The Enchanted Canyon

"A boy at fourteen needs a mother or the memory of a mother as he does at no other period of his life."--_Enoch's Diary_.

Except for its few blocks that border Washington Square, MacDougal Street is about as squalid as any on New York's west side.

Once it was aristocratic enough for any one, but that was nearly a century ago. Alexander Hamilton's mansion and Minetta Brook are less than memories now. The blocks of fine brick houses that covered Richmond Hill are given over to Italian tenements. Minetta Brook, if it sings at all, sings among the sewers far below the dirty pavements.

But Minetta Lane still lives, a short alley that debouches on MacDougal Street. Edgar Allan Poe once strolled on summer evenings through Minetta Lane with his beautiful Annabel Lee. But God pity the sweethearts to-day who must have love in its reeking precincts! It is a lane of ugliness, now; a lane of squalor; a lane of poverty and hopelessness spelled in terms of filth and decay.

About midway in the Lane stands a two-story, red-brick house with an exquisite Georgian doorway. The wrought-iron handrail that borders the crumbling stone steps is still intact. The steps usually are crowded with dirty, quarreling children and a sore-eyed cat or two. Nobody knows and nobody cares who built the house. Enough that it is now the home of poverty and of ways that fear the open light of day. Just when the decay of the old dwelling began there is none to say. But New Yorkers of middle age recall that in their childhood the Lane already had been claimed by the slums, with the Italian influx just beginning.

One winter afternoon a number of years ago a boy stood leaning against the iron newel post of the old house, smoking a cigarette. He was perhaps fourteen or fifteen years of age, but he might have been either older or younger. The city gives even to children a sophisticated look that baffles the casual psychologist.

The children playing on the steps behind the boy were stocky, swarthy Italians. But he was tall and loosely built, with dark red hair and hard blue eyes. He was thin and raw boned. Even his smartly cut clothes could not hide his extreme awkwardness of body, his big loose joints, his flat chest and protruding shoulder blades. His face, too, could not have been an Italian product. The cheek bones were high, the cheeks slightly hollowed, the nose and lips were rough hewn. The suave lines of the three little Latins behind him were entirely alien to this boy's face.

It was warm and thawing so that the dead horse across the street, with the hugely swollen body, threw off an offensive odor.

"Smells like the good ol' summer time," said the boy, nodding his head toward the horse and addressing the rag picker who was pulling a burlap sack into the basement.

"Like ta getta da skin. No good now though," replied Luigi. "You gotta da rent money, Nucky?"

"Got nuttin'," Nucky's voice was bitter. "That brown Liz you let in last night beats the devil shakin' dice."

"We owe three mont' now, Nucky," said the Italian.

"Yes, and how much trade have I pulled into your blank blank second floor for you durin' the time, you blank blank! If I hear any more about the rent, I'll split on you, you--"

But before Nucky could continue his cursing, the Italian broke in with a volubility of oaths that reduced the boy to sullen silence. Having eased his mind, Luigi proceeded to drag the sack into the basement and slammed the door.

"Nucky! Nucky! He's onlucky!" sang one of the small girls on the crumbling steps.

"You dry up, you little alley cat!" roared the boy.

"You're just a bastard!" screamed the child, while her playmates took up the cry.

Nucky lighted a fresh cigarette and moved hurriedly up toward MacDougal Street. Once having turned the corner, he slackened his gait and climbed into an empty chair in the bootblack stand that stood in front of the Cafe Roma. The bootblack had not finished the first shoe when a policeman hoisted himself into the other chair.

"How are you, Nucky?" he grunted.

"All right, thanks," replied the boy, an uneasy look softening his cold eyes for the moment.

"Didn't keep the job I got you, long," the officer said. "What was the rip this time?"

"Aw, I ain't goin' to hold down ho five-dollar-a-week job. What do you think I am?"

"I think you are a fool headed straight for the devil," answered the officer succinctly. "Now listen to me, Nucky. I've knowed you ever since you started into the school over there. I mind how the teacher told me she was glad to see one brat that looked like an old-fashioned American. And everything the teachers and us guys at the police station could do to keep you headed right, we've done. But you just won't have it. You've growed up with just the same ideas the young toughs have 'round here. All you know about earnin' money is by gambling." Nucky stirred, but the officer put out his hand.

"Hold on now, fer I'm servin' notice on you. You've turned down every job we got you. You want to keep on doing Luigi's dirty work for him. Very well! Go to it! And the next time we get the goods on you, you'll get the limit. So watch yourself!"

"Everybody's against a guy!" muttered the boy,

"Everybody's against a fool that had rather be crooked than straight," returned the officer.

Nucky, his face sullen, descended from the chair, paid the boy and headed up MacDougal Street toward the Square.

A tall, dark woman, dressed in black entered the Square as Nucky crossed from Fourth Street. Nucky overtook her.

"Are you comin' round to-night, Liz?" he asked.

She looked at him with liquid brown eyes over her shoulder.

"Anything better there than there was last night?" she asked.

Nucky nodded eagerly. "You'll be surprised when you see the bird I got lined up."

Liz looked cautiously round the park, at the children shouting on the wet pavements, at the sparrows quarreling in the dirty snow drifts. Then she started, nervously, along the path.

"There comes Foley!" she exclaimed. "What's he doin' off his beat?"

"He's seen us now," said Nucky. "We might as well stand right here."

"Oh, I ain't afraid of that guy!" Liz tossed her head. "I got things on him, all right."

"Why don't you use 'em?" Nucky's voice was skeptical. "He's going down Waverly Place, the blank, blank!"

Liz grunted. "He's got too much on me! I ain't hopin' to start trouble. You go chase yourself, Nucky. I'll be round about midnight."

Nucky's chasing himself consisted of the purchase of a newspaper which he read for a few minutes in the sunshine of the park. Even as he sat on the park bench, apparently absorbed in the paper, there was an air of sullen unhappiness about the boy. Finally, he tossed the paper aside, and sat with folded arms, his chin on his breast.

Officer Foley, standing on the corner of Washington Place and MacDougal Street waved a pleasant salute to a tall, gray-haired man whose automobile drew up before the corner apartment house.