The Rabbi

by Noah Gordon

  Tom Hendrickson took down one of the lanterns and motioned with his head. Mystified, Michael followed. In a small room at the rear of the cabin it became suddenly apparent why no one in that house slept. The old lady was long and spare, like her sons. Her hair was white, carefully combed, and tied in a bun. Her eyes were closed. Her features were composed, at least in death.

  “I’m sorry,” Michael said.

  “She had a good life,” Hendrickson said in a clear voice. “She was a good mother. She lived seventy-eight years. That’s a long time.” He looked at Michael. “Thing is, we got to get her buried. It’s been two days. Preacher we used to have hereabouts died a couple of months ago. Clive and me were figuring on driving her clear over the mountain in the morning.”

  “She wanted to be buried here. I’d sure appreciate it if you could see your way clear to preach over her.”

  He felt impelled to laugh and cry, both at the same time. He did neither, of course. Instead, in a dry, matter-of-fact voice, he said: “You understand that I’m a rabbi? A Jewish rabbi?”

  “Denomination don’t matter. You’re a preacher? A man of God?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then we’d appreciate your help, Mister,” Hendrickson said.

  “I’m honored,” Michael said helplessly. They returned to the front room.

  “Clive, you’re the best carpenter. There’s everything you need in the shed for makin’ the box. I’ll go down to the buryin’ ground.” Hendrickson turned to Michael. “Will you be needin’ anythin’ special?”

  “Just some books and things in my car.” He spoke with more confidence than he felt. He had assisted at two funerals, both of them Jewish. This would be his first as officiating clergyman.

  He went out of the station wagon and returned with his bag. Then he sat in front of the fire once again, this time alone. Bruce had gone with his father to make the coffin. Ella and her mother were mixing up a cake in the kitchen, for the funeral breakfast. Michael riffled through his books, seeking passages that would be appropriate.

  From somewhere outside came the muffled thump of an instrument striking frozen earth.

  He read the Bible for a long time without making up his mind. Then, drawn by the digging sound, he closed the book and put on his jacket and cap and boots. Outside, he followed the sound until he saw the glow of Hendrickson’s lantern.

  The man stopped digging. “Something you need?”

  “I came to help. I’m not much of a carpenter, but I can dig.”

  “No, sir. No need of that.” But when Michael took the pick from his hands he gave it up.

  He had already removed the snow and the top frozen layer. The earth beneath it was soft but full of rocks. Michael grunted, lifting out a large one.

  “Chert soil,” Hendrickson said softly. “Full of flint. Best crop we got is stone.”

  The snow had stopped, but there was no moon. The lantern flickered but continued to glow.

  Within a few minutes Michael was breathing hard. A band of pain stretched across his back and gripped each biceps. “I forgot to ask you,” he said. “What was your mother’s religion?”

  Hendrickson moved down into the grave and motioned him out. “She was Methodist, Godfearing but not much of a churchgoer. My pap was raised a Baptist, but he hardly ever went that I can recollect.” He pointed with the shovel to a grave a few feet away from the hole they were digging. “There he is over there. Died seven years back.” For a while he dug in silence. A crow cawed and he straightened up and shook his head in disappointment. “That’s a rain raven. Means we’ll have moisture in the morning. I sure do hate a wet funeral.”

  “So do I.”

  “I was her second-to-least boy. The least one was named Joseph. He died when he was three years old. Fell out of a tree we was climbin’ together.” He looked at his father’s grave. “He wasn’t even at the funeral. See, he left us for a spell back there. Was gone fourteen months. Just up and went off one mornin’.

  “She took care of us just as if he was here. She shot rabbits and squirrels so we always had meat. And kept a good garden. Then one day he came back, as nat’ral as though he never went. Till the day he died, we never did find out where he spent those fourteen months.”

  They swapped again. They were deeper now and there was less stone, Michael found.

  “Mister, you one of them preachers dead set against drinkin’?”

  “No, I’m not. Not at all.”

