OR Post #3

As Ren and his two caretakers move to a different town, Ren gets to experience many different kinds of swindling tricks that Ben and Tom use to steal money from people. Ren is actually one of the main parts for a certain trick that involves a fake medicine that can supposedly make a child behave. The three of them travel to an Ice Cream social on a Sunday, and Ren is asked to punch another kid in order to start a fight. This scuffle is played out in front of a huge crowd, and then Ben arrives and offers to sell Ren's "father", Tom, some child curing medicine. Ren takes it, and is immediately calm and lazy. Hannah Tinti describes the scene as, " 'All that boy needs is some tonic.' Benjamin appeared, slipping out of the crowd, swinging the wooden case, and smiling. 'And I just happen to have some with me today. Mother Jones's Elixir for Misbehaving Children.' Tom handed him a wrinkled dollar bill, and the tonic was passed over. Ren's lip was split and his ribs ached. 'Im not going to drink it.' 'If you don't, Ill tan your hide'" (Tinti 94-95). After seeing Ren so relaxed and "behaved", many parents rush to buy a bottle. Every bottle works, maybe because the "Elixir" is laced with opium. This passage shows how stupid the common person can be when looking for a fast and easy solution to their problems.

When moving into the next town, they encounter a dismal sight. Benjamin knows the place, and it used to be a bustling mining town until a collapse trapped ten miners, and none escaped. They knock at the door of the local inn, and it is answered by a woman who always seems to yell, but she invites them in and immediately gives Ren a warm bath, and provides dinner for the two older men. Ren had not had a good meal or cleaning for weeks, and so after dinner and a little bit of sleep, he ventured downstairs to the kitchen. A plate with what looked like a large slab of meat and a piece of pie was sitting by the fireplace, untouched. Ren could not hold his hunger in, so he immediately gobbled down the cake. As he was about to leave, something extraordinary happened, and Tinti writes, "A bit of soot began to sprinkle down from the chimney into the fireplace. Ren could hear a scraping noise. Something was caught inside the flue- a bird, or perhaps a squirrel. His heart beat quickly, and the scratching stopped, as if the creature inside had heard it" (Tinti 113-114). It turns out that this rumbling was a man, and from his hiding spot in the corner, Ren could see that it was a deformed, little man, body parts not quite proportionate to one another. The man ate up the meal, and quietly dissapeared into the chimney. It is little plot twists like this that keep you so into Tinti's book, because you are hooked in to the possibilities of what could happen and wonder how this ties in to the rest of the main plot.