Snow in August

21

On Easter Sunday morning, Michael kept looking at his reflection in the store windows as he walked along Ellison Avenue. The priests told them at church that Easter was about Jesus rising from the dead, proving His immortality; everybody in the parish knew better. It was about new clothes. And in his new blue suit, white shirt, striped tie, and polished black shoes, Michael thought he looked older, more mature, whatever that vague word meant. Not yet a man, but no longer a boy.

He saw a girl named Mary Cunningham coming out of her building across from the factory. She was thin, with long brown hair, and was dressed in a light blue coat and a straw hat with plastic flowers around the crown. She smiled at him in what he felt was a new way. She was in his grade at Sacred Heart, but since the boys were separated from the girls at school, they only saw each other in the schoolyard or on the street.

“Happy Easter, Michael,” she said, smiling. Unlike some of the other girls in his grade, she didn’t wear braces. Her teeth were as hard and white as Lana Turner’s.

“Yeah, same to you,” he said.

“That’s a great suit,” she said.

“I like that hat too,” Michael said. “You going to mass?”

“Of course,” she said. “We have to go, right? But I gotta wait for my father and mother.”

His own mother had gone to the eight o’clock mass, which was all right with Michael. He didn’t want her walking him to mass as if he were a first grader.

“See you there,” Michael said to Mary Cunningham, and moved along more lightly in the bright spring morning. Suddenly Mrs. Griffin was calling to him from across the street. She was dressed in a tan coat and high heels and laughing hysterically.

“Michael, Michael, hey, Michael Devlin,” she shouted, looking both ways for traffic, then scurrying across to him. “You heard the news?”

“What news?” She was more excited than she had been when the war ended.

“Your mother didn’t tell you?”

“No.”

“My horse came in!” she said. “What’d I tell you? You gotta have faith! And it was all because of you, Michael. You told me your dreams, right? And we figured out some of them. But I couldn’t figure out that damned bowler hat. I thought about it for days and nights. Then yesterday I’m looking at the charts in the Daily News, I see there’s a horse running in the third at Belmont, and get this: his name is Bowler Hat! I say to myself, I say, God used Michael to give me a winner! I knew it in my bones. I knew it in my heart! God says to Himself, That Mrs. Griffin, she needs a few bucks, she needs a gas stove, she needs some nylons. So He sends a dream through you to me. I run across the street, and I put five bucks on Bowler Hat with the bookie, and son of a gun if it don’t come in by a lengt’ and a half and pays twenty-two to one. I’m rich, Michael!”

She hugged him and put a bill in the palm of his hand.

“Keep the faith, Michael,” she said, “and keep on dreaming, kid.”

She pirouetted away and Michael opened his hand. A five-dollar bill. From a nightmare! He’d never had a five-dollar bill of his own before, and his head filled with objects as he hurried on to mass: flowers for his mother, a box of chocolates for her, comic books, maybe a hardcover book. Or he could give the whole five bucks to his mother to help save for a phonograph. Or maybe he could have a date with Mary Cunningham. Take her for a soda. Or to the Grandview when his mother wasn’t working. He’d never gone out with a girl, but he knew about dates from the movies and Archie comics and Harold Teen in the Daily News. And Sonny talked about the things you did with girls. In the balcony. In the park.

He turned into Kelly Street, skipping along, thinking about girls and the things Sonny told him about them and the mysteries of their bodies. He wondered too what Mary Cunningham thought when she saw him in his new blue suit and what she would think if he talked to her in Yiddish or quoted Latin from the mass. Would she think he was weird? Or would she think he was the smartest guy she’d ever met? He wondered too what it would be like to touch her skin or play with her hair, and then wondered if such thoughts were sins.

And then stopped near the synagogue as he heard a low, angry, keening sound. A sound of deep, hopeless pain.

He followed the sound to the corner, and there was Rabbi Hirsch, his face the color of ashes, anger and grief clenching his jaws. He had a coarse towel in his hands and was violently scrubbing the walls of the front of the synagogue. Someone had painted about a dozen red swastikas on the dirty white bricks. The words JEW GO were daubed on the sealed front door. Even the sight of Michael did not ease his pained fury.

“How could they do this?” the rabbi shouted bitterly. “Who could do this?”

Michael put his arm around the rabbi’s waist, trying to comfort him, but the rabbi pulled away from the boy, seething with anger, and grabbed the picket fence for support. Michael backed away, feeling wounded and stupid, but also fearful that the wet paint would end up on his new suit. The rabbi reached for a mop and stabbed at the swastikas, smearing the fresh red paint.

“Wait here,” Michael said. “Don’t go away.”

