The Rabbi

by Noah Gordon

  He groaned, and it was like the breaking of a dam. “My God, I’m never going to see that kid again.” He threw himself forward, his head striking Michael’s shoulder and almost knocking him off the bed. Michael held him tightly and rocked, saying nothing. After a long while he reached down and with great gentleness removed the gun from the slack fingers. He had never held a gun before. It was surprisingly heavy. Over the man’s head he read the raised printing on the barrel: SAUER U. SOHN, SUHL, CAL 7.65. He set it down on the bed beside them. He continued to rock. With his right hand he held the man’s head to his shoulder, stroking the matted hair. “Cry,” he said. “Cry, Mr. Lefcowitz.”

  When the Military Police let him off at the temple it was still dark. He found that he had left without locking the door or shutting the lights and he was glad he had come back instead of going straight to his roominghouse; Rabbi Flagerman might have been annoyed. In his office the air conditioner was still going at full speed. The night air was chill and the temperature in the room was uncomfortably low. He switched the air conditioner off.

  He fell asleep at his desk, his head in his arms.

  When the telephone jolted him awake the clock on his desk said eight-fifty-five. His bones ached and his mouth was dry. Outside, the sun was hot and yellow. Already the humidity was uncomfortable. He switched on the air conditioning before he lifted the telephone.

  It was a woman. “May I speak to the rabbi?” she asked.

  He stifled a yawn and sat up straighter.

  “Which one?” he said.

  20

  Not quite a year after he had come to Miami, Michael flew to New York to help Rabbi Joshua Greenberg of Sons of Jacob Synagogue officiate at the marriage ceremony of Mimi Steinmetz and a certified public accountant who had just been made a junior partner in her father’s firm. As the marriage was made and the couple kissed he felt a flash of regret and desire, not for the girl but for a wife, someone to love. He danced the kezatski with the bride and then drank too much champagne.

  One of his former professors at the Institute, Rabbi David Sher, was now with the Union of American Hebrew Congregations. Two days after the wedding Michael paid him a visit.

  “Kind!” Rabbi Sher said, rubbing his palms briskly. “Just the man I’m looking for. I have a job for you.”

  “Good job?”

  “Lousy job. Miserable.”

  What the devil, Michael thought, I’m awfully tired of Miami.

  “I’ll take it,” he said.

  He had thought that circuit-riding ministers were an oddity out of the Protestant past.

  “Hebrew hillbillies?” he exclaimed.

  “Jews in the Ozarks,” Rabbi Sher said. “Seventy-six families in the mountains of Missouri and Arkansas.”

  “There are temples in Missouri and Arkansas.”

  “In the lowlands and in the larger communities. But nothing in the region I’m talking about. The rough country, where an occasional lone Jew keeps a general store or runs a fishing camp.”

  “But you said lousy. It sounds wonderful.”

  “You’ll travel a twisting circuit five hundred miles through the hills. There aren’t going to be hotels wherever you need them, you’ll have to live off the land. Most of your congregation will welcome you with open arms, but some of them will send you away, some of them don’t care. You’ll be on the road all the time.”

  “A portable rabbi.”

  “A rabbinical hobo.” Rabbi Sher went to a filing cabinet and took out a manila folder. “Here’s a list of things to buy; you can charge it all to the Union. A station wagon goes with the job. You’ll need a sleeping bag and other camping equipment.” He grinned broadly. “And, Rabbi—when you get the car, have them put on the heaviest shock absorbers made.”

  Four weeks later, he was in the mountains, having driven the sixteen hundred miles from Miami in two days. The station wagon was a year old, but it was a big rugged green Oldsmobile, and he had had it outfitted with heavy-duty shocks that looked strong enough to support a tank. Thus far Rabbi Sher’s gloomy portents had not materialized; the roads were good and easy to follow on his map and the weather was so mild that he continued to wear his Florida clothing, ignoring the mounds of winter gear piled high in the back of the car. The first name on his list was George Lilienthal, a lumber operations manager whose address was Spring Hollow, Arkansas. As he drove through the foothills and the roadway’s angle of elevation became more marked, his spirits rose. He traveled slowly, enjoying the scenery: hard-scrabble farms with log cabins, houses with silvery plank exteriors, rail fences, an occasional mining town or factory building.

