The Blood Lie

by Shirley Reva Vernick

  Next, Mrs. Pool asked the operator for Pool’s Dry Goods. As Jack listened to her whisper into the receiver, he knew the truth. If his mother couldn’t wait to talk until Mr. Pool got home, then she was plenty worried.

  “Let’s head back,” Lydie said when they reached the river. “Daisy’s not around here anywhere.”

  Emaline hesitated. She listened to the water break on the rocky bank and wondered how fast the current could carry a little girl’s body. Maybe Daisy’s bloated corpse would get so far downriver before washing up that the people who found her wouldn’t know about her. Maybe they’d bury her in an unmarked grave, and she’d never be laid to rest next to her own father.

  The Sacred Heart bells rang nine. “Why isn’t anyone out here helping?” Emaline asked impatiently.

  “I don’t know, but we should really head back.”

  “If you think so,” Emaline said, but she didn’t move. “Do you want to hear something awful?”

  “No.”

  “This morning I told Daisy she was a great big pest. She got into my beads, the ones I’m using for Ma’s birthday bracelet, and I was so cross, I said, ‘Daisy Elizabeth Durham, if I were rich, the first thing I’d do is get my own house.’ I think that might’ve been the last thing I ever said to her.”

  “Hush now.” Lydie pulled her close. “It might’ve been the last thing you said to her this morning, but you’ll have plenty of chances to make up with her.”

  “How do you know?” Emaline squeezed her eyes shut, but the tears escaped anyway, rolling down her cheeks to her lips, where she licked them away.

  Lydie reached into her coat pocket and brought out a handkerchief. “You know, you’re just punishing yourself. And I’ll bet your mother is sitting at home doing the same thing, going over everything she said today, everything she didn’t say. Where’s that getting her? I ask you. More important, where’s it getting Daisy? We’ve got to keep ourselves pulled together now, for Daisy’s sake.”

  “I don’t think I can anymore. I’m all balled up, and my legs are so tired, they feel like applesauce.”

  “Come on, then. Let’s get you home. A hot bath and a hot drink will do you good.”

  “Okay, but I’m going barefoot. My heels are screaming with blisters.”

  “Good idea.” Lydie stepped out of her shoes and picked up one in each hand. “The ground’s nice and cool. All right, let’s go.”

  “Look,” Emaline said as they walked. “Even fewer flashlights than before. They’re giving up. Just like us.”

  “We’re not giving up. We’re just giving up on this one course. Besides, look at us. We can hardly walk.”

  “I don’t think I’ve walked this much all year,” Emaline confessed. “But if we’ve traveled so far, then why can’t we find her?” There, she said it. The dreaded question.

  “We’ll figure that out when we get to your house. Come on, our flashlight’s fading.”

  “Ahhh!” Emaline cried, stopping short.

  Lydie started, coughing uncontrollably. “What is it?” she wheezed.

  “Must’ve stepped on a stick or something. I’ll be all right. What’s wrong with you?”

  Lydie made a few more barking coughs, then swallowed hard. “When you cried out, I swallowed my gum. Never mind.” Lydie shined the dying flashlight on Emaline’s foot, exposing a few drops of blood. “It’s not too bad, but it needs a good cleaning. Here, lean on my shoulder and we’ll take it slower.” Emaline put her arm around her cousin, and they crept on.

  “What’s gonna happen to Daisy?” Martha knelt on a kitchen chair next to Jack while he peeled a crateful of red potatoes over the sink. Harry was shucking corn on the porch, and Mr. and Mrs. Pool were retrieving linens upstairs. They were speaking to each other in Yiddish, so whatever they were saying, they didn’t want their children to know.

  Martha brushed her dark hair out of her face. “What’s gonna happen to her?”

  “They’re gonna find her, that’s what,” Jack said. He used the tip of the paring knife to dig out a particularly deep eye. “Pretty soon you’ll be doing this work too, squirt,” he said, handing her another potato for the pot.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because we all do this work.”

