On the Day I Died Read Online Free PDF Page A

of their unneeded goods. Already, I’d slipped a greenback-thick wallet out of some rich swell’s coat pocket, and I’d pinched a gold bangle off one of them high-class dames as she bustled off to do some shopping at Marshall Field’s or one of those other swanky department stores down on State Street.
    We were in a depression, see, but them hoity-toity slobs didn’t know a thing about it. You can bet your lastdollar they’d never stood in line half a morning just for a lousy ladleful of thin soup. Bet they’d never slept on a hard bench over in Grant Park, neither, using yesterday’s copy of the
Daily News
for a blanket. Nope, life’s miseries never touched them white-breads. But I sure did. And why not? I’m like that Robin Hood guy, taking from the rich and giving to the poor. They had so much. What was wrong with taking a little for myself, for cripes sake? I’m the poor!
    So there I was, minding my own business and working the privileged crowd, when—
WHAM!
I found myself facedown in the gutter.
    “That’s it, Johnnie Novotny,” bellowed a deep voice. “I’m taking you in.”
    I scrambled to my feet, fury boiling in my veins, fists raised. Nobody pushes Johnnie Novotny around, not unless they want a bloody lip. Then I saw who it was and I tamped down my anger. Plastered an innocent look on my face, too. “Whatcha do that for, Funkhouser?” I asked the beefy cop who towered over me. He was a giant dressed in a navy-blue woolen coat with big brass buttons. “You shouldn’t go around pushing citizens, you know that?”
    “You shouldn’t have come back here, Johnnie,” Funkhouser replied. “I told you last time that if I ever saw you working my beat again, I’d arrest you.”
    “I wasn’t doing nothing, just walking down the street, that’s all. Ain’t a man allowed to walk down the street?”
    “A man? You?” Funkhouser’s broad shoulders shook with laughter.
    My fingers clenched again. I was almost sixteen, wasn’t I? Old enough to knock that smug grin clean off his stupid mug. And I was itching to do it, too, except I didn’t fancy a month in the cooler. I turned to walk away.
    “Oh, no you don’t,” said Funkhouser. Grabbing my arm, he held me tight as a vise. We started down the sidewalk, him pushing me ahead through the crush of pedestrians.
    “Lemme go!” I shouted, twisting in his grasp.
    “I’m doing you a good turn, Johnnie,” said Funkhouser. “I’m going to recommend to the judge that he be lenient, send you to reform school instead of jail. It’s the best thing for you, son. You’ll be off the streets, getting three squares a day. And you’ll be getting an education, too, going to regular school.”
    School?
    Just the sound of that word made my neck hairs stand on end.
    School?
    I’d rather be in jail. Heck, in my world there wasn’t much difference.
    It was them teachers that put me off, namely one Miss Bolam. Jeez, but she was a real fossil, as musty as that ancient history she taught. Just looking at her gave me the creeps. Her dark eyes, cold like some kind of lizard’s, darted from student to student. She always had itin for mugs like me—kids who came to class to catch up on their sleep while she droned on about mummies and vengeful gods and Phoenician burial spells.
    “Amun cahi ra lamac harrahya,”
she’d babble away in that wise-guy voice of hers. “That, ladies and gentlemen, is the Sumerian Resurrection Curse.”
    Or, “Many ancient cultures believed they could transfer death from one person to another simply by chanting this curse:
Ai oro ramr hvtar
.”
    Is it any wonder I couldn’t keep my eyes open in class? And what was the point of it, anyways? How would all that gibberish help put food in my belly? Useless, I tell you.
    The whole time she talked, her long, bony fingers would reach up to touch the brooch she always wore pinned to her collar. It was a weird-looking thing, gold with a big red stone, and shaped like a crescent moon. I