Corky's Brother (20 page)

Our synagogue was called Congregation Shaare Torah, and it was pretty poor. It only had two floors: an upstairs temple that was nice enough, and a downstairs part that they called the “vestry rooms.” They were very dingy—in fact, they weren't rooms at all. Just a basement with a bunch of sliding doors. They used this basement for everything—classrooms, offices, the rabbi's study, the Junior Congregation Services on Saturday, dances, meetings, High Holy Day services, Sunday afternoon clubs, and even Bar Mizvahs and weddings. They were always announcing fund-raising campaigns to build a new center—but during the years we went there they never did, so that we used to be envious of the guys who went to other synagogues where they had basketball courts and swimming pools and ballrooms. The only bright spot in the whole place for us—aside from the fun we had stealing kids' books and passing them to the back row and under the sliding walls into the next classroom—was the trophy case outside the rabbi's study. There were silver and gold cups in it, inscribed, and medals, and photographs of winning track teams with the guys laughing and hanging their arms over each other's shoulders. We spent a lot of time gazing into that trophy case and there was this one photograph of a college runner, I remember, in a Columbia uniform, and he was holding his running shoes, leaning against a high hurdle and brushing his hair from his eyes while he smiled at you. I used to spend hours in front of my mirror at home, trying to get his expression on my face, imagining the day I would be able to send a picture like that back to the Hebrew school. “To Mr. Gleicher, a great coach,” the inscription on it would read, “from your former student, Howie.”

Next to the trophy case, on a wall with the plaques which represented trees bought in Israel, was the story we all knew by heart, about Mr. Gleicher, who had been a hero with the Haganah during the Arab-Israeli war in 1948. The story came from an old issue of
World Over
, a magazine that was given out to Hebrew school kids all over the country, and there were pictures in it of Mr. Gleicher in his Haganah uniform—and one of him in his track uniform. That was what interested us most,
I
suppose—the fact that until he'd had his knee blasted in an Arab mine field, he had been known as “the world's fastest Jew” and was supposed to have been a sure bet to win all kinds of medals for Israel in the 1952 Olympics. According to the article, Mr. Gleicher had been born in Poland, but had fled to Israel with his family in 1938. Then, when his father had died in 1940, he and his mother had been brought to America by members of their family who had escaped here from the Nazis. The article had a lot of stuff about how much they'd been persecuted, and how many members of his family had died at which concentration camps—but the important thing as far as we were concerned was Mr. Gleicher's track feats—his running times and medals and records—and how, when he was going to Brooklyn College, he'd gotten the job at our school, teaching Hebrew to help support his family. It was a nice feeling to see the name of your Hebrew school in print. Except for the one year in the U. S. Army and the two years he'd spent in Israel after the war had broken out there, he'd taught at our school steadily since 1942, and we'd come in first or second at Field Day every year except for the three he was away fighting.

The year most of us were in the sixth grade at P.S. 92, though, we figured we didn't stand a chance even to place in the first five. What had happened was this: all the guys a year ahead of us in Hebrew school who were good runners had had their Bar Mizvahs by about April—and, naturally, all of them had immediately stopped coming to Hebrew school. This meant that even though Izzie, Stan, Marty, and I were pretty good runners for our age, in the major event of the day—the Senior Relay—we'd be racing against guys a year older. We knew our school would score its share of points in all the other races, but unless you came in first or second in the Senior Relay, you didn't stand much chance to win the championship and the Bar Kochba Trophy.

Still, we worshipped Mr. Gleicher, and we kept telling each other that if we tried hard enough, we could do it. So every day, starting about the middle of April—Field Day was scheduled for the second Sunday in May—we were out at the Parade Grounds practicing. Even on days when we didn't have Hebrew school. Louie had a stop watch and a record of winning times for the last few years, and we drove ourselves until our tongues were hanging out, trying to equal them. We made progress, and you could tell from the quiet way Mr. Gleicher would encourage us that he knew how hard we were trying, but after a couple of weeks it became obvious that it was going to take a miracle for us to win.