  “No, I mean, how do you know they’re gonna find her?”

  “Because. Because she didn’t disappear into thin air. She got lost, and someone will find her, that’s all.” He sensed her staring up at him, so he fastened his eyes on hers. “I said, someone will find her.”

  “How ’bout you?”

  “How ’bout me what?”

  “How ’bout you find her, silly,” she said, climbing up on the counter and dangling her legs over the edge.

  He let out a small laugh. If only I could go out and look for Daisy, he thought. If only I wasn’t accused of killing her.

  “Well, why dontcha?”

  “Can’t, silly. I’ve got to peel these potatoes.” Martha’s right—I should be out with the search parties. After all, if Daisy vanished right after I left her in her driveway, isn’t it my fault? Why didn’t I wait for her to get inside her house? Or maybe I did wait. Did I watch her push open the door—or not? It was no use. He couldn’t remember. At this point, he couldn’t distinguish between reality and wishful thinking.

  “Agh,” he muttered when the knife slipped from the potato and cut a shallow crevice in his finger. He squeezed the finger with the opposite hand and watched the trickle of blood leak out. A cut on his fingering hand. Why did it have to be his fingering hand? Mr. Morse always told Jack to treat his fingers like the precious things they were. Now look what he’d done—with his audition only three days away. Nothing can interfere with that, nothing. I’ve got to get to Syracuse. And I’ve got to get out of here.

  “What’s the matter, Jackie?” Martha asked.

  “Nothing. Listen, squirt, someone will find her. I promise, all right? Now let me finish my work.”

  A promise from her big brother seemed to be enough to satisfy Martha. She handed Jack a fat potato and hopped off the counter to find Mrs. Pool, leaving him with a sink full of browning vegetable skins. Dropping the knife into the sink, he watched a thick splash of blood disappear down the drain.

  There was no denying one thing: regardless of when or how Daisy disappeared, he had been blamed. Accused. As good as convicted.

  Why?

  And, more importantly, where—where would this monstrous lie about Jews using blood in their rituals lead? How many people would hear it, believe it, act on it? Does Emaline know I’m suspected of murdering her sister?

  Rabbi Abrams said rumors were about as easy to unspread as butter. Was it too late already? Were the Jew-haters coalescing even now? Would word of this circulate as far as Syracuse, as far as Dean Elihu Pierson’s office? Would all his plans and years of hard work get wiped out just like that, all because of a lie? God, Jack thought as he pressed a dishtowel to his cut hand, let it be over. And let my promise to Martha not be broken. Amen.

  Clarisse waited for the girls to get back before heading home. “Don’t disturb your mother,” she told Emaline on her way out. “She said she wants to get some rest. Lydie, you coming with me?”

  “No, I’m going to stay with Em.”

  “Okay, well, it’s 9:30 now. I’ll call at 11 to check in.”

  “No, Mother. You get yourself some rest. We’ll call you if there’s news.”

  “Well…”

  “Good night, Aunt Clarisse,” Emaline said.

  As soon as Clarisse bustled out of the house, Lydie said, “C’mon, Em, let’s go see your ma. If she told Mother she needs a rest that means she needs a rest from Mother, that’s all.”

  They headed upstairs and stopped outside Mrs. Durham’s door. “I’m home,” Emaline said. God, if I could only hear Daisy say those words.

  “Come in,” she said. “It’s not locked.”

  Emaline winced when she saw her mother sitting up in bed, looking so pasty and frail
. Even her hair seemed to have lost its color. Like the life has been siphoned right out of her.

  “Thank heavens, it’s you two,” Mrs. Durham said. “Those women kept pestering me to eat a sandwich or drink some tea, so I finally just told them I had to lie down.”

  “Well, Mother was the last of them,” Lydie said, “and now she’s gone too, thank goodness.”

  Emaline raised an eyebrow.

  “I’m just being honest,” Lydie said. “We all know she’s bossy and she talks too much. Not to mention that she’s a worrywart.”

