In the Midst of Wolves - Softcover

Novak, P. L.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1458209911 ISBN 13: 9781458209917

Publisher: AbbottPress, 2013

Synopsis

It's 1896. New York City is hardly the ideal place for a child whose father has disappeared and whose mother has fled from reality to the comfort of her piano. Eight-year-old Leigh Blackwell, determined to care for her mother and make ends meet, leaves school and takes a job in the garment district. Just as life's challenges threaten to overwhelm her, she finds nine-year-old Tom Paterson, a streetwise pickpocket, on her front steps. Tom and Leigh's lives soon intertwine as he appoints himself her protector and shares part of his meager earnings with her. After her love of horse racing eventually leads Leigh to a job at a thoroughbred stable, she finally attains independence and slowly pulls away from the one who has quietly fallen in love with her. But when Leigh leaves New York and becomes entangled with a bitter, angry man, her desire to help him nearly costs Tom his life-and their chance at ever finding happiness together. In the Midst of Wolves recounts the unconventional coming-of-age journey of a homeless pickpocket and an enterprising orphan as they grow into adulthood in the early twentieth century despite many obstacles, including some that are of their own making.

About this title

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

In the Midst of WOLVES

A Novel

By P. L. Novak

Abbott Press

Copyright © 2013 P. L. Novak
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-4582-0991-7

CHAPTER 1

Not aSparrow Falls

Leigh Blackwell

MY MOTHER WAS born Lydia Bernice Rhodes and was raisedto be pampered. She was lovely. Her hair was long like mine, butblonde instead of dark, and her eyes were a gentle blue. I'm namedfor her, by the way; my name is actually Lydia Leigh. (I'm gladshe didn't saddle me with "Bernice.") She was trained in classicalpiano and took to it naturally. I gather that she could have played inconcert halls. But instead she married my father, Philip Blackwell.It's from him that I get my dark eyes and hair and who knowswhat else. I have no idea how they met or what he did for a living;all I know is that her family in Pittsburgh was so displeased withher choice that they severed all ties with her and my father. Theyprobably never even knew that I exist. My parents and I lived in anapartment on the second floor of a nondescript building between6th and 7th Avenues, near what New Yorkers call the "GarmentDistrict." Not the best neighborhood but safe, I guess, compared tomany. When I was eight years old, my father packed up and left. Icame home from school to find my mother sobbing. I have to sayI don't remember much about him, and at this point my memoriesof him are probably based more on their wedding picture thananything else.

Once I realized that my father was never coming back (I think Iunderstood this before my mother did), I figured I'd better get a job.My mother hadn't been raised with the idea of working and she justcouldn't accept what had happened. We had no friends or family inNew York, and I felt responsible for the two of us. Now don't supposethat I resented this responsibility; I accepted my mother's role as a ladyand wanted more than anything to let her stay that way. What wasdisturbing, though, was how she started to slip away from the presentas the fact of my father's permanent absence became inescapable. Shespent her days at the piano. I not only needed a job; I had to preparemeals and do whatever household chores were required.

My first job was piecework for some of the garment shops a fewblocks south. The woman in the apartment across the hall helped getme started. I sewed artificial flowers—violets, forget-me-nots, andother small varieties—for women's hats. Child labor was still legalthen, but just to be safe I told the shop owners that my mother wasunable to leave the apartment because of her health (which technicallywasn't a lie) and that I was just picking up the work and dropping itoff for her. I got paid a little extra for delivering the finished goodsfrom the seamstresses in our building; usually the shops hired boysto do that. At two cents a bunch, you have to sew a lot of flowersto make any money at all, so I gave up school. Thankfully, therewere no visits from truant officers. I met Tommy on my front stepsa few months after I started working (he tells that story better thanI do), and later he even helped a little with the sewing. He wouldn'tbe proud to have you know that, but it's true and I was grateful forhis help. My fingers got pretty sore, doing that all day. No matter; Ibecame skilled enough that I was "promoted" from flowers to ladies'gloves, which paid a little better. I did this, all told, for almost threeyears, though I had to fill in with odd jobs, like cleaning up after thehorse-drawn trolleys. All of this probably wouldn't have sustainedus for even that long, except that Tommy, who was working as anewsboy by then, generously shared his earnings with me, and thatmy father at least had had the heart to leave some money behind. Ormaybe he'd forgotten it was there.

