Jew Store (17 page)

According to my father, if there was one thing they didn't need at that moment, it was peace and quiet.

Joey asked T if he couldn't stay and then go to the next show. T said he couldn't and tried to explain the Saturday picture-show routine. How it worked, he said, was “you kindly eases yourself in” and see the serial while the others were out buying with their folks. “The others see it first,” he said, “and it takes the fire pure out of it.”

Mrs. MacAllister, listening to T, suddenly knew why the farmers hadn't been in. The answer was that they were out buying their important stuff—their feed, seed, “their living, other words,” she said. And they did their “personal shopping” in the afternoons.

“I ain't sure I'm on the same page as you, Mrs. Mac,” said my father, “but I sure hope you're reading the words right.”

A few people trickled in. My father took out his watch: four minutes to twelve. And here came Miss Brookie, a basket lifted
high and saying, “I brought some lunch, but I wouldn't complain a speck if y'all were too busy to eat it.”

My father said customers weren't exactly knocking them down. He took a chicken leg and napkin and asked if Carrie MacAllister had it right, and Miss Brookie agreed. After the farmers bought their “necessities,” they'd eat their dinners in the courthouse park, and then, she said, “You might look for them to come in.”

Might
. My father took notice of the word.

My mother came over and refused a deviled egg. “On such a day, how can I eat?” she asked of nobody in particular. Among her worries were the “coloreds.” None had been in.

Easy to explain, Miss Brookie said. They were waiting on the Klan, hanging around on First Street to see what the Klan was up to. If a Kluxer walked into Bronson's with his family, the Negroes would take this as the sign that they could do the same.

This consoled my mother not at all. She used to say she rubbed her hands so much on this day, she thought both skin and bones would disappear. “
Oyoyoy
,” she said to Miss Brookie. “So much worry before somebody comes in to buy something.”

“But what if the Klan don't put its okay?” My father's nervousness had turned the word into the long-discarded “hokay.”

Miss Brookie said that “without the
hokay
,” the Klan would take action long about suppertime. “Just drape themselves in muslin and march,” she said.

“March?” My mother, in her innocence, was slightly buoyed by the idea of a march. In 1909 she and her family had attended a parade to commemorate Henry Hudson's discovery of the Hudson River, and it had been through the years one of her proudest memories. How glorious the celebrated Goldman band had been, with sunlight glinting off tubas, and white uniforms sparkling as the men stepped smartly down Fifth Avenue, playing
with gusto, aware they were thrilling the crowd. “There'll be a parade?” she asked Miss Brookie.

Miss Brookie, as if reading my mother's mind, said this was not going to be like any parade my mother might have seen. No, this one would be men in grubby sheets shuffling down First Street. And for music, only whoops and hollers from the crowd.

Where they would march
to
was to our store. My father always said that at these words he could feel his face go pale, and when Miss Brookie said they'd want to paint a cross on the store's window, since they wouldn't want to
burn
one on First Street, he felt his whole body go pale. And here was this lady, this Miss Brookie, being so unexcited, so calm, so . . . goyish.

My father wondered if there wasn't something they could do, somebody they could talk to, and Miss Brookie, in her unruffled way, said no, there wasn't, and that my father should “disabuse” himself of the idea that they would listen to
her
, whom they trusted, she said, “about as much as a goat in the gladiolas.”

As predicted, the farmers came in. They came in a surge; everyone had work to do. The farmers were eager to buy. The children needed shoes, the women needed yard goods, the men needed work pants and shirts. They needed, they needed; and since times were good, they bought. Joey was moving quickly to replenish, and Miriam was busy with her souvenirs.

It was clear the farmers were delighted to have such a store to trade in. One man, eyes squinting as if he were still in the field under a glaring sun, told my father, “Lord help us if Miz Turnpaugh ain't been as excited as a pup. I reckoned if you didn't open up soon, I'd have to ice her down.”

My father's banter was unflagging: “You the one with that nice-looking farm out on the south road?” he might say. “With that fine stand of cotton? And the cows everybody says give such good milk? Well, you'll want some shirts I got in mind. You don't want those cows to be handsomer than you. Right over
here, sir.” The customers, perhaps reserved at first, ended up laughing, joking back, buying.

