Something That Can Make My Abilities Shine
Nora Graves.
Her home was a tenement house—a crowded, squalid apartment building where living conditions were miserable. The residents were mostly poor Jewish and Italian immigrants.
In the basement of that place sat a sewing workshop subcontracted by a garment company. It was Nora’s workplace, a notorious sweatshop infamous for its wretched conditions and starvation wages.
Clack-clack. Clack-clack.
Even with fifty people crammed inside, the only sound in the workshop was the relentless whir of sewing machines. The quiet chatter that had filled the morning had long since died away. The women sat tightly lipped at their ancient machines, feet pumping the pedals, hands never still.
Sweatshop—literally a place where you sweated. The hours were endless; the pay was a cruel joke. Even in the mild May weather, sweat poured down their faces, and lint from the fabric drifted through the narrow space that had no ventilation at all.
In that workshop Nora fed fabric under the needle with practiced ease. Her hands and feet were locked in the work, but her mind was a storm of dark thoughts.
In the space of a single week both of her sons had collapsed and been carried home unconscious. Something was badly wrong—more wrong than she could bear. The truly hopeless part was that she could see no way out of the gutter.
I brought this all on myself.
Choosing Protestantism over the Catholicism her family had followed for generations. Becoming a missionary and sailing to a country called Joseon she had never even heard of, where she met her husband. Getting pregnant with Kieran in the giddy joy of reuniting with him after he came to America. Stubbornly refusing her parents’ and siblings’ demands that she remarry after he died. Every single choice had been hers.
She did not regret them—not when she thought of the children. But the crushing weight of the question whether she would ever escape this stifling reality pressed down on her shoulders until they ached.
A heavy sigh had just escaped her lips when—
Bang!
“Blank!”
Half a dozen men kicked the workshop door open and strode straight toward the owner’s office as if they owned the place.
Every sewing machine stopped at once. From inside the office a rough voice roared:
“You son of a bitch, I told you to pay up! You ignore me? If you can’t pay, you shouldn’t have touched the dice in the first place!”
“W-wait, just listen—”
“Talking time’s over.”
Thud! Thud!
Every dull impact made the workers flinch. Nora bit down hard on her lip and stared at the office door. Seventy dollars in back wages. The price of twelve-hour days, the money her family’s survival depended on. Blank had always claimed the garment company was late with payments, but the scene unfolding now made it obvious every word had been a lie. He had taken loanshark money to feed his gambling habit and blown their wages along with it.
That goddamn bastard…
Rage flooded her until her vision went white. Her eyes locked on the sewing needle within arm’s reach. Her hand trembled with the fierce urge to yank it free and bury it in the owner’s throat. The other women felt the same. Every one of them was barely scraping by; the whole workshop seethed with fear.
“Will we even get the money we’re owed?”
“Looking at this? Fat chance. Bastard. I knew it the second he started stalling, saying he was short.”
“So what happens to us now?”
Bad working conditions were only half the story. Wage theft was epidemic in the sweatshops. Garment companies handed out subcontract after subcontract; the more layers there were, the easier it was for one man to collapse and take everyone down with him. There were so many examples that the workers panicked the moment a single payday was late.
A short while later the hard-faced men came out of the office shouting:
“We’ll be waiting outside—get your ass out here! If you don’t have the money by tonight, we’re selling every piece of equipment in this place. Count on it!”
The lead man herded his crew straight through the middle of the workshop without so much as a glance at the workers. The moment they were gone Nora and several other women rose and marched into the office.
“What the hell is going on, Blank?!”
The owner clutched his forehead and glared at the protesting women. There was not a shred of pity in him; instead he roared right back.
“Shut your mouths and get to work! You gotta work if you want the money I owe you, don’t you?”
“And that money’s actually for us?”
“If you don’t believe me, quit! If you’re not going back to your seats, get out right now!”
The man who had caused the mess was the one throwing a tantrum. It was enough to make them sick. Yet there was a twisted logic in his words: no work, no money. Even knowing every cent would go straight to the loansharks, they could not simply walk away. How could they abandon the wages already owed? Somewhere inside was the desperate hope that once the debt was settled he might start paying them little by little.
Blank stood, his voice cold as he dismissed them.
“I’m going out to raise the cash. Don’t get any stupid ideas—just keep working.”
No one spoke as he left the workshop. Amid the sighs, the stifled sobs, the simmering fury and dread, someone finally started a sewing machine again. Nora bit her lip and had no choice but to join them.
Clack-clack. Clack-clack.
