The Way Things Are

"Blake!" The landlord's voice rumbles down the stairs like thunder, but Jakob moves as quickly as he can, pulling his coat on and fumbling with the buttons as his boots slap against the steps. "Blake, boy, get back here!" He reaches for the handle of the door and, for an instant, feels cold metal against his fingertips before he is jerked back by a heavy hand on his collar.

Wheezing, Jakob finally stops protesting and glares. His landlord, a barrel with limbs, a red face, and a temper, ignores Jakob's indignation. "Yes, sir?" the young man gasps, wishing he could breathe.

"Rent, boy!" The voice booms again. "Where is it?"

Jakob gestures toward the door. "I was planning on earning it, but you're bent on choking me!" He has to clutch the banister to keep his balance as the landlord drops him.

"Go!" The thin walls seem to shake with the force of the command.

Jakob runs as far as he can manage, then trots half-heartedly the rest of the way, buttons of his coat matched to the wrong holes. He can picture the headline:

BOY ESCAPES CERTAIN DEATH THOUGH
LANDLORD UNFORTUNATELY SURVIVES

He reconsiders, then decides on a subtitle:

CITY MOURNS

It has a nice ring to it, really, he decides.

By the end of the day his mood is noticeably less cheerful. The muscles of his back twitch with exhaustion and he exhales, rotating his shoulders to stop the spasms along his shoulder blades. Though he is hardly heavy, the thin, warped planks of the wharf cry out shrilly with every step he takes. He wipes his mouth with the back of a grimy hand whose palm is raw from ropes sliding through his grasp all day. A few more men stagger with cables wrapped around their arms as together they hoist the last flat of cargo onto a ship. The fading sun glints off the ocean, which swells and sinks around the hulls of the ships, and he stares at the scene until his eyes sting from focusing.

He isn't quite fit for this; he's of average height and weight instead of tall and brawny. This results partially in his constant complaints about the hard work and partially in his determination to succeed. Perhaps if he'd completed some school--if he'd had the time and the money and, to be honest, the brains--perhaps then he'd have a better job, but he didn't, and therefore he doesn't, and that is the way things are.

Sweat trickles down the back of his neck, and he is grateful for a breeze that follows him 15 blocks north to a tenement building in the Village. He pushes up the sleeves of his worn shirt--so worn it is almost transparent, thin and papery like gauze--and studies the red marks that wind around his arms.

He hates the harbor, the wharves, the water-stained, creaking tenement buildings that lean away from the ocean as if repulsed by the very sight and smell of the garbage-choked water. The breeze is always damp, clogged with salt and the smell of fish lying out in the sun, their lifeless eyes like marbles. He was born by the ocean, in a one-room apartment with a tiny window that faced the water. When he had started to sell newspapers at nine he had ventured away from the building, trying to cut the ties that were strangling him.

At the corner of his street is a young, gaunt child who waves a paper at him frantically. "Just a penny!" he chirps. "Good news today, sir."

Jakob fishes a penny out of his pocket and hands it over, then accepts the paper with a nod and nothing more. He buys a paper every day, twice if he can manage to get both the morning and the afternoon editions. His favorite paper is The New York Sun, but he never does more than skim the articles, picking up disjointed words and phrases without ever focusing on the important information. Today's headline is unexciting; the date is June 3, 1904.

CITY PLANS ROAD RECONSTRUCTION PROJECT
Popular vote city-wide reform improve traffic flow
Projected time span is "We will beautify New York . . ."

Jakob lets his eyes linger on the front page, then folds the paper and tucks it in his back pocket for reading later. He grew attached to newspapers in the nearly ten years he hawked their headlines, "improving the truth" in order to improve his own sales. He could transform news about the governor's new yacht into cries of "Govn'r and Family Narrowly Escape Death at Sea!" The crowds would come running to buy an edition when he came up with headlines as dramatic as those. When he was even younger, he would simply cry, "Extry! Extry!" because he couldn't read the headlines. Jakob was past ten years old when a friend selling papers with him finally taught him to read, but even after 13 years, his reading is hardly solid, and writing is simply an ordeal he tries to avoid.