Miss Brookie was taking it all in, but my father knew she was thinking that yes, it was nice to see all the farmers, but if the Klan turned thumbs down, they wouldn't be seeing them for long. As for the factory workers, they wouldn't even
appear
until the Klan said it was okay.

So as he turned from one customer to the other, my father would say he had one eye fixed on First Street, and once or twice he thought he saw sheeted figures on the cobblestones.

The day wore on, the farmer families came in fewer numbers. Tom Dillon came in, Miss Brookie gave him a word, and he gave a word back. After a sweeping look, he walked out again.

Did Miss Brookie have any ideas on Dillon? “I notice he didn't drop any money on us,” my father told her.

Miss Brookie thought Dillon was probably just looking to see who was there. And hoping to find the store empty. And it was a kind of shame that it wasn't because if nobody was there, he might decide it wasn't worth the trouble.

Trouble?
My father felt a renewed paleness.

The trouble it took to start up the Klan, Miss Brookie said.

This was new information: Tom Dillon was a Kluxer? “Him?”

“Sure, him. He's a leading light. When he gives the word, sheets start flapping.” Apparently there wasn't a “white soul in town” who didn't “run with” the Klan—farmers, factory workers, the lot. Miss Brookie had the ultimate example: the Baptist minister who had been the Klan chaplain. There was a story that went with this—the man had eloped with the choir soloist, leaving behind a wife and four children. It was a story that, had it come from Carrie MacAllister, Miss Brookie would have called gossip, but since it came from her, she called an illustration of the town's sociology.

Six o'clock neared. If anything was going to happen, it would happen pretty soon. My father thought Joey and Miriam
would be better off in the picture show, but what if they got busy (was it possible they would get busy?) and needed them?

They waited, Miss Brookie in the shoe department holding Billy Sunday in her lap; Mrs. MacAllister having an exchange with a customer; Vedra Broome upstairs eating; my mother sitting rigidly on her register stool; and my father, whenever free, positioning himself at the front door.

He was there when the door pushed open and a stranger in a blue shirt and dark pants came in, trailed immediately by a wife and several children.

Miss Brookie, Billy Sunday held in front of her like an offering, darted forward. From her lips came an impassioned cry. “Wister! Wister Rankin! Why bless your heart!”

Wister Rankin, though clearly puzzled by this ardent welcome, got out a big-toothed grin that opened up most of his face.

Mrs. Rankin grinned also. The children glued their eyes to Miss Brookie, plainly hoping she would do something else outrageous.

Miss Brookie's greeting was endless. “It's just so
good
to see you!” She grabbed Miriam's box. “Here, take some pretties.”

“Already got some,” Mrs. Rankin said.

“Then take some more.”

Wister offered that they had been looking forward to the opening like to Christmas. “Yes, ma'am,” he said, “And I'll probably spend my last dime here, too.” He laughed.

Miss Brookie laughed with him, heartily, as if he had made the funniest possible joke. “That's really so funny,” she said, and laughed harder still.

What Miss Brookie was laughing at, my father, standing beside her and listening, had no clue. What did this wild laughter mean? Could it be that Miss Brookie was going to pieces? Had she at last, as she had always predicted, been pushed over the edge by the people she had to deal with, people who had
the imagination of that concrete orb in her yard, as she would say?

Wister was expressing a desire to meet “the man”; and Miss Brookie swallowed hard and at last got her laughter under control. She reached out and pulled my father into the group.

When she did the introductions, she also
mentioned
—nailing my father, he later said, with a look about as delicate as “a
klop
to the chops”—that Wister worked at the shoe factory. So the Klan had come to their decision, and it had been to do nothing. It was then that my father was able to fathom Miss Brookie's hitherto unfathomable laughter. It had been the laughter of relief.

My father's hand went forward and he said to Wister, “A real pleasure. . . . What can I show you?”

Miss Brookie asked Wister to excuse them and pulled my father into the shoe department, where she stood looking at him. They exchanged victory smiles. “You did it, Aaron, you did it,” she said.

