Melov's Legacy

by Sam Ross

  His throat dry, his knees quivering, Hershy backed away from the motorman, slunk behind him, and stepped to the door.

  “Let me out, Mister. I got to get out here.”

  The motorman whirled his crank and slammed the door open. Hershy ran to the curb and swore defiantly at the motorman, but the door was already shut and the car had trundled past. Then, suddenly realizing that he was in a foreign neighborhood, he began to run. Maybe somebody on the street had heard him swear. He had got off the car three blocks before his stop and he ran hard over the distance. When he got to where he was to turn off to his father’s laundry, he paused to catch his breath; he still had two dangerous blocks of foreign territory to pass before he’d be really safe.

  He wedged the package of food under his armpit, pulled his broken-peaked cap down to one side so that he might look tougher, took a deep breath, and then began to walk. The trees between the sidewalk and the curb were the same as on his block. The houses, some of them flush against the walk and some set back from it, were almost the same; they were only a little older and dirtier. A group of three kids were sitting on a porch. He tightened up and began to spit through the side of his mouth.

  “Hey.”

  He looked straight ahead, his heart hammering and throbbing in his throat, his legs strained like a taut bowstring ready to whing him away.

  “Next time we’ll find out who the punk is.”

  Safe. He tried to relax but couldn’t. A block and a half to go. A black iron fence began to flicker past. Set back from it was a church. In the garden was the statue of a saint in a long robe, with bowed head and a cross in his hand. A statue of Jesus Christ nailed to a cross, with a kind of diaper around his mid-section, loomed up. He stiffened and spit three times to keep his evil spirit away. (Once, a year ago, he had wandered out of his neighborhood and was attacked by five kids. Because he didn’t know the catechism they knocked him down, pulled his pants off, and found out he was a Jew. Then they dragged him into a church yard to baptize him. They almost broke his arm, as they applied an upward pressure to it behind his back, to get him on his knees. Then, refusing to beg for mercy, feeling that if he did his own God would strike him dead, his mouth filled with blood as a knee rammed his chin. A clot of earth was forced into his mouth, and, when he saw a worm wriggle out in his sputtering, he vomited. He keeled to his side; then, pinned to the ground in the form of a cross, each one drew up a blob of phlegm, and, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, they spit on him and baptized him and ran away at the approach of a priest. Only when the priest, in helping him clean up, assured him over and over that he had not been baptized and that he had not betrayed his father and his mother and his God and that the kids who had tortured him would be doomed to everlasting hell, did he begin to feel alive again.)

  At the corner he saw four kids his size playing mumbly-peg. Then he couldn’t help himself. He broke into a dead run and rushed into the laundry out of breath with his face white and his blood still racing madly onward. He had made it again. Once there, he calmed down quickly and the heat of the place helped bring back the blood to his face.

  He walked over the wooden floor, parts of which were rotted and splintered from the dampness, through a wooden gate his father had made which led to the office. His father, who had watched the office girl sweat and squirm at work, had built a wooden partition separating the plant from the office. He had also built her two wooden desks. Uncle Irving had been opposed to it: what was he, still a carpenter? But his father said: “For a few dollars and a little labor let a person be a human being, let her be able to go home without having to wring her clothes out and without a broken back and splinters in her arms. God knows, we pay her little enough for her labor.” To which Uncle Irving answered: “All right, break your back and spend our money, but don’t come to me with complaints. Some businessman I’ve got for a partner.”

  Hershy tapped the office girl on the head. She looked up from her adding machine and smiled at him. Her wide face seemed to crunch together when she smiled.

  “How’s my little sweetheart today?” she asked.

  “All right,” he said, warmed by her welcome smile.

  He liked her. She always had a big smile for him. Sometimes she let him brush against her, and, when she didn’t move away, he got very excited. Once, when she was showing him how the adding machine worked, he leaned against her shoulder and accidentally put his arm around her and touched her breast. She looked up and shivered, then smiled and wagged her finger at him and said: “Naughty, naughty.” Another time, after he had pecked his name on the typewriter, she pulled him to her. “Why, that’s wonderful, wonderful.” Then she released him and said: “My, my, but you’re getting to be a big boy.” He couldn’t understand why, but when he was close to her he felt tense, dry-mouthed, heart-pounding. Was it that she held the secret that he and all the guys on the street were aching to learn?

  He wondered if he could ask her about Emily: was it right that you should get a funny pull in your belly when a picture of a girl got in your head; and what did you talk about, without fighting, when you were with a girl; and how could you know if a girl was your girl? But the engineer stepped in, his white teeth flashing from his grimy face, his light hair coated with coal dust. The office girl looked away and slapped the engineer’s hand down when he tickled her chin and said: “What’s doing, cookie?”

