The Blood Lie (13 page)

Louis' older sister found him and helped him up. There was nothing to do now except stay alive. That meant getting as far away as possible from this place that had been home. So he and his family started walking. They walked, rode trains and hitchhiked across Europe, ending up hungry and exhausted in Wales. They'd trekked almost 1,500 miles, but for Louis the journey was just beginning. Traveling alone this time, he took a boat to New York City where he could live with a cousin, prepare for rabbinical school, and start a life in America.

Back in the ghetto, the rabbi wasn't able to help his people or even that one little girl. But today, he thought, maybe he could help both a lost girl and his community. Maybe he could organize a search party to look for Daisy Durham.

Pushing aside his writing materials—that would have to wait—he wondered who he should phone and whether he should wait until a more reasonable hour of the morning.

The telephone jolted him. He hoped it was the trooper calling to say that Daisy was found wandering the woods or a back road—and perhaps even to apologize. Then again, it could be one of his congregants calling. Someone may have passed away in the night—maybe old Max Clopman or poor Sadie Gelman, who was so sick. Yes, it was probably a death; anything else could wait until a sensible hour. He picked up the receiver.

“Rabbi, it's Sam Pool.”

“Sam, what's wrong? It's not Eva, is it? Or one of the children?”

“No, it's—I'm sorry if maybe I wake you. Since last night I try to call. I need to tell you—do you know a girl is missing? Daisy Durham?”

“Why, yes. I was just thinking about her. I'm glad you called. We should help. I would like us to help look for her.”

Silence, then a long exhalation.

“Sam, are you there? I was saying we should help find the girl.”

“Rabbi, we cannot.”

“Why not?” he asked, but even as he did, a groundswell of alarm flooded his insides. “We'll walk the streets or the schoolyard or—”

“Louis, listen to me. They say we murdered her. Us. The Jews.”

Jack, listening in on his father's end of the conversation, was surprised to hear Mr. Pool speak so frankly, after his mother's cryptic words last night.

The rabbi could not respond. “But…”

“Louis?”

“How do you know this?” the rabbi asked.

And so Mr. Pool revealed everything that went on during the night. He told Rabbi Abrams about the interrogations, the store searches, the threatening crowds, the shattered window. “So we cannot go looking for the child. Outside, we shouldn't be. It isn't safe. Not after all that has happened and might happen still, you see?”

The rabbi wanted to say that no, he didn't see. But he did see, very well. He saw that all of this had happened without his even knowing about it, much less doing anything about it.

“Louis, I know this is—”

“Sam, there's more. They came to me too. At the synagogue. I just got home.”

“Oh my God. They got you? What…how?”

“First the trooper barged in, saying he wanted to make a search. Then a gang forced its way in, shouting and drunk and trying to get their hands on me.”

“Their
hands
on you?”

“I really thought they were going to lynch me. They had bloodlust in their eyes and in their voices. They wanted me dead, I think, or at least hurt. I thought it was the end for me. And then a miracle. The lights went out. All that wiring trouble we've been having, it saved me. I had a chance to hide.

“And then another miracle, a second one,” the rabbi continued. “Don't ask me how, but out of nowhere a
shofar
blasted—I swear it. It scared the mob worse than the darkness did, and the trooper was finally able to get a hold of them. Kicked them out. But he searched the
shul
just the same. Even
the ark he stuck his nose in, like we might have stuffed a body in there after we took the blood.”

“My God,” Mr. Pool murmured.

“I'm going to call the American Jewish Committee right after the Yom Kippur fast,” the rabbi said. “They should be informed, and maybe they can help us. I'll phone them first thing. Meanwhile, I have to figure out what to say to everyone at services.”

“We ought to cancel services,” Mr. Pool said, “for our own good.”

“Absolutely not! We must not cower. We will pray for ourselves and for the lost child.”

“Louis, listen to me. They call us murderers—cannibals, even. They take over our
shul
and our stores. You, they almost drag away. With this kind of trouble, we should walk the streets and gather together? I say no.”

The rabbi said nothing.

“Louis?”

“I trust I will see you here for
shlug kapporus
in a few hours. We need you. We need each other.”

“I don't know. I will think it over, and do what is best for my family.”

“As you should. Goodbye.”

Mrs. Pool caught Jack eavesdropping on Mr. Pool's phone call with the rabbi. “Jack,” she said, passing him on her way to the kitchen, “since you're up, feed the chickens, will you? And bring in the eggs if there are any. I think we'll bring the red hen for
shlug kapporus
, so make sure she's not all dusty.”

Jack didn't know how his mother had revived her cool, but he wasn't going to be the one to tell her that Mr. Pool was talking about skipping services altogether. Instead, he grabbed his jacket from the stair rail and headed out the back door, relieved that no one seemed to know he'd been out during the night.

The sun perched on the treetops, just below the silver swaths of sky. This could have been any morning, any autumn sky, except that the air was filled with the stench of last night's violence, and maybe also the stink of what was yet to happen.
Anything could happen. At any moment. To any of us.

As Jack walked down the porch steps, he caught sight of the neighbor dog, Agatha, sniffing around the coop. She was unusually excited, whining, poking her nose through the wire fence, wagging her tail, and finally letting out an eager yelp. Something was different. He ran to the coop.

