by Bill Albert
I’ve thought quite a lot about that last one since I came out West, wandering, you could say, to where I am now. Anyway, those dime novels became a passion for me. I didn’t have to share them with anyone, didn’t have to be a Liebermann with them, didn’t have to do anything but sink right down and go out West with Buffalo Bill and his pards.
All that was worth thinking about or doing for the kid I was then was there in the Dimes, with their fine colored pictures on the front. Savage Indians, wild animals, and bad, bad men. Hair-raising trips down angry rapids in canoes, gun fights against overwhelming odds, midnight rides to warn the settlers that the redskins were on the warpath, wagon trains to rescue, the mine payroll to get back from the outlaws. There was absolutely nothing that Buffalo Bill couldn’t do. He could fight off a thousand bloodthirsty red men, kill a bear with his Bowie knife, or face down a black-suited gunfighter. He could ride faster, shoot straighter, and walk taller than any man in the West. Buffalo Bill was tops. No one could doubt that.
You didn’t find such danger, excitement, or adventure on Eighth Avenue overlooking Central Park. For my family and their friends danger, excitement, and adventure were the lot of the ordinary people who were not intelligent enough to plan their lives so as to avoid the unforeseen. What else could “those people” expect? Even when we escaped from the city and went to New Jersey, to the seaside, everything was carefully measured out by the spoonful. There was one way to do things and that’s the way they were done. There were certain clothes that had to be worn for certain occasions. There was a time to eat, a time to wash, a time to go to sleep, a time to get up, a time for this and a time for that. And, of course, the sand was always carefully covered before we sat down on it. There was positively no room for danger, excitement, and adventure. God forbid!
It wasn’t difficult to figure out that my parents wouldn’t approve of Buffalo Bill and because of that I had put the Dimes in a wooden box, which I cunningly concealed under the window seat in my bedroom. Unfortunately I was not cunning enough and an unsympathetic upstairs maid had found my stash. She was a good Catholic and didn’t approve of young boys, even young Jewish boys, reading dime novels. They were, she said to my gravely nodding parents, the Devil’s work and would undoubtedly destroy my morals and put me on the road to a dissolute life. And I suppose you might say that they did, although not in the way the upstairs maid envisaged.
My parents couldn’t say enough about how wonderful the upstairs maid was, how lucky they were to have found someone of such good character. She was a real treasure, they said. A week later she ran off with the cook’s dark-haired cousin. I liked to think that finding my dime novels had in some way contributed to her fall from Grace.
“But, Mother,” I pleaded, “this is different. This is the real Buffalo Bill, not what Father said about reading and things like that. Everyone has seen him! Please take me! I’ll do anything if you take me! Anything you say! Anything at all!”
The carriage was halfway down the block. Another billboard loomed up outside our window. I was going to bust wide open. Buffalo Bill was so close. Just there a few steps across the road! I saw people staring up at the billboard, other people buying tickets. There were kids there too. Everyone was going to see the show but me. Why couldn’t I be like the other kids? Plenty of them would see Buffalo Bill that night. Plenty of them were allowed to buy dime novels without being made to feel like criminals.
My mother was trying to look stem, but she couldn’t stop a smile pushing up at the edges of her mouth.
“Mother?”
She sighed and ruffled my hair.
“You’ll have to ask your father, Meyer dear.”
She might as well have said no.
We had passed the end of the block. The Madison Square Garden along with Buffalo Bill and the Congress of Rough Riders was swiftly disappearing behind us.