Throwing a paper away seems like a waste, so he has a collection of piles and piles under his bed, tucked in his drawers, stuffed in the closet.

MAYOR DECLARES WORK ILLEGAL, HANDS OUT FREE MONEY

Jakob entertains the thought on his way up the stairs of his building.

CITY REJOICES

Jakob pounds on the door just inside the entrance to the building. "I got the money!" The door swings open long enough for Jakob to deposit a handful of coins and a few loose bills into his landlord's massive palm. Thick fingers close around the money as Jakob steps backwards.

"Next time, Blake, you better have it in the morning," he warns, then slams the door. Jakob shakes his head and heads upstairs, reading the rest of the paper for the half-hour he spends alone.

Halfway through the paper, Jakob hears the door open. "Hey!" someone laughs, and the sound is comfortingly familiar. His roommate is home at least an hour early. "Guess what?"

He is grinning and Jakob shakes his head, scratching the stubble between his lower lip and chin. "What is it?" He's not certain if he wants to know; his roommate only grins like that when it's bad news or concerns women, which are often one and the same. The two have been companions for years, but friends for mere weeks, when they opted to move from a boarding house into this place together. His roommate is a few years younger and a thousand times more talkative. He was born in Brooklyn Park to working-class parents who died in a cholera epidemic--this is as much as Jakob knows, and it is really all he cares to know. A newspaper crinkles as his roommate smoothes a section open, scanning the page. Jakob recognizes it as an edition of The World, one he hasn't yet read. "Where you from again?"

"Harbor area. South." He is reluctant to say anything at all, but the direct question is impossible to avoid. The pause between question and answer stretches so long that his roommate briefly blinks in confusion when Jakob speaks, then remembers.

The younger man taps the page with an index finger whose nail is ragged.

"Oh yeah? Your ma's in the paper, I think."

Jakob's heart stops briefly, and when it resumes beating, its pace is frantic, as if it is struggling to free itself from his chest. A trickle of old coffee bleeds onto the table as he upsets a cup on his way over to his roommate, but he ignores the spill, eyes fixed on the newspaper. "What?"

His roommate pushes over the paper, and then, exhibiting the small bit of tact he possesses, leaves his friend to read the article in solitude. Jakob forces himself to focus on the two paragraphs hidden in the corner of the sixth page of the second section, then scans it quickly, because he knows these are words he doesn't want to see. The heading of the section details something about a police log.

PROSTITUTE ARRESTED
Thursday morning Mary Blake arrested on charges Prostitution South St. Seaport previous conviction disturbing the peace
Public inebriation Jailed $20 bail

The newspaper flutters from his trembling hands, leaving traces of ink on his palms. It drifts to the floor, sections separating on its descent. An hour later, when the two reconvene for supper, neither mentions the article. The newspaper itself is gone, folded up and hidden under Jakob's mattress.

LOCAL BOY HUMILIATED BY MOTHER
CITY MOURNS

Jakob props his feet up, jamming each worn boot between a metal rail of the fire escape, and leans back against the brick building, watching the sun sink behind a tall building. Minutes later the sky bleeds pink, and blue creeps in until it's dark. He stretches his arms over his head, ignoring the ache in his back from work, ignoring the thought of his mother in jail. Guilt has to stem from something, and if the harbor doesn't exist in his head, then the guilt cannot either.

HARBOR DISAPPEARS

A rap on the window beside him startles him. Jakob looks through the warped windowpane to see his roommate who pushes up the window. Jakob slides back inside, boots landing heavily on the pine floorboards.

"You ready?" His roommate pulls on a worn dirty jacket.

Jakob nods, flashing a grin of slightly crooked teeth, and the baby fat still in his cheeks makes him look young. "Yeah, yeah. You should pay me the money now and get it over with."

His roommate hits him in the shoulder, his laugh filling the room. "If I win once, then maybe I won't laugh so hard when you say things like that."

"Hey, hey!" More laughter brightens the apartment as the kerosene lamp is extinguished, and dirt rises up in tiny clouds as boots hit the floor.

