The Tribe

by Bari Wood

  “I don’t.” Hawkins stood up.

  “Then how . . .”

  “That’s what I have to find out,” Hawkins said.

  “And when you do?” Ryder asked softly.

  “I’ll stop them,” Hawkins said.

  Ryder put on his down jacket and heavy boots. He took his bicycle out and rode past the little shops in the town’s main street. The moon set. He looked back and couldn’t see the road behind him. Ahead were the Sutter Lane houses.

  His part of town, the Yankee part, was zoned for three acres. The houses were big and smooth lawns were open to views of the Sound, road, beach. There were a few oaks on the lots, some forsythia, a few willows, but no hedges or fences.

  But here the lots were smaller and hedges surrounded the houses like seawalls or shields, as if the Sutter Lane people were protecting themselves from an invader the Yankees didn’t know was coming.

  Most of the houses were dark. Even the porch lights were out. The main floor of the house they used for a shul was dark, too, and he was ready to go back and finish his sermon for the funeral, wondering why he’d come here at all. Then he noticed a light in the basement at the back of the building.

  He leaned the bike on its kickstand and went up the path toward the light. Hedges surrounded him, blocked out the street light; and he felt enclosed, like a man in a maze. He got to the window, squatted on his heels, and looked inside.

  The basement was finished. Bright green linoleum covered the stone floor and knotty pine paneling hid stone walls. It looked warm, dry, welcoming, and he half expected to see an old man in skullcap studying the Talmud by candlelight . . . the antithesis of everything Hawkins had told him. But the room was empty. The basement was very deep, the window was high and small, and he had to lean his head against the glass to see the far wall. The light came from a child’s night lamp shaped like a pig sitting on a kitchen stool. The only other thing in the room was a big wooden box. The top of the box almost touched the ceiling and it was at least six feet wide. The back of it was against the far wall; the sides he could see were rough wood, which was odd considering how carefully finished the rest of the place was. The front of the box was covered by a heavy cloth drape with flowers on it. It reminded him of fabric remnants his wife brought home to use for dish towels or to make pillows with. The floor was clean, and he noticed a rim of darker wood on the wall along the floor, as if it had been washed recently and hadn’t dried yet.

  His legs were giving out, he didn’t want to kneel on the ground, and he leaned too hard against the window. It opened slightly. A breeze got through the hedges and blew in through the window. The draft pulled at the curtain, it started to billow out, and something . . . the shadows it made on the wall, the dark hedges around him, the story he’d just heard . . . frightened Ryder. He lost his balance and sat down hard on the ground. His sleeve caught on the hedge and suddenly he was terrified. He pulled the sleeve so hard the poplin ripped and down dribbled out. He yanked it free and ran to his bike and pedaled as fast as he could up the lane toward town. The wind was against him and made the going hard, but he didn’t stop until he reached the town square.

  He stopped on the far side and looked at his church across the park and then around him at the center of the town he’d grown up in.

  The Town Hall built in 1880 was on the one side, the library built in 1925 was on another, the WPA-­built post office was on the third, and his church closed the square.

  It had been built in 1792; it was the oldest and most beautiful building in town—in the whole state, he thought, maybe the world. He looked up at its steeple, which was light gray against the dark gray sky.

  “What happened?” he whispered. “What the hell happened? Nothing,” he answered himself. A draft had blown a flowered curtain that covered a jerry-­built plywood box, and he’d gone mad. “Mad,” he said out loud. The black man was crazy, he decided. He’d listened to him because he was tired, bored with his life, under too much pressure. But he didn’t believe any of the explanations he gave himself. There was something behind the flowered curtain. And he knew if he hadn’t run away, he would have seen it.

  A cold spring wind blew the crocuses flat. The coffins were covered with iris and black tulips and all three were lowered at the same time. Willa’s sister and Tom’s mother held Tom’s arms as he half walked, half staggered to the limousine. Rachel tried to say something to him but his face twisted when he saw her and he said, “No, Rache. What’s the use? Don’t talk . . .” and he kept going. He was almost past her when he said, “Good-­bye, Rachel.”

