Annie (6 page)

“Well, you gotta have a dream,” said Annie with a grin.

“Huh,” grunted Lou. “Under this damn bridge, traffic rattlin' overhead all night.”

“To wake you up from your nightmare,” answered Annie. Everyone around the fire laughed.

“It ain't funny, kid,” said Lou sourly. “Not when all you got in the world is empty pockets.”

“At least you got pockets,” Annie rejoined. “Lots of folks these days don't, I'll bet.”

“Freezin' fingers,” muttered Lou.

“Lucky thing you got them empty pockets to put 'em in,” replied Annie. Once again, everyone laughed.

“All right, kid, you're so smart,” said Lou. “You know what else we got here? Newspapers for blankets. Now, whatta you say to that?”

Everyone was silent around the fire as Annie thought for a moment. “I got it,” Annie said, smiling. “You can read in bed!”

“Aw, I give up,” said Lou, getting up from the fire and walking away in disgust while the others laughed with delight at Annie's cheerful victory.

“You know something, Annie?” said Randy. “You're okay.”

“Annie,” asked Sophie, “you got yourself a place to stay for the night?”

“Well, uh, not exactly,” Annie replied. “You see, I kind of ran away from—”

Randy stopped her. “Uh-uh, Annie, don't tell us,” he said. “Down here at the bottom of life's pickle barrel, we don't ask anybody questions about why they're here. We don't talk about our pasts and we don't talk about our futures. We just try to help each other to get through the present—one day at a time, as they say up at Sing Sing. And our present, I might add, happens to stink. Some business I'm in. Seven million people in New York, and I only sold seven apples today. In the rain, yet.”

“The sun'll come out tomorrow,” said Annie. “Bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow there'll be sun.”

“My bottom dollar, huh?” Randy laughed. “I'd bet it, kid, if I hadn't already lost it.”

“Look, Annie, if you need a place to stay you can bunk in with me,” Sophie offered. “I got a little tin palace over there all to myself and there's plenty of room for the both of us.”

“For Sandy, too?” Annie asked.

“For Sandy, too, of course,” said Sophie good-naturedly, and later, when the fires had died down and everyone had begun to get ready for the night, Sophie lit a candle and led Annie and Sandy into her shanty. The roof was so low that Sophie had to bend down when she was inside, although Annie could stand up fine. The shanty smelled of mildew and candle wax, but it was at least warm and dry. Sophie spread three layers of newspapers on the hard dirt floor of the shanty to make a bed for Annie and Sandy, and the child and the dog lay down on the bed, nestled together. Then Sophie covered them over with three more layers of newspapers. The newspapers made a surprisingly comfortable and cozy—if crackly—bed, Annie discovered, and putting her arms around Sandy's neck, she soon fell asleep.

“Good night, sleep tight, and don't let the bedbugs bite,” whispered Sophie, blowing out the candle and settling heavily down on a similar bed of newspapers at the other side of the shanty. In the middle of the night, the rain began to fall again, pelting the corrugated tin roof of the shanty with a sound that was almost as loud as gunfire. Sophie woke up abruptly. But Annie and Sandy were so tired that they slept right through the storm. Sophie lit another candle in the dark and looked over at the sleeping child and her dog. “What a sweet little girl,” said Sophie softly. It was too bad that Annie couldn't have heard Sophie, for that was almost the first time in her life that anyone had ever said anything nice about her.

T
he next morni
ng, the rain had stopped, but the sun hadn't come out—it was a bleak, gray day. In the shanty, Annie was awakened by Randy calling to her, “Come on, little lady, rise and shine. You and I are going into business together!” Randy explained a few minutes later that he'd decided to give her some of his extra apples to sell and that they'd split the profits, fifty-fifty. “I'm branching out—taking on hired help,” explained Randy grandly, smiling as the Hoovervillites sat around on the ground outside their shanties, eating oatmeal that Sophie had cooked up for breakfast. Sophie's oatmeal, Annie decided, was slightly more tasty than Miss Hannigan's mush. But not much more. After breakfast, fitted out with a cardboard tray of apples strung about her neck on a piece of twine, Annie set out with Sandy and Randy for Grand Central Terminal. There, Randy positioned her by the Lexington Avenue entrance, and he went around to the Vanderbilt Avenue entrance. “A little tyke like you, you're bound to sell plenty of apples,” said Randy, “so long as you look sad and hungry.”

