# Chapter One: The Shoeshiner's Prayer
The marble floors of Grand Central Terminal never stayed clean for long.
James Brown worked his rag in tight circles across a businessman's oxford, the leather catching lamplight as it gleamed. His hands moved with practiced efficiency—polish, buff, snap the cloth for effect. The man above him read his newspaper, cigar smoke curling toward the vaulted ceiling painted with constellations that James had memorized during countless sleepless nights spent hiding in the terminal's corners.
"That'll be five cents, sir."
The newspaper didn't lower. A nickel clinked onto the ground beside James's knee—not placed in his palm, but dropped like feeding pigeons. James pocketed it without comment. Gratitude could be mistaken for insolence. Silence was safer.
The businessman walked away, shoes clicking importantly toward Track 17.
James gathered his kit—polish tins rattling, brushes wrapped in stained cloth—and moved to his usual spot near the information booth. Close enough to catch travelers, far enough from the police officers who patrolled the main concourse. Officer Reilly had already chased him twice this week. "No loitering, boy. You got a permit? Didn't think so."
A permit cost three dollars. James had eighty-seven cents hidden in a crack behind a loose tile near the men's washroom.
The afternoon crowd thinned. Commuters rushing home to houses James could only imagine—rooms with doors that locked from the inside, kitchens with iceboxes, beds that didn't require checking for rats first. He'd slept behind the terminal last night, in the alley near the loading docks where the kitchen staff threw out bread that was only one day stale. The February cold had seeped through both his shirts—the one he wore and the one he used as a blanket.
"Shine, sir? Just five cents, make those shoes look new."
Most people walked past. Their eyes slid over him like he was architecture. Sometimes he wondered if he was becoming invisible, worn away by indifference until he'd be nothing but a smudge on the marble, polished away by the night cleaning crews.
A trio of white boys his own age strutted through the terminal, their wool coats expensive, their laughter loud. James recognized the blond one immediately—Tommy Penfield. His father owned textile mills, or railroads, or something that required other people's labor. The kind of wealth that came with a sense of ownership over public spaces.
Over people.
James looked down at his kit, making himself small. Maybe they wouldn't—
"Well, look here. The little shine boy."
Tommy's voice carried across the concourse. Several travelers glanced over, then quickly away. Nobody wanted to be involved.
James kept his eyes on his polish tins, counting them. Five tins. Four brushes. Two rags. Numbers were safe. Numbers didn't sneer.
Expensive shoes entered his field of vision. He could tell they were newly purchased—the leather still stiff, barely creased. Probably cost more than James would see in six months.
"You deaf, boy? I said look at me when I'm talking to you."
James looked up. Tommy's face was all sharp angles and cold blue eyes, his blond hair slicked back with pomade that probably cost more than James's entire kit. The two boys flanking him grinned, eager for entertainment.
"Your shoes need shining, sir?" James kept his voice level, polite. The sir stuck in his throat like a fish bone, but swallowing pride was easier than swallowing broken teeth.
Tommy laughed. "My shoes? Look at these—they're pristine. Unlike some people." His eyes dragged over James's patched trousers, his shirts with their fraying cuffs. "Tell me, boy, how much do you make in a day? Couple nickels? Dimes if you're lucky?"
"I work honest, sir."
"Honest." Tommy rolled the word around like a marble. "That's precious. You hear that, fellows? He works *honest*." He leaned down, voice dropping to a whisper that somehow felt louder than shouting. "You're a little n----r playing dress-up, pretending you're worth something. But you know what you really are?"
James's hands tightened on his polish tin. He knew better than to respond. Knew better than to let his face show anything. But Tommy saw something anyway—some flicker of defiance, some spark of selfhood that needed extinguishing.
"You're dirt. And dirt belongs outside, not in a place for civilized people."
Tommy's foot lashed out, kicking James's kit. Tins scattered across the marble, polish bleeding dark stains onto the pristine floor. Brushes skittered toward the feet of passersby who stepped carefully around them, eyes averted.
The three boys walked away laughing, their voices echoing off the constellation ceiling.
James didn't move for a moment. Couldn't. His breath came shallow and quick, his heart hammering against his ribs like it wanted to escape the cage of his body. He counted to ten. Then twenty. Then started gathering his supplies.
