Son of a Smaller Hero (8 page)

Gas was the first to notice the soft-drink stand. He turned to Pinky’s Squealer. “You’ve got a quarter. Go get us Pepsis.”

“Gas should go,” Hoppie said. “He’s the least Jewish-looking of the gang. Look at his nose – Christ! They’ll take him for a
Goy
easy.”

“You can have my quarter.”

“Aw go water your tea-kettle,” Gas said. “Maybe I don’t look as Jewish as you or Noah, but they can always tell by pulling down your pants …”

They all giggled.

“It’s not so funny,” Hoppie said. “That’s how they found out about my uncle, who was killed in Russia.”

“You’re all chicken,” Noah said. “I’m going. But I’m having my Coke right out there on the beach. If you want anything to drink you’ll have to come too.”

A convertible Ford pulled away, and that exposed the sign to them. Gas noticed it first. Suddenly, he pointed. “Hey! Look!”

That changed everything. Noah, who got very excited, said that they should hang around until evening, and then, when the beach was deserted, steal the sign.

“Yeah, and walk back in the dark, eh?” Pinky’s Squealer said. “It’s Friday, you know. Ain’t
your
Paw coming?”

Gas and Hoppie looked puzzled. Both of them had been forbidden to play with Noah by their mothers. Pinky’s Squealer made sense, but they did not want to be associated with him and if Noah intended to stay, they would look foolish having left him behind. Noah wanted to stay. Having his father up for the weekend usually meant two days of quarrelling.

“Aw, in a hundred years we’ll all be dead,” Gas said.

Pinky’s Squealer waited, kicking the stump of a tree absently. “If you come with me, Hoppie, you can have my quarter.”

“Watch out for snakes,” Hoppie said.

Pinky’s Squealer ran off.

They waited. The afternoon dragged on slowly. But at last the sun was lower in the sky and a stronger breeze started up. Only a few stragglers remained on the beach.

“Is a Gentile a protestant and a catholic too?” Hoppie asked.

“Yeah,” Noah said.

“But they’re different,” Hoppie said.

“Different,” Gas said. “You know the difference between Hitler and Mussolini?”

Noah said that as it was getting late they would have to chance it, stragglers and all. The few couples that remained were intent on each other and wouldn’t notice them if they were smart. Noah said that he and Gas should stroll out on to the beach, approaching the sign from different directions, nonchalantly. It didn’t look like it was stuck very solidly into the sand. Hoppie was to yell if he saw anybody coming for them. He had stones and the
BB
gun.

So the two boys walked out innocently on the beach. Noah whistled. Gas pretended to be looking for something. The wind kicked up gusts of sand, and the sun, quite low now, was a blaze in the opposite hills. Suddenly, frantically, the two boys were yanking at
the sign. Gas roared with laughter, tears rolled down his cheeks. Noah cursed. They heard, piercing the quiet, a high-pitched yell. “Look out!” Gas let go, and ran off. “Hurry!” Noah persisted. A man was running towards him with a canoe paddle in his hands. Noah gave one last, frenzied tug, and the sign broke loose. The man was about twenty feet away and already swinging his paddle. His eyes were wild. “You son-of-a-bitch!” Noah swerved, and raced swiftly for the bushes. A shower of pebbles bounced off his back. The paddle swooshed through the air behind him. But he was fast. Once in the bushes he scampered madly off into the mountain. He ran and ran and ran. Until finally, clutching the sign in his hands, he tumbled down on the pine needles, his heart thumping wildly.…

Noah sat down on the window-sill of his rented room. I couldn’t find Gas, he remembered, but Hoppie was waiting for me in the bushes. It got dark fast, and – of course – we got lost. I wasn’t frightened. I had the sign, didn’t I? But Hoppie was scared. We didn’t have a flashlight. For all we knew we might come out of the woods again back at Lac Gandon. We had stopped climbing and had reached a level bit of ground when suddenly we heard many voices. Light beams shot through the darkness. We hid the sign under a mess of leaves and climbed up the nearest tree – our pockets filled with stones. The voices and the lights came nearer. Remembering, Noah laughed warmly. I think every Yid in Prevost was on the mountain that night. Where they got all those pitchforks and clubs and sticks, God knows. Hoppie and I never thought we’d be grateful to Pinky’s Squealer, but we were that night. We slid down the tree and uncovered the sign, and that was our night of glory in Prevost. Nothing was too good for us. Sunday morning, Noah remembered, he, Mort Shub, Gas, and Hoppie had planted the sign on the beach. They had got some paint first. When the people had come out to swim, they had read:

