A Bright Tomorrow

by Gilbert, Morris

  “Oh. Well, I guess—”

  “No gotta room, just for you…but you can maybe sleep with-a Nick and Mario, my boys.”

  “Oh, that’ll be all right, Mrs. Castellano,” Amos said quickly.

  “You pay one dollar every day…and you eat at our table.” She was not a handsome woman, but there was a pleasant air about her. Her face was marked with care, but she had large attractive eyes, the darkest Amos had ever seen. “Come on, I show you the room.”

  Amos followed her up two flights on the narrow staircase, then onto a narrow, dark hall with two doors on each side. Opening one of the doors, she gestured. “You take-a that bed,” she said. She studied his soot-stained clothing, and said abruptly, “Take off-a your clothes.”

  Amos froze, the blood rushing to his face. He had heard that there were bad women in the big city, but Anna Castellano had not seemed a likely version. He began to edge toward the door, and the woman, seeing the shocked look on his face, broke into a peal of rich laughter. Her large body quivered, and she finally wiped her eyes and gave Amos a merry look. “I’m-a glad to see you’re a nice-a boy. But you’re safe with Mama Anna. I just think you’re pretty dirty. I wash-a your clothes, and you can wash on the back porch.”

  “Oh—” Amos felt like a fool and said so. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Castellano.”

  “Just call-a me Mama Anna.” She smiled. “Take your clothes to Mary Elizabeth…then wash-a your face.”

  Mama Anna’s brusque orders somehow relieved Amos. He grinned as he changed into his other clothes. Always good for a fellow to have a ma around to look after him.

  He went downstairs and handed his clothes to the girl—all except his underwear, which he had decided to wash himself. He washed up in the kitchen, where the smell of fresh bread baking in the oven brought an ache to his throat, he was that hungry. Anna must have sensed this, for she set him down. “You no eat breakfast? I fix-a you something.”

  As Amos forced himself to slowly eat the bread and stew she put before him, he listened as the woman chattered. The children came and went, scurrying around so fast Amos couldn’t get a head count. He finally figured out that there were five little ones, with two older children. When he finished his meal, the warmth of the kitchen and the fullness of his stomach, combined with his long journey, began to bring an overwhelming desire for sleep.

  Mama Anna, seeing his eyelids droop, said, “Now, you go to bed.”

  Amos mumbled his thanks and stumbled up the stairs, so overcome with fatigue that he could barely remove his shoes. He rolled onto the cot, pulled a worn blanket up to his chin, and promptly lost consciousness, slipping away into a black hole that closed upon him instantly.

  Well…I got here, Ma. Now get those prayers to going!

  Amos was awakened by the sound of voices. At first he thought he was back in the loft with Owen and his other brothers. But as he slowly pulled himself back to consciousness, he became confused, for the voices were strange to him. He sat up, bolt upright, to find a young man about his own age sitting cross-legged on a cot across from his. On the third cot a boy with the same curly black hair and smooth olive features regarded him steadily.

  “Hello.” The older one nodded. “You finally wake up?”

  Amos was exhausted and, when he looked out the window, he saw that it was still dark. He arched his back and felt for his money pouch. “I guess so. I was on the train for four days…didn’t sleep much.”

  “Four days? Where’d you come from?”

  “Arkansas.”

  “Yeah? That’s way out in the sticks, ain’t it?” The young man shrugged, adding, “My name’s Nick.”

  “I’m Amos Stuart.” Amos was hungry again, and the smell of some rich food wafted into the room, increasing his hunger. “Is it time to eat?”

  Nick laughed, exposing a perfect set of white teeth. “Sure. Come on and let’s get started before it’s all gobbled up.”

  He led the way down the stairs and into the largest room in the house. The dining room was dominated by a large rectangular table flanked by an assortment of chairs, all occupied by either resident Castellanos or boarders. This last group included Amos and two young women, who shared a room down the hall from him. They were both plain and poorly dressed, but each of them gave Amos a calculating look as they ate.

  The meal was spaghetti, served in two large bowls, kept filled by Mama Anna or Mary Elizabeth. There was plenty of fresh bread with butter, and water to drink.

