Free Belle Cora: A Novel by Phillip Margulies

sticks.
    “Lewis!” I shouted. “That’s him! Put me down!”
    “Help me, Arabella,” said Lewis, as if we were home and I had just come in from the next room. He was trying to work a brass-tipped cane from the embers.
    “P-put me down,” I commanded Bill.
    “Did I find your brother for you?”
    “Yes, thank you.”
    “And you’re grateful?”
    “Yes.”
    “And do you know how to show gratitude?”
    “I’ll tell my papa. My papa will give you something.”
    “Your papa? No. Something from you.”
    We were bargaining. I understood that. But what could he want from me? I had in my room some pennies, and dimes, one English shilling, books, toys, a collection of seashells; I knew he would not trust me to go home and come back with them. I had my scarf; I was unwilling to surrender it in this cold. I had biscuits in my pockets. I decided I would offer them to him, but I thought it prudent to ask first, “What do you want?”
    “Give me a kiss.”
    Well, that cost nothing, and it was not even the first time I had made this exchange; perfectly respectable strangers, after telling me how pretty I was, had often solicited my kisses, and once I had kissed a store clerk who had afterward given me a penny, and Christina had reminded me to thank him. So now I cooperated readily; my lips grazed the sandpapery whiskers of his filthy cheek. “Not like that,” he said. Gripping the back of my head with his free hand, he kissed me on the mouth, while the hand that held me from below clutched a place on my body that seemed unnecessary to the task of holding me aloft. It was as foul a surprise as you would expect it to be; and I leave you to decide, knowing what ultimately became of me, whether this strange man saw or in some mysterious way influenced my future, or whether, as I believe, it only seemed so later because of the events which I shall relate in their proper order.
    At any rate, he put me down, and then I was wiping my mouth with one hand and grabbing Lewis with the other. “Lewis, we sh-shouldn’t be out. We have to get home.”
    “In a minute,” he said. “Help me.”
    “Nanaowowow!” I demanded. The word was elongated by my shivers, as in a game we used to play when I would shake him while he said his name and it would come out “Lllllllloooooooo-iiiiiii-sssssss”; but the cold was our rough playmate now. There was no feeling in my fingertips,and I considered it very strange to stand surrounded by embers and worry that we might freeze before we reached our home.
    “Help me,” said Lewis. He meant help him get at his loot.
    “Will you come with me when you have the cane?” I asked.
    After a hesitation, he said, “Y-y-yes.” He was shivering, too.
    The cane, half buried under assorted office furniture, had a curved brass handle in the shape of a snake’s head. It was the handle he wanted. I stepped tentatively on the cane. Then I stepped on it harder. Within a puff of fine ash, which expanded slowly in the air for a long time afterward, the cane snapped near the handle. I stepped again, and it broke off completely. Lewis stuffed it into a pocket already bulging and sagging with other loot.
    He was trembling with the cold, and I pulled him close to me as we walked home. He told me his head hurt and asked me to pick him up. I told him that I didn’t feel well either. I, too, had a headache, and I was tired. I remembered that we had missed breakfast. So we stopped to warm ourselves by the heat of a burning house, and ate cold biscuits, though neither of us was hungry.
    When we reached our street I saw the doctor’s carriage waiting by the black iron fence. I banged the knocker until the door opened, and Christina pulled us into the house, touching our heads and our cheeks, exclaiming over the dirt and soot that covered us.
    “How is Mama?” I asked.
    Christina had a careful, emphatic way of imparting information, staring into your eyes, as if she meant you to memorize her words. “The doctor is