What’s a fellow to do?

What’s a fellow to do?

Was there ever such pickings?

Slim grinned to himself as he hugged his baggy overcoat around crammed pockets. Pockets within pockets in his trousers. Pocket lining the lining of his long coat. All stuffed with a bounty from opening day of the fair — the Colombian Exposition of Chicago. Yes sir, 1893 was a great year to be alive, and this was a great day in May. Cool and cloudy it was, with risk winds sweeping in from Lake Michigan. None amongst the surging crowds would question his need for the billowing coat, lumpy with the spoils of his trade.

Slam caught himself cluckling aloud. A hundred thousand people or more, their purses all his for the fifty cent admission. And them fair coppers! He snorted in derision. Bunch of old codgers, a lot of’em. Never seen such a lame crew. Didn’t give a fellow half a challenge. Surely no challenge at all for Slim the Needle, the preeminent fourteen-year-old pickpocket in all of Chicago. Should he put ‘em on their metal one last time? Or should he had back to French Louie waiting for the haul outside the entrance gates?

Slim did most of his thinking with his body, and now his skinny, overgrown boy’s form curled into the wind in a question mark. His pockets were full.  Go or stay?

He was distracted by that vast white structure sitting before him by the Basin. What do you suppose a “Manufacturers Building” might hold? His eyes darted around. French Louie never need know that he, Slim, had taken an hour or two holiday. Old Mother Hubbard was supposed to be working the buildings themselves for satchels  and a little light shoplifting, but if he bumped into her, he could say he was casing the place. Checking it out for bigger and better things. Maybe that’s what he would be doing. Question mark changed into an exclamation point topp by a gray felt hat, it’s brim pulled low over matching gray eyes. Gray all over and almost as transparent as a ghost, Slim dissolved through the crowds and into the building.

A figure nearly as transparent as Slim made her way past the far side of the same building, trudging slowly, huddled against the wind. She was only a few years older than Slim, and equally skinny, but skinny from hunger, not growth. She was also burdened, though her load was hardly stuffed pockets. It was a bundle tightly wrapped in an old, course shawl. The bundle whimpered.

“Hush, darlin’. I’m doin’ the best by you as ever I can.”

Eyes darting even more warily then the pickpocket’s, a young mother fearfully assayed the waiting entrance. At a break in the crowd, she crept in. Her eyes wideened at the light, and the magnificence of the space opened before her under the endless, arching roof. Acres of space filled with machines and displays and exhibits — even castles — all beyond her knowing.  She hugged the bundle more tightly.

“All these wondrous if things, she whispered to it. “Rich folks’ things. Rich folks’invention. If the Lord has any mercy, there’ll be a rich family coming by to care for you.” She turned a corner round a machine and staggered on down along aisle. “But it’ll need to be the right place.”

The frail figure stumbled on her way, lost in the maze of objects she’d never understood. Nerely in despair, a scent came to her. Her head rose. Perfume? Rich folks could afford perfume, fine French perfume. She pushed herself farther, following the aroma’s trail. The booth was set off almost by itself in a corner. Glass cases were filled with lovely bottles. More bottles sat on open shelves, surrounded by a halo of subtle fragrances. It was the closest she and her child might ever get to heaven.

Her body made sharp spin of surveillance. Blessedly no one, not a solitary soul, was nearby. She knelt as if to pray. Instead she opened the bundle long enough to kiss the soft forhead, to touch a silky blond curl, to gaze into trusting brown eyes.

“Forgive me darlin’. But I’ll always love you. Forever and ever. Your mama will always love you.”

She called beneath the counter to tuk the bundle safely out of sight, then scurried from the overwhelming scent of rose and lavender. None amongst the boisterous crowd in the vast building noticed the running girl, tears streaming down her face. None but a young pickpocket on brief holiday. But is quickly diverted by the spire of a colossal clock tower planted smack in the center of the building. As he stared up and up its 135 foot height, chines began to strike the power of three, reverberating throughout the building.

“Criminey.” Slim whistles with awe despite himself. ”  Now wouldn’t that be a timepiece to go with a fellow’s fob!”

In a forgotten corner of the building, a small hidden parcel began to cry softly, suddenly filled with all sorts of hungers.

Slim the Needle stopped in his tracks before the exhibit that had just caught his eye.  No. It had court more than that. It sent tingles through his spine. Because every cell in his body to vibrate. He slipped between the gates of the gilded, eagle tipped tower, to enter the realm of paradise.

“Tiffany’s,” he breathed. “This is Tiffany’s.”

The content of the display cases surrounding almost overcame the boy: six shooters with richly graven silver handles; heavily ornamented silver tea sets; loving cups, bonbon boxs and tankards of gold. What couldn’t he do with such loot! He could get out from under French Louise’s thumbscrews, find his own fence and set up in business for himself. Clover. He’d be in clover forever

“Ooh,” he crooned softly. The tingles reached the humming cells of his fingertips. They grasped convulsively of their own accord. “Come to Papa. Come to Slim.”

Lost in his dream, Slim totally ignored the hovering guards and swept on to the center of the display. Here were glass cases stuffed with diamonds and pearls. His entire body palpitated before a velvet pyramid revolving slowly on a golden pivot.  Inset against the velvet, flashing fire, was that you will the size of a walnut, a jewel the likes of which he could never have imagined. The tiaras and necklaces and bracelets surrounding this gem dimmed to nothingness. Slim mouthed the inscription mounted beneath. “The Grey Canary Diamond… Lord,” he reverently intoned, “but such a tiepin  that’d  make!”

