THEY CAME TO AN AGREEMENT ABOUT WORKING TOGETHER WITHOUT much difficulty. Once Charles told him that he generally didn’t go down to the waterfront more than once a week, Aidan felt better. He had been imagining wandering those streets every night, which seemed foul beyond tolerance. But Charles explained: Every hour you spent down there increased your risk of getting pounded by a thief who wanted what you had rightfully stolen or, even worse, getting pinched by the cops. And it was the meanest, most corrupt cops who ended up with the waterfront as their beat.
There were other rules, too. Charles focused on cash and generally did not get distracted by other valuables, although he did make exceptions, like when he spied the initialed pocketknife. And he stopped for the night when he felt he’d made enough, no matter how early it was.
These rules comforted Aidan. There was a formula to what Charles did that limited his time on the waterfront streets. And as much as Aidan wanted to avoid getting caught, Charles had a much clearer idea of what that was like. Aidan was counting on Charles’s memories of the reform school to keep them both safe.
That Friday night, they met in front of the Old Howard. They made a few dollars—three for Charles, one for Aidan—and would have had more if they hadn’t run into two older boys who moved in just as they identified a man who was out like a light, slumped against a broken crate in the shadows.
“Listen, the luck ain’t with us. I’m not gettin’ a good feeling about the rest of the night. We’re done,” Charles announced.
Aidan thought of the biscuit tin at home, not as full as he would have liked it, but not empty, either. Though it was not as if he had any say in whether he and Charles continued on tonight or not. They started walking away from the waterfront. “Where you headed now?” he asked.
“You know, no place. Why?”
“Well,” said Aidan with some embarrassment, “um, last time we was out, I couldn’t sleep when I got home, for hours. Doin’ this just gets me all strung up, and I . . . I just wanted to know if you wanted . . . if you would come to my place. For a little while.” He kicked a stone into the street as he walked.
Charles thought it over. “I dunno about your ma, Sully. But maybe we could set on the stoop for a while.”
So they went to Aidan’s building. Aidan sprinted upstairs and grabbed some day-old bread and hard sausage from the kitchen, and they ate on the stoop and looked up at the moon, visible over the row of buildings on the opposite side of the street. Charles cut the meat with his pocketknife, and Aidan broke the bread in pieces the right size for the wheels of sausage.
When the food was gone, they stayed on the stoop, sometimes talking, sometimes just surveying the night sky and listening to the occasional argument coming from an open window. Eventually, both boys were tired, and they parted ways. Aidan climbed the stairs to his apartment, where everything was still. Maeve and Ella were sleeping like spoons in their bed. Aidan lay down on his straw mattress in the main room and took out Dan Connelly’s baby blanket. He refolded it, slipped it under his head on top of his thin pillow, and in thirty seconds, he was asleep.
And so it went. Through the rest of June and all of July, Charles and Aidan met at Rosen’s Monday through Friday, where Charles let Aidan know which night they would be working, usually Saturday. As the weeks progressed, they began leaving Rosen’s together to pursue the daytime diversions Boston could offer two young boys. On most good-weather days, Aidan was able to steer them toward the Public Garden for a spell. On rainy days, when they could afford it, they went to Austin and Stone’s or one of the other dime museums down in Scollay Square. For ten cents you could see a freak show with tattooed ladies, two-headed animals, African pygmies, and other oddities. They never tired of the sword swallower, and they marveled over the trained goat who could play a hand of poker.
As much as they were on equal footing during the day, Charles called the shots on their work nights and Aidan was happy to comply. And though they had several face-offs with other groups of boys, most of which they conceded, they only had one encounter with the police. It was late on a Friday night, and after hours of scouting, they saw an alley with promise. After Charles had exited and the two were a half a block away, they slowed their pace.
“Hardly worth the—” started Charles, and then he stopped mid-sentence. Aidan could feel Charles tense up even as he continued to walk. Keeping his gaze straight in front of him, Charles whispered urgently, “Up ahead. Take a piss.”
They turned into the next alley, and Aidan saw Charles take money from his pocket and stuff it between the slats of a broken crate. Then Charles unbuttoned his pants and stood in front of the brick wall. “C’mon, c’mon!” he urged Aidan, who did the same but was too confused and scared to be able to produce anything. A policeman appeared at the mouth of the alley.
“Well, if it ain’t two little thieves out past their bedtimes,” he said as he grabbed them both by the shoulder.
“We’re just takin’ a piss, officer, swear to God,” said Charles plaintively.
“If this alley’s yer toilet, what the hell were ya doin’ in that other one? Couldn’t have anything to do with that sailor lying in there, could it?”
“Yeah, we went to go use that one, but that sailor was in there taking up all the room, so we just went to the next one. Look, we ain’t got nothin’. Spent our last on a couple of short beers, and we’re headin’ home now, swear to God.” Charles took everything out of his pockets—slingshot, pocketknife, 35 cents—so that he could turn them inside out. With his empty hand he punched Aidan out of his frozen state so that he could do the same.
The policeman looked over the meager contents in the boy’s hands and picked up the pocketknife for closer examination. “This here’s a pretty nice knife for an Arab like you,” he said suspiciously.
“Yeah, it’s a beaut. My pa got it for me for my last birthday, put my initials on it and everything. I ain’t never leave the house without it,” he added with a faint note of pride.
The policeman narrowed his gaze, not fully believing that a boy as dirty as Charles had a pa and a house, but somehow convinced by Charles’s confident tone. The fact was that Charles was an excellent liar. Even Aidan felt himself taken in by Charles’s fabrication, starting to believe, despite the facts, that the two of them had in fact just been searching for a place to empty their bladders, that Charles would go home to his pa and perhaps get punished for being out so late.
The policeman slapped the knife back in Charles’s palm. “Waterfront ain’t the place for you to be takin’ refreshment. I don’t want to see you back here at this hour, or I’ll run ya in no matter what ya got in yer pockets.” He gave them both a shove, propelling them out of the alley, and they buttoned their pants as they scampered away.
They were three blocks distant from their run-in when Aidan finally spoke. “How’d you know he was behind us? I didn’t hear nothin’.”
“Dunno. Somethin’ about the way a cop walks. Maybe he don’t shuffle like most of the drunks down that way, or maybe he got some special copper shoes—I just know that sound.”
“What’d you stuff in that crate?”
“One lousy dollar. All that for almost nothin’. I’ll go back tomorrow morning and get it if it’s still there.”
After another block, Aidan asked, “Uh, Charles?”
“Yeah?”
“Can we stop up ahead for a minute? Now I really have to piss.”