“That won't be hard,” Annie exclaimed cheerfully as Randy left her to sell her wares. “Apples, apples, five cents apiece, two for a dime!” Annie cried out to the travelers hurrying in and out of the station. “Remember, folks, an apple a day keeps the doctor away. And two apples a day keeps two doctors away!”

All day long, from eight o'clock in the morning until after seven o'clock at night, with only an occasional break to rest on one of the benches in the Grand Central waiting room, Annie sold apples. And ate apples. Annie and Sandy each had an apple for lunch and another for a late-afternoon snack. “We're eatin' up the profits,” said Annie to Sandy, “but we gotta keep up our strength if we're gonna make it through the day.” At seven fifteen, when Randy rejoined them, he was delighted to learn that Annie had sold seventeen apples and taken in eighty-five cents. (He had sold only five that day.) “Aw, it was nothin'.” Annie shrugged, smiling proudly as she handed the money over to Randy.

“Nothing? It's a small fortune,” said Randy happily. “I knew it—I knew they'd buy more apples from a nice-looking kid like you than from a no-good-looking bum like me. Annie, you and I are going to get rich!”

Randy handed Annie her share of the money—thirty-four cents. She tucked it into the pocket of her sweater—it was more money than she'd ever had before in her life. And then the three of them—Annie, Sandy, and Randy—trudged back uptown to the Hooverville, where they were just in time to get a helping of Sophie's stew. To pay for her keep, Annie gave half of the money she'd earned that day—seventeen cents—to Sophie. She kept the other half. “I'm gonna save up and buy bus tickets,” Annie earnestly told Sophie, “and then me and Sandy, we're gonna go all over America, all over the world if we have to, lookin' for my mom and dad until we find them. And we're gonna find them, we are!” “Of course you are,” said Sophie, gently tousling Annie's hair.

After dinner in the Hooverville, as a full moon came up in the pale-blue sky above the 59th Street Bridge, they all sat around on the ground in the warm May night and talked yearningly about what they were going to do after the Depression was over. Lou began to play the harmonica, and soon the ragged group was singing along, old songs like “By the Light of the Silvery Moon” and “Moonlight Bay.” Around ten o'clock, Annie said good night and led Sandy to their bed of newspapers in Sophie's shanty. Carefully covering Sandy with papers, Annie lay on the bed next to him and put her arms around his neck. “You know, Sandy, we're doin' all right for ourselves,” she said quietly to the dog as she heard the grown-ups outside talking and singing in the warm spring night. “We got a place to stay, food, friends, and even a job. I mean, look at us, we're already seventeen cents rich!” And, as the bright full moon shone down on the Hooverville shanty, Annie and Sandy soon fell asleep.

• • •

A new life had begun for Annie. And Sandy. In the weeks that followed, as spring gave way to summer in New York, the girl and her dog went with Randy each day to Grand Central Terminal and took up their stand. With spirit and determination, they sold apples until nightfall. They had their good days and their bad days, but there wasn't a day when Annie didn't end up making at least ten cents. And by the middle of August, she'd saved up $13.25.

Although the residents of the Hooverville often sang and laughed and joked, their lives were hard. Broke, out of work, scrounging for pennies to pay for their share of the food, and sleeping under newspapers in tumbledown shanties, they had little hope of ever finding a real job again or of ever getting out of the Hooverville. And life in the Hooverville wasn't easy for Annie, either, although she tried always to have a cheery smile on her face. Annie got up each morning full of hope, convinced that the day ahead would at last be the day when she'd find her father and mother. But each night she went to bed disappointed. “Tomorrow,” Annie would say to herself with a sigh before she closed her eyes and dropped wearily off to sleep. “Yes, tomorrow will be the day.”

