propped up on a chair.