  At four in the afternoon it began to spit snow and he felt cold. He stopped at a filling station—a farm barn with two pumps—and changed into warmer clothing in the barn while an old man with a wrinkled face filled his gas tank. The notes Michael had made in the Union office said that Spring Hollow was seventeen miles by dirt road beyond Harrison. But the old man shook his head when Michael tried to confirm this.

  “No. You want to take sixty-two up beyond Rogers and then cut east a few miles beyond Monte Ne. Gravel road. If you’uns get lost, just ask a person.”

  By the time he turned off the highway beyond Rogers he could only guess that the new road was gravel-covered, since its surface was hidden by snow. The wind blew in gusts that rocked the station wagon and sent icy pockets of air in through the tops of the windows. The clothing that had been on Rabbi Sher’s list was adequate, he observed thankfully. He wore heavy boots, cord slacks, woolen shirt, sweater, lined suede jacket, gloves, and a cap with ear flaps.

  The heavy snow came just as darkness fell. Sometimes on curves he could see his headlight beams shine straight ahead into dark emptiness. He was conscious that he knew nothing about the mountains or how to drive over them at night. At first he pulled over to the side of the road and parked, thinking to sit the storm out. But it grew very cold. He started the car’s motor and turned the heater to high, only to find himself wondering whether there was enough ventilation, whether next morning his stiff body might be found within the car (motor still running, State Police said). In any event, it occurred to him, the parked car was a prime obstacle for any vehicle that might come rolling out of the dark and the snow. So he drove, very slowly, until he topped a rise and in the distance saw a yellow square of light that subsequently proved to be the window of a farmhouse. He parked the car under a large tree and knocked at the farmhouse door. The man who answered looked nothing like Li’l Abner. He wore jeans and a heavy brown work shirt. When Michael explained his predicament the man asked him in.

  “Jane,” he called. “Man here needs a bed for the night. Can we he’p?”

  The woman came slowly into the cabin’s front room. Beyond her, Michael could see yellow light through the chinks of a pot-bellied stove in the kitchen. The house was very cold. There was a lantern hung from a nail.

  “You bring a deck of cards?” Her hands pinched together the buttonless coat sweater she wore.

  “No,” he said. “I’m sorry. I don’t have playing cards.”

  Her mouth was severe. “This is a good Christian home. We don’ allow no cards ’r no whiskey.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  In the kitchen he sat at a rickety table that looked hand-hewn and she warmed up a plate of stew. The meat tasted strange and strong, but he lacked the courage to ask what it was. When he had eaten, the man took the lantern and led him into a pitch-black back room.

  “Hyah, get out there,” the man grumbled. A large yellow dog, yawning, reluctantly left the narrow cot. “She’s all yours, Mister,” he said.

  When he had closed the door behind him, taking with him all light, Michael decided against removing his clothes. It was very cold. He unlaced and slipped off his boots and then he settled into the bed under covers that were ragged and did not hold enough warmth. They smelled very heavily of dog.

  The mattress was thin and packed into bumps and furrows. He lay for several hours wit
hout sleeping, tasting the greasiness of the stew, cold and unable to believe where he was. At midnight, there was a scratching at his door. The dog, he thought, but it opened under a human hand and he saw with some alarm that it was his host.

  “Hsst,” the man said, his finger to his lips. In his other hand he carried a jug. He left it and disappeared without a word.

  It was the worst drink Michael had ever had, but strong as an explosion and very warming. It took only four swallows to make him sleep as though he were dead.

  When he awoke in the morning neither man, woman, or dog was in the house. He left three dollars at the foot of the bed. His head ached and he no longer wanted the jug but he was afraid that the woman would find it. He carried it into the woods beyond the cabin and left it in the snow, hoping the man would come across it before it was discovered by his wife.

