Bitter Cry

by S. L. Stoner

  Sage heard the words but it was her passion that held his attention. Her whole body seemed to vibrate with it. Still, he nodded soberly.

  Pritchard continued. “We’ve had the visiting nurses survey the children. They report that fully 40% of our students have eaten nothing before coming to school. Another 18% ate only the poorest bread—the kind that is usually augmented with sawdust.

  Our numbers here in the North End, are much higher than the national average of 23% underfed children. Like every poor neighborhood in the country, this neighborhood has more impoverished children than the City’s average.

  “Mr. Adair, what studies show is that all of these underfed children will grow up inches shorter and pounds lighter than other children of their age. That’s how serious hunger is.”

  Again, Sage could only nod. He knew hunger was the poor’s constant companion although the high percentage of North End children going hungry was unexpected. He’d had no idea there were so many. Then he thought of a test that might diminish her irresistible attraction.

  “So, I understand that Mother Jones woman made quite a fuss over how this country treats its children.” What Sage didn’t say was that he knew and adored the Irish born, Mary Harris Jones. The gray-haired, sweet-faced woman had made national headlines when she organized and led a children’s march from Pennsylvania to Teddy Roosevelt’s front door in New York.

  Pritchard’s laugh was genuine. “Oh, she is one crazy lady, that Mother Jones. But, I’ll tell you something. The President might have ignored her Children’s Crusade but a whole lot of other people didn’t. I may not agree with all her socialist solutions but I am grateful for what she did. She’s forced people to acknowledge the importance of saving our children from hunger and toil.”

  Sage gave a mental sigh. Every word she spoke increased his admiration. He fought to keep his face showing only polite interest. He must have succeeded because there was no sign she sensed his inner turmoil. Instead, Pritchard briskly rose to her feet. “Come next door and you can see for yourself the problem we’re trying to solve.”

  She led him into a classroom. About thirty kindergarten-aged youngsters sat on benches before long, low, roughly-made counters. A teacher was reading to them. Some of the children were alert and attentive. Others, though, sat with their heads atop pitifully thin arms and their eyes closed. Still others, equally thin, twitched atop their stools with pale blue smudges beneath eyes in heads that looked too big for their small bodies.

  Pritchard gestured him toward the door and they stepped back into the hall. “What I am hoping, and Dr. Lane is hoping, is that you would be willing to donate toward our breakfast program. We want to serve the children good bread, hot porridge, and fruit when they come to school. All thirty of them. Those who aren’t hungry won’t have to eat but we’re betting that most of these children are undernourished.”

  Then she answered a question Sage hadn’t thought of. “This isn’t just a stop-gap program. We mean it to be a pilot project. We want to show that children learn better when they are adequately nourished. We plan to compile data on how well and fast they learn now and then track how well they do after eating a decent breakfast every morning. With that data, we can go to the public schools and insist on them serving breakfast. France and England are already doing it with remarkable results. Once adequately fed, many of their undernourished children turned alert and achieved success in school and later in life.”

  Valentine Pritchard led Sage back to her office. Once again settled in chairs, she leaned forward over her desk and continued, “Fully thirteen percent of America’s schoolchildren are labeled ‘feeble-minded’.” That’s because their school performance is viewed as ‘backward and mentally dull’.”

  He startled when she slammed a fist onto the desk and said forcefully, “Any fool knows that the problem is that they are malnourished. These children become discouraged by their failure and hardened by constant rebuke and the taunts of the brighter, well-fed students.”

  She sighed and spoke more quietly, “Eventually, these kids become careless, defiant and altogether incorrigible students who leave school at an early age. After that, they turn to vice or eke out a bare living that’s no better than their parents’. They are never given the chance to develop into the healthy, happy and educated citizens our country needs.”

  Her indignant sorrow made her eloquent. No question but that she meant and felt every word she spoke. He kept his face interested when what he wanted to do was agree wholeheartedly and share his personal experience with childhood hunger. But he didn’t. She had to consider him a potentially helpful but, somewhat disinterested, wealthy donor to her cause.

    

  He headed back to Mozart’s, his thoughts on Valentine Pritchard. He told himself that he would have pledged the monthly fifty dollars donation no matter what. After all, it was a good cause and Doc Lane was right. Sage’s money from his Klondike gold strike just kept growing without any effort on his part. I would have donated it even if Valentine Prichard wasn’t so damn interesting, he assured himself. That was a step too far into self-delusion because his mind’s eye momentarily flashed on the faces of his mother and Lucinda, both of whom were eying him skeptically.

  Further thought of Valentine Pritchard ceased when he stepped into Mozart’s kitchen and saw his mother’s face. Mae Clemens was visibly upset and wasted no time in idle greetings. “Millie was just in here and she’s fit to be tied,” she announced. “Terry Tobias is missing.”

  “Missing?” Sage echoed dumbly.

  “Dr. Lane sent a nurse and a wagon first thing this morning. They had to carry Mary Tobias on a litter up out of the Gulch, she was so weak. But, she’s on her way to the sanatorium, safe and sound. Probably there by now.”

  “And, Terry?” Sage nudged her story along.

