Snow in August

24

In the midst of Robinson’s awful slump, a rumor swept through the parish: Frankie McCarthy had copped a plea. The detectives had traced the cans of red Sapolin number 3 straight to Frankie and found a stiff paintbrush in the lot on Collins Street, six doors from Frankie’s house. The rumors said that a clerk from Pintchik’s paint store on Flatbush Avenue picked Frankie out of a lineup. “They even had fingerprints on the brush,” Sonny explained. “And on the can. This guy is dumb as a cucumber.” Frankie’s lawyer told him it was better to plead guilty to the charge of vandalism than face trial for assaulting Mister G.

“And get this,” Sonny said. “The lawyer was a Jew and the judge was a Jew!”

“They should’ve thrown him in the goddamned river,” Michael said.

“We’ll, he’da gone up the river on the assault charge,” Sonny said. “For a couple of years. Copping to the paint thing, he’s out in a couple a months.”

It didn’t seem right to Michael. Poor Mister G was in a bed somewhere with a broken head. His mind was gone. His store was gone. His wife must cry herself to sleep. His kids were trying to get him to read an old prayer book so they could talk to him before he died. Frankie was going to be all right, with a nice warm cell and all his meals. “Three hots and a cot,” Sonny called it. And because of other things Frankie had done, Rabbi Hirsch had trembled with bitterness and Michael’s mother had been driven to fury. In a few months, Frankie McCarthy would be back on the street. He’d sneer. He’d laugh. He’d hurt someone else. It wasn’t right.

The rumors turned out to be true. But when Michael brought the news to Rabbi Hirsch, the rabbi said nothing. He made a sound. Humf. That was all. Humf. The sound of a man who knew that for some crimes, nobody ever truly pays.

Rabbi Hirsch did not brood, at least not in front of Michael. He was too busy mastering the theory and practice of baseball. Alone in the synagogue, he wrote pages of notes and consulted them while firing questions at Michael.

A bunt is what?

How is explained a southpaw?

This Red Barber, he’s a socialist?

What means picked off?

Harold Reese, why is called Pee Wee?

A double play, this is two runs?

Mr. Shotton, his name is Boit or Burt?

Who is an Old Goldie?

None of this was easy. Michael had tried to teach baseball to his mother and had failed. After fifteen years in America, she still didn’t know first base from third. But Rabbi Hirsch went at the task with Talmudic intensity. After hearing Michael’s explanations, he copied the language of baseball from loose sheets of paper into a kid’s composition book. He made diagrams. He insisted on knowing the rules. Much of this was abstract. The daily newspapers never showed photographs of the whole ballpark, but Michael had a drawing of Ebbets Field that he’d cut out of an old copy of the Sporting News and he used it to explain the positions and the bases. When they talked baseball, the sadness left the rabbi’s eyes. They never talked about Frankie McCarthy. And for a few days they stopped talking about Jackie Robinson too. What needed to be said had been said. The prayers had been offered. God knew what He should do. But it was too soon to use the Kabbalah.

And then Robinson began to hit.

And then Robinson began to dance off second base, driving pitchers crazy, drawing throws from angry catchers, coming in a rush around third, with Red Barber’s voice rising, saying, And here comes Robinson.

Robinson began to hit, and the Dodgers began to win. And in the synagogue on Kelly Street, Rabbi Hirsch was clipping stories too, from the Brooklyn Eagle and from the Forvertz. Michael brought his scrapbook to show Rabbi Hirsch, and the rabbi got one for himself.

“Is like a story,” the rabbi said. “Each day, a new chapter.”

“It’s history,” Michael said.

“And something else,” the rabbi said. “In America, he is new. Just like me.” He paused and ran his hand over one of the clippings. “With Jackie Robinson, the book I am not starting in the middle. In America, it takes so long to learn what happened before. But here, we are at a beginning.”