Expert at "running the numbers" even then, Tommy figuredout that the sewing wouldn't make enough to pay bills and feed mymother and me, even if I were able to do it twenty-four hours a day.I had to find another job. I had a good friend from the neighborhood,Karen, who had recently been more or less forced into prostitutionby her parents; she was pretty and they were poor, and such thingsweren't all that uncommon, I'm sorry to say. I would still see heroccasionally and she tried to persuade me that her new life wasn'tso bad, but I couldn't imagine that God would use that as the wayto take care of me. There weren't many options, though. An ideafinally occurred to me. Once in a while on a Saturday, Tommy andI would take the train down to Coney Island and (while he madesome extra money picking pockets, as if I didn't know) I'd sneakinto the horse races at the Sheepshead Bay track. I loved watchingthose magnificent animals—a different species, almost, from thespiritless creatures that pulled carts, wagons, trolleys all across thecity. I wondered if perhaps I could get a job at the stables. The name Iremembered seeing most often at the track was McLaren. I bought anold but serviceable bicycle, found myself a pair of trousers at a churchrummage sale, and set out for the McLaren stables in Brooklyn.You won't get if you don't ask, I reasoned; but you'd better believeI prayed about it, too.

I know that God made it possible for me to get that job. Ofall the people I could have first spoken to when I showed up atMcLaren's Thoroughbreds, old Sam McFee, the stable foreman,was the only one who wouldn't have shut the door on me. Yearslater he told me I reminded him of his granddaughter. Good thing!Anyway, he told me that working in the stables was very hard. Itold him I was willing to work as hard as he needed me to. He saidthat I would have to work as hard as the boys, and that my workwould be judged more critically because I was a girl. I told him Iunderstood, and I would be grateful if he gave me a chance. In theend, he took me on.

Who would have guessed that I would love being there? Muckingout stalls and hauling hay, feed, and water is truly demanding, butbeing with the horses was worth the labor. I loved their big browneyes, the smooth gloss of their coats after I'd brushed them, theirvaried personalities, even their earthy smell (somehow it was hard toconnect it with the unpleasant, often acrid odors I'd always knownon our streets). I hadn't been there long when Mr. McLaren gotwind of it. My first impression of him was pretty terrifying. RoreyMcLaren was known as "the Roaring Scotsman" because he alwaysyelled first and (maybe) listened afterward. And he was just furiousthat Sam had hired me. "I'll nae be ha'in' girlie-girls in m' stables!"he thundered as I did my best not to cower. Sam interceded, assuringMr. McLaren that I was proving to be an excellent stable hand, evenbetter than some of the boys. Still, I think that if Mr. McLaren hadn'thad a lot of respect for Sam, I'd have been out of a job. He let mestay on, provided I didn't turn out to be a girlie-girl after all. Andso I was a lowly stable boy for quite a few years; eventually I wasentrusted with the added responsibilities of grooming and saddlingthe horses. Sam even had me exercising them and walking themto cool down after a hard run. I mended tack as a regular duty, ofcourse, but I was grateful that Sam didn't have me do more than myshare of that task.

Most employers paid female employees less than males, supposedlybased on the premise that males were permanent members of theworkforce and primary breadwinners to boot. It's too bad thatlandlords and coal merchants didn't honor this premise by chargingwomen one-third less. Unfair or not, that's just how it was. So youcan see why I felt especially blessed to work for Sam; as soon as hesaw that I worked as hard and as diligently as the boys, he paid methe same wages. A dollar a day! It wasn't enough to get rich on,but compared to what I'd been making as a seamstress it felt like awindfall. I never took it for granted.

