Corky's Brother (23 page)

“Sure, Elijah.”

“My brother, I think he on to what we gonna do. He squeal on me, man, I'm dead.” He shook his head and whistled. “Izzie, though, he got some good points. I go along with him. See you tomorrow, Howie—”

Then he left. The next morning Louie's father drove Izzie, Stan, Marty, and myself to Wingate Field and we met the other guys by the handball courts. Mr. Gleicher too. It was a beautiful spring day, I remember, and the place was already filled with hundreds of guys, all practicing starts and running around the track. In a little while the stands began to fill and we followed Mr. Gleicher's advice, just jogging around the track, not trying to impress anyone by how fast we were. A few of the guys' parents were there and a lot of people from the neighborhood around Wingate Field, and it felt pretty good, running around on an official track—it was a black one, made of cinders—with over a thousand people watching. Some of the other schools had uniforms, but all we had were these little shields the girls had made for us out of oaktage, with the name of our school on it. We pinned them to the front of our T-shirts.

The whole place was in chaos, it seemed to me, with little kids chasing each other, girls practicing their dances, music playing over the loudspeaker, and teachers and mothers walking across the track to talk to kids—but once the man in charge announced that the track meet would begin soon, things got organized. We looked for Mr. Gleicher on the infield of the track, where all the teachers were, and we found him right away. They played “The Star-Spangled Banner” and then the “Hatikvah,” and Mr. Gleicher gave out square pieces of paper with numbers on them, for us to pin on the back of our shirts. He had a list of the events on a sheet of paper and while speeches were going on and girls from different schools were dancing around as if they thought they were on the plains of Israel, he told us which events came when and who would run in which races. There were all kinds of things you could get your school disqualified for—and the thing he tried to impress on us most was to stay in our spot of the field until our individual race was called. Last year, he reminded us, we had lost points because the judges had found one of our guys sitting in the stands, eating lunch.

Just before the first race, they unveiled a table of trophies and medals and you could hear everybody go “Ooh” when they did. And when they announced that the winner of Field Day the previous year—and the current holder of the Bar Kochba Trophy—was Congregation Shaare Torah, we cheered and shouted as hard as we could, and all the guys from the other Hebrew schools looked our way. Izzie got into some good name-calling with a group of kids from Judea Center, which was in our neighborhood, and when they taunted us about having all our older guys graduate, Izzie yelled back that we had a secret weapon.

Elijah hadn't shown up yet. The announcer called for the guys in the first race, a fifty-yard dash for kids in the first grade of Hebrew school, and Mr. Gleicher got them around him in a circle and reminded them not to look back or stop running when they reached the finish line. The kids listened when he talked, and he was very gentle with them—the way he'd been with Elijah. Mr. Gleicher warned us again to stay in our places, and he went over to the finish line. From where we were you couldn't see much of the race, but when it was over and we saw one little kid from our school jumping up and down, with all the other kids hugging him, we knew what had happened. Mr. Gleicher came back carrying the kid on his shoulders and we gave him a 2-4-6-8 cheer and told each other that this was it, we were going to do it again, nothing could stop us. Izzie even borrowed Louie's ballpoint pen and had him write “Bar Kochba's Raiders” on his T-shirt, and all of us followed his lead.

The track meet progressed pretty much the way Louie had it figured—we did real well in the lower grades and better than we'd expected in the individual races in the upper grades. When the time came for the individual races for seniors, we were in second place, a few points behind the East Midwood Jewish Center. “If we can just pick up a few third places in the senior events,” Louie told us, “we can still do it.”

Stan and Marty had come in second and third in the race for guys in the next-to-last-year, and Mr. Gleicher had Izzie and me scheduled to race in the senior events. Until we got to the starting line next to the other guys, though, I think we'd forgotten how much bigger than us most of them were. Our race was a hundred-yard dash, and even though we swore to each other that we would give it all we had, I think we knew we didn't stand a chance. “Gleicher should of raced us with guys our own age,” Izzie said. “Then we could of at least had a first place for sure—”

The starter told the runners to take their mark and my heart pounded. Izzie got down in position and set his jaw. “Relax,” I whispered. “And come up slow—”

“Got you,” he said, without looking my way. An instant later the gun went off and the line of us—fifteen to twenty guys—started out. Izzie and I ran neck and neck and for the first twenty or thirty yards, before you really picked up speed, we stayed with the leaders. In fact, at about the twenty-yard mark, I think Izzie was in first place. Being small helped him get a good start. But then, even though I strained with all my might, a few guys passed me and stayed ahead. The same thing happened to Izzie. One guy in front of us, from East Midwood, must have been about six foot one or two, with the longest legs of a guy our age I'd ever seen, and as we passed the halfway point he opened up a lead of almost ten full yards on the rest of us.

