A Kiss for Rabbi Gabrielle

by Roger Herst

  “For the moment we’re not pointing,” Terrance answered. “Our guns will put the fear of God into their hearts. Trespassers surrender their rights the moment they come on land that doesn’t belong to them. The law lets us protect our property. And that doesn’t exclude shooting trespassers. We’ve got good legal counsel about this.”

  The open space in front of the clubhouse was filling with new arrivals. One had a bongo drum; the tempo of the protestors’ chant increased to its rhythm. The prospect of arguing legal points didn’t sit well with Joel; neither group was prone to flexibility.

  He raised both arms in a signal for quiet and kept them extended. A jet plane ascending from Washington’s Reagan National Airport growled overhead, momentarily drowning out all communication. His arms remained above his head until the aircraft disappeared into the clouds and the engine noise trailed off.

  Simultaneously, Gabby and Kendra ran through the foliage to catch up with the youngsters ahead. When she was beside the leader, Gabby planted a hand on his arm, dragging him to a stop.

  Kendra said, “You know how to shoot that old gun?”

  “No,” he snapped back. “Do you?”

  “Yeah,” replied Kendra, taking some liberty with the truth. She knew how to load a muzzle-loading musket, but had never done it. And she certainly had never shot one. “Give it to me. I know how.”

  The tall, thin youth glanced at the breech, acknowledging that its ancient mechanism meant nothing to him. His ambivalence was resolved when Kendra took the weapon from his hand.

  A familiar voice resonated through the thin buffer of trees ahead, addressing the demonstrators. “Thank you. Thank you. I’m Joel Fox, director of KISS, the Kids’ Instructive Shooting and Safety Club. A few hours ago, I invited your leader, Ms. Roberts, to observe what we’re teaching your kids. It’s a shame she didn’t accept because she might have seen some pretty neat youngsters learning how not to hurt somebody with a gun. And we were particularly fortunate to see a young black bear on the range, a very rare sighting in this neck of the woods. How many of you have seen a black bear in Maryland?”

  Nobody raised a hand.

  “We like to think of our instruction here as an ounce of prevention. You only hear about bad people pulling the trigger on good people. You never hear about the accidents that don’t happen because people were careful to avoid them in the first place. What the media fails to convey is that for every person wrongfully shot by a juvenile delinquent, or a deranged individual, two more are hurt because somebody didn’t observe simple safety rules when handling a firearm. If I thought for one moment that I could end armed violence in Washington by closing down KISS, I’d do it. But that isn’t what’s at stake here. You know it and so do I. Reasonable and practical people must settle for a more modest goal—to reduce accidents. My colleagues and I know that no matter how many kids we teach about guns, there will still be criminal misuse of firearms. That’s a given. But if we’re successful with this program, fewer people will have accidents and end up in hospitals or morgues. I can’t tell you exactly how many. All I can say is that accidental injury and death will be reduced.”

  “We don’t want you propagandizing our children,” interrupted a voice from the second row. “We don’t see gun violence as a given.”

  “And we don’t want you teaching them how to shoot guns,” another added.

  Terrance Koe took a menacing step forward along the porch, displaying a .308 Ruger with a long oak stock. The bolt was forged from stainless steel rather than the traditional blued-steel. “And we won’t tolerate you trespassing on our property. Dr. Fox invited you here as guests. But that apparently wasn’t good enough for you. Now you’ve come onto our property uninvited, as trespassers. We’re warning you now. Pack up and leave immediately or face the consequences.”

  “Don’t let a bully like him scare you,” a mother from Capitol Heights shouted from a safe distance in the rear. “Never let a bully scare you. Just because this asshole got a gun, he thinks he’s a big shit. Well, I’m telling you he’s nothing but a little shit.”

  Terrance glared at the woman as if he could singe her with his eyes. His head suddenly jerked up and his lips tightened for an instant before he yanked back the trigger of his .308, dispatching a high-velocity bullet into the air with an ear-piercing crack. Nothing like the tiny pop of a .22 shell, this was a thunderous blast, with a whinnying aftershock. His second movement was familiar to everyone from the movies. He slid the stainless steel bolt back along its track and ejected a spent cartridge that sailed over the porch and dropped onto the lawn in front. As the bolt closed, it smartly injected a second cartridge into firing position. As in the movies, the sound of metal on metal signified to his audience that he was now deadly serious. No more fooling. No more deliberations.

