THE WILD MAN

Eerdmans Books for Young Readers

Chapter One

There was a crack like a rifle shot.

"Oi, you can't do that 'ere!"

Joe ducked instinctively and twisted sharply around. Three big boys were standing on the dirty London roadway ten feet away, glaring at him, while the messengers and shoppers that crowded the narrow street pushed past. The noise had been the sound of three heavy-handled brooms being clashed together like weapons.

Joe stood his ground. Tough-looking kids had been pushing him north of the City all week. It was the fifth time today.

"Weren't nobody here," he said defiantly.

"We're 'ere, ain't we?" said the tallest of the boys. "Watchmaker's shop down to the crossroads. That's our pitch. And you're on it!"

Joe took a step backward, shooting a glance over his shoulder. Through the crowd an old man was hobbling toward him. In his hands he held the same kind of broom as Joe and the three boys — stout wooden handle with birch twigs tied tight with twine around the business end. Seemed like trouble whichever way he went.

"Look," he said, turning back to the boys, "I paid for me broom same as you. I got a right to work."

The tall boy looked down at him and laughed. "He's little but he's fierce, ain't he?"

They all laughed at that. Then they moved toward him in a group. Joe took another step backward. He was going to have to make a run for it. Again.

Suddenly one of the boys shot out a hand, stopping the other two. A hansom cab had pulled up beside them, halting traffic. The driver pulled his lever to release the doors of the cab, but the immaculately dressed gentleman inside hesitated, eyeing the filthy roadway between him and the watchmaker's.

Forgetting Joe, the three boys stepped briskly forward. One took the cabman's horse by its bridle, the other two swept busily, clearing the street of horse dung, mud, and rubbish. Joe hovered in the entrance to the shop, watching.

Less than half a minute and there was a clear path from the cab to the watchmaker's door. The sweepers made a flourish in the air and tucked the brooms under their arms, as if they were sheathing swords. Then all three swept off their caps in unison and made a low bow.

The gentleman laughed and reached into his waistcoat pocket. He disappeared into the shop, leaving the three boys splitting the coins he'd handed out. One of them looked up to see Joe still standing by the shop door. He lowered his broom and dug the handle sharply into Joe's ribs.

"See you round 'ere again, we knock out your teeth for marbles. Understand?"

Joe understood.

The boys headed off through the crowd, pushing each other and laughing. Joe turned up the road, holding his side painfully. The old man with the broom was blocking his way. He saw Joe try to dodge past and reached out a hand.

"Easy, boy. I ain't gonna hurt yer. New to this game, eh?"

Joe nodded.

"Ain't got a trade of yer own?"

Joe hesitated. Then he shook his head. It wasn't true. He did have a trade, but he wasn't going back to it.

He'd been a tosher five years and more, searching the stinking sewers of Pound's Field for scraps, and robbed of most of what he earned by an old monster of a woman he'd called Mother. But it was three months now since he'd left Pound's Field and nothing on earth was ever going to get him back to that rat-infested hole again. Couldn't go back anyhow. He'd left owing Mother money. If she ever got hold of him again, it'd be a lot worse than getting his teeth knocked out.

The old man eyed Joe slowly, taking in his decent clothes and boots. "What you want to go sweepin' for, anyhow?" he said slowly. "You look like you got a bit put away."

"Did have," said Joe shortly. "Got thieved off of me, didn't it?"

As he spoke, Joe could feel again the sickening sensation of waking up a week back to find his gray cloth bag gone. Inside that bag had been every scrap he'd ever saved from Mother. He'd kept it out of sight day and night. He'd slept with the bag tied to him under his vest, but that hadn't stopped it going. They'd slipped something in his drink. Must have, to make him sleep through it. There'd been a filthy taste in his mouth when he came round in the morning and it wasn't just the taste of being dirt poor again. Anyway, the bag was gone and it wasn't coming back by wishing.

The old man had been watching him silently. "Can't work nowhere down here unless you're part of a gang," he said finally.

"How do I join?"

"You can't."

Joe thought about that for a moment. Then he looked sharply at the old man. "You ain't part of no gang," he said.

"Me? I bin on my corner so long nobody bothers me. Police know me. Kids know me."

"You make a livin' at it?" asked Joe eagerly. "Sweepin'?"

"Sometimes." The old man pointed to a scruffy-looking mongrel with a white rump and one torn ear that hovered a short distance off, avoiding the passersby. "That dog yours?"

Joe looked over his shoulder. The dog's eyes never left him.

"Boy ain't mine. Just follows me around."

"Same difference," said the man. "Might be a help. Might not."

"How d'yer mean?"

But the man had spotted someone and he was already leaving. "Find yer own pitch," he said, limping away as fast as he could.

"Yeah, but where?" Joe called after him. But the man didn't respond.