The brown polish had cracked open, its contents smeared across the floor. That was fifteen cents to replace—three shines' worth of work. The small brush with the soft bristles his mother had given him before the influenza took her—its handle had cracked against a pillar.
His mother. Five years gone now. Some days he could barely remember her face, just the feeling of her hand on his head, her voice singing softly when the tenement walls were thin and the neighbors were fighting. She'd sung in church, before. Before his father left. Before the sickness came.
"You can't sing like the men, baby," she'd told him once. "But you got something sweeter. A voice like morning. Don't lose that."
He hadn't sung since she died. Hadn't seen the point.
Officer Reilly's whistle cut through the terminal noise. James looked up to see the policeman striding toward him, nightstick swinging from his belt.
"What's this mess? I told you—"
"I'm cleaning it, sir. Just an accident."
"Accident." Reilly looked at the polish stains, at James's scattered kit, at the travelers giving them a wide berth. His hand rested on his nightstick. "You've got two minutes to get this cleaned up and get out. I see you in here tomorrow, I'll run you in for loitering. Understand?"
"Yes, sir."
James worked quickly, scraping up what polish he could salvage, wrapping the broken brush in a rag. His eighty-seven cents wouldn't be enough to replace everything. Maybe he could find work at the docks tomorrow, hauling crates. Except last time he'd tried, the foreman had looked him up and down and laughed.
"What are you, ten? Twelve? Too weak for man's work. You look like a little girl. Get out of here before you get crushed."
Too weak for black men's work. Too black for white neighborhoods. Too visible to hide. Too invisible to matter.
James walked out into the February cold, his kit lighter than it had been that morning. The street lamps were coming on, their yellow glow struggling against the gathering dark. He needed to find somewhere to sleep before the temperature dropped further. The alley behind the terminal was already occupied by two other men who'd warned him not to come back. The church on Lexington didn't open its doors to street children anymore, not after one of them had stolen from the poor box.
He walked without direction, letting his feet carry him while his mind went quiet. Survival didn't require thinking—just movement, just the next moment, just breathing in and out until morning came and he could try again.
A flash of red caught his eye.
A flyer, pasted to a streetlamp. The paper was expensive—thick stock, professionally printed. The kind of thing that cost money to produce and distribute.
**THE GOLDEN BOYS**
*America's Premier Jazz Orchestra*
**SEEKING NEW TALENT**
*Auditions: Friday, February 24th, 4:00 PM*
*Opera House, 39th & Broadway*
Below the text, a photograph showed five men in sharp suits, instruments gleaming, smiles bright against their dark skin. James recognized them vaguely—their music played sometimes in the shops he passed, tinny and distant through phonograph horns. "She Worships Eve" had been everywhere last summer, people humming it on street corners, the melody sweet and strange.
*All voices welcome. Bring your talent. Bring your hope.*
Hope.
James almost laughed. Hope was for people who had something to hope for. He was a twelve-year-old colored boy with eighty-seven cents and a broken shoeshining kit, sleeping in alleys and dodging police. What did he have to offer a nationally famous jazz band?
But his mother's voice whispered in his memory: *A voice like morning.*
Friday was tomorrow.
The audition was at four. He'd need to clean himself up somehow—find water, wash his face, maybe borrow a comb from somewhere. The Opera House on 39th was in a white neighborhood, which meant risk. Which meant police who wouldn't just chase him away but might beat him first, ask questions later, if they thought he was "in the wrong place."
But the flyer said *all voices welcome*.
James carefully peeled the flyer from the lamppost, folded it, and tucked it inside his shirt where it pressed against his heart like a secret.
The wind picked up, carrying the smell of snow. The constellations above Grand Central were invisible from the street, blocked by buildings and soot and the haze of electric lights. But James remembered them anyway—remembered lying on the cool marble at three in the morning, staring up at that painted sky, wondering if the real stars looked down on him at all.
Tomorrow. Four o'clock.
He'd try. What was one more rejection, one more door closed in his face? At least it would be warm inside the Opera House for a few minutes. At least he'd get to see what hope looked like up close, even if it wasn't meant for him.
James pulled his thin coat tighter and walked into the February night, the flyer warm against his chest, and hummed—just for a moment, just for himself—a melody his mother used to sing.
The sound was small and soft, quickly swallowed by the city's roar.
But it was there.
Still there.
And tomorrow, maybe someone would hear it.