A Far Piece to Canaan (20 page)

While Nora wasn't a strong believer, her parents were, and she had spent two summers on a kibbutz in Israel. She spoke pretty good Hebrew and knew the services for Shabbos and a couple of Jewish holidays. At the start of our marriage the only Jewish tradition we observed was the Passover Seder with her parents. Every year we went back to New York for Passover. I enjoyed the service. It was fun. That was especially true after the kids were born and they could join in the first Seder. I surprised everybody by getting tapes and learning some Hebrew. The results made for some great scenes.

Nora: “Chu . . . chu . . . not, huu! Hebrew is not spoken with a hillbilly dialect!”

“That's bigotry,” I'd counter. “You wouldn't say that about Russian, Spanish, German, Mandarin, or Urdu. Hillbilly is my language! I will not be discriminated against!”

The kids were preteens by this time and would join in the arguments. Some of the most outrageous religious discussions would take place among us. Nora, the teetering-agnostic traditionalist, raised the kids Jewish, and I did my best to help. Whenever they asked the big question, however, I told the truth as I saw it. I didn't believe in organized religion. I told them that they should believe whatever they wanted, believe what they felt in their hearts. Also, that I thought their mother was right, tradition was important. Every few weeks Nora would prepare a Shabbos service and I would join in, yarmulke and all. The girls would laugh that I was trying to cover up my bald spot.

Both girls wound up marrying Gentile boys. One of the boys converted to Judaism and became the first devout Jew in the Zelinsky clan since my grandfather.

Though a nonbeliever, being Jewish did provide me with a temporary respite once, when the weight of the world seemed to be crushing my skinny shoulders . . .

. . . I didn't tell. I was almost certain I wouldn't when I left Ben's, and by the time I got home, I was dead sure. Not being able to talk about it made things awful. It was a long Saturday night and Sunday. Monday morning, though, I started feeling better. It was Rosh Hashanah, and I figured nobody tells something like that on Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur. I heard Dad say to Mom one day that he figured all our relatives was dead and wudn't any reason for it. He said Jews better plan to make it on their own because wudn't anybody above or below gonna help. We were still going to shul on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur though.

Mr. Mac and Babe agreed to milk for us on both holy days. I was in the front yard trying out my new shoes when they come rolling up in their black '32 Ford coupe. Babe was driving like he always did unless Mr. Mac had a snootful, then he was “gonna by God drive!” As the Ford pulled up, I went to meet them. Mr. Mac come flying out of the car, flung open his fleece-lined coat, and folded me inside. He squeezed so hard I couldn't breathe.

“How ye doin', Samuel!” he roared.

The sound rolled like thunder in his bony chest, which was crushing the side of my head. He smelled good of tobacco and liquor. When he quit squeezing, he took hold of my shoulders, leaned back, and looked at me. “Hey, you look spiffy, boy. Hot dog, you're shined up enough t' go courtin', ain't he, Babe?” Babe grinned and said he reckoned I was and that it wudn't going to be long before I was doing it.

Just then, Dad come out of the house, putting a tie around his neck. “Come on in, George,” he called. They did and stood by our Warm Morning stove which we had just lit for the first time since spring.

“What kind of religious doin's is this, Morse?” asked Mr. Mac.

“New Year's,” said Dad, finishing his tie in front of a little buffet mirror.

“What kind of celebration you have?” asked Mr. Mac.

“Oh, we thank th' Lord for all he's given us. And pray for th' dead folks.”

“Way th' world's treated your people, you must have a lot of faith, Morse,” said Mr. Mac, opening the door to the Warm Morning and shoving the coals around.

“My daddy'd of wanted it,” said Dad and it got quiet for a few seconds.

“You know he's gone for sure?” asked Babe.

“They're all gone,” said Dad. “Brother, sisters . . . everybody. Gone.”

Mr. Mac nodded kind of slow, then he turned to Babe and said they better get started milking because it was getting late.

After some yelling by Dad that it always took Mom and Naomi forever to get ready, we got in the Ford and started for Lexington. The air coming through the Ford's broken back window was cold, boy. Naomi and I huddled together on the good side of the car to keep warm.