Tommy, on the other hand, wasn't thrilled with my newoccupation, though he admitted that it did pay considerably betterthan flowers and gloves. He was concerned that I'd forget I was goingto grow up to be a woman, not a man. He made me promise that Iwould leave my hair long and never cut it. I learned how to plait itin one thick braid down my back. That's the way I still wear it whenI'm working with the horses.

And I should tell you that, although it won me many shockedand disapproving looks, especially as I got older, I definitely learnedto like wearing trousers. I felt so much more capable in them. Skirtsmake me feel very confined and vulnerable. Who could win a horserace sitting side-saddle?

Tom Paterson

After my mother and siblings had all died, I lived alone with myfather in two small rooms on the third floor of a four-story tenementon the lower West Side. Being a kid, I didn't know any different,but looking back on it I have to say it was the kind of place wherepeople hole up just to keep from slipping over the edge entirely. If Itell you that tenement life prepared me in some important ways forbeing homeless altogether, you'll maybe get the idea. The building,like all the others on the block, was almost grand-looking on theoutside, with its ornamental cornices and scrolled iron fretwork, as iftrying overly hard to hide the ugly truths inside. Our "home" had awindow, which might have been considered a luxury in that part oftown except that it only looked across the air shaft to the tenementimmediately behind. Not enough light or air got through to makemuch difference. I remember sleeping on the ornate but not-so-sturdyfire escape on hot summer nights, along with a lot of other people.It's a wonder the thing didn't collapse. Our furniture consisted of thebed, made of scrap lumber on crates, on which my father slept, and apile of rags in the corner that served as my bed. In my mother's timewe had several chairs and a little table, but my father sold those topay for his nights at the saloon on the first floor.

The whole building was served by two outhouses that were sofilthy and so prone to overflowing when it rained that most of usdidn't use them. You may have read that some tenement dwellers usedthe stairwells, hallways, or even their own rooms when nature called.I can vouch for the truth of that claim, as disgusting as it sounds.The stench was nauseating and suffocating and made my eyes andthroat burn; maybe the adults were less affected because their headswere further from the ground but I doubt it. More likely they keptthemselves too drunk to notice. You had to watch your step or you'dslip in something vile and land in something viler. It was especiallyhorrible on windy winter days when no one wanted to lose whatlittle warmth they'd been able to create by their own breathing andshivering. There wasn't much other heat indoors and the place wasn'tbuilt with any notion of keeping out drafts. It was about the mostsqualid existence known to the civilized world. I made a few penniessweeping horse manure out of the street and into the gutter alongour block so it was easier for the sanitation crews to haul away, andit did seem ironic to me (kids do understand irony, by the way) thatour street was more wholesome than the inside of our building.

To be fair, some families did everything they could to keeptheir rooms tidy and "clean"—take into account that soot and dirtfound their way through a hundred gaps, and that laundry on theclotheslines strung between the buildings was arguably not muchcleaner than it had been before it was washed. I think that maybeif my mother had lived, my father and I might not have ended upliving like feral dogs.

Life can completely change in a day, though, even for a dog.When I was nine, my dad beat the daylights out of me one morningbefore he left for work. If there was a reason I never did know it.No different from all the other times, but I'd had my fill of it. Oncemy head cleared I ran away, and my intention was to be done withliving. I was feeling pretty despondent, no lie. I pictured myselfstopping halfway over a bridge, over the deepest part of the river,and jumping off. Or throwing myself under the "Death Avenue"train that lumbered down the middle of 11th. Good riddance to life.What purpose had it had so far? What hope that there'd ever be apurpose for it?

