by Larry Karp
Mr. Raskin lowered his paper, saw me. Old and round as he was, I thought he might vault over the counter and punch me. Amid a flurry of pages he jabbed a finger, spluttered about calling the police. “Mr. Raskin,” I shouted. “I came to apologize.”
He stopped his convulsion, stared at me. I reached into my pocket, took out the five dollars, extended them across the counter. “I’m sorry for what I did,” I said. “And I’m sorry about the mess I left for you to clean up.”
The old man looked at the money, then at me. He shook his head sadly. “Oy, Sonny. A nice-looking boy like you, a pretty girl like that. How old are you?”
“Sixteen.”
“Her?”
“Sixteen, too.”
“Sixteen. Stealing rubbers, shame on both of you. What would your mothers and fathers say?”
How could I tell him why I’d really gone behind that counter? “I’m not sure,” I said. “Maybe they’d say if we were going to do it, they were glad we were careful enough to take precautions.”
Mr. Raskin looked at me very strangely, then said, “Y’know what? You sound just exactly like Samuel Firestone, kind of look like him, too. You know him? Dr. Samuel Firestone?”
“He’s my father.”
“Your father! And you ain’t afraid of what he’d do to you if I call him up and tell him?”
“No, I’m not afraid. If you think you should call him, go ahead.”
Mr. Raskin shook his head again, then sat heavily on his stool. “Jeez-Christ, what the world is comin’ to. What’s your name, Sonny?”
“Leo.”
“Leo, can you see your father goin’ into a store and stealin’ rubbers?”
I saw a vial of morphine tucked away in brown paper at the bottom of a doctor’s bag. A caustic wave came up from my chest, blossomed into a bitter taste in my throat. “No,” I said very quietly. “I told you I’m sorry, and I am.” I laid my five dollar-bills in his hand.
He mistook my emotion for embarrassment, waved me off. “Put away your money, Leo. Go buy your girl a hamburger and an ice-cream soda.” He narrowed his eyes. “You didn’t come in here to steal rubbers, not the way you talk. If you wanted rubbers you’d’a just plain walked up and told me you were twenty-one. And I’d’a sold you your rubbers, we both of us know that. So what the hell were you doin’ here behind the counter? Tell me.”
“Mr. Raskin,” I said, “I got bored, that’s all. My friend was looking at lipstick and I decided to see what a druggist actually does hide behind the counter. When you caught me I got scared and knocked over all those damn boxes of rubbers.”
The old man chuckled. “You’re Samuel Firestone’s son, all right. Okay, fine. I thank you for coming in here, and I accept your apology. Now, go on home and behave yourself.”
Next morning on rounds, as I carried Samuel’s bag I made sure to walk beside him, not a step behind. Rhoda Brown was awake, alert, feeling much better, if still weak. “A miracle,” her mother said. As we walked away, down the corridor, Samuel echoed that. “Antibiotics, penicillin—amazing. Without it, they’d be at her funeral today.”
“But maybe there’s a funeral somewhere for a soldier who needed that penicillin and didn’t get it,” I said.
Samuel shrugged as if I’d made a comment about the weather. “Maybe so,” he said. “But maybe is less than probably, probably’s less than certainly, and Rhoda certainly would be dead without the penicillin.” Short pause. “And Rhoda is under my care.”
Short list of house calls that day; after the last one, Samuel checked his watch. “Eleven—let’s stop by the Fleischmanns’, look in on Angela Gumpert. She lost a lot of blood at her abortion.”
If I felt conspicuous as we walked into the attic, Samuel and Lily very quickly took my mind off myself. They strolled down the aisle side by side, King and Queen of the Baby Mill. Samuel told Shannon she was doing fine, just another few days and she’d be on her way. He patted Teresa’s big belly, said it wouldn’t be much longer ’til the baby came.
As we walked up to Angela, Lily murmured, “White as a sheet,” but with her dull yellowish pallor, Angela would’ve been a dingy bedsheet. She tried to smile, managed a soft hello. She looked weaker than the day before, eyes sunken. Samuel took her hand, slid a thumb to check her pulse. I could see him counting as he talked. “Lose any more blood yesterday?”
She shook her head vaguely. “Kind of like a heavy monthly.”
Samuel passed her hand to me. “Check her pulse, Leo.”
Warm in that attic, but Angela’s hand was cold. I found the pulse, looked at my watch, started counting. “One thirty-three. Thready.”
“Right.” He pressed one of her fingernails, let go, then pressed one of mine. “See the difference?”
“Mine was red at first, then went white when you squeezed it,” I said. “Hers was white to start with, and it stayed white.”
“Because your hemoglobin’s near fifty, and hers isn’t half that. She needs red blood cells.” He looked at Angela. “Your body will make back all the blood you lost, but it’ll take six weeks, long time for you to feel as bad as you do. We’ll give you a booster.”
“Transfusion?” I asked.
Samuel nodded.
“Where’s the blood?”
Samuel’s eyes told me to shut up and watch.
Angela looked at the three of us in turn, then asked the universal question. “Will it hurt?”
“Little needle-stick, that’s all.” Samuel was already reaching into his bag; he came out with a rubber-topped bottle filled with clear fluid. “Novocain.” He drew some into a small syringe, then took Angela’s left hand in his, studied the inner surface of her elbow, wiped an alcohol swab over a large blue vein, slid in the needle. “Okay, now,” he said, and injected. Angela squeezed her eyes shut. “Stings,” she moaned.