Mom kind of shuddered. “Morris, when are you going to fix that window?”

“You want me to stop tobacco housing t' fix a car window?”

“We finished housing a month ago.”

“Stop with the nagging,” said Dad, his voice sounding tired.

“I'm not nagging,” said Mom. “The children will freeze. They'll catch a death—”

“All right, I'll fix it. Just stop nagging,” and we went along a little way in quiet.

“Do you know who's going to be president of the shul next year?” Mom asked.

“No, who?”

“Guess.”

“Pope Pius the twelfth,” Dad said, and laughed.

“Oh, Morris, guess right.”

“Okay,” he said, and quit laughing. “Uh . . . Isadore Gold.”

“No.”

“No? Then who?”

“Guess.”

“Dammit, I guessed. Now, who's gonna be president of th' shul?”

“Your cousin Henshy,” she answered, kind of meek.

“Henshy!” Dad boomed.

“Henshy,” she said.

“My God! What's he doing president of a synagogue?”

“Henshy,” Mom said again, like she knew everything.

“But . . . it can't be Henshy! Henshy runs a whorehouse! Everybody knows—”

“Morris, the children!” Mom yelled.

“But Henshy! I can't believe it! Not even those schlemiels could elect Henshy. It's an . . . an . . . It's an abomination!”

“Henshy,” Mom repeated.

“Now, that's a sin. If you believe, that's a sin,” and he was all over the road.

“Morris, watch where you're going,” yelled Mom, and Naomi and I grabbed each other as the car skidded on the shoulder and tore up gravel.

When things calmed down, Mom said, “You know who's going to be an officer?”

“Hermann Göring!” Dad screamed, and threw his arms in the air.

“Nate Berman,” Mom said, and her voice had a little laugh in it.

Dad thought that over for about five miles. It started to drizzle, and the one old wiper that worked made a little pin streak out of which Dad could see the coming cars, but the rest of us could only see moving blurs of light. Every now and then, the road would bend a certain way, and the drizzle and the smell of damp night would fill the backseat.

“Nate ain't bad,” he said, finally.

“No,” Mom answered. “Nate ain't bad.”

“He don't know Judaism from a hill of beans, but he's okay. What's Abe Gollar?”

“Nothing. I guess he'll still be cantor, but nothing. No officer.”

“Humph,” come out of Dad, and he didn't say anything for two more miles.

In the back, it was getting cold, boy. I mean, I was freezing. My teeth started chattering and I couldn't stop them.

“How come Abe Gollar is nothin'?” Dad asked.

“Morris, he's so old-fashioned.”

“How much Torah does Nate know? He'd eat a pig's ass if it chewed a cud.”

“Morris . . .”

“What's so old-fashioned about being able to read Hebrew? What's old-fashioned about having read th' Talmud? What's the matter, don't they want a Jew for a president?”

“Morris, he's—”

“—old-fashioned,” said Dad. “He don't play golf. He's a butcher. He didn't make a million during th' war. His boy fought in th' Battle of th' Bulge and was decorated.”

We drove a couple more icy miles, then Mom said, “The women don't like Abe.”

“Why don't th' women like Abe?”

“He calls them names. They go in for meat and he cuts everything off the same piece. He'll say, ‘You want chops? Chops! Bam! Flank? Flank! Bam! Roast? Roast! Bam!' And they can't argue with him. He's the only kosher butcher in Lexington.”

Dad chuckled. “What's he call them?”

“Old yentas.”

“To their faces?” and he started laughing.

“Yeh,” and her voice laughed too.

Dad sighed. “Well, maybe Abe is a little hard t' get along with, but he and I don't have any troubles. He always looks me up and talks t' me and makes me feel like I belong a Jew. He's not ashamed to say ‘Good yontiff' to a dirt farmer like me. You watch the rest of them t'night, how many greet me and talk t' me when I speak t' them.”

“Morris, they know you don't like them.”

“How th' hell can you like people that make a white slaver head of a shul!”

“Morris, the chil—”

“It's the truth! It's Rosh Hashanah. We need to tell the truth! They shouldn't even take Henshy's pledge until he quits. It's wrong. M'dom, don't you see it's wrong?”