  Hershy wondered if she was the engineer’s girl, if … but he was a married man; besides, in his overalls, he looked like a coal bag. Still, he liked the engineer, too. He had swum against the Duke Kahanamoku, the greatest swimmer in the world, and had pitched in the Three-Eye League, and had run the hundred yards in ten flat, and had been a crack fullback, and had done more things than it took the ordinary man a hundred years to do. Hershy, when he sat at his desk in the boiler room, didn’t believe him, because he had a weak chest and his collarbones stuck out and his legs were bowed and his neck was scrawny and his gray eyes looked washed out; but he seemed to know so much about everybody and everything that it was nice listening to him. And when it came to machinery he knew everything.

  “Someday,” he warned him, “you’re going to step in your father’s shoes, so you better learn what makes this place tick.” Then he’d mystify Hershy completely as he compared the plant to the human body. “See that engine.” There wasn’t much to see, only the pumping rods and the flyballs. “That’s the heart. Instead of blood it pumps power to all the machines in the plant; it makes all the belts flap and all the wheels go round. See the coal. That’s food, that’s meat and potatoes and bread. You feed it into that big ugly mouth, see. That’s the fire box. See down below. I push and pull the shaker, the waste goes down the grate, and the system is cleaned out, just like when you go on the toilet. Now, that hot fire heats up the water in the boiler on top, and when water boils up what do you get? Steam. That’s right, sonny. Now that steam is like your blood, see. It’s what makes everything tick. It pops off against the engine; then, like the heart, the engine begins pumping, real hard, and it makes all the machinery move. See?”

  Hershy’d say, yah, he saw, but he really saw nothing. Everything was hidden. He couldn’t see the water in the boilers, nor the steam in the engine, nor the intricate connections between the engine and the machinery in the plant. All he knew was: it worked. His body worked, too; he didn’t know why. He knew also that the engineer was important to his father and that he made more money than his father. That was another hard thing to understand: a boss making less money than a man who worked for him. His mother cursed the engineer for the salary he made, but his father stood in awe of him: without him, a man of science, the laundry was nothing; in fact, it gave him pleasure, he claimed, to watch a man go about his work with a sure skill and knowledge; the engineer was the master of the machine, just as he had been the master of the tool. As a result, with his father completely mystified by the machine and dependent upon the engineer’s control of the machine’s might, Hershy als
o stood in awe of him. He wondered, with all the engineer knew, whether he should ask him about girls. But then he might start talking about the heart and the blood and all the things inside that a guy can never see, and he’d get all mixed up, more than before. Maybe he’d ask him some other time.

  “What do you say, champ?” The engineer pulled Hershy’s cap down over his eyes. “Hit any Texas leaguers lately?”

  Hershy pulled his cap up. “No,” he said.

  “Got to keep the balls hot, kid.” The engineer winked at the office girl, who turned away red in the face. “Got to keep up that old batting average, champ. Remind me to tell you sometime what them Texas leaguers did to my batting average in the Three-Eye League.”

  No, thought Hershy, he couldn’t talk about it with the engineer. He might say: Remind me to tell you about a little girl I had when I was four; by the time I was going on twelve, like you, I was an old old hand already.

  He walked on to the wet floor of the plant. His father was walking down the aisle, pulling levers and twisting valves, amid the sliding belts and revolving wheels and washing machines. His boots were shiny and his bare arms were strained and his eyes looked buried between his forehead and cheekbones and his straight black hair was plastered to his scalp.

  “How’s it, Pa?”

  “Oh, hello, Hershel. Look out, you’ll get wet.”

  Hershy jumped back as a flooded washer, in its backward turn, gushed over. His father pulled a lever and let some of the soapy water splash into the gutter below.

  “What’s the good word, Pa?”

  “Nothing. Nothing.”

  “Need some help?”

  “No.”

  “Can’t I do anything?”

  “Later. Later.”

  His father stopped a machine and dragged the bundles to a ringer. He raised a lever. The high spin of the ringer began to slow down as his father walked away to the washing machines. The tight ball of clothes began to scatter, until, like a tightly woven rope had splintered to shreds, the clothes lay full and limp in the aluminum shell. Hershy wondered how, without hands, the clothes were wound up and wrung out and unraveled. His father came back, took out the water-extracted clothes, and dumped the wet wash into the ringer. Hershy pulled the lever down and started the spinning; he had helped out. His father patted his back.

  “It’s easy, Pa. Anybody can do it.”

  “That’s right. Anybody.”

  “When you going to eat?”

  “Later. Later.”

  “How come you don’t go out to eat?”

  “I don’t have the time. Who’ll tend the machines?”

  “I will.”

  “When you get older. There’ll be plenty of time for you to work when you get older.”

  “You mean you don’t want me around?”

  “No. You can go home and play. Play while you have a chance.”

  He lingered, feeling guilty; he really wanted to help. He also wanted to get back home, too. Maybe after supper he’d go over to the park and see Emily outside her house.

  The engineer walked by. Hershy’s father asked him if he’d watch the machines while he grabbed a bite to eat.

  “Sure, sure,” said the engineer.

  Hershy followed his father with the package of food through the boiler room out into the alley. His father sat down on a wooden crate, and, closing his eyes for a moment, leaned heavily against the building. Hershy watched the sweat begin to dry on his skull-like face.

