The bearded man called to him again.
“Please.”
Michael stopped. There was a note in the man’s voice as he said the simple word please. The sound of distress. As if a life could depend upon what Michael did next. There was pain in the word too. And sadness. Maybe the bearded man was just that: a bearded man, calling for help in a blizzard. Not some agent of the devil. They were like two men in the trackless Arctic, specks in the ghostly wastes of a dead world.
If I walk away, Michael thought, it will be for one reason: I’m afraid. The Malemute Kid wouldn’t walk away. Neither would Billy Batson. Shit, if Billy Batson had walked away from the man in the black suit he would never have become Captain Marvel. And my father, Tommy Devlin, he would never walk away. Not from a thousand goddamned Nazis. And definitely not from a man who said please in that voice.
The boy crossed the street, struggling again for balance, found the wall of the synagogue in the twisting snow, and inched his way to the side door. The bearded man’s face was clearer now. Under his heavy black hat, he had blue eyes behind thick horn-rimmed glasses. His small nose made his beard seem larger, more solid, as if it were carved from wood instead of made of hair. The beard was dark, with touches of rusty red and gray, but the boy could not tell how old the man was. He was standing just inside the door, a heavy dark tweed coat hanging loose over his shoulders. Everything else he wore was black.
“Please,” he said. “I am the rabbi. I need a help. Can you give me a help?”
Tense with fear, Michael stepped closer. The wind abruptly died, as if pausing for breath. The boy stared at the bearded man, noticing his dirty fingernails, the ragged cuffs of the tweed coat, and wondered again if dark secrets lay behind him in the synagogue.
“Well, you see, Rabbi, I—”
“One minute, it takes,” the rabbi said.
Michael fumbled for words, trembling with fear, curiosity, and the cold.
“I’m an altar boy up at Sacred Heart,” he said. “You know, a Catholic? And I’m late for the eight o’clock mass and—”
“Not even one minute,” the rabbi said. “Bitte.” He pulled the coat tighter. “Please.”
Michael glanced past him into the unlighted vestibule. Wood paneling rose about five feet from the floor, topped by a ridge. The rest of the wall was painted a cream color. He could see nothing else in the gloom. What if he’s Svengali, he thought, the bearded guy in the movie who could hypnotize people? Or like Fagin in Oliver Twist, who made the kids steal for him? No: his voice doesn’t sound like those bastards. The wind suddenly attacked again, like a signal of urgency. Besides, the boy thought, I can always push him down the steps. I can knock off his glasses. I can kick the door open. Or kick him in the balls. One false move. Boom! Knowing that he was talking to himself to kill his fear.
“Okay,” Michael said abruptly. “But it’s gotta be fast. What do you want me to do?”
The bearded man opened the door wide and Michael stepped in, suddenly warmer as he left the wind behind. There were three steps leading down. The boy stood uneasily on the top step.
“A little light, is good, yes?” the rabbi said, waving a hand around the dark vestibule.
“I guess.”
“There,” the rabbi said. “You see?”
Michael moved down a step and peered through the dimness toward the wall to the right. A switch was cut into dark wood paneling. The rabbi gestured nervously, as if flicking the switch, but he did not touch it.
“You mean turn it on?” Michael asked.
The rabbi nodded. “Is… uh… it’s dark, no?”
Michael was suddenly wary again.
“Why don’t you turn it on?”
“Is not… permitted,” the bearded man replied, as if groping for the correct word. “Today is Shabbos, you see, and — is simple, no? Just—”
He brushed the air with his hand to show how easy it would be. Michael took a breath, stepped down, and flicked the switch. The space was suddenly brightened by an overhead globe. They were in a small vestibule; three steps up on the far side, there was another door. The creamy ceiling paint was cracked and peeling. The boy exhaled slowly. No bomb had exploded. No steel walls had descended to imprison him. No trapdoor had opened to drop him into a dungeon. The light switch was a light switch. The rabbi smiled, showing uneven yellow teeth, and looked pleased. Michael felt loose and warm.
“Thanks you, thanks you,” the rabbi said. “A dank. Very good boy, you are. Du bist zaier gut-hartsik… Very good.”
Then he pointed to the ridge along the top of the wood paneling.
“Is for you,” he said. “Please to take. For you.”
It was a nickel, gleaming dully in the light.
“For you,” the rabbi said.
“No, it was nothing, I don’t need it….”
“Please.”
Michael was anxious again, about the time now and the four blocks he still had to journey through the blizzard. He picked up the nickel and slipped it into the side pocket of his mackinaw.
“Good-bye,” the man said. “And thanks you.”
“You’re welcome, Rabbi.”
The boy opened the door and rushed into the storm, feeling taller and stronger and braver.
3
Father Heaney looked as if he too wished he had stayed in bed. His halo of uncombed gray hair combined with his wild black eyebrows and unshaven chin to create a vision of distraction and carelessness. Only his eyes seemed to belong to the man whose war record made him a hero to Michael and some of the other altar boys. His slits of eyes were more hooded than ever, causing Michael to imagine him posing as a Japanese submarine commander spying for the OSS. This was not too absurd a possibility; they had heard from other priests that Father Heaney had been a chaplain in North Africa and Sicily and Anzio; he had gone into Germany with General Patton. He had not been in the Battle of the Bulge, although when Michael asked him about it, he said, in a tight-lipped way, that he’d known men who died there. In his sermons, or in the mornings in the sacristy, Father Heaney never talked about the war. But Michael was sure the war hung over him like a dark cloud; after all, less than two years ago, he was giving the last rites to dying soldiers.
To be sure, Father Heaney’s silences were not confined to the war. He was silent about most things. In the mornings before mass, he seldom said anything to the altar boys, but on this morning he was more silent than ever. He grunted when he saw Michael arrive breathlessly at ten after eight. He grunted at Michael’s apologies. Then he grunted and motioned with his head for the boy to precede him out to the altar.
The priest’s style was to say the mass very quickly, like a man announcing a horse race, and the other altar boys always joked that he was in a hurry to get back to his bottle. Michael had never seen him drinking, or even smelled whiskey seeping from his pores, but on this arctic morning, Father Heaney’s impatient, hurtling style hadn’t changed. He raced through the mass in the cold, empty church while Michael tried valiantly to keep pace. Usually there were two altar boys, but Michael’s partner had been defeated by the blizzard, and Michael made all the Latin responses himself. At one point, Father Heaney cut Michael off in midsentence; at another, he completely dropped a long piece of Latin. It was as if even the words of the ancient ritual were more than he wanted to say. Michael moved the heavy leather-bound missal from one side of the altar to the other. He did what he was supposed to do with wine and cruets. As the priest mumbled before the tabernacle, with a plaster statue of the bleeding Christ above him, Michael tried to pray for his father in his Belgian grave and the souls in Purgatory and the starving people in Europe and Japan. But only the impulse rose in his breast; the actual words of prayers did not follow. Father Heaney wouldn’t let them, driven as he was to cross the finish line. The priest blessed the great dark space of the church and skipped the sermon, while far above, the steeple of Sacred Heart of Jesus R.C. Church shuddered and creaked under the assault of the wind.