11
My mouth is flannel-dry, my tongue swollen. It pushes fatly against the back of my teeth. I’m so thirsty I could lick the glaze of ice off the cell floor. I stand up and drape the blanket over my shoulders. I stamp my feet to shake out the aching coldness. The impact against the hard floor makes my toes tingle and burn, stinging pain slices up my calves. I bring my foot down again. The pain feels good, it gets the blood moving and takes my mind off the thirst. The blanket slides off and falls to the floor. I rub my arms. I smack my one good hand across my chest. It doesn’t help all that much but its better than sitting on the cement and letting the dampness creep into my bones. I pick up the blanket, put it over my head and start to walk, putting each foot down carefully. Two paces and then turn, stop, and turn around. Another two paces. Stamp. The pain is reassuring. Somewhere a door clangs shut, keys rattle, footsteps plod down the corridor. Muffled voices, a harsh laugh, then silence again. Could it be morning? I’ll never know in here. The Irishman will be coming, taking me to the warm office, asking his questions. Will the guards tell him about last night? When he finds out that I’m a Jew, what then? “Jesus,” he said. “Think about Jesus.” Jesus!
How long have I been here? I’ve lost track. I’ve also lost touch with my left hand. The numbness seems to have spread from my busted finger. Gangrene so soon? Frostbite? And for this I ran away from home?
No, I definitely did not. In fact, at the time I didn’t really think I was running away from home, at least for keeps.
My father said no. I had expected it, but the expectation didn’t make not being able to see Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show any easier. I decided I could not let it happen just like that. I would tell him very carefully and without raising my voice why it was so important for me to go to the Madison Square Garden. After all, my father was not such an unreasonable man.
I was wrong. He banished me to my room for being “rude and ungrateful.” He said when I was ready to apologize I could come downstairs.
Rude I could just understand. To argue was to contradict, to contradict your father was rude. Ungrateful? Because they had been charitable enough to make me a Liebermann? What else could he mean if not that? Had I asked them to adopt me?
“Thanks for nothing,” I muttered under my breath as I stomped noisily up the stairs.
“What was that you said?” my father called after me. “Meyer? You come back here this minute, young man!”
I kept going and slammed the door of my room behind me. I knew he wouldn’t come after me. It was not dignified. The worst he would do would be to send the governess to bring me down to him. But she was gone, and so for the time being I was safe.
Burdened with my mother’s story, I had felt increasingly sorry for myself as we made the long journey home from the Lower East Side. Now, sprawled across my bed fighting tears, I was righteously indignant as well. Missing Buffalo Bill was the last damn straw.
I lay there looking up at the ceiling and trying to picture what my real mother had been like, how things would have been for me if she had lived. No Greek and Latin, that’s for sure. No interfering nannies or any of those other dumb things. I would have had brothers and sisters to pal around with. I could have come and gone as I pleased, not have had to wear clean knee breeches, stiff collars and neckties every day. I bet she would have let me read dime novels and go to see Buffalo Bill.
Then I thought that maybe my mother hadn’t died. Maybe she believed I would have a better home with rich people and had just given me away. Didn’t my mother say she made up the story about Castle Garden? And my genuine father? Whatever really happened, he might still be out there. Henry Street, Division Street, somewhere among all that confusion. Did he know he had a son? It was like the story about the poor shepherd boy who finds out he’s actually a handsome prince, only my story was the other way around.
A short time later I sneaked out of my room and down the narrow staircase used by the servants. I was hungry and didn’t see why I shouldn’t have my lunch because my father didn’t approve of Buffalo Bi
ll. Carefully I went one stair at a time, missing the last step from the bottom which always made a loud creak. Luckily, there was no one in the pantry hall. On tiptoes I went toward the kitchen. The door into the dining room was ajar. I stopped, calculating the risk of trying to get across the open space to reach the other side and food.
“I still don’t understand,” my father was saying.
I held my breath, not wanting to hear and yet wanting to hear.
“It just happened, Nathan. I’m sorry, but it just happened.”
“Didn’t you promise never to take him?”
“Yes, but . . .”
“And we had agreed also not to tell him about his mother or any of that?”
“Yes, Nathan, but I explained . . .”
“It is impossible, Helen. Do you hear me? What are we going to do with him? Tell me that. I don’t know anymore. He won’t do his school work, no governess will stay, he is . . . He is . . . unmanageable. The older he gets the more like a stranger he becomes.”
