Billy Straight

39

Sam Ganzer didn't park the Lincoln carefully. The twenty-year-old land yacht was too wide for each of the spaces behind the shul, so he used both of them.

Who was there to complain? The synagogue, once a social center for Venice's Jews, had been reduced to a weekend facility, Sam's maintenance calls the only thing that opened its doors before Friday night.

Even on the weekend it was sometimes hard to get ten men together for a minyan. Beth Torah wasn't Orthodox enough for the yarmulke-clad yuppies who'd gentrified Venice, so they started their own congregation a few blocks away, brought a bearded fanatic rabbi from New York, installed a partition between the men and the women. The old, mostly left-wing crowd who patronized the shul wouldn't hear of it.

That had been five years ago. Now most of the regulars had died off. Eventually, Sam knew, Beth Torah would close down, the property sold. Maybe the yuppies would reclaim it, which would be better than yet another cheap business added to the dozens that lined Ocean Front Walk. Sam didn't mind the yuppies as much as some of the old socialists did. He had a deep-rooted distrust of authority but was, at heart, a businessman. Meanwhile, he'd park any damn way he pleased.

He felt he'd live forever. For seventy-one, his body was working okay. His brother Emil, living down in Irvine, not religious at all, was seventy-six. Good stock: generations of thickset, robust metalsmiths and carpenters honed by bone-numbing Ukrainian winters.

It had taken pure evil to cut down most of the Ganzer tree.

Mother, father, three younger brothers, two sisters shipped off to Sobibor, never seen again. Avram, Mottel, Baruch, Malkah, Sheindel. Had they made it to America, what would their names have been? Sam's best guess was Abe, Mort, Bernie, Marilyn, Shirley. Last week, he'd raised the question with Emil, who didn't want to talk about it.

All in all, forty-five Ganzers and Leibovics had been rounded up by the Ukrainian police and handed over to the occupying nazi scum. Sam and Emil, muscular young men- Emil a lightweight boxing champ at the Kovol gymnasium- were spared and enslaved as forced laborers. Eighteen-hour workdays on thin soup and sawdust bread. Midnight escape through the snow, living in the forest on leaves and nuts, nearly starving till they'd been taken in by a saintly Catholic woman. When her son came back from the war, he wanted to turn them over; the Ganzer brothers ran again, walking till the brink of death, finally making it to Shanghai. The Chinese had been decent. Sam sometimes wondered what it would have been like to stay, marry one of those gorgeous porcelain girls. Instead, liberation, Canada, Detroit, L.A.

For years he hadn't thought about any of that crap. Lately, the memories had been returning, uninvited. Probably some kind of brain damage. His body was strong, but names, places were fading, he'd walk into a room, forget why. The ancient stuff, though, was as clear as day. All that anger- he could feel it pounding in his ears, bad for the blood pressure.

He turned off the Lincoln's engine, got out. On Friday night and Saturday, he assumed sexton's duties, had since Mr. Ginzburg died. With the unpaid position came maintenance obligations. Why not? What else did he have to do besides play the mandolin and sit outside his house getting too much sun- he'd already had four precancerous lesions cut off his face and one on his bald spot. Had to wear a stupid cap, like an old guy.

He took the hat off, tossed it into the Lincoln, locked up, enjoyed another look at how he'd parked. Better than leaving room for some drug addict to slump in a stolen car and inject himself. That had happened more than once. This neighborhood, always a little nuts, had become a crazy mix of gawking tourists on weekends, lowlifes crawling out of the woodwork at night.

Most of Ocean Front was one big gyp-joint now. Fly-by-nights selling cheap junk, weekends so jammed you couldn't take two steps without bumping into some yutz.

For forty years Sam and Emil sold hardware and plumbing fixtures from their store on Lincoln Boulevard, things you could use. Both of them knowing how to install as well as sell, pipe a house from scratch. You got to be handy, living on your own, never depending on anyone else. Leaving Shanghai, he'd vowed never to depend on anyone else. Maybe that's why he'd never married. Though the ladies loved him. He'd had his good times. Even now he once in a while got between the covers with soft-skinned grandmothers ashamed of what age had done to their bodies. Sam knew how to make them feel young and gorgeous.

He felt for the shul key in his pocket, found it, opened the back door. Not noticing the screen from the bathroom window lying on the ground, because it was partially blocked by his right front tire.

Moments after he got inside, he knew someone had broken in.

The silver-plated pushke was sitting atop the platform where the Torah was read, shiny against the blue velvet coverlet, right out in the open. The charity box hadn't been used since Friday night, when it was passed around before services. Sam had put it away, personally, in a cabinet beneath the bookcases. Just a cheap combination lock, no reason to make a big deal- all it contained was a few dollars in coins.

But someone had tried anyway. And, look- food had been taken out of the same cabinet. Snack stuff for the handful of Saturday-morning regulars. Tam Tam crackers and a pink box from a bakery on Fairfax- sugarcoated kichlen shaped like bow ties. Sam had bought them last week. No preservatives, had to be stale; he'd forgotten to get rid of them.

Crumbs on blue velvet. A quarter and a dime had fallen out of the pushke. Hungry thief. What else had he taken?

The only things of value to a junkie were the silver finials and breastplates that graced the three Torahs in the ark. Sam started toward the carved walnut case, ready to draw back the blue velvet curtain, afraid of what he'd find.

Then he stopped himself, raised his heavy arms instinctively. Maybe the crook was still here. All he needed was some junkie jumping out at him.

No one did. Silence; no movement at all.

He stood there and looked around.

The shul was four rooms- small entry hall in front, gents' and ladies' lavs at the back; in between, the main sanctuary- rows of walnut pews, seating for 150.

