What about these cars? a cop said. Who did this to these cars? Mr. Gallagher said, Find the guys that beat up this rabbi and yiz’ll have your answer.
While they talked, Michael’s head filled with images of violence. He imagined Tippy and Skids and the rest of the momsers, kicking, stomping, laughing, while one of them gouged the swastika into the door; imagined Rabbi Hirsch fighting back, the way he tried to fight at Ebbets Field, and falling between the cars, while fists and shoes and sticks rained down on him; and wished he could have arrived when it was happening, shown up with his father, and Sticky the dog, and Father Heaney, and Charlie Senator. Then there would have been a fair fight. He imagined his mother telling his father what had happened on Ellison Avenue and how they had put their hands on her. And pictured his father getting his M-1 and going hunting for Falcons. I wish I could do that. Go and get them.
He said none of this to the police. And after Rabbi Hirsch was lifted into the ambulance, Mr. Gallagher drove Michael home. Don’t worry, the older man said. The cops will get those bums. Michael did not reply.
As he climbed the stairs, he felt numb and slow, his strength drained away. He gripped the banister to steady himself, and then made an effort to finish the last flight. His mother was sitting where he’d left her, but suddenly her own numbness vanished. She got to her feet and went to her son.
“Jesus Mary and Joseph, son. What’s happened?” she said.
He told her. And dissolved in tears and then in rage again. He punched at the air. He shook his fists. He ground his teeth.
“I’m gonna get them!” he shouted. “I’m going over to the poolroom and I’m gonna kill them! I don’t care what they do to me! I’m gonna kill them, kill them, kill them.”
“Don’t bother, son,” she whispered, hugging him until the rage ebbed. “We’ll be leaving.”
Then she turned away from him, folding her arms, and for the first time since the news of the death of Tommy Devlin, she began to weep. The sound was full of a deep, grieving helplessness. And Michael thought: They have to be punished. Here. On earth. Not in Purgatory or Hell. Here.
And then he thought about the only way that punishment might be certain.
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.