by Marc Simon
*
Even in the early months of 1914 the threat of world war loomed on Europe’s doorstep, and Arthur, who’d barely opened a book in four years—he’d repeated seventh grade twice—couldn’t get enough of news from “across the pond.” He read every article in the daily paper he took home from his after-school job at Plotkin’s Grocery Store. Europe’s impending conflict had become an obsession with him, and he began to get to school early so he could get to the school library and study the towns and landscapes of France, Germany, Belgium, Bulgaria and Turkey on the world atlas. He knew the locations of the local U.S. army, navy and marine recruiting stations and went by them on Sundays to stare at the recruitment posters in the windows. Your Country Needs You. Now’s the Time to Enlist! The drumbeat was calling.
Benjamin was interested in the war, too, but had become far more passionate about baseball. Never much of an athlete, he began to blossom physically as he entered his early teens; his limbs lengthened, his foot speed increased dramatically, as did his hand-eye coordination, and he showed a natural propensity for hitting a baseball, no matter how fast the ball was pitched, perhaps due to his keen eyesight, which, had Dr. Malkin the instruments or knowledge to measure properly, would have registered 20/15.
Everything Abe knew about the impending war he got from Arthur’s daily updates. Even though Ida took Alex during the week, riding herd on his older sons, working overtime and keeping the house at least semi-habitable meant he barely had time to read the newspaper before he fell asleep at night in his easy chair, a half-smoked cigar resting in the ashtray. Household obligations had cut deeply into his time with Delia Novak, too. Consequently, their relationship, which Delia referred to as “this thing we do,” was as stagnant as the air above an open hearth on a humid summer night. As the months went on, Abe realized it had been far easier to have a mistress when he had a wife.
It was close to six o’clock on the Friday before Ida was to take Alex to see Reverend Billy. Abe had gotten home late from work. He carried a large paper sack with four fish and fried potato dinners he’d picked up from The Olde Oyster House in Market Square, in deference to Ida and her Friday preference. Even though he’d “paid through the nose,” as he told his boys, he was fairly flush, with steady work and plenty of overtime to be had at Shields Metal now that the steel industry was ramping up production for the inevitable wartime shortfalls of its allies, whomever they would turn out to be.
Arthur stood at the kitchen sink, rinsing breakfast dishes. He was as tall as his father, and almost as broad, with Irene’s red hair and light complexion. Benjamin was halfway out the side door, holding an industrial-sized trash barrel with a week’s worth of garbage. Will you look at these two, Abe thought, doing what I told them this morning before I left, without me yelling at them, will wonders never cease. He set the sack of food on the counter.
Arthur looked up. “Smells good, Dad.”
Abe’s stomach gurgled at the aroma of fried potatoes. He took one of the dinners wrapped in newspaper from the sack. “Don’t suppose it would hurt to have a little taste before your grandmother and Alex get here, huh? Arthur, get your old man a beer, would you?”
“Yes, sir.” Arthur opened the icebox. “Dad, did you hear, the Gerrys might push into France any day now.”
“Ain’t that jumping the gun a little bit there?”
“Well, I read it just today. They’re tight with the Turks and the Austrians. There was a map. We’ve got to get ready for this thing.”
Benjamin closed the door behind him. “He wants to enlist, Dad.”
“I would in a minute if I could. I don’t see why a 16-year-old can’t serve.”
Abe fingered a potato. “War is a terrible thing, boys, a terrible thing.”
“But you never fought in a war, and now you’re too old.”
“Yeah, well ask your grandmother sometime about what happened to your grandfather in the Spanish-American War. Poor guy got blown to smithereens when they sunk the Maine.”
The front door creaked open. “Daddy!” Alex rushed into the kitchen and threw his arms around Abe’s legs.
“Wow, look at Alex,” Benjamin said. “Where’d you get that hat?”
Ida had dressed him in his new checked suit. “Don’t let him get dirty now.”
“Come on, Alex.” His brothers hoisted him by the arms and headed upstairs.
Abe finished his beer and thought about opening another, but it was Friday, which called for something a little stiffer. He took his bottle of rye from the cupboard above the sink and checked the level to determine if his boys had nipped any. He poured two fingers for Ida and two for himself. “Here’s to your health, Ida.”