His brain began to grind at top speed. His eyes did their part too. Figure the dimensions of the case. Estimate the best spot to broach it. It wouldn’t eat the same as picking a pocket, that was sure. This was something far grander; grand theft, in fact. Was it possible, or only a pipe dream?

“You, there!”

“What?” Slim skipped back a pace at the sharp bark, or medically hugging his jacket and its hidden pockets to his body, automatically closing off his thoughts, too, as if they could be read.

“Stop breathing on the glass! You’re fogging it up.” The guard whipped out a handkerchief and ran it lightly over the smooth surface. “Put too much pressure on this here case and the alarms’ll go off,” the man continued to grumble. “And they sound like the very end of the world.”

“Sorry,” Slim muttered. He backed farther away. Then, still so overwhelmed with shattering new ideas and emotions that he could digest no more, Slim stumbled from Tiffany’s and wandered in a daze through the remaining acres of the building.

Tiffany was an epiphany. In one crystal-clear moment it brought Slim’s entire life before him. Good and bad. Mostly bad.

Yeah, so I’m a pickpocket, he growled to himself. At thief. Is that any reason for the entire world to scorn me? Do you treat me like the scum of the earth? It’s a profession, like any other. A skilled profession. It requires timing, and daring, and courage, too.

And it’s not as if I pray on just anyone. I’ve got my standards, after all. I’d never lightened the pockets of the poor slobs in my neighborhood — they none of them have more than a few pennies to rub together anyhow. Nope, it’s the bigwigs I go after, the fat cats, very important men with eight-inch cigars and rubies flashing on their pinkies. Sometimes their women, too. But only the ones who look down their noses at me and my kind, like to say we’ll give them lice, or worse. A real lady I wouldn’t ever touch, because real ladies are like flowers. They make the world blossom.

Slim shoved his hands deep into his pockets, unconsciously following a scent of flowers.

His mother’s face flashed before him. His mother might’ve been down on her luck, but she was a real lady. Only trouble is, she was one of those delicate flowers. He faded early and fast, just the way his little sister had a year before, leaving him to his own resources. That’s how he ended up with French Louie’s gang. It was Old Mother Hubbard who found him wandering around the streets after the consumption finished off his ma and the authorities came and took away what was left of her.

Slim was six. His mother was proud of a lot of things, and one of them was his birthday. “Never you forget, Thomas.” Her words came back – Thomas was his given name, but he’d never use it on the streets on account of it was still like a private gift from her. “Never you forget that you were born on the Fourth of July in the year 1878. That makes you even more of an American that most people. That’s why I named you after one of our greatest presidents, Thomas Jefferson.”

Thomas Jefferson James, Slim mused. That’s who I  used to be. Who I might have been. Without the consumption and French Louie.

Slim’s nose tugged him through the crowds and around a corner. His legs kept moving down and new aisle.

Ain’t whining, he tried to convince himself. He had a skilled profession. And Old Mother Hubbard always did like to cook. She and Black Lena and Kid Glove Rosey kept a big old house for French Louie and Hungry Joe and Grand Central Pete. They’d collected lots of other kids after him, and started a real school. Taught us how to read what the Bible, he reminded himself. Right, so we could learn to choose marks out of the newspapers. Taught us arithmetic, too, so we count our pickings and divide them equally — after French Louie’s cut. Taught us other things as well. Slim toted them up in his mind: sleight-of-hand, and how to disguise ourselves for a job, and have to melt into a crowd. Regular humanitarians, a lot of them.

Then you start to grow a little, and you turn fourteen, and you’re not cute anymore. You wake up on your cot one morning and learn what’s expected of you.

The games become a job like any other. A skilled profession.

Slim shook his head, bumping into a few easy marks without even noticing. But by then, something of it gets into your bone, maybe into your soul. Your fingers work on their own, and all your pockets fill up faster, and you see something like Tiffany’s, and you begin to get bigger ideas. Ideas about cutting free, about independent, about why should French Louie keep getting a percentage when you are doing all the work?

Raising his head he finally, conscientiously, caught the scent he been following. Perfume. Hooking him by the nose, right down to the toes. His ma’s scent. Maybe that’s what’d been bringing her back. After trying to push her away for too long.

He followed the aroma like any ordinary soccer. Like Thomas Jefferson James, not Slim the Needle. What do you find at the end of the trail?

The far corner of the building was still empty, aside from escalating cries of bewilderment emanating from amongst the perfume display. Empty until Slim arrived, following his nose. Then the vision of Tiffany’s all mixed up with his mother’s face burst.

“Here now, something’s amiss.” Without thinking, he crawled under the counter and headed the irrevocably toward the source of the noise. In a moment he was cradling the bundle and the yowls ceased. He poked through the shawl to find the curly blond head and big brown eyes. The creature smiled at him, and a smile of wonder crossed his own face.

A baby.

A baby who’d maybe be crawling around lost, if she could crawl yet. A baby who looked like the prettiest little flower ever created. Like his own lost sister.

“Hoy in their!” a huge voice roared. “What’ve  you got in your arms?”

Slim stared up at the guard. Each found her fair and square. The first thing he hadn’t stolen since he was six. Someone who smiled on him with no reservations. With love. The way his ma and baby sister used to smile on him.

“She’s mine!”

He hugged the bundle to his chest. He knew how to read and write. He could start over with something better than cold, glistening jewels. Be Thomas Jefferson James. Make his ma proud.

“It’s my baby sister. I was just changing her wrappers, private like.”

“Move along then, when you’re done.”

“Yes, sir.”

Slim grinned and at the baby and figured they’d get along just fine. She was a natural thief too. She’d stolen his heart, hadn’t she?

He shrugged.

What’s a fellow to do?