Their friend's apartment is a six-block walk east of their tenement building, and the night is pleasantly warm. Jakob is almost reluctant to go inside, but his roommate challenges him and they race up the three flights of stairs, arriving out of breath. A young man with a cut across his cheek and a grin leads them inside to a faint haze of stale smoke and loud laughter. Jakob heads for a table of men playing poker, swings a chair around, straddles it backwards, and scoops up the first hand of cards within reach. He arranges the unrewarding selection, feeling their slippery-smooth, worn texture against the calluses of his fingers. The pennies are cool in his hand, turning warm as he grips them in a grimy fist, then drops one in to ante-up, then two, three to meet the bet. The center of the table glows copper, and seven men eye it hungrily. His roommate folds with a rueful grin, lights a cigarette, and leans back in his rickety chair.

Jakob loses. "You like cleaning us out?" He watches a younger friend scoop the pennies up, sees his hands with the little half-moons of dirt under each nail. The kid gives a grin; his front tooth is missing. "Sure do," he replies, and there is a cocky air to his every movement for the rest of the night. Jakob laughs again and winks at his roommate, indicating the kid with a tip of his chin.

PRODIGY CARD PLAYER GOES DOWN HARD
DESPITE INITIAL WIN, THANKS TO JAKOB BLAKE
CITY REJOICES

Assorted glasses and mugs are filled with cheap, bitter beer and passed around, and everyone's stomach begins to ache from laughing too hard or from groaning at a loss. This is what life should be like, Jakob says to himself, and deals the next hand.

When his pockets are empty two hours later, he becomes aware that there is more around him than the card game, and he finds himself sitting on the arm of a sofa that is missing some upholstery. His brown eyes meet the blue ones of a blonde with a half-empty glass in her hand. She is no doubt here for the atmosphere and the people rather than the poker game, still going on behind him.

"I'm Rose," she introduces herself, laughter escaping her for a reason that escapes him.

He laughs too, mostly out of uncertainty. "I'm Jakob."

She fills the silence by draining her glass in one gulp, then discards it. He tries to right it after it tumbles over on the table, but finds that after four glasses of beer he simply cannot, and they both laugh again.

She fidgets with the cuff of her sleeve. "So, where are you from?" He notices when she smiles at him that her teeth are tiny and very white, and knows his own must be crooked by comparison.

Eventually the words hit him and he nearly drops his own glass. "Me?" He is stalling for time, feeling the stuffiness of the room and praying for a distraction that doesn't have the good sense to come when he needs it. "Qu--the--um, from Brooklyn."

BOY'S INGENIOUS SAVE
REWARDED BY MAYOR IN PUBLIC CEREMONY
CITY REJOICES

Rose goes home after half an hour of incoherent, slightly slurred conversation, promising to see him again. The roommates leave empty-handed hours later, pockets decidedly lighter than before. Their laughter is a little louder and more irregular, and they have trouble navigating the stairs, stumbling against one another. They laugh a little louder the next minute, a little longer, their own desperation sustaining the good mood with more force than the alcohol, staving off everything but the slick sound of cards hitting the table and the warmth of the room, the taste of bad beer and the smell of copper pennies, the sense of belonging.

As early as nine in the morning Jakob can tell that today is going to be hell--or at the very least, it'll feel that way. Already the air is muggy and stifling, and the sun is glaring down from a cloudless sky. A brown veil of smoke and dirt in the air rests uneasily on the horizon, but no breeze blows it away, and it slowly settles down, pressing on him. Jakob wipes the sweat from his forehead. Days like this usually promise rain for the next. What's the saying? Calm before the storm? He reminds himself that it's five days until the next card game--sure, he didn't win in June or July, but for the end of the summer, he'll have to win at least something. Third time's a charm.

BOY'S KNOWLEDGE OF CLICHÉS
LEADS TO INTERNATIONAL FAME AND GLORY
CITY REJOICES

"Hey, wait!"

He is already five blocks from the apartment--why is his roommate calling for him? He squeezes his hands together briefly, to reassure himself, then looks back. "Yeah?" he calls, hoping it's just a forgotten key.

His roommate catches up, out of breath. His face is flushed but he grins. "Been following you for blocks! Whyn't I walk you to work today?"

The suggestion startles Jakob into a second of silence. "Why would you want to do that?"