  “She’s had hard times too,” Mrs. Durham said. “You can’t blame her for being twitchy. Come here, sit with me, both of you. And bring me my rosary, would you? On the bureau.”

  Emaline handed her the rosary and sat at the foot of the bed next to Lydie. Mrs. Durham stroked the beads and then let them fall onto the quilt. “Do you know what a wretched soul I am?” she asked. “I told Daisy she couldn’t have her lunch today till she came back from hollering for you. She’s been gone all these hours, and she doesn’t even have a decent meal in her. Not even a biscuit. And wearing last year’s spring coat. Barely covers her knees anymore.”

  Emaline glanced at Lydie and scooted closer to her mother. “Stop that, Ma. We knew you’d be doing this, being hard on yourself for things that aren’t your fault. Why don’t we talk about something different? Then we can go back to fretting.”

  Mrs. Durham turned her face to the window as if she expected to see Daisy bouncing up the front walk in her too-short spring coat.

  “Ma, did you hear me?”

  “How about you read to me? There’s a book under the water pitcher. Read me something from it. Something sad.”

  “Something sad? That’s no good. How about something—”

  “No, I want something sad.”

  Emaline pulled out the book and started thumbing through it.

  “Your father gave me that book when you were born,” Mrs. Durham said. “I used to read it when I was up with you at night.”

  “Was I up much?”

  “All the time, but I didn’t mind.”

  “You didn’t mind being up all night?”

  “Your father stayed up with me. We took turns holding you, and I’d read out loud when it wasn’t my turn. If you hadn’t kept us up, I’d have missed that time with him. Now read me something.”

  Emaline continued scanning the pages. “Okay, how about this:Sorrow like a ceaseless rain

  Beats upon my heart.

  People twist and scream in pain—

  Dawn will find them still again;

  This has neither wax nor wane,

  Neither stop nor start.

  People dress and go to town;

  I sit in my chair.

  All my thoughts are slow and brown:

  Standing up or sitting down

  Little matters, or what gown

  Or what shoes I wear.”

  “Brown,” Mrs. Durham said. “That’s the right color. Not black, not red, not grey. Brown. You spend years thinking the worst possible tragedy has already befallen you, and then something even more dreadful happens, and all you can do is sit there.” She closed her eyes.

  “Why don’t you try to sleep now, Ma?”

  “Sleep? I can’t sleep. But you should rest. You must be exhausted. You too, Lydie.”

  They couldn’t deny it. They were bone-tired.

  “Go,” she urged. “I need you to be rested.”

  Emaline nodded, although she wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to sleep again. “You’ll wake us if…?”

  “Of course. Now go. Find Lydie a pillow. And pull out an extra quilt if you need it.”

  Victor and Gus took the table nearest the window fan, coffee cups in hand.

  “Find anything out?” Gus asked.

  “Only that the Pool kid and his mother are full of excuses. Contradicting themselves left and right about where they were tonight and why they didn’t answer the phone this afternoon. And a big icy mitt from the lady at the end. I’m thinking it’s time to check their store.”

  “I made you a list of all the Jew businesses in town.” Gus pushed a folded piece of paper across the table. “Just in case the Pool place don’t check out.”

  Victor cracked open the paper. “One, two, three…eight. Jeezus, that’s gotta be half the stores in town.”

  “You should know. Your father knew. The Jews move in and take over every money-making operation in sight.”

  “This could take hours.”

  “It’s not that big a town. These places are all on the same couple of blocks.” Gus plunked down his coffee cup and leaned forward. “Do it for your father, Victor. Do it for the man who had to drive a cab to put food on your table.”

  “Bus.”

  “Huh?”

  “It was a bus. Anyways, I’ll start with the Pool joint and go from there.”

  “Wait, let me jot down their preacher’s address—Abrams. He has all the right tools for this kinda job—I shoulda thought of that before.”

  “Tools?”

