Joe Pitt 3 - Half the Blood of Brooklyn (15 page)

When they try to get Stretch from Vendetta's embrace, she bites someone's thumb off. They
get smart and let her hold the dead guy and just lift them both from the floor and carry
them out to wherever they took Harm and Rachel. Axler's place, I guess.

And in the middle of all this, Axler comes for me.

Knife out, chaos behind him, he reaches under the pew and pulls me out and I twist my
wrists and the straps hold and I kick my legs and the straps hold and he pulls my hair and
stretches my throat and when his father hauls him off me and throws him to the other side
of the temple he takes hair and scalp with him.

And soon after that, it's pretty quiet. The girls are gone with the escort of boys, which
leaves me bound on the floor, and the Rebbe sighing deep, and his son dragging himself to
his feet and looking for his knife, and Lydia, still staring at the door where they took
the dead father and his crazed daughters.

Lydia looks at Moishe.

--I did warn him.

He crouches next to her.

--Yes, you did. No one said otherwise.

--I've never done anything like that before.

--Of course not, why would you have? He tasked you. You are wounded and exhausted and in
danger and he tasked you.

--I mean, I've, I've, I've killed before. But in self defense. I. I've never. In anger.
I've never done that before.

--You were raised well, then. You said your father kept Seder? You were raised in a proper
house? He was Jewish? Yes?

She looks at the cracked tiles.

--What? Yes. Jewish. All that nonsense. All of us. Yeah, yeah, but California Jewish is
different from New York Jewish.

--Shht. Nonsense. There is only Jewish. Look at us, yes? I came from Poland. Do you believe
this? It is true. Deep in the dark holds of ships. Smuggled out. From Poland. Over the
sea. Are we different from New York Jews? Perverse as we are, are we not Jewish? Yes, we
are. Your father raised you Jewish, you are Jewish. And your mother?

--Yeah, like I said, all Jewish. Bat mitzvah, the whole thing. Till I was old enough to
think for myself.

--Well, they must have raised you well and loving. You've been blessed. In this our life,
only to have killed in self defense. Never until now in anger. Never from greed or hunger.
That I could say the same.

He stands, he stands and takes a step and puts himself in the path of his son, who has
recovered his knife and has crossed the temple and is coming for me.

--Axler.

--Move, Papa.

--Boy.

--Move.

Axler sweeps his arm at his father to knock him aside.

And the Rebbe grabs his son's wrist and twists it and cranks it down and behind his back
and pushes it up and kicks him once behind each knee and Axler goes down and throws his
free hand out to catch himself and the knife flies from his fingers and his father forces
the arm high and his son bends until his forehead touches the ground, his face rubbed in
the pooled blood of his uncle.

--Boy, you have done enough. Enough. And is there no length you will not go to cover your
sins? Laying hands on your father? Your Rebbe? Piling bodies on bodies to hide the ones
beneath? Invoke the safety of the tribe to excuse your shame? Shht.

He releases the arm and straightens. But Axler stays as he is.

--My son.

He walks to the fallen knife and picks it up.

--My pride and joy.

He comes to me with the knife.

--Do you know how many older brothers he had, this one?

He slips the blade between the straps on my ankles and parts them.

--Six. Six boys older. And perhaps wiser, yes? How could they not have been?

He slips the blade between the straps on my wrists and parts them.

--But only this one survives. When he reached the age when I could pass the blood of
Gibeah, only he had the strength for it. Of seven, only this one of my sons.

He tucks the knife in his belt, crosses to Lydia, puts a hand under her arm, helps her to
her feet, leads her to a pew and seats her.

--It's not carried in birth, the blood of Gibeah. Even though his mother and I both have
it, our children were born without it. The act of love, it will not carry this warrior's
blood.

He finds a handkerchief in his trouser pocket and wipes spots of Stretch's blood from
Lydia's hands.

--But the ones who have the strength, they take the blood young. After the bris, of course.

He tucks the handkerchief away and looks at me as I sit up on the floor.

--Imagine, if we put the blood in them before the bris? The mohel's dismay.
Wait, didn't I just cut that off?

