A Bandit's Tale Page 5

  I spotted Luigi and Marco slumped in a corner. Luigi tried to smile at me, then stopped and put a hand to his lip. I knew why. All day, every word or movement of my mouth had made my own cut start to bleed again. I gave him a tiny nod, feeling a stab of regret that I’d abandoned them that morning.

  Padrone limped to the middle of the room and threw his arms up in dismay. “You boys look to me to feed you all. You complain if your breakfast or dinner is a little short. How am I supposed to pay for food and the roof over your heads when you don’t do what you’re asked?”

  He shook his head. “I’m disgusted. A little snow and you fall to pieces. Not one of you has come back with a whole dollar.”

  I looked around and let the silence stretch out. Then I stepped forward and held out my hand.

  “I have, Padrone,” I said. “I earned a dollar—and an extra dime besides.”

  CHAPTER 7

  A chapter covering many long and dismal days; observations on horses

  So there you have it. That was my first, miserable day as a street musician, struggling to earn a single dollar by striking a little triangle and begging for coins. The best part had been meeting Tony and Carlo. But though I continued to watch for them every day, I never spotted them. They seemed to have been swallowed up by the city, two drops in an ocean of people.

  I can’t say the same for that girl, the one they called Meddlin’ Mary. I encountered her again a few weeks later, after a big April rainstorm had turned the streets into rivers of mud and manure. I came around a corner into a side street and there they were—the girl and that same old man, the Great Meddler—frowning over a deep, uneven hole in the paving stones.

  Curious, I stepped behind a telegraph pole to watch. Mary peered up at a street sign, then jotted something in a notebook. Mr. Bergh bent down and unfolded a wooden ruler. He moved around the big rut, placing the ruler here and there, all the while calling out to Mary, who seemed to be recording what he said in a small black notebook.

  Suddenly a horse-drawn cab came barreling around the corner. Without missing a beat, Mary waved for it to go around them, her dark braid flying as she flung her arms into the air. Meddlin’ Mary could stop traffic!

  What could possibly be so fascinating about a hole in the street? I wondered. The mystery was solved the next week, when I passed the same place and spied two men at work filling the gap, making the spot with the worn-away, broken stones smooth again.

  Horses! That was the answer. Mr. Henry Bergh and Mary Hallanan (and I suppose there were others too) were trying to make the city safer for horses. Somehow, they knew how to get things done, things as small as filling a single gap where a horse might trip.

  After that, I began to see Mary everywhere, especially if I wandered west, toward Greenwich Village. Sometimes she carried a book or two, other times that black notebook. Often I would spot her standing on a corner, watching horses as they passed or gazing fixedly down at the mishmash of stones and pavements that made up the city streets. Her movements were so regular I decided she must have had her own route to patrol.

  But watching Meddlin’ Mary (and, I admit, sometimes even looking for her) led to something unexpected. I began to notice horses too. It just crept up on me, gradual-like, and once I started, I couldn’t stop.

  I’d pass a gap in the road and wonder if Mary and Mr. Henry Bergh would get it fixed before a horse fell in and broke a leg. I noticed horses so thin their ribs showed. Every week, I saw drivers unhitching fallen horses and leaving carcasses in the gutter. And, of course, omnibuses and streetcars pulled by two horses were everywhere. They were, I realized, always packed to overflowing, making heavy loads for the poor animals.

  Then came the day when I saw a driver beating a team struggling to move a heavily loaded wagon. The horses’ legs were shaking, their heads bowed. They were doing their best. It made me so mad I began banging my triangle and shouting at the driver in Italian. He shot me an annoyed look and eventually stopped, though he probably didn’t understand a word I said.

  It’s a good thing Old Biter stayed in Naples with the sailor, I found myself thinking. That donkey wouldn’t like New York City one bit.

  —

  By now I could play a few different rhythms on my triangle—enough to coax occasional smiles from passersby and entice them to drop a penny or nickel into my palm. Most nights, I made it back by dark with my dollar. When I didn’t, I curled up against the locked door, often with Luigi and Marco, who couldn’t quite get the hang of strumming their big harp. Sometimes Padrone took a paddle to those of us who didn’t meet our quota. The less said about that, the better.