Then Elijah appeared. One afternoon, when there was no Hebrew school and we were out at the Parade Grounds by ourselves, running laps around the baseball backstops, he suddenly appeared beside us. “C'mon, Jewboys!” he called. “Catch me, mothers!” Then he was gone, flying by us as if we were standing still. He'd slow down sometimes, but when we'd be almost up to him, he'd just laugh and take off again.

The next afternoon, while the girls were off by themselves practicing their dances and we were jogging around the field with Mr. Gleicher shouting to one of us, and then to another, to take the lead, he showed up again. “C'mon, Jewboys,” he said. “Catch me, mothers—” We took after him as fast as we could, but he flew away from us as if, as Izzie put it, he had jets in his ass. Once, when we were coming around the last turn for the final fifty-yard sprint, he even turned around and ran backwards for about twenty yards, but we still couldn't catch him. “You Jewboys sure can run!” he laughed.

When we had all collapsed on the grass in front of Mr. Gleicher, Elijah hardly seemed tired. He stood away from us, at a distance of about thirty or forty yards, leaning against a tree, watching us while Mr. Gleicher talked. “You must learn to breathe in regular patterns,” he said. “From down low. You must stretch your diaphragms.” None of us was listening to him too much, though. We all kept glancing over at Elijah. Mr. Gleicher had seen him too, we knew, and he smiled in Elijah's direction—but he didn't say anything.

On the way home that day, most of us were pretty depressed, and some of us even began complaining that Mr. Gleicher wasn't such a great coach after all, that maybe it was his fault we weren't improving. Stan Reiss even said what I'd thought a few times—how quiet Mr. Gleicher always was, how he never
inspired
you—but Izzie got mad at this. “A guy like that's been through a lot,” he said, and he reminded us about his knee getting shot up, and about his wife. We knew that he had married an Israeli girl who had died in 1949—it said so in the
World Over
article—and from the first day we entered Hebrew school and we'd heard about Mr. Gleicher from the older kids, they had also passed along rumors about her death, with some pretty gory stories about how she'd been captured by Arabs and what they had done to her before they finally killed her. Then, just as Stan was telling Izzie he was sorry he'd blamed Mr. Gleicher—we were at the corner of Caton Avenue and East 21st Street, outside the BMT station—Elijah was suddenly alongside us.

“Hey,” he said. “You guys wanna buy things?”

We stopped—none of us knew quite what to do. What took us by surprise most, I suppose, was that he had come right up to us that way, as if what had happened at the Parade Grounds had never taken place. “C'mere,” he said, motioning to the wall overlooking the train tracks. “Make a circle round me so the cops don't see. C'mon—you don't gotta be scared. You with the stop clock,” he said, meaning Louie, “you be lookout.” There were about eight of us and we followed him to the wall. He fished into his side pocket. “You want cigarettes? I got Chesterfield and Old Gold. I give 'em to you cheap—ten cents a pack.”

“We're in training,” Stan said.

“Yeah. I seen you,” he said, and rolled his eyes. “Okay.” He put the cigarettes away. “I got some good rings—take any one you like, a nickel each,” he said, tinkling a handful in front of us. “You go to the store to buy 'em, they cost you forty-nine cents each. The ones with pearls cost eighty-nine, I let you have 'em for ten cents. How ‘bout it?” None of us said anything, and Elijah flashed his fingers in front of our eyes. On every one of them except the thumbs there was a different ring. “I wear 'em, you whiteboys can wear 'em too. Only these ain't Woolworth rings. These the real thing I wear. This here's a genuine ruby, and this a topaz with a 14-karat gold setting. You believe it. I get you these too, you don't like the fake ones.” He looked up. He was a skinny kid, an inch or two shorter than most of us. “You wear these rings, you start to run faster.” He laughed, but none of us joined in. “Okay,” he said, putting the rings away. “I show you something else. I got some necklaces you can give your mother for her birthday.” He drew out pearl necklaces, then ankle bracelets, combs, fountain pens—but we still couldn't speak; it was as if he had us paralyzed. Even Izzie seemed flabbergasted. “How come you don't want nothing? Ain't you got money? My old man says you Jews got all the money.” He rolled his eyes again. “C'mon guys, buy something from me, huh? I got to make some money today. I come home without money, I catch hell.” He licked his lips. “I tell you what I do for you—you give me orders, tell me what you want, and I see if I can get it for you. Get you good prices.” He took a pad from a back pocket and spit on the end of a chewed-up pencil. “What you want—baseball gloves? some nice ties to wear for school? a pipe for your father—?”