When the game was on the radio, all that had happened before to Rabbi Hirsch seemed to disappear. He never talked about Prague. He didn’t evoke the spires of the cathedrals. There was no need for the Golem, if Jackie Robinson was taking a long lead off first. There were too many questions to be answered, too much to learn. The rabbi wanted to know about Sportsman’s Park in distant St. Louis, where a man named Country Slaughter — such a name! — hit one over the pavilion roof. He wanted to know about Forbes Field in Pittsburgh and Shibe Park in Philadelphia. Forbes, who was he? And Shibe? He was a ballplayer? The rabbi tried hard to imagine these sun-drowned places in the vastness of America. While he had baseball, there was no place in his mind, it seemed, for night and fog.

Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, the rabbi sang during a game, when Robinson scampered home from second on a wild pitch.

Zip-a-dee-ay,

My-oh-my, what a wonderful day…

Baseball made him sing. He was always out of tune, but it didn’t matter. He learned the words to “Don’t Fence Me In,” all about straddling his own saddle underneath the Western skies, and Michael found the English words to “And the Angels Sing.” These the rabbi sometimes changed. You hit, he would sing, and then the angels sing… and laughed at himself.

One warm evening in June, Michael was walking home from the synagogue, brooding about Pete Reiser. Nine more days until the end of the term, and then Sonny can help us get PAL tickets so we can go to Ebbets Field, and Pete Reiser runs into another goddamned wall! Ends up in a hospital. Unconscious. Just like ’42. Reiser was hitting.383 that year, then he runs into a wall and hits.200 the rest of the season and we lose the pennant. In ’41, he hit.343, led the league in doubles and triples, and we won the pennant. We need Pistol Pete. We need him. And where is he? In the goddamned hospital, just like Mister G, and he can’t talk, and the sportswriters said when his head hit the wall, the sound was sickening. That’s like Mister G too. When Frankie McCarthy hit him with the cash register. Sickening. We never saw Mister G again, and his wife left and his kids left and the store is empty, like it has a curse on it. Maybe center field will have a curse on it. The curse of Pete Reiser. Oh sure, they put Carl Furillo there for now. Great arm, but not Reiser. And they brought up this Duke Snider, but he strikes out too much. Shit. Jackie Robinson can’t do it alone. The Dodgers need Reiser too. I wish I could go to the hospital and pray and pray and Reiser’s eyes would open and he’d get up like nothing happened and take a cab to the ballpark. Maybe if I prayed hard enough, Mister G would get up too and go to the candy store and everything would be the way it was before. And summer would come, all hot and green, and we could go to see Reiser and Robinson. Watch Reiser steal home. Against the Cardinals. Cheer Robinson dancing off second base against the goddamned Phillies, just the way Red Barber describes him. And here comes Robinson! And There goes Reiser…

Michael was crossing the street beside the factory, his head full of green fields and roaring crowds, when they reached him.

His arms were grabbed and he was lifted and jerked sideways and shoved hard against the picket fence of the factory. The streetlight was out. But Michael saw the faces. The Falcons. Tippy Hudnut and Skids, Ferret and the Russian. He smelled sour beer. Stale sweat. He felt hard fingers digging right to the bone of his arms and his heart pounding. This can’t be happening. Not now. No. Not tonight. No. Please, no. Then he was twisted around and one of them drove a punch into his stomach. His body exploded in pain. He couldn’t feel his legs. His belly felt split. He couldn’t breathe. He tried to speak, but no words came from his mouth, only a kind of whimper. A shameful kid’s whimper.

Then he smelled shit.

His own shit.

No.

Then there was another tearing jolt. No, and he bent over, No, no, and something, a bat, a billy club, smashed against his legs.

“Little cocksucker,” one of them snarled. “Singin’ like a canary.”

“Fuckin’ Jew-lover,” a second voice growled, panting as another punch smashed into Michael’s stomach. “Half a fuckin’ Hebe. How do you like dat?”

“This is from Frankie,” a third voice said. “He sends you his best. He wants you to have a real good fuckin’ summer. He’ll think about you every night. You and your fuckin’ friends.”

Michael thought: I’m going to die. They’re going to kill me.

Then the shit-stained world exploded into a high, white, ringing emptiness.