by Rhoda Lerman
Yussel pointed to Grisha, turned his back on her. “Go tell him. He’s in charge.”
He shouldn’t have sent her away because he watched her walk. From where does a pious man say such a thing about how tight a woman’s pants are? From where does he think such a thought? Only the Yetzer Hara. Only.
“You brought that one on yourself, my darling son.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Her. You did this, Yussele. I know how He works. With my lovely young widow you did this. Now I know what you did, how you did. God help me.”
“A shmuck Indian brings the wrong size cap and I did it? Please.”
“Feh, feh, Yussele. I’m talking about the lady. Your platform isn’t high enough. Someday maybe you’ll figure it out. Maybe in time.”
Yussel closed his eyes, looked under his eyelids. No one was zooming around on a motorcycle. The Flower Child was out of his head. The shmegeggies had water, Yussel had talked to God, God had answered him. He could do without such answers. HaShem gave him water, took the Flower Child from his head, put in a demon, a succubus.
“Watch her, Yussele. This is very important.”
“If you were such a terrific prophet, Totte, you wouldn’t be in Hell.”
“I’m telling you. That package comes direct from intentional. Believe me.”
She was showing Grisha her map, moving her hands, swinging her hair, pointing to the mountains, drawing long sweeps with her arm. Grisha concentrated on the map. He had no idea what she was talking about. Yussel walked closer until he could hear.
“So it must slope up around here, under the old lake bed. And the angle of fracture in the rocks up there” —she pointed to the notch in the mountains where Yussel had taken his bath—“that angle must be repeated down here. So there’s a pocket and it slopes and you hit underground water. You need a pump to contain this. You know what fresh water’s worth around here? You know how much money this land is worth now?” She swung her hair around again, caught Yussel in her net. Her eyebrows jumped up and down on her forehead. She was very excited about the water.
Grisha looked at the map and said, “Blessed art Thou oh Lord our God, Ruler of the Universe, who performed wondrous deeds for our ancestors in days of old at this season.”
Yussel said, “Amen.”
She said, “What’s the matter with you guys? You’re losing your building and you’re wasting water. I’m offering you a pump!” She didn’t wear jewelry. She was filled with light, cut with such swells, prisms, curves, facets, she was fire herself. She had the pale white skin redheads have, with little blue veins, hot blue eyes. Yussel thought of the Shabbas candles burning, the white shoulders of the candles, the blue flame, the hot blue center of her eyes, the flaming face of Sabbath. Why would a shicksa make him think such thoughts? He’d never seen a woman with so much fire in her eyes. Except for his mother when she battled with his father. No woman had ever looked at him with that kind of fury. Maybe his father was right; maybe she wasn’t an accident.
She looked at Yussel. “Listen, I didn’t try to kill you. You didn’t try to kill me. Let’s start over. Okay?” She thrust out a hand, “Lillywhite, Stevie.”
He jumped back from her, sent out little waves. The waves rolled back around his legs like lassos, around his ankles, beat against the shores of his heart. “I don’t shake hands with such pretty girls.” He wished he had one of Chaim’s pencils that said DIAL-A-JEWISH-STORY.
“You’re calling me a girl?” She laughed. “I’m not a girl. I’m not pretty.”
Looking back, Yussel always thought that’s when it started. When she said I’m not a girl. I’m not pretty. Yussel, knowing the arguments, was prepared. You say woman. They don’t like to be called girls. All right. “So, I don’t shake hands with such beautiful women.”
Time slowed down. The horizon buckled around like a jump rope, dropped away in great hunks like the clay on Ernie’s adobe huts. The water tower swayed, creaked, groaned. The Arizona was tilting on its side, Yussel stared at her. She stared at him. Yussel was locked somehow in this moment arguing with this woman and he’d already told her she’s beautiful and he could see the fury burning in her eyes, hatred, and he didn’t know what he’d done, except maybe she thought he tried to kill her on purpose this morning or maybe even expose his business to her. She smiled a wicked smile. “And what would you do about touching me, Rabbi, if for example I were drowning?”
“Baruch HaShem, you’re not drowning.” How stupid he sounded. How could she know a line from Talmud? The Yetzer Hara taught it to her, that’s how. The Yetzer Hara made up this woman and that line just for Yussel, just for this moment. In all fairness a woman like this is not something God should do to a married man, unless He had a very good reason.
