The Clockwork Three by Matthew J. Kirby Page A

boy. It was Pietro. Pietro, who never brought in enough. Pietro, who said he played all day but no one gave him any money. Pietro, who had cost Giuseppe how many dollars and how much time?
    Giuseppe stood watching him. Then he shouted, “Hey!”
    Pietro skidded to a halt, spraying sand.
    “Get over here. Now!”
    The little boy’s shoulders slumped, and he trudged across the beach.
    Giuseppe shook with anger. “You waste a lot of time down here?” He clenched his jaw and wanted to scream. “What are you doing, Pietro?”
    The boy kept his eyes down. He shrugged.
    Giuseppe lost control. “Look at me, you little runt!” He grabbed Pietro’s face and forced it up. “I’ve been giving you money from my own pocket! I’ve gone without supper for you! He threw me in the rat cellar! For what? So you can spend your days chasing birds?”
    Pietro started to cry.
    “Stop that! Stop it right now.”
    “I sorry, Giuseppe. I sorry.”
    Giuseppe pushed him to the ground. “No, you’re not. I’m finished with you. You hear me? No more money. You get nothing from me.”
    Pietro burst into a full wail.
    “Shut your mouth,” Giuseppe said, and walked away.
    He did not feel like playing for fishermen anymore. He did not feel like playing at all. He left Pietro sobbing on the beach and could still hear him two streets over. A part of him felt bad for being so harsh, but the other part counted up the money he had wasted on the kid, money that could have gone toward a ticket home. That part of him was not satisfied at all. That part of him wanted to go back and pummel Pietro into the sand.
    Giuseppe glowered and paced the city for hours, up and down the streets, ignoring traffic and pedestrians. He finally stormed into the cemetery of the Old Rock Church. He was about to charge over to Mister Stroop’s tomb when he noticed Reverend Grey planting a flower over somebody’s grave. Giuseppe tried to back away before the old man saw him.
    But the reverend looked up. “Ah, Giuseppe!”
    “Hello, Reverend.”
    The old man labored to his feet, his knees and ankles cracking like bending tree branches. “It’s so good to see you, my boy. I’ve been wondering about you. Why haven’t you been coming ’round?”
    “I have been, Reverend,” Giuseppe said in a mumble.
    “What’s that? Then you must be coming when I’m not looking.”
    Giuseppe folded his arms.
    The reverend pulled out a handkerchief and wiped the sweat off his brow. “Is that brute Stephano treating you any better?”
    “Same as always.”
    The reverend shook his head. “I’ve said it before, but there should be laws against it. One day, there will be. I promise you.”
    Stephano ignored laws.
    “Well then, how are the other boys? Your friends?”
    “They’re all right.”
    “Come,” the old man said. “Sit with me. Tell me all about what you’ve been up to.”
    Giuseppe paused a moment, and then he realized that he wanted to talk with the reverend. The way they had before. So they sat down together on a shaded bench against the church, and Giuseppe told him all about Pietro and about helping him with his own money. He told of the boy’s actions, but he was honest about how he had treated Pietro earlier that day. He left out any mention of the green violin or the money he had saved and hidden in the tomb just a few feet away.
    “Well, I’d be angry, too,” the reverend concluded. “It sounds like you put yourself at great risk for his sake, and it turned out to be for nothing. And it has cost you.”
    “That’s right,” Giuseppe said, and pounded his fist on his leg.
    “Of course, if I were this Pietro boy, I’d rather be chasing gulls, too.”
    “What?”
    “Don’t mistake my meaning. The boy was in the wrong. But if you think back to your first years here in the city, what was it like for you?”
    Giuseppe frowned. In those first years all he had wanted was to have someone rescue him. Back then he thought about his parents all the time and