  She stood alone and bereft a few feet from Willa’s grave. The wind blew her skirt and upended folding chairs. She sobbed and pressed Kleenex against her eyes. Reverend Ryder touched her arm.

  “Don’t use that, Mrs. Levy, the lint gets in your eyes, makes it worse.” He held out a clean folded handkerchief and she took it and wiped her eyes.

  “Is your husband here?” he asked.

  “My husband’s dead,” she said.

  “Long ago?” he asked.

  “Yes, Father.”

  “Please don’t call me Father,” he asked earnestly.

  “What should I call you?”

  “Edward,” he said. “Or Ed, if you like, or Ned. Not Eddie, though.” He smiled. “I’d like to talk to you if you have time.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes. I’ll ride back with you if it’s all right. I think the others are gone and it’s a long walk.”

  She led him to the car over a rise covered with crocuses. They were quiet on the drive back. He pointed out his house as they passed it, a big old frame building with a round window in the attic and stained glass over the door. A Yankee house.

  “Did your father buy that?” she said.

  “My great-­grandfather built it,” he said absently.

  He got the fire going in his study and gave her tea and a glass of sherry, then he sat down across from her in a worn chintz easy chair. The books on the walls made the room cozy, wind blew outside, and Rachel thought everything looked normal. She could talk to this man about what a fine woman Willa had been and maybe he’d ask her to bake the cookies for something . . . the Planting Festival . . . and she’d go home, cook dinner for Jacob, watch Quincy. She sipped sherry.

  “I met a friend of yours last night,” Ryder said. “Roger Hawkins.”

  She was too surprised to say anything.

  “He said I could talk to you, only to you, so I’m doing it. He said some crazy things, Mrs. Levy, but I’m supposed to listen and I did. It almost made sense at night, with the wind howling, now—” He stopped and she waited. “It was about your people,” he said.

  “What about them?”

  “He said that your father-­in-­law and his . . . congregation . . . ah . . .” He stopped again.

  “Go on,” she said.

  “. . . killed Willa, the boys, some people in Brooklyn, and more in Poland.”

  “In Germany,” Rachel corrected.

  He stared at her. “You believe it?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “So did I,” Ryder said. “At least enough to get on my bike, ride to the temple in the middle of the night, and look in the basement window like a sneak thief.”

  “Did you see anything?”

  “A night light shaped like a pig.” Leah’s little night light. She’d wondered where it was. “And a big wooden box with a curtain over it.”

  He saw the look on her face and asked, “What’s in the box, Mrs. Levy?”

  “Nothing. Prayer books, jars of herring, shawls. Nothing.”

  She jumped up and he caught her arm.

  “I have to help you,” he said.

  “Do what?”

  “The inspector talked about Cabala, mysticism, magic. He said it was bullshit, but I don’t think so. Neither do you, do you?�
��

  She didn’t answer.

  “I’m supposed to know about that kind of thing, aren’t I. I’m a minister. It’s more my business than yours . . .”

  “No!” she cried, without thinking. “It’s not your business or his. It’s mine. Only mine . . .”

  Chapter 4

  Carver led Hawkins through one dismal corridor after another and left him in a small unused office on the fourth floor. There was a table in the room, a couple of molded plastic chairs, and locked files against the wall.

  Hawkins went to the one window. The rain had stopped, the clouds were gone, and it had turned warm. He could see the river over the prison wall. It was bright blue under the sun and the wooded bank on the other side was already green. He saw other windows around him and thought of the men behind them looking out at the river and woods.

  “Hey, boychik,” Meyer Garfield yelled from the door.

  Hawkins thought some men looked like killers, but not Garfield. His face was sweet, almost pretty. He had thin, sandy hair, parted just off center, round pink cheeks, and large dark eyes. He rushed across the room and embraced Hawkins. Carver left them alone and Garfield went to the window. “Some day,” he said reverently. “Some gorgeous day. Shitty time of the year to be stuck in the can.” Then he turned to Hawkins. “Nu, boych,” he said, “what goes? This ain’t the sixth Sunday and I still got half a box of chocolate.”