She leaned forward, her voice clear, softer. “Actually, it’s you who’s drowning, Rabbi.” And then she lay her hand on his cheek and pressed hard, somewhere between a slap and a stroke, more like a trembling rolling pin, she drew her hand over his face slowly until she reached the bottom of his beard. Her eyes burned. Candles. Blue-hot fires. It wasn’t amusement. Yussel didn’t know what he had erupted in her, in him. She wasn’t playing. He was so startled by the touch, the audacity, the putrefaction, the intention, the smell of horse, of woman, the pure loose-wire power, he stood still under her touch.
“Answer me, what would you do?” Her eyes were dark pools. Lightning streaked in them like a new kind of reality. She pulled his beard. Nobody had ever done such a thing to him. In his life. Lillywhite Stevie. What kind of name is Lillywhite Stevie? He remembered the black-and-white ceramic tiles of his mother’s bathroom floor, buckling, coming loose, breaking up the inlaid stars. His mother kept the loose tiles in a jar, hoping someday to put the floor back together. It only became worse.
So he swung a left to her jaw, punched her, laid her out in the water, was about to fall on her, punch her again, except his men were grabbing his arms and yelling at him. They couldn’t touch her. She stood up, shook herself off like a dog. Her nose was bleeding. She licked the blood, wiped it with her sleeve, grinned at him. No one wanted the sin of touching her. So it was Yussel they tried to pull away. He fought with them to get at her. Then she went for his beard again. But this time she touched his face lightly, stroked his beard, grinning all the while, rolling a pink tongue over her lips, tasting her own blood, breathing hard. Yussel struggled to free himself, to kill her. She watched him for a moment. He was the prisoner. They were both dying to get at each other. He wanted to taste the blood running from her nose.
“I own most of the land around here. So I think you can treat me like a nice person if only for your own benefit.”
“You’re telling me what I should do? You’re telling me?”
That’s when she laughed at him, tossed her head back, laughed. He wanted to bite the length of her neck. Grisha, everybody, was screaming at her to go away, to get off their property, to call the police, to turn a hose on her. For a swift moment Yussel could see what was happening, the paradox of his situation, but then the moment slipped and he was standing on the other side of a boundary. The floor was gone, the tiles in jars, no longer stars, everything realigned. In that one second. It wasn’t the touch, the legs, the eyes, the hair, the blood, the sting of her hand on his beard. He didn’t know what it was. Because once he’d crossed that boundary of perception, she could have been cockeyed, crippled, an idiot. It wouldn’t have mattered. It was too late.
“Oy vey, Yussele, my darling son, does He play for keeps! What did you say to Him He should do this to you? Poor Yussele. The water may be up to your ankles, but you are up to your neck. Both of us. My lovely young wife wasn’t enough. He had to send in His first team your heart was so hard, your neck was so stiff. Oy gevalt. I’ll never get to Heaven. Not now. Never.”
Grisha cleared his throat, rolled something around in his mouth and spat at her. His spit landed in a wad at the top of her gleaming boot. She looked down, smiled at Yussel, dipp
ed water over her boot. “I’ll send a pump and a crew.”
Yussel felt the air sucked from his world, pulmonary edema creeping into his chest. She started up the road, splashing, the gray riding pants, the line of bikini underwear. Yussel, who wouldn’t even watch TV except for documentaries on Jewish subjects, watched her run. Grisha was praying fast, desperately.
The water tower creaked louder and louder. Two legs hung in the air. Lillywhite Stevie, jogging, looked up, saw it, stopped, pointed at an electric wire the water tower was now leaning on. The tower was coming down slowly, stretching the wire as it came. “Everybody out of the water,” Lillywhite Stevie yelled. “The distributor line’s coming down. Get out of the water. You’ll be electrocuted. Get out! Get out!” She dragged Grisha by the arm. He shook her off. She grabbed his stool and pulled him out as the tower swayed and pulled at the line. Everyone was out, screaming at everyone else. Yussel ran also. “Turn off the power,” she yelled at him. “Turn off the power. Where’s the switch?” The power line dropped into the water, hissed, snapped around.
“Power’s off, Lillywhite,” Rosebud yelled from the road.
But it was too late because Babe had stopped to pick up a chicken and now she was facedown in the water. Grisha and Yussel looked at each other, weighing the situation. Yussel was paralyzed. He couldn’t touch her. Well, if her life’s in danger. But then maybe she’s dead and so her life isn’t in danger. Into the absolute silence, with only the hiss of the wire jumping around in the water, Natalie whispered, “You mean nobody’s going to get her?”
