by Larry Karp
When Samuel finished his examination he looked from Teresa to Emily to Joe. “Ready to give them your baby, Teresa?”
The girl hesitated just an instant, then nodded. “Yes.” No more than a whisper. She gathered the blanket around the baby.
“Go ahead.” Samuel’s voice was as soft as hers, but the two words carried a force no one could’ve stood against. “Tell them just what you told me.”
Teresa extended her arms to hold the baby out to Emily. “I came to Dr. Firestone,” she said, “and asked him to…kill my baby. Because I wasn’t going to be able to give it a good home. Dr. Firestone told me I could have the baby, and he’d make sure it went to people who could give it what I couldn’t, and I could meet them and make sure I felt right about it.” Teresa placed the baby in Emily’s arms. “So I’m giving you my baby, it’s of my own free will, and I’m happy doing it because you and Joe are good people, and the baby will have a good life.”
Emily planted a light kiss on Teresa’s cheek, which started them both crying.
Teresa’s speech bothered me, thick with rehearsal, studded with wordings obviously not hers. “Of my own free will.” I wondered how much free will anyone had once my father went to work. What was happening did seem to be what everyone in that room wanted, but I wondered whether Teresa would feel differently the next day, or in ten years. But how might she feel in ten years if she did keep the baby? A teen-aged single mother, in 1943? And how about the baby? What really was best for him?
I didn’t have long to think about it. Samuel, radiant, proclaimed, “Teresa gives her baby to Emily and Joe. Who promise…”
“To raise him as our own beloved son,” Joe and Emily said in unison, their voices taking turns cracking. “And to remember and be grateful for Teresa’s love, which gave him life and brought him to us.”
“And his name is…” Samuel intoned.
“David,” Emily said. “David Franklin—” She caught herself as if she were stumbling at the edge of a cliff. “We picked the name last night, all three of us. David Franklin.”
“Good.” Samuel pulled a pad from his black bag, a fountain pen from his pocket, started writing. I glanced over his shoulder. Name of Baby: David Franklin. The rest of the form was already filled in, and no, the parents’ names really were not Emily and Joe Ronstadt. Samuel blew on the ink, showed the paper to “Joe” and “Emily.” “Birth certificate. I’ll file it today, then the county clerk will send you a copy after it clears registration.” He looked at Teresa. “You’ll get your paper when you leave. TB’ll never bother you again, will it?”
Teresa looked down. She’d caught the meaning in his words and eyes.
Samuel nodded at Emily and Joe. “I’ll check Teresa, see you downstairs.”
Teresa cried quietly while Samuel tapped at her chest, listened to her lungs, palpated the hard postpartum uterus just below her navel. At one point she said, “I feel strange, Dr. Firestone. I don’t know whether I’m sad or happy.”
Samuel rested a hand on her shoulder. “You’re happy,” he said. “But you feel bad about feeling happy, so you feel terrible, except you feel wonderful.” Teresa couldn’t seem to decide whether to keep crying or laugh.
Afterward, in the Fleischmanns’ living room, Joe held a thick white envelope out to Samuel. “Here it is, Dr. Firestone, just like you said. Three thousand.” Not pocket change then or now, but during the war a lot of ordinary people had money because there was nothing to spend it on. Samuel thanked him, passed the offering to Lily, who walked away with it in the direction of the kitchen. “I can’t tell you how much—” Joe continued, but Emily interrupted him. “Dr. Firestone…I’m sorry. But you are sure it’s all right?” She looked down at the baby in her arms, maternal concern all over her face. “I mean, he’s only a day old.”
“Don’t worry,” Samuel said. “Go to the address I gave you, rent a room. You had your baby unexpectedly while traveling, you’re going to stay a week. Any problem at all, you and Joe have my phone number. And I’ll see the little guy in my office before you head home.”
Emily laid a hand on Samuel’s forearm. Her eyes apologized for any doubt she might ever have harbored. Joe shook Samuel’s hand. Just then Lily walked back in, waving a little black camera with a flash gun on top. Samuel laughed. “Her toy.” He gathered Joe in one arm, Emily and the baby in the other, nodded to me. I stepped next to Emily. Lily studied us through the lens, then murmured, “Yes, just right,” and pushed the button at the end of a cable, flash! The baby whimpered, Emily soothed him. Another round of thank-you’s, then a moment later the screen door slammed. I thought about Ramona, alone in our house after the funeral, felt a terrible sadness in the pit of my stomach.