Then Elijah showed up, running along the grass on the inside of the track, waving to me and Izzie. “C'mon, Jewboys,” he called. “Catch me, mothers!”

“Yippeee!” I shouted—I was so happy to see him—and as I did I gagged and stumbled, knocking into a guy to my left. The two of us flailed away with our arms for several yards, and then went down in a heap. But Izzie was picking up speed, muttering at Elijah, and churning his little legs as fast as they would go. As I lay on the track and watched him, I could hear in my head the words he was saying, and when he'd gone past the tape and one of the judges had motioned that he'd come in third, I jumped up and ran straight for him and we hugged each other and danced around like maniacs. “I knew I could count on that black bastard—” Izzie said. “I knew it! I knew it!”

We ran back to our group of guys and they surrounded Izzie, punching him around and telling him how great he was. We got a little scared a minute later when the guy I'd knocked down complained to the judges that our whole team should be disqualified, but they ruled that it was nobody's fault, and Izzie's third place stood. Elijah sauntered over to our group then and Mr. Gleicher gave him a big hello, telling him how glad he was to see him. Elijah didn't say anything. He just sat down with the rest of the guys, as if he was one of us.

The broad jump was next, but Izzie and I didn't even come in in the first five in either the standing or the running events and when the announcer said over the P.A. system that the senior relay teams should report to the starter's table for the final event of the day, Louie told us that we were now in third place, eleven points behind East Midwood and eight points behind Temple Petah Tikvah. The relay counted for fifteen points, and when we realized that the guy who had won the hundred-yard dash was from East Midwood, we all felt we were done for.

That was when Izzie put his plan into action.

“I got a stomach ache,” Stan Reiss said to Mr. Gleicher. “I think you're gonna have to get somebody else to run for me.”

Mr. Gleicher looked around. “You better pick one in a hurry,” I said, and Izzie, Marty, and I made as if we were leaving for the track. “My stomach hurts real bad,” Stan said.

“Okay,” Elijah said, standing up. “I'll run for you—”

Izzie nodded toward our group of guys and we took our cue and cheered and started slapping Elijah on the back. Mr. Gleicher smiled at us and put his arm around Elijah's shoulder.

“That's very nice of you, Elijah,” he said. “But I'm afraid you're not allowed—”

Izzie was ready. “Why not?” he asked. “You been telling us yourself how we should treat him like he was one of us.” He looked at Elijah and Elijah hung his head.

“It's not that,” Mr. Gleicher began. “It's—”

“All that stuff about prejudice and him being an honorary member of our class,” Izzie said. “Boy!” he exclaimed.

“You ain't gonna let me run?” Elijah said to Mr. Gleicher.

Mr. Gleicher started to say something, but the P.A. announcer interrupted with a call for the Congregation Shaare Torah Relay Team, and we told Mr. Gleicher that he'd better hurry and decide on a substitute for Stan or we'd lose—and if we didn't come in in the first three in the relay, we would finish fourth or fifth in the total scoring. That hadn't ever happened since Mr. Gleicher had been coach. Izzie nodded to Elijah.

“Look,” Elijah said to Mr. Gleicher. “I
want
to be a Jewboy—” He lifted a chain from under his T-shirt and showed it around. It had at least a dozen Jewish stars on it, all different styles. Mezuzahs too. “Izzie been working with me, teaching me,” he said. “Honest, Mr. Gleicher. Izzie, he says that if you let me run with the team, that finish me off with the first training for being a Jewboy.” He whipped a
yamulka
out of his pocket—a white silk one—put it on his head, and then—just like that—began talking in Hebrew.
“Baruch Atoh Adonai Shalom Shalom
—” Mr. Gleicher looked confused. “Honest, I run real
ma-hare
, show you how much I wanna be a Jewboy. Please, Mr. Gleicher—” He began kissing his Jewish stars, one after the other. “Please let me.
Aleph Bes Gimel Shalom
. Please—” By this time Elijah had such a painful look in his eyes that even I was beginning to believe him. Then he started in about how Mr. Gleicher had to let him be Jewish to save him from his father. “Oh man,” he pleaded, “you just got to. I been studying so hard. Listen—
Baruch Atoh Adonai Shalom Shalom—”