Joe headed north on Lower Road. A thin, cold rain began to fall. He passed a one-legged man in a ragged uniform. He had a broom. A couple of hundred yards farther on there were two more fierce-looking kids who eyed him suspiciously. They had brooms too.

There'd been crossing sweepers in Pound's Field, but Joe didn't remember seeing so many. Maybe he just hadn't noticed. It hadn't mattered back then.

Where Lower Road became Upper Road he passed a line of ragged women and children huddled on the pavement. Joe took a quick look down the side street where a gas lamp burned dimly. They were waiting for a soup kitchen to open: you didn't see a crowd like that anywhere else; and it must have been getting close to five o'clock because arguments were breaking out at the front of the line. They never had food or lodging for everyone.

Joe hurried on. He didn't like hanging around places like that too long. It always felt like bad luck.

Upper Road was wider and straighter than Lower Road but just as dirty, and the area looked poorer. The glovers' shops and haberdashers had given way to pawnbrokers and dingy slop shops. Joe didn't see anyone with a broom, but the chances of any tips for sweeping the street around here seemed pretty slim.

It was getting dark now and Joe's stomach was telling him it was time to take what little money he had left to a cookshop when a carriage passed him at a brisk trot, breath steaming from the nostrils of its pair of jet-black horses. Then two gentlemen swinging silver-handled canes came out of a side street and strode on up the road in front of him. Joe peered through the drizzle at the dark streets. He was an hour's walk north of anywhere he knew, but this was still the East End. Where were the gentry off to in these parts?

Then he saw it.

Up on the next corner, high over the entrance to a tall building, a single enormous gas lamp lit up the night, making the thin rain glow like a shower of gold. There were boarded-up windows in the upper stories of the building where the crumbling brickwork looked ready to collapse into the street, but the ground floor shone with gleaming plate glass and gilded plasterwork.

It was a gin shop, one of the biggest and gaudiest Joe had ever seen. Gilt letters on the windows advertised a dozen different brands of liquor, and the name of the place was written up over the door in tall black letters. Joe stopped just beyond the reach of the gas light, squinting up at the frontage of the building. He knew the gold leaf and the plasterwork meant money — and lots of it. He didn't know what the sign said, because Joe had never learned to read or write.

"Boy!" he hissed. "Wait!" The dog stopped.

It was early yet, but the gin shop was doing a roaring business. Half a dozen burly street vendors staggered out of the gleaming mahogany doors. They'd have been shouting their wares on the street that morning, but it looked as if they'd spent the rest of the day drinking. Two gentlemen with fashionably dressed ladies on their arms stepped smartly out of the vendors' way and then went inside. A big man in a red uniform held the double doors open and put his hand to his cap in a salute. Joe noticed one of the gentlemen slip a coin into the doorman's hand. As the doors swung open, a cloud of pipe and cigar smoke erupted into the cold evening air along with the racket of a hundred people all ordering food and drink and shouting to each other at the same time.

Joe hung back in the shadows, keeping out of the doorman's sight. A four-wheeled carriage drew up in the glowing circle of light outside the gin shop, and a sharp-eyed boy was holding its door open before the horse had come to a halt. A sweeper! Naturally there'd be one working a place like this.

"Welcome to Addison's Superior Tavern and Supper Club! Mind your step there, sir!"

The boy had one of the smart, new-style brooms with a solid head and stiff bristles. Joe had seen them in the market. Tenpence they cost. His had been tuppence ha'penny and that was enough! Joe could hear the boy's voice clearly above the noise from inside the bar. He certainly had the patter.

"Terrible the rubbish in the streets these days, sir! Did you know one hundred tons of horse dung are deposited in our metropolis every twenty-four hours?" The boy snatched the cap off his head and swung around to the lady at the man's side. "Pardon me for mentionin' such matters, madam."

The woman looked at the boy coolly. "Give him something, Lawrence, or he'll probably cover us with the stuff when our backs are turned."

"Oh, no, madam!" The boy was all outraged innocence as he set about explaining how he and his friend Charlie were the last honest crossing sweepers in London. "Bob and Charlie wouldn't never play a dirty trick like that, madam!" But Joe could see that all the time his eyes were on the gentleman's hand as it dipped into his trouser pocket and extracted a coin.

"Thank you kindly, sir," he cried, tossing the coin high into the air.

Joe's eyes followed the tiny silver disc turning over and over, spinning up into the night air until it was almost out of sight. Bob caught the coin in his left hand without looking and slipped it into his pocket. The woman laughed.

"Nice to see you in our 'umble part of town, madam. And I hopes the evening ends well, sir." Bob winked broadly at the gentleman.

The man raised a hand as if to give the boy a cuff round the head for his cheek, but Bob had already ducked away and was buttonholing another well-dressed couple. "Welcome to Addison's Superior Tavern and Supper Club!"

