Faster Than Wind. Steve Pitt
The whole market spread out below me like a miniature city festooned in all its Christmas glory. Gold-and-red-ribboned holly wreaths and mistletoe garlands hung everywhere. Underneath, hundreds of people stood still and gazed up at Pat and me with mixed expressions. Most pointed and laughed. Mr. Crane looked up with concern. Sean was down there, too, pacing like a terrier waiting for a rat to come out of its hole. A small army of German butchers surrounded the tree. Nearly all of them had at least one Kelly in a headlock or by the scruff of the neck. One stunningly pretty golden-haired girl my own age stood beside a suit of armour at a chocolate truffle stall. The beautiful girl was actually smiling at me. I was on the verge of tipping my hat to her when I heard an ominous noise three feet above my head.
Biiiwoinnnnng!
The wire holding the tree was starting to unravel. A couple of loose strands had popped out on the outside. As the wire strained under our weight, the strands gently whirled like the legs of a ballet dancer. Pat began climbing the tree again, and the ballet turned into a jig as more “legs” appeared until the wire bounced and whirled like a dance-crazed octopus.
“Hey, stupid, stop it!” I yelled at Pat. “The wire’s breaking.”
“You get him, Pat, or else!” Sean growled from far below.
Reluctantly, Pat raised himself one more branch.
Boinnnnnnnnnnng-whaaack! went the wire as it finally snapped.
I clamped my legs and arms as tightly as I could around the treetop. With its roots firmly buried in the sand container below, and all our weight at the top, the tree flexed sideways like a gigantic fishing rod. We plunged toward Frau Dunkle’s Famous Tripe, Tails, und Trotters stand. Our descent stopped abruptly as the tree reached the limit of its flex. Too dumb to hang on properly, Pat tumbled forward and landed face first in a bathtub-size vat of pickled pig parts. With him gone the tree snapped itself upright again, and I whipped backward in the other direction. The force of the reaction nearly hurled me off, and I thought I was going to plunge through the tent roof of Mrs. Dee’s Fish and Chips, but the sight of a massive cauldron of bubbling hot grease helped my hands and legs to find the strength to hang on. Like a piano teacher’s metronome, the tree rocked me back and forth several times between the gut tubs and hot grease, but gradually momentum was lost and I came to a halt.
Heaving a long sigh of relief, my whole body trembling from nerves and the physical strain, I was aware enough to be amazed that the golden-haired girl was still standing there, her mouth gaping. I no longer had a hat to tip, so I gave her a wink and raised my hand to salute. As soon as my hand reached my head, there was a loud snap and the tree trunk broke, pitching me off.
My fall wasn’t as painful as I thought it would be. Each branch broke or gave way enough to slow me down, and my heavy winter clothes absorbed most of the shock. Of course, when I hit the floor it would be a different story. The floor was solid hardwood. I closed my eyes, clenched my teeth, and prepared for a spine-cracking impact.
Whummmph! I smacked the floor, but something else broke my fall. Two teenagers had locked arms and caught me in their arms. They deliberately collapsed under my weight, and we slumped to the floor in a tangle.
“Nice catch, Tommy,” the shorter one said.
“Good idea, Ed,” the other answered. Then they began laughing because we were covered head to foot with sawdust from the butcher stalls.
I didn’t laugh. More Kellys were coming straight at me, with Sean leading the pack, his fist raised.
“Where you goin’, Pumpkin Head?” the teen called Tommy said, stepping between Sean and me, still smiling as if he had just heard the best joke of the year.
Sean came to a dead stop. No one had ever dared call him Pumpkin Head to his face. “Out of my way. I’m going to kill that little pug.”
“I don’t think so,” Tommy said. “We just saved him, and that would make Ed and me look like chumps, seeing how we just took a sawdust bath for our trouble. Right, Ed?”
“Ppppah! I even got some in my mouth,” Ed agreed, spitting and making a big show of whacking the sawdust off my coat with his tattered cap.
“This isn’t your business,” Sean snarled, trying to look menacing.
“I’m making it my business, Carrot Top,” Tommy said without the least bit of menace in his voice, but even Sean had enough sense to be wary.
Ed and Tommy were familiar sights around the market. Tommy lived on one of the islands in Toronto’s harbour and made his living from fishing and sailing with his father. Although he was still only sixteen, he already had a prizefighter’s build from a lifetime of rowing and hauling sails seven days a week.
Milwaukee Ed, as he was known, was pretty formidable himself. No one knew his exact age because he was an orphan. In 1891 Grand Trunk Railway workers found him as a tiny baby in a boxcar nestled in a crate marked MILWAUKEE EDGED TOOL MANUFACTORY, with just a handwritten note that said “Please take care of him.” Because there was no name in the note, the dock-wallopers dubbed him Milwaukee Ed after the crate they discovered him in.
Ed grew up sleeping on a shelf in a railway tool shed and unloaded crates in return for leftovers from workmen’s lunch pails. When he was twelve or so, Ed found a steady job on the market docks, which was where he met Tommy. The two became fast friends, and when they weren’t working, they were always seen together.
Sean made one more move to go around Tommy, who said, “Back off — hey, Ed, I need another orange vegetable.”
Ed shrugged. “Beats me.”
“How about yam?” I offered.
“Yam?” Ed, Tommy, and Sean echoed, staring at me in puzzlement.
“You know, a sweet potato.”
Tommy flashed me an impressed smile, then looked Sean in the eye. “Oh, sure, perfect. Back off there ... Sweet ... Potato.”
The crowd around us erupted in laughter.
Sean’s skull nearly exploded as he struggled to contain his rage. As a gang leader, he had a reputation to maintain, but he hadn’t become the East Side’s top hooligan by picking fights he couldn’t win. Tommy knew that, too. He even turned his back on Sean to pick some imaginary sawdust off my coat. “Sweet potato. I’ll be —” he started to say to me.
Then someone shouted, “The bulls are coming!” And suddenly the market was filled with the thunder of heavy boots.
“We’ll get you, McCross,” Sean snarled at me as he melted into the crowd. “Count on it!”
2 Iceboat Initiation
December 24, 1906
For fifteen minutes the stall merchants complained long and bitterly to the police about the constant trouble newspaper boys caused. To the cops it was just one more paragraph in a long story. Nearly every day there was a complaint somewhere about newsies. We were just poor kids trying to make a living, but to established merchants we were one step lower than skunks raiding the garbage.
“Who’s going to pay for this mess?” the market manager demanded, pointing at the hundreds of broken Christmas ornaments.
“They knocked over my cheese wheels!”
“My tripe and trotters are ruined!” Mrs. Dunkle shrieked.
“I’ve got six feet of spruce stuck in my deep fryer!” Mrs. Dee cried.
I wasn’t going anywhere. One of the cops had me by the neck. At the very least I suspected I was going to spend Christmas Eve in jail. Several of the Kellys who hadn’t escaped the butchers would likely be joining me. None of us would have a silent, holy night.
“This lad here didn’t do anything!” Mr. Crane insisted.
A