  “Meyer, I need a favor.”

  Garfield raised his eyes to the ceiling. “Thank God,” he said, “I thought it would never happen.”

  Hawkins had tried to save Garfield’s son’s life. He failed and David Garfield died in Vietnam, but Garfield thought he owed Hawkins anyway.

  Hawkins hadn’t meant to do it. He hadn’t meant to do anything when the rocket hit them this time. He’d thought he’d never be able to jump out of a plane again, and if the plane went, he’d go with it. But he jumped with the others, and floated down into a paddy with the VC shooting up at them. He watched the rippling mud come up at him and thought if he could make it that far, he’d live. The mud looked soft, inviting, infinitely safe. It opened for his feet, closed around his ankles and calves. He sank into it as far as he could, then lay back to let it cover his chest. The others took longer getting there. They got George Dunning in midair and he was dead when he landed. They got little David Garfield, too, but he was still alive. He landed a few yards from Hawkins and Hawkins heard him groan and slosh in the mud. He stopped moving and Hawkins looked over at him. His blood ran into the mud in streaks. He was twenty-­two then, but he was thin, his eyes were big for his face, and he looked like a child. When the firing stopped, Hawkins half swam, half waded to him.

  “It’s in the gut,” Garfield said to Hawkins. “Very bad, I think . . .” He spoke reasonably. “I think I’ll die soon. So leave me, Roger. There’s no point.”

  Hawkins wanted to leave him but he couldn’t. He waited to be sure the VC were gone, then lifted the unconscious boy in his arms and started carrying him back where he thought they’d come from. He’d gone four miles when a helicopter spotted them.

  They tried everything to save Garfield but he died in three days. Before he did, he dictated a letter to his father and told him who Hawkins was and what he’d done.

  “Meyer Garfield’s an animal,” Lerner told Hawkins. Hawkins was a rookie then; Lerner had been his sergeant. “He pimps, pushes, bribes, kills. . . . So what does he want with a rookie cop?”

  “I tried to save his son’s life. I guess he wants to thank me,” Hawkins said.

  Lerner looked at him for a moment. “The son died?” Hawkins nodded. Lerner tried to look cold and failed. “Okay,” he said, “go get thanked; just watch your-

  self.”

  Hawkins waited in the huge living room of Garfield’s apartment on Central Park West. It was filled with dark overcarved furniture, and bad paintings in ornate gilt frames covered the walls. The room itself was hushed, but Hawkins heard sounds in the rest of the apartment. Phones rang­, women talked and laughed somewhere. He sat on a rose velvet settee and tried to relax, but his uniform was new and stiff. It bound in the crotch, the cloth scratched his legs, and he started to sweat. A door slammed in the hall, a man screamed something in Russian or Yiddish, and Meyer Garfield raced into the room. He was in his forties then, but he looked much younger. His face was sweet and fine, and the sandy hair was still thick. A tall, dark-­haired man with oily skin was with him. Hawkins stood up but Garfield waved at him to sit down. He pulled up a spindly carved gilt chair, sat across from Hawkins, and took his hand. He held it for a moment, patted the back of it, then let it go.

  “You tried to save my son’s life,” he said softly with a thick Russian-­Yiddish accent.

  Hawkins didn’t say anything.

  “At the risk of your own,” Garfield said.

  “It was reflex,” Hawkins said.

  “Reflex shit. You tried.”

  “I’m sorry it didn’t work,” Hawkins said. He remembered the skinny-­faced kid and tears stung his eyes.

  Garfield looked away. “You want a job?” he asked.

  “I have a job, thank you,” Hawkins said politely.

  Garfield eyed the uniform. “Some job,” he said. “You could get your ass shot off any minute, and for that they pay you, kom, kom,¶¶¶ twenty thousand a year.”