“And just look at the boy,” Grandfather added. “You don’t even have to look very carefully to see he’s not a Liebermann.”
“Father!” my mother exclaimed.
“Only the truth I’m saying here. Only . . .”
“Maybe if we’d been able to have our own children, Helen. Maybe if . . . You know I have tried with the boy, haven’t I? But, as they say, blood will out.”
There was the sound of silverware clanking against a plate.
“Nathan!”
“I never should have let you talk me into it in the first place. Do you remember what the rabbi said at the time? Well?”
“He is our son,” my mother said indignantly. “We have an obligation to him.”
“Obligation? I have nothing but obligations, Helen. My life is one obligation after another. I’m heartily tired of them. It is high time that boy faced up to his obligations in our home.”
So, can you blame me for running away?
I reckon most kids think about it at one time or another. I had, but only got as far as some romantic fool notions. It’s not that you run to anywhere in particular but more how you imagine everyone being sick with worry when they’ve found out you’ve gone. They’d all sit around saying how they shouldn’t have treated you so badly or been so cranky and cross about dumb stuff. It would be like Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer, but not so Southern, damp, or messy. No lead-weighted loaves of bread and cannons blasting across the Mississippi.
Now I had a genuine reason for running away. I wasn’t only adopted; I wasn’t wanted. Nothing but an obligation who had to be polite and grateful all the time. It was worse than being one of the servants. I’d show them. I suppose I wasn’t thinking much past that.
Having made my decision, I had to figure out where to go. Everyone I knew lived in New York City and they were mainly cousins, who even when I didn’t want to run away, I wasn’t keen on seeing. There were a couple of boys I liked at school but I didn’t know exactly where they lived and anyway their parents would have sent me straight back home.
However, all that cogitation and disquietude came later on after I had crept back to my room. At that moment, standing in that dim hallway sniffing in the sweet scent of floor polish and eavesdropping on my parents and my grandfather, I wanted only to be as far away as possible. The “where to” wasn’t important.
What do you take when you run away from home? I do remember wishing I had long pants. It didn’t seem proper to run away wearing knee breeches and high socks, but it was that or nothing. Up in my room I tore off my necktie and high stiff collar and threw my suit coat and vest on the floor. Already I felt like a rebel. Then I put on my reefer jacket, which looked more like something you should run away in. A gray flat cap and lace-up boots were the top and bottom of my escape outfit. A comb, a handkerchief, and a small gold nugget on a chain that one of my uncles had given me all went into one pocket. From the top of the wardrobe I pulled down a leather club bag and hurriedly stuffed it with shirts, underwear, socks, a sweater, and a pair of blue-striped pajamas. I looked around my room but there was nothing else I wanted that I could carry.
I was ready, but wherever I was going I couldn’t get there without money. I opened the door and looked into the hall. My parents were still eating lunch and probably still discussing what an obligation I had become or how much I didn’t look like a Liebermann. I knew where I could get money, so taking my bag I slipped down the stairs and into my father’s study.
Every night when he came home my father took the small change from his pocketbook and put it into a big glass jar. It was, he told me, to help the Temple. A new building, a library, something like that. He locked the jar in his desk, but I saw where he hid the key. I was unlocking the drawer when I noticed his black leather pocketbook lying on top of the desk. He had probably been emptying it when my mother and I returned. As I picked it up I thought I heard someone in the corridor and so shoved the pocketbook into my jacket and quickly left the study. A few moments later I was on the sidewalk. No one had seen me, but it wouldn’t be long before I was missed. Picking up my bag, I walked quickly across the street, climbed over the low stone wall and into the tree-lined shelter of Central Park.