  “Millie was there at the shack to escort the children to the Boys and Girls Aid Society. Once they got there, she showed Carrie Lynne and Terry where they’d sleep with the baby until Dr. Lane decides they don’t have TB. She also gave them a tour of the dining room, classrooms, and the playground where they could be together during the day. Millie said Terry was very somber the whole time but praised the place. He was definitely willing to have his sisters stay there.”

  She paused for so long that he said, “But?” again to move her story along. He had to change his clothes and get to Speedy.

  “Well! Not ten minutes later that imp ran off. He walked right out the back door and across the playground. One of the other children watched him go and went to tell the matron. By the time she got down to the playground, he was nowhere in sight. Millie waited an hour but he never came back.”

  “That was this morning and, he’s still not back?”

  She shook her head. “I asked Eich to see if the boy had returned to the shack for some reason. He went to the Gulch but says another family was already moving in. They said that they’ve seen neither hide nor hair of Terry. Eich believed them.”

  Fifteen

  Dusk hadn’t fallen when Sage strolled into Speedy Messengers that Friday night. He was lucky. Prang seemed to have no customers and a surplus of messengers. For the first time, Sage could sit and talk to his fellow messengers.

  “Hey, can a guy get into your card game?” he asked the three who sat at the table, cards in their hands, coins at their elbows. One of them was the leader who’d been kicking the stuffing out of Terry a few days ago. He was the one who answered.

  “You can if you got the money. We’re playing penny-ante poker. You know the game?”

  “Yup,” Sage responded, drawing up a chair and slapping a few coins down.

  As they played, Sage intentionally lost every hand. Since he’d played poker many long winter days in the Klondike, his losing was more choice than happenstance. Today, his opponents grew ever more cheerful as his coin stack shrank.

  “So, who’s the
Dougie guy you were so het up about?” he asked.

  “Why you want to know?”

  “Curiosity, I suppose. Terry Tobias seems like a right enough fellow, so I figure you must have a good reason for being mad at him.”

  The other three exchanged looks and reached silent agreement. The leader, a boy named Christopher, answered Sage’s question. “Dougie used to work here. He disappeared a few weeks ago.”

  “Why’s that Terry’s fault?”

  A boy who’d been quiet up to that point, piped up, his voice as reedy as his body, “Dougie and Terry were working together to start a Messenger’s Protective Association. One like the newsboys have. Prang and Kimble didn’t like it none. All of a sudden Terry stopped doing anything except kissing their butts and Dougie just up and disappeared. We figure Terry’s nothing but a turncoat.”

  They played the next two poker hands in silence. Seeing darkness outside Speedy’s windows, Sage finally asked the question he dreaded asking.

  “What’s this Dougie fellow look like?”

  Again, the smaller fellow answered, “Ah, he’s right easy to spot. Dougie has orange hair and more freckles than a ladybug has spots.”

  “What’s Dougie’s last name? Does his family live near here?”

  “Douglas Spencer is his full name,” said Christopher, “and he’s only got his pa. They live down near the railroad station. But his pa ain’t seen him either and that ain’t just ‘cause of the whiskey he drinks.”

  Christopher’s eyes narrowed and he asked, “How come you’re asking so many questions about somebody you don’t know?” At Sage’s shrug, Christopher slapped down his cards and stood, saying, “Game’s over, fellas.”

  His announcement coincided with Prang standing up so Kimble could take his place. The night shift had officially begun. Just then Terry charged in the door.

  A relieved Sage crossed the room to greet him. “How are you doing, Terry?”

  The boy’s clothes were rumpled and his face drawn from exhaustion. “I’m alright, I guess,” he said. “How’d last night go? Sorry I didn’t get to talk to you this morning. Kimble kept me running all night long and I had to leave early to take care of something.”

  “Last night was okay. You look like you didn’t get any sleep today.”

  “Yeah, well. I had a lot to do. Plus, I had to find a place to stay.”

  “Your family moved?"

  Terry’s lips twisted. “Yeah, but I couldn’t move with them.”

  “Why? Did they move out of town or something?”

  “Or something.”

  “So, did you find a place?”

  Terry met that question with a frown before saying, “Sorta, but it ain’t a place I want to stay too long. It’s a better fit for the cockroaches and rats that live there. The best thing I can say is that it’s close to work.”

    

  Near midnight, while out running one of his errands, Sage knocked on Hanke’s apartment door.

  “Adair! Come in, come in,” said the police sergeant, who was still dressed and wide awake.

  “Can’t do that. I’m working and being timed,” Sage said, tapping his black wool cap with a gold “Speedy” embroidered above its short bill.

  “What? You’re playing messenger boy now?”

  “I’m still trying to find Glad. I think his brother knows more than what the family is saying about Glad’s disappearance. Since the brother, Terry, works at Speedy, I’m hoping he’ll confide in me as a friend.”

  “Any luck?”

  “Well, now that I’ve been around him, I’m certain he knows something but he won’t trust me with it as of yet.”

  “So, is there a reason why am I standing here letting all my household heat escape into the cold hallway?” Hanke asked with a smile.