I kept running until I found myself in an unfamiliar part of town,and I was just going to sit on some steps awhile and catch my breath,you know. But I began to sense that someone was there, sitting nextto me. The eye on that side of my face was swollen shut, thanks tomy dear daddy, and I had to turn my head to see. I don't know whoI was expecting, but I wasn't expecting a girl. Why would a littlegirl sit next to me? I didn't look friendly or even safe, I'm sure. Notthat she had much to lose. Scrawny little thing; a dress and shoesshe had pretty much outgrown, and a jumble of long, dark hair. Buther brown eyes were so deep and innocent. I'd seen many thingsin people's eyes during my short life, but I'd never seen innocencebefore. I was almost scared, to tell the truth.

Being the tough kid I was, I just told her, "Your hair is a mess."

She got up and went into the building and I thought I'd chasedher off. But no, back she came with a silver-backed hairbrush in herlittle hands. I noticed how red and sore her fingers looked. And thenshe handed me the brush and sat back down beside me.

"You want me to brush your hair?" I knew even at the time thiswas an imbecilic thing to say, because the answer was obvious, butshe just looked at me with a shy little smile and sat there.

Now, I was a boy. I didn't know beans about brushing hair,especially hair that was so long and thick and tangled. I don't knowwhy I even considered doing it, but once I started, there didn't seemto be any rational way to quit. It took at least an hour, because I didn'twant to yank on the knots and hurt her. By the time I finished, Iwas amazed (and to be honest, enthralled) by how soft and lovelyher hair was, how it slipped through my fingers, and how it fell likea dark, heavy curtain around her face and down her back, all theway to the step behind her. I was completely in awe. But I couldn'thave her knowing that. I asked her what her name was and she toldme; I told her my name was Tom. But as we kept talking, I noticedthat she always called me "Tommy." You know it's not like Leigh todo that, to give someone a nickname they didn't ask for. I somehowunderstood that it was her way of claiming me for herself. It made mefeel differently about the killing myself idea. Maybe Tom Patersoncould jump off a bridge and no one in the world would care, butTommy could never do that to this little girl. And so the rest is whatit is. I've been her Tommy ever since, and she's been my Little Girl.I've always called her that. At first it bothered her, but I think shecame to understand why I did it. A tough and angry nine-year-oldboy, after all, can't handle such a sudden, overpowering feeling ofbeing needed and of wanting to take care of someone. Sometimeswhen I look at her I still can't handle it.

Leigh

While Tommy couldn't really argue about the better pay offeredby my new job at the stables, he hated the idea of my riding mybicycle that far alone every day. For such a young person, he seemedto know a lot about the evils of the city.

"What's so terrible about it?" I said. "I'm a good enough cyclistto make it to the stables."

"You don't got any idea, do you? This place is crawling with lowlifes,you need to understand that. It's not just the kids in the gangs,Little Girl. There's lots of other people you don't wanna meet."

"I can take care of myself."

"No you can't. You don't know what you're sayin'. If youtake the straightest path to the Brooklyn Bridge, you know whatneighborhood you'll be goin' right through?"

"No. I haven't been very many places except with you."

"And I'm careful where I takes you and how we gets there, believeme. But you gotta be at McLaren's so early, it'll still be dark. There'sa part of town you'd be ridin' through, ya know, that's nothin' butsaloons and brothels."

"What's a brothel?"

Ordinarily, I think, he'd have blushed, but he was already tooworked up for that. "A house of.... A place where they.... Aw, heck.A whorehouse."

I blew out a sigh of exasperation. "Why didn't you say so? Sowhat."

"I don't want you goin' anywhere near there."

"Oh, come on. It'll be during the daytime. You think I'm goingto get sucked in through the door or something?"

"You're gonna be hard to look after, ya know that? Guess I haveto explain it to ya. There are people who would see you and figureyou'd make a nice little whore, and they'd—"

(Continues...)

Excerpted from In the Midst of WOLVES by P. L. Novak. Copyright © 2013 P. L. Novak. Excerpted by permission of Abbott Press.
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Edition details

• Publisher: AbbottPress
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1458209911
• ISBN 13: 9781458209917
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 282