Lillywhite ran down the slope into the water, pulled Babe up onto the land. Yussel watched as if it were a movie. No one would go in, no one would touch. Lillywhite listened to her heart, her pulse, raised her fist above her, smashed her in the chest, listened again, then lay on top of her, chest heaving into Babe’s, mouth on Babe’s, forcing her body up and down as hard as she could to bring Babe back. Once she called out, “Someone call an ambulance. There’s a phone in the Bronco.”
Yussel was watching the redhead on top of Babe. That was all Yussel could see: the redhead on top of him, heaving and humping and squirming, the behind up and down in the tight pants. Grisha stood beside him, weeping.
Lillywhite stopped, exhausted, listened to Babe. “Call the fucking ambulance!” No one moved. Natalie finally ran up the spur to the Bronco and made the call. The men weren’t moving. Lillywhite was humping, thumping, bumping, grinding. Their blouses were transparent, nipples, hairs, belly buttons—now and then, you could see it all on both of them. The possibilities weren’t lost on the men who stood, biting their lips, trying, Yussel was sure, as he was, not to see what they were seeing. Lillywhite stopped, listened, finally turned her head sideways like a swimmer, body still heaving.
“Okay,” Lillywhite shouted triumphantly. “We’ve got her. We’ve got her.”
Grisha came alive, punched Yussel into the present. “She saved her. Babe’s alive. She saved her.”
Babe moved an arm, then jerked, focused on Lillywhite, croaked, sighed, “Where’s that nice little Indian?”
Lillywhite fell back against the ground, legs and arms spread, chest heaving, laughing at Babe. “Where’s that nice little Indian?” There was nothing of her body Yussel couldn’t see, every curve, every valley. The ambulance came, men and women in shiny green jackets ran down the hill, carried Babe up, roared away. No one looked at Yussel. Yussel couldn’t look at anyone. His ears burned with shame. His heart wasn’t his anymore.
Grisha walked beside Yussel toward the Arizona. “I’ll bet that’s her.”
“Who?”
“The one who sings.”
Something was closing in on Yussel. A dead chicken clung to his ankle. He shook it off. It drifted after him a little as if it needed to talk to him.
“Nisht shlect, Yussel. Not bad. We’ve got water for a mikveh. They’re going to think you’re a saint, Yussel, finding water in the wilderness.”
“Who’s going to think?”
“Everyone.”
“You?”
Grisha’s voice went up an octave. “Me?”
The firetrucks came behind the ambulance. The Moffat Volunteer Firemen wore bright yellow boots and slickers, wanted to save the Shanda. Yussel told them to leave it where it was. They served coffee and cheese sandwiches, offered to put everyone up in the high school overnight, used fancy suction machines to get water out of the house, driers on the wall plugs. Most of them had long full beards like Yussel, big beer bellies. They gave Yussel a slicker, shook his hand, congratulated him for hitting water, told him all he needed was a beer belly and a pickup truck and he could join up. Yussel took a minute to forgive Schmulke for wanting to look like Darth Vader when he went into the wilderness.
By dusk, the Arizona sat flat on the ground again. Mops and rags were laid outside to dry. Floors were dry, appliances plugged in. The fountain was off. Trenches carried excess water out into the desert. A lovely lake shimmered under the water tower, over a steady supply of pure underground water. Soon they’d have a mikveh. The land was now worth what Yussel had paid for it. That part at least, Yussel could acknowledge, was a miracle.
Yussel sat behind the bar with his head between his knees. He was exhausted, near tears. His hands trembled. He couldn’t catch his breath, settle his nerves. All he wanted to do was go home and hide. But he knew he couldn’t leave such a mess. He drank a glass of milk and thought about the redhead on top of Babe, breathing life into Babe’s mouth, the power of it, the control, the competence. A woman who saves lives, with those legs, the streaks of lightning in her eyes, her touch. He shook his head, couldn’t understand how such a thing could happen to him. His father came. His red silk pajama bottoms were soaked. The hem of his mallard-duck robe was muddy. He poured water from the brim of his hat, pushed it back on his head.
“Yussele, in the right vessel the wire gives heat and light. You put it in the wrong vessel, the water, it kills. HaShem is showing you abundance. Some things can’t take His abundance … they are not the right vessels … too weak, the wrong build. They break. They become the evil shells in the universe. Maybe He’s trying to make you His vessel, trying you out to see how much of His abundance you can tolerate before you break, to see if He shows you His Face whether you can endure Him. If He breaks you, He loses you and you become evil. If you can endure Him, you attach. All that water, all the woman …” His father shook his head. “Can you endure all this?”