  “The next time somebody’s going to get hurt,” he said with cold deliberation.

  The kids were about to emerge from the trees when Gabby’s hand stopped Kendra. “Give me that musket, please. Above all, we don’t want these folks to see you guys carrying guns. If they do, that’s the end of your club. Better I take it.”

  Kendra hesitated. “I ain’t gonna point it.”

  “I know that. And you wouldn’t aim at anything you didn’t want to shoot. Right? But the people on the porch might think you stole it. Besides, you told me you’ve never fired one of these.”

  “Did you?” She sounded skeptical.

  “No. I have to admit I haven’t. Just give it to me.”

  Thirty-seven kids suddenly emerged from the trees and headed for the open space between the clubhouse and the first row of protestors. They’d thought they knew what they wanted to do, but finding themselves midway between the demonstrators and the armed members of the gun club left them suddenly confused. There were a few hoots and muttered curses, but nothing more substantial, before they fell silent.

  Gabby worked her way forward through the kids, lugging the heavy musket at her side. Demonstrators gasped. Those who recognized her from the National Coalition for Gun Control were stunned. Cameras clicked as if the photographers had just discovered the president of the United States on the steps of a house of ill repute.

  “If Mr. Koe thinks he’s going to intimidate anyone here, he’s mistaken,” she said without hesitation. Her voice was firm and uncompromising, but without rancor. “If he points his gun at anyone, then I will point this old blunderbuss at him. Many of you know me. For those who don’t, I’m Gabrielle Lewyn. You may ask what I’m doing here. The answer is simple. I accepted the invitation that Karen Pillsbury and Stephanie Roberts refused. Dr. Fox asked me to observe his work with these kids. That’s why I wasn’t with you on the road below. I was trying to understand what KISS is all about.”

  “It's irrelevant. We don’t want our children here. Simple,” an angry mother interjected.

  Gabby ignored the speaker, keeping her eyes on Terrance Koe and addressing him in a voice loud enough for all to hear. “You and I are about to escalate this difference of opinion into a wholesale tragedy. I doubt you can shoot me without hurting one or more of these kids. Would you kill an innocent youngster to prove your point about trespassing?”

  Immediately she pivoted out toward the crowd, keeping the muzzle of the rifle pointed toward the sky, just like she learned in the safety lesson earlier. Her next remarks were directed to fellow Coalition members. “And would you endanger your kids by provoking the owners of this club? I don’t think so. We can defuse this situation if those of you in the rear move back down the road toward the highway. If I can persuade you to do that, I’ll get the people on the porch to put down their rifles.”

  “That’s not going to solve our problem,” Karen Pillsbury shouted.

  “You’re right, Karen, but it will lessen the danger of bloodshed. If we don’t take care of the immediate situation, a few of us may not be around to solve the larger issues. In a range war everybody loses. My friends, you haven’t seen what I have. But if you’ll permit me, I�
��ll report to the Coalition Board. Then we’ll call a meeting in the District and hear what these kids think. I’m sure Dr. Fox will respond to all your questions. Isn’t that right, Dr. Fox?”

  “Sure,” he replied, amazed by her ability to talk with a nasty crowd.

  Gabby shot a glance along the row of armed people on the porch. To the crowd she said, “These folks know a helluva lot more about shooting than I do. If Mr. Koe decides to shoot me, I ask you all to please come to my funeral. I want all you to say a prayer for me. Will you do that?”

  The proposition struck a bizarre, almost humorous, note. None of the protestors had anticipated facing guns when they entered the range. Two individuals near the road began inching backward. Others followed their lead.

  “All right, Louise,” Gabby said, addressing the woman she expected to understand her plea better than the men did. “It’s time to put your rifle down. My arms are tired. I’d love to put this heavy thing down, too,” she said, lowering the musket’s muzzle to the ground.