  Truth was, most of the boys knew only one or two tunes; their violins sounded like screeching cats. There was an exception, though. One spring afternoon, I was searching for a place to play on Elizabeth Street when I saw a small crowd gathered up ahead.

  Drawing closer, I caught the sweet, plaintive sounds of a violin. Curious, I pushed to the front. There was Giuseppe, wielding his bow like it was part of his hand. I stayed until the end of the tune, when everyone smiled and applauded and dropped coins into his outstretched hand. Nothing like that had ever happened when I tried to make music.

  I asked Giuseppe about it that night.

  “I love the violin,” he admitted. “But it doesn’t do me much good. Padrone knows I can play well. Once he found out that I can easily earn more than a dollar a day, he made me stay in the same spot so he can swoop in to collect anything I’ve got in my pocket by noon.”

  That wasn’t fair, but by now it didn’t surprise me. Giuseppe didn’t seem like the sort of boy not to fight back, though.

  “You’re good enough to be in a real orchestra. Can’t you try to hide some money away?” I wanted to know.

  “Even if I did, greenhorn, I wouldn’t tell you where it was,” he said before rolling over on the straw so his back was to me. Giuseppe had his own friends in our den, three boys he had known back home. Marco, Luigi, and I were still newcomers in his eyes and not to be trusted.

  Still, despite what Giuseppe said, I didn’t feel like a greenhorn anymore. I had picked up a few words of English. I could find my way around Little Italy and recognize street signs. I knew that Crosby was only a block from Broadway, the street that always seemed to me like a great river. Giuseppe told me it led to an enormous space with meadows and trees called Central Park—and even beyond.

  “I walked all the way up there once, before Padrone starting watching me so closely,” he bragged. “A nice gent had given me a dollar first thing that morning, so I set off to explore. It’s like a whole separate city of green, that Central Park. And open to anyone. Even us.”

  I hadn’t managed to go farther north than Fourteenth Street. I kept to the patchwork of streets that made up Little Italy—Broome, Hester, Mulberry, Elizabeth, and Grand—though sometimes I did wander toward the West Village, near Seventh Avenue. (Not that I was trying to catch a glimpse of Meddlin’ Mary at work, mind you.) Little Italy was a poor neighborhood. It wasn’t always easy to get my daily quota there. But I took comfort in hearing my own language around me.

  Despite the run-down tenements, the neighborhood was a humming beehive day and night: workers heading to garment factories, fish and cheese peddlers clustered on a corner, fruit vendors hawking their wares. When people stopped to chat near me, I would catch snatches of conversations, enough to piece together their stories. I heard a man tell another that he’d just earned enough to send for his wife. Friends and relatives seemed to look out for one another.

  It’s like Calvello, only bigger. Much bigger, I realized.

  Sometimes I wondered what would happen if I could bring my family here. Papa was used to hard physical labor, so he might work unloading ships at the dock. I could imagine Anna and, when she was older, Emilia striding off to a garment factory with other girls. Mama, who was always thrifty and shrewd, might take in boarders and entice them to stay with her delicious meals. Maybe, with everyone else working, Vito
could stay in school.

  This was foolish thinking, I knew. Mostly, I stood in the midst of noisy, chattering crowds, feeling so alone I began to talk to my little triangle. “How are you doing today?” I’d whisper. “Will you ring brightly for me so we can earn our dollar quickly?”

  I know you’re probably laughing at me now. Snicker if you must. All I can say is that my loneliness felt as real as pain. Sometimes sharp, like a knife cut; other times dull, like the endless ache of hunger.

  And while most days I wanted to be like Tony, who strutted like a prince, there were moments when I thought I’d be happy to do real work, just as I’d done back home. Every day in New York, I saw boys sweeping sidewalks and shops, selling newspapers, and hurrying here and there carrying messages of all sorts.

  But this? Anything would be better than being kept in a den. Anything would be better than being a beggar.