He smiles with half his face.

He gets up again, goes to his son, rests a hand on his back.

--Get up, Axler. Get up. There is shame in what you have done, but there is also pride. You
are my son, yes? Nothing you do, nothing I do changes this. We cannot change this.

Axler lifts his face from the blood, looks up, raises his hands, holds his arms to his
father.

--Papa.

--It's OK, boy.

--Papa.

The Rebbe takes a step forward and presses Axler's face to his stomach and Axler wraps his
arms around him.

--Papa, I killed Selig. And Chaim. Chaim died. And their bodies. Chaim was burned and.
Fletcher. Fletcher was also killed. Pieces of him were lost. And Elias, his body. And
another. We didn't know what was his and. And the others, they came because I told them it
was alright. That if the girls drove and we didn't use guns, the sins would be less and. I
killed Selig, Papa.

--Shht. Shh.

He holds his son's head and looks at me and Lydia.

--This is what war does to us, yes? Our principles, our love, everything is tested. We find
out everything there is to know about ourselves in two things only. In war. And in love.

He puts a hand under his son's chin and lifts his face and looks at him, tear tracks cut
through the blood on the boy's cheeks.

--My son has just learned that he is not so strong as he thinks.

He glances at Lydia.

--As have you.

Axler sobs, coughs.

--I'm sorry, Papa.

Moishe shakes his head.

--No, no, don't be sorry to me, be sorry to God. To God you owe your apologies. Apologize
now to God.

Axler nods and closes his eyes and begins to whisper.

The Rebbe looks down at him.

--And, you see, tonight you find out more than that you are weak in war. You find out you
are strong in love. The love for your friends. It was too strong for you to lie. When the
time came, your love was too strong not to do what you had to. Not to face the truth, yes?

He runs his fingers through his son's hair, straightens his yarmulke.

--This is the nature of love, to shine a light. To show us all what we really feel and
want.

He looks at the ceiling.

--We have only to open our eyes and look, to see what love demands of us.

He slides the knife from his belt, pulls his son's head back, baring his throat, and he
pushes the knife through his neck, much as Axler did to murder his friend; a killing
stroke he must have learned from his father.

I'm about to come off the floor and grab the Rebbe's head and twist his neck and drag
Lydia the hell out of this madhouse when the boys come back in and I have to put that
particular plan on hold.

--And so we are diminished. Four sons of Benjamin. All with the blood of Gibeah in their
veins. All killed in one night. And Abe as well. We must not forget Abe, yes? Not a
Benjaminite, true, but he carried Gibeah in him. And he fathered two girls both strong
enough to carry Gibeah themselves. A rare thing. Here, lift him.

He tucks the tail of the shroud around his son's body and gestures to two of the boys and
they lift Axler and carry him to the front of the temple and lay him at the foot of the
altar.

Another boy comes back from the errand he was sent on and places a large bucket of soapy
water and a pile of rags where the Rebbe points.

--There. No, leave them. All of you. Just. Sit please, yes? And be quiet for a moment. If
this is not too much to ask? Yes? Thank you.

The boys take seats in the last row of the temple.

Rebbe Moishe takes one of the rags and dunks it in the water and starts to wipe up the
blood of his son and his sister's husband.

--And now the girls are of more importance than ever, yes? Daughters of their mother and of
Abe. We'll need them not only because they can produce true sons and daughters of
Benjamin, but because they come of such strong stock. With luck, perhaps one or both of
them will give us a boy who can carry the blood of Gibeah.

He twists the rag over the bucket and it rains red.

--But, this doesn't matter to you, yes? You have heard enough of our problems. This our
life, to sustain a history and a people that we trace back before Christ and Moses. What
is that to you? Nothing. To you there is one question, yes? Coalition or Society,
What is to be done with us now?
is your only question.

He scrubs the temple floor.

--What is happening here, here in our land, in New Gibeah, this is for us, not for anyone
else. If some others here who carry the blood of Gibeah do not wish to remain in the city,
they may do as they please. They may leave. Provided, this is no surprise by now I think,
provided that like Abe they do not try to take our daughters with them. But to leave is
one thing, yes? To bring outsiders here is another. It invites misunderstanding and chaos.