  Louise was reluctant to be the first, but acknowledged Gabby’s logic. Nobody in his right mind wanted bloodshed. She took the opportunity to ease the tension by dramatically opening the bolt on her rifle and withdrawing a copper cartridge from the breech. Her movement to disengage built momentum; several of the club members followed her lead and more of the demonstrators returned to the road. They walked slowly to make the point that their withdrawal did not mean wholesale capitulation, but they went. Gabby, beginning to breathe again, heard someone mutter that they might be crusaders for gun control, but they certainly didn’t intend to become martyrs.

  An hour later, a bus filled with KISS youngsters left the Izaak Walton grounds and headed back to the District of Columbia. In the clubhouse, Joel’s cohorts regarded Gabby with a mixture of resentment and respect. They admitted that she’d been instrumental in averting a nasty scene but, at the same time, felt her anti-KISS bias.

  ***

  “One question,” Joel asked later, as he parked his Bronco alongside Gabby’s Jeep in the Ohav Shalom parking lot. “Was your musket ready to fire?”

  “How the hell should I know?” She pushed her lower lip forward and shrugged her shoulders.

  “You mean you didn’t look! I can’t believe you didn’t learn to do that first.”

  “I was so scared, I just plumb forgot.”

  “Forgetting is no excuse. Never do it again. You might hurt somebody.” But he gave her a warm, glowing smile and took a softer tack. “Hey, Rabbi, that was a pretty neat piece of work you did today. It’s the second time you’ve saved my fat ass.”

  “From what I just saw, yours is a fat ass worth saving,” she replied.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  OHAV SHALOM RELIGIOUS SCHOOL

  Gabby made certain Ohav Shalom did not forget its slain Bar Mitzvah bocher. In addition to Bart’s funeral, she organized a memorial service and included his name on the congregational Kaddish list. A number of children in the religious school had asked to discuss the topic of guns and violence with their teachers and rabbi. She had considered inviting Joel Fox to present his views, but decided she could not afford to be naïve about the political sensitivities of her congregants. The vast majority of them held a dim view of firearms and she would provoke a tidal wave of controversy if she provided a platform for an NRA board member. The negative reaction to Joel’s presence would far outweigh the benefits. Instead, she judiciously invited Sergeant Paul Miller, the DC public relations officer who had spoken at Bart’s memorial, to discuss the proliferation of firearms in public schools with Ohav Shalom’s confirmation class.

  After the Sunday morning discussion, Sergeant Miller waited in Gabby’s study. She’d been teaching Misnaic passages from Perkay Avot and was detained by the usual press of people in the corridor as she returned to her study. Young children, always awed by the aura that surrounds a rabbi, wanted to say hello. Teachers stopped her, pressing for last minute facts to include in their lessons. Parents who planned to attend the weekly coffee and bagel discussion at 11:00 a.m. ambushed her with rabbinical questions.

  “Sorry,” she declared as she dashed through the door to her study, almost slamming it behind her as a shield against further intrusion. “This place buzzes on Sunday mornings. Hard to pull away.”

  Paul Miller placed a Pendaflex folder on the low table in front of him and rose to greet her. He stifled a yawn, product of the late evening he had passed with friends at a neighborhood pub, and offered his hand.

  “Good of you to speak with our children, Sergeant Miller,” Gabby said, inviting him with a gesture to return to the couch, then sitting opposite him in a chair. “I’m sorry we didn’t get an opportunity to talk at Bart’s memorial service. By now, you probably see how much his death has affected the Jewish community. Of course, we read in the papers about the daily bloodbath on the streets. But it’s easy to be blasé about such things until one of your own is gunned down.”

  Miller stiffened, preparing to defend his department. “Rabbi, with all the violence I’ve seen, you’d think I’d become callous. Thank the Lord I can still feel pain for the victims. When street punks shoot nice people like Bart Skulkin, it hurts – a lot. That particular young man will be hard to replace. Patrolmen on the streets always appreciate a good schoolteacher. Apparently, his kids loved him.”

  “Bart was an easy person to love.”