“Yes, it's wrong, Morris. I know it's wrong,” and we pulled into the shul parking lot next to a big Cadillac.

At the door of the shul somebody gave me a yarmulke and we went inside. It was like it always was, with the women on one side and men on the other. I stood beside Dad, who had on his suit and felt hat. He never wore a yarmulke or tallis, but he read the prayers, which he understood even though the Hebrew letters looked like hen scratching to me.

The rabbi up front was chanting, and every now and then Mr. Gollar would walk up all grizzled with a black and white striped tallis with fringes around his shoulders and start singing. When he did, tears come rolling down his cheeks and soaked into his salt-and-pepper beard. His voice made me sad because it sounded like he had a rock on his heart.

Pretty soon, I noticed Stacy Kalman and some other boys walk toward the door. I looked at Dad and his face said if I wanted to go out, go ahead.

In the parking lot I saw Stacy and the others and walked up to join them. Just as I got there, they stopped talking.

“Hi,” I said, and somebody said, “Hello.”

There was this little quiet period, then they began talking about bowling and how Stacy had just bowled 180, and was good enough to bowl in a league next year.

“You gonna bowl in a league?” I asked, trying to sound like I knew what I was talking about, which I didn't because I had never seen anyone bowl in my life.

“Yeah,” said Stacy, and it got quiet again.

Then they started talking about going next year to Henry Clay Junior High.

“Y'all goin' to Henry Clay Junior High next year?” I asked, figuring that ought to get me into the conversation.

“Yeah,” said Stacy. “Where you goin', Middletown?” and they all laughed.

He knew dang well that's where I was going to go someday. I had been looking forward to going to Middletown too. It sounded like nothing when Stacy said it.

“Middletown can't beat anybody. They never make it past th' first game in th' basketball tournaments,” Stacy said, snickering, and the rest of the boys snickered too.

“There ain't anybody but goyim at Middletown,” said Martin Millheim, and everybody snickered again.

“I ain't goyim and I'll go there,” I said, and they snickered louder.

I could feel the hot come into my face as they made fun of me. Then Stacy motioned with his head and the whole crowd walked off, leaving me standing there. It was cold and lonely, so I went back inside the shul.

At last they got to the part I liked best, blowing the shofar. Mr. Gollar would stand there and say something in Hebrew and the rabbi would blast away on the ram's horn. It was really pretty to hear and I couldn't help thinking how much it sounded like the fox horns around home. Over and over the rabbi blew it, and each time power rushed up into my chest. I felt like I could lick the world. I even felt like I could lick Lonnie, which was dumb because wudn't any way I was ever gonna lick Lonnie Miller.

The rain that was falling on the way in started again on our way back, only this time the wind had shifted and some come through the broken-out window onto Naomi and me. It felt like it was going to either sleet or snow and we were shaking so bad we almost couldn't stand it, all wrapped up with our arms around each other and faces stuffed against one another's necks. I looked up once as a car come past and almost screamed. Naomi's hair had turned white! Just before I yelled, I realized that it was water drops glistening in the headlights. It was pretty. Naomi was pretty. Not as pretty as Rosemary, but kind of like Joy West. I was about to compare her to some of the other girls when she pulled my head back toward her neck.

“For criminy's sake, Samuel.” She shivered. “Stop lettin' cold air in on me.”

I put my head down and listen to the Ford's engine and the tires on the wet highway and the sounds of cars passing us. That's all I could hear until I heard Mom say:

“We are going to get rid of this car!” and her teeth were chattering.

“What for?” come out of Dad. “This is a good old car.”

“You may think it's a good old car, but I think it's a sh . . . shitting car. The window is broken out. It doesn't have a heater. The windshield wipers don't work so someday we won't see somebody and have an accident and kill us all. The wadding is coming out of the seats and a spring jabs me in the tuches every time I sit down. The brakes are almost gone. It won't go in the backup gear. It drips oil . . .”

“It doesn't drip oil,” said Dad.

“It drips oil!” yelled Mom. “I've seen it on the ground every time you move the car!”

“A quart of oil lasts me almost two weeks, M'dom. That's not a bad leak.”