Booster
Booster
Set in Toronto in the 20’s an underprivileged boy grows up providing for him self and his family through thievery. With the mentoring of an aging criminal shop owner Billy Hillis finds his way through life, love and war the only way he knows how.
The streets of Kensington were still partially cobbled at that time, although in recent years some of the old brickwork had been taken up to make way for the placement of rail for the new electric trolley car system. What an amazing thing this electricity was and how it opened up new and exciting areas of the city that before would have taken all day to reach by bicycle or carriage, or at least hours by car on the rutted and poorly maintained roads. This meant for Billy, as he grew to be a teenager, a whole new world to plunder. By the time Billy was eight he was well known to the police in his old neighbourhood. And by the age of ten he had almost run out of things to steal and was running out of excuses for why he had, when he got caught.
Billy seemed to have shot straight from the age of ten to a gangly fourteen without anyone having noticed, except for some of the local shop owners from whom he regularly stole. He was at least a head taller than the other two boys he hung around with, Terry and Lloyd, but it was more his daring than anything else that made them tag around after him. Billy had gotten them their first cigars and their first hangovers, and they felt sure that it wouldn’t be too long before he got them all laid for the first time too. You see, Billy had a way of getting what he wanted. He either stole it or traded something he had stolen for it. Lloyd always said, the sun shines out of your ass William Hillis I just hope nobody puts a plug in it. That always made Billy feel magical, like he really did have some kind of charmed life.
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