The Lawyer
He couldn't go home. Couldn't, or wouldn't, or both. It was almost eight o'clock, long after our store had closed for the day, long past his or our normal suppertime. Still he sat in my father's small office at the rear of the store, drinking and talking, talking and drinking. As soon as his glass was empty he simply held it out and, without a word—no please, no thank you—it was promptly half-filled with rye whiskey. I was then dispatched to the washroom in the warehouse to fill the other half with water.
It was the time of the Fall Assizes, and he talked about his case that had begun that morning. His client, a Ukrainian, had knifed a fellow steelworker (Irish) almost fatally. A cold-blooded ruthless attack, no. A crime of passion? Yes. The Irishman had sought to dance with the Ukrainian's wife at a wedding party; the wife had refused, the Irishman called her a bloody half-breed, the rest was buried in conflict and confusion. But would the twelve craggy impassive faces in the jury box understand?
"I'll make 'em understand," the lawyer said, extending his glass for yet another refill.
And he would, for he was the best criminal lawyer in these parts. Everyone knew it. And he knew it. His courtroom prowess was formidable; even the Assize judges—those starched, boiled and blackrobed severities from Toronto—tangled with him gingerly.
"This one's not going to be easy," he said. "You don't get much sympathy for a Ukrainian when you've got a bunch of Scottish farmers on the jury. Besides, his wife really is a half-breed. But they're starting to roll with me now, I can tell."
He described in detail his meticulous preparation weeks in advance of the trial: how he would take advantage of his old foe the local Crown Attorney whose knowlege of the laws of evidence could never be as keen as his own; how he would deliberately antagonize the judge from the very outset of the hearing so the Ukrainian would take on the complexion of the underdog rather than the aggressor. Like a general he plotted his strategy, lining up various objects on my father's desk to represent the elements in the campaign: this rubber stamp was the judge, that marble penholder was the jury, the large gum eraser was the crown attorney. Close by the jurybox sat the Ukrainian's wife (a large shiny paperclip) attired in a neat pink suit and a small white hat. Yesterday disaster; today uncertainty; tomorrow, or perhaps the day after tomorrow, triumph.
"When I'm finished," the lawyer said, "that jury will give my Ukrainian the keys to the city."
We were the perfect audience, reacting suitably with shock or admiration ("You don't say. . . . Amazing! . . . There isn't another lawyer in town who could have ...") Meanwhile the bottle of rye, full when he entered the office just before six, was now consumed down to its last few ounces, yet he showed little effect. Where did it all go? Perhaps, deep within his huge frame, there was some extraordinary apparatus where the stuff was reconstituted and distributed to various parts of his body in one benign form or another.
True, his speech was becoming a bit thick by this time. He had begun crisply, for that was his style; short sentences, simple direct language, delivered in a voice that was not loud but that managed to convey absolute authority-delivered with his massive head slightly lowered and bent forward as if poised for a strike, his eyes fixed in a permanent narrow aperture that gave him a look of shrewdness and cunning, his nose fine and straight and—viewed in profile—coming to a point at just the right distance between forehead and chin. All the handsome features were still intact, but by this time the words were being groped for, the sentences trailing off or running into each other.
Why, I wondered, didn't he ·do his drinking elsewhere? Why here, in this small office with the cheap used furniture and the girlie calendars on the walls, reflecting the taste of local hardware and feed-and-seed merchants? Surely there were hotels, or private clubs.
Yet he sat and talked on, putting off and putting off some more the unwelcome moment when the bottle would be drained dry and it would be time to go home.
"It's no good, you know," he said, extending his glass to accept the final draught, "no good at all. Too many cases. Too much pressure. Fighting everybody every minute of the time. Every eye in the place on you, watching every move you make. Got to stay alert, can't daydream even for a second.''
He sighed deeply, wearily, threw that great granite head back to catch the last possible drop from his glass, and rose slowly, standing in the middle of the small office like a giant fallen tree that managed miraculously to right itself.