  Nick watched with amusement in his dark eyes as Amos poked at his portion of spaghetti cautiously, not knowing how to handle it. “You never ate spaghetti before?”

  “No, I never did.”

  “Here, wind it around your fork like this.” Nick demonstrated his technique, and Amos awkwardly succeeded in transferring a sizable portion of the slippery tubes into his mouth. “You like?”

  “It’s real good.”

  “Glad you think so.” Nick winked at the others. “You’re gonna’ see a lot of it around here.”

  After supper, Amos walked down to the grocery store with Nick. They were scarcely out of sight of the house when Nick stopped and turned to face Amos. The gaslights were on—a marvel to Amos—and the yellow glow seemed to give the face of young Castellano an oriental cast. He was smoking a cigarette, and he let it dangle from his lower lip as he spoke. “This ain’t your home ground, Amos,” Nick said in a tight voice. “So I’m gonna give you one little bit of advice.”

  Amos was taken aback by the young man’s rather abrupt manner. “I’d appreciate it,” he said carefully.

  “Keep your hands off my sister.”

  For one moment Amos thought Nick was joking, but there was no humor in the lean face turned toward his. “Mary Elizabeth? Why, she’s just a kid!” he protested.

  Nick shook his head. “She’s filling out, and I wanna be sure you know what’s what.” He took a long draw on the cigarette, tossed it onto the hard-packed ice, then stepped on it, grinding it beneath his foot. “Us Italians are kinda funny. We fight a lot with the Jews and the Irish…but that don’t mean nothin’ usually. But we believe in family, see? Anyone who hurts one member of the family…well, he’s got the whole bunch of us to fight.”

  Amos thought of his own family. “Why, we’re like that, too, Nick. Back home, I mean.” He had thought to keep his reason for coming to the city a secret, but an impulse overtook him. “The reason I’m here, Nick…my sister Lylah ran off with some man. I’m here to get her and take her home. And if the guy objects, I’ll make him wish he’d never been born!”

  Nick was studying the newcomer’s face carefully and seemed to be testing the quality of his words. Liking what he saw, he allowed a smile to tilt the corners of his lips. “That why you’re packing a gun?” he asked quietly. Then catching Amos’s expression of outrage, he explained, “Yeah, I know about it.”

  “You went through my bag?”

  “Naw, I didn’t. It was Mario, my kid brother. He’s only six, and you know how kids are…always into everything. Hey, it’s okay,” he said quickly. “Another thing about us Italians, we don’t squeal on our friends.” He waited for a moment, then nodded. “You’re okay, Amos. Any guy who sets out to get the rat who ruined his sister is okay in my book. Anything I can do, you let me know. I mean, like if you find the guy, and he’s too tough, I got some friends who’ll turn him wrong side out.”

  Amos felt a warm glow, for he knew that Nick was not the sort who made such offers casually. “I’ll remember that, Nick. And if anyone insults Mary Elizabeth, I’ll hold him while you cut his ears off!”

  Nick laughed, delighted with the idea. “Ho, that’s the way I like to hear a guy talk!” Growing serious, he turned and asked, “You got any idea about how to find your sister?”

  “Not much…except the guy she ran off with is an actor of some kind. And I know the name of the woman who was the boss when they were in Little Rock.”

  “Shouldn’t be too hard.” Nick shrugged. “You find the woman
, she names the punk, and we go get him. It’ll be easy!”

  But it was not easy, as Amos soon discovered.

  On Monday morning he set out to find Maude Adams. Following instructions from Nick, he made his way to the section of New York where most of the city’s theaters and opera houses were located. Going into the first one he came to, Amos found a fat man wearing a black derby and sitting at a desk. “I’d like to see Miss Maude Adams.”

  The fat man took the cigar stub out of his mouth, studied the ruby tip, then set his pale blue eyes on Amos. “So would about a million other guys,” he remarked, and replacing the cigar, resumed reading his newspaper.

  Amos’s temper flared, and he leaned forward. As his coat fell open, the fat man’s gaze took in the revolver Amos had stuck into his waistband. The man sat upright, eyes bugged out. “Hey, I didn’t mean nothing, mister!”

  “Neither did I,” Amos said, but there was something in his eyes that frightened the man at the desk. “I only need to ask her a simple question.”