He ran all the way to Sacred Heart, fighting a stitch in his side, ignoring the sweat that was dampening his fresh shirt. Each time he faltered, gasping for breath, he saw Rabbi Hirsch in his mind’s eye, and rage urged him on. Outside the church, the sidewalk was packed with people in flowered hats and new suits and newsboys selling The Tablet. It was as if the whole neighborhood were converging on the 10 A.M. solemn high mass that was to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. Michael pushed through them, thinking, Move, goddamn it, move, and took the steps two at a time into the church.

The nine o’clock mass was over, but the pews were almost full of those who wanted to hear the solemn high mass at ten, sung by three priests. Michael glanced up and saw that the choirboys were already assembled in the loft. An usher tried to stop him, but he pushed the man aside and hurried down the aisle and into the sacristy. He was relieved to find Father Heaney sitting on a chair, smoking a cigarette, finished with his own duties. The three other priests were helping each other don the gorgeous gold-embroidered white vestments used at Easter.

“Father Heaney!” Michael hissed. “Listen, there’s — I gotta — you have to—”

“Take a deep breath, kid,” the priest mumbled, “then tell me what you’re trying to say.”

Father Heaney listened as Michael told him the story, his voice hushed, to avoid distracting the other priests, who were busy dressing, talking among themselves. Father Heaney’s face shifted. A deep vertical crease carved itself into his brow.

“I’ll call the cops,” he said, standing suddenly and going to the sink to quench his cigarette.

“No, you can’t do that, Father. The cops don’t care, we don’t ever call the cops, they—we’ve got to help him.”

“Why?”

Four alter boys suddenly entered the sacristy. Michael nodded hello. The altar boys went to the door leading to the altar and waited. Out in the sanctuary, the choir began to sing. One of the priests glanced at the wall clock, said, Let’s go, and altar boys and priests went out to begin mass as music surged around them. Father Heaney stood looking at Michael. His eyes were more focused now, as if a film of indifference or boredom were being peeled away.

“We’re not cops,” Father Heaney said, when he and Michael were alone. Outside, the music soared. “Why should we get involved, kid?”

“Because Rabbi Hirsch is a good guy!”

“How do you know?” Father Heaney said, in the tone of someone who had seen too much evil.

Michael exploded. “How do I know? I’m the Shabbos goy at the synagogue! I help him turn on the lights every Saturday morning. I’m teaching him English. He’s teaching me Yiddish. And his wife is dead and he’s alone and he doesn’t need some goddamned Nazi painting his synagogue!” The words clogged, as Michael realized he’d used the word goddamned to a priest, and then rushed forth again. “My father died fighting the Nazis. You saw all kinds of guys die in the war, you—”

Father Heaney’s slits of eyes opened wider and he stepped back a foot, as if the words had pierced a part of him that had been numb for a long time. He raised a hand, palm out, stopping the flow of Michael’s words. He reached for his coat.

“Come on,” he said.

He walked out into the church, pointed at a few men and gestured for them to follow him. He grabbed one of the altar boys from the previous mass, a tall Italian kid named Albert. Some parishioners looked up from their prayer books at Father Heaney as if wondering why he was disrupting the mass. The choir reached a pitch and then stopped. Mr. Gallagher, the owner of the hardware store across the street, arrived late and was searching for a seat when Father Heaney took him by the elbow and guided him back outside.

At the foot of the church steps, Father Heaney started giving orders like the military man he’d once been. He slipped two dollars to Albert, the altar boy, and sent him to buy some coffee and buns at the bakery. He convinced Mr. Gallagher to open the hardware store and hand out rags and scrubbers and solvents. On the corner near the schoolyard, he saw Charlie Senator, who had left his leg at Anzio, limping toward the church. He whispered a few words to him, and Senator gave him a small salute and fell in line.

Then all of them were marching down the avenue, carrying mops and rags, pails and solvents. People in Easter finery looked at them in surprise. A few more men joined the line of march, with Father Heaney and Michael out front, as the platoon crossed the great square at the entrance to the park and turned into Kelly Street.

Father Heaney’s face was now clenched in righteous anger, his mouth etched tight, the muscles moving in his jaws. He didn’t say a word. Michael wondered if he’d gone too far, mentioning his father. His mother never did that, not to the landlord, not to Michael, not ever, and he’d never done it before either. But it just came out, and it was true. Private Tommy Devlin had died fighting these momsers. These lousy pricks. And he suddenly pictured his father marching with them down Kelly Street, going again to fight the Nazis. Then he realized he was the only boy among almost a dozen men. And saw himself with his father’s platoon. Helmeted. Carrying a machine gun. Going to get these bastards who killed babies and old ladies and turned men into living skeletons. Heading for Belgium.

When they reached the synagogue, Rabbi Hirsch was still poking with his mop at the first swastika.

