by Tom Blair
One thing I felt real sorry about. More than thirty years Brenda and I were married. Probably not a week went by without me telling her something good about Pa. Always bragging Pa was the best man I ever knew. I shouldn’t have been looking backward. Should have been looking next to me. Should have been telling Brenda she was the best most wonderful person ever. But I didn’t. Never told her how special lucky I was to have her. Hoped maybe sometime I would get the chance.
After a spell Sarah put me in an old folks home. I was there for the better part of a year. Then back to the Woodlawn Methodist Church for the last time.
John
Mordecai’s Uncle
Two hundred and fifty years after a few brave and hopeful English struggled to establish the first colonies in America, colonies that held the promise of religious freedom and the opportunity to work for a better life, Europeans were still fleeing from their homelands for America. And America still, after two hundred and fifty years, held out the beacon of religious freedom and greater rewards for greater work.
Between 1880 and 1920 over two million persecuted Jews fled Russia, and what is now Poland and Ukraine, for America. After a long and difficult journey, the last portion being in damp and dark steerage of a rusting or rotting ship, only opportunity stood at the pier to greet them. But opportunity was the large white canvas on which many painted their life’s work, achievements, and legacy. One such painter was Mordecai’s Uncle.
IF IT WASN’T THE COSSACKS, IT WAS THE COLD; AND IF NOT THE cold, it was hunger.
One winter night Shlomo ben Jezekiel dropped from his dying horse outside what passed for our tavern and beat on door after door, crying that at Kishinev our people had been slaughtered like rats, baled up like corn for the reapings, and he passed from one hand to the next no one believing, yet all knowing they had to, broken bricks with what looked like gray worms in them—brains, Jewish brains. So we left.
We sold everything (a lot, ha!) and borrowed a little that the Staronometz pressed on us, the only rich folk in the shtetl, guilty at being on such good, well-paid terms with the colonel of Cossacks and the vice-governor.
We wouldn’t take all that they offered—we’d never have the chance to repay it—
but what we took made all the difference.
It was five weeks to the sea, to harsh Odessa with our children and our nephew Mordecai breaking our backs when their legs gave out.
Oh, but they had a great spirit, to walk so far through the icy ruts, our shoes filled with blood on those foul roads and every joint a chilblain.
Dos Kleyne Mentshele, the Little Man, I thought of these unforgiving potholes, the little little man in the big indifferent world; I’d have settled in a blits for its being indifferent, but it seemed as hostile as the Cossack major who robbed us outside the city.
Praise be for money sewed up in girls’ flowers, torn to look ragged.
And so finally we got there, three children sick, neither of us free from lameness for the rest of our lives.
But none dead, and the ship at the quay!
We worked our way through those horse-drawn carts and proud-driven carriages, their coachmen anxious to frighten the poor who worked for no noble family, cracking their whips from the box; and always the horsemen in the foul Tsar’s uniform, smashing off shtrayml, sending those fur hats flying like crows with their wretched tin sabres that had done them no good with the Japanese.
(How we laughed when we heard!)
And people shrieked at us, “Where d’you think you’re going, Jew?”
We answered clear, under our breath:“We’re off to America. America, where our shoes and mittens won’t have holes. Die Goldene Medina. The Golden Land.”
And so we arrived at the ship. We knew we weren’t going easy. We were going to sail like the old women’s children who went to sea in a sieve; but not even that quite prepared us for our particular sieve. Worm-ridden, rat-riddled, vomit-clung, and, we suspected, heavily insured so the owners wouldn’t be too grieved if the sea ate us off Iceland, or fire claimed us off the Grand Banks.
We sold our lucky pieces for bread rations. They rotted. But we were off to the Golden Land.
The ship met the big waves, and it staggered, leaving legs and arms broken in every hold.
Icebergs we saw, where a few years later that great liner sank with a thousand of the richest—and the sea piled up like the mountains of Megiddo between us and dry land and no fear and hard earth.
But each face of water was one wet mountaintop nearer the Golden Land.
