othing mattered so much anymore. What comments he had to make on the subject seemed distant, unimportant and altogether impertinent. If a sensible question could have been put to someone about the incident, he would have certainly attempted to ask it. In truth, all preliminary difficulties aside, he felt free of the burden of having to explain his part in the circumstances. One might have thought his part would have inhibited him in making a revelation or two, but this simply was not the case. Rather, the opposite was true. He felt surprisingly removed from the fray and upon discovery that it had come to its abrupt conclusion, immediately disassociated himself with the conflict.

He never liked being the center of attention. Fame had no real allure for him. Power, money and the fruits of one's labor, achieving some degree of success—all necessary and appropriate baggage for a man of his social standing, but as a rule of thumb he gravitated toward the middle ground. A deep sense of his own privacy, and he did not wish to give way to the temptations that so often accompanied the educated and over privileged class on their way through life.

That afternoon, when he came upon the child, he thought little of it. The child looked like any other little boy. The child was lost. Or so it appeared. Perhaps the boy was lost. Perhaps he had somehow climbed aboard a bus in, say, Cleveland, Ohio and been brought to New York City. The boy popped up on the street, where little boys hardly stand much of chance. It seemed most unfortunate. Harold suspected no real foul play. The boy was a victim of a bizarre circumstance.

"What's your name?" Harold inquired.

The boy turned around. Smiled. Surprised and delighted someone had spoken to him. But the boy said nothing. He gazed up Harold.

"Are you lost?"

The boy gave no response.

"Where's your mother?" Harold asked politely. He was puzzled by the boy. The lad was a rough looking child. Clothes soiled, wrinkled, hair mussed. Harold immediately surmised the poor child had been on the street for quite some time. Perhaps the boy had slept on the street. The child was unusually thin, his jeans torn and ragged, pale blue and threadbare. He boy had not bathed in quite some time.

"Do you go to school around here?"

The boy gave a puzzled look.

Harold looked around. He thought perhaps the boy had momentarily stepped from his school yard. Perhaps he and his classmates were visiting a nearby museum or movie house. Perhaps the boy had momentarily broken line, strayed from the pack. Or a parent had gone inside a shop to purchase something and would come at any moment to claim the boy.

He waited and saw no one emerging. There was no school in the vicinity and no throngs of children were visible for many blocks.

"Is there someone..?." Harold said, breaking off at a moment of reflection. "What's your name? Perhaps I can assist you?"

The boy turned his back on him.

"I recall being a boy just like you. I got lost at a circus," said Harold.

The boy gave him a look.

"My name's Harold," Harold said and extended his hand.

The boy stepped back.

"I won't hurt you."

The boy gave out a grunt. Harold for a moment considered it a word. A statement of recognition. Though it was hardly that. It was a grunt. A sort of unmusical throat eruption that struck him as neither friendly nor accusatory. He was not certain as what to make of the sound. And as the crowd hustled along the sidewalks he took notice of something that alarmed him. The boy had taken up with the crowd. The boy had begun to follow aimlessly behind. Harold saw no attachment, no friend or family member came forth. No face came to greet the boy, no warmth whatsoever came from anyone among the crowd. No one paid the child much attention. The boy was tagging along, as through a drift in a tide. The strong currents pulling him along, moving him down stream, the rapids murmuring, car horns beeping, a siren calling like some wild animal in the forest.

In the city, a sense of direction was invaluable. One went along, coasted down the street, without complaint particularly if that indeed was the direction in which one desired to travel. But the boy seemed not concerned with direction. He spun forward from no obligation of his own. Rather by the sheer force of the perpetual motion of pedestrians. He walked hurriedly behind and among the crowds, tangled with their fierce momentum, which would have barred him from breaking out, even if he so desired.

