Joshua Then and Now

by Mordecai Richler

  “Now I’ve told you I read this story three times, and the way I see it there are two morals buried in it. One, Mordecai’s rise out of nowhere proves something I’ve always tried to knock into your head. It doesn’t matter what you know, but who you know. Two, according to the law and what the rabbis say even now, it is an offense to marry out of our religion – we are not supposed to tie the knot with a goy or a shiksa. But nowhere in the Book of Esther do you find God hollering because she married a goy, and I never heard any rabbi complain either. So, if I interpret the law correctly, you are not allowed to marry out of the faith unless it’s into a royal family. Interesting, eh?”

  12

  HOW WAS JOSHUA TO KNOW THEY WOULD FLY TO THE moon? Gun down another Kennedy? Get Nixon? Trade Bobby Orr? Or that the honest crook and the worldly senator would become such devoted friends?

  His father, his father-in-law.

  Given to drinking together in the Rideau Club, the senator beckoning cabinet members to their table to be introduced. “I would like you to meet my son-in-law’s father. Reuben Shapiro. He is the most perspicacious Bible scholar I’ve ever met and a former lightweight boxing champion of Canada. He went eight rounds against Mr. Samuel Angott, and I’m proud to say I once had the signal honor of being his wheelman. Isn’t that so, Reuben?”

  “Damn right.”

  Then, leaning back in his chair, the senator might add, “We’re looking for a little action tonight. Maybe a poker game.”

  Ever since his initial meeting with the senator Joshua, brooding on him, had magnified the man as a much-needed figure of rectitude come into his life. Unwinding the spool of that first encounter again and again, he had grown increasingly ashamed of his brash behavior. The truth was, he had reflected more than once, that had he been Pauline’s father, he would not have wanted her to marry the likes of Joshua Shapiro. With hindsight, Joshua had come to respect, even cherish, the senator, and to measure his own moral lapses against what he took to be the senator’s uncompromising standards. The old virtues of the men who had forged colony into country, refining a frontier society. So he had been considerably more sorrowful than triumphant to discover that the senator was considering accepting a couple of directorships in companies controlled by Izzy Singer. He was indignant that Izzy, who knew the price of everything, had turned out to be a better judge of character than he was. He hadn’t grasped, as Pauline had always known and accepted, that her revered father was the sum of old alliances, with political connections he could redeem at his convenience. His senatorial endowment policy. Obviously, his father-in-law was a man of sensibility and tact. His fingernails clean. His library beyond reproach. Without a police sheet. But there was a little of Colucci in his soul.

  Which certainly explained why his father was so amused by him, if not why the senator had come to hold his father in such surprisingly high regard.

  It was Joshua, his mood defiant, who had arranged the senator’s meeting with his father.

  He and Pauline, as requested by the senator, drove out to inspect her inheritance on Lake Memphremagog in the spring of 1968, with Alex, Susy, and the infant Teddy, whom Pauline was still nursing at the time. They had only been installed in the sinking old house with the wraparound porch for a few days when Joshua invited his father out for the weekend. His step jaunty, Reuben disembarked from the bus in Magog, wearing his straw boater, an ice-cream suit, and one of his vintage hand-painted ties. Autumn, a veritable riot of color, comes to the Laurentian Shield. He arrived on a Friday night, laden with toys for the kids, and the senator, as Joshua should have expected, was far too experienced a man to betray even a flicker of surprise at his father’s appearance. But he did seem a bit chuffed that the children, who were unfailingly reserved in his presence, flew right into Reuben’s arms, competing for kisses. And Joshua feared that it was not generosity, but a spirit of grandfatherly competition that prompted him to invite his father to join him and Alex on a fishing expedition early the next morning. It was June, the lake still running cold, hungering bass, perch, and even landlocked salmon swimming in shallow waters. Joshua never did find out all that passed between them on that outing, but if the senator, an experienced angler, thought that Reuben would prove comically inept on the lake, he was in for a surprise. Hunkered down in Michigan more than once, Reuben had learned to handle rod and reel with élan.