In the Plymouth, going home, I said, “That was more of a religious ceremony than the funeral.”
“What?” Samuel’s foot accidentally tapped the brake; the car lurched. Knowing I’d nailed him gave me courage to go on. “And you sounded more like a minister than the one in church.”
Samuel chuckled, back in control. “Tell you something. Teresa needs to believe she’s doing the right thing for that baby. And Joe and Emily should know what she’s gone through, feel a real obligation to her. A little ceremony helps. Shows what serious business it is. Door’s closed, no one ought ever open it.”
“One thing to say a bunch of words, another to mean them,” I said. My own boldness surprised me. “How can you be sure—”
Samuel smiled as he broke in. “Wait to be a hundred percent sure, all you’ll ever do in your life is stand around watching people suffer and die. Sometimes you need to behave as if there really were certainty in this world—you know, update Pascal’s wager. Put it into play where there actually might be something to lose.”
The gospel according to St. Samuel. “Go for eight.”
After lunch, Samuel went to talk to his accountant, so I biked to the junkyard. Where six piles of metal had stood the day before, now only scraps lay next to a messy heap of wrinkled tarps. I saw Murray and George off by the fence, stoking the garbage fire. Clouds of dense black smoke billowed across the river into Emerson Township. No sign of Oscar, good.
I uncovered my work, sat down, slid the music box cylinder into its brass end bearings, positioned the governor and spring assembly, then screwed them all into place. I picked up the comb, but remembered Murray’s warning about the cylinder spinning around too fast and knocking out teeth. So I put the comb aside, and pulled the winding lever on the spring, once, twice. Nothing happened. I pulled a third time, no difference. When I flicked the little blades of the governor fan they barely moved, and reluctantly at that.
At least as reluctantly, I got up and walked slowly across the junkyard. Murray surprised me by laughing when I told him what was wrong. He wiped an arm across his forehead, pulled out his grimy handkerchief, blew his nose. “Sounds like maybe you got a sick patient, there, Dockie. Let’s take a gander.”
“I don’t want to interrupt you. I mean, if—”
“You mean if Pop sees me helpin’ you?” Murray rumbled.
I nodded. That was exactly what I was going to say.
“Tell you something, Dockie. All that shit about how this is Pop’s junkyard—just forget about it. If my old man’s got a bug up his ass about your old man, that’s between the two a them, okay? Pop bothers you, I’ll take care a him. Just don’t you go messin’ with him. Kapeesh?”
Back at the worktable, Murray picked up the musical mechanism, held it to the light, squinted. He flicked the fan blades with his index finger the way I had, poked at the governor gears, finally pointed at the gear-juncture of the governor and cylinder. “Look, Dockie. Bound up here, tight as a tick.” He poked an elbow into my ribs. “You done a damn good job gettin’ your sick patient better, but now we gotta do like your old man does sometimes. He don’t do brain surgery operations, does he?”
“No. He’d call in a consultant, a neurosurgeon.”
“Well
, then. That’s what we’re gonna do now. Governor needs some adjustments, pretty delicate work. Besides…” Murray pointed at the comb, lying upside down on the table. “See them little wires underneath the teeth, curving towards the tips? They’re called dampeners, and they need a ton of work, too.”
I peered, shaded my eyes. “I can just about make them out. Some are bent off to one side or the other, and some aren’t even there.”
Murray held out his hands, hams with sausage fingers. “Can you just about see me trying to put stuff like that right? Or do some tiny little adjustment on a governor? Less’n a minute, I’d be shaking like a leaf on a tree. Put it back inside the case and take it on over to Hogue’s. I’ll give Chet a call, tell him what’s what, and you’re on your way.”
Inside fifteen minutes I was there. Mrs. Hogue glared at me through the thick gray haze in the shop. Gunmetal hair drawn back hard into a bun, thin lips turned down at both corners. Someone who always got the short end of every deal, and wasn’t about to let you forget it. I said hello, held up the music box in its case. “Murray Fleischmann—”
That was as far as I got. She ripped the cigarette from her lips, shouted at the top of her voice, “Chet! Kid’s here from Fleischmann’s.” Then she jerked a hitchhiker thumb toward the back. “Listen to what he tells you, keep your mouth shut, get done, awright? He gets talkin’, he’ll be at it all day.”