"I'd better give you a ride home in my car," my father said to him, helping him on with his coat.
"Home; yes, better go home. She'll be waiting." His ·eyes, those two narrow penetrating apertures, were focused upon some distant unpleasant horizon. We helped him squeeze his bulk into the car, then out of it once we were in his driveway. I carried his hat which had refused to stay on his head.
She was waiting.
She stood in the doorway, broad-hipped, solid, calm, like a foundation stone, saying nothing. The porch light reflected on her silver-rimmed glasses, obscuring the eyes that looked out from behind the lenses, making her appear strangely eyeless. Gripping the wrought-iron railing with one hand, accepting his hat from me with the other, he made his way up three steps and across the porch and through the front door of the house with such sudden momentum that she was obliged at the last split second to step aside to avoid being run into. Neither looked back at me as I stood at the foot of the steps. Instead, she slammed the door shut, but not before I heard her voice-cold as the supper that awaited him, "Where've you been, drinking at that Jew's again?"
It was late afternoon, December 24th. A time when the saleswomen in the store began eyeing the clock on the office wall, counting the minutes until closing time. It had become a tradition over the years for my father to play host at a Christmas party for the staff. The party would commence promptly at six.
"Okay girls, the last nudnik has gone. Close up!"
The girls would hastily draw the shades at the front doors, throw the cotton dust covers over the merchandise that lay exposed on racks and counters, and head eagerly for the office where the desk had been cleared and transformed into a bar. Nothing fancy: the inevitable bottle of rye (in those days the only people who drank scotch were those clubbylooking Englishmen in the magazine advertisements), the inevitable cartons of gingerale, a box or two of pretzels, a tin of peanuts. Often the husbands or boyfriends of the saleswomen would drop in and by nine o'clock several reserve bottles, cartons and tins would have been produced and exhausted, and employer-employee relations would be at the high point for the year, both sides pledging unflagging allegiance to each other in the difficult month of January (post-Christmas sale) and the even more difficult month of February (annual stock-taking) that lay ahead.
That was how Christmas Eve was usually spent in our store. But with closing time mere minutes away, the front door was thrown open and there, in the doorway, stood the lawyer. His face was flushed. The crown of his fedora was pushed in on one side so that the hat sat lopsided on his granite head. His overcoat was unbuttoned and wide open despite the raw cold.
He was obviously drunk this time. Too drunk even to attempt to look sober, too drunk to worry about dignity. He stood in the middle of the store, arms half extended as if he were about to pronounce a benediction upon all who stood gaping at him. This time the giant tree, its boughs stretched limply out at its sides, swayed noticeably. "Look here," he commanded, "you've gotta help me, see. It's Chrizmuss. I mean tomorrow is ... an' I hafta get 'er something. Can't go home without presents for the bitch." The saleswomen exchanged embarrassed glances. One, spotting the hands of the clock at six sharp, muttered "Damn." My father, anxious to keep the ranks happy, came forward nobly. "Girls, you go into the office and start. I'll look after our friend here." He winked at them reassuringly and gestured to them to disappear into the office, which they did without argument.
The lawyer advanced to the counter on which stood the cash register, an old-fashioned piece of machinery that resembled the console of
a mighty cathedral organ. He laid his hand over the top and smiled, not warmly but slyly, his narrow eyes retaining their shrewdness even though all other faculties functioned far below their peak.
"I know you Jews," he said. "This thing"—he tapped the cash register with his forefinger—"this plays your favourite music, doesn't it?"
He dug clumsily into his pocket, and his fist emerged and opened, spilling a crumpled pile of bills on the counter. There were tens, twenties, even one fifty-dollar bill—a sight not commonly beheld in those times.
"I got 'im off, y'know."
"Got who off?"
"The fella with the knife. I told you I'd get him off, an' I did, by Christ. I got the bugger off. And this"—he pointed to the bills—"this is the balance of my fee. Well, almost the balance."
