The Gravedigger’S Daughter (16 page)

that would scar Jeb Meunzer for the remainder of his life.

It would be told how Herschel Schwart then wiped the bloody knife calmly on his victim’s trousers, rose from him and waved insolently at the stunned, staring Mrs. Meunzer and her daughter, and turned to run into the darkness. It would be said that, at a bend in the Post Road, a car or pickup truck was idling, with its headlights off; and that Herschel climbed into this vehicle and drove away, or was driven away by an accomplice, to vanish from the Chautauqua Valley forever.

Earnestly he insisted, “My son, he is a good boy! Like all your boys. Your Milburn boys.
He
would not harm another. Never!”

And, “My son Herschel, where he is gone I do not know. He is a good boy always, working hard to give his wages to his mother and father. He will return to explain himself, I know.”

So Jacob Schwart claimed when Chautauqua County deputies came to question him about Herschel. How adamant the poor man was, in not-knowing! In a craven posture clutching his cloth cap in both hands and speaking rapidly, in heavily accented English. It would have required men of more subtlety than the literal-minded deputies to decipher the gravedigger’s sly mockery and so the men would say afterward of Jacob Schwart
Poor bastard ain’t right in the head is he?

Among your enemies, Rebecca’s father advised, it is wise to hide your intelligence as to hide your weakness.

A police warrant had been drawn charging Herschel with three counts of “aggravated assault with intent to commit murder.” Of his three victims, two had been hospitalized. The swastika-mutilation to Jeb Meunzer’s face was severe. No one in the Milburn area had ever been so attacked. Bulletins had been issued through New York state and at the Canadian border describing the “dangerous fugitive” Herschel Schwart, twenty-one.

The deputies did not question Anna Schwart at length. The agitated woman shrank from them trembling and squinting like a nocturnal creature terrified of daylight. In her confusion she seemed to think Herschel had himself been injured and hospitalized. Her voice was quavering and near-inaudible and her English so heavily accented, the deputies could barely understand her.

No! She did not know…

…knew nothing of where Herschel had gone.

( Was he hurt? Her son? What had they done to him? Where had they taken him? She wanted to see him! )

The deputies exchanged glances of pity, impatience. It was useless to question this simple-minded foreign-born woman who seemed not only to know nothing about her murderous son but also to be frightened of her gravedigger husband.

The deputies questioned August, or “Gus,” Herschel’s younger brother, but he too claimed to know nothing. “Maybe you helped your brother, eh?” But Gus shook his head quizzically. “Helped him how?”

And there was Rebecca, the twelve-year-old sister.

She, too, claimed to know nothing about what her older brother might have done, and where he’d fled. She shook her head wordlessly as the deputies questioned her.

At twelve, Rebecca still wore her hair in thick, shoulder-length braids, as her mother insisted. Her dark-brown hair was parted, not very evenly, in the center of her head and gave off a rich rank odor for her hair was not often washed. None of the Schwarts bathed frequently for hot water in large pails had to be heated on the stove, a tedious and time-consuming task.

In the face of adult authority Rebecca’s expression was inclined to be sullen.

“‘Rebecca,’ that’s your name? Is there anyone in your family in contact with your brother, Rebecca?”

The deputy spoke sternly. Rebecca, not raising her eyes, shook her head
no
.

“
You
haven’t been in contact with your brother?”

Rebecca shook her head
no
.

“If your brother comes back, miss, or you learn where he’s hiding, or that someone is in contact with him, for instance providing him with money, you’re obliged to inform us immediately, or you’ll be charged as an accessory after the fact to the crimes he’s been charged with�d’you understand, miss?”

Stubbornly, Rebecca stared at the floor. The worn linoleum floor of the kitchen.

It was true, she knew nothing of Herschel. She supposed that, yes he was the man the deputies wanted. Almost, she was proud of what Herschel had done: punishing their enemies. Carving a swastika on Jeb Meunzer’s mean face!

But she was frightened, too. For Herschel might now be hunted down, and himself injured. It was known that fugitives
resisting arrest
were vulnerable to severe beatings at the hands of their pursuers, sometimes death. And if Herschel was sent to state prison…

Jacob Schwart intervened: “Officers, my daughter knows nothing! She is a quiet girl, not so bright. You see. You must not frighten her, officers. I plead you.”

Rebecca felt a pang of resentment, that her father should misspeak. And malign her.

Not so bright
. Was it true?

The deputies prepared to leave. They were dissatisfied with the Schwarts, and promised to return. With his sly mock-servile smile Jacob Schwart saw them to the door. Again telling them that his elder son was a boy who prayed often to God, who would not raise a fist even to a brute deserving of harm. Nor would Herschel abandon his family for he was a very loyal son.

“‘Innocent until guilty’�yes? That is your law?”

Watching the deputies drive away in their green-and-white police cruiser, Rebecca’s father laughed with rare gusto.

