Elegy Part II, or, Impatience cowboy_newsieOctober 21 2011, 09:55:46 UTC
It’s 1900 when you return-rather immediately so; it’s midnight and David is grabbing your arm as fireworks go off in celebration of the new century. You cling back to him, dazed and out of it, and blame it on the alcohol he thinks is coursing through your veins when he looks at you oddly.
The next day, as always, you have work, and before you know it you’re two hours into selling newspapers. You’ve checked your reflection; you’re seventeen and skinny again, with masses of scars on your back, arms and hands. When Blink punches you in the arm it leaves a faint bruise; when you trip over the missing cobblestone on High street-the one you haven’t had to think about avoiding for two years-it leaves a bloody cut on your knee.
You’re back, and not a damn thing in the world-from your clothes to your body to your blood-proves otherwise.
For the next week, you’re almost eager to forget. You throw yourself into your work, your drawings; you drink and joke and gamble until you feel ill, and you don’t-you don’t-- think of Edelweiss, of Canada, of powers-and you especially don’t think about Sirius or Alice.
But that’s impossible. You knew that after the first day, but you persisted anyway, stubborn as always. Even at night, when it was just you staring at the dark ceiling, you would stubbornly steal a book from Specs and focus on the words, staying up until you were exhausted, firmly shoving everything-everyone--from your mind. But it’s not working. Nothing’s the same anymore. The jokes seem dull, the petty routine of selling papes is mind-numbing-even illustrating cartoons for the World isn’t what you want to be doing, not really, not as your main job. You stare longingly at doctor’s offices, craving to join them-and you know how, you know better than they do, but you also know without trying you’d be laughed out of the office the moment you stepped in, grubby and poor as you are.
So you content yourself by taking on an unofficial third job and caring for the newsboys. You diagnose their illnesses, you prescribe cures. When they tease and wonder how you suddenly know what to do, you claim you’ve read a bunch of books lately; when they question that, you snap at them until they leave you alone. You’re Jack Kelly; they won’t question you too deeply. And when the boys start getting healthier, they start shyly bringing by their siblings, their girlfriends-even their folks, in one or two memorable occasions. You start keeping a tin labeled donations by your bed, and people-more than you think would-start tipping you. It isn’t a lot, but it’s more than enough to buy medical supplies-and then you start to get more and more business, as people tell their friends and family.
And before you know it, you’ve begun to run a small practice. It’s not legal, of course, as you’re not actually a doctor-but as you cater to those who (for one reason or another) can’t or won’t go to a more official doctor, no one is particularly inclined to call the cops on you. Besides, you’re fairly certain this is technically legal-after all, any money you take you’re certain to call a donation, and it’s not your fault if people want to give you their money, is it.
You also keep up on your reading. It’s a weird feeling, to correct medical textbooks, but a gratifying one as well-and you read other books too, Davey’s books, Katherine’s books, anything you can get your hand on.
And it helps. It all helps, the reading and the three jobs and the sheer exhaustion that comes from that-you barely have time at all to think about him. About them. About how badly you miss them, how every time you wake up you expect to see Sirius about three inches away; how you keep thinking of jokes he’d love and sights he’d want to see. About how much you miss your home with him, your pets, the routine your life had settled in-and you hadn’t known it could hurt this badly, that your heart could break like this. It was nothing like when your mother had died; you had long seen that coming. This was too sudden, too immediate, and you wonder when it will stop feeling like a physical ache, as if someone had literally broken your heart.
You need him next to you, and you don’t know what to do now that he’s not there.
So you eventually begin writing to him. It’s stupid and it hurts and you actually end up crying the first time (not that you’ll ever admit it), but you do it anyway because then it seems less like you’ll never see him again and more like you two are just separated for a while.
Dear mate, you write,
Life is boring and I miss you, but at least I have my suspenders to comfort me. I miss Yorick too, but the little titchy newsboys are almost like him so that’s okay. I miss you. Katherine is very affectionate now that I’m a big shot doctor. She has great tits, did I tell you? I wish I did. You’d be jealous of me if you could see her (I wish you could), she’s amazing. No worries, though, we could find you a girl here, there’s a million good enough for you in New York. I miss having you next to me, nobody appreciates my jokes or how I look at things now, you’ve ruined me, made me all half-English. I’m an outcast now.
You pause because there’s more truth in that sentence than you want to admit-but Sirius has always seen all of you, good sides and bad, serious and comical, and so you leave it in.
I miss you mate.