T
hat night there were plenty of sales for all. Nobody, of course, had more than my father. As the evening wore on, he took off his coat, and in his shirtsleeves with the rubber band on the sleeves to hold the cuffs up and keep them clean, he was here, there, everywhere. It was nothing for him to outfit the whole family from father to baby, then to go outside to the family wagon, pull out Grandma and Grandpa, and outfit them as well. He was a sal-es-man doing what a sal-es-man did best.

I
n the kitchen that night, Miss Brookie had one more instructional tale. As she passed around Lizzie Maud's pineapple upside-down cake, she told everybody she had “divined” the reason the Klan hadn't marched, that it had to do with the competition between Dillon and Spivey. “Thing's this,”
she said. “In the Klan Spivey's got muscles about as big as Tom's.” And since Dillon and Spivey got along “like spinach and peach preserves in the same jar,” if Dillon wanted the Klan to march, Spivey would be hell-bent to see that they didn't.

It sounded plausible, but my father had another theory. His had to do with the “accordin' thing” that Spivey had tacked on to the lease. With the “accordin' thing” operating, if my father did well, Spivey did well. It was as simple as that. Anyway, he told Miss Brookie, whatever was the reason, it was a good night.

To which Miss Brookie laughed and said, no, it was not a good night
entirely
.

So why not an entirely good night?

Because, Miss Brookie said, my father now had to pay her four dollars a week rent. “Into each life some rain must fall,” she said, and gave my father a wink.

My father used to say there wasn't much Miss Brookie could tell him about rain falling that he didn't already know, but on this night, with all the money that was in the register and all the customers who had left happy, he didn't point this out, just winked back, and said, “My pleasure.”

And when my father went to bed that night and thought it all over, what he really wanted to believe was that the Klan hadn't marched because Concordia truly needed a Jew store.

I
've been told that in the days following the store's opening, business stayed up and anxieties went down, though of course my mother always had a little stock of anxieties she could turn to, and she now turned to Joey's school. In Tennessee, children started school at seven, Joey was seven, and the first day of school was approaching. The opening date, however, was later than in New York, as in Tennessee harvest time was taken into account.

She was anxious about all manner of things: first of all, whether the teachers would like Joey, though, as she said to her invisible third person while giving Joey's cheek a forceful pinch, “What could there be about my Joey not to like except he's Jewish?”—at the same time trying to ignore my father's look. She fretted about who Joey would play with, knowing the answer—Gentiles, of course; and about what, in this little town, the children wore to school. In New York pupils wore uniforms—navy blue knickers, white shirts, and ties blue or red; girls wore navy blue skirts, white middie blouses, and also red or blue ties. But here? Did they dress as if for church? Or was it farm clothes? In which case were shoes considered an urban affectation?

T arrived on the first morning of school, to see to things. Though himself in starched and sharply ironed overalls and high-topped, thick-soled shoes, he pronounced Joey's corduroy knickers and high-topped,
thin
-soled shoes “fitting.” Erv was dressed the same as T. Though not a pupil in the technical sense, Erv was allowed to be in school and share T's seat. He wouldn't go “for real” until next year.

My mother spotted another opportunity for worry: T was carrying a book satchel. When my mother looked stricken, Miss Brookie rushed around and found a satchel in her attic. Its leather was dry, its color like bread mold, its buckles rusted. My mother gave it a quick scrub job, scouring it with Old Dutch Cleanser, then finishing off with neat's-foot oil from an old bottle Lizzie Maud had found.

My brother has always said he was of two minds about the satchel: It was pitiful looking, he remembers—and Miriam has backed him up on this—but he knew my mother was eager that he have what the others had. Maybe it
was
true, as my mother thought for as long as she lived, that Joey had a special way of feeling her feelings, as they say now; it was obvious to all of us that even if he didn't exactly share her feelings, he always took them into account. Perhaps the fact that he looked like my mother—he had her freckly fair skin and short features—carried with it this responsibility. So he said yes, Mama, he would carry the satchel.