That was some time, Noah thought fondly. It really was. He leaned back on the bed, and smiling almost imperceptibly, smoked with his hands clasped behind his head. Pinky’s Squealer, he thought, is studying to be a rabbi now, like his cousin Milton Pinky Fishman. Noah got up. Miriam, he thought, resembles those pretty women on the beach at Lac Gandon.
I did not make my mother to suffer or my father bewildered, or my grandfather hard. I should have had the right to begin with my birth
. He sat up and rubbed his jaw absently.
It’s all absurd, but here I am
. Glancing out of the window he saw a blackboard of sky with several stars chalked up in yellow and an imperfectly rounded moon done up in orange. It would be all right, he thought, to reach out and pull down a star or two to look at. They can’t be as big or as far away as they say. They’re only stars, he thought. If you were tall enough you could pick them like berries. “Miriam,” he said softly.

Something was happening to the old man. His anger and his words were still law for the family, but Shloime and Ida disobeyed him behind his back, something they would not have done so freely before. He complained of rheumatism and a weight on his heart and sometimes he did not go down to the coal yard in the mornings. He had a nap after lunch. He felt the damp November days in his bones. During the afternoon he read Talmud and in the evening he studied with the other old men in the synagogue. Had I been willing to let my children fend for themselves, he thought, had I followed my natural bent, I could have been a scribe – and Noah would have had respect.…

“Max wants for us to move into an apartment in Outremont. I should retire, he says. What should I do, I ask, if I retire. What …”

“He means only good, Melech. Thank God we haven’t got for children such bums as Edelman. You know de Edelman boy was in
jail again? A Yiddish boy. Now they will say we are robbers on top of everything. As if we didn’t have enough. So what would you like? Sons like Panofsky has? Communists yet. You see his Aaron? Everybody loved Aaron. So. What is? He sits in front of de store in that wheelchair smoking cigarettes like a chimney. Where are his legs? His legs are in Spain. At least we have boys who are pushers. Max, you watch. Maxie will be all right.”

“Max. A lot he knows.”

Autumn had come swiftly to the ghetto. The leaves had turned briefly red and yellow on the trees and then tumbled downwards dead. Black clouds swept by fast in the lowering sky, and the prosperous who lived in Outremont, Max among them, brought their families back from their summer homes in the Laurentians. The McGill freshmen among their children wondered whether they would be asked to join a good fraternity or sorority. The boys bought pipes and blazers and the girls tried on party dresses. Meanwhile those who had already graduated began to exchange pipes for cigars: party dresses brought in a good return in engagement rings. He who had failed opened up an insurance office, or, if she were a girl, went in for social service work or nursing.

Ida couldn’t hear her parents talking. Upstairs, she sucked impatiently on a peppermint and listened to the Make-Believe Ballroom.

Don Bishop laughed. So did Ida.

Ida had gone to Goodman’s hotel, in Val Morin, for her summer vacation and that’s where she had met Stanley. But Stanley did not come from an orthodox family and Ida was worried about introducing him to her father, so they saw each other secretly.

A shaded yellow light hung low over each of the eight tables in the Royal Billiard Room. Smoke, eight clouds for eight suns, thickened under and around the bulbs. The long and narrow room reeked of french fried potatoes, the walls were heavy with soot. Men watched the players from the benches that flanked the walls. Occasionally they made derogatory remarks: but otherwise they did not talk much. The snooker balls clacked together again and again making a hard, clean sound. Shloime, who was also known as Kid Lightning, was playing The Sleeper on the second table. The game was for five dollars, Shloime, who was a good player, was up twenty-two points and they were already on the coloured balls. The Sleeper, who in his wakeful hours had been arrested four times, once for arson, twice for petty larceny, and another time for shoplifting, cursed each time he shot and always watched to make sure that Shloime kept one foot on the floor. Each time Shloime made a run he accused him of fluking. Shloime was excited. Not because of the five dollars, no, but because he was being watched by Lou The Hook Edelman. Each time he sunk a difficult shot Shloime looked up at The Hook and grinned. The Hook had his boys with him. It could mean anything, Shloime thought.

“You waitin’ for Christmas? Shoot,” The Sleeper said.

