The Brooklyn Nine: First Inning

He was on again about Felix’s shoes, which were better than everyone else’s. Felix’s father, a cobbler, had made them for him—sturdy brown leather lace-ups with good thick heels.

The game of tag ground to an abrupt halt and the boys shirked away as Felix’s uncle laid into him.

“I knew you would be here, you worthless boy! You should have been back an hour ago! Where is the parcel you were sent to deliver?”

Felix glanced meekly at second base.

Their tenement stood in the shadow of a fancier building facing the street on the same lot.

It was hot and dark, and Neumans young and old sweated as they sewed cut pieces of cloth into suits around the dim light of four flickering candles. Herr Neuman, the family “foreman,” came forward to take the package from Felix.

What neither of them knew, of course, what none of the tailors and cobblers and haberdashers had known, was that those hundred and fifty thousand men needed only five men to sell them suits and shoes: Mr. A. T. Stewart, Messrs. Lord and Taylor, and the brothers Brooks.

Felix, his uncle Albert, the Neumans, they were all just cogs in the great department store machine.

Here the pigs being driven to market strutted down the sidewalk alongside flashy American women wearing their big, brightly colored dresses and ribbons.

Gentlemen in serious gray suits hurried by with pocket watches in hand while b’hoys with curled mustaches and red shirts and black silk ties mocked them from painters’ scaffolding and butcher shop doorways.

Uncle Albert had warned him not to dawdle on the way, so he hurried along—fully intending to do his dawdling on the way back.

He had found them by accident one day, following an oddly dressed man wearing blue woolen pantaloons, a white flannel shirt, and a straw hat, and now he went by the lot every time he ventured this far north in case a game was under way.

The judge came forward to examine the evidence, then threw his hands up in exasperation.

“Let us ask the young squire with the very nice shoes,” one of the Knickerbockers said.

And on behalf of the New York Knickerbocker Volunteer Fire Fighting Brigade, I’d like to thank you for your honest and impartial observation.

He was transfixed by something over Cartwright’s shoulder, a towering plume of smoke billowing up from the rooftops of the city to the south of them.

He was transfixed by something over Cartwright’s shoulder, a towering plume of smoke billowing up from the rooftops of the city to the south of them.

Church bells pealed across the city, and Cartwright and the rest of the volunteer fire brigade abandoned their game and raced the few blocks to their station to ready their wagon.

Cartwright rang the bell on the wagon and they nudged on, sending curious gawkers scurrying for the sidewalk.

Men yelled obscenities at each other.

It took them a full quarter of an hour to ford the frozen river of carriages the short distance to the corner of Union Square Park, upsetting an apple cart and managing to turn another carriage completely around on the way.

At last the Knickerbockers pushed their engine up the curb into the wooded expanse of the park.

Felix dug in with his good shoes and gave it all he was worth, and with great effort the brigade slogged its way up and down the rolling hills of the park.

An explosion to the south—a gas line, one of the men guessed—brought screams from the ladies caught in the throng of carriages around the square.

The heat from the flames was blistering as the Knickerbockers searched for an unoccupied cistern to drop their hose in.

The wind off the East River carried the fire like swirling leaves across the street, where it set the canvas awnings of another building ablaze.

Water splashed from the nozzle into the broken windows of a clerical office, but after half an hour it was obvious to Felix that they weren’t doing any good.

The fire truck was trapped on the other side of the pyre, but the pumpers ran it through, singeing themselves and the cart in the process.

“The Pennsylvania and Connecticut crews telegraphed to say they’re on the way, but they’ll not be here in time to prevent the conflagration from jumping Wall Street.”

He set the cask of gunpowder by the support beam and found the stairs, taking them two at a time.

It’s still smoldering, you know. They say the smoke plume can be seen two hundred miles away.

It’s still smoldering, you know. They say the smoke plume can be seen two hundred miles away.

It was on his legs that he had planned to carry his mother and father and baby sister away from the blight and the famine and the poverty of Bremen.

His shoes too, the beautiful shoes his father had made for him, his only connection to the family he’d left behind, had been so mangled and burned in the explosion that they were unusable now.

Like the Neumans, they had no windows in their flat, and in the summer the heat was stifling.