  “Yeah…sure.” The fat man nodded, speaking rapidly. “What you need to do is go down to the Victoria Theater. Miss Adams won’t be there, but you talk to a man named Joe Rossi. He’s a close friend of hers and can put you in touch.”

  “Thanks.” As Amos turned to leave, the fat man said, “I wouldn’t flourish that gun in front of Joe. He’s a pretty tough article.” As soon as Amos left, the fat man scribbled something on a scrap of paper and called out, “Hey, Pierce, take this note over to Joe Rossi at the Vic, will you?”

  A grizzled old man with a patch over his left eye shuffled in, a broom in his hands. He took the note, stuffed it into his shirt pocket and left, grumbling about the cold.

  “I hope Joe shoots that kid.” The fat man smiled wickedly, then returned to his paper.

  “Look, kid, lemme put it to you like this…there ain’t no way I’m gonna tell you where Miss Adams is.”

  Joe Rossi had stood up when Amos entered his office. He had the note from Ed Bains, warning him that a yokel with a gun was making noises. He left his own hand in his right pocket, clutching a derringer…just in case.

  He was a tough man, and a careful one, having been many things in the past, and he knew men well. The young man who stood before him was clean-cut and seemed to be a good type, but Rossi could see the bulk of the revolver beneath the thin coat the boy wore.

  Amos was aware of the man’s hard eyes, and didn’t know what he’d done to make him angry. “I just need to ask her one question,” he said quietly.

  “What question?”

  “I–I can’t ask anyone except her.” Amos bit his lip. “I know she’s a famous lady and probably all kinds of people pester her. But I’ve got a problem, and she’s the only one who can help me.”

  Rossi decided the boy wasn’t dangerous. Removing his hand from his pocket, he sat down and waved toward the chair. “Sit down, kid…and let’s talk. What’s your name?”

  Amos gave his name and sat there, twisting his soft cap in his hands as Rossi questioned him and trying to think of another way to find Lylah. But it seemed almost impossible. Finally he got to his feet. “Sorry to have bothered you, Mr. Rossi.”

  Rossi let the young man get to the door, then made a decision. “Stuart…wait a minute!”

  “Yes, sir?”

  Rossi rose and motioned toward his desk. “Miss Adams is out of the country. But if you want to write her a letter, I’ll see that she gets it.”

  Amos thought quickly, then nodded. “I’d appreciate that, Mr. Rossi.” He sat down and wrote a few lines, folded the paper, and handed it to Rossi. The older man took it and held it in his hand. “Leave your name and address. I’ll send for you if she answers this.”

  Amos jotted down the Castellanos’ address, then looked up. “How long do you think she’ll be gone?”

  “Maybe a month, maybe two.”

  Rossi turned away in dismissal, and Amos left the office, feeling defeated. I can’t stay here two months! he thought. I’m broke! But then he remembered Lylah’s face, and his jaw hardened.

  He walked back to the Castellanos’ house and, when Nick came home, he told him what had happened. “I’ve got to stay here until I hear something. Do you know where I can get work?”

  Nick nodded. “Sure, you can work in the bottle factory with me.” He frowned and stared down at his hands. “But you won’t like it, Amos.”

  “Can’t be any worse than plowing new ground.”

  “You’ll see!”

  4

  A NEW ARRIVAL

  A voice was calling his name, but Amos clung stubbornly to sleep, fighting for oblivion as a dreamer fights for his dream. Hands pulled at him, and he made a few feeble spasmodic blows that accomplished nothing.

  “Lemme sleep!” he mumbled, burrowing his face in the pillow, trying desperately to will away the voice and the hands.

  But the hands persisted, grabbed his shoulders and pulled him upright, and Amos squinted, recognizing the features of Nick Castellano. “Come on, Amos, pile out of there!” Nick said, and when Amos tried to break away, Nick braced himself and gave a rough jerk, pulling Amos half out of bed. “Better hurry up, or they’ll dock your pay!”