"Nothing better to do."

"Oh, thanks," Jakob says, the taste of bile in the back of his throat. His roommate holds a decent job filing papers at a respectable office in Chelsea; he has never before shown interest in Jakob's work. One thing he has shown is plenty of contempt for the slums around the harbor, as he often forgets that Jakob was born there. His reaction will be nothing but scornful if he follows Jakob to work. Jakob's heart beats like a rabbit's.

LOCAL BOY'S PAST THREATENS HIS REPUTATION
CITY MOURNS

"But honestly, you don't want to. Nothing interesting to see there."

"I don't know nothing about the harbor. I don't even know what kind of job you got," protests his roommate. Jakob tries to convince himself that his roommate means well.

They argue back and forth and finally Jakob's tone changes from joking to sharp. "Just go home already!"

"What's wrong with you? I just want to see where you work!"

Jakob can't help but scowl. "You just want to be irritating, is all."

His roommate snorts, feelings clearly hurt by the retort. His hazel eyes are slightly squinted as he glances at Jakob again. "Huh, well, maybe I'll see you at the Phoenix tonight." Jakob is confused, wondering why his friend wants to go to a brothel so suddenly, and why he brought it up in the middle of this heated conversation. "I'll be sure to give a nice greeting to your ma if I get there first," the younger man finishes, a look of cold triumph on his face when Jakob cannot do more than turn a shameful shade of crimson.

His fists clench with anger, but he knows he doesn't have the force to back it up, and so he turns on his heel and sprints away, panting for breath, cursing his mother silently. The irregular cobblestones of the sidewalks make his heels hurt after a while, and his sides begin to ache from the effort. When he gets to the half-dirt, half-asphalt path that winds along the side of the harbor, he is barely moving faster than a wounded animal dragging itself along the ground.

Out of breath and humiliated, he slowly approaches the wharves, testing his weight on a weak-looking board before stepping ahead. He picks up on the soft scurrying sounds of rats beneath the planks. Today must be a good haul because he can smell the fish before he sees them heaped in slightly writhing mounds, mouths agape, sun glinting blindingly off their scales. A seagull shrieks and dives inches past his left ear, heading for the closest heap of cod. Jakob looks over his shoulder instinctively, but nobody has seen him arrive here.

Before leaving Greenwich Village the next week, Jakob finds a newsboy and gives the child a penny. As he walks away, he studies the August 13 edition of the New York Sun, only reading half the words in stark black and white contrast.

STORMS EXPECTED THIS WEEK
North Atlantic bringing heavy rains Adverse conditions will
persist Thunderstorms until next All boroughs

Glancing up at the sky, he sees miles and miles of gray, curving around the world and grazing the tops of the buildings, and the fact that the sky is endless causes Jakob to shudder, but he isn't certain why. He folds the newspaper carefully and tucks it in his back pocket, feeling the beginning of a hole in the fabric. An hour into his workday, it begins to rain, and soon his patched clothes are plastered to his body, his brown hair to his head. The newspaper must be little more than a soggy, ink-stained clump of wood pulp by now. He hears the crackle of thunder somewhere off in the distance, shivers, and tries not to let the wet rope slip through his hands. Someone shouts at him to pull his weight, and he bites back a retort.

AREA BOY'S PULLING OF MEAGER WEIGHT NOT ENOUGH TO SATISFY COWORKER

He can't decide if the city should mourn or rejoice for this turn of events, and while he tries to make up his mind, the rope slips. His heart nearly leaps out of his chest and he can feel it beating in his throat, so he swallows and clings to the rope.

"Blake!" The shout comes at the same time as another peal of thunder and is nearly as furious.

Jakob's heart seems to slide into his throat as he regains his grip. Seven more hours of this will make him crazy with anxiety. "I--sorry." And they continue working as the rain pours down.

Teeth chattering together audibly, he steps away at long last and tries to slick water off himself, but it's no use. He looks up again and squints so that the water drips from his brow onto his cheeks instead of into his eyes. Behind him, the sea rages, slapping angrily against the hulls of the ships.