  The car started with a minimum of coaxing. Before he had driven a mile he saw how wise he had been to have stopped for the night. The road grew progressively narrower. It climbed. On the left of the car there was always the side of the mountain, studded with outcroppings of rock. On the right the drop from the shoulder was sheer, offering a swooping view of a snow-covered valley with peaks thrusting beyond and ridges on both sides. The hairpin turns were slushy and covered by melting ice in spots. He made them gingerly, certain that beyond each bend the road ended in a cliff over which he and his car would fall a great distance.

  It was mid-afternoon before he drove into Spring Hollow. George Lilienthal was out in the woods with the lumbering crews, but his wife, Phyllis, greeted Michael like a newfound relative. They had been watching for the rabbi’s arrival for days, she told him.

  The Lilienthals lived in a three-bedroom house owned by the Ozarks Lumber Corporation. It had a good hot-water system, a refrigerator and freezer, and a hi-fi set they claimed to be wearing out. By the time George Lilienthal came home for supper the rabbi had soaked in a hot bath for an hour, had shaved, and changed his clothing; glass in hand, he was listening to Debussy. George was thirty-seven, a big, beaming man who had done graduate work at Syracuse in reforestation. Phyllis was an immaculate housekeeper whose soft spreading hips advertised that she liked her own cooking. Michael said the blessings during the meal. Afterward he led them in prayer, sharing a siddur with Bobby, their son. The boy was already eleven years old; he had only twenty months before his bar mitzvah; yet he could not read a Hebrew word. Michael spent the entire afternoon with him on the following day, teaching him the Hebrew alphabet. He left an aleph-bez with Bobby, and a lesson assignment to be completed before his next visit.

  Next morning George started him down a logging road that would take him toward his next stop.

  “You shouldn’t have a hard trip,” the lumberman said anxiously as he shook hands. “Of course, you’ll have to ford two or three streams and the water’s kind of high this time of year. . . .”

  At a place called Swift Bend the general store overlooked the river, which flowed cold and fast, flecked with ugly gray chunks of ice. A bearded man wearing a brown plaid mackinaw was unloading bundles from the back of a 1937 Ford coupé. The bundles were composed of stacked and cord-tied pelts of some kind of small, furry animal, or perhaps several kinds. The pelts were stiff with cold, and the man was arranging the bundles in piles on the porch of the general store.

  “Is this Edward Gold’s store?” Michael asked.

  The man continued to work. “Yep.”

  Inside, there was a stove and it was warm. Michael waited while the woman behind the counter dipped three pounds of unbleached flour into a brown paper sack for a young girl. When she looked at him he saw that she was a mountain woman, or rather a girl, skinny and freckled, but with rough skin and chapped lips.

  “Is Edward Gold around?”

  “Who is wantin’ to know?”

  “I’m Rabbi Michael Kind. Mr. Gold got a letter telling him that I would be coming by to see him.”

  She looked at him coldly. “You are talkin’ to his woman. We got no use for no rabbi.”

  “Is your husband here, Mrs. Gold? Could I talk with him for a few moments?”

  “We got no need for no religion of your’n,” she said fiercely. “Can’t you understand?”

  He tipped his cap and left.

  As he got into the station wagon he was hailed softly by the man who was piling skins on the porch. He sat and let the motor warm as the man approached.

  “You the rabbi?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Ed Gold.” The man pulled the leather mitten from his right hand with his teeth and dug into his pants pocket beneath the mackinaw. He pressed something into Michael’s hand.

  “That’s the best I can do,” he said as he pulled the mitten back on. “You better not come back here anymore.” He walked quickly to the Ford and drove away.

  Michael sat there and looked after him. In his palm were two one-dollar bills.

  He mailed them back to the man when he got to the next town.

  When he had completed the circuit he had nineteen Hebrew students, ranging in age from seven to sixty-three, the latter a trailer-camp operator who hadn’t been bar mitzvah as a boy and who wanted to be before he was sixty-five. Wherever Michael found a Jew who was receptive, he conducted religious services. Great distances separated the members of his “congregation.” In one long haul he had to drive eighty-seven difficult miles between one Jewish home and another. He learned to get off the road at the first sign of snow, and he found shelter in a variety of mountain homes. One night when he mentioned this to Stan Goodstein, a miller whose family was one of his regular stops, Goodstein gave him a key and some road directions.