Harold followed for several blocks. Then he stopped. Frustrated. Not wishing to pry. The boy wasn't any of his business. And besides the lad was too nimble, too quick. The little fellow dashed up the street, scampering through the crowds like a smooth stone skipping across blue water. The boy was agile. Harold wanted at this point to turn back, remembering he had a visit to pay a friend on Central Park West. But he didn't. Something kept him on the trail. He did know it at that moment, but something strange was happening. The circumstances would soon show themselves. The boy paused in front of the Museum of Modern Art. Harold could see the boy standing there, as though waiting for something. Harold stood across the street, fearful of approaching at that moment so as not to scare the boy. Then Harold realized the boy was more purposeful than he first thought. The boy wasn't frightened. The lad was a con artist with his hand out. And people were busily dropping coins into his outstretched hand.

Whether out of good commerce or mischief, the boy made it a point to nod his head and grunt as it each coin was placed into his hand. It then occurred to Harold that perhaps the boy was deaf. That would explain the speech problem. But what of the boy out on the street. The lad could not have been more than nine or ten years old. What unmerciful circumstance had led to his plight? Was he alone in the city? Did he live on the street? No doubt there were many such children about on the Manhattan streets. A place in a such a big city many things went unnoticed. A child was no small thing to overlook. A glimmer of gloom. That was what Harold saw when he looked at the boy. His face was smudged, messed with a grime of several weeks worth of going without washing. Also there was that faint pained expression on the boy's face. The little fellow couldn't hide that from the world. The boy was hungry. When Harold approached, the closer he got the greater his understanding and sympathy for the child. The boy was pitiful. Harold gazed upon him with a tenderness of a visitor to an orphanage. The city was an orphanage to many children and many adults. The lost came here from all over the world. New York City was that large place to hide out in. They came and lived in the doorways, down in the subways like rats. The city was full of the undesired, the unwashed, the deadbeats and the bums of every creed and nationality. One didn't associate with their kind. The orphanage was out in the open air. One walked through the orphanage. The adult orphans, those abandoned by society, drank their fills of cheap wine. Stuck needles in the veins, littering their blood and braincells with drugs of every description. They smoked their crackpipes. Drank their cheap wine. Smoked the cigarette butts they found in the streets. The streets were orphanages filled with crime. Though in truth, the orphanage was no haven. It was a vast wilderness. Tall buildings, faceless crowds and the indifference, the strangeness of strangers, the feelings kept to one's self, not looking around at the shapeless miseries of the homeless. The ways of the crazy streets so thick with commerce and excitement it dulled your senses to take it all in.

Had the lad lived in the street? And how long could anyone endure the city? Harold got close up. He examined carefully the lad. Harold made note that boy's eyes had changed. They weren't bright anymore. The boy's eyes were the eyes of a ghost. Someone who had lost what he cherished most. Harold spoke up. "Here's something!" Harold said, offering the boy a ten dollar bill. But the boy didn't hear him. The boy was deaf. Harold walked so that the boy caught him out of the corner of his eye.

The boy took the money and grunted. It was then Harold noted that the grunt wasn't a grunt. Not a guttural intonation. It was more of a hum. A short hum. If one didn't listen carefully all one heard was a grunt. It was nothing of the sort. It was a kind remark from the boy.

Then something else occurred to Harold. Something terribly important. It was a revelation. It came upon him from out of no where. It visited him and left its mark and rightfully so. This was no boy. It was a girl with hair cropped short as a button. The deep voice had thrown him. The low rumbling, tumbling voice that had suggested someone of the male species. But no, nothing further from the truth. The voice was the rumbling of deaf girl. She was of her own sex. A little lady. And very much thankful for his contribution, humming nicely and her chin bobbed at him. And perhaps, though it was too nimble to notice, a smile came out of her soiled face, and from the further regions of her soul a cheerful energy erupted in her dingy cheeks.

As he turned to walk away, Harold felt not so much a sudden surge in his spirits. But a helplessness, a terrible sense of foreboding that came over him and would not let up for the longest time.

('The Orphanage' originally appeared in Dream Forge)

© Ernest Slyman