The hens were dead. Headless, everyone of them. Someone had slit their throats and tossed their faces into the egg bucket, except for one that was stuck on top of the fence. That head belonged to the red hen, the one Martha called Sunny, the one Mrs. Pool wanted to bring to
shlug kapporus
, the one that was supposed to be cooked into a meal for Frenchie LaRoux. Sunny's eyes were open, looking neither afraid nor angry, looking nothing at all—except dead. A trickle of blood made a crooked line from her beak down to the bottom of the fence, where Agatha was happily licking and scraping. Now Jack understood the late-night commotion in the coop, the sudden squawking followed by sudden quiet. It was a Jew-hater, not a dog, who'd trespassed.

Jack wondered for a second what note Sunny had made
with her last breath—low C, high A? Was it an oscillating vibrato, or maybe a sliding glissando? Then he raced to the garage for a shovel.

He half expected to find the car tires slashed, as well, but they were all right. He lowered the shovel from the wall rack and walked the perimeter of the Model T to make sure nothing was ripped off or smashed. As he did, an impulse gripped him—a powerful urge to take the car and plow it straight into the Sit Down Diner. Jack hated Gus and his cronies. He hated everyone who had, or might have had, a part in any of this, and he wanted them to pay. But there was no time to dream of revenge. He had to get rid of the chickens.

Jack let himself into the coop and began digging a hole. He didn't want his mother to see the butchery, so he worked fast. He dug and dug, his hands burning against the wooden handle.
Blisters
, he thought.
Just what I need on top of my cut. Blisters on my fingering hand and blisters on my bowing hand
.

He kept digging, and with each scoop of cold black soil he felt himself harden.
Is this what being a Jew gets me? Is this my reward for studying Torah and keeping kosher and missing every single baseball game?
He wasn't just mad at the Jew-haters anymore. He was mad at God.
How could You let this happen?

Jack hit something hard with the tip of his shovel and crouched to remove the offending rock. He threw it over the fence, startling Agatha enough to make her dart back a few feet. He considered tossing her a chicken head; then maybe she'd go away. Better yet, maybe she'd bury it in her master's garden, and he'd dig it up with his bulbs. He'd finger it curiously, stroking away the dirt, thinking it was a misshapen bulb, and then when he saw what it really was, he'd drop it like
a snake, revolted. Agatha's master could be one of them, after all. Anybody could be one of them, anybody at all. There was no way to be sure.

Jack went on digging, stabbing at the ground. He felt like his arms would break. He dug mechanically, almost violently, until the hole was deep enough. Then he threw the snarl of bloody carcasses in and began covering the grave.

The hole was scarcely half filled when Mrs. Pool's voice jolted him from behind. “Jack, what's taking you so long?” she asked. Without thinking, he turned around to face her.

She blanched when she saw the bloody shovel and his bloodstained hands. “Jack, what…happened?” She suddenly winced at the smell. Agatha took a step toward her, tail wagging.

“I didn't want you to see,” Jack said.

Mrs. Pool was as wide-eyed as the dead chickens. She breathed in the dirt and the carnage, looking like she might get sick, looking like an older and more fragile version of herself. “You finish up here, then,” she said briskly. “I'll need to call Mrs. Silver to see if she can bring the bird this time. Get rid of the feathers too. And don't tell your father, not yet. He doesn't want us to go as it is.”

Jack watched his mother brush past Agatha and lift her skirt as she climbed the back steps. Her writing pad slipped out of her apron pocket, and she bent to pick it up. When all this was over, Jack knew she would scribble the story down in that pade. He wondered how it would all end.

The Sit Down Diner buzzed nonstop all morning. Joe Runions said he saw the Jewish tailor carrying a particularly long pair
of shears last week. Picky Willard chimed in that the Jewish doctor bought a bottle of ether at the apothecary the other day, and Cecilia Gardener said she noticed a truck delivering a box the size of a small coffin to Popkin's Furniture the day before. Later, old man Claghorn said he heard all about the store searches from his cousin Bernie.

“Some folks took a look inside their church too,” Chuck Petru said. “Didn't go so well, I hear. But they say they heard a trumpet in there, like an angel's horn, like a sign from the Lord Himself, saying justice must be served. So it's not over yet.”

Just before noon, Stretch Spooner, one of the factory foremen, came in for his regular lunch. He took his regular stool and his regular cup of coffee and, as usual, he set his walking stick right on the counter. Everyone knew the walking stick was hollow; he kept it filled with liquor, so a swig was as nearby as a screw of the handle.

“Saw the queerest thing this morning,” Stretch said. “I was reading the paper and happened to glance out my window, the one that looks out on their preacher's backyard. And what did I see?”

Everyone leaned in.

“I saw a circle of Jews. And inside that circle? The preacher dancing all over and singing and waving a goddamn chicken around. A live one. Like something you'd read about in the
National Geographic
or something.” He drained the creamer into his cup while the others murmured.

“Hold on now, that's not all,” Stretch said. “When that preacher finally stops trotting around the circle, he takes the bird over to this big box he keeps in the yard, and when he comes back into sight, the chicken's head is missing. Gave me
the heebie jeebies, I tell you. I locked the whole house right up after I saw that show.”