Snow in August

32

On the following morning, Kate Devlin was up early. Michael heard her say that she had lost one day of work, she could not afford to lose two; but the words were just words to him. Rabbi Hirsch was in the rooms, his blood on the walls, at the table, in the bathroom. He heard her say that they had to hurry to the hospital, it was the day his cast would be removed; but the words receded behind the screen of blood. He chewed cereal and saw the rabbit’s teeth snapped at the gums. He heard the radio, and saw the blood leaking from the rabbi’s ear. He turned on the water tap to wash his face and saw blood. He combed his hair and saw the great swelling of the rabbi’s skull.

“I have to see him,” Michael said. “I have to see Rabbi Hirsch.”

He heard his mother say that if he was in critical condition, they might not allow visitors. Her voice seemed to be coming across a vast distance. He heard her say she would check with her friends who still worked at Wesleyan. Heard her groping for words of comfort.

“They say your leg could be as good as new,” she said. “You know, when bones break, they heal harder than ever.”

Michael wanted to believe this, wanted to believe that when he healed and his mother healed, and if Rabbi Hirsch healed, they would all be stronger than ever. But if Rabbi Hirsch died, he would not heal. The rabbi’s face forced its way into his mind, and everything else seemed trivial. I am sitting where he sat that night, Michael thought. I am sitting where he told his story. He is here. I must try to believe.

They walked out into the hot morning, slowed by the plaster boulder of Michael’s cast and the need to use the stickball bat as a cane. He could hear Harry James playing “Sleepy Lagoon” from an unseen radio and wondered what it would sound like on a Chiclets box. Or the shofar. And then saw Rabbi’s Hirsch’s face: the snapped teeth, the blood, the swollen skull. Try to believe, he told himself. Try to make him heal by believing.

In front of Casement’s, a fat man sat in his undershirt on a folding chair, fanning himself with a newspaper. The asphalt felt soft. A lone pigeon circled sluggishly over the rooftops. Kate took Michael’s hand as they climbed aboard the trolley car, and then, as they passed Pearse Street, he saw Frankie McCarthy.

“Mom, look.”

“Holy God.”

McCarthy was with some of the other Falcons, swaggering along the avenue, carrying a small canvas bag. He was out of jail for the second time. They could see Tippy and Skids, laughing and joking. They saw the Russian. And Ferret. Frankie McCarthy walked as if he were a veteran home from the wars. Michael wondered if they were telling him what they had done to the Devlins, mother and son, and how they had battered the rabbi from Kelly Street.

“Do nothing,” he heard his mother say in a cold voice. “We’ll be moving.”

At the hospital, he stopped thinking of the Falcons while nurses directed them down corridors that Kate knew from her days working the wards. Rabbi Hirsch must have been rushed through these halls, he thought. With frantic nurses beside him and doctors shouting orders. They went to a tiny room on the first floor, and Michael lifted himself onto a gurney. Maybe he was on this gurney. Maybe they used this to wheel him into the operating room. A young intern in green scrubs looked at Michael’s cast and the hospital records and reached for some large shears.

“You’re Jewish?” he asked Michael.

“Irish.”

“You got Hebrew written here, buddy. It says long life.”

“Can I save that piece?” Michael said. That piece of Rabbi Hirsch.

“Sure.”

Then the intern shoved the shears under the cast and started cutting. This was a simple thing to do; the cast that felt like cement to Michael turned out to be fabric and plaster. The intern first cut down the inside of Michael’s right leg, and then did the same on the outside, cleaving the cast into two parts. He gently pulled them apart and they made a sucking sound where the fabric and plaster had stuck to Michael’s skin. Suddenly, the odor of compacted sweat filled the tiny room. When Michael looked at his skin, it was white and mottled like grass that had lain under a rock. He expected to see worms.

“Can he walk on that?” Kate said.

“Why not?”

“Without a crutch?”

“Hey, it looks as good as ever,” the intern said. “But you gotta get it X-rayed before you leave.”

“Can I wash it off?” Michael asked.

“Right in there.”

Michael slid off the gurney and tried putting his full weight on the leg. The floor was very cold under his bare foot. There was no pain, but the leg felt weak and strange and very light, in spite of all the exercise on the roof. He went into the small bathroom, feeling unbalanced as he walked, and found soap and paper towels and washed his calf and ankle and foot. His soapy hands on the leg made him feel odd, slippery, thrilled. When he was finished, he stepped out and the leg felt fresher but not quite his. The intern was gone. Kate waited by the door, holding one sock, one shoe, and the piece of the cast that bore the Hebrew lettering. She forced a smile.