We lost our steering for hours off some unlit lighthouse. But we made it. God preserved His poor children. We creaked into New York Harbor—some thought it was Boston—with three feet of water in the hold and our bread blue for so many days.
But though our legs swayed under us when we arrived, we stood firm on the land we never again left—not even a trip on a pleasure barge!
We staggered to Immigrant Aid and got ourselves jobs, I for a hard man that made factory soft shirts. Only calluses for me on my throat, yelling at the little ones. Thread those bobbins! Cut that cloth!
Rebekah scrubbed floors and thought they were joking when she worked out she was getting ten kopeks for work that would have got her one, and a curse, from the squire uphill in the Old Country.
We found schools for the children, so Rebekah and I could go also, alternate nights, to learn this strange country, golden or not.
But then the schools began to take hold, and we found the library. And now there were more books than you could read in a lifetime, most the kind Rebbe Aron always warned against.
But some—wicked smart Gibbon, peace be upon the clever old pagan; kindly Lincoln, who agonized over a bloody war among brothers; proud Jefferson, who loved liberty while he held slaves and “remembered that God was just”—reminded you why you were in a free country. You were still always tired—everyone was. You heard of Mr. Morgan’s partners dying of overwork, him shedding no tears, this was America. And you always wanted something to eat, but not the way you did in the Old Country.
Each day you made money—maybe just pennies—but you wanted to spend it, because you could not walk down the street without seeing something you wanted, something new to eat, new to wear. In a shop window, on a wall, on a leaf of the New York Herald blowing jerkily downstreet, inducements uppermost; and it made it so hard to chink those few pennies back and put them under the brick (from which we both stole, I’m sorry, sorry when temptation hurt too much, for an apple, or an orange, or God help us, one stick of chocolate. But we put it back, and put the blows and outcries behind us, and went short to make up).
Then that terrible March, that awful factory fire. Doors were locked, little lives lost. No factory, no job, no money.
So we got a cart, just for coffee and sandwiches—but Lord, how people wanted fresher things than their lunch boxes held.
Hotter coffee at break—couldn’t call it lunchtime—after five hours already at work. Then I hired a man. Kal Ivanov worked hard, but never lost a smile.
Three years, then we had two carts, and three. First to work, then to dream; next to dream and work even harder.
A shop, yes, and another, and buying the building, but not forgetting to send money five thousand miles to get more of our people on ships—just slightly better ships—before their luck ran out in the darkening Old Country, before the murderous horsemen were given free rein, and the golden doors slammed on this country. Some we got out, some we didn’t. God help us.
Come the day we’d been off the boat for twenty-five years—like five when you take stock, like fifty when you remember the work, one day on another—and we thought of working only six days a week.
(Shabes we felt embarrassed, driving past Synagogue; fair Sabbath-keepers we were!)
But too golden a sun rose on Wall Street, and we found most of our gold magicked to paper. We were hurt enough in the fall, and laughed bitterly when pushy little Harry Golden went down with his firm and
went to prison for mail fraud. (Well, he made it back, that I’ll give him.)
But we had our hearts and our heads, and dammit our good name, and back we came. Rebekah went to Florida for her pleurisy. Being a fool she bought a stretch of sand on a place called Palm Beach and has laughed ever since at how furious I was. And then—I nearly was too annoyed to say it—there was my nephew Mordecai.
We brought him over, saw he got a good schooling, couldn’t miss how sharp he was, working through Stevens College—but then he passed up a good job! Went for this PhD thing. Oy, we were mortified.
Still and all—rather good, I think—one year he had to go to Stockholm, shake hands with the king. Because he invented something that no one needed. Even got a medal, and half a cart full of money!
Only in America, my America.
Die Goldene Medina.
Mordecai’s Uncle
Nananawtunu
Within the first few decades of the seventeenth century, the British had colonies established along the New England coast and the Chesapeake Bay. At first, trade with the European settlers brought Native Americans material advantages: knives, axes, cooking utensils, fish hooks, and a host of other goods. Those Indians who traded with colonists initially had significant advantage over their rivals who did not.