“Gestapo. They are brutes, but they are fools, to be led by the nose like bulls. We will see!”

Gus laughed. Rebecca forced herself to smile. Ma had crept away into a back room, to weep. Almost you would think, seeing Jacob Schwart strut in his kitchen, thrusting a wad of Mail Pouch chewing tobacco into his mouth, that something exhilarating had happened, that
these others
had brought good news of Herschel and not a warrant for his arrest.

In the days following, it was clear that Jacob Schwart took pride in what Herschel had done, or was generally believed to have done. He overcame his customary frugality by buying several newspapers carrying articles on the assaults. His favorite was a front-page feature in the
Milburn Weekly
with a prominent headline:

THREE BRUTAL HALLOWÉEN ASSAULTS
LINKED TO
21-
YEAR-OLD SUSPECT
Area Youth a Fugitive Considered Dangerous

In each of us there is a flame that will never die, Rebecca!

That flame is lighted by Jesus Christ and nourished by His love
.

How badly Rebecca wanted to believe in these words of her former teacher Miss Lutter! But it was so hard. Like trying to lift herself onto the tar paper roof of the toolshed using just her arms, when she’d been a little girl imitating her brothers. They’d laughed at their little sister struggling behind them, too weak-armed at the time, her legs too thin, lacking muscle. Where they scrambled up onto the roof deft as cats, she’d fallen back helplessly to the ground.

Sometimes one of her brothers would lean over to give her a hand and hoist her up onto the roof. But sometimes not.

In each of us a flame
.
Rebecca, believe!

Jacob Schwart mocked
those others
for being Christian. In his mouth the word “Chriss-tyian” was a comical hissing noise.

Rebecca’s father said how Jesus Christ had been a deranged Messiah-Jew who could save neither himself nor anybody else from the grave and what the fuss was about him, almost two thousand years after his death, God knows!

This, too, was a joke. Jacob Schwart was always grinning when the word “God” popped out of his mouth like a playful tongue. Pa would say, for instance, “God chases us into a corner. God is stamping his big boot-foot, to obliterate us. And yet there is a way out. Remember, children: always there is a way out. If you can make yourself small enough, like a worm.”

He laughed, almost in mirth. His rotted teeth shone.

And so it became Rebecca’s secret from her family: her wish to believe in Miss Lutter’s friend Jesus Christ who was Jacob Schwart’s enemy.

Miss Lutter had given Rebecca Bible cards, to be hidden in Rebecca’s school books and smuggled home. “Our secret, Rebecca!”

The cards were slightly larger than playing cards. They were full-color depictions of Bible scenes so precisely rendered, Rebecca thought, you might think they were photographs. There was the Wise Men from the East (Matthew 2:1) in their flowing robes. There was Jesus Christ seen in profile, in a yet more flowing, surprisingly colorful robe (Matthew 6:28). There was the Crucifixion ( John 19:26), and there was the Ascension (Acts 1:10): Jesus Christ, His bearded face barely visible, in a now snow-white robe floating above the head of his prayerful disciples. (Rebecca wondered: where did Jesus’s robes come from? Were there stores in that far-off land, as in Milburn? You could not buy such a garment in any store in Milburn but you could purchase the material, and sew it. But who had sewed Jesus’s robes, and how had they been laundered? And were they ironed? It was one of Rebecca’s household tasks, to iron flat things for her mother, that didn’t wrinkle easily.) Rebecca’s favorite Bible card was the Raising of Jairus’s Daughter (Mark 5:41) for Jairus’s daughter had been twelve years old, she’d been given up for dead except Jesus Christ had come to her father and said
Why make ye this ado, and weep? The damsel is not dead, but sleepest
. And so it was, Jesus took the girl by the hand, wakened her, and she rose, and was well again.

Miss Lutter had not understood that the Schwarts did not own a Bible, and Rebecca had never wished her to know this. There were many things of which the gravedigger’s daughter felt shame. Yet she did not wish to betray her parents, either. Now in seventh grade she was not Miss Lutter’s pupil any longer, and saw her infrequently. She remembered Miss Lutter’s words, however.
You have only to believe in Jesus Christ the Son of God and He will enter your heart, He will love you and protect you forever
.

So she tried, tried to believe!�and could not, not quite. Yet almost she did believe! Each day, since Herschel’s disappearance, and the upset in her family’s life, and the widespread dislike with which all the Schwarts were now regarded, Rebecca especially wanted to believe.

When she was alone, and no one observing her. No one sneering at her, cursing her. Bumping against her in the seventh grade corridor, or on the school stairs. Walking quickly home from school cutting through alleys, vacant lots, fields. She was becoming a feral cat, furtive and wary. Her legs were strong now, she could run, run, run if pursued. A not-bright girl, you might think. A girl from a poor family, in mismatched clothes, ugly braids swinging beside her head. There was a certain hill above the railroad embankment, just before Quarry Road, where, as she descended it, skidding and slipping in the loose gravel, Rebecca felt her heart knock against her ribs for she was allowed to know
If you deserve to fall and injure yourself, it will happen now
.