You pause again-and you want to continue, you really do, but you can’t think of anything else because that’s the only real sentence your heart has been singing since you got here. I miss you I miss you I miss you, alternating occasionally with I need you I need you I need you.
You sigh and push your hand through your hair and eventually you fold up the damn letter and shove it in an envelope. Sirius Black, you write irritably, and then hesitate.
Black Family, you write instead, slowly, feeling sick. London, England. You shove it into your pocket and run a hand over your mouth, staring at nothing.
Half an hour later you’re at the docks; three days later you’re on a boat to England.
You’ve left a note for Katherine and David that explains nothing and promises all the details in the world when you get back. You aren’t sure if you’ll tell them or not; they love you dearly, but they’re both hardened skeptics-but on the other hand, they’ve both noticed and commented on the change in you.
Who knows. Who cares. You’re off to England to try and track down the Black family.
It’s cold in England, colder than you anticipate-- It’s not cold so much as an all-prevailing chill, a voice corrects wryly in the back of your head- and you yank your jacket tighter about you, glancing about as if trying to find a sign. Wizards this way!, perhaps.
Diagon Alley . . . hadn’t he said that was in London? Certainly, yes, but London had to be as big as New York; to search blindly for it would be idiotic.
But not as idiotic, perhaps, as the plan forming in the back of your mind. Why not? After all, no one knew you here; what sort of reputation would you have to uphold?
***
It takes two weeks of asking random strangers how to get into Diagon Alley before you meet a wizard who, thank god, buys your story of being a Squib. He gives you a snobbish sort of glance, to be certain, but you’re too used to that to care; the important thing is that he lets you in and leaves you be.
It takes you another hour to locate Gringotts, another ten minutes to both stop staring at the Goblins and work up your courage to speak to them. After some odd minutes spent exchanging American money into English, and further into Wizard, you finally open an account.
You want, you explain carefully, to hold a letter for some seventy years. The goblin’s expression doesn’t change; you wonder if this is normal for wizards. And after seventy years-that was right, wasn’t it? Better make it eighty, just in ca-no, no, seventy-eight (the goblin was growing irritable, but politely so)-yes, in seventy-eight years, you wanted it delivered to the eldest heir of the Black family.
Does the Black family know your intentions, you’re asked, and you reply in your haughtiest voice that they do not and they should not, thanks very much, as it isn’t their business. The goblin raises an eyebrow, nods, and informs you that it shall be done.
And that’s that. You’re left standing there with an oddly hollow feeling in your chest; that feels far too easy.
Now all you have to do is wait, really. You’d added a small epilogue to your letter, one on the back:
I’m here, you said, waiting in Diagon Alley in 1900.
He said he would come, and Sirius had never broken his word.
You exhale slowly, wander outside, sit on the stone steps of the bank and stare out onto the street.
The next day, as always, you have work, and before you know it you’re two hours into selling newspapers. You’ve checked your reflection; you’re seventeen and skinny again, with masses of scars on your back, arms and hands. When Blink punches you in the arm it leaves a faint bruise; when you trip over the missing cobblestone on High street-the one you haven’t had to think about avoiding for two years-it leaves a bloody cut on your knee.
You’re back, and not a damn thing in the world-from your clothes to your body to your blood-proves otherwise.
For the next week, you’re almost eager to forget. You throw yourself into your work, your drawings; you drink and joke and gamble until you feel ill, and you don’t-you don’t-- think of Edelweiss, of Canada, of powers-and you especially don’t think about Sirius or Alice.
But that’s impossible. You knew that after the first day, but you persisted anyway, stubborn as always. Even at night, when it was just you staring at the dark ceiling, you would stubbornly steal a book from Specs and focus on the words, staying up until you were exhausted, firmly shoving everything-everyone--from your mind. But it’s not working. Nothing’s the same anymore. The jokes seem dull, the petty routine of selling papes is mind-numbing-even illustrating cartoons for the World isn’t what you want to be doing, not really, not as your main job. You stare longingly at doctor’s offices, craving to join them-and you know how, you know better than they do, but you also know without trying you’d be laughed out of the office the moment you stepped in, grubby and poor as you are.
So you content yourself by taking on an unofficial third job and caring for the newsboys. You diagnose their illnesses, you prescribe cures. When they tease and wonder how you suddenly know what to do, you claim you’ve read a bunch of books lately; when they question that, you snap at them until they leave you alone. You’re Jack Kelly; they won’t question you too deeply. And when the boys start getting healthier, they start shyly bringing by their siblings, their girlfriends-even their folks, in one or two memorable occasions. You start keeping a tin labeled donations by your bed, and people-more than you think would-start tipping you. It isn’t a lot, but it’s more than enough to buy medical supplies-and then you start to get more and more business, as people tell their friends and family.