Early colonial–Indian relations were an uneasy mix of initial cooperation and conflict. Conflicts grew into a long series of skirmishes and wars. At first the Indian was most often the victor, then as the population of Europeans grew in the colonies the balance shifted, and the Native Americans were forced to retreat in defeat.
The first of the important Indian uprisings occurred in Virginia in 1622, when over three hundred colonists were killed, including a number of missionaries who had just recently come to Jamestown. The Pequot War followed in 1637, as local tribes tried to prevent settlement of the Connecticut River region. Then with the colonies’ population advantage and deadly weapons, began a 250-year long slow decimation, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, of a race and its culture.
BEFORE THE SUN WAS UP I WAS DOWN THE PATH, MOVING FROM our village to a stream that wrapped past our round-topped wigwams. I paused, I lay in the water, my scent washed away. Then across the shallow flow and back to the path. Up a small ridge spotted with pine, down and through a dark forest of beech, off the path, following beside a slow-running creek that cut through a lone tribe of hemlock. Once across I moved softly through a clearing, the sun now on the horizon. Across the open yellow grasses and into the forest, then to the blind my son and I made days before. Today, fresh tracks in the dew. One set of hooves no more than two fingers across, a yearling. With these tracks another with hoof marks three fingers across, the back hooves farther apart than the front hooves, an older doe. As I moved from the tracks to the blind, rabbits darted far to my right, to their burrows for the day.
I squatted behind the blind with my longbow, made from ash, as long as I am tall. The back flat, the front rounded by a shale scraping rock, then smoothed with a quartz rubbing stone. A bowstring of dressed and twisted sinew from a moose leg. Arrows nested in a quiver of dark bark with a strap of hide for the shoulder. Arrows from a hardwood sapling, almost a stride in length and thick as the small finger. Long ago cut from their mother tree with a blade made from the leg bone of a deer; split down the middle to make two sharp edges, these edges given a cutting bite with a flint notching stone. Shafts then carefully smoothed with a sandstone. A notched quartz arrowhead fashioned. To receive the arrowhead one end of the shaft notched with a large beaver tooth or antler from a young buck. To guide its flight, tail feathers from an eagle, split down the middle, three halves lashed to the shaft with dried gut from a small animal.
This morning, the air was still. No scents drifting. A sweet smell of a nearby honeysuckle. Another sweet smell of flesh decaying.
I knelt, one knee on the earth. In the distance turkeys called. Traps for these birds set far away yesterday. Between the clouds of foliage above, the sky was bright. A fox trotted slowly down the trail, then sensed me and disappeared into the brush. Above, a hawk stalked in drifting circles. Squirrels rushed in the trees, muted squeals and the feathered hunter tearing flesh. The sun slowly higher, in time straight above me. Next to me red ants moved in a line from their mound, disappearing under gray-brown leaves. Another row of ants back marched from the leaves and down their hole with prizes.
I ate red berries. No food that would carry the scent of my village. I thought of days as a young Indian, of days with my father, Mixanno. Many days hunting, learning the ways. I thought of my son Quannopin, how much I must teach him. The sun began its journey downward. A hemlock next to me, beetles of a shining green at its base. Their journey up and under the bark. Around the tree a floor of pinecones, some newly fallen, others gray and cracked. Among them a chestnut, but no chestnut tree near. A squirrel’s lost meal, or perhaps from above, pigeon dropped.
A movement of air. Dung from a bear in the breeze. Also the scent of blood. Perhaps the blood of the hawk’s kill. When the direction of the wind shifted, my blind no longer a blind to the deer.
Clouds sneaked in, long and flat. No thunder. Past me a snake on a zagging course, leaving curves in the soil, a bulge in its middle, a chipmunk, young heron, or frog. The sun drifted low. Another fox loped by, and then hurried away. A noise of leaves rustling. As the colors of the forest turned from greens and browns to grays and blacks, I stood. Footsteps in the distance, footsteps of my son. Coming to help me carry a slain deer back to our village. But no fresh meat today. Together we walked, told me of his day’s task. Well-soaked birch bark carefully lashed to a curved frame of white cedar. Another few days the canoe will be married to the rivers.