  “Oh, you just help yourself to any lure you want,” the senator had said, opening the tackle box. “They’re all much the same.”

  “Yeah. Right,” Reuben said, anticipating the senator’s hand, snatching just the right lure out of a tray before the senator could grab it.

  “Now I’m going to throw this line the best I can, Alex, and then, you and me, we’re going to reel it in together, but slowly.”

  Reuben, who could cast as expertly as he could jab, immediately struck for the dark shady waters just short of where the lily pads were beginning to send up shoots. When they finally came in, late in the afternoon, Alex was waving eight fish on a dancing line, shouting that he and Reuben had landed six of them together. Joshua was concerned – needlessly, as it turned out. For whatever had passed between his father and the senator on the lake, the amazing thing was that the senator didn’t seem to mind about the fish. He was flushed and exuberant. “I don’t mind telling you,” he said, “that we had some damn good fun out there.”

  And, on the evidence, a good deal of rye as well. Reuben and the senator drained the last of the V.O. before the fire, and the senator asked him how he had become so familiar with the Bible.

  “Well,” Reuben said, “in the days when I was no more than a club fighter really, and I would have to stay in all those crummy hotels on the road, there was no TV in the rooms. We didn’t even have beds with Magic Fingers yet. I could never get to sleep the night before a fight, so I found myself reading the Good Book, in which I have instructed my worthless son here.”

  Pauline, going on very little sleep, nursing Teddy on demand, suddenly let out a sharp cry. She had invited twelve people over on Sunday afternoon and had just discovered there was very little to drink in the house and, of course, the liquor commission in Magog was already closed for the weekend.

  “Couldn’t we borrow some bottles from the Hickeys?” the senator asked.

  “They’re not invited.”

  “What about the McTeers?”

  “And they’ll be reminding me about it for the next twenty years. Shit.”

  “I know you’re tired,” Joshua said, “but would you please stop overreacting to the most trivial –”

  Teddy let out a yelp from his crib. Anticipating, Joshua grabbed Pauline. “Sit, for Christ’s sake. He’ll wait a minute.”

  “Oh, a hell of a lot you know about these things,” she said, dashing up the stairs.

  The senator frowned and began to poke the fire.

  “Yeah, well,” Reuben asked, “are we anywhere near a village called Vale Perkins here?”

  “Indeed we are.”

  “Then we can’t be far from Owl’s Head?”

  “I had no idea you were familiar with this region,” the senator said.

  “Well, like, I was in the liquor business once. Deliveries, sort of. And in those days I got to know some of the back roads that lead into Vermont from here.”

  “Holy cow,” the senator said, “you were a bootlegger!”

  “Now what I’m going to need,” Reuben said, “is a flashlight, maybe a couple of shovels, two empty boxes, and have you got a crowbar?”

  “Yes, in the basement.”

  “Josh, I’m going to need you.”

  “Can I come?” Alex asked.

  “Geez, can you come? I’m counting on you, kid. You’re going to be my lookout man.”

  “And what about me?” the senator demanded, aggrieved.

  “Well now, you’re a very respectable fella. I really don’t know.”

  “It’s my car,” he said, petulant.

  “Yeah. Right.”

  �
��Let me be your wheelman.”

  “Well …”

  “I’ll bring my piece.”

  “Your what?”

  “My cannon.”

  When the senator reappeared, he was carrying a pail of water and an old 12-gauge shotgun that had last been used to scare raccoons out of the cornfield.

  “Holy shit,” Reuben said, “what do we want with that thing?”

  “In case we run into the heat.”

  “Oh, yeah. Right. Good thinking. But just be careful where you point it.”

  Pauline drifted down the stairs, Teddy suckling happily at her breast, to find them standing there with flashlights, shovels, crowbar, and shotgun. “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “We’re going to find you some booze,” Reuben said. “At least, that’s the general idea.”

  “Reuben, you are not to break into anybody’s house here.”

  “Oh, no. Hell. Nothing like that.”

