The Fortunate Pilgrim [antikvár]

PART I Chapter I Laery Angeluzzi spurred his jet black horse proudly through a canyon formed by two great walls of tenements, and at the foot of each wall, marooned on their separate blue-slate sidewalks, little children stopped their games to watch him with silent admiration. He swung his red lantern in a great arc; sparks flew from the iron hoofs of his horse as they rang on railroad tracks, set flush in the stones of Tenth Avenue, and slowly following horse, rider and lantern came the long freight train, inching its way north firom St. John's Park terminal on Hudson Street. In 1928 the New York Central Railroad used the streets of the city to shuttle trains north and south, sending scouts on horseback to warn traffic. In a few years this would end, an overhead pass would be built. But Larry Angeluzzi, not knowing he was the last of the "dummy boys," that he would soon be a tiny scrap of urban history, rode as straight and arrogantly as any western cowboy. His spurs were white, heavy sneakers, his sombrero a peaked cap studded with union buttons. His blue dungarees were fastened at the ankle with shiny, plated bicycle cHps. He cantered through the hot summer night, his desert a dty of stone. Women gossiped on wooden boxes, men puffed cigars of the De Nobili whUe standing on street comers, children risked their lives in dangerous play, leaving their blue-slate islands to climb on the moving fireight train. All moved in the smoky yellow light of lamp posts and the naked white-hot bulbs of candy-store windows. At every intersection a fresh breeze from Twelfth Avenue, concrete bank of the Hudson River, refreshed horse and rider, cooled the hot black engine tliat gave warning hoots behind them. At 27th Street the wall on Larry Angeluzzi's right fell away for a whole block. In the cleared space was Chelsea Park packed with dark squatting shapes, kids sitting on the ground to watch the firee outdoor movies shown by Hudson Guild Settlement House. On the distant giant white screen, Larry Angeluzzi saw a monstrous horse and rider, bathed in false sunlight, thundering down upon him, felt his own