Whether they would ever see their back wages was anyone’s guess. Nothing in the workshop had changed. Blank was simply exploiting the fact that the workers had nowhere else to turn.
The undisputed center of world finance was still the City of London, yet one American city was beginning to challenge its throne.
Wall Street, Lower Manhattan, New York.
Tall stone buildings lined both sides of the street; bank clerks and investors in suits hurried past in every direction. Newcomers might have stared in awe, but the skyscrapers no longer impressed me. The street was quieter than most of the city, yet still crowded enough. Carriages and Ford Model T’s choked the road, belching out thick exhaust. Newsboys shouted European-war headlines to snag the attention of passersby.
“American freighter sunk by German U-boat in the Atlantic!”
“U.S. troops have landed in France! Read the on-the-spot reactions!”
Among the newsboys was a kid who looked about Roa’s age, struggling just to hold a stack of papers that sold for a cent and a fifth. Everyone was hustling just to survive. I was one of them.
I had been shining shoes on Wall Street since early morning. Getting started had not been easy. The local boys’ territorial hostility was vicious—curses, threats to follow me into an alley—but I ignored them all.
If you don’t like it, try me.
Whoa, this kid’s completely insane.
They could foam at the mouth all they wanted; they would never jump me in front of a crowd. A newcomer who simply refused to back down threw them off balance. By holding my ground I had made far more money than the day before. Wall Street was overflowing with men in suits, and the slogan I had planted behind my stand drew plenty of curious eyes.
I'm not shining shoes, I'm polishing your future.
This time a clean-cut young man took the bait. His tailored suit and the air of quiet money around him were impossible to miss.
“Wow, great line. You come up with that yourself?”
“Yes, sir! I’ll polish your future until it gleams.”
“All right, let’s see what you’ve got.”
He smiled and set his shoe on the footrest. The money was welcome, but the real reason I had chosen Wall Street was the chance—however slim—of catching the eye of someone who could open doors, someone like the titans at J.P. Morgan. The young investors flooding this rising financial capital often read the papers while I worked, and the European war was the only subject that mattered to them.
I was no finance expert, yet my knowledge of the future was better than theirs. America had stayed neutral and raked in war profits; then in April the country had officially entered the fight, and stocks in munitions, transport, steel, railroads, and oil had climbed day after day. Liberty Bonds floated to finance the war were white-hot as well.
Into that atmosphere I tossed bait that always made them lean closer.
“The war won’t last long. A year at most—maybe next winter. Germany will surrender, the Central Powers will collapse with her, and the Ottoman Empire will be carved into pieces.”
Most people reacted the same way: either they decided I was a smooth-talking con artist or they simply ignored me. This young man, however, asked a real question.
“If the war ends soon like you say, when should I dump the munitions and steel stocks? Do you think we’re at the peak right now?”
“There’ll be a short-term drop after the war, but over the long haul they’ll rise again.”
“So I should just keep holding?”
“Nothing lasts forever. Factories will keep churning out goods long after the buyers disappear, and then the crash comes. A balloon that big always bursts. That’ll lead to another war—”
“Interesting, but I’m short on time.”
He cut me off, clearly writing me off as someone who had picked up a few newspaper scraps. Then he offered what he thought was sincere advice.
“Don’t talk like that anymore. People will brand you a hustler. Some of them might even take a swing at you. I’ve seen kids get beaten for less.”
Wall Street was full of men who had failed in business or speculation and were out hunting for capital. They hid their desperation behind sharp clothes—especially polished shoes. So a shoe-shine boy who started spouting investment advice? An Oriental one at that? Of course it rubbed people the wrong way. The man had simply been kind enough to point it out.
Second life. I had come back a hundred years into the past, yet I still had no idea how to put my knowledge to real use. Fragmentary facts gleaned from books and screens were not enough to move anyone’s heart. Even if every prediction came true, the proof would arrive years too late. I did not know what would happen tomorrow, or even later this week. The taste of reality was bitter.
“Don’t worry—I’m in a good mood today. That’s the only reason I listened.”
He grinned and clapped my shoulder, then checked the shine and looked satisfied.
“How much?”
“Three cents.”
He handed over the coins and glanced again at the sign.
“You really invent that slogan yourself?”
“Last night. Wrote it myself.”
“You’ve got a way with words. Instead of shining other people’s shoes, why don’t you go find something that can actually make your own abilities shine?”
My abilities would shine brightest in the military. For that I needed money, education, and a sponsor. Any military academy that could make me an officer—even if it wasn’t West Point—would do. The chance that a complete stranger would bankroll me was zero, but still…
“May I ask your name, sir?”
