Fever Season (12 page)

“Of course,” Mrs. Freedman said. “I'll see what I can do.”

About an hour later Mr. Rosen was driving David home. It was the first time he'd ever been in a car. It was big and black, with spoke wheels like fat bicycle tires and two glass headlamps in front that reminded him of googly eyes. The ride was smoother than in a streetcar, but the car jerked every time it stopped and started. David remembered what his father had said about horses and cars on the way home from their first hockey game. Mr. Rosen's car was a little noisy, but at least it didn't poop!

It was only about a fifteen-minute drive from the Montefiore Home to Chabot Street. Arriving by car somehow made the street seem smaller than David had ever realized. All the buildings were so tightly packed. Mr. Rosen parked the car in front and rang the bell for the first-floor flat. Mr. Lemoine, the landlord, came to the door. Mr. Rosen had telephoned ahead, so Mr. Lemoine was expecting them. David had never spoken to him much, but his parents had lived in the flat for a long time and they'd been good tenants. Even when times were tough, they always paid their bills.

Mr. Lemoine wasn't sure what to say. He just grimaced at David, who was carrying a small box they had given him at the Home to collect some of his things. “Your mother was a real nice lady,” he said. Then he led David and Mr. Rosen up the stairs. “It'll be cold inside,” he told them as they climbed. He had opened all the windows so the flat could air out. “And I burned all the clothes,” he whispered to Mr. Rosen. “The sheets and blankets, too.”

“Probably wise,” Mr. Rosen said. “We've already arranged for new clothes to be donated for the boy.”

When they got to the top, Mr. Lemoine unlocked the door. It was obvious he had no intention of coming inside. “Just leave it when you're done. I'll lock up later.” Then he turned and went back down.

Mr. Rosen held open the door for David, and they went inside. It was cold. Somehow it was even colder inside than it had been on the stairs. David could almost see his father putting a couple of logs into the heater. There were still dishes in the drying rack beside the sink in the kitchen, and a bad smell came from the icebox. Mr. Lemoine hadn't thought to empty it. Despite the cold in the flat, all the ice had melted long ago. No one had been there to empty the pan, and there was water all over the floor. It made David feel even too sad to cry. He turned away and went to his room.

David picked up his scrapbooks and put them in the box. He took down some of the pictures from the wall and placed them in the box, as well. He'd heard Mr. Lemoine and Mr. Rosen talking about the clothes. He knew his dresser drawers would be empty, but he opened them, anyway. In the bottom drawer he saw his sewing kit. David stared at it for a moment, then took it out. He unfastened the snap and opened the leather sides. Inside were several needles of varying lengths and thicknesses, plus a few safety pins. There were three cardboard spools of thread, a collection of buttons, a thimble to protect his thumb, and a small pair of scissors for cutting thread.

He closed the kit and put it back in the drawer. Then, as he pushed the drawer shut, he changed his mind. It didn't feel right to leave the kit behind, as if it would disappoint his mother if he did. So he put it in the box, too.

David went into his parents' room next. He stared at the bed for a long time. It was just a grey mattress on a metal frame, but it reminded David of a skeleton, which seemed about right. On top of the dresser was a carrying case where his mother kept her thread. He opened it and threw some of the spools into his box. The family had very few photographs, but there were some on the far wall in this bedroom. David walked over and studied them. There was one of his mother and father, and another of David and Alice. There was also one of the four of them together. They had been taken early in the summer of 1916, before his father had joined the army. Everyone looked a lot younger.

Mr. Rosen had been silent as David strode through the house, but he spoke now. “You should take them,” he said of the photographs. “It's painful now, but one day you'll be glad you have them.”

David felt as if that would never be true, but then he remembered something. “Uncle Danny!” He rushed back to the dresser and pulled opened the top drawer. Nothing was in there. No stack of letters. No folder with the half-photo.

He spun around angrily. Mr. Lemoine must have burned them with the clothes. But then David spotted the folder. It was sitting on the small wooden table next to the bed. There was a pencil there, too. David could see that something had been written on the folder. It was faint, as if it had been scribbled by someone too weak to press down properly. The printing was sloppy, but David recognized it as his mother's. She had written two words on the folder protecting her brother's picture:
Find him.

C
HAPTER
11

David couldn't wait to show the picture to Mrs. Freedman when he got back to the Home.

“This is my Uncle Danny,” he said. “I could live with him!”

Mrs. Freedman saw what was written on the folder and opened it. She was surprised when she saw the picture. Not just because the face looked so much like David's, but because the boy in the picture was even younger than David was.

“When was this taken?” she asked.

“I don't know exactly,” David said. “A long time ago, I guess. My mother said he was ten or eleven.”

“He's your mother's brother?”

“Yes.”

“And there's no picture of what he looks like now?”

“No.”

“But he's the only relative you're aware of?”

“Yes.” David was getting impatient.

Mrs. Freedman picked up a pencil and paper. “Do you know his last name?”

David tried to remember. His mother usually just called him Danny. “Embury!” he said suddenly.