  “Unfortunately, I’m here about that boy we saw this morning. His body fits the description of a boy named Doug Spencer who worked for Speedy Messenger. He and Glad’s brother, Terry, were trying to form a messengers’ union and then Spencer disappeared about the same time as Glad. The Spencer boy and his father lived near the rail station. I was told that his pa likes whiskey more than he should. So, you might find him in one of the saloons around there. ”

    

  The rest of the night passed quickly and Sage was less tired than usual at the end of his shift. Maybe he was adjusting to the all-night schedule. It helped that, after his first night, Kimble seldom sent him out to the city suburbs on errands. Mostly, he ran errands between saloons, restaurants, and whorehouses. It was a world full of drunkenness, addiction, and vice.

  Once they got to the bottom of Glad’s disappearance, he’d do everything he could to help Millie Trumbull end the use of child messengers for good.

  Upon returning to Speedy, Sage had asked Kimble, “How come you never send me on errands to Vera Clark’s whorehouses?"

  After a phlegmy chuckle, Kimble explained, “I do that, we might lose her business. She wants only young messengers—the younger, the better. Sez she gets a kick out of being the first to introduce them to certain ‘manly pleasures’.”

  Sage had to ask, “You think that’s okay? Some of these kids are less than ten years old.”

  Kimble shrugged and said, “Gonna happen to them sooner or later. Might as well be Vera doing it. Never had no complaints from the ones she’s educated.”

    

  Sitting in a café and shoveling in breakfast, Sage puzzled over how to get Terry out of Speedy’s clutches, find Glad and ruin both Vera Clark’s and Speedy’s businesses for good. His biggest concern, though, was how to get Terry into a safe situation as soon as possible.

  It was as he was heading back to Mozart’s and bed, that the various bits and pieces snapped together in his head. He realized why Matthew had given up the messenger job he loved and why the schoolboy messengers had vanished from the farmers’ market. Speedy hadn’t limited itself to attacking other messenger companies; it had gone after the independent messengers as well. He gave himself a mental kick in the head that it had taken him so long to make that connection.

  Sage changed direction and caught a trolley up to the West Side High School at 14th and Morrison. He had to talk to Matthew.

  The school was an ornate stone pile of gothic towers, pointed arches and useless spires prickling its roof. The reception he received was equally prickly. “Well, I’m not sure it is proper for me to call him out of his classroom on just your say so,” said the primly officious school secretary.

  “It’s important that I speak with him immediately. I am carrying a message for him. It’s a private family matter,” Sage insisted.

  The woman arched an eyebrow, clearly exasperated that Sage refused to be more specific. Sighing heavily, she beckoned to a nearby student. Scribbling something on a piece of paper she handed it to the boy saying, “Matthew Mason is in Mrs. Grady’s history class. Please deliver this note to him.”

  Five minutes later Matthew rushed into the office, spied Sage in his Speedy Messenger cap and came to a dead stop as fear turned him rigid.

  Sage didn’t want the secretary listening so he stepped into the hallway. Beckoning Matthew to follow, he said nothing until both were outside on the school’s front steps.

  “Everybody is fine,” were Sage’s first words. Matthew’s reaction confirmed that Sage had discovered the reason for the young man’s odd behavior during the past weeks. Relief seemed to buckle Matthew’s legs because he grabbed the side of the stone arch to stay upright.

  Sage gestured down the steps, “Come on, we’re going back to that café down the street and talk this through. I need your help with something.”

  Once they’d sat and had given their orders, Sage started talking. “I am going to tell you what has been going on. If I get something wrong, you tell me, okay?”

  At Matthe
w’s cautious nod, Sage continued. “A while back, some men came to you and told you they wanted you to work for one of the messenger companies. You refused.”

  Matthew nodded and Sage said, “You weren’t the only one. They asked that of all of your messenger friends, all the boys who hang out at the farmers’ market after school.”

  Matthew’s eyes widened and Sage continued, “Most of them said ‘no’, just like you. But for some reason, it was you that they focused on the most. Why was that, Matthew?”

  Surprisingly, Matthew responded, “My bicycle and the fact I had a route of regular customers. They wanted that route.”

  “They threatened you and your family.”

  Sage’s statement brought tears to the young man’s eyes. “Not just Aunt Ida and Uncle Knute but you and Mrs. Clemens. They said they’d burn down Mozart’s with everybody in it.”

  “They’ve beat you, haven’t they? You never fell off your bicycle like you told your Aunt Ida.”

  Another nod, so Sage asked, “Why didn’t you tell us what was going on? We’ve handled worse situations than this before.”

  “I couldn’t. He said if I did, he’d kill me and burn down Mozart’s. He knows all about us. He even knew Mrs. Fong was sick.”

  “When and where have you seen him?”

  “He hangs around outside school. I try to sneak past him but he’s caught me and pushed me around. He only punched me once.”

  “Who is he?”

  “He’s never said his name. But he’s a big guy.”

  “Which messenger company does he work for?” Sage asked, though certain of the answer. He wasn’t disappointed.

  “Speedy Messenger Service, up in the North End. He waits around the school, watching for when I leave to go home. And you are right. He’s scared off all the other messengers down at the public market.”