“Rabbi, I’m Joe Heaney,” the priest said. “I was a chaplain in the 103rd Airborne. Most of these men fought their way into Germany two years ago, and one of them lost a leg in Italy. They are not going to let this bullshit happen in their parish.”

“Please,” Rabbi Hirsch said, “I can do it myself.”

“No, you can’t,” Father Heaney said.

And so they went to work. Mr. Ponte, the stonemason, fingered the texture of the bricks, while Mr. Gallagher examined the paint. “Sapolin number 3,” Mr. Gallagher said. “Every moron in the parish paints his chairs with it and then sits down before they’re dry.” Together, he and Mr. Ponte mixed the solvents in a steel pail. Others peeled off their Easter jackets, removed their ties, rolled up their sleeves, and grabbed rags and mops. Father Heaney stripped to his T-shirt. Albert, the altar boy, arrived with buns and coffee, then grabbed a cloth. A police car came along and one of the cops wanted to make a report, but Father Heaney said that he and Rabbi Hirsch would take care of the matter in their own way.

“We both believe in an Old Testament God,” Father Heaney said. “He punishes all morons.”

The cops shrugged and drove away. Michael hung his jacket and tie on the picket fence, on top of Charlie Senator’s coat, and joined in the scrubbing. The men said little as they scrubbed and grunted. Their eyes seemed cloudy with memory, as if the things they had seen a few years earlier were driving them to finish. Michael was soon exhausted but pushed himself harder, thinking of the grainy black-and-white images from the Venus newsreels, the skeletal men, the hollow-eyed women, the mounds of corpses. Thinking of soldiers dead in the snow. He kept glancing at Rabbi Hirsch, but the man had retreated into himself, his lips moving inaudibly as he attacked the hated red paint. The word JEW vanished. Then the word GO. And another swastika.

He must be thinking of her, Michael thought.

His wife.

Leah.

At one point, Frankie McCarthy and four of the Falcons strolled up from Ellison Avenue and stood on the far corner beside the armory. For them, Michael thought, the hour was early. Usually, you didn’t see them until noon. They passed around a quart of Rheingold beer and wore sneers on their faces and one of them said something that made them all laugh. But they knew better than to look for trouble from this group of men. Michael thought: Come on, Frankie, shout something about the Kikes, come on. These guys kicked the shit out of the Wehrmacht, Frankie, these guys beat Tojo. Come on, prick.

For a moment, Charlie Senator glared at the Falcons, as if he were thinking the same things, then went back to work, putting his weight on his good leg as he bent into the paint with his rags. Lighting cigarettes, jingling change in their pockets, the Falcons watched the Christians cleaning the swastikas from the synagogue and then went bopping away to the park.

Finally, it was done. The walls were lighter where the swastikas had been painted. But the light patches had irregular shapes and didn’t indicate what had been put there on an Easter morning. Rabbi Hirsch walked back and forth alone, mounted the steps leading to the sealed front door of the upstairs sanctuary, examining the walls, then came back to the men. He was still shaking his head, his mouth a bitter slash. The men had finished cleaning their hands and pulling on their jackets and neckties. Most were sipping coffee and smoking cigarettes and wolfing down the buns from the bakery. They looked awkward now, saying little, staring at the wall or the sidewalk or the sky. In the war, Michael thought, they must have soldiered with Jews. But they certainly didn’t know many rabbis. The synagogue was as strange a place to them as it was to Michael on that first morning of ice and snow. He saw Rabbi Hirsch flex his fingers as if to shake hands, but his hands were covered with paint.

“Thank you, gentlemen,” the rabbi said hoarsely.

“Here, Rabbi, use this stuff to get the paint off your hands,” said Mr. Gallagher, dipping a rag into the solvent. “It smells awful, but it does the job.”

“Thank you, and thank you, Father Heaney,” the rabbi said, cleaning his hands. “And Michael…”

His body shook in a dry, choked way, but he would not weep.

“I wish to the synagogue, you all could come,” the rabbi said. “To have a big seder together.… But food we don’t have here, just tea, and matzoh, and—”

“It’s all right, Rabbi,” Father Heaney said. “Some other time.”

The rabbi bowed in a stiff, dignified way. Michael looked at his eyes and saw that he did not believe there would be another time. They would all go back to their world and he would stay in his.

“I’ll see you, Rabbi,” Mr. Gallagher said, and grabbed the pail, emptying the solvents into the gutter, nodding to the others to retrieve the mops. “Let’s move out,” he said. “It’s a beautiful day.”

Charlie Senator glanced at his watch and then at Father Heaney.

“Well,” he said, “I better go do my Easter duty.”

“You just did,” Father Heaney said, popping a Camel from his pack.