We enjoyed other pastimes too. On my drawing pad, we’d play the dots-and-boxes game, erasing the lines for additional rounds, as most pages were covered with my tracings and rubbings. After discovering he had learned standard Dutch at his old school—a delightful surprise—I persuaded him to improvise skits in my dialect. We’d pretend we were far off in the exotic cities of Holland. My preference was for the dramatic, his for the silly.

Other nights, if I were awake and heard him coming in from the cold, I would hurry to my front door and raise a hand to say good night, to which he’d respond in kind.

I volunteered once to join his walk, but sensing his reluctance, I withdrew the offer. He didn’t need to expound. Those solitary outings were his own means of finding peace.

We told no one of our friendship. At school or elsewhere in passing, catching his eye would bring me hidden joy. Ours was a bond cultivated in secret—for the most part. A knowing wink from his sister, Thea, implied she suspected a crush. If she did, she’d graciously kept it from her parents. The “sinful influence” of my Catholicism on Arie’s Protestant soul would have guaranteed their disapproval.

Papa, I suppose, might have been more lenient; it wasn’t as if I’d been named traditionally after a saint, and his confessional visits were hardly regular. Still, Arie and I refrained from taking the risk, even to set Thea straight.

In hindsight, I’d say our private meetings, unlike so much in life, were prized as something within our control. They were a conduit for healing.

Just like the thoughtful gift he passed along.

Left beneath my pillow one day was a thick, pocket-size book with a well-worn cover. Houdini’s Big Little Book of Magic & Stunts. As Arie later explained, upon seeing it discarded at the barbershop where he earned pennies to sweep up hair, he received permission to keep the publication, yet once he’d flipped through the pages, his gut told him it was meant for me.

When I opened the book, I was only vaguely aware of the late showman Harry Houdini. Chapter after chapter, through narrative and diagrams, were various methods behind his tricks, starting with sleights of hand involving coins, cups, and playing cards. Past the halfway point, the schemes progressed in complexity: slipping out of ropes and handcuffs, mailbags and barrels. His most secretive illusions would obviously be omitted, and yet…

The notion that a person could escape the inescapable was beyond inspiring. More than bewitching.

It was life altering in ways I never could have foreseen.

Chapter 13

Soon after the stampede, the miners’ passions that had buoyed the strike largely deflated. Like a knife to a ship’s sail, each loss sliced through the fortitude of the workers’ demands. Come March, negotiations with management ended the impasse but left the families questioning the sacrifices made.