“T’ree times in a week, the bulls came up my house,” Sonny Montemarano said that afternoon, as they stood beside the roof door of his building, gazing out at the rain. “Abbott and Costello, in person. They threaten you. They try to make you feel guilty.”
“Me too,” Jimmy said. “They come to see me day before yesterday.”
“They did?” Michael said. “What happened?”
“Nothing,” Jimmy said. “I didn’t say nothing, I swear.”
“What about your uncle?” Sonny asked, squinting now, staring into Jimmy’s pale blue eyes. “Did he say something?”
“Nah. Just his usual.”
“Whatta you mean, his usual?” Sonny said.
“You know, about the Jews and all.”
There it was, Michael thought. The Jews and all. Jimmy’s uncle was the rat. A rat so stupid he didn’t even know he was a rat.
“Exactly what did he say, Jimmy?” Michael asked.
“I don’t remember exactly.”
“Try,” Sonny said.
Jimmy gazed off at the rain sweeping through the backyards. It was as if he too now understood what had happened.
“You know, like, ‘What’s the crime, beating a Jew up? What’s the big deal?’ ” His voice lowered in shame. “Then he says — I couldn’t stop him, I swear — he says, ‘So what, if Frankie McCarthy broke his head?’ ” He paused, but didn’t look at Michael or Sonny. “Stuff like that.”
Sonny moaned. “Jesus, Jimmy—”
“He didn’t say we were there,” Jimmy said.
“Maybe not then,” Sonny said. “But they could grab him again on the street, when he’s working, anyplace.” He shook his head. “They could beat the shit out of him until he told them what they wanna hear. They could threaten to deport him, send him back to Poland.”
“One thing’s for sure,” Michael said. “The cops probably figure you told your uncle. He didn’t pick Frankie’s name out of the air.”
“They will def’nitely call your uncle as a witness,” Sonny said.
“And you too, Jimmy,” Michael said.
“And us,” Sonny said, looking at Michael in a trapped way.
Images of courtroom scenes flashed through Michael’s mind. Oaths. Lies. Frankie McCarthy staring at them. The rows filled with Falcons. They knew where Michael lived. They knew where his mother worked. The wind suddenly rose, and rain lashed the roof above them, and backed them away from the open door. They stared out at the glistening black pebbles and the clotheslines and the chimneys.
“Frankie’s boys must figure we ratted,” Sonny said quietly.
“Nah,” Jimmy said. “Why would they think that?”
“Because that’s how they think,” Sonny said. “They don’t know us. They don’t know your goddamned uncle either.”
The rain faded again into a steady drizzle.
“We got to let them know it wasn’t us,” Michael said. “Without ratting on Jimmy’s uncle.”
“How? We write them a letter? We go to the poolroom and say, ‘Excuse me, fellas, but we didn’t rat you out, so don’t do nothing to us, okay?’ ”
There was a silence. Michael felt cold.
“Maybe it wasn’t my uncle,” Jimmy said. “Maybe there was another witness. Maybe somebody was in the back of the store. Maybe a neighbor seen it from a window—”
“Yeah, wit’ X-ray vision, like Superman,” Sonny said.
There was another long silence.
“We’re in deep shit,” Sonny said.
17
One wet Tuesday after school, Michael entered the synagogue through the Kelly Street entrance. The door was open, awaiting his arrival, and he paused for a moment in the vestibule, feeling safe. As he shook the rain off his mackinaw, he heard a hard, almost braying sound from the far side of the door leading to the rabbi’s rooms. The notes were familiar. Braaah, braawp, brah-brah, bruh, brah-brah, braawp… The first notes of “And the Angels Sing.”
The sound abruptly stopped. Michael opened the door quietly and saw Rabbi Hirsch standing near the bookcase, deep in concentration, trying to blow on a curved instrument made of polished horn. His eyes were closed. He started to keep the beat with one foot, then tried again. Braaah, braawp… Then he paused, opened his eyes, saw Michael, and laughed.
“You catched me!” he said.
“Caught,” Michael said.
“You caught me,” the rabbi said. “I want to surprise you, but…” He brandished the horn. “I’m going to be a regular Ziggy Elman!”
Michael looked at the horn. “What is that in your hand?”
The rabbi explained that the instrument was a shofar, a ram’s horn. It was used in ceremonies during the holy days called Rosh Hashanah and was the same kind of horn that Joshua had used in biblical days to flatten the walls of Jericho.
Michael started singing a song he’d heard a lot on the radio:
Joshua fit the battle of Jericho,
Jericho,
Jericho.
Joshua fit the battle of Jericho,
And the walls came tumbling down….
“Wait, wait!” the rabbi said, signaling with the shofar. “Now, again!”
Michael sang the words more forcefully and the rabbi played a few notes in the thick, plangent tones of the ram’s horn. Joshua fit the battle of Jericho, Jericho, Jericho… The sound of the shofar was fat, primitive, eerie, as if Rabbi Hirsch were reaching back across the centuries. But there was no melody from the horn. It was not mournful. It was not melancholy. It was just loud and brutal, like a foghorn.
When the rabbi finished, he shook his head sadly, his face drained by failure.
“Is impossible,” he said. “A tune you can’t get from a shofar, just a noise. You need—” He pounded his chest as if asking it to identify itself. “What’s the word?”
“Lungs,” Michael said. “So you have enough breath.”
“Yes, yes, lungs.”
He turned the shofar over in his hands.
“Why can’t I make from it music?” he said softly. “Why can’t I make from it joy?”
Michael could offer no answer.
“Why can’t I make from a shofar like a regular Ziggy Elman?”
Rabbi Hirsch laid the shofar on a shelf of the bookcase and switched on the radio. It was tuned to WHN. Red Barber was explaining that with runners on first and third and none out, the Dodgers were sitting in the catbird seat.
“There’s a bird in America that looks like a cat?” the rabbi asked.
“I don’t know,” Michael said.
“So why does Red Barber say the Dodgers, they are in the catbird seat?”
“He says it all the time, like he says rhubarb.”
The rabbi was flicking through the dictionary.
“Rhubarb? That’s like a fruit I see in Roulston’s grocery store.”
“Red Barber uses it to describe, like, well, a big fight. You know, if a batter gets hit by a pitch and he charges the mound? Or when Leo Durocher comes out to holler at the umpires. That’s a rhubarb. And he says ‘We’re sitting in the catbird seat’ when he means the Dodgers are in good shape. They have the upper hand. They’re sitting pretty. Know what I mean?”
“No.”
The words zipped through Michael’s mind, and he realized what they must sound like to Rabbi Hirsch. Good shape and upper hand and sitting pretty. How did they come to mean what they mean?
“It’s like to have an advantage,” Michael said. “Like, you don’t have to worry now. You can’t lose. You can do it.”