She put her hand over her glass. “None for me, thank you. I’ve sworn off the stuff.”
“You? You’re pulling my leg.”
“Oh, it’s no joke, Abe. Liquor is the Devil’s tool.”
Abe scratched his head, as if considering that it might be so. “Maybe so. But hell, Ida, that never seemed to bother you before.”
“And I’ll thank you to want to watch that mouth of yours around me, too. I don’t take to cursing now, either.”
Maybe the woman is already drunk, he thought. She did seem to have some kind of glow about her, but her smile was too broad, her eyes were too wide open. Something had its hooks into her.
Upstairs, Arthur did twenty-five push-ups with Alex sitting on his back. His side of the room was a neat as a Marine’s barracks awaiting inspection.
Alex slid off his back. “Look what I have.” He took three one-dollar bills and a faux diamond hatpin from his pockets, the swag from his Kaufmann’s heist. He smiled up at Arthur. “See?”
Arthur closed the door. He whispered, “Put that stuff away.” He explained to Alex that he didn’t want him to steal anymore, he was through with selling stolen stuff at school. He’d been thinking it over, that he couldn’t afford to get caught, since he was going to enlist as soon as he could and that he couldn’t have a criminal record because the army didn’t want criminals. Besides, it wasn’t honorable to do what he’d been doing, no soldier would ever do that, it was against the soldier’s code of conduct to commit any sort of crime.
Alex was on the verge of tears. He appealed to Benjamin, his long arm reaching for his brother’s waist.
“You know I won’t take it, Alex.”
Abe called, “Boys, dinner.”
Benjamin folded his hand over Alex’s. “Just stick it back in your pocket for now.”
“Don’t tell Dad, either. And Alex, don’t steal no more.”
“Boys!”
Ida placed bowls of pickles and bread on the table. She sniffed at the paper bag. “Fish?”
Abe said, “Your Friday regular.”
“You don’t have to do that anymore. I’m no longer with the Romans.”
Abe sipped his rye. “What the hell—pardon my French—is going on with you, Ida? No booze, no cursing, and now you’re telling me you’re not a Catholic, just like that? What’s it all about?”
Ida’s smile was beatific. “I met a man.”
Chapter 14
Three inches of wet snow had turned to sooty slush, but even if it had transformed into quicksand, it wouldn’t have deterred the masses that came to clap and cheer and collapse in front of Reverend Billy during his Monday night sermon on the first of February.
Ida and Alex arrived two hours early, so determined was she to find a seat on the aisle, center section, as close to Billy’s podium as she could get. She’d packed a dinner of meatloaf sandwiches, green bean casserole and oatmeal cookies, along with a thermos of hot chocolate. She’d considered picking up a pint of Irish whiskey, too, just the thing to navigate a cold, blustery night, but then, she told herself, she was beyond that now. She’d pledged for Reverend Billy. How could she throw over their relationship for a bottle?
Alex insisted on removing his new coat, even though the air inside the makeshift tabernacle was cold enough to vaporize his b
reath. He watched the workmen sweep the stage and place a bullhorn and microphone on Billy’s famous pedestal, from which he’d been known to do leaps and handstands. He wandered up to the men as if he were inspecting their work, and soon became a distraction for them—what’s yer name, sonny, you’re how old, now quit playing with me, my boy. Ida chased after him and tried unsuccessfully to get him to sit still. Finally, to keep him occupied she gave him two cookies and her Bible, randomly opening to Corinthians.
By seven o’clock the makeshift house of prayer was almost full, with both curious first-timers and dedicated regulars. The murmur of anticipation for the evening’s service was palpable. Occasionally, groups of people broke out to sing the praises of the Lord, a cappella, a righteous warm-up to the evening’s event.
On the side of the aisle opposite Ida two rows back from Billy’s pedestal stood a uniformed chauffeur and butler. They held a rope between them that stretched across six seats, and politely but briskly turned away anyone that attempted to occupy the prime real estate. When Alex tugged on their pants or kicked at their ankles to get their attention, they ignored him as if they were guards standing in front of Buckingham Palace.