  “You’ll catch a cold, Pa.”

  His father shook himself and took a deep breath, as though coming out of a deep sleep. He opened the package and began to eat a salmon sandwich. He fumbled about the paper and brought up a pint bottle of milk. Opening it, he drained half the bottle before he set it down.

  “Pa, we going to be rich someday?”

  “I hope so.”

  “When?”

  “Someday.”

  “Do all girls like rich guys?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Then we got to be rich.”

  “Why? Do you have a girl?”

  “Who? Me?”

  “Then don’t worry about it.”

  “But we ain’t rich now, are we?”

  “No. We’re poorer than we ever were.”

  “Why? Because the engineer makes all the money?”

  “No.”

  “Because you used up all our money?”

  “Yes.”

  “But when we get rich we’ll have a big house, huh?”

  “Yes.”

  “And a car and everything, huh?”

  “Yes.”

  “When’ll we be that rich? By the summer? By next year?”

  “It takes time.”

  “Then maybe we’ll move in a big house by the park on Sacramento Street, huh?”

  “Maybe.”

  His father bit into another sandwich. Somehow, he wasn’t interested in talking. He looked more like he wanted to sleep. Lately, he never seemed interested in talking. He didn’t seem to care what was happening. He wiped his milky mouth with his hairy forearm.

  “Pa, do I have a grandfather?”

  “No. They’re both dead.”

  “But I had a grandfather, didn’t I?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Did I have a great-grandfather, too?”

  “Certainly. That was my grandfather.”

  “How about a great-great-great-great-grandfather?”

  “You had them, too.”

  “Who was they?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How come other people know who theirs was?”

  “Why are you so interested suddenly?”

  “Somebody said they had a great-great-great-great-grandfather in the American Revolution.”

  “Oh.”

  “What did mine do?”

  “Yours? Your grandfather was the greatest of them all”

  “Yah? Who was he?”

  “Adam, the first man in the world.”

  “No kidding, Pa.”

  “It’s true. All Jews are descended from Adam. Even the goyishe bible says so. So next time somebody boasts about their ancestors you tell them you’re a descendant of Adam’s. Hear?”

  “Yah. How come you know so much, Pa?”

  A weak smile appeared on his father’s face.

  “If I could only know so much as you, Pa.”

  “You will, Hershel. Much more. Much much more.”

  “I’d win every argument.”

  His father stood up and took a last deep breath of air and walked back into the laundry.

  “You can go home now, Hershel.”

  “Okay. But any time you want some help let me know.”

  He still lingered on, feeling guilty in not helping. But his father paid no attention to him; the machines began to absorb him again. He wished his father was like he used to be, stronger-looking, and giving all his attention to him whenever he wanted it. Now he seemed to be inside himself all the time.

  “Pa, do you wish you was a carpenter again?”

  His father didn’t answer him. A hundred spouts of dirty soapy water spilled out of the holes of a washer and splattered Hershy’s shoes and stockings. Hershy decided, finally, to leave.

  5.

  Hershy began to train his hair with water and vaseline, and finally managed to get a clean unbroken part on the side. He brushed his teeth twice a day and no longer rebelled when his mother insisted upon his changing into clean clothes. He longed for long pants but was told he wouldn’t get them until he got into high school. He studied the big guys, especially when they were with girls: the way they walked and talked and looked, wondering what they talked about and what was happening to them as they walked or sat or stood still. The image of Rachel and Joey began to blur: as something without meaning which he could no longer relate to himself; as something, almost, that had not happened, though sometimes it disturbed him in his sleep. In fact, with her gone, he began to miss her, as his mo
ther and father did, for it felt strange and lonely about the house without her.

  From time to time, when she sent a picture postcard from some different part of the country, he could almost see her getting dolled up and eating supper with him, and he could almost hear her singing voice and smell her nice powdery skin. And he could almost hear himself say to her, after a breathless trip through all the wonders she had seen and done: Rachel, what’s a girl really like, what do they want, how do they like a guy to be, what do you talk about with them, how are you supposed to feel? Maybe she’d tell him. He wished she was home again, as much as his mother and father did.

  He also wished, as he observed himself in the mirror and began to estimate himself, that he had dark curly hair and that his ears didn’t stick out and that his teeth wouldn’t make his mouth bulge and that his nose wasn’t so bony and that his eyes were wide and dark insead of light and sunken. He wished he was six feet tall, with broad shoulders and a big chest and narrow hips and strong legs, with muscles busting out all over. For, when he looked at his bony knees and the thin fuzz on his shapeless legs, at his tight white skin with only his ribs and two nipples designating his chest, at his flat waist and bony pelvic region, and at his narrow arms and shoulders, he saw himself as something not yet formed. He became helpless at the sight of himself; he’d never become a man. Time, to him, became a stationary thing; it never moved. It seemed to him that he had lasted a century and that nothing had changed about him. Growing up was endless.

  His mother, noticing his change (though he thought she was too absorbed with worry about the business and his father and the growth within her), clasped her hands and screamed with delight: my, how he was growing.