As the doorman held the doors open again, a ragged little girl, maybe half Joe's age, slipped past carrying an empty bottle and trailing what looked like her mother's shawl behind her. The doorman ignored her. The two gentlemen Joe had spotted on Upper Road laughed loudly at the child and flipped a coin into the doorman's waiting hand.

Joe had heard about these kind of places, where the rich came slumming among the poor, but he'd never seen one before. There was money being made here — outside as well as in. The question was: how was he going to get any of it?

Chapter Two

"What's yer game, short-shanks?"

The voice came loud and sudden from behind him. Joe turned slowly with a long sigh, knowing what was coming. Sure enough, he was looking up at a tall, heavily built boy, maybe three or four years older than him, with a tenpenny broom in his hand, just like Bob's. This would be the sweeper's partner, Charlie.

The boy looked down at him, a glint of amusement in his eye. Then he put his fingers to his mouth and let out a piercing whistle. The dog at Joe's feet yapped excitedly at the sound. Charlie aimed a swift kick.

"'Ere, Bob," he called out. "I caught meself a tiddler. What's yer name, tiddler?"

Joe said nothing. A group of men and women burst out of the bar, singing at the tops of their voices. The red-coated doorman impassively watched them go, then his eyes rested on Joe and the two sweepers.

"I'm watchin' you, Charlie," he called out.

The tall boy put his hands up, still holding the broom, and took a step backward away from Joe. "We ain't doin' nothin', Freddie."

"Mister Frederick to you, you little cadger."

"Silly me!" Charlie smacked himself on the brow as if in horror at making such a mistake. "We ain't doin' nothin', Mister Frederick — Mister Frederick, sir, I should say." The doorman scowled while Charlie made a great show of doing up a loose button on Joe's jacket. "Bob and me is just makin' friends with — what d'you say your name was, short-shanks?"

"Joe."

"Joe what?"

"Just Joe."

"We're makin' the acquaintance of Just Joe, Mister Frederick."

"Well do it someplace else."

"Fair enough," said Charlie. "Come along, Just Joe. They don't want to see the likes of you outside a Superior Tavern and Supper Club. And we want a word with you. Don't we, Bob?"

"That we do," said the other boy slowly. "That we do." Joe could hear the menace in his voice.

The pair marched Joe on up to the corner, beyond the reach of Addison's light, where the road was quiet. He knew what to expect. He had a broom and he was on their turf: he was going to get a beating.

Joe's eyes searched the darkness for an escape route. The soot-blackened side of the gin shop rose above them. Ahead, the bright red bricks of a new wall led on down a dark side street. Just next to where they were standing Boy was sniffing at a jagged crack where the builders had tried to tie the new wall into the old brickwork. Joe could see the same clear divide at his feet. Where he stood the road was unpaved and all three boys were ankle-deep in mud, but just a couple of yards farther a pavement of neat gray slabs began and the road had the new surface of crushed stones they called mac. Beyond that there wasn't much street lighting, but the boy could see dim lines of tall terraced houses against the evening sky. Maybe he could lose these two down there. Maybe not ...

The problem was, he didn't know the area. Running was easy when you knew where you were. In a strange part of town running was risky. Running got the pursuers' blood up and it could make the beating worse. Joe stayed where he was, eyeing Bob and Charlie warily. The two bigger boys kept a firm grip on him and talked over his head.

"See now, what I like about this one," Charlie was saying, "is that he's nicely turned out."

The tall boy fingered Joe's collar. He'd paid five shillings for the jacket and breeches and then another two bob for boots. It had felt good to own his first set of decent clothes — still did, actually.

"The nobs like a decent turnout." Charlie was doing all the talking. Now he turned his attention back to Joe. "See, Just Joe, you think you're going to do better if you look all ragged and pathetic like, but you don't. The nobs just turn their noses up. 'Specially the ladies. What they likes is the kind that looks decent and honest." He laughed. "You are honest, aren't yer, Joe?"

Joe studied the boy's face. What did he want him to say? He tried to match the older boy's knowing smile. Bob slapped him hard on the back.

"When you can afford it, eh, Joey?" He laughed. " 'E's a clever one, this, I reckon, Charlie. Might be able to make somethin' of him, eh?"

The two boys looked at each other. Charlie winked and Bob nodded his head. Were they going to let him in on their turf outside Addison's? Joe could feel the excitement building inside him. It was the first chance at earning a living since he got out of Pound's Field. Before someone stole his bag full of gear it hadn't mattered so much. Now it was life or death. They'd want something in return. A piece of what he got probably. But whatever they wanted, this was too good to let slip.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from THE WILD MANby Mark Barratt Copyright © 2009 by Mark Barratt. Excerpted by permission of Eerdmans Books for Young Readers. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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