And before you know it, you’ve begun to run a small practice. It’s not legal, of course, as you’re not actually a doctor-but as you cater to those who (for one reason or another) can’t or won’t go to a more official doctor, no one is particularly inclined to call the cops on you. Besides, you’re fairly certain this is technically legal-after all, any money you take you’re certain to call a donation, and it’s not your fault if people want to give you their money, is it.
You also keep up on your reading. It’s a weird feeling, to correct medical textbooks, but a gratifying one as well-and you read other books too, Davey’s books, Katherine’s books, anything you can get your hand on.
Reply
You need him next to you, and you don’t know what to do now that he’s not there.
So you eventually begin writing to him. It’s stupid and it hurts and you actually end up crying the first time (not that you’ll ever admit it), but you do it anyway because then it seems less like you’ll never see him again and more like you two are just separated for a while.
Dear mate, you write,
Life is boring and I miss you, but at least I have my suspenders to comfort me. I miss Yorick too, but the little titchy newsboys are almost like him so that’s okay. I miss you. Katherine is very affectionate now that I’m a big shot doctor. She has great tits, did I tell you? I wish I did. You’d be jealous of me if you could see her (I wish you could), she’s amazing. No worries, though, we could find you a girl here, there’s a million good enough for you in New York. I miss having you next to me, nobody appreciates my jokes or how I look at things now, you’ve ruined me, made me all half-English. I’m an outcast now.
You pause because there’s more truth in that sentence than you want to admit-but Sirius has always seen all of you, good sides and bad, serious and comical, and so you leave it in.
I miss you mate.
You pause again-and you want to continue, you really do, but you can’t think of anything else because that’s the only real sentence your heart has been singing since you got here. I miss you I miss you I miss you, alternating occasionally with I need you I need you I need you.
You sigh and push your hand through your hair and eventually you fold up the damn letter and shove it in an envelope. Sirius Black, you write irritably, and then hesitate.
Black Family, you write instead, slowly, feeling sick. London, England. You shove it into your pocket and run a hand over your mouth, staring at nothing.
Half an hour later you’re at the docks; three days later you’re on a boat to England.
You’ve left a note for Katherine and David that explains nothing and promises all the details in the world when you get back. You aren’t sure if you’ll tell them or not; they love you dearly, but they’re both hardened skeptics-but on the other hand, they’ve both noticed and commented on the change in you.
Who knows. Who cares. You’re off to England to try and track down the Black family.
Reply
It’s cold in England, colder than you anticipate-- It’s not cold so much as an all-prevailing chill, a voice corrects wryly in the back of your head- and you yank your jacket tighter about you, glancing about as if trying to find a sign. Wizards this way!, perhaps.
Diagon Alley . . . hadn’t he said that was in London? Certainly, yes, but London had to be as big as New York; to search blindly for it would be idiotic.
But not as idiotic, perhaps, as the plan forming in the back of your mind. Why not? After all, no one knew you here; what sort of reputation would you have to uphold?
***
It takes two weeks of asking random strangers how to get into Diagon Alley before you meet a wizard who, thank god, buys your story of being a Squib. He gives you a snobbish sort of glance, to be certain, but you’re too used to that to care; the important thing is that he lets you in and leaves you be.
It takes you another hour to locate Gringotts, another ten minutes to both stop staring at the Goblins and work up your courage to speak to them. After some odd minutes spent exchanging American money into English, and further into Wizard, you finally open an account.
You want, you explain carefully, to hold a letter for some seventy years. The goblin’s expression doesn’t change; you wonder if this is normal for wizards. And after seventy years-that was right, wasn’t it? Better make it eighty, just in ca-no, no, seventy-eight (the goblin was growing irritable, but politely so)-yes, in seventy-eight years, you wanted it delivered to the eldest heir of the Black family.
Does the Black family know your intentions, you’re asked, and you reply in your haughtiest voice that they do not and they should not, thanks very much, as it isn’t their business. The goblin raises an eyebrow, nods, and informs you that it shall be done.
And that’s that. You’re left standing there with an oddly hollow feeling in your chest; that feels far too easy.
Now all you have to do is wait, really. You’d added a small epilogue to your letter, one on the back:
I’m here, you said, waiting in Diagon Alley in 1900.
He said he would come, and Sirius had never broken his word.
You exhale slowly, wander outside, sit on the stone steps of the bank and stare out onto the street.
Wait, yes, but for how long?
Reply
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