Rebecca had recently learned to bargain in this way. To offer herself as a victim. It was in place of others in her family being punished. She wanted to believe that God would act justly.

Sometimes she did fall, and cut her knees. But most often she did not. Even when she became aware of the wraith-like figure in a flowing white robe and white headdress approaching her she did not lose her balance, her body had become agile and cunning.

Columns of mist, fog, lifted out of the deep drainage ditches on either side of Quarry Road, that was an unpaved country road on the outskirts of Milburn. Here there was a stark cold odor of mud, stone.

Rebecca was allowed to speak if she did not move her lips, and did not utter any sound.

Would Herschel be returned to them?

Jesus said in a low, kindly voice, “In time your brother will return to you.”

Would the police arrest him? hurt him? Would he go to prison?

Jesus said, “Nothing will happen that is not meant to be, Rebecca.”

Rebecca!
Jesus knew her name.

She was so afraid, Rebecca told Jesus. Her lips quivered, she was in danger of speaking out loud.

Jesus said, just slightly reproachfully, “
Why
make ye this ado, Rebecca? I am beside you.”

But Rebecca must know: would something happen to them? Would something terrible happen to�her mother?

It was the first time Rebecca had mentioned her mother to Jesus.

It was the first time ( her mind rapidly calculated, she knew that Jesus too must be thinking this) she had alluded to her father, indirectly.

Jesus said, an edge of irritation to His voice, “Nothing will happen that is not meant to be, my child.”

But this was no consolation! Rebecca turned in confusion, and saw Jesus staring at her. The man looked nothing like Jesus on the Bible cards. He wasn’t wearing a flowing white robe after all, nor a headdress. He was bareheaded and his hair was straggling and greasy, tinged with gray. His jaws were stubbled, his face was creased with deep wrinkles. In fact Jesus resembled the scummy-eyed men, derelicts they were called, bums, who hung about the railroad yard and the worst of the taverns on South Main Street. Those shabbily dressed men of whom Rebecca’s mother warned her repeatedly to keep clear, to avoid.

This Jesus resembled Jacob Schwart, too. Smiling at her in angry mockery
If you believe me you are indeed a fool
.

And then a car came rattling along the Quarry Road, and He vanished.

Nothing will happen that is not meant to be
.

These were the words of the mocking derelict Jesus. Rebecca heard them taunting her through that long winter and into the freezing spring of 1949 which would be her final year in the old stone house in the cemetery.

It would be said in Milburn that the end came for the Schwarts soon after Herschel’s criminal behavior, and his flight as a fugitive, but in fact eight months intervened. This was a time of stasis and confusion: when one is locked in the paralysis of sleep, even as the dream is broken, disintegrating. Rebecca knew only that her father’s episodes of fury and despair, anxiety and sodden alcoholic depression, alternated more frequently, and were not to be predicted.

More and more, Jacob Schwart found fault with his remaining son. The boy’s very name filled him with contempt: “‘Gus.’ What is this ‘gus’�‘gas’? Who is named ‘gas’?” Jacob laughed, this was very amusing. Even when he hadn’t been drinking he tormented the boy:

“If our Nazi enemies took one of my sons, why not
you
? Eh?”

And, “God is a joker, we know: taking my firstborn son and leaving behind
you
.”

Strange, Jacob Schwart’s English speech was becoming ever more heavily accented, as if he’d been living in the Chautauqua Valley only a few weeks and not more than a decade.

Gus mumbled, to Rebecca, “Why’s he hate
me
? I never made Herschel go nuts like that.”

Unlike Herschel, Gus could not seem to stand up to their father. And Jacob Schwart was a man who, when unopposed, grew yet more contemptuous, cruel. Rebecca had seen how at school if she tried to ignore the other children’s taunts, the taunts were only intensified. You could not placate a bully. You could not wait for a bully to tire of his cruelty, and find another target. Only if Rebecca fought back immediately did her tormentors let her alone.

Temporarily, at least.

Poor Gus, who had no work outside the cemetery. No life outside the stone cottage. Their father refused to let him get a job, as Herschel had done, and earn his own wages. Nor did Gus have the strength to break away from home, for their mother was dependent upon him. By the age of nineteen he’d become Jacob Schwart’s (unpaid) assistant. “Get out here! Get your ass here! I am
waiting
.” In the smallest matters, Gus must obey his father; Rebecca thought he was craven as a boy-soldier, terrified of disobeying his superior officer. She’d loved Gus when they were younger, now she shrank from him in disgust. By degrees Gus had become a captive animal, his spirit was squelched. His hair that was thin, fawn-colored, was seriously thinning, he scratched his scalp so. His forehead was becoming furrowed as an old man’s. He suffered from mysterious skin rashes, always he was scratching with his nails. Rebecca cringed seeing Gus poke his forefinger deep, deep into his ear canal to scratch wildly as if hoping to claw out his brains.