12
In the stories I had read it was always so simple. Huck Finn glided off down the Mississippi River on a log raft. Kids stowed away on steamships or rode empty boxcars, swiped horses, hid in the backs of wagons, or just walked off down the road whistling. What did I know about steamships, boxcars, rafts, or horses? I was a rich kid in the middle of New York City who had only traveled in the family carriage, the occasional hansom cab, and the first-class compartment on the train to New Jersey. I thought about the various options for escape as I sat on a stone bench in the park. Even if I had wanted to, I had no idea where the docks were or the railway station, I couldn’t ride a horse, let alone steal one, and even my whistling wasn’t up to much. But, I thought with growing desperation, without somewhere to go what difference did it make if I couldn’t figure out how to get there?
It had been easy until I reached that park bench. I was about a hundred and fifty yards from our house. I could see it through the trees, as at that point the park was higher than the road.
I knew that part of the park well. It wasn’t far from the Seventy-second Street entrance where I sometimes watched the carriages, especially the late afternoon processions which exited there after coming up from the south of the park. Everyone came out to impress everyone else with their matched horses, uniformed coachmen, and fancy rigs. There were landaus and phaetons, victorias and barouches. Some people doffed their hats to you, others just looked indifferently regal.
There was always something interesting going on in Central Park. Band concerts, ice skating, rowing, riding on the Carousel. However, that afternoon was the first time I had been on the other side of the stone wall by myself. I should have felt free but I didn’t.
The bench was hard and uncomfortable and I was hungry. I wasn’t accustomed to missing my lunch. Running away from home, I decided, might not be such a wonderful idea. I wouldn’t have been displeased at that moment if one of the servants had found me and taken me home. I sat there for over half an hour waiting, but no one came. Didn’t they care?
Then I opened my father’s pocketbook. Ducking my head to make myself smaller and secreting the pocketbook inside my jacket I looked around. Behind the bench was a screen of bushes, the leaves moving together evenly in the light breeze. Was there someone hiding in among all that swaying green waiting to leap out and rob me? Across the way half a dozen tall sycamore trees with thin spring leaves betrayed nothing. A nurse wearing a stiff white hat and pushing a baby buggy had just passed by on the gravel path in front of the bench. A man in a straw boater carrying a cane was coming towards me from the opposite direction. I tried to look unconcerned. He walked by without a glance. I waited until he was gone and
then making sure my hands were shielded by the bag, I counted the money again. Eagles, double eagles, silver coins, and a thick wad of folding money. Five hundred and fifteen dollars and thirty-seven cents! I remember that figure because I counted the money three more times. I was in real trouble. No longer a little boy who ran away from home. No sir. I had become a big-time thief. I could hear them congratulating themselves on my folly.
“An incorrigible ingrate! A boy we rescued from the gutter, raised as one of our own, took into the very bosom of our family and this is how we are repaid. Humph! A common thief stealing from his own father.”
“Was I right, or was I right, Nathan my son? A Liebermann? Ha!”
Now there were watchers everywhere. I was sure I saw the man in the boater hurrying back up the path. He had seen the money for sure. In the distance, just emerging from around a row of trees, I made out the nurse with the baby buggy also moving rapidly towards me. Behind me the leaves rustled urgently. In the distance I heard the bells of a fire engine. I got up from the bench, grabbed my bag, and ran for home.
Maybe my father hadn’t missed the pocketbook, I thought as I stumbled down the hill. I had been gone less than an hour. I could sneak back inside, no one would ever know and that would be the end of it.
I clambered over the wall at the edge of the park. There was a crowd of about a dozen people standing there staring across the road. I looked too, but my view was partially obscured by a closed hansom which had just drawn up to the curb. A very fat man and an even fatter woman huffed and grumbled as they pried themselves out of the narrow door. Concealed by the high back wheels I peered across the road expecting to see the familiar view of our front door—sanctuary from the demons of the park. Instead my father was at the top of our front steps with two uniformed policemen. The silver badges on their helmets glinted in the late afternoon sun as they nodded their heads. He was gesturing with some agitation towards the park. He raised his hand halfway up his chest palm downwards to indicate the height of something. Me! Mother, her arms folded as if she was holding herself in, stood supportively behind him. I was too late.