“Last call for the relay team from Shaare Torah—” came the announcement, and Izzie and Louie and I stormed Mr. Gleicher with the arguments we had ready, telling him that he himself had said Elijah was our brother, that color didn't matter, that we should welcome him to our school, that he'd been with us for weeks now and had learned his prayers—

“Forget it,” Elijah said, pulling himself away from Mr. Gleicher. “He's the same as all the rest. People always promise you—”

Then Mr. Gleicher was holding Elijah's hand and running through the crowd of kids with him. It all happened so fast after that that to this day I'm not sure exactly what happened. Maybe the judge had a lot of respect for Mr. Gleicher, or maybe he felt sorry for Elijah, or got confused, or—who knows?—maybe Mr. Gleicher even swore on the Torah that Elijah was a Jew and a member of our class. All I know is the judge pinned a piece of paper with a number onto Elijah's back and showed him where the anchor men were lined up. When the big guy from East Midwood said something about Elijah being Negro, Izzie just said, “What's the matter, you stupid or something—you never heard of the black Jews? Boy, what kind of prejudiced Hebrew school do you go to?” and before we knew it the gun had sounded and Izzie had shot out ahead of the pack, running like a madman, his arms pumping, the baton clenched in his fist.

By some miracle he held on to a slight lead on the first leg of the race, but after he'd passed the baton to Marty we began to lose ground steadily. I was number three relay man, and when I began trotting in the passing zone, and took the baton in full stride from Marty, we were already in third place, about ten yards behind East Midwood. I gave it all I had, trying to make believe Elijah was in front of me, as if nobody else were on the track except us, with him laughing and calling me Jewboy—and I guess it helped, because when I reached Elijah for the last leg I had almost overtaken the number two man. “Watch me go, Jewboys,” Elijah said as I ran alongside him and slapped the baton into his hand. “I got Jewgas in my legs!”

The big guy from East Midwood was about fifteen yards ahead by now, but in no time at all Elijah was breezing past him, running free and easy, and laughing in the big guy's face. He only came up to his chest, but he moved his legs across the cinders as if his toes hardly touched the track. The crowd was going wild and in the middle of the field you could see the kids from our school throwing their jackets and sneakers and stuff in the air. Even Mr. Gleicher was yelling and cheering, and when Elijah came to the last twenty yards or so, he did what he used to do with us—he ran backwards! We got worried for a second, because the guy from East Midwood chewed up the ground fast—but then Elijah straightened out the right way, and broke the tape about ten yards ahead of the other guy.

“Mazel tov!”
Mr. Gleicher shouted, and when Elijah trotted back to us, smiling and proud, the
yamulka
still perched on the side of his head, we shouted it with him.
“Mazel tov
, Elijah!
Mazel tov!”
we screamed—laughing, happy. “Hurray for Elijah the Jewboy!” Izzie yelled, and we all hugged him and pounded him on the back and then Mr. Gleicher hoisted him onto his shoulders and limped around the track with us in a pack around him, giving Elijah
Mazel tov's
and 2-4-6-8's and every other cheer we could think of.

When Mr. Gleicher let Elijah down from his shoulders onto the grass, the two of them looked happier than any two guys I'd ever seen. “I run pretty good for a Jew, huh?” Elijah said. “We gonna get that big trophy now?” he asked. We told him we were but that they had to announce it first and give out individual medals. “Bet we could get a lot of money for that trophy—” he said, and he strutted around with us as if he owned the place. What he loved most was to see the looks on the faces of the kids from the other Hebrew schools when they'd come over to stare at him and he'd rattle off the words Izzie had taught him. “What's the matter?” Izzie kept asking them. “You stupid or something? You never learned about the black Jews?—What kind of crumby Hebrew school do you go to?”