The moment his pay is in his pocket, he is heading for the Village. When he arrives, he'll make himself some tea and perhaps his roommate will have a meal for them to share, if the fight has blown over. He'll dry off, and if it stops raining he can watch the stars from the fire escape. Maybe he can go find Rose if it's not too late; it's been nearly a week. She said . . .

A whirring sound catches his attention--it is the sound of a cable slipping through a pair of hands and then through the pulleys that control it. Looking around quickly, he sees a flat of cargo swing free--"No!"--and in the midst of the storm he doesn't even realize that he's said it aloud. Two men launch themselves in a sad kind of desperation at the ropes that thrash and writhe like tentacles, and for an instant it looks as though things are saved. One man hangs on and is jolted five feet in the air as the cargo sways backwards with a groan, then starts to plummet. The man is part of the storm, dropping down to hit the pier along with the rain.

Most eyes are on the fallen man, but Jakob watches the flat. It seems to be moving slowly as it lurches from side to side on its descent, seems to be slower than anything else in this entire borough, but the instant it hits the ship it was being raised from, time accelerates and soars past Jakob and he can do nothing to stop it. A collective gasp rises from the dockhands. The deck splinters loudly, and he hears a vaguely metallic-sounding noise, and then--nothing.

CITY HOLDS ITS BREATH

The roar is deafening and he staggers backwards, clapping his hands over his ears too late, unsure if he's yelling or if it's everyone else or all of them or if it's just the noises of the ship dying in front of them. Something has gone wrong--he is certain the papers will know what it is, the New York Sun will be here--something has gone terribly wrong and there has been a great burst of flames, as if the rain was not even there to stop it. The hair on the back of his neck prickles. He waits, and the city of his imagination waits with him, in silence and stillness.

But he is grateful for the rains that seem perpetually to plague this place, and it will all be over soon. It is only when he notices the itch of salt on his clean-shaven cheek that he realizes the rains have stopped, a summer storm over as soon as it began. The fire crackles before him as it becomes more voracious, and orange, gold, blue-forked tongues shoot up from the hole in the deck of the ship, splintered planks surrounding it like jagged teeth before they are eaten away. Another breeze brings with it the acrid smell of burned wood and other things he tries not to think about.

His stomach churns as he registers screaming from the dying ship. Soon he stops thinking because to acknowledge everything that assaults his senses would be enough to bring him to his knees. Around him people panic, knocking him from side to side as they either flee or rush toward the ship, carrying pails of water that could not douse a hundredth of the flames ripping across the deck. Someone tells him that in the cargo was a barrel of oil. It must have broken open across the deck, leaving an easy trail for the flames from a burst boiler to follow. The shouting around him hurts his ears, and he covers them again, as if that can block out the sounds.

Someone has notified the fire department, but it will take them at least 20 minutes to get here--it already took that long to find a telephone to make the call itself. Jakob knows it will be too late by the time they arrive.

"We have to stop it from spreading!" Someone else--for they are all faceless now--shoves a bucket filled with water in Jakob's trembling hands. He passes it to the next person, and soon another bucket is shoved into his hands, and another, and another. His eyes are focused on the rhythmic slapping of waves against the hull of the ship that groans as fire guts it. Suddenly a gust blows across the area, and the women clutch their skirts to their legs. Fire dances from one ship to the next, and soon it leaps onto the wharves. Everyone runs; Jakob finds himself being shoved along in the herd and sinks down heavily on the cement of a crooked sidewalk, unable to believe this is happening right before his eyes. More people flee as the fire leaps to the buildings, clutching what belongings they can as they run to safety. Jakob turns to watch a ship cave into itself, and his heart aches with pity for something that seemed to be alive and proud when it sailed into this dirty little harbor. More ships begin to groan in agony as they are dying; the screams have long since faded because the people are dead; everything is dying.

Jakob fights down the urge to vomit and bolts to his feet, pushing his way through the terrified crowd to escape the harbor. On his way out the main road leading past the harbors, he passes the crew dispatched by the fire station. His eyes sting and his clothes smell like smoke. His fingers shake too badly for him to open the door to his apartment; it takes seven tries to get the lock to turn. The groans of the ships and the screams of the people echo in his head, and the darkness of his bedroom begins to frighten him, but he is more frightened of striking the match to light the kerosene lamp.

