i’ve been thinking a lot about crutchie recently.
charles morris. charlie. crutchie. born to a “loving” single mother who abandoned him when he first got sick. the convent was better equipped to handle the polio virus anyhow, and that’s just where he stayed. the fever subsided fairly quickly, but his leg never worked right again. at the age of five he has to learn to walk with a third leg, without a family by his side.
the nuns were nice enough. they gave him food, helped him learn how to live after his paralysis hit. but they weren’t family. the solace he didn’t find in the nuns, he found in God. he prayed nightly, hoping for someone to come along and save him. a family to take him from the convent and show him what truly living was really like. and then he met jack kelly.
crutchie was convinced that jack was a literal godsend. they were both thirteen and too scrappy for their own good. jack and his expert persuasion convinced the sisters that crutchie was ready to be off on his own, beginning a life as a newsboy. crutchie was over the moon. his disability suddenly became a goldmine, and he had the closest thing he’d ever had to a family. he had a brother, hell, many of them, and he was happy.
his leg never got better. not that he had expected it to. not that it mattered.
it was him and jack for years in their penthouse above kloppman’s boarding house, until the strike. until david jacobs. and suddenly jack had a new right-hand man, a new protege. and crutchie found himself in the refuge.
he had a lot of time to think there. he realized that he’d likely been in love with jack as long as he’d known him. it was impossible not to be. jack kelly oozed charisma, and his smile could melt anyone’s cold heart. crutchie fell instantly. but he also realized that they would never be more than friends. crutchie saw how he looked at davey, like his eyes held all the stars in the sky, and it didn’t hurt him. not like he thought it would. he still wrote to jack, but as brothers. and just as soon as he realized his crush, it was gone.
strike settled, snyder imprisoned, and crutchie is back to selling. jack sells with davey and les now, which doesn’t bother crutchie as much as it should. they’re still best friends—jack still stays in their penthouse when he isn’t at the jacobs house. and besides, crutchie has finch now. finch who wouldn’t leave his side after he got back from the refuge, who bandaged all his scabs and listened to his sobs when he got a particularly bad reminder of his time in the refuge. they sold together now almost every day, and crutchie had honestly never been happier.
charles morris had lived more, lost more, and loved more at eighteen than most people did in their entire lives. and he did it all on one good leg.