As she walked back and forth with Randy between the Hooverville and Grand Central Terminal, Annie told him about her life in the orphanage and how she'd run away to find her father and mother. And Randy had helped her to letter a large cardboard sign that she propped next to her by the entrance to Grand Central Terminal: “Anyone having any information about anyone who left a two-month-old infant named Annie at a New York City orphanage on the night of December 31, 1921, please contact the young lady selling apples beside this sign. Reward $13.25.” And each week, as she saved more money, Annie raised the amount of the reward, until by early October it had risen to $23.75. But although hundreds of people stopped to read the sign every day, not one of them ever had any information about her father and mother. Still, Randy continued to keep up her hopes. “I promise you, Annie, sooner or later everyone in America passes through Grand Central,” said Randy, “so you couldn't be in a more ideal place. If you stand here long enough, you're bound to find your parents.”

The thought that everyone in America eventually passed through Grand Central Terminal heartened Annie. But it also made her nervous when she realized that everyone in America included Fred Bixby. For she lived in constant fear that Fred would swoop down on her while she was selling apples, drag her across town, beat her unmercifully, and force her to work once again in the Beanery. Still, she told herself, Fred hardly ever left the Beanery, except to go drinking at McGuire's speakeasy. And maybe he'd already passed through Grand Central Terminal, years ago. But, come to think of it, maybe her father and mother had, too. As long as she had her sign, though, which she lugged back and forth from the Hooverville every day, Annie told herself that she could keep on hoping.

But her hopes of finding her parents at Grand Central Terminal vanished one gray afternoon in early November. She'd already been feeling downhearted that day, thinking about winter coming on and about how—no matter how cheerful she'd try to be—the months ahead in the Hooverville would be bleak and freezing. And she'd also been worrying about how school had now been going on for more than two months without her. Annie would have been in the seventh grade this fall. Instead, she was falling further and further behind in her schooling with each passing day. On October 28th, her birthday had come and gone without anything special happening, for she hadn't told anyone in the Hooverville that she was twelve years old that day. So there'd been no party or singing or birthday kisses. But, of course, this was nothing new for Annie. Her birthday had never been celebrated at the orphanage, either, and she'd never in her entire life gotten a birthday present. All of these unhappy thoughts were going through her mind as she continued to chant, “Apples, apples, a nickel apiece, two for a dime,” when suddenly Randy came running breathlessly up to her.

“Annie, quick, take your apples and skedaddle—there's a cop looking for you!” cried Randy. Her heart pounding with fright, Annie grabbed Sandy and ran off into the station, where she hid in a corridor not far from the entrance. A policeman. After her. Annie had never been so scared in her life. After a moment, she peeked out and saw Randy standing by the entrance talking to a policeman. The policeman was showing him a piece of paper. Randy, she saw, was shaking his head and shrugging as if to say that he knew nothing. At last, the policeman stalked angrily away, and Randy came into the station and found Annie and Sandy hiding in the corridor. “You've got to get out of here, Annie, back to the Hooverville,” whispered Randy, pulling her farther along the corridor into the shadows. “The policeman showed me a circular with your picture on it—it says that you're wanted as a runaway orphan. He told me that he'd remembered seeing you around here—selling apples—but I told him I hadn't seen you and that I didn't know anything about you. But then he spotted your sign and he took it away. Evidence.”