  “Whenever you pass Big Cedar Hill, stay at my hunting lodge,” he said. “It’s stocked with plenty of canned food. The only thing you must remember there is that if it snows, get out fast or settle down to stay until the snow melts. You have to drive over a suspension bridge. Once snow piles up on the bridge it’s an impossibility to get a car over.”

  Michael stayed at the cabin on his next trip around the circuit. The bridge spanned a deep chasm cut over the years by a stream of racing white water. He sat stiffly when he drove across, gripping the steering wheel until his knuckles protruded and hoping that Goodstein had had the bridge inspected lately. It stood the test with no signs of weakness. The cabin was at the top of a worn-down mountain. The kitchen and the cupboard were complete and he made himself a very adequate meal, finishing off with three cups of strong, hot tea which he drank in front of a roaring fire he made in the stone fireplace. At dusk, dressed warmly, he walked through the nearby forest, preparing to say the Shema. The huge trees that gave the place its name rustled and sighed as the wind moved through their great branches. The foliage rose and fell as if the trees were old men, praying. Walking under them, praying aloud, he felt not in the least bit strange.

  In the cabin he found half a dozen new corncob pipes in a bowl and a humidor of stale tobacco. He sat in front of the fire and puffed and thought. Outside, the wind began to pick up a bit. He felt snug and warm, at peace. When he grew sleepy he banked the fire and pulled the bed close to it.

  Something dragged him awake just after 2 A.M. When he glanced out the window he knew at once what it was. The snow was light but driving. It could grow heavier within minutes, he knew. He lay back in the bed and groaned. For a moment he was tempted to close his eyes and return to sleep. If he were snowed in he could rest until the snow melted in three or four days. The prospect was tempting; the cabin had plenty of food and he was tired.

  But he knew that if he were going to succeed in the mountains he would have to become a familiar figure to the people he visited. He forced himself to leave the warm bed and dress quickly.

  When he reached the bridge it was already covered with a thin layer of white. Holding his breath and praying without words, he drove the car slowly onto the span. The wheels held; in a few moments he was across.

  Twenty minutes later he came to a cabin
with lights in its windows. The man who answered his door was dark and spare, with thinning hair. He listened impassively to Michael’s statement about not wanting to drive in the snow and then held the door wide and motioned him in. It was now almost three o’clock in the morning, but three lanterns hung in the cabin’s front room, a fire roared in the fireplace and a man, a woman, and two children sat around it.

  Michael had hoped for a bed. They offered him a chair. The man who had answered the door introduced himself as Tom Hendrickson. The woman was his wife. The little girl, Ella, was their daughter. Tom’s brother Clive sat with his boy Bruce. “This here’s Mr. Robby Kind,” Hendrickson told the others.

  “No, that’s Rabbi Kind,” Michael said. “My first name is Michael. I’m a rabbi.”

  They stared. “What’s that?” Bruce asked.

  Michael smiled at the adults. “What I do for a living,” he told the boy. They settled back in their chairs. From time to time Tom Hendrickson threw a pine knot at the fire. Michael glanced at his watch and wondered what was going on.

  “We’re sittin’ up with our Maw,” Hendrickson said.

  Clive Hendrickson picked a violin and a bow from the floor by his chair. He leaned back, eyes closed, and began to fiddle softly, his foot tapping. Bruce whittled on a piece of soft pine, sitting close to the fire so that the thick, curling shavings fell into the flame. The woman was teaching her daughter a knitting stitch. They bent over their needles, talking in whispers. Tom Hendrickson stared into the fire.

  Feeling more alone than he had when he had been in the woods by himself, Michael slipped a small Bible from his jacket pocket and began to read.

  “Mister.”

  Tom Hendrickson was looking at the Bible intently. “You a preacher?” The fiddling, the whittling, and the knitting stopped; five pairs of eyes stared at him.

  He realized that they didn’t know what a rabbi was. “You might say that,” he said. “A kind of Old Testament preacher.”