  The bottle had been set in the shadows just beyond the lantern’s light. Hendrickson politely gave him first swallow. He was sweating from the work but a fresh breeze had begun to blow off the mountain and the liquor felt good.

  The darkness was diluting when Michael helped Hendrickson clamber out of the completed grave. From far off the high, clear bell of a hound floated to them. Hendrickson sighed. “Gotta get me a good dog,” he said.

  The woman had heated water and they washed and changed their clothing. Perhaps the rain raven had been correct but premature; low gray clouds scudded across the mountaintops, but no rain fell. While they brought the pine box in from the shed, Michael selected his texts, marking the pages in the Bible with bits of torn newspaper. When he was ready he placed a yarmulka on his head and threw a tallis around his shoulders.

  The crow cawed again as they carried the box to the grave. The two sons lowered the coffin, and then the five of them stood there and looked at him.

  “The Lord is my shepherd,” he said. “I shall not want.

  “He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul. He guideth me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.”

  With her toe, the little girl moved a clod of earth until it disappeared into the grave. She jumped back, her face ashen.

  “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies; Thou hast anointed my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

  “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.”

  The little girl was holding her mother’s hand.

  “A Virtuous Woman who can find?” Michael asked. “For her price is far above rubies.

  “The heart of her husband trusteth in her, and he shall have no lack of gain. She doeth him good and not evil all the days of her life. She seeketh wool and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands. She is like the merchant ships, she bringeth her food from afar. She riseth also while it is yet night, and giveth meat to her household, and their task to her maidens.”

  Clive Hendrickson looked down into his mother’s grave. His arm was around his boy. Tom Hendrickson’s eyes were closed. He pinched a fold of the flesh on his forearm between the tips of his fingers and the edge of his horny thumbnail.

  “She considereth a field and buyeth it: with the fruit of her hands she planteth a vineyard. She girdeth her loins with strength, and maketh strong her arms. She perceiveth that her merchandise is profitable: her lamp goeth not out by night. She layeth her hands to the distaff, and her hands hold the spindle. She spreadeth out her hand to the poor; yea, she reacheth forth her hands to the needy.

  “Strength and dignity are her clothing; and she laugheth at the time to come. She openeth her mouth with wisdom; and the law of kindness is on her tongue. She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness.”

  The first raindrop struck like an icy kiss on Michael’s cheek.

  “Her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her: ‘Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all.’ Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: But a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised. Give her of the fruit of her hands; and let her works praise her in the gates.”

  It was beginning to spatter now, the drops smacking into the wet ground
. “Let us each pray according to his own fashion for the soul of the departed, Mary Bates Hendrickson,” Michael said.

  The two brothers and the woman sank to their knees in the mud. Exchanging a frightened glance, the two children did likewise. The woman wept as she bowed her head. Standing over them Michael spoke in a loud, clear voice the ancient Aramaic words of the Hebrew prayer for the dead. Just before he finished, drops the size of half-dollars began to drum steadily from the heavens.

  While the woman and the children scampered, softly screeching, Michael stowed the Bible in his jacket pocket and then helped the brothers pack the stones and wet earth back into the hole, mounding the grave high against the pull of time.

  After breakfast Clive began to play light airs on his fiddle and the children laughed. They seemed relieved to say good-by.

  “That was a fine funeral,” Tom Hendrickson said. He held out a dollar and one-half. “This is what we used to pay our preacher, the one who died. Is it all right?”

  Something in the man’s eyes prevented Michael from refusing the money. “It’s generous. Thank you very much.”

  Hendrickson walked him out to the car. While the motor warmed up he leaned on the half-open window. “This fella I worked with one time on a big farm in Missouri?” he said. “He told me Jews had nigger hair and two little horns growin’ up the tops o’ their head. I always knew he was a dumb liar.” He shook hands hard.