  CHAPTER 8

  In which I receive an intriguing invitation

  “So, here you are,” crooned a voice in my ear one afternoon in early summer.

  I whirled, ready to pounce or run to protect my earnings. It hadn’t been a bad day so far. The warm breeze and sunshine seemed to lift people’s spirits, and I already had fifty cents.

  “Tony!”

  “That’s right, your first friend in the city. Let’s take a look at you.” Tony stood back, folded his arms across his chest, and gazed at me solemnly.

  He shook his head and sighed. “What do you think, Carlo? Rocco’s been here quite a few weeks now, but he looks as much like a bedraggled alley rat as he did the first day.”

  Almost without thinking, I touched my tongue to the scar on my lip. It was still there, it would always be there—a reminder of what I now was. Padrone’s boys went to the public baths once a month, and wore their clothes until they fell off. My shirt was caked with dried mud; both sleeves were ripped. My pants reached only to the top of my ankles. Somehow, even with little food, I’d grown an inch since March.

  I was definitely a pathetic-looking creature. For his part, Tony glowed with good health, as smart and sleek as a spirited young colt. He sported a nifty vest and a stylish bowler hat. And his shoes! Oh, they were beauties, made of real brown leather. Even on these dusty streets, they shone. They were exactly the sort I dreamed of wearing one day, the kind of shoes to make Papa proud of me again.

  At Tony’s shoulder, Carlo grinned. “I hate to say it, Tony, but Rocco still looks like a greenhorn to me.”

  “I am not!” I protested, jutting out my chin. “I can find my way around just fine, and I haven’t been robbed once since that first day.” That, at least, was true.

  “Good for you,” Tony said wryly. “And how are you getting along as a street musician?”

  “I do all right,” I told them. I couldn’t resist lying, just a little. “I haven’t been short my dollar quota even once.”

  “Yet you haven’t tried to escape,” Tony pointed out.

  “No,” I admitted. “But I will. Soon.”

  That, as I was sure Tony realized, was another lie. It was perfectly plain I was nothing more than a fly stuck in my padrone’s web.

  Why hadn’t I tried? I could pile up excuses one by one until they were as tall as a great building: I’d been sick, coughing through much of the spring; I didn’t want to starve; I was still trying to figure out a plan so I wouldn’t get caught; I worried about my parents losing the money Padrone had promised them each year.

  The truth was, I was in a muddle. I didn’t know where to begin. I couldn’t imagine how to change my life.

  Tony made a tsk-tsk sound with his tongue. “I’m disappointed, Rocco. I expected a sharp lad like you to be free of your padrone by now—or at least have the gumption to try.”

  Then, leaning close, he whispered conspiratorially, “Maybe we can help you out again.”

  He grinned, exposing his jagged tooth. If Tony ever had occasion to bite someone, that tooth would definitely come in handy.

  That tooth made me think of Old Biter, traipsing happily through the streets of Naples. I wondered if he’d given up his bad habits and now greeted people with a toothy donkey grin. I bet Old Biter’s new owner is just like Meddlin’ Mary, making sure he doesn’t step in any treacherous holes, I thought.

  “Why would you help me again?” I asked warily.

  I felt an odd chill, as if an invisible fog had touched the air between us. It struck me that this might not be an entirely friendly encounter. I still owed Tony a dollar—a dollar and ten cents, to be exact. It had been so long since I’d seen him I’d almost forgotten about my debt. He, I suspected, had not.

  And I did owe Tony. Being the only boy to return with a dollar on that stormy March night had raised my standing with my padrone. Signor Ancarola didn’t seem to consider me a troublemaker now.

  Tony and Carlo led me to an alleyway. It looked familiar. This, I realized, was Bandits’ Roost, where we’d come that first day.

  “I thought you were different, Rocco—that maybe you’d fight harder than most of those sheep in Padrone’s den,” Tony was saying. “I thought I saw a spark in you.”

  Carlo spoke up. “You should’ve found Tony to pay him back by now. That would have been the way to show thanks and respect. You could’ve come to Bandits’ Roost to find him. Instead, we had to track you down. That’s not so good, Rocco.”