Shloime took aim patiently, and sunk the green ball in the side pocket. The cue ball swerved back and rolled into perfect position behind the brown ball. Shloime knocked the brown hard into the corner pocket and the cue ball zoomed fast down the cloth, nearly scratched in the far corner pocket, jumped clear and rolled lazily up towards the blue ball which was frozen against the band. Shloime leaned his cue against the table and rubbed the chalk off his hand. “Pay up,” he said.

“You blind? Dey’re still three balls on the table.”

“This jerk believes in miracles yet,” Shloime said, turning to the others.

The Sleeper flung his cue down on the table and rushed towards Shloime. “Who’s a jerk, eh?”

“You tell me. I’m lissnink.”

The Hook got up and came between them. He turned to The Sleeper. “You’re a jerk. Okay? Now give the kid his five fish.”

“Dis is our business,” The Sleeper said, beating his chest.

“I just made it mine. Okay,
jerk
. I’ll count ten.”

The Sleeper flung a five-dollar bill down on the table and then grabbed his coat and rushed towards the door. He stopped in the doorway. “You can’t count no higher’n ten, Hook. You ex-con you. Hankink is too good fur you.” Then he slammed the door and rushed down the street.

“Heroes.” The Hook shrugged his shoulders and turned to Shloime. “You play me now. Okay, pal?”

“Sure. But it’s on me, Hook. I’ll pay.”

“Naw. We’ll play for the fin. But you and me, we’re pals. We got business to talk to you after de game. Me, and the boys.”

“I’ll be right back.”

Shloime washed the chalk off his hands and combed his hair in the toilet. Various comments had been scrawled over the urinals.

“The next Guy who comes In may be Barefoot!”

“JEANNE SA
2146.”

And written in yellow chalk:

“A MERRY XMAS TO ALL OUR READERS.”

Shloime hurried back to the table and chalked up his cue joyously. A whole new world seemed to be opening up to him.

Wolf was always grateful for the night. But in recent years he had spent less and less time in Leah’s bed and he did not know whether that was the usual thing or not. He would have liked to ask his
brothers, but he was too ashamed. Nat, he remembered, had tied a cow-bell to the bedsprings on his wedding night. Wolf giggled. He had paid Nat back by placing a huge carrot and two onions between the sheets on
his
wedding night, arranging the vegetables just where Sarah couldn’t miss them. Remembering, Wolf nearly giggled again. He stopped himself just in time, afraid of waking Leah. Leah had to be watched. She had had a difficult summer. She complained of headaches and pains in her shoulder, insomnia, and shortness of breath. She had had her spectacles changed, but that hadn’t helped. Her brother Harry, the doctor, had put her on a diet. Once, when she had been laid up for a week, Wolf had suggested that he should phone Noah, but she had said no, absolutely no. Wolf hadn’t argued. Why should I look for trouble? he had thought.

But things weren’t so good, anyway. She didn’t even argue with him, and business wasn’t so hot. Well, the autumn was always slow. What could you expect? Things would pick up during the winter. They always did.

“Leah. You sleeping?”

“No.”

“You want an Aspirin?”

“No.”

“It might do you good?”

“No.”

“Leah. I want you should listen. I mean not to interrupt. I …”

“Who’s interrupting?”

“No. What I mean is you should listen without being angry or stopping me to put in this or that. All right?”

“Go ahead.”

“I spoke to Paw today. I said to him just like that how I am the oldest boy and it’s not so nice for people that I shouldn’t be a partner. We should be Wolf Adler & Son. With a new sign and everything. Well, he didn’t say no, Leah. He didn’t say yes but he didn’t say no.
You know what else? I said Max is younger than me and he lives in Outremont. That’s what. I said to him, Paw. Paw, I said. You should retire and I’ll take care of everything. We could split fifty-fifty. You should see the way he walks around the yard these days, Leah. A regular dreamer. Anyway, Leah, what I mean to say is he didn’t say yes but he didn’t say no. That’s a start, you know. Other times he would walk away as soon as I started to talk. I was thinking, Leah, that after he – well, you know. I’ll sell the business. Don’t think I haven’t got ideas. I read in the
Digest
last week how a man made a fortune in the gift business. You start a club which costs ten or twenty dollars a year to join. Each member when he joins sends in a list of occasions he mustn’t forget. His wedding anniversary, family birthdays, and so on. A week before each occasion you send him a letter saying next week, for instance, it’s your wife’s birthday. ‘Choose from the following gifts and return form with your choice marked X. We’ll attend to the rest.’ You can make a pile, I’m telling you.”