  Miller rubbed his hands together and refocused his eyes through wire-rim glasses. “We don’t see many white boys teaching in black schools. Not many black boys either, for that matter. In Washington, we have beaucoup do-gooders who volunteer to work in tough places but go home to the suburbs. Skulkin worked and lived in the neighborhood. You know, of course, that black people are sometimes self-conscious in the presence of white people. But I’m told that with Bart it was different. None of his students seemed to notice that he was white.”

  His words stirred the grief and bitterness Gabby felt over the murder, propelling her to ask, “Any progress in the investigation?”

  Miller stretched out the corner of his moustache with fingers gnarled by arthritis. “We’re pursuing many inquiries, but at this point we’re not drawing conclusions.”

  “Have the kids at the school been helpful?”

  He emitted a short bark of laughter. “Nothing. Kids don’t volunteer information. To get information from these kids, we have to finger them for a felony, then tighten the screws. Under pressure they often squeal. But so far, we’ve gotten nothing relevant to the Skulkin case.”

  “The shooting happened about 6:00 p.m. on a Sunday afternoon. By that hour it was already dark. To get to Fort Dupont Park, Bart had to cross the Anacostia River. I keep asking myself why he traveled to such a dangerous area after sundown.”

  “If we knew that, we’d be able to focus on the killer.”

  “You don’t sound optimistic.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that. The department’s workload is heavy. That’s the bad news. The good news is that one criminal act often leads to another. One break, one tip from an unknown source, and the puzzle starts to fit together.”

  “As far as I can see, nobody seems to acknowledge one obvious fact. Bart led an anti-gun campaign at school. I can’t imagine that dealers would be enthusiastic about his work. Maybe they had a motive to kill him.”

  “We’re looking into that, of course.”

  The door to Gabby’s study opened after a very brief knock. Ziporah Kleindeinst, director of the religious school, poked her head through the opening but did not enter. “Sorry to disturb you, Rabbi. But we have to make a change of venue for the coffee and bagel hour. Can’t use the lounge as usual.”

  “Why not?” Gabby asked, a little annoyed at the interruption.

  “Too many people. We usually have about thirty. But for some reason the room is already filled. My guess is that there are fifty or sixty right now and we still have ten minutes for more people to show up. I’m moving it to the Meyerhoff Hall. Is that oka
y with you?”

  Normally Gabby welcomed a large gathering, but this sudden surge in attendance, for no clear reason, stirred a tinge of apprehension. “Okay,” she said with hesitation. “Meyerhoff will be fine. I’m tied up for a few more minutes and will probably be a tad late.”

  She turned back to Sergeant Miller. “I’m usually not a woman of vengeance, but it seems terribly wrong not to bring Bart’s killer to justice. I can’t believe that this is just another random shooting. True, he taught in a school in Anacostia and coached tennis in the park nearby, but it was Sunday and he lived in an apartment on North Carolina Avenue, near Eastern Market. There had to be a good reason why he was in that park after sundown.”

  Miller shook his head, reminding her that he was not the detective on Bart’s case. He courteously stood to close the meeting and let Gabby go to the hall. A business card passed from his hand to hers. “We’ll continue to work with everything we’ve got. Don’t you fret about that, Rabbi.”

  “Any problem with me asking a few questions of his students at Anacostia High?” she asked, as they passed through the secretarial area.

  “It’s a free country, but you’re wasting your time. Let me be blunt. Hiding secrets is a survival technique these kids learn at an early age. It’s dangerous for them to disclose information to strangers. Anacostia is a jungle. Be careful entering it, Rabbi. You could do more damage than good.” He glanced down the synagogue corridor before saying, “I wouldn’t recommend going there alone. Don’t compound Bart Skulkin’s tragedy by making one for yourself.”

  “I always avoid unnecessary chances, Sergeant Miller. I was generously endowed with what I like to call safety genes.”

  A bemused expression crossed his face. “Strange, that’s not your public persona. I saw you on TV during the Zentner case a couple of years ago and I don’t recall any timidity on your part.”

  “Well, Sergeant, let’s just say that was a different phase of my life. Like you can on a computer, I’d love to delete that entire file, but people in this town have extraordinarily long memories.”