“You're right, I've got to get out of here,” Annie agreed with a shiver. And with Sandy running at her side, she hurried through the gray afternoon to the Hooverville. That night, she and Randy and Sophie decided that it would be too risky for Annie ever to go back again to Grand Central Terminal—the police were certain to nab her. So in the days that followed, Annie and Sandy hung around the Hooverville, helping Sophie with her cooking and going shopping with her on First Avenue. Sandy seemed to enjoy the foraging trips that they made with Sophie along the banks of the East River to pick up pieces of driftwood for the fires they built every night in the ash cans. Being with Sophie all day was pleasant enough for Annie and Sandy, but as December came along and the weather grew sharply colder, they nearly froze in the chilly afternoons as they gathered wood along the windy banks of the river. Annie grew discouraged, too—as long as she had to stay all day in the Hooverville, how could she get on with her search for her father and mother? From selling apples, Annie had saved up twenty-seven dollars, which she kept pinned in her sweater pocket, and now she decided to use the money to buy bus tickets to Florida for her and Sandy. “As nice as the folks are to us here, we gotta be movin' on,” Annie told Sandy one night as they were lying shivering in their bed—covering themselves with even a dozen layers of newspapers just didn't seem to help much on these early December nights. “'Cause this way I'm never gonna find my mom and dad,” Annie went on. “We'll go down to Florida for the winter, where it's warm, and look around. Maybe they're livin' down there. Who knows? And then, if we don't find them, we'll head back up here next spring.” But it was hard for Annie to leave Sophie and Randy and all the others, to set off once again on her own. And Annie knew that, even in 1933, twenty-seven dollars wouldn't last long. “We'll go soon, maybe tomorrow, or maybe when the first snow falls,” she told Sandy, but as the December days passed, she kept postponing her departure.

Finally, it wasn't Annie who decided that her stay in the Hooverville should end. On a bitter, windy night in the middle of December, only two and a half weeks less than a year since Annie had run away from the orphanage, she and Sandy and the grown-ups were huddled around the ash-can fires when a bulky, pig-eyed police sergeant suddenly loomed up out of the shadow. “Okay, folks, everybody outta here,” shouted the sergeant, whose name was Ward, brandishing a legal-looking document. “We got a court order, we're tearin' down this junk pile!”

“You can't do that—this is the only home we got,” cried Sophie. “And we're not doin' nothin' wrong here. We're not hurtin' nobody.”

“Oh, yeah, tell it to the judge,” said Sergeant Ward mockingly. He pointed to the high-rise luxury apartment buildings, the dwelling places of the rich that lined the East River above them. “The people up there, they went to court and got this order,” he went on, “sayin' that this here dump is an eyesore and a health hazard. And I'm only doin' my duty. So, come on, all of you bums, outta here!”

Annie stepped forward with Sandy at her side, and spoke up boldly to Sergeant Ward. “They're not bums,” she said angrily. “They're good, hardworkin' folks who just happen to be down on their luck. And they gotta have a place to live, too, even if they ain't rich!”

“Wait a second, you, little girl,” commanded Sergeant Ward, pointing a fat finger at Annie. “Ain't I seen your picture on a circular at the station house? You're a runaway orphan, ain't you?”

“No, sir, I'm . . . I'm her little girl,” said Annie, pointing to Sophie.

“Oh, no, you ain't,” said Sergeant Ward, grabbing Annie by the neck of her sweater. “You're comin' along with me. And that mutt there, he's goin' to the dog pound.”

“Oh, no, he isn't!” Annie gave Sandy a shove and called, “Run, Sandy, run!” Sandy scampered up the embankment and, his ears flattened against his head, ran off as fast as his four legs could carry him.

“Get that dog! Get that damn dog!” shouted Sergeant Ward, blowing his whistle as a squad of a dozen other policemen now appeared out of the shadows on all sides of the Hooverville. One of the policemen, waving his nightstick, ran off up the embankment after Sandy.

“Knock it down! Knock down this junk pile!” cried Sergeant Ward to his men, still holding Annie tightly by her collar. Annie reared back and kicked him as hard as she could in the shins. “Owww!” shrieked Sergeant Ward, letting go of Annie as he hopped about in pain. The moment he let her go, Annie turned and ran like a streak, heading northward along the bank of the river, in the opposite direction from the one that Sandy had run.

“Get that kid! Get that damn kid!” Sergeant Ward called out, and Annie soon heard footsteps at her back. Behind, from the Hooverville, she heard screams and shouting and the sickening, crunching sound of the fragile, makeshift shanties being knocked down by the police. Running along the riverbank in the dark, cold night, Annie stumbled on a rock and fell. She quickly scrambled back up and ran on. But the policeman, she could hear, was gaining on her. “I've got to run faster,” said Annie to herself, breathing heavily, “'cause I mustn't let him catch me. I mustn't!”