His roommate has already left for work when Jakob awakens to a painfully bright morning. On the kitchen table is a copy of the New York Sun, folded so neatly that Jakob guesses it hasn't even been opened yet. The dateline running across the top of the paper proclaims the date, August 14. Jakob bites his lip and picks up the crisp sheets, scanning the headlining article.

FIRE DESTROYS PART OF MANHATTAN'S
SOUTHWEST HARBOR AREA DURING A SUMMER STORM
Four ships destroyed Many lives lost nearby buildings destroyed
apartments evacuated before worth of damage

The words are there but he cannot register them; instead, his eyes lock on a moment frozen in time: the photograph accompanying the article. The flames are grainy, stationary things, the ship itself is motionless and silent, but it is the faces caught in the foreground of the photograph that burn themselves into his memory. The people are crying in the picture because everything is gone, and drops of crystal-clear liquid splash onto the paper, but it is not raining. He spends the rest of the morning in bed, staring at the wall.

It takes Jakob nearly ten hours to muster up his courage to return to the seaport. By now, he has reread the article a dozen times, never retaining a word printed there. He sees himself in the picture--not precisely himself, but nevertheless he is there, somewhere. The paper has done an injustice to its readers by publishing such a cold photograph, devoid of life and feeling. The readers of the New York Sun will not understand the pain of watching everything go up in flames; they will look at the picture and cluck their tongues in what they believe to be sympathy, and it will not be enough.

The sun has sunk below the horizon by the time he reaches the harbor, though the sky is still alive and vibrant with the orange hue of a summer evening. Despite the pleasant temperature, he shivers with each stride along the uneven path beside what were the wharves, which extend half their original distance. Beneath his feet are various shards of various things; some crunch as he walks along, while others give way without so much as a sigh of protest. The building he was born in, a tenement like every other in the area, is gone. Its skeleton of charred wood is a third the size the building was, and he is afraid to exhale for fear it might tumble down.

Finally he must turn his eyes toward the ocean and what lies just before it, pieces of wood tumbling into the water from time to time with quiet splashes. Lazy trails of smoke rise in different places, and he stands as close as he can manage without melting the rubber soles of his shoes on the ashes and embers. He stares past it again for another moment of solace, watching the untroubled blue of the ocean. Finally he looks at the wharves, which are so close themselves to tumbling into the ocean. He shivers again, clutches his arms around himself, harshly aware that he is lucky to have survived, that while everything is gone, he is still here.

Jakob forces himself to look at what smolders before him.

No words come to mind at first, and he rocks on his heels, back and forth. Suddenly a phrase flies through his head, snags on his mind, and remains lodged there, manifesting itself a hundred times over.

CITY MOURNS

The meaningless phrase he made up a lifetime ago, a trite and unfeeling addendum to every headline he came across as a newsboy, hollering "Extry! Extry!" when every cry really was a plea to help him escape the harbor. Jakob wonders if he would have screamed it with quite so much force if he'd known what lay ahead.

CITY MOURNS. CITY MOURNS.
MAN'S CHILDHOOD HOME DESTROYED;
CITY MOURNS

Because he is a man now, not a boy too ashamed of his origins to accept them, who intended to lie about them forever.

UNSTOPPABLE HARBOR INFERNO DESTROYS
LIVES, PROPERTY, MEMORIES;
CITY MOURNS

This was what he wanted, wasn't it? Hadn't he wished for just this? Jakob lets out a low sigh, closer to a wail than anything else.

ONLY ASH REMAINS; CITY MOURNS. CITY MOURNS

He rocks on his heels, back and forth.

CITY MOURNS

Jakob gingerly nudges a still-smoldering piece of wood with his foot. It crackles and splits apart, and he becomes acutely aware of the silence of the place. He should feel free, and he does, but free like a ship cut loose from the tethers anchoring it to the dock, floating aimlessly on a wild sea with nothing to turn back to. He looks around and realizes that he is alone on the remains of the wharves, on the ends of his beginning, and can pick out the smell of rain on the breeze that blows in.