“All right,” I said. “I appreciate him helping me.”
Her face softened just a bit. She plugged her cigarette back in, took another drag, then half-turned in her swivel chair and blew the smoke toward the poster-picture of Roosevelt on the wall as if she were offering incense to a god.
Mr. Hogue sat at his workbench, manipulating a scatter of clock pieces through a loupe. He bulldozed a space with a hand. “Let’s see what you got, Sonny.”
He pulled the music-works out of its case, took off the comb, studied the governor and cylinder. “Mmmm…yeah.” Then he started to work the winding lever back and forth. “Gotta take off all the power, otherwise we’ll be pickin’ up gear teeth all over the floor. Maybe our own teeth too.” After a cackle at his joke, he unscrewed the governor, lifted it from the bedplate, peered through a hole in the side plate. “Hmmm.” He pushed a thumb against the outermost gear. The fan blades balked, then started to spin, but slowly. Mr. Hogue pointed at the peephole in the governor side plate. “Look here—worm’s not meshing good with the first wheel. Gonna move them two gears a hair closer. Watch.”
He slipped a narrow-bladed screwdriver into the slot of a screw on the rear of the governor, advanced the screw about a quarter-turn, then peered through the brass knothole again. “Here y’ go, Sonny, lookit it now.”
I craned my neck to peek over his shoulder. The worm and its wheel were deeply engaged. Mr. Hogue pushed his thumb against the outer governor gear, and there went the fan blades, round and round. Picture a fox who just beat a cat to a particularly tasty bird. “Watch this, Sonny.” He screwed the governor back into place on the bedplate, then pulled at the winding handle. Fan turned, cylinder rotated.
Like watching Samuel diagnose diphtheria by smell. The expression on my face set Mr. Hogue cackling again. Then from behind me came a menacing contralto growl. “Comin’ along, Chet?”
If Mr. Hogue was intimidated, he didn’t show it. “Goin’ great, Martha. Boy’s got a nice music box here, least he will when he’s done.” He picked up the comb, screwed it to the bedplate, then wound the spring and released the stop-finger on the side of the governor. Music played. I didn’t recognize the tune but both Hogues began to sing along, “We will me-e-et in the swe-e-et by and by-y-y.” Mr. Hogue shot me a look out of the corner of his eye. “Real popular tune back a few years, Sonny, back even before Martha and me. I remember my mother used to sing it.”
“Mine too.” Martha, never to be outdone.
The cylinder clicked to a halt. “It plays,” I said. “But it sounds terrible. All those squeaky, scratchy sounds—does it need oil?”
Mr. Hogue laughed. His wife blew a mouthful of air into a disparaging sound, then pushed back a gray strand that had dared to come loose and fall across her cheek. “That’s dampers, Sonny,” Mr. Hogue said. “Them little wires under the teeth. If they ain’t set exactly right, then the cylinder pins make a noise like hell when they hit a tooth. Gotta get every damper just so. Lemme show you.”
As he picked up the comb, Mrs. Hogue said, “You can’t be all the rest of the day with him, Chet. Mrs. Bishop’s been drivin’ me nuts, when’s she gonna get her clock back?”
Mr. Hogue’s eyes glittered. This was their game, no ending, no one ever declared winner. “Tell her she’ll get it back when it’s done. When’s the last time a customer didn’t get her clock back fixed? I’m gonna show Sonny here how to do dampers, then he’s on his own.”
Fine with me. I didn’t want to spend the rest of the day in that smoky, smelly room. “I’ll take it back to the yard, work on it there,” I said. “Murray’s really a good guy. He lets me use a table, and his tools.”
The Hogues exchanged one of those looks long-married couples give each other, no need for words. Then Mrs. Hogue cocked her eyes in my direction. “Yeah, Murray’s a nice guy—which is more than I can say for certain other people in that yard.” Back to the lemonsucker face. “Poor Stella Fleischmann. Shoulda been snow in hell before she ever took that bastard Oscar into her house.”