The beverage room in the hotel across the street had the spent portion.
"Let's start with a dress for her; somethin' good now, y'hear? I don't want any of your damn monkey business just because I've been drinking. I want something good."
My father's accomplished eyes had counted the bills almost the moment they landed. He moved happily to the most expensive rack of dresses, summoning the lawyer to follow him.
"What size does she take?"
"How th'hell should I know. She's short and—" He indicated that she had considerable girth.
"It would be better if we knew her right size. We do have a store policy that we don't accept returns unless it's our mistake," my father cautioned him in a very courteous tone of voice.
"Don't worry about that," the lawyer responded. "I'm pretty sure she comes up to about my shoulder, and she's kinda big around here and here, y'know."
A dress was chosen, then a tweed winter coat, a chenille bathrobe, a couple of satin nightgowns, several pairs of stockings, and a silk scarf. In between choices my father would dart into the office. "Just another minute or two, girls. Have some more pretzels."
The gifts were wrapped in tissue, boxed, and tied; the account was totalled, and what little was left of the money on the counter was handed back. The cash register rang— sang!—and the biggest single sale of the sellingest day of the year was recorded.
"I sure hope everything fits," father said, helping to arrange the boxes in an awkward stack in the lawyer's arms.
The lawyer's eyes looked intently into my father's. "Do you? Do you really?"
"Yes."
"Well lemme tell you something, my frien' ... I don't give a good goddam."
And with that generous remark, the giant tree turned and swayed out of the store and into his own Christmas Eve.
The office party began almost a full hour behind schedule. One of the saleswomen, already irked at the delay in the start of festivities, shrugged as if a cold chill had passed through her.
"God, if my husband handed me a Christmas present in that spirit, I'd throw it in his face."
"I'd take it all back right after Boxing Day," said another.
"Bite your tongues," my father said. "You don't get a cash sale like that every day." He filled the waiting glasses. Beaming, he lifted his own glass in the air.
"Merry Christmas," he said.
When the party was over, and all that was left were ashtrays laden to the brim with cigarette butts, and when that terrible late Christmas Eve silence that every smalltown Jew knows and dreads had settled on us, my father turned to me.
"Funny how the world goes 'round," he said. "An Irishman gets stabbed for calling a Ukrainian's wife a halfbreed. The Ukrainian pays a fortune to an English lawyer to get him off in front of a jury full of Scotchmen. And they all end up making a Jew happy for a few minutes on Christmas Eve."
Up in Smoke
The line between Good and Evil is thin. In fact, it is thinner than thin; it is practically non-existent. Virtue and sin invade each other's territories freely and no sanctuary on this earth—no matter how lofty—affords absolute protection from wicked thoughts and unlawful deeds.
Take the synagogue in our town, for instance. Erected in the mid-forties after years of patient planning and fundraising, the little red brick building on Bruce Street stood as the crowning achievement of the Jewish community. Here at last was a roof to call our own, with a lawn in front and a mezuzeh on the door and a sign declaring that this was the House of Jacob. No more meetings in the Oddfellows Hall and Foresters Hall, no more High Holiday services in dance halls over bowling alleys.
As one of the three trustees appointed by the congregation to supervise the construction, my father was very proud of the edifice. In the years following its consecration he filled just about every post from steward to president. The House of Jacob was the object of some of his noblest efforts.
It was also the site of the one desperate crime he committed in his seventy years.
My father had a weakness for a particular brand of American cigarettes. Blindfolded, put in a room with a hundred different cigarettes all burning at once, he could quickly sniff out and lead you directly to his favourite brand. That make, and that make alone, satisfied his craving. What's more, he was a smoker of Olympic capacity, running through as many as three packs a day with hardly a pause for breath. Such demands for Yankee Tobacco—and lots of it—would have created agonizing frustration in the average Canadian. But my father was lucky; he lived in a border town. A simple ten-minute ferry ride across the St. Mary's River brought him to the land of plenty—Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan—where he would stock up often and generously.