Why do I recount this day for you? Because it is an Indian day. A day of seeing nature, smelling nature, touching nature. A day of being nature. Let me explain. Our women wove mats. Every wigwam hosted many mats. They were sat upon, they were slept upon, they were ate upon. A frame of wood as large as the reach of a warrior was used by our squaws to weave these mats. Each mat, thousands of strands from bulrushes, the inner bark of cedar and the roots of evergreens. All intertwined among each other in a careful pattern. Some strands colored with the dyes made from pine root, other dyes from the bark of walnut and flender root mixed with crabapple juice. To the Indian nature is as a mat. The earth, rivers, trees, plants, fish, birds, animals, rain, and the sun, all together intertwined and dependent on each other to create nature. The Indian saw himself as one of the strands of the mat. He is part of nature.
The white man did not see himself of nature. This was the strangest of the white man’s many strange ways. Even the greatest of white men, Roger Williams, saw nature as only a servant. The white man walked upon the mat, he scuffed the mat with his boots. For those settlers among us nature was only to serve. As we could not understand their ways, they could not reason our reverence to nature. As an old and wise chief said, “The white man asked the Indian to dig for stones of value. Should we dig under the skin of our mother for her bones? The white man asked the Indian to cut grass, make hay, and sell it. How could we cut our mother’s hair?”
Let me tell you of my life. My name is Nananawtunu, son of Mixanno, one of the three sons of Ousamequin. This Great Chief was known as Massasoit, the honored leader of the Pokanoket people. Our lands were those surrounding Narragansett Bay. You know this land as Rhode Island. Because of his wisdom and spirit, the Indians of the Wampanong sought Massasoit’s counsel. Their lands spanned the forests and streams of Rhode Island and the lands of Massachusetts, including what you call Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. In the year 1620, by your calendar, Massasoit and Canonicus, another great leader, met with the chiefs of the white men who journeyed to our lands on the Mayflower. Before this, many council meetings of Massasoit and other sachems from many Indian villages. Much discussion on the white man’s fate. Some believed the English as a forest fire, they would destroy land and game. Others saw them as an Indian, gentle love fo
r their children and hard work for shelter and food. Others believed the white men’s big canoes with their own clouds and their thunder muskets showed they were wise. After paced and considered discussion, the council decided the English should be welcomed and given knowledge of the land. For years the white man and our nation lived together in peace.
In time Massasoit and the elders learned that other white men came to lands far south from our nation. In our land the white man came to worship their god, not the god of their chiefs in England. Settlers in the south came seeking gold and pearls. Neither were found. To survive they grew the leaf that is smoked. This crop they bartered in England for supplies. For them tobacco was more valuable than food. In time white men in great numbers came to the south to grow the crop. Indian forests were cleared. Game became fewer. More settlers, more Indian lands taken. Battles between settlers and Indians.
I had just turned from a boy to a man when my father took me to Massasoit’s wigwam. Grandfather told me of his days with the English. Spoke to me of his friendship with Roger Williams, a man who saw the Indian as no less than a white settler. Williams wished to write an English translation of Indian words to create a record of the ways of the Indian. Neither I nor my grandfather knew of a book. Only later did I learn a book of Indian language would be printed for those English far away.
Grandfather believed the more the English understood of us, the better our contentment. Told that I would assist Roger Williams. His home was in Providence, there I would make my wigwam. Over the summer and into the fall in Providence I met with Roger Williams most days. It was a labor of discovery and humor, for both of us. He learned the Indian’s ways as well as the Indian words. I learned of the white man’s ways, as I learned their language. The humor was because Williams did not understand all Indian’s words, and I only a few of theirs. He pointed to his mouth and rubbed his stomach. I gave him the phrase for not hungry, matta niccattuppummin. Days later, before a meal, I learned he wanted the word for hungry.