A double-sided dead bolt protected the front door- you couldn't get in or out without a key. Same for the back. So how…

He waited a few more minutes, convinced himself he was alone, but made sure by inspecting. Then out to the front room. Still locked; no damage to the door.

In back was where he found it, the window in the ladies' lav. Closed, but the screen was off- there it was, down near his tire. Some white chips on the sill where dry paint had flaked off.

Closing the window after he'd left? Considerate thief?

He returned to the sanctuary, opened the ark, examined the Torahs. All the silver in place. The bottle-shaped pushke hadn't been emptied either, and the lock didn't show a scratch. Only Sam and Mr. Kravitz knew the combination, and they took turns emptying the weekly take and delivering it to the Hadassah thrift shop on Broadway. Once upon a time Congregation Beth Torah had proudly contributed fifty dollars a week to the poor; now it was down to ten, twelve. Embarrassing, so Sam augmented it with twenty of his own. What Kravitz did, he had no idea; the guy was a bit of a cheapskate.

He inspected the pushke, rattled it. Still full. Except for the quarter and the dime. Strange.

Several kichlen were gone and, from what Sam could see, quite a few crackers.

Hungry gonif. Probably some bum, too doped up to know what he was doing, one of those nuts who lurched up and down the walkway. Sometimes Sam gave them money, other times he wanted nothing to do with them.

A skinny nut, because the lav window was small. Junkies got skinny. And weren't they always hungry for sweets? Okay, no big loss. He dropped the coins back in the pushke, brushed crumbs from the velvet, closed the cracker box and the bakery box and carried them over to the bookcase. Opening the lower cabinet where the food went, he saw something else the gonif hadn't touched: booze.

Schnapps for the regulars. A nearly full bottle of Crown Royal, and a half-empty Smirnoff's vodka.

A junkie with one vice only, no taste for booze?

Next to the bottles were some folded prayer shawls. A bunch of small silk ones, striped blue, but also the big black-striped woolen tallis worn by the prayer leader. That one belonged in the compartment under the platform- how had it gotten there?

Had he put it there? Had Kravitz? He strained to remember, damn his memory… last shabbos… yeah, yeah, Mrs. Rosen hadn't felt good and Sam had left early to take her home, he'd left Kravitz in charge. The guy had no eye for details.

Removing the woolen shawl, he saw that Kravitz hadn't folded it properly, either. A klutz. He'd clerked for the Water Department all his life, what could you expect from a desk jockey.

Refolding the shawl, caressing the thick wool, Sam carried it to the platform, bent down and opened the compartment door.

Inside was a boy.

A small, skinny kid, curled up into a corner, looking scared as hell.

Breathing hard. Sam could see his chest moving, and now he could hear it, fast, raspy, like he had asthma or something.

Such a look on the face.

Sam knew that look. His siblings; faces through train windows.

Laborers in the camp who didn't make it.

Even tough Emil's face the time he got pneumonia; thought this was it.

Sam's own face when, in the dead of winter, he found a piece of broken glass in the snow, used it for a mirror, saw what he'd become.

This boy looked exactly like that.

“It's okay,” he said.

The boy shivered. Hugging himself like he was cold, and even though this was June, Venice, California, a beautiful sunny day, Sam felt a Ukrainian freeze pass over his own body.

“It's okay,” he repeated. “Come on out, I don't bite.”

The boy didn't budge.

“Come on, you can't stay in there all day- still hungry? Crackers aren't enough, let's get you some real food.”

It took a long time to coax the boy out, standing far back so the kid could crawl free. When he was finally out, he looked like he wanted to run.

Sam held him by the arm- skin and bones. More memories.

The boy struggled, tried to kick. Sam, knowing what it felt like to be restrained, let go and the boy dashed toward the front of the shul.

Rattling the door, but locked in.

Returning to the sanctuary, he gave Sam a wide berth. Wild-eyed, looking from side to side, trying to figure out how to escape.

Sam was sitting in a front pew holding a box of doughnuts the boy had missed. Real chazerei. Entenmann's chocolate-covered cake doughnuts, still unopened, hidden behind some old prayer books. Kravitz's secret lode- who did he think he was kidding? Next to the doughnuts was also a sealed jar of gefilte-fish balls in jelly. Sam couldn't imagine the boy going for it.

“Here,” he said, holding up the doughnuts. “Take it with you.”

The boy stood there and stared. Despite being dirty and ragged and skinny, with a scratched-up face, he was a nice-looking kid. Maybe eleven, twelve. What was he doing out here so young? There were plenty of runaways in Venice, but they were mostly teenagers, bigshot rebels, with needles and rings stuck into their bodies all over, crazy haircuts, tattoos, a bad attitude. This one just looked like a kid, undernourished and scared.

Definitely goyische-look at that upturned nose, that dirty-blond hair. Sometimes the goyim beat their kids, abused them, God knows what else. Maybe this one had run away. Jews, too, he supposed, though he'd never encountered that personally.

What did he know about kids, anyway?

Emil had one son, a lawyer, lived in Encino- drove a German car!- never talked to his parents or Sam.

“Here,” he said, shaking the doughnut box. “Take it.”

No response. The kid, distrustful, thinking Sam was up to something. Dirt stains all over his jeans and that T-shirt was full of holes. He was making fists, a tough little pisher.

Sam put the doughnuts on the floor, got up, said, “Fine, I'll open the door for you, you don't have to crawl out the window. But if you ask me, you should get some clean clothes, eat some real food with vitamins.”

Dipping into his trouser pocket, he took some bills out of his wallet. Two twenties- way too generous for someone he didn't know, but what the hell.

He placed the money on the floor next to the doughnuts, walked to the back of the shul, and unlocked the rear door. Then he went into the gents' lav, to give the kid a chance to make a graceful exit, and because his bladder was killing him.