There was one disadvantage: in a small border town the customs officials eventually got to know the steady travellers a little too intimately. No need to post up a "front-and-side" photograph of my father in the customs office; they knew him by heart. It was a reasonable assumption that he wasn't journeying regularly to the U.S. side of the border just for a change of scenery (there was no change of scenery, for that matter). Eventually, it behooved the smuggler to be a little less cavalier, a little more prudent.
My father, therefore, prevailed upon tourist friends from the States to transport the precious contraband into town for him. This they did with such zeal the first summer that by the end of August his closets were crammed with several cartrunk-loads of cigarettes. And still the tourists continued to arrive, the September hay-fever sufferers from Michigan and Illinois and Ohio who sought relief in our clean clear northern air. And with them came still more cigarettes, carton after carton of the stuff.
Then came bad news: the R.C.M.P. announced the beginning of a campaign to stop cigarette smuggling. There would be closer scrutiny at border points, personal inspections, cars would be turned inside-out, suspect premises would be raided and searched, arrests made.
Surveying his cornucopious closets, my father worried out loud, "Where in hell will I ever find a safe place to hide all that?"
Suddenly he had his answer. Hell was no place to stash the cigarettes; indeed hell was the first place the police would search. Better to conceal them in heaven, or at least as close to heaven as one could find in these parts.
The cartons-dozens of them—were promptly packed in innocent-looking boxes. That very night, when it was late and the streets were dark and deserted, my father loaded the entire stockpile into his car and transferred it from his house to the House of Jacob. As a trustee, he possessed a set of keys to the synagogue and was familiar with every nook and cranny of the place. He chose the most inconspicuous location, a gloomy space under the foyer stairs that was visited only by the holy spirits who inhabited the building and by no mortals ·except himself. There, in that lonely unlit cache, he laid to rest his forbidden cargo.
From time to time, as his needs dictated, he would make pilgrimages to the synagogue and dip into his reserves. It was known that he went to the synagogue often, for in our town a person's comings and goings were impossible to keep a secret as long as there was a sun in the sky by day and a moon by night. But everyone assumed that he was motivated by a mixture of orthodox piety and devotion to his secular duties. I alone kne
w the extra-curricular nature of his attendances.
I regard this as being in essence a religious tale. True, my father's acts could hardly be termed righteous; still one must admit that by cloistering his secret stock of American cigarettes in the temple, he demonstrated an unshakable faith in the Divine.
And there is an element of mystery here, too. (After all, aren't all religious tales founded upon equal elements of faith and mystery?) The mystery is this: our Rabbi—may he rest in peace—was also a devotee of American cigarettes.
I wonder where he kept his?
Of Life and Love in a '41 DeSoto
The last thing in the world you did, if you were a teenage Jewish boy in the Sault, was to date a teenage Jewish girl.
The reasons were obvious: firstly, teenage Jewish girls were horrible, each and every one of them. They knew you too well because they had grown up with you. Secondly, and worse still, their parents knew you too well. Whenever you called on a Jewish girl her mother would always look you up and down and burst out laughing. "My God," she would exclaim, "I knew you when you were just a little pisher in diapers, and now look at you." And her father would pinch your cheek until you saw stars.
If a Jewish boy took out a Jewish girl more than twice, the fathers of the boy and girl would joke openly about the future relationship of their families and arrange to inspect each other's financial statements and bank books so that the young couple would be guaranteed a proper economic start in life—all of which joking and arranging was positively mortifying to the young couple itself. Occasionally it turned out that the two sets of parents hadn't been on speaking terms for several years; as a result, any proposed union of boy and girl could hardly be expected to receive official blessings at home and was therefore doomed. Indeed, the sins of the parents were always visited upon their children. "Don't go out with her, she's a gold-digger just like her mother..." "Stay away from him, he's a stubborn fool just like his father . . ."
A Good Place to Come From Page 11