  Carlo shook his head, putting a sad expression on his face. I felt sure they were about to beat me up. Should I try to break free and make a run for it? I didn’t see how—my back was to the wall. The two older boys blocked my way.

  “I’m sorry,” I mumbled. My excuses sounded lame even as I stammered on. “I—I should’ve tried to f-find you. I—I was so turned around that first day I didn’t know where I was. You can have all I have in my pocket. I’ll get you the rest tomorrow.”

  “It’s been months since I loaned you that money,” Tony pointed out. “With interest, the debt is about three dollars now.”

  “Three dollars!” I protested. “I can’t get three dollars right away.”

  “Temper, temper,” warned Tony. He grinned and spoke softly, bringing his face close so that his dark eyes held mine. “Don’t be mad. I’m just teasing you a little. You once said you might like to work for me. As it happens, we could use someone like you right now.

  “It’ll just be a side job, at least at first,” Tony went on. “You’ll still stay with your padrone until we see how you do. But you can spend part of the day with us and work off your debt. If you apply yourself to the business, well, maybe you’ll be able to free yourself from his snare before you know it.”

  “What kind of job is it?”

  “It’s best if we show you,” said Tony.

  “It’s a lot more fun than banging a triangle on the street,” Carlo assured me cheerily. “And Tony thinks you’ll be good at it.”

  “You have the right sort of face,” Tony agreed. “So, Rocco, do you want to make a future for yourself, or stay an alley rat your whole life?”

  I took a deep breath. “Sì. All right, I’ll do it.”

  What did I have to lose? Besides, I couldn’t think how else I’d ever pay Tony back.

  “Good. We’ll meet you on the corner of Grand and Broadway—not far from Crosby,” Tony said. “Be there around eight tomorrow morning.”

  “I have one more question. If…if I work for you part of the day, will I still be able to give my daily quota to Padrone?” I didn’t want to get punished any more than necessary.

  “Don’t worry about that. I guarantee that you’ll head home tomorrow night with a dollar,” Tony said smoothly. “Just be at the meeting place, and don’t let Signor Ancarola or any of the other boys see you. That’s important. Can you do that?”

  I nodded. And then they were gone.

  CHAPTER 9

  I visit Wall Street and witness an impressive demonstration by experts

  Next morning, I stuffed my triangle into my pocket and slipped off, careful to th
read my way along side streets to get out of sight as quickly as I could.

  The hardest boy to shake was Luigi, who always wanted me to walk with Marco and him. “Please, Rocco,” he begged. “Just help us get the harp to Mulberry Street. Marco coughs so much we have to stop all the time so he can rest.”

  “I can’t this morning, Luigi,” I told him. Seeing the look on his face, I added, “I’ll try to find you at the end of the day and help you get it back here.”

  He nodded and sighed. He didn’t really believe I’d keep that promise. I rarely did. Luigi was so easily distracted and Marco so sick that the two had a hard time making their quota. I’d spotted them just the week before. Luigi had stopped to watch a bunch of boys playing ball in an alley. Marco was leaning against a building with his eyes closed.

  Luigi and Marco would just hold me back. I had other plans.

  At the corner, I waited nervously. What if they didn’t appear? But Tony arrived minutes later, with Carlo right behind him, a burlap bag slung over his shoulder.

  “Got the newspapers,” Carlo announced.

  “Good. Let’s go,” Tony replied. “We’ll walk down Broadway to Wall Street. We want to be near the banks when they open.”

  “Banks are good,” echoed Carlo.

  “Why’s that?” I asked.

  “Lots of potential customers, so to speak,” Tony said as he made his way through the throng.

  I struggled to keep up, stepping around an elderly man pushing his way down the sidewalk with his cane. “So, you’re in the newspaper business?”

  “Something like that,” replied Tony, adjusting a light coat he’d draped over his arm. The weather was warm, and I wondered why he needed it.

  “Will I learn to sell papers too?”

  “Hmm…we’ll see,” he mused. “Don’t worry about that just now. There’s a lot to learn first.”