Kairos | Newsies: The Broadway Musical

CHAPTER TWELVE

Cora's heart broke for Scar, the girl she considered a new friend. She could never be able to imagine how hard her life had been for her to resort to stealing. That was something Snyder nor Pulitzer could seem to grasp, either.

"So you'd be doing the city a service removing these criminals from our streets," Pulitzer told the mayor.

Mayor Van Wyck nodded slowly. "If that's the case, we can take them in quietly and –"

Pulitzer slammed his hands on his desk, the loud noise startling Cora so much that she jumped and gripped the handles of the chair she was in. "What good would quiet do me?" Pulitzer shouted explosively. "I want a public example made of him! Of both of them!"

"Mr. Pulitzer!" Hannah, Pulitzer's secretary called out as she rushed into the room, pointing behind her. "The boy, Jack Kelly, is here."

"Here?"

"Just outside," Hannah replied, and Cora, eyes wide, stood up alongside Katherine. "He's asked to see you."

"Ask and ye shall be received," Pulitzer stated, almost excitedly. Cora took a breath, looking over at Katherine nervously, who gave her a shared look of unease. Pulitzer gestured to the back of the room. "Mr. Snyder, if you please." Snyder nodded, running to hide in the corner of the room as he walked back over to Cora and Katherine. Standing between the two chairs, he ordered, "Sit."

Reluctantly, each girl sat down and Pulitzer turned the chairs around, so that the backs were to the room, and no one could see they were sitting there. Cora licked her lips, sighing out shakily as she heard Hannah's high pitched voice announce, "Mr. Jack Kelly."

"Afternoon, boys," Jack greeted easily, his thick accent sticking out like a sore thumb.

"And which Jack Kelly is this?" Pulitzer asked, and Cora wished she could turn around to see if Jack were intimidated or not. Knowing him, he wasn't, and she wasn't sure if that were a good thing or a bad thing. "The charismatic union organizer, or the petty thief and escaped convict?"

"Which one gives us more in common?" Jack attempted to joke.

"Impudence is in bad taste when crawling for mercy," Pulitzer warned.

"Crawlin'?" Jack repeated with a chuckle. "That's a laugh, I just dropped by with an invite. Seems a few hundred of your employees are rallyin' to discuss recent disagreements. I thought it only fair to invite you to state your case straight to the fellas. So whaddya say, Joe? Want I should save you a spot on the bill?"

"You are as shameless and disrespectful a creature as I was told," Pulitzer stated. "Do you know what I was doing when I was your age, boy? I was fighting in a war."

Cora sighed quietly, having heard the same speech from her father a thousand times over when it came to her brother and what he should be doing at his age.

"Yeah?" Jack replied, his tone almost mocking. "How'd that turn out for ya?"

"It taught me a lesson that shaped my life," Pulitzer answered. "You don't win a war on the battlefield. It's the headline that crowns the victor."

"I'll keep that in mind when New York wakes up to front-page photos of our rally," Jack told him.

"Rally till the cows come home," Pulitzer hummed. "Not a paper in town will publish a word, nor publish a photograph. And if it's not in the papers, it never happened."

It was silent for a moment, Jack's footsteps toward Pulitzer all Cora could hear. "You may run this city, but there are some of us who can't be bullied," Jack declared lowly. "Even some reporters and photographers."