“You heard him,” she said. “As good as ever.”

They walked down the hall to have the X ray made. He was here, too, he thought. They must have X-rayed his skull. The room was crowded. Everyone was white. Doctors, nurses, and patients. As they waited their turn, Kate studied the classified advertisements in the Brooklyn Eagle, circling apartments with a blue pencil. He thought: She’s serious, she’s giving up, she wants to leave. And how can I blame her? I’m the guy who dreams of white horses racing over the factory roof.

“You’re next, young man,” said a nurse with frazzled blond hair. “Soon as we do this guy.” He heard her bright telephone operator voice. He heard her speak to Kate: “Thanks for your patience, Kate. You know how it goes.”

“I certainly do,” Kate said.

“Nurse,” Michael said. “Did you X-ray a rabbi here yesterday?”

“A rabbi. Yes, I believe we did. He was mugged, poor soul, wasn’t he?”

Someone called her and the conversation ended before it had begun. He heard his mother say: “He’s in the best hands here.” He heard his mother say: “It’s not like some city hospital.” He heard her say: “They’re just butcher shops.” Michael wiggled his toes, massaged his skin and muscles, and measured one leg against the other. The damaged right leg was definitely thinner. He wanted to get out into the sunshine, to exercise the leg and let the sun brown his skin. And then take care of one big thing.

“Mom, I want to see Rabbi Hirsch,” he said suddenly. “He’s here somewhere, and I’ve got to see him.”

She looked at him in an exasperated way, as if considering that the rabbi might be part of their troubles. Michael sensed this.

“It’s not his fault, what happened,” Michael said angrily. “He’s a good man and they’re not. You know it, Mom.”

“All right,” she said. “When you’re in X Ray, I’ll find out where he is.”

Then it was his turn. He followed a nurse into the X-ray room, while Kate went out to the corridor. The X ray took a few seconds. He asked the dark-haired nurse operating the machine if she had X-rayed a rabbi the day before. “I was off yesterday,” she said. Then called out: “Next.” And told Michael to wait outside. With Kate gone, he sat in the back row, behind dozens of women and children and a few men, and felt his anger throbbing like a wound. Goddamned nurse. Maybe she’s lying. Maybe she doesn’t want to tell me about his broken head. Maybe there’s brain damage. He saw the blood seeping from the rabbi’s ear. He saw the slick red puddle on the asphalt.

Kate returned, shaking her head.

“He’s up on the seventh floor,” she said. “In intensive care. No visitors, Michael.”

“I’ve got to see him,” Michael said. “I don’t want him to be alone, the way I was.”

“I know that, son,” she said, irritated. “But he’s in a coma. Do you understand what that is?” He nodded that he understood. “They’ve got a cop up there, keeping everybody away. We’ll come back when he’s better. Out of the coma. We’ll bring him pound cake and iced tea.”

That was that. They walked home together. Michael was still limping, but he kept increasing the weight on the healed leg, hoping that each step would make it stronger. It was almost noon. The sun beat down from a cloudless sky. Flowers wilted on the stands outside the florist’s shop. The asphalt was softer. Dogs huddled against walls, their pink tongues hanging. Kids sat in the shade on the side streets, sucking on lemon ices and drinking red sodas. Michael felt sweat seeping down his back under his shirt, as slow and thick as blood. It must be hot in his room at the hospital, Michael thought. He must be sweating under the bandages. But he will not die. I have to believe that. I won’t let him die.

“It’s a scorcher,” he heard Kate say, as if forcing herself back to normal conversation.

He heard his own voice, following her lead. “The radio says it’ll be ninety.”

“Human beings aren’t made for such heat,” she said. “When it’s sixty in Ireland, we think we’re in the tropics.”

The hallway was cooler than the street, but as they climbed the stairs, Michael’s stomach churned, and the heat grew clammier, as if it were pressing down from the roof. He paused at the first floor landing, touching his mother’s forearm.

“Someone’s upstairs,” he said.

She listened. They could hear the muffled sound of a flushing toilet. In the Caputo flat, pots clanged against a sink. Jo Stafford was singing “I’ll Be Seeing You” in Mrs. Griffin’s. But there were no baritone whispers above them, no shuffling of feet.

“Come on, son,” she said, leading the way.

And stopped as she turned on the second floor landing.

Sonny Montemarano and Jimmy Kabinsky were sitting on the steps.

“Hey, Michael,” Sonny said.

“Some friends you’ve been,” Kate Devlin said. “Move over and let us by.”

Sonny stood to let her pass, and for a moment Michael was afraid that he’d completely turned against the Devlins and would strike her. He tensed, ready to attack.