  Michael drove away slowly. The rain had melted the snow. He reached a town in about forty minutes, stopping by the single gas pump in front of Cole’s General Merchandise (SEEDS, FEEDS, DRY GOODS, GROCERIES) to fill the tank because he knew the next pump was almost three hours away. Beyond the town was a wide river. The ferryman took his quarter when he had driven his car onto the raft and shook his head when Michael asked about road conditions up ahead.

  “Don’t know,” he said. “Ain’t no one come over from there yet today.” He smacked his lead mule across the rump with a willow switch and both his animals strained, turning a winch which pulled the cabled raft into the stream.

  He had driven for twenty minutes on the other side when he stopped and turned the car around. Back at the ford the man came out of his little shelter and stood in the rain. “Road out up there?”

  “No,” Michael said. “I forgot something.”

  “Won’t be able to give you your money back.”

  “It’s all right.” He paid another quarter.

  Back at Cole’s General Merchandise he parked the car and entered the store. “Do you have a pay phone?”

  It was located on the wall inside the door of a storeroom that smelled of moldy potatoes. He dialed for the operator and gave her the number. He had a lot of silver but not quite enough and he had to change the dollar bill that Hendrickson had given him, then he fed coins into the slot.

  Outside, it began to pour; he could hear the rain thrumming on the roof.

  “Hello? Hello, it’s Michael. No, nothing’s wrong. I just wanted to speak to you.

  “How are you, Momma?”

  21

  Since the Arkansas mountains could not be visited from Massachusetts over long week ends and Hartford was only two hours away from the Wellesley campus, Deborah Marcus had gone home to Connecticut with Leslie Rawlins half a dozen times during their three-year friendship. At a New Year’s party in Cambridge during their senior year, while kissing the man she loved and simultaneously on another level of consciousness worrying whether her parents would like him, Deborah had conceived the idea that Leslie could accompany her to Mineral Springs during their spring vacation, to lend her moral support while she told her mother and father about Mort.

  Five weeks later, toweling her long bronze hair in the shower room of the deserted dormitory on a Saturday night when she should have had a date but didn’t, Leslie noted that someone had blocked up the toilet again, causing it to overflow. This circumstance, although hardly a rare one, enraged her sufficiently to make a break in routine eminently attractive, and the next morning, while sleepily handing sections of the Boston Sunday Herald back and forth between their beds, she told her roommate that she would go with her to the Ozarks.

  “Oh, Leslie!” Deborah stretched and yawned, then smiled radiantly. She was a large-boned girl, slightly topheavy, with pretty brown hair and dark features that were plain until she smiled.

  “Will we have Passover?” Leslie asked.

  “With all the trimmings. My mother’s even going to have a rabbi, this year. You’ll be a real Jew by the time vacation’s over.”

  Ugh, Leslie thought. “Many are called but few are Chosen,” she said, rattling the comics.

  Mineral Springs proved to be just that—three springs that bubbled out of the earth at the top of a hill, over which Nathan Marcus, Deborah’s father, had built a bathhouse adjoining their small inn. A limited but regular clientele composed mostly of arthritic Jewish ladies from the large cities of the Midwest came to the inn annually for the waters, which smelled like rotten eggs and brimstone and tasted only slightly better than they smelled. But Nathan, a graying kewpie doll of a man, assured the city folks with great sincerity that the waters contained sulphur, lime, iron, and other things that would cure anything from sciatica to puppy love, and the ladies were always certain that their pains were fewer following a ten-minute immersion. Anything that smelled that bad, they remarked to him archly and often, had to be good for you.

  “Temperature of the springs is going up,” Nathan told the young rabbi as they sat on the lawn in wooden-slat chairs with Deborah and Sarah, Nathan’s wife. Leslie, wearing jeans and a blouse, lay on a blanket at their feet, gazing into the meadow and woodland that fell away below them in the dusk.

