The man with the field glasses turned to Michael, glancing at the Jackie button.
“You ever see him before?”
“No. This is my first time in Ebbets Field.”
“Take a look.”
He handed Michael the field glasses.
“You got to adjust them,” he said. “But don’t try to read the writin’ on them. I took them off a dead German.”
After adjusting the lenses, Michael could see all the way to first base, where Furillo was taking a lead; all the way to the dugout, where Burt Shotton was sitting in a civilian suit and Robinson was standing alone, with one foot on the top step. He could even see the dirt on Robinson’s uniform.
“Thanks,” Michael said, handing the glasses back.
“You got to see a great play, boy,” the man said, adjusting the lenses again for himself.
“I sure did,” Michael said.
The man said his name was Floyd, and he shook Michael’s hand and then introduced his friend, Sam—“We were in the army together”—and then Rabbi Hirsch reached across Michael to shake hands with the two men. “My first time in Abbot’s Field too,” he said. “Like Michael.” There was a great sigh as Hermanski grounded into a double play to end the inning.
In the top of the second, Hank Greenberg came to bat. A few people stood to applaud. So did Rabbi Hirsch.
Then they heard the voice:
“Siddown, Rabbi, don’t hurt your hands clappin’.” It was the youth in the black T-shirt. “This sheenie can’t hit no more.”
Rabbi Hirsch turned toward the voice and slowly sat down.
“This word?” he said to Michael. “What is it?”
“What word?”
“Sheenie.”
“Ah, it’s one of them dumb words.”
“A word for Jew?”
“Yeah.”
The rabbi turned again to glare at the young men. His face trembled. But then he turned back to Greenberg’s at bat.
The voice again, shouting at the Dodger pitcher: “Give dis Hebe a little chin music, Branca. He’ll quit right in front a ya.”
Rabbi Hirsch turned again to Michael; his early joy seemed to be seeping out of him.
“What means chin music?”
“It means, like, throw the ball close to his chin.”
“So they think, throw near Hank Greenberg’s head, he will quit? Because he’s a Jew?”
“That’s what that guy thinks.”
Greenberg took a ball, low and away.
“You said Hank Greenberg, he was a hero in the war. These young men, they don’t know this?”
Floyd heard him and leaned over.
“They are ignorant, Reverend,” he said. “They are stupid.”
But the loudmouth in the black shirt wasn’t going away. He bellowed: “Hit him in the Hebrew National, Branca. Let’s see how big his salami is.”
A few people in the crowd laughed, but Louis stood up.
“Hey, whyn’t you bums keep y’ traps shut? Yiz are insultin’ people!”
“Ya wanta do somethin’ about it?” the young man shouted. His friends were all laughing now.
“I’ll come over dere and give you a fat lip, buster!”
“You and what army?”
Greenberg swung and lined a ball deep and foul. The whole park groaned in relief.
“His cousin caught it and sold it on da spot!” the young man shouted.
Now Rabbi Hirsch stood up and faced them.
“Please! The mouth, shut it up, please. This is America!”
The tough guys started singing the first lines of “America the Beautiful.” Sarcastically. Out of tune. Full of the courage of superior numbers.
“Please,” the rabbi said. “The big mouth!”
Then Greenberg walked.
“Whad I tell you?” the young man shouted. “Dis old Hebe can’t hit no more!”
“All right, can it, shmuck,” Louis the union man shouted.
“Kiss my ass!” the youth replied.
That was enough. Louis was up, leaping across the aisle. He grabbed the young man by his black shirt and smashed him with his right fist. The young man’s friends rose as one, throwing punches, and the two other union guys piled in, and then everybody in the area was up. Floyd and Sam stood to watch, carefully, warily. Then they looked at each other. Without a word, Sam slipped off his glasses and his wristwatch and tucked them into his pocket. Floyd handed the field glasses to Michael, who thought: If I didn’t have this cast, if I only could swing at them, hurt them.… But now others were diving into the brawl, and the young men were backing up as the union guys went at them. Jabbo knocked down a kid with red hair. Ralph kicked a sunburned kid in the balls. The one called Louis grabbed the loudmouth by the hair and whacked his head into the top of a seat. The young man squealed.
“I’m bleedin’! I’m fuckin’ bleedin’.”
“Wrong,” Louis said. “You’re fuckin’ dyin.”
And banged his head again on the seat. Suddenly Rabbi Hirsch hurried over and tried to get into it, but now it was all fists and feet and curses and he was shoved back. His glasses fell and he was groping for them on the concrete steps when two of the young men started kicking him. Michael grabbed one of his crutches and hobbled toward them, but then Floyd and Sam pushed him down in his seat. “Watch the stuff,” Floyd said. He grabbed one of the young men attacking Rabbi Hirsch, spun him, and presented him to Sam, who knocked him down with a punch. The other one looked up, his eyes wide with fear. Floyd bent him over with a punch to the belly, and then kicked him in the ass, tumbling him down the steps.
Suddenly it was over. The six young toughs were ruined. Bleeding, groaning, whining. Rabbi Hirsch found his glasses and looked around in amazement. Floyd and Sam took their seats. The union guys sat down.
“Can’t even watch a fuckin’ ball game in peace no more,” Louis said.
“Hey, Louis, want a hot dog?” one of his friends said.
And now the cops arrived, ten of them, beefy and pink-faced and Irish, all in blue with their batons at the ready. Rabbi Hirsch was still standing, baffled, his eyes wide. One of the cops looked at the battered youths and then at the rabbi.
“Did you do this?” he said.
“I wish,” the rabbi said.
“They went dattaway,” one of the union guys shouted. Floyd and Sam laughed for the first time.
“Who did it?”
“The Jewish War Veterans, Officer.”
The cops hauled the young men to their feet and led them away. The whole section burst into applause. Louis stood up, faced the fans, lifted his hat, and bowed.
“What a rhubarb!” Rabbi Hirsch said, laughing and making a fist. “What a great big excellent goddamned rhubarb!”
30
On the Fourth of July, Michael watched the fireworks from the roof, where grown-ups cheered and the noise was like an artillery barrage. Sonny and Jimmy were not there. They were in the streets, where they could believe what everyone else believed about Michael.
In the days that followed, Michael heard laughter from those streets and the phwomp of spaldeens and the rise and fall of arguments. But he was no longer part of it. His world had shrunk to the apartment and the roof, his room and the cellar, with occasional trips to the Grandview when his mother was working. In the dark theater, he saw Double Indemnity and To Each His Own and The Spiral Staircase, imagining himself scheming with Barbara Stanwyck or waltzing in wartime London with Olivia de Havilland or protecting Dorothy McGuire in a vast, evil mansion. When the movie was over, he was still on crutches, still facing the long hobble home through streets more dangerous than any in the movies. On that walk, he often felt like a five-year-old, guarded as he was by his mother.