“Danny Embury.”

“And he lives in Montreal?”

“No. He lives in Seattle.”

Mrs. Freedman's brow wrinkled briefly. “Seattle, Washington?”

“I guess so. Out west. Near Vancouver.”

She nodded. “Do you know his address?”

“No …”

Mrs. Freedman did her very best to keep the doubt out of her voice. “Well, David, we can try. But it won't be easy.”

David moved into the boys' dormitory that night. It was a large L-shaped room with a wooden floor and small windows on the outside wall. There were about a dozen beds in one part of the L, with eight lined up under the windows against the long part of the wall, and four across from them. There were about the same number of beds inside the other part of the L. There were lockers, like in school, along the two ends of the dorm where the boys kept their clothes. David put the box with his scrapbooks and pictures beneath his bed. It was a nice bed, not a cot, with a thick mattress. When no one was looking, David tucked his sewing kit under the foot of his mattress. He didn't know what people here would make of it, but he didn't want it to be among the first things these boys knew about him.

The children in the Home were divided into three groups. Group One included the children who were six to nine. They were called Group One because they were the first to go to bed at night. Group Two were aged ten to thirteen, and Group Three were the children between fourteen and sixteen. David was in Group Two. An older boy named Meyer from Group Three showed him around.

“Mostly things are pretty good here,” Meyer told him. “We watch out for each other. But there are always a couple of troublemakers. There's a boy named Benny in your group who's always looking for a fight.”

The boys took turns sweeping the floor in the dorm, and the first time Meyer told Benny to take the broom and sweep, Benny shoved him and said, “Make me!”

“Watch out for Solly in my group, too. He's always getting his mouth washed out with soap for swearing. If you hang around him, you will, too. But he's not really a troublemaker. More of a kibbitzer, really.”

David didn't understand that word.

“A kibbitzer's a joker,” Meyer explained. “Solly likes to fool around. I forgot that you're not Jewish.”

“My father was Jewish.”

“Doesn't count. Your mother's the one who has to be Jewish.”

“She's not,” said David, who wasn't used yet to saying
wasn't
when he was talking about his mother.

“Then you're not.”

Meyer didn't say that in a mean way. Still, David wasn't sure where he stood as a non-Jew in a Jewish orphanage. “We never went to church or anything,” he said.

“Well, now I guess you'll be going to
shul
,” Meyer said.

“Shul?”

“Synagogue. We have services in the auditorium every Saturday morning. They'll make you go. Everyone has to. Don't know if they'll bother sending you to the Hebrew school, though.”

David discovered that the Home ran its own Hebrew school. It also had a library with books in English and a reading room where kids could study or do their homework. They all went to a regular day school a couple of blocks away.

Schools and other public places had opened again while David was recovering. Still, the people at the Home thought David wasn't strong enough for full days at school. It was already near the end of November, so they decided he could wait to begin school after the break for Christmas and New Year's.

The Home was nearly empty when everyone else went to school. Of course, there was always some of the staff around. Sometimes David helped Mrs. Freedman in the office. That was where she usually worked when there were no emergencies in the infirmary. He did things for her like filing papers or stamping envelopes. A few were addressed to charities and other Jewish groups in Seattle.

“I hope someone there will be able to find out something for us,” she told him.

During the week, David worked with the kitchen staff to set the tables for when the other kids came home for lunch. Often he helped J-P stock the shelves in the pantry, too. Although David was supposed to get to know the other kids in the Home, he often ate his lunch with J-P in the pantry.

J-P usually had a French newspaper with him. David couldn't understand many of the words, but he did recognize some of the names and pictures, especially as the hockey season neared.

“That's Newsy Lalonde,” David said over J-P's shoulder one day in early December. “What's the story say?”

“Da Canadiens are starting practice this week. Lalonde's been working out in a gym da past couple of weeks and they say he's already in great shape. With the war over a lot more players will be back in da game. Dey're calling it the Peace Season. You a hockey fan?”

“Yeah,” David said. “My father used to take me to games.”

“Wanderers, eh?”

“No, the Canadiens. He said he liked the way they played.”

“Smart man, your father.”

David was quiet.

J-P didn't say anything for a while, either. Then he asked, “What happened to him?”

“I don't really know. We got a telegram, but it didn't say much.”

J-P nodded. “It was pretty bad over there. I lost my bruder at Passchendaele. One minute Jacques was standing beside me, next minute
boom
and he was gone. They told me dere was nothing left but his boots. Blast knocked me out for three days, but all I lost was a couple of fingers and some muscle in my thigh. Couldn't march after that, though. They had to send me home.”

That was the most David had ever heard a soldier talk about the war. Most of them didn't like to speak of it except to other soldiers. No one else could really understand.

David brought their conversation back to hockey.

“First game I went to, Joe Hall pushed Newsy into the boards and he got cut for ten stitches.”

“I was dere, too! That Hall's a … well, I don't wanna say around here what he is, but I can't believe dey're teammates now.”

“I know, but they got along so well last season they even roomed together on road trips. There were lots of stories about it.”