Tunes for Bears to Dance To (5 page)

Jackie scrambled to his feet, massaging his throat “What are you—a madman?” he yelled hoarsely.

The man who had separated them was a veteran who still wore his khaki uniform, faded and patched up now. He hung around the Welcome Bar day and night. He had stormed the beaches of France on D day and people said he had never slept a wink since then, awake twenty-four hours a day.

His eyes red and binary, breathing heavily as if he had run a long distance, the veteran muttered, “What’s the matter with you kids?” His voice filled with disgust. “Don’t we have enough fighting in the world?”

“He attacked me,” Jackie whined, his voice still
roughedged. “I didn’t do anything. We were standing there talking and he started to choke me.”

“My father is not crazy” Henry said, pronouncing each word distinctly, needing to impress the truth on Jackie Antonelli and the veteran and people who had begun to gather. ”He’s sad but not crazy….”

“Get out of here, the two of you,” the veteran said. “Vamoose.”

At home Henry’s father sat at the kitchen table shuffling cards with one hand, the cards slipping and sliding in and out of the deck.

“It’s hot out,” Henry said, raising his voiced bit, speaking as if his father was deaf. Sometimes he seemed to be deaf and did not respond when someone spoke to him.

Slowly gathering the cards into a neat pile, his father looked up at him.

“I’m sorry, Henry,” he said.

Sorry for what? The heat? This tenement? His long silences? His father spoke so seldom that Henry gave weight to everything he said.

“Don’t be sorry, Pa.”

“You’re a good boy,” his father said. He seemed about to say more, wetting his lips with his tongue, then fell into silence again and resumed shuffling the cards.

Henry waited a few moments, glad to have heard his father’s voice, then went outside to the piazza. His mother was late, which meant she was
working overtime again. He looked down at the deserted suppertime street. He thought of Frenchtown and how Leo Cartier used to call his name after supper on nights like this: “Henry, are you coming out?” I
will not let myself be lonesome,
he vowed silently.

His mother arrived, bringing anger into the tenement. Not only had the tips been bad today but some customers had stiffed her, which meant they had left without paying the check. Two young guys in sharp suits. The manager, Mr. Owens, had taken it out of her pay. “I like you, Aggie,” he had said. “But I’ve got to set an example. Otherwise someone will play an angle on me.” All this Henry heard her report to his father. His father did not reply.

She banged pots and pans and dishes around in the kitchen. Then silence fell. Henry slipped down the front stairs. He could not at this moment bear to be in that sad tenement.

“S
ee the old man out there, tipping his hat to nobody,” Mr. Hairston said at the window. “Looks like an idiot.”

The boy put down the feather duster and went to stand beside the store owner.

“That’s Mr. Levine,” he said.

Surprise on his face, Mr. Hairston asked, “And who’s Mr. Levine?” Brusquely. “I know he’s a Jew by his name, but who is he?” He scowled fiercely, as if angry at Henry for knowing a Jew.

“He lives in the crazy house, but he’s not crazy,” Henry answered. “He was in a concentration camp during the war. His village was destroyed by the Nazis. His family was killed, his wife and children, all his relatives.”

Mr. Hairston made no reply. Kept staring out the window. “Look, he’s tipping his hat again. I think he
does
belong in the crazy house.”

“That’s reflex action,” he said, using George Graham’s words. “The guards made him tip his hat so much in the camp, and beat him up if he didn’t, that now he does it all the time.” Henry felt the explanation was inadequate. “He’s a nice old man.”

“Watch out for Jews,” Mr. Hairston warned. “Even a nice old one.”

Did Mr. Hairston hate everyone? Henry wondered.

“He’s very talented,” Henry said.

“Talented? What kind of talent does an old Jew from the crazy house have?”

“He’s rebuilding his village that was taken by the Nazis, carving the houses and barns and shops. Carving small pieces of wood to look like the people he grew up with. The village is beautiful.”

“Well, I hope it keeps him out of mischief,” Mr. Hairston said. “You never can tell about these people.”

Later, when Henry had finished dusting the cans on the shelves and polishing the fruit, Mr. Hairston summoned him to the window. He hoped that the grocer would discuss the monument, whether he had talked to Mr. Barstow yet.

“Tell me more about the old man,” he said. “That village he’s making.”

Heartened by the grocer’s interest, Henry repeated all that the giant had told him about the Nazis and what had happened to Mr. Levine’s family.
Eagerly he described the did man’s painstaking work on the miniature buildings and figures.

“Five or six hours for every figure?” Mr. Hairston asked, obviously impressed. “How many figures? How many buildings in the village?”

“A lot,” Henry said, his mind racing to compute the number. “A whole village of people. Young kids and fathers and mothers and
pépères
and
mémmères,”
using the old French words for grandparents. “The buildings aren’t too hard to make, but the little figures take a lot of time. You should see him work at them, Mr. Hairston. He’s a great artist. The figures look exactly like the people he knew.”