  “And are you going with them, Daddy?”

  “Yes,” the senator cried out defiantly.

  “At your age?”

  “Damn it, Pauline, I’m the wheelman,” he said, hurrying on ahead to avoid further recriminations.

  “Joshua, what’s happening?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Come on, fellas.”

  They found the senator squatting at the rear of his station wagon, rubbing mud on the license plate.

  “Hey,” Reuben said, nudging Joshua, “I can see you’ve been around.”

  The senator grinned, immensely pleased.

  “Now just let me have a look at that shotgun,” Reuben asked. And, borrowing it for a moment, he slid round to the other side of the car.

  They drove to Vale Perkins and then on to Owl’s Head. Beyond it, Reuben pointed out another dirt road that led into Vermont. “We want to go as far as the border,” he said, “turn around and then track back exactly one mile.”

  The senator took it slowly.

  “O.K. Stop right here.”

  Flashlight in hand, Reuben got out to scrutinize the trees by the roadside, and then he started tentatively into the woods. He was back in five minutes. “This may turn out to be a wild goose chase,” he said.

  “What do you mean?” the senator asked.

  “Well, it’s been a long time since I last passed through here. You and me, senator, we’ve begun to shrink, but these goddamn trees here they just keep putting on new growth.”

  They stopped another hundred yards down the road and Reuben got out to examine an old cedar tree, running his hands along the bark. “O.K., just pull up here, boys.”

  “Do you want us to stash our wheels anywhere, Reuben?”

  “Shit, no. Just come on out of there.”

  Following Reuben, they climbed over a fence with a NO TRESPASSING sign nailed to it, the senator carrying his cannon. Reuben began to study the trees again, running his hand along the bark here and there. Finally he seemed to find whatever it was he wanted, and he set out through the grass, stopped abruptly, and called for Alex and Joshua. “O.K., Josh, you start digging here and you here, Alex,” and then he moved off to sit down on a rock with the senator. “Maybe,” he said, “you should be sitting back on the road? Lookout.”

  But the senator wasn’t budging. “If anybody comes,” he said, “we’re fishermen digging for nightcrawlers.”

  “Hey, Senator, I sure coulda used a fella of your skills back in the old days.”

  “This is such grand fun, Reuben.”

  Alex called out to say that he had hit wood.

  “Well, well, why don’t you get your father to help you uncover it, then?”

  Within twenty minutes the unmistakable outlines of a coffin began to emerge.

  “Put down that shovel immediately,” Joshua said to Alex, and he charged over to his father, pulling him aside. “Are you crazy, Daddy, bringing Alex out here? Is this your idea of a joke? There’s a coffin in there.”

  “Oh, really,” Reuben said, reaching for his crowbar.

  “Let’s get out of here right now.”

  “I’m staying,” Alex said.

  The senator joined them. “Is there really a stiff in there?” he asked in a faltering voice.

  “What a bunch,” Reuben said, exasperated. “Alex, we should of come out alone.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Now you boys just dig out that coffin. I know what I’m doing.”

  When they had finally cleared the cheap, rotting pine coffin, Reuben moved around it, jimmying the lid here and there. Joshua’s heart thudded. The senator, for all his bold talk, looked old and weary. But Alex was elated. “O.K.,” Reuben said, “anybody here believe in ghosts?”

  Nobody answered.

  “If it’s a vampire, I think what you’re supposed to do is drive a stake through its heart.”

  Nobody laughed.

  “O.K. Stand back. Ready. Steady. Go,” Reuben said, and with one twist of the crowbar he swung back the splintering lid to reveal a cornucopia of booze. Top Hat Whisky, Scotland’s Pride, Edinburgh Castle, Hi-Life.

  “Holy cow,” the senator exclaimed.

  As Alex reached down to retrieve a bottle of Top Hat, Reuben cautioned him, “Hold it, kid. You don’t want to drink that shit.”

  “What?”

