The Blood Lie (16 page)

Jack settled back on the bench. He considered the rabbi's talks—filled with colorful tales, both true and imagined—to be the entertainment portion of the services.

“This is a story about a young man,” the rabbi continued. “A young man who risked his own safety to help another man.”

The rabbi seemed to be looking straight at Jack as he spoke. A twinge of something—he didn't know what, maybe satisfaction, maybe relief—shot through him.

“This young man—let us call him…Buddy—was growing up in a village much like ours. One evening, he was walking home along the riverbank, his books in one hand, his baseball bat in the other. Suddenly, he heard angry voices up ahead in a wooded area. He ran toward the sound, and what did he find? The village tailor pressed against a tree by the local stone mason, who had a fist raised, ready to strike.”

Jack pictured the rabbi being cornered by the pack right here in the temple. Cornered by men with fists and maybe guns, as well.

“Buddy dropped his books so he could wield his baseball bat with both hands. ‘Leave him alone!' he shouted, swinging the bat and heading straight to the mason. Startled, the mason let go of the tailor and ran away.”

Jack hoped the fleeing mason got hit by a car as soon as he reached the street. But it didn't matter. What mattered was that the rabbi knew…didn't he?

“After thanking Buddy for his assistance, the tailor
walked over to a tree stump and carved these words with his pocketknife: ‘Buddy helped me here.' Then he picked up a stick and wrote in the dirt. ‘The mason hurt me here.'

“Buddy asked why the tailor wrote one message in wood, the other in dirt. The answer was simple, the tailor explained. ‘I will never forget how you helped me. Anyone who passes this stump will also know about your kindness. But I want the memory of my quarrel with the stone mason to fade, just as the rain will wash out the words in the dirt.' ”

Wait a minute
, Jack thought uneasily.

Rabbi Abrams stepped out from behind the podium. “Today we ask God to forgive us our sins, yes. But today we also ask ourselves to forgive those who have sinned against us, those who have lied to us, violated us, spoken ill of us.”

What?
Jack couldn't believe what he was hearing.
Forgive?
The rabbi couldn't mean it.

But he did mean it. “How can we ask the Lord for forgiveness,” the rabbi said, “if we won't forgive those who have hurt us?”

“Forgiveness may not take away our pain, but it will bring us closer to the Almighty,” the rabbi said. “Just as He is merciful, so we should be merciful.”

Jack tuned the rabbi out. It hurt him just to think about forgiving anyone. He thought instead of his Bentley interview—suddenly only a day away. Tomorrow morning he'd board the sunrise train, travel for hours through the Adirondacks and Finger Lakes, get off at the Syracuse
station, and walk a mile to the music school.
I'd walk the whole way to Syracuse if I had to. I'd do anything to get out of here.

Tomorrow Jack's father would reopen the store. He'd open his doors to all the Jew-haters and pretend everything was fine. He'd speak kindly to everyone, even though any of them could be the one who shot the rock through his living room window, who decapitated his hens, who accused his son of killing a little girl. The best Mr. Pool could hope for was that they'd play the same game and make believe nothing was different; business as usual was better than no business at all. It made Jack sick, and it made the Bentley School more necessary than ever.

Jack felt a poke in his ribs. “What is it?” he asked Harry irritably.

“The
shofar
,” Harry whispered. “Rabbi's calling you up.”

Jack had forgotten. His
shofar
was sitting beside him the entire service. Completely off guard, he took the horn and stood up. All eyes were on him. Everyone was counting on him—he could see it in their faces. They wanted him to breathe a clear and vital sound, a sound powerful enough to remind them that God breathed life and strength into them all.

Jack joined the rabbi on the
bima
, uncertain whether he could make any sound at all.
I'm not ready. I haven't practiced enough. I don't feel what I need to feel.

As he raised the ram's horn, Jack saw his father smiling at him. His half-blind father was looking straight at him and smiling a proud smile. Jack pressed his lips against the
shofar.
He inhaled deeply and then forced the air out of his lungs, through his lips, and into the horn, doubting what would come out the other end.

A strong blast shot to the far walls of the sanctuary. One long blast—God reigned. Several short blasts—God reigns. Another long blast—God will reign forever. He lowered the
shofar
, a little dizzy from blowing and very relieved to be finished.

“On Yom Kippur,” the rabbi read from the Torah, “you shall sound the horn throughout the land…and proclaim liberty unto all the inhabitants.”

Liberty.
Jack fell back into place next to Harry with that word echoing in his ears.
Syracuse
.

Jack didn't say much at the dinner table after Yom Kippur. He had nothing to say, plus he was busy shoveling his mother's
lokshen kugel
—brimming with noodles, fruit and sweet spices—into his mouth.

“May I be excused?” he asked when he finished his second helping.

“But there's dessert,” his mother said. “Why don't you stay?”

“Jack has big day tomorrow,” his father pointed out. “Let him go. He is excited.”