“Interesting,” Mr. Hairston said. And said no more, sending Henry away with a fling of his hand and remaining at the window, silent and thoughtful.

Henry was uneasy as he resumed work, as if somehow he had betrayed the old man.

A
fter Henry had helped to unload the merchandise from the delivery truck, he lingered for a moment on the platform, letting the cool air bathe his face.

He turned at a sound from the far end of the platform and saw Doris standing in the shadows of the staircase. She emerged slowly, walking delicately, as if her bones would come apart and clatter to the floor if she moved too quickly.

“Are you all right?” Henry whispered. She was the kind of person that you spoke to in whispers.

She nodded, almost imperceptibly, wincing, as if even the movement of her head was painful.

“Your father says you fall down a lot,” Henry said. “Did you fall down again? Is that why it hurts you to walk?”

“It doesn’t hurt me to walk,” she said, a bit defiantly
but only a bit, as if she was trying to convince herself as well as Henry. Then, looking away: “Yes, it does….”

“How did you fall down?”

She looked at him sharply, opened her mouth as if to answer, then clamped her lips shut.

Henry made a sudden leap of knowledge. “You didn’t fall down, did you?”

She looked at him with those deep dark eyes and still did not say anything.

“Do you like to read?” she finally said. “My father lets me go to the library whenever I want.” A hint of boasting in her voice.

Henry did not answer.

“I’m clumsy,” she said, lifting her shoulders and sighing. “I drop things sometimes and he gets mad.”

Henry felt a rush of tenderness for this thin pathetic girl. He almost reached out to stroke her cheek.

“Be careful of my father,” she warned, speaking low again, glancing toward the back door of the store.

“Will he hurt me too?” Henry asked, stunned at her words.

“There are a lot of ways he can hurt,” she said. “He never hits my mother, but hurts her with his tongue, the things he says to her. …”

“What does he say?”

“That she’s dumb and ugly. And too fat. That she eats too much.”

What kind of man was this Mr. Hairston who hit his daughter so hard it hurt her and called his wife dumb and ugly?

Perhaps Doris saw the questions in his eyes, because she said, “My father loves me and he loves my mother. But he wants us to be perfect.” The small defiance returning.

“But he’s not perfect,” Henry said. “In fact, he’s …”

Doris waited for him to say more but Henry did not know what Mr. Hairston was, and he shrugged his shoulders.

Now Doris was timid again, almost shriveling into herself as she drew away. “I have to go,” she told him, her voice low and barely audible. “I shouldn’t have said what I said to you. Try to forget I said it. …”

She turned away and Henry watched her shuffling slowly, painfully, toward the stairs. The stairs creaked as she climbed them, like the sound of her wounded bones.

A crazy thought, he told himself, but the sound lingered in his ears the rest of the afternoon.

“S
tay awhile after I cash up,” Mr. Hairston “said. “I have something to show you.”

Ordinarily, Henry was free to leave the store when the six o’clock whistle blew at the fire station down the street, signaling the end of the business day. When Henry went out the door, Mr. Hairston was always busy at the cash register, counting the money and entering various amounts into a ledger.

“Have a Baby Ruth while you wait,” Mr. Hairston said. Baby Ruth was his favorite candy bar, which the grocer had offered him only once before. He knew that eating the candy would spoil his supper but hesitated to rebuff his boss. Chances were that supper might be late anyway, because his mother often worked overtime at the diner.

While Henry chewed listlessly, the caramel sticking to the roof of his mouth, Mr. Hairston continued
to enter figures into the ledger. Finally, he closed the ledger and looked at Henry, a strange expression on his face. Strange for Mr. Hairston, that is, because his face was almost pleasant, his features suddenly soft, not sour as usual.

The grocer opened a drawer in the counter and drew out a sheet of paper. He placed it flat on the counter and motioned for Henry to approach and look at it.

The paper showed a black-and-white drawing of a stone monument, the name EDWARD CASSAVANT at the bottom in fancy letters. Above the name were a baseball bat and ball embedded in the stone, the bat upright as Henry had envisioned, and the ball, stitchings visible and scarred a bit like a real ball, at the base of the bat.

Henry’s throat tightened. He had no words to describe a thing of such beauty. Taking his eyes reluctantly away from the sketch, he looked up with gratitude at the grocer.

Then looked away, thinking dismally,
How could we afford such a monument?

“Well, what do you think?” the grocer asked.

Henry detected eagerness in the grocer’s voice, something he had never heard before. He was uncomfortable as Mr. Hairston waited for his reaction, his eyes fastened upon him. This was a Mr. Hairston he had never encountered before.

“It’s beautiful,” Henry said, the word inadequate. “But how much will this cost?”

Mr. Hairston shrugged and opened the ledger became busy with it again, studying the entries as if he was looking for a mistake he hadmade. He mumbled something that Henry did not catch.

“I don’t think we could afford a monument like this,” Henry said reluctantly, placing the sketch on the counter.

Mr. Hairston looked up, coughed and cleared his throat, and said, “Maybe we can work something out. …”