“Joseph. Sorry, but if my name gets mixed up with those wild stories of yours, that would be a real problem.”
The careful young man gave only the common name Joseph and walked away. My eyes followed him until he disappeared inside the headquarters of J.P. Morgan & Co.
The Morgan dynasty that ruled American finance. I seemed to recall that J.P. Morgan’s grandson was in his mid-twenties, but the name had not been Joseph.
I turned and looked down the length of Wall Street to the Trinity Church that still stood tall at its end. A church built seventy years ago would still be standing in that exact spot a hundred years from now.
Fuck it. Just shine the damn shoes.
I was scanning the street for the next pair of eyes when a commotion broke out at a nearby newsstand.
“I told you not to sell those papers, didn’t I? You trying to run a business like that? Huh?!”
Four men in wide-brimmed fedoras snatched the stacks of newspapers and menaced the owner. Plenty of people were around, yet each of them gave the scene a wide berth the way you step around dog shit. The men were “sluggers”—hired thugs employed by a rival newspaper. Their job was to threaten and beat newsstand owners so they would stop carrying the competition.
The most famous case had been the newspaper war between Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World and William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal. Both papers had gone to war with sensational headlines, price-cutting, and talent raids. In that insane death match both sides used sluggers; Journal gangsters had even attacked and wrecked World delivery wagons. Street brawls, smashed newsstands, threatened or beaten deliverymen—nothing was off-limits. That was the birth of yellow journalism: the art of throwing ethics to the dogs and selling papers with the most lurid, often fabricated, stories imaginable.
After the Spanish-American War and especially after Pulitzer’s death six years earlier, the rivalry had cooled and public taste had begun to change. Then the European war exploded and the old habits returned. Demand for papers soared, circulation wars reignited, and most major papers once again kept sluggers on the payroll.
The important fact was that the sluggers were, at bottom, gangsters. And after they finished wrecking the newsstand they did not simply walk past me.
I was next—the Chinese kid who had ignored Wall Street’s unwritten rules and set up shop.
“Who the hell gave this ballsy little chink permission to work here?”
Crack!
One of them kicked my toolbox as if it were a soccer ball. The wooden lid shattered; brushes, polish, rags, and spare laces went flying across the pavement. The moment I stood, three of them surrounded me while the fourth slipped a knife against my back where the crowd could not see. Then they took every cent I had earned.
That was not the end of it. The local shoe-shine boys who had been waiting for exactly this moment came scrambling out. They watched the big brothers’ fine work with satisfied grins, then rushed in and scooped up every tool that had hit the ground—like a pack of little scavengers.
“Show your face here again tomorrow and it won’t end this easy.”
The men who had destroyed my kit left me with that warning and walked off. My heart was hammering harder and harder. Goddamn gangsters. Wherever I went they turned up to get in my way. In just a few days my patience had hit rock bottom.
“This is… fucking ridiculous.”
Just like Uncle Larry always said: gangs are the weeds mixed in with the grass. If you don’t look carefully, no one even notices what they are. One day the weeds get pulled and something else grows in their place, and people still don’t care what it is. Gang names? Who gives a damn—they’re all the same.
The NYPD had even formed special strong-arm squads to wipe them out, yet the new sprouts growing now would build organizations far stronger and more ruthless than anything before. Men like Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Siegel.
I reached down for one of the small, sharp tools still lying on the ground. Scattered around it were the crumpled, torn copies of the New York World the sluggers had thrown aside. One headline caught my eye.
The unprecedented, utterly insane age of Prohibition.
—Instead of shining other people’s shoes, why don’t you go find something that can actually make your own abilities shine?
A place where my abilities could shine.
Maybe it wasn’t the army after all. Maybe it was the city’s own battlefield.
I made sure the newsstand owner was still distracted, then quietly pocketed one of the papers.
Tweet!
A sharp whistle finally cut through the street. The police had arrived—remarkably fast for once. The gangsters and the kids who had stolen my gear were long gone. The newsstand owner watched the officers with complicated eyes and said nothing. He was afraid of the retaliation that would follow any complaint. Sure enough, the late-arriving cops never even asked what had happened to me; they were more concerned about the smashed toolbox cluttering the sidewalk.
“Hey, quit making a mess and clean this crap up. Then get moving.”
“That’s not mine.”
Two days of shoe-shining was enough. I took only the newspaper and the small knife I used for scraping mud and filth from soles, and walked away.