“I’m going home.”
“I think it’s too late. I think you’re already on the path.” The Rabbi shrugged. “I may be wrong.”
“I’m not on any path.”
“You don’t think this happened because you kicked my Flower Child out of your house?”
“I told you, it happened because of one shmuck Indian. That’s how it happened.”
The moon scattered the clouds. His father sat for a while, watching him, sighed.“I was once so dumb. Once I thought because I knew all the letters, I understood the alphabet.” He shook his head, left. Yussel smoked one cigarette after the other, kept closing his eyes, kept looking for the Flower Child on her motorcycle. She wasn’t there. The redhead’s crew came, installed a fancy pump, pipes, valves, clamps, he didn’t know. They left an envelope. Yussel didn’t want to look at the bill. Grisha still had ecstasies around his eyes. He sat at the other end of the bar, playing his cards.
“What do you think, Grisha?”
“Bashert. Intended. Now you have to stay for Shabbas.”
“I can’t leave you with such a problem.”
“Also you can’t leave because you want to see what happens next.”
Yussel thought about that. “Could be. Maybe.”
“Me too. That’s why I play cards.” Grisha dealt his cards in a circle, turned up a king in the center, looked at it as if it were a message from HaShem, made a blessing, kept turning up the right cards. “See, Yussel? See how He works?”
“She saved Babe’s life
.”
“She’s dirt.”
Something in Yussel rose to defend the redhead. Yussel throttled it fast. He opened the envelope. There was no bill, only a note on ecru linen with little bits of hair from his beard. The note said, in a scrawl, “I know you have to burn these.” Yussel showed the note to Grisha.
“She’s Jewish,” Grisha declared. “She knows too much. Listen, Yussel,” Grisha walked over, talked very softly. “What did Babe mean, ‘Where’s that nice little Indian?’”
“I guess she wanted the redhead to be a man.”
“Babe?”
“Babe.”
All of us, Yussel said to himself.
Grisha, too high to sleep, the red spots on his cheeks flashing like numbers on an alarm clock, played cards long after midnight. Slotnik came in with his books. He’d driven up into the mountains so he wouldn’t be interrupted by the excitement. Babe was in the clinic on the other side of the mountain, perfectly okay. She’d be home the next evening. The others found beds—some in the high school in Moffat, some at Chaim’s, some even in the tents. The night was still, big. Yussel sat in the bar and wondered what he was feeling. Whatever he was feeling he had never felt before. He smoked one cigarette after the other, drowned the butts in coffee cups, lit up, poured another cup, tried to activate himself, couldn’t. He was drowning in the redhead. The Flower Child had been in his blood. This one shook his soul, tore at his roots. He could see Shoshanna’s little hand on her throat, trying not to cry. How terrible he should have looked at that woman, felt her touch. How terrible to do such a thing to his Shoshanna. He loved her more than anything in the world, in the whole world, even in the World to Come. But on the other hand, looking at a woman as he looked at the redhead, feeling what he felt, thinking what he thought, he wouldn’t have to worry about becoming a saint. Yussel knew he’d have sex dreams if he went to sleep, so he said he’d finish the kitchen, told Grisha to go to sleep. Grisha grunted, shuffled off to sleep.
Yussel mixed dough for the challahs, laid three strands of dough out on the cutting board, thought about breasts, squeezed the dough, thought about legs, braided the dough, thought about why the redhead was in his blood. Maybe she was a lost Jewish soul and he was supposed to light her spark? Jews are sent into exile to wander the earth to find lost souls, to bring them back. Sometimes these souls, these Neshamas, are parts of the same old soul who stood on Mount Sinai and received the Torah from HaShem. So maybe the redhead was such an old part of his soul. Maybe like magnets their souls were supposed to be drawn together. Maybe she was actually intended? After all, why else would she exist? Why had they met? Maybe it was intended that he should confront her, deal with her, get to know her? Maybe it was even intended he should descend into sin in order to bring her back? Maybe he had to open her soul? Yussel punched the end of the braid into the bread, gave it a kiss. Maybe, God forbid, he just wanted a little action. Yussel tore off a piece of challah, made a small bread, put it aside. It was already four in the morning. What would be the point of sleeping now?