  “How long has the temperature been rising?” the rabbi asked. He looked a little like Henry Fonda, Leslie decided, but not as big in the shoulders as he might be, and somewhat thinner. He needed a haircut dreadfully. When she had seen him yesterday for the first time, climbing out of that dirty station wagon wearing high boots and rumpled clothes that had never seen a dry cleaners from their looks, she had thought that he was some kind of mountain man, a farmer or a trapper. But now he wore a sports coat and slacks and he looked more acceptable and just as interesting. Only, the hair was too long.

  “Been going up every year for six years, about half a degree annually. Up to seventy-three degrees now.”

  “What is it that warms the water up?” she said lazily, looking up at them. He could be Italian. Or Spanish, she thought, or even Black Irish.

  “There are several theories. Maybe way underground the water is meeting molten rock or hot gases. Or some chemical reaction down below may be heating the water. Or radioactivity.”

  “Wouldn’t it be nice if the water became real hot,” Sarah Marcus said hopefully.

  “Make us rich as kings. Nothing like that anywhere between here and way out to Hot Springs. And the government owns those. With hot mineral water on our ground, this would be some health resort. As it is, you have to heat the water before these damn women will get into it. Don’t know why. Over two hundred years ago the Indians were using these springs to cure whatever was wrong with ’em. Quapaw tribe. Used to camp here for a couple of weeks every summer, I’m told.”

  “What finally happened to them?” his daughter asked innocently.

  “Died out, mostly.” He frowned at her. “Got to take the temperature,” he said, and got up and walked away.

  Sarah was shaking with laughter. “Oh, you mustn’t tease your father,” she said to Deborah. She pushed herself out of the chair. “They didn’t ship out enough matzo meal. If we’re going to have matzo-meal pancakes tomorrow, I’d better crumble up a lot of matzos.”

  “I’ll come and help you,” Deborah said.

  “No, you stay here with the other young people. I don’t need any help.”

  “I want to talk to you.” She rose. “See you later,” she said, and she winked to Leslie.

  When they were gone the girl on the gr
ound chuckled. “Her mother wanted her to stay with you. Mrs. Marcus is a real matchmaker, isn’t she? But her daughter’s engaged. I imagine that’s what Deb is going to tell her now, while they’re sitting there making matzo crumbs.”

  “Wow,” he said. He took a cigarette and handed it to her, then took one himself and struck his lighter. “Who’s the lucky man?”

  “His name is Mort Beerman. He’s a graduate student in architecture at M.I.T. He’s coming here in a couple of days. They’re sure to like him.”

  “How do you know?”

  “He’s very nice. And he’s Jewish. Deb has told me several times that they feel guilty and afraid about having raised her out here, away from young Jews.” She rose from the blanket, rubbing her goose-fleshed arms. When he took off his coat she allowed him to place it around her shoulders without thanking him. She sat in the chair next to his, the one Deborah had sat in, tucking her legs under her.

  “It must be hard for you here,” she said. “There can’t be many Jewish girls around.”

  From the kitchen of the inn ripped a short scream, followed by a delighted babbling.

  “Mazel tov,” Michael said, and the girl laughed.

  “No,” he said, “there aren’t many Jewish girls here. There aren’t any the right age for dating.”

  Her eyes mocked him. “What is the word you people use? For a gentile female?”

  “We people? You mean shickseh?”

  “Yes.” She paused. “Am I a shickseh? Is that the word you think of when you look at me?”

  Their glances locked. They stared at one another for a long time. Her face was pale in the gathering darkness and he noticed the smooth flesh planes under her high cheekbones, and her mouth, full-lipped but not slack, perhaps a little too large for beauty.

  “Yes, I guess it is,” he said.

  He left after the seder the next day, not intending to return to the Marcus inn for four or five weeks. But three days later he found himself turning the car back in the direction of Mineral Springs. He tried to tell himself that he was curious to see Mort Beerman and then he grew angry and thought to hell with excuses, I haven’t had a real day off since I began this crazy hillbilly existence, or talked to a woman like a human being instead of a rabbi. Anyhow, maybe she had a boy friend who was driving up with Beerman or perhaps she had already cut her visit short.