“He looks more tired than excited,” she said. “Okay, go.”

Jack went to his room and practiced his audition piece over and over until Harry came in for bed. “Mama says go to sleep before you wear your fingers away,” Harry said.

“Fine,” said Jack, but he didn't stop playing.

While Jack worked and reworked one particularly difficult bar, Harry changed into his nightshirt and climbed into the top bunk. Then he reached over and tugged the pull string, turning the room black. “I think she meant now,” he said, yawning.

Ten minutes later, Jack was lying awake in the bottom bunk, making the bedsprings grate as he turned from his back to his chest and then to his back again.

“What's eating you?” Harry asked.

“Nothing. I just…nothing.”

“You nervous about your audition?”

“Sort of.”

“Why? You practiced enough. Everyone says you're good.”

“Being good isn't always enough. Some schools put quotas on Jews, y'know.”

Harry swung his head over the railing. “What?”

“I hear even places like Harvard and Yale, if they think you're Jewish—”

“Says who?”

“Says a lot of people. I just never believed them, before now.”

“Well, our name doesn't sound very Jewish, so you've got that going for you. Not like Abe Goldberg's or Eli Tennenbaum's.”

“Yeah, well, maybe that's what the interview is for. To see if I look Gentile or not.”

“Hmm,” Harry said, lying back down. “You could always ask them where the nearest church is. Or if the school has a chapel choir you can join. Or if they serve fish on Fridays.”

“Good night, Harry.”

“What? Isn't Pa always telling us how our great-uncle in Russia dressed up like a woman when the Jew-hating army came to draft him? And how his grandmother pretended to be pregnant so she could—”

“Good night, Harry.”

“I was just trying to help.”

Jack tried to make out his cello in the shadows of the bedroom. Tomorrow he would play like his life depended on it. As far as he was concerned, his life
did
depend on it—because he didn't know how he'd survive if he had to stay here.

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 1928

Jack tried sitting on the bench outside the train station, but he couldn't stay put, so he stood on the platform, his cello on one side and the ticket master's scrawny dog on the other. Over and over he checked to see if his ticket and wallet were still in his pocket. His mother was right, he realized. The brown shoes would have gone better with his pants and sweater than the black ones he ended up getting. Still, the oxfords were dressy enough, and the blisters that sprang up on his heels during the walk to the station hardly hurt at all.

He couldn't wait to get out of his house this morning. His mother was nervous and excited and even a little teary, as if she were sending Jack away for a year, not a day. She kept reminding him, as if he needed reminding, that he'd never taken the train by himself, or traveled to Syracuse, or been this far from home. She wanted to go with him to the station, but he said no, so instead she followed him around the house and issued orders to Mr. Pool until it was finally time to go.

Shielding his eyes against the shafts of early light, Jack surveyed the long strip of track, then rechecked his ticket, wallet and watch.
When will it get here?
He'd only make the interview on time if the train stayed on schedule. Showing up late would be tantamount to telling the dean he wasn't particularly interested. He had to be prompt.
Did I remember my comb?

Jack was so deep in thought, he didn't hear the footsteps from behind, but suddenly the ticket master's dog was wagging its tail, and someone was standing next to him, breathing hard. Not
someone
as in anyone.
Someone
as in Emaline.

She wore a pale blue dress Jack had never seen on her before, white gloves, and the hat she'd bought at the store over
the weekend, the black one with the silk rose. Jack looked down at his own clothes and stood up straighter. Jack thought he picked up the faint scent of perfume.

“Emaline,” he said, his voice uneven.

“Hi,” she smiled. The skinny dog ambled over to her and tapped her leg with its swishing tail.

“You traveling?”

“No—well, we're going to Waddington later to spend a few days with my Aunt Pearl. Ma thinks we all need a rest after—after the weekend. I wouldn't exactly call it traveling. Anyway, I was just at your house, and when your mother said you'd already left, I—”

“My house?”

She scratched the mutt's head and stepped closer to Jack. “I wanted to see you off, wish you good luck.”

She remembered
. “You didn't run all the way down here, did you?” Jack asked.

“In my Aunt Pearl clothes? No, Ma dropped me off. She and Daisy are having breakfast at the Sunflower.”

Emaline took another step closer, until her foot met his cello case. “Jack, I didn't come just to wish you luck. I came to say I'm sorry. So terribly sorry about this weekend.”

“I…” Jack's head wobbled with questions.
What exactly is she sorry for—how much does she know? Does she know I was the one accused? That someone killed all our hens and left their heads for me to bury? That the temple was raided and the stores searched? Does she know Pa's afraid he won't have customers anymore? Or that Mama won't let Martha play in the yard by herself?
Jack had a thousand questions, but the one that came out was, “How did you hear?”

“Oh,” Emaline sighed. “Well, I heard a little about it during our ordeal, and then my Aunt Clarisse filled me in after. You can't change your bloomers without Aunt Clarisse knowing about it. She knows everything, that woman.”