In Theda Bara's Tent (as Reviewed by Publisher's Weekly)

CHAPTER SEVEN

The chauffeur shook me awake the next morning. I’d slept on the floor of his room without realizing it. When he was dressed, he went with me across the driveway to the back door where dozens of sparrows were pecking at crumbs someone had thrown out to them. Breakfast was not oatmeal but eggs, bacon and thick toast with as much butter as you wanted. Did the children who lived here eat like this every morning?

After breakfast, I drove downtown with Mr. Levin who sat next to me in the back seat reading the Boston Post. The car came to a stop on a narrow street of livery stables. Stable boys pushed wheelbarrows, and a few spiffily dressed equestrians rode away on good-looking saddle horses.
It was obvious which was  Mr. Levin’s stable because his Clydesdales were out front, dwarfing the handlers who dressed them in patent-leather harness. Because of their size, the complicated assemblage of reins and the narrowness of the street, hitching the team to the wagon created a commotion: a staccato composition of hooves striking cobblestone, harness bells tinkling, horses snorting and seagulls screaming overhead. There was a cacophony of smells too: leather, horse, sea, hay.

Mr. Levin in a straw hat and a seersucker suit, escorted me inside. There were rows of box stalls, empty and with the doors left open. Barn swallows swooped down and returned to the rafters. In the hayloft above the stalls, a young man was shoveling hay through a trapdoor. It crashed onto the barn floor and sent up clouds of dust. Niko, Mr. Levin called, stepping back fast from the cascading hay. Knock it off!” The young man came to the edge of the loft and looked down. Come meet the new boy.

Niko was framed on the platform by rafters overhead and hay all around him. In bib overalls and a sleeveless undershirt, he just stood there, yet the space became a stage, and he alone existed. Mr. Levin felt it too and was agape next to me. Here was the handsomest young man I had ever seen—and I mean even in the movies. His face was not typically American, more like that of a god on an Aztec coin, with shapely lips and chiseled cheekbones. Maybe he was eighteen or twenty. Come meet Harry Sirkus, Mr. Levin called up to him. The young man came to the very edge of the loft, spread his arms wide and said in a stentorian voice that filled the barn, In thy face I see the map of honor, truth and loyalty. Ill note you in my book of memory. The vibrations of his voice were still bouncing around as Mr. Levin laughed and said, Get down here, Niko. Ive got appointments.
 Niko jammed his pitchfork into a hay mound and climbed down the ladder. He stood before me as if presenting himself. Here I am, and you may gaze upon me. His eyes were intensely blue, and they held mine so boldly that I looked away and felt confused and slightly diminished. A goodly lad and fair, he said, grabbing my hand and shaking it up and down, which forced me to look at him again. I pulled my hand away before he was ready to let go. Mr. Levin said to me, Do what Niko tells you and youll be all right. From outside, we heard the horses clatter away. Mr. Levin walked into a patch of sunlight on the barn floor. Show him the ropes, Niko. With his back to us, Mr. Levin went out to his waiting limousine, his goodbye wave a hand held up straight.

I stood there hoping I would be able to endure the smell of hay and that I would not be trampled by the giant horses when they returned. Niko handed me a shovel, pointed to a wheelbarrow, nodded toward the empty stalls with their filthy straw and manure and said, in a normal voice, Dump it out back. Then he returned to the loft, and I made sure I was out of the way when hay thundered down. I mucked out stalls and pushed the heavy wheelbarrow out to a steaming, fly-infested heap at the end of the alley where other stable boys from other barns were doing the same thing. My arms trembled from the weight of the wheelbarrow, and I wished that I was stronger and taller. Niko showed me how to spread sawdust on the stall floors, and we pitched clumps of hay into each one.

At dusk, clattering hooves on cobblestones signaled the return of the Clydesdales, who stood patiently while the drivers removed their harness. My heart was pounding at the thought of having to lead those titanic gods into the barn, but it turned out they did not need to be led. They walked by themselves into their stalls and put their noses in the feed buckets that Niko and I had filled with grain. Niko went from stall to stall bolting the doors—ker klatch, ker klatch, ker klatch—as the drivers carried jingling harness back to the tack room. One of the drivers tossed me a brush and said, You clean up Ben, child. Stand on a stool if you gots to. Later I heard him say to the man grooming in the stall next to him, What he get such a pip-squeak about? He dont look no bigger than twelve year old.