“The pastoral parts,” he said. “That’s nothing. That’s the least of it, the pastoral parts. Even the weather, that’s nothing too. Even the cabin fever. What you’ve got to look out for are the Russian Orthodox. You’re looking at me as if I was nuts. Russians discovered this place. They battled the natives years, some hearts-and-minds thing. Then they converted them. They did. The Russian Orthodox church is very popular with the natives. All those onion-shaped domes that you see. You do. You see them everywhere. In Sitka. In Juneau, the Aleutians. Up and down the Kenai Peninsula. Kodiak. Even right here in Anchorage. (You know there are scholars who believe the igloo is a serendipity? That some native was trying to build a little Russian Orthodox church out of blocks of ice and snow? Monkey see, monkey do. Who knows?) Anyway, watch out for them. You see any Russian Orthodox Cossack Eskimo momzers come roaring in on their dogsleds, waving their whips over their heads, hollering ‘Mush!’ and thinking whatever the word for ‘pogrom’ is in Eskimo, in Ice, get out of their way because they’re looking to beat the living shit out of you. Hey,” he said, “they learned from the best. Free Soviet Jewry, yes, Rabbi? So that’s another reason I don’t go out, why I declare so many snow days.”
“Mush?”
I swear I knew what he was going to say. I swear it.
“Ice for ‘Jews.’ It eggs on the dogs.”
And let them pass, Petch’s pensées. Only the distraction of the rabbi’s high-grade cabin fever. Some distraction. Some only.
One of the disadvantages of being without a wife in company is that when it’s time to vamoose there’s no one with whom you can make eye contact. Your body language falls on deaf ears. One of you can’t signal to the other of you that it’s time for the baby-sitter line to be offered up, the tomorrow’s-a-working-day one. I was on my own. There should be no hurt feelings. He means no harm. Be polite with this all-cabin-fevered-out colleague. I shifted my weight, I cleared my throat, I tamped at the corners of my lips with my napkin, Ice for “be seeing you,” for getting the hell out of there.
“The deal’s off then?” Petch said.
“What deal? We had no deal.”
“You know,” he said. “I can’t come to New Jersey? We can’t trade? The prince and the pauper?”
“Rabbi Petch,” I said.
“Listen,” he interrupted, “I make a bad first impression. I know that. I do. I’m paranoid. Hey,” he said, “if Jews had priests and bishops I’d be on the first boat out. They’d hang me out to dry in the diocese’s designated hospital.”
“Please, Rabbi.”
“No, please, come on. The way I talk? A learned man? Listen,” he said, and lowered his voice. Close as we were, I had to lean forward to hear him. “Listen,” he said, “they don’t know what to do with me. The congregation wants to be fair. They come over. Machers and shakers. Boiling mad. Determined. Minds made up. Once-and-for-all written all over their faces. But you know? They’re stunned when they see. Humbled. All of a sudden the cat’s got their tongue, they don’t know what to say. They’re thunderstruck in the southwest corner. They can’t do enough for me. However they were feeling, whatever was on their minds, on the tip of their tongues, it’s forgotten. All is forgiven. And I know what was on their minds, the tip of their tongues. I could say it for them. You know something? Once I did. I really did. I spoke their piece for them. From the tip of my tongue to the tip of their tongue.
“ ‘Rabbi Petch,’ I said, ‘how are you today? Cold all better? Good, excellent, alevay! We were worried. As a matter of fact, Rabbi, now that you’re feeling so much better, it might be a good time to tell you something that’s been on our minds, on the tip of our tongues. Some of the board members have noticed that you don’t quite seem to be feeling your good old self of late. Not precisely a hundred percent, not specifically par value. Well, it’s this winter, Sidney. It’s been a terrible winter this winter. It’s taken its toll from the best of us. Dan Cohen, for example. A shtarker like Dan. Heck, Rebbe, weather like this, unrelenting, you’d be a shvontz not to get shpilkes. We’re all shlepping. Anyway, we had a meeting, we put our heads together, we had a discussion.’
“ ‘Loz im gayn. It’s been a hell of a winter, he’s starving for light.’
“ ‘Loz im gayn? Loz im gayn? Loz im gayn where? Sid’s a widower. His brothers are dead, his sisters. All the mishpocheh got eaten up and picked clean in the Holocaust.’
“Someone said no, someone said yes. Someone said no again. Someone looked it up.
“ ‘Sidney. Sid. Kid. The long and the short. We made up a collection, we collected your airfare. We dipped into capital. We collected something extra. You’ll be home for Xmas, Rabbi. Come April, alevay, you’ll be searching for leaven, licking a hard-boiled egg, sucking parsley and charoses from between your teeth and having Pesach with your Aunt Ida in Arkansas hiding the afikomen from the pickaninnies. Next year in Little Rock, this is your life!’
“They never had the nerve. Even after I said it for them they never had the nerve. They went off biting their tongues, kicking themselves in the behind. So New Jersey was my idea. I can do what you’re doing. Bury people, say a few words. They’d put up with me in New Jersey, with my ways. In New Jersey I wouldn’t even have ways. Only here I have ways.
“I’m a spiritual, God-fearing guy. God-fearing? He scares the bejeesus out of me. I’m very impressed. Well, He makes an impression. All the ice and that darkness, the disproportionate strength of a bear. The whiteness of whales.
“Listen,” he said, “go in good health, but promise me.”
“Promise you what?”
“You’ll keep an open mind.”
“Certainly,” I said. “I will. I promise. But now,” I said, “if I could just use your phone. I’ll call a cab. I have to get going.”
He nodded in the direction of the telephone.
“You’ll write me?” he said when I’d made my call.
“Write you?”
“From the pipeline. You’ll let me know how things are?”
“Sure. I’ll drop you a line. Well,” I said, carefully making my way through Petch’s obstacle course, “thanks for the tea. And thank you for seeing me.” But he wasn’t listening. He was peering out the window, looking hard at whatever it was he thought he could see in the gloom, March’s short daylight already shutting down.
“Is it my taxi?” I asked him.
“What?”
“Is it my taxi? Has my taxicab come?”
“What?” he said. “No. I don’t like the looks of it out there. Something’s up. If I were you I wouldn’t even try to go out this month.”
Remarkable. Wait. This is remarkable. What happened. Just remarkable. Maybe I should tell you — the guy? That I shared the ride with? In the wrecker? He turned out to be my bush pilot. Same guy. The law of no loose ends. What goes around comes around. The law of the return.