The very front row was out of bounds, however, even for the holy wealthy, for that row was reserved for Reverend Billy’s special cases, which included the infirm, the crippled and members of clergy that came either to “praise Caesar or to bury him,” as Billy might joke.
Thirty minutes before the service was to begin, every seat was taken, and then some, with people standing in the back—God hears you in the back just as good as in the front, the saying went. Ida and Alex sat next to an older couple, the Santorinis, who had journeyed to the makeshift Mecca from Wheeling, West Virginia, some forty miles south. They were taken by Alex and his sweet voice and smile, and they offered him their hard candies, which he stuffed into his cheeks and pockets.
The Santorinis confided to Ida that, like her, they’d suffered the loss of a child—two, in fact, for their sons had been buried alive in the Monongah Mining Disaster of ’07, an explosion that claimed the lives of 362 boys and men and created 250 widows. “And what does the company say to you? Nothing. What do they do for you? Nothing. What is the death of your boys worth to them? Nothing. Not a blessed thing. They’re worried about their mine, that’s all, about how soon can they get it going again. The almighty dollar, that’s their religion. That’s who they bow down to. The workingman is like a slave to them, a dime a dozen. Our poor boys, dead and gone.” It was their third time to see Reverend Sunday.
“Solace for our suffering. That’s why we’re here.” Ida squeezed Mrs. Santorini’s hand. “It’s my fourth time, dear, and my Alex’s first. Isn’t it, sweetheart? Alex? Alex!”
The Bible lay open on the seat, but Alex was nowhere in sight. Ida stared left and right, got down on her hands and knees and groped under their seats. She shouted his name but her voice was swallowed up by singing and organ music.
During a rousing chorus of Gimme That Old Time Religion, Alex had worked his way across the aisle and, hidden behind a large woman’s legs, gazed intently at the open purse of Mrs. Winston Childs, the wife of a cousin to one of the Fricks. Alex had his eyes on something sparkly, but he thought, Arthur doesn’t want me to steal anymore, but I could give it to Grandma. She bought me all new clothes. It would be a present, not stealing.
He scanned the row, taking in the chauffer and butler, who every so often shot a menacing glance at him. Mrs. Childs was on her feet, her white ermine wrap bouncing on her neck as she clapped her hands to the music, along with her best friends and bridge partners, Chappie Morton and Ginny Smith-Walters. When everyone else raised both hands in the air, up to Heaven as Billy implored them, Alex reached into the purse for the bracelet, but simultaneously felt himself being lifted into the air by a man who smelled of pomade and herring.
Meanwhile, Ida went from worshipper to worshipper, tugging arms, tapping shoulders, frantic to find her grandson. When she described him in detail, most people thought she was out of her mind, with or without the Holy Spirit, but one elderly man said he thought he might have seen a very small boy in an orange cap, but which way he went, he couldn’t be sure. She doubled back to her seat in the hope that Alex would miraculously turn up on his own, for after all, this was the place for miracles, and the Lord knows she deserved one.
She had sunk to her knees and raised her eyes to the heavens, prepared to tell God she was ready to give up ten years of her life to get Alex back, when there he was, or rather, there was his orange hat. It bobbed up and down above the crowd, coming closer and closer. God has lifted him on high, she thought, above the multitude, until she saw that it wasn’t God at all, but a man with a greasy hat, a dark goatee and pince-nez glasses, riding Alex on his shoulders. A few moments later he was in Ida’s arms, courtesy of Dr. Sergei Malkin.
Ida hugged Alex tight to her breast. She also twisted his ear so hard his yelp turned heads two rows away. “Don’t you ever scare me like that again, you little scamp.” She squinted at Malkin. “You. I know you.”
“Ah, Mrs. Ida, Dr. Sergei Malkin, at your service.” Malkin bowed and bumped his elbow into Mrs. Santorini’s ribs. “Excuse me, madam. Such a crowd it is here. Lucky was it that for you and the boy that I happened to be it in the vicinity of which he was standing, no? When he showed it to me where it was you are sitting, I felt it to be it my duty to bring him back to you. It is the second time I am delivering this little one, is it not?”