  “He keeps an old piano box in his backyard. I seen them Jews bringing him live chickens—they all raise their own chickens—and he takes the birds out back to his box and comes back with them dead. Sometimes they even bring him a live cow. They walk the animal right down to his house on a rope like they own the street and they have him slaughter it. Then someone comes to pick up the cow parts with a truck.”

  “No kidding?”

  “It’s unreal. Anyway, if you like, I can come up with a list of their home addresses too. Just in case. Just so you know you’re hitting on all sixes.”

  “Later, Gus. I’m hoping I won’t need to go that far.”

  “Attaboy.”

  Harry and Jack were sitting on the front steps shucking the last of the corn into a paper bag when the police car pulled up to the house.

  “What now?” asked Harry.

  “Come on,” Jack said, brushing corn silk from his trousers and moving quickly down the steps. He didn’t want the trooper to get to the front door. His parents were inside, putting Martha to bed.

  “Is your father at home?” Victor asked as he approached the boys in the driveway.

  “No,” Jack lied. “Can I help you with something?”

  “It’s about his establishment. I need to check it.”

  Jack nudged himself in front of Harry. “Establishment? The store? Check the store?”

  “Yeah, have a look around. The Durham girl is nowhere to be found. So we’re going to search the places of business.”

  “You’re going to check all the businesses in town? Even the farms?”

  “Not all.”

  “Just the Jewish businesses. That’s what you mean, isn’t it?”

  Victor wouldn’t look at him. He stroked his mustache and watched the moths orbiting the lantern on the porch.

  “It’s ten at night,” Jack said. “You need to get into the store now?”

  “The sooner the better.”

  “Well, our father’s not home. I’ll let you in. Hold on, let me get the key.” Pulling Harry along with him, Jack went inside and grabbed the spare store key that hung from a pantry hook. “Don’t say anything to Mama or Pa until they figure out I’m gone.”

  “Are you kidding? They’ll have our heads for this.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll take all the blame. Close the door behind me, would you?”

  Jack ran out of the house. “You have no right to do this,” he told Victor as they headed for the car.

  “I’m afraid I do, kid,” Victor said, opening the back door. “I have every right when a child’s life is at stake. Now get in.”

  Jack fell into the seat. He’d never been in a police car and thought he never would. It smelled like cigarettes and rubber.

  As Victor pulled away from the curb and drove down the street, Jack’s head filled with nightmarish images. He saw his baseball team huddled up the way they did right before a game started
. Of course, Jack wasn’t in the huddle, because he was never at the Saturday games. But Moose Doyle was there. Trooper Brown was there too. So was automobile king Henry Ford, who’d recently published The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem, and he was handing out free copies of his book. Joining the group was a pack of men Jack didn’t recognize at first. Then he realized it was the gang that had lynched Leo Frank in Atlanta.

  Poor Leo Frank. He was the manager of the National Pencil Factory in 1913 when a thirteen-year-old girl who worked there was found strangled. Leo Frank was accused of murder and convicted on circumstantial evidence. But before he could begin serving his life-imprisonment sentence, he was kidnapped and hanged by a group that included a former governor, the son of a U.S. Senator, bankers, doctors and a sheriff. None of the lynchers were prosecuted. Half the Jews in Georgia fled the state.

  Jack tried to move to a different part of his mind. The opening chords of the concerto in C minor. The solid feeling of the cello between his knees. The warmth of the carved maple neck against his thumb. But it was no use.

  Victor pulled in front of Pool’s Dry Goods, where ten or maybe fifteen men were standing on the curb, drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes, as if they’d been waiting for them. They raised their cups in salute and moved aside to let the trooper park.

  Jack suddenly felt compelled to study the faces in the crowd—to watch and memorize them—but he fought the urge. He didn’t want them to see the fear in his eyes, and he didn’t want to see the hate in theirs. Instead, he gazed upward, where he saw a smashed egg drizzling down the store sign. He wondered if Gus Poulos had provided the egg from the diner.