  “Too much sulfuric acid. The Gurskys didn’t know too much about distilling in those days. There was so much rust in this brew they had to run it through a loaf of bread, not that it really helped. You sip that and your fingers will go numb. Now there,” he said, pointing at two strapped boxes, “there’s the stuff we want.”

  They retrieved the boxes and unstrapped them to uncover a dozen bottles of Johnny Walker Black and a dozen of Gordon’s Gin. Reuben opened a bottle of Johnny Walker, took a swig, and passed it to the senator, who drank and passed it to Joshua.

  “I’m so excited,” the senator said, “I’ve just got to piss right here and now. Anybody mind?”

  “Certainly not.”

  And then, his cheeks flushed, the senator added, “Anybody care to join me?”

  Alex and Joshua transferred the good liquor to their own cartons and, on Reuben’s instructions, resealed the coffin and shoveled earth over it again.

  “How did it get there in the first place, Reuben?”

  “I really wouldn’t know about that, Senator, but if I had to guess I’d say in a hearse, most likely.”

  They started back for the road, the senator leading. “Damn it,” he suddenly exclaimed, trotting back toward them, “it’s the heat.”

  They all turned to Reuben, but he offered no guidance.

  “I knew we should have hidden the car,” the senator said.

  Parked right behind their station wagon, headlights blazing, was the village taxi. And leaning against it, wizened, mottled old Orville Moon. Lizardy eyes, yellowed teeth. “Why, Senator Hornby,” he said, astonished, “what are you doing here?”

  “Looking for nightcrawlers.”

  “You came all this way for worms?”

  “That’s right.”

  Moon indicated the senator’s shotgun. “And were you going to shoot the meaner ones between the eyes?”

  Alex sat down on his carton. So did Joshua.

  “For worms,” Moon said, “they sure do rattle a lot.”

  “Look here, Orville, if not for me you’d still be singing for your pension. I also got your cousin that beer license.”

  “True enough.”

  “Out of our way, then.”

  “There’s some deer that’s been shot out of season around here.”

  “Now you just scat, Orville.”

  Pauline was waiting for them in the living room.

  “I pissed outside,” the senator told her, excited, “out in a field there.”

  Alex and Joshua carted in the liquor.

  “Boy, did we ever have fun!” the senator said.

  “Stop waving that cannon around like that,” Reuben said. “Here. Give it to me.”


  Reuben gestured for Joshua to follow him out onto the porch, where he showed him the empty breech. He held the bullets in his hand. “I wasn’t taking any chances. I emptied it before we got into the car.”

  The senator was just a bit of a problem the following afternoon.

  “You’ll never guess where this hootch comes from,” he said, pouring a Scotch for Dickie Abbott.

  “Hey now,” Reuben said, “I never took you for a canary.”

  “Damn right. Mum’s the word. But it was aged in the casket, wasn’t it, old pal?”

  “If you say so, Senator.”

  Later Joshua found Pauline soaking in the bath. Pauline, Pauline. Joshua let out a yelp, stripped down, and lowered himself into the tub behind her.

  “What if Alex comes in?” she asked.

  “Well now,” he said, beginning to lather her breasts, “don’t you think it’s time he learned about alternative life-styles?”

  “I’m not protesting. I just think maybe we should lock the door.”

  “Maybe I’ve made a mistake about avoiding it out here. Possibly we should try a summer on the lake.”

  “You have no idea of the kind of people who come out here in summer. You’d only be miserable, Josh.”

  “What about you?”

  “I was brought up with them.”

  “I could build a fence around the property. Electrified. This is where the Shapiros live. Bless them. Jane Trimble and cancer keep out.”

  “If only it were that simple.”

  “Hey, you’re becoming awfully serious.”

  “Darling, if you’re going to do that –”

  “Do you want me to stop?”

  “Certainly not. But lock the door, please.”

  “I love you. But I can’t understand why you ever married me. I never would have.”

  “You didn’t make it easy to say no.”

  “Did you love me then?”

  “I wasn’t sure.”

  “And now?”

  “Please lock the door.”