“What?”
“I am making it a joke with you, you see, for I have delivered him both at birth and now. Well, perhaps it is me only that I find it the humor in it.”
“What? I can’t understand you with all this noise.”
“Yes. Well,” he shouted, “I think you should know it that I caught the little one here with his long arms trying to steal it a bracelet.”
“What?”
Malkin shouted, “A bracelet I am saying.”
“I heard what you said.” Ida grabbed Alex again by the ear. “Stealing? Don’t you know stealing is a sin, Alex? Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not steal. Repeat it after me, Alex. Thou shalt not steal!”
“But I was just looking at it.”
Malkin shook his head no.
Ida tweaked his ear even harder. “And thou shalt not lie, either. How could you do this to me, Alex? My grandson stealing, it’s a black mark on me. Don’t you want me to be saved? Don’t you want to be saved, my dear little one?”
Alex thought that if getting saved meant having his grandmother stop pinching him and getting out of this place, he was all for it. “Yes, Grandma.”
“Praise the Lord.” Ida hugged him. She could see now that she had her work cut out for her, to bring her little one back to the path of righteousness and away from the temptations of stealing and whatever other sins he might have committed. His brothers, they must have put him up to it. Stealing, and a lie on top of it. God forbid Reverend Billy would get wind of a thief in their midst, even such a small, adorable one. She turned to Malkin. “The Christian thing to do would be to thank you. But I’ll never forget what that mumbo-jumbo tonic of yours did to my daughter. Probably killed her, that’s what.”
Malkin bowed his head. “Sorry it is that I am to lose it any patient, particularly the mother of the little one, and I pray it to God she is up in Heaven, but you see, the diphtheria, The Dip, it will take it who it wants until there is a cure, which, by the way, may be with this little boy.”
Reverend Sunday shouted, “Can I have an A-men?”
Alex, who hoped his grandmother would hear the repentance in his voice, shouted, “A-men!”
“What are you talking about?”
Malkin explained that it was quite extraordinary that a little one such as Alex could survive The Dip when it took the weak and the old and even the boy’s mother, a healthy young woman, and that if Ida would consent to let him study Alex, draw blood and tissue samples and the like, perhaps he could find
a cure or an antidote or even develop a vaccination against the dreaded disease. He had felt this way for many years but never had the chance to properly study the boy. “So you see, missus, it is for the scientifical progress of disease prevention for which I am asking it.”
Reverend Billy implored the crowd. “Say it with me, ladies. Lips that touch liquor shall never touch mine!”
Women responded heartily. Men frowned.
“I don’t have a clue in the world what you’re talking about, but whatever it is, it’s something you’ll have to take up with his father.” She turned her attention to Billy, who leaped into the air, his coat tails flaring out behind him. “And anyway, what are you doing here in the first place? You ain’t no Christian, that’s for sure, not by a long shot.”
Malkin reached into his medical bag. “You see?” It was a flyer, promoting his practice—Dr. Sergei Malkin, Medical Doctor, Dentist and Babies Doctor also. “There could be it here a lot of new customers for me, God willing, as the preacher he might put it, not that I am in competition with him for the healing.”
“Sisters, oh my sisters,” Billy said, “who among you are true daughters of Jerusalem?”
*
That week, as part of his penance, Ida had Alex read to her every evening. “Not from the encyclopedia, dear, from the good book.”
“But I want to read about Africa. Elephants, Grandma.”
“Africa? Where the darkies come from? I don’t want to hear about that foolishness. Here.” She handed him her copy of the New Testament. Without looking, she flipped open to Luke 24. “Read.”
Alex stared at it for a few seconds. The text seemed alien. “‘But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb.”
“Toooomb, dear, not Tom-b, tooomb.” She closed her eyes, and she could see the golden desert sand and the palm trees that fluttered in the gentle, restorative breezes of the Holy Land, and camels and goats and holy men dressed in flowing robes, walking to the tomb. If she truly wanted to be a daughter of Jerusalem, as Reverend Sunday had said, she had to find a way to get there.