Since Herschel had left home, the persecution was worsening. But it had begun years before when Jacob Schwart insisted that Gus quit school on his sixteenth birthday.

Jacob had said, matter-of-factly, “Son, you are not bright. School does nothing for one like you. On the terrible sea voyage, you were afflicted with dysentery and fever. Once the brain starts to melt like wax there is no recovery of intelligence. At that school you are surrounded by our enemies. Crude, coarse peasants who laugh at you, and through you laugh at your family. At your mother! It is not to be tolerated, son!” When Pa worked himself up into righteous anger, there was no reasoning with him.

It was true, Gus had to concede. His grades were poor, he had few friends, the majority of his classmates avoided him. Yet he’d never caused trouble, he’d never hurt anyone! It was his inflamed skin that exuded a look of fury. It was his small close-set eyes that regarded the world with such distrust.

So Gus obeyed his father, and quit school. Now he had no life outside the cemetery, beyond Jacob Schwart’s domain. Rebecca worried that one day her father would insist that she, too, quit school. He had so bitterly repudiated the world of learning, of books,
words
. And Rebecca’s mother would wish it, too.
You are a girl, you don’t want something to happen to you
.

( Rebecca was puzzled: would she be punished because she was a girl, or because she was the gravedigger’s daughter?)

One day in late March, when Gus was helping their father clear away storm debris from the cemetery, Jacob Schwart became impatient with his son, who worked clumsily and distractedly; Jacob cursed him, and feinted with his shovel as if to strike him. Of course, Jacob was only joking. But Gus’s cringing response, the look of abject fear in his face, infuriated the older man who lost his temper and struck Gus on the back with the flat of the shovel�“Fool! Donkey!” The blow wasn’t a hard one, Jacob Schwart would insist, yet out of perversity Gus fell, striking his head against a gravestone and cutting himself. A short distance away, several visitors to one of the grave sites were watching. A man called over asking what was wrong, what was going on, but Jacob Schwart ignored him, cursing his fallen son and commanding him to get up�“You are shameful, to behave so. Pretending to be hurt like a baby.” When Gus struggled to his feet, wiping at his bleeding face, Jacob raged at him. “Look at you! God-damn baby! Go, go to your mama, suckle Mama’s teats. Go!”

Gus turned to his father, staring. There was no look of abject fear in his face now. Bleeding from a cut in his forehead, Gus regarded the older man with an expression of hatred. His fingers twitched, gripping a wide-pronged metal rake.

“Do you dare! Do you!
You!
You do not dare, go suckle Mama’s teats!”�so Jacob Schwart raged, as his son advanced upon him with the uplifted rake. At the same time, the man who’d called to them was now approaching them, cautiously, speaking calmly, trying to dissuade them from more violence. At the grave site, two women clutched at each other, whimpering in alarm.

“Try! Try to strike your father! You cripple-baby, you can
not
.”

Gus held the rake in his trembling hands and then, abruptly, let it fall. He had not spoken, and would not speak. As Jacob Schwart continued to rage at him, he turned and walked away, unsteady on his feet, dripping blood on the snow, determined not to fall like a man making his way across the deck of a pitching ship.

When Gus entered the house, there was Anna Schwart awaiting him, quivering with emotion.

“
He? He
did this to you?”

“Ma, no. I fell. I did it to myself.”

Anna tried awkwardly to embrace her son, who would not be embraced or impeded at this time.

She was begging, pleading. “He loves you, August! It is just his way, to hurt. To harm where he loves. The Nazis�”

“Fuck the Nazis. He’s a Nazi. Fuck
him
.”

Anna soaked a towel in cold water, to press against Gus’s bleeding forehead. But he had no patience with her nursing, he seemed hardly to feel pain, the bleeding was only annoying to him. “Shit, Ma, let me go. I’m O.K.” With surprising roughness he shoved Anna aside. In his bedroom he emptied bureau drawers onto his bed, yanked his few items of clothing out of his closet, threw everything into a pile. He would fashion a crude bundle out of a flannel blanket, and tie up his meager possessions inside. His distraught mother could not believe what she was seeing: her wounded son, her only remaining son, so elated? Smiling, laughing to himself? August, who’d rarely smiled since the terrible morning of the swastikas.

On the kitchen floor, in the hallway and in the bedroom, bloodstains would gleam in August Schwart’s wake like exotic coins Rebecca would discover when she returned home from school to the silent, devastated stone house.

Like the other he never said goodbye. Left without seeing me never said goodbye.