He holds out his arms, the rag dripping.

--Chaos. War. Death.

He wrings the rag and bends to clean.

--We do not want these things brought here to our doorstep. Nor do you, I think, want them
brought to yours. The Gibeahans, the seven hundred left-handed warriors we can muster,
brought to your house, would not suit you.

He looks at us.

--Yes?

He cleans.

--Shht. Of course not. So a message must be sent. A message clear and without ambiguity
must be sent.

He drops the rag in the bucket and comes to his feet.

--You remember the message that was sent, yes? When Gibeah was destroyed by the children of
Israel, you remember? The concubine,
divided together with her bones into twelve pieces and sent into all the coasts of
Israel.

Lydia and I are on our feet, the boys are on theirs.

The Rebbe raises his hands.

--No. No. That will not be the message tonight. No. There has been enough. No. Not tonight.
If you come again, if any of you come again across the river, yes, that is the message we
will send. That is the warning we will send, the promise we will make and keep.

He looks at the body at the altar.

--But not tonight. For love's sake we are done with that tonight.

He walks to me and holds out his hands.

--Come.

I don't move.

He takes my hands and squeezes them both.

--Go to your home, tell your people this is our land, our home. Ours to defend and do with
as we wish. No one else's to give. We don't ask for permission to do the things we do. We
do them. For our protection, for God, we do them. Tell them the strength of our resolve,
yes?

He looks over his shoulder to his dead son.

--The lengths we will go to here. Tell them the story of what we do here to be certain the
tribe is safe. The sacrifices we make. Our willingness to cull our own herd of the weak to
make the strong stronger.

He squeezes tighter.

--Yes?

I nod.

--Sure.

The boys start down the aisle.

--They'll take you to the edge of Gibeah. From there you find your own way home.

I nod.

Still he holds my hands.

--The lecture on war was wasted on you, yes? You know what war is already. But perhaps not
the one on love? I think not.

He squeezes tighter.

--Know what you love best before you sacrifice on its behalf.

He looks at the boys, and they are on Lydia, one on each limb, another to bind her while
they hold her down and she screams.

I jerk my arms back and the Rebbe turns them under and lifts them and I freeze.

--Think what you love best.

Lydia is on the floor.

Screaming.

--Joe! Joe!

I relax my arms.

Moishe eases his grip.

--Good, yes? Think, yes? You know this is as it must be. Her mother was Jewish, she said,
yes?

--Joe! Don't you let these fucking lunatics keep me!

--Her mother was Jewish. Perhaps not of Benjamin, but a woman of Jewish blood, descended of
a woman of Jewish blood. And she has the blood of Gibeah. She is ours. You know this, yes.
Even if she does not, you know this.

--Fucking, Joe! Joe!

--Her children will make the tribe stronger. Her children will be clean. Can carry blood
for the sons and daughters of Gibeah.

--Oh no, fuck no!

Her arms and legs are bound. One holds her head, another gags her. She twists and
struggles and keens through the gag.

The Rebbe raises a finger.

--Know what you love best, and what you are willing to sacrifice for it.

I look at all the blood smeared in this temple. I look at Lydia.

And I know what I love best. The only thing I love. And what I will do for her. And how
little time I have left to do it.

I stop looking at Lydia and look at him instead.

--Hey, man, I barely know the chick. All I'm interested in is a ride home.

The boys hoist her high and bear her out of the room.

They keep my blade and my works and my guns, but they give back my money and my keys, and
they let me ride in the backseat instead of the trunk.

One of the boys on either side, two more up front, they drive me in Axler's mom's beaten
Caddy.

Out Ocean Parkway to the Prospect expressway and the BQE, we trace back the route I took
with Lydia through Red Hook. No one says anything. The car smells like the blood we've all
spilled. Dry and crusted to our clothes. It burns the nostrils, as if someone had spilled
a can of paint thinner in the car. One of the boys keeps his window down and rides with
his face tilted into the wind.