  Amos groped around in the murky darkness, fingers stiff with cold as he fumbled for his clothes. They lay on the floor where he’d let them drop the night before, stiff and dirty and cold, so that he shivered as the cloth touched his bare skin. They smelled rank. Got to wash my clothes after work, he thought. Can’t live like a pig! He had only two sets of working clothes, and his first two weeks on the job, he’d washed one set every day, but that had taken too much energy, until now he usually went dirty…except for those times Mama Anna or Mary Elizabeth took pity on him and threw his stiff pants and shirt into the family wash.

  When he was dressed, he stumbled out of the small room, casting one envious glance at Mario’s sleeping form. I’d give anything to be able to stay in bed and sleep! He went down- stairs, stood beside Nick at the mirror over the washbasin, and the two of them shaved in cold water, the dull razor raking Amos’s skin and making his eyes water. After he finished, he slumped at the table with Nick and gulped down the coffee Anna set out, then silently ate the hot mush and rolls that comprised their usual breakfast. It was the last hot food hewould have for fourteen hours, so he chewed slowly, trying not to think of the long day stretching before him.

  Swallowing their last bite, they got up and took the small paper sacks Anna gave them. She kissed Nick. “I’ll see you after work, bambino mio.”

  Nick was embarrassed as always by her caress. He pulled away, grunting, “Yeah…okay, Mama.” Anna patted Amos on the shoulder and smiled. “I put half an apple in your lunch, Amos.”

  “Thanks, Mama Anna.” Tired as he was, Amos came up with a faint smile for her, then turned and followed Nick out of the house.

  It was bitter cold, had been since the new year of 1898 had descended on the city. A fresh snow had fallen, laying a glittering white icing over the old covering of dirty yellow. It had stopped snowing, but the wind cut through Amos’s thin coat and rasped against his throat and lungs like a razor as he breathed. His rough shoes were so worn that, despite the pieces of leather he had inserted to cover the holes in the soles, he could feel the cold dampness seeping in. When he inadvertently stepped onto a sheet of ice that broke beneath his weight, he felt icy water fill his shoes and knew he was doomed to have aching cold feet all day.

  The two young men trudged along the murky streets, past block after block of tenement houses, saying nothing at all to each other. They were part of a silent stream of laborers, clothed in black and muted by the cold and the dullness of fatigue, who moved like specters toward the big smoke-stained buildings that blotted out the darkness of the sky.

  As they approached the building, Nick burst out in a spasm of defiance, “I ain’t gonna stand this no more, Amos. This is my last day at this dump!”

  Amos turned to stare at him. “You’re quittin’?
”

  Nick glared at the bulk of the dark, many-eyed building, whose opaque windows seemed to glare blindly back at him. He cursed roughly, then shook his head, and when Amos asked what he was going to do, replied sharply, “I’ll get by…and I’ll make more dough than I ever made before, too, see if I don’t!”

  Amos said nothing, but he had not been unaware of the strain between Nick and his mother. Their arguments had been loud and frequent—she, accusing him of running with a wild bunch and warning him that he’d get into trouble if he didn’t watch out; Nick, shouting that he was old enough to choose his own friends.

  Amos had gone with Nick a few times and had formed a low opinion of Nick’s crowd. At least, they didn’t appeal to him. None of them had jobs, yet they had good clothes and money for beer and dance hall girls. They were all Italian, of course, and Amos had felt out of place, preferring to stay home after the first two or three times. He knew they were hooked up with some sort of shadowy organization that had its roots in the old country, and Nick had warned him, “Don’t get crossways with nobody in this crowd, Amos. They got connections.”

  Nick need not have worried, for Amos had neither time, money, nor inclination to join that crowd. He was an intuitive young man and understood that they were on the fringe of lawlessness. But the few times he’d tried to mention his uneasiness to Nick, the other boy had only laughed at him.

  A shrill whistle split the air just as the two young men entered the building. They hurried across the massive room, lit only by a few gaslights along the wall. Getting a hard look and a curse from their foreman, they took their places.

  The work was simple enough, for all Amos did all day long was to tie glass stoppers into small bottles. He carried a bundle of twine at his waist and held the bottles between his knees so that he could work with both hands. Sitting in this cramped position, his shoulders began to ache after only a few hours. And by glancing around at his fellow workers—some of whom had done nothing but this monotonous work for years—the fear took root that he would become like them, gnomes with rounded backs and blunt faces, devoid of all other interests in life.