“I don’t blame you for being mad at us, Mrs. Devlin,” Sonny said softly. “But we didn’t have no choice.”

“Yes, you did,” she said, her anger pushing her up the steps. “You could have had guts.”

Her keys jangled as she opened the apartment door. Michael started to pass Sonny and Jimmy.

“How you feeling, man?” Jimmy said, looking ashamed.

“Fuck you,” Michael whispered.

“We gotta talk to you.”

“About what?” Michael said, and kept going.

Sonny grabbed the back of his belt.

“About Frankie McCarthy,” Sonny said. “He’s got a gun.” Michael gripped the banister. His mother appeared at the door above them.

“Are you all right?” she said. “Michael?”

“Yeah, Mom. We’re goin’ up the roof and talk.”

“Don’t go near the edge,” she said, a look of disdain on her face for Sonny and Jimmy, and went back into the kitchen.

On the roof, they leaned against a brick wall. The air was thick with heat and chimney smoke. Ridges of shiny black tar pushed through the joined seams of tarpaper. A yellowish haze shimmered over the rooftops of Brooklyn. While he talked, Sonny wouldn’t look at Michael, but his words came in an anxious rush.

“So you know Frankie got out, right? The lawyer talked some fucking judge into it, saying Frankie was too young to do time with all these bad guys in Raymond Street, being seventeen and all, and too old to go to Warwick or Youth House with the bad kids. So they give him credit for good behavior, and yesterday they tell him get the fuck out. First thing he does, he gets himself a piece. From the racket guys down President Street. I hear this from one of my cousins lives down there. Then last night, they all meet in the poolroom. Jimmy and me are hangin’ out on the fire escape in my aunt’s house, you know, by the Venus? It’s so fucking hot we can’t do nothin’ but hang there. And here comes Frankie McCarthy and the rest of them, drinking beer from containers. They sit on the steps beside the Venus. It’s closed now, you know? They always hang there. Right beneath us. And we see Frankie show them the piece.”

“Looked like a.38,” Jimmy said.

“Then they talk about having a big party,” Sonny said.

“A welcome home party,” Jimmy said.

“And Frankie says, ‘Yeah, we’ll get these fucking people out of our hair, once and for all.’”

“They mention you,” Jimmy said. “They mention your mother.”

“The Russian says they gotta let everybody know what they can do or the cops will nail them all.”

“And that Skids, you know, little guy with the muscles? He says they gotta do to you and your mother what they did to the rabbi. To set a fucking example. And Tippy Hudnut says they didn’t go far enough, they shoulda killed the Jew bastid and burned down the synagogue with him in it.”

“Then Frankie shows them the piece again,” Sonny said. “He says they can grab who they want, take them out to Gerritsen Beach or someplace and blow their heads off. He says, ‘These fuckin’ people around here, they gotta know we mean what we say.’ He says, ‘I met some Mafia guy in the can, he told me how to do it.’”

“They’re laughing all through this,” Jimmy Kabinsky said.

“Frankie says the mafioso told him he could get them plenty of work, big money,” Sonny said. “Robbing cars, muscling guys for the loan sharks, and getting people to pay protection. You know, the bars, the stores, they don’t pay, you break their fucking windows. You burn the store out. You rob everything or kick over the stands or whatever. They could make a mint of money, Frankie says. But then he says, ‘You gotta put fear in them to make it work.’”

“So he says he wants to have his welcome home party Friday night,” Jimmy said. “At the poolroom. To make sure everybody knows he’s back. To show the cops can’t do nothing about nothing. A big party, with a sign and all, a fuck you to the parish. Let everybody know. Get drunk, get laid.”

“Then get you. Get your mother.”

“Burn the synagogue.”

“Get the guys that cleaned the synagogue that time.”

“Burn down the fucking hardware store,” Jimmy said.

“All in one night,” Sonny said.

“Jesus Christ,” Michael said.

He turned away from them, looking toward the factory roof. The hard edges of the dark brick building were dissolving in the heat. He couldn’t see the white horse. He took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, then faced them.

“How come you came to tell me?” he said.

Sonny’s face was loose with emotion. His eyes welled.

“We don’t want nothin’ more bad to happen to you, Michael.”

“You’re still our friend,” Jimmy said. “Even though you joined up with the rabbi when you was supposed to find the treasure.”

“I found the treasure, Jimmy.”

“You did?”

Michael tapped the side of his head. “It’s up here.”

He started to leave, and Sonny grabbed him, heaving with emotion.

“I’m sorry, man,” he said, and hugged Michael.

“So am I,” Michael said, and pulled away.