“Okay,” Izzie said, and we all jerked our heads toward him. “Can you get me a Pee Wee Reese model glove?”

I gulped, but Elijah's face fit up. “Sure! That's easy, man!” he said. “But you got to give me a deposit on it first—fifty cents down, a buck and a half when I bring the glove.”

“C'mon,” Izzie said, starting away. “How dumb do you think we are?—You take our money and we'll never see you again.”

Elijah grabbed Izzie's arm. “You can trust me, kid—honest. Do I look like a guy who'd fade out on you? I bring you the glove at practice tomorrow. I promise.”

“Forget it,” Izzie said.

“Look—I bring the glove tomorrow, you have the money?”

“Yeah—sure,” Izzie said.

“Okay.” He turned to the rest of us. “You guys sure you don't wanna buy a ring or a comb or something till then?” He looked down at the sidewalk. “Oh boy, I just got to get some money, guys. You tell me what to do, I do it. I do anything for money!”

People started coming out of the subway then, home from work, and Elijah dropped back against the wall, gathering us closer around him so nobody would see him. When the train below had clattered out of the station and he told us again how he would do anything for money, I offered to buy a comb for a nickel. The other guys followed my lead and inside of a minute Elijah had sold us a bunch of combs and rings and some candy. He seemed happy again—the way he had when he'd been running in front of us at the Parade Grounds.

“You guys saved my life!” he said when we'd finished our transactions. “Fifty-five cents I got now. At least my old man won't lay into me.” He walked us to Flatbush Avenue, then waved goodbye. “I see you guys tomorrow. You bring the money, Shorty, and I'll have the glove. I got to split now.”

Izzie acted as if he was mad that Elijah had called him Shorty—even though Elijah was no taller than Izzie—but you could tell that he really felt pretty good that he'd been the only one with enough nerve to order something. “Holy mackerel!” he kept saying. “Two bucks for a Pee Wee Reese model glove. Holy mackerel!”

The next afternoon, about twenty minutes after we'd started practice, Elijah came running by us, waving a baseball glove in his hand. “C'mon, Jewboys,” he said. “You catch me, I give you the glove for nothing.” He took off and we took off after him, Izzie giving it all he had, but it was no use. No matter how hard we ran, we couldn't come close to him—and he hardly seemed to be trying. Mr. Gleicher watched what was happening, and he seemed to enjoy it. For the first time since we'd begun practice, he was smiling.

“Ma-hare! Ma-hare!”
he shouted to us in Hebrew, and when we had finished our laps and lay stretched out on the ground in front of him, exhausted, he praised us, telling us he had never seen us run faster, that if we kept it up we would do well on Field Day. Elijah remained at a distance, near where the girls were practicing. After we'd rested for five minutes, we started running again, practicing passing the baton this time, and Mr. Gleicher shouted at us the whole time. “On your toes! On your toes!
Ma-hare!…
Pump the arms,
bevakasha! Mahare
, Izzie!” Izzie was the anchor man for the relay team, and as he came around the last turn this time, after Stan had passed him the baton, Elijah joined him, running a few yards in front and tossing the baseball glove up and down in the air.
“Ma-hare!”
Mr. Gleicher yelled, and we all joined in.
“Mahare
, Izzie.
Ma-hare!”

Elijah kept laughing, his legs flying under him, and as they came by us, a few yards apart, you could hear Izzie muttering, “Black bastard…I'll catch him…black bastard…” Then there were suddenly three men running, and within five strides, busted knee and all, Mr. Gleicher had caught Izzie and pulled him up short, grabbing him by his sweatshirt. He looked as if he were going to kill him, he was so angry. He shook him with both hands and lifted him up in front of him, gritting his teeth and hissing rapidly in Hebrew. Then he threw him down on the ground and we all ran over. For a minute I even thought he was going to kick him, but he didn't. He just clenched his fists and glared.

“Hey, man,” Elijah said to Mr. Gleicher, wandering over to our group for the first time. “Why don't you pick on somebody your own size?”