  Hawkins didn’t answer and Garfield shrugged. “Nu, it’s your ass.” He snapped his fingers. The tall man handed him a card, he handed the card to Hawkins. “If you change your mind, call this number. If you ever need anything, anything at all, call this number. Remember, I owe you, and I pay my debts. Ask anyone in this town and they’ll tell you, Meyer Garfield’s word is gold, pure gold. You can put it in the bank.” Garfield stood up, leaned over, and kissed Hawkins’s cheek. “Thank you for trying,” he said hoarsely. He crossed the room and stopped at the door. “Don’t forget,” he yelled, “anything. Anything at all.”

  Garfield was convicted of jury tampering and sent to Atlanta for five years, of which he served two. Hawkins heard about it and, on impulse, sent Garfield a box of Hershey bars. Twelve years after that Garfield was indicted for murder, and the big soft-­voiced man called Hawkins.

  Hawkins and Garfield sat across from each other at a dented metal table in a downstairs room of the Tombs. The oily-­faced man, who was bald by then, leaned against the wall.

  Garfield took Hawkins’s hand and held it tight. “I want you should do something for me,” he said. He felt Hawkins’s reaction in his hand and laughed.

  “I want you should get me the Hershey bars, that’s all, boych. A box of Hershey bars every couple months, and maybe bring them yourself . . .” He paused, then said, “I come from a good family. My brother’s a rabbi. Not just a rabbi, but a good man. A holy man. I myself wanted to be a chazen . . . that’s the man who sings in the shul. But the war came and they took us to the camps. Chaim they sent to Theresienstadt. No picnic, sure. But they sent me to Auschwitz.” Hawkins looked dow­n. The big, dark man shifted against the wall, the room was quiet, then Garfield said, “If you arrest a kid in Harlem whose father beat him, whose mother starved him, whose friends take dope and hit old ladies on the head for their welfare money, and he does the same and you believe he must be punished, you still don’t hate him?”

  “No,” Hawkins said, “I don’t hate him.”

  “Even if the old lady dies . . . you see the scars his daddy left on his poor skinny back and the sick blank look in his eyes—and you don’t hate him, do you?”

  “I don’t hate him,” Hawkins said again.

  Garfield said softly, “Nu, they gassed my father, my mother, my sister. They pulled my teeth out and every day for five years I thought I was going to die.”

  Garfield was convicted, his appeals failed, and he was sent to Ossining. Every sixth Sunday Hawkins brought Garfield a box of Hershey bars.
r />   “Nu, what favor?” Garfield asked excitedly. “Ask me anything. Anything. Only I can’t drive you home,” he said, and laughed.

  “I need help. Your brother’s help.”

  Garfield was stunned. “My brother?”

  “You said your brother was a rabbi, a holy man.”

  “So he is. Most holy. But what do you want with a holy rabbi from the ass end of Riverdale?”

  Hawkins thought of his old friend Pinchik for the first time in years. Funny, bitter Eli Pinchik who’d left Brooklyn and gone to Riverdale to find civilization.

  Hawkins said, “I need a cabalist.”

  Garfield looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. “My brother isn’t a cabalist. I don’t even think he believes in God. But that’s between us.” Garfield’s eyes were bright. “What do you want with a cabalist?”

  Hawkins told him Relkin’s story and Garfield was enchanted. “How many did they kill?” he asked.

  Hawkins didn’t answer and Garfield grabbed his arm. “How many Krauts did they kill?”

  “A lot. Twenty. Thirty.”

  “Feh!” Garfield shouted. Carver opened the door. “They killed forty of us an hour, a minute.” He looked very disgusted. Then he asked, “What does thirty dead Krauts in Belzec mean to you?”

  Hawkins shook his head.

  “Ah,” Garfield cried, unwrapping one of the Hersheys. “A secret. Wonderful. Maybe Chaim knows a cabalist. Chaim knows everybody. A most respected and loved man is my brother. He’ll help you.”

  Hawkins tried to call Chaim Garfield from service areas in Ossining, Tarrytown, and Dobbs Ferry; the line was always busy. The rain stopped, the sky cleared, and the sun started to set. When he called from the Riverdale service area, the line was still busy.