I felt confused, must’ve looked the same. Mrs. Hogue nodded viciously. “You don’t know? Oscar was Stella’s second husband. Sol Bromnik was her first, busted an appendix and died just like that, from one day to the next. Left Stella with a junkyard and a baby, Jonas, not even a year old. So here comes Oscar Fleischmann, that fat, stinking son of a bitch, used to pull a wagon around like an ox, selling ice. Oscar knew a good thing when he saw it, and before Solly was cold in the grave, Oscar married his wife, adopted his son, and took over his junkyard. Treated the poor woman like dirt from the first. She sure didn’t want no more kids, did everything she could, but then here comes Murray, right on the same day we went into the First War. Some Good Friday that was. Least Murray turned out decent. But I always said Stella should’ve told Oscar to get lost, even if she had to starve. Didn’t I, Chet?”
“Yes. You did.” Mr. Hogue looked as if he’d gotten a whiff of something tainted. “But I told you then and I’ll tell you now—it wasn’t only her woulda starved. What about Jonas? And then Murray?”
“So Jonas and Murray were half-brothers,” I said.
My reaction went right past Mr. Hogue, still facing down his wife from his soapbox. “We had Teddy Roosevelt then, not Franklin,” Mr. Hogue shouted. “There wasn’t no Social Security, no unemployment. What kind of a mother’s gonna let her little kids starve? Now, if you don’t mind a whole lot, Martha, I’m gonna finish showing Sonny how to do these-here dampers. Then he can go on back to the junkyard and I’ll take care of Mrs. Bishop’s blasted clock.”
“Hmmph.” Mrs. Hogue went for the Camels, made a military about-face and stomped toward the front of the shop. Mr. Hogue picked up a small pair of pliers in one hand, a spool of fine wire in the other, paused long enough to size me up. Then he reached for his loupe. “Okay, Sonny,” he said. “Here’s where we find out if you’re a sheep or a goat.” He bent over the comb, and…well, it looked so easy. In five minutes he had ten damper-wires set, cut, shaped a paper-width off the tips of the teeth. Then he gave me those little tools and sat me down to work. Fifteen minutes and probably twenty tries later, I finally got my first damper right. My hands shook as if I were freezing. Mr. Hogue patted me on the back. “Take it easy, Sonny. The tools know what to do. Your job’s just to get ’em where they need to be. They’ll take it from there.”
Nearly a half-hour, three dampers set and shaped. Mr. Hogue held up the comb, squinted. “That’s the idea.” Then he opened one of the workbench drawers, pulled out another loupe and a paper bag, put the loupe into the bag, sc
ooped in the tools and the spool of damper wire from the benchtop. “Go work in the junkyard,” he said. “When you’re done, bring me back my stuff.”
“I can’t take your tools, Mr. Hogue,” I blurted.
“Y’ can’t? Well, how in hell you gonna put in dampers, with your teeth? It’s okay, I ain’t doin’ no music box work right now. Bring the stuff back by next week, that’s all. Now go on, would you, and let a man do his work.” He glanced toward the front of his shop, cackled softly. “Before the wife gets to work on me again.”
I thanked Mr. Hogue, then pedaled back to the yard and set myself up at the table behind the office shack. Dampering’s a real pain-in-the-ass job, finicky as hell, but in a little while I got into a rhythm. Pull the pin, ream the hole, set the wire. Cut, shape, adjust. Again and again and again. After an hour I’d put in ten dampers, as many as Chester Hogue had done in five minutes. My fingers and forearms ached.
I stood up, stretched, started thinking. When Oscar told me about having Chapters A through Z on Samuel, he pointed at the office, didn’t he? I shaded my eyes, scanned the yard. George was working in the Six-Six, the far corner where Sixth Street intersected Sixth Avenue. They kept dead appliances there to be stripped down for parts. George’d probably be a while.
No sign of Murray or Oscar. I walked out from behind the table, around to the front of the office and inside, just in time to hear Bill Nicholson, the Chicago Cubs’ slugger, put a ball into the left field seats. A disgusting bouquet of Oscar’s cigarettes, unwashed armpits, and garlic filled the room. I opened the cooler on the floor, dropped a nickel into the can, pulled out a Coke, popped the cap, swigged. Then I looked around. Below the radio on the window sill, a battered old desk with a rickety chair behind it. Another two flimsy wooden chairs between the desk and cooler. Against the wall to the left of the desk, a dented four-drawer metal file cabinet. In the back, a filthy toilet in a tiny cubicle, visible through an open doorway. I walked over, sat in the chair behind the desk, hesitated for just an instant. Then I started opening drawers.