Samuel pulled the needle out. “All you’ll feel.” He took a second small needle from the bag, put it onto the syringe, lowered his own left arm, swabbed, injected Novocain. “There. All set.”
Back to the bag, out with two rubber tourniquets, a roll of adhesive tape, and a sealed paper autoclave bag. He tore off four strips of tape, hung them from the edge of the night table. Then he handed me the autoclave bag. “Open it, but make sure not to touch the needles.”
I found myself holding about two feet of rubber tubing with the two biggest steel needles I’d ever seen at the ends. Angela’s eyes flew open. “Don’t worry,” Samuel told her. “That’s why I gave you Novocain. You won’t feel a thing. Watch.”
He picked up the tourniquets, used his free hand and teeth to fasten one around his upper arm, the other around Angela’s. Then he took the tubing from my hand, crimped it between his left thumb and index finger, and carefully, deliberately, plunged one of the needles into a bulging vein at his left elbow. Quickly, he released the tourniquet. “See?” Big smile. “No pain.” He taped the needle secure, then took the free needle in his right hand and slowly released pressure on the tubing. A moment later, a couple of red drops fell from the needle to the floor.
Samuel pinched the tubing again, bent over Angela. “Don’t move now.” He worked the big needle into her vein, fastened it with tape, then smiled at her. “What’d you feel?”
She shook her head, did her best to smile back. “Little pressure, maybe. No pain.”
“Good. Just remember, hold very still.”
Not a sound in that room. Samuel released the tourniquet on Angela’s arm, looked at his watch. The rest of us goggled, frozen, ’til Samuel said, “There,” and pulled the needle out of his arm. Blood streamed down to his wrist; he grabbed an alcohol swab, pressed it onto his vein, folded his arm. As the tubing emptied, he pinched it shut again and stage-whispered, “Don’t want to get air in there.” Then he pressed a swab gently to Angela’s arm, and slipped the needle out. Lily reached to put pressure on the puncture site.
Samuel passed me the dripping tubing. He looked at Angela.
“Well?”
In the time of the transfusion her cheeks had gone from sallow to faintly pink. She smiled at Samuel in a way that under other circumstances would’ve been seductive. “Dr. Firestone…I don’t believe it.” Breathy whisper. “It feels like you actually ran life back into me.”
As Samuel and I pulled away from the curb in the Plymouth he said, “In a sense I did, didn’t I? Run life into her. Life, oxygen, blood. I gave her a temporary supply, tide her over ’til she can catch up.”
I asked the question I’d held back since he flashed me that shut-up look. “But for a transfusion, shouldn’t you use stored donor blood that’s been tested to make sure it’s the right type?”
“It’s coming around to that, Leo. I suspect in five or ten years, blood banks will be the thing. But some professors still say direct transfusions have their advantages. Look in Kracke’s Diseases of the Blood. For one thing, the fresher the blood, the better it works. Also, the patient doesn’t need to go into a hospital, which in this case would’ve been a little embarrassing.”
“But if your type and hers aren’t the same, can’t there be complications? Kidney failure, even instant death…what do they call that?”
“You’ve been reading, good. That’s anaphylaxis, very nasty allergic reaction. You’re right, that could be a risk, but not in this case. I’m Type O, Rh negative, all my antibody titers extremely low. I’m the universal donor, can give blood to anyone.”
“And you feel all right now? You’re not weak?”
Samuel laughed. “Do I look weak? No, I only gave her about a pint. Enough to build her up, not nearly enough to knock me down.”
Chapter 10
After lunch I biked to the junkyard. Murray, Oscar and George were at the side of the office near the corrugated fence, making a bunch of smaller piles out of two great big heaps of metal. Oscar saw me first, pulled himself straight as I walked up. “Murray’s busy,” he snarled. “Go play dollies with the other girls.” Nasty sneer. “Or play doctor, yeah. Go play doctor with the girlies in the sandbox.”
Murray and George stopped working. All three men looked at me. I glanced at Murray, which clearly infuriated Oscar. “I told you Murray was busy, what you checkin’ with him for? Beat it. None of us got any time today for your silly shit.”
“You’ve got plenty of time to just stand around and be nasty,” I said.
Oscar grabbed a piece of metal off the pile, a mean-looking steel rod. “You little fucker, I’ll show you some manners.” Murray and George stepped between us like a team. “Pop, quit being a schmuck,” Murray growled, then took my arm and moved me a couple of steps away. George kept himself squarely in Oscar’s path. “Hey, Dockie,” Murray said to me. “Don’t go making things tougher’n they gotta be, okay?” With his left side toward Oscar, Murray twisted the right corner of his mouth into a grin and winked his right eye. “Don’t blame you,” he muttered, then added aloud, “Old shithead’s right, I am real busy right now. Whyn’t you give us a hand here, we’ll get the job done faster. Then I’ll show you how to put that machine back together. Okay?”
“Fuckin’ hell, Murray!” Oscar’s face was like a ripe plum covered with fuzzy gray growth. “What’s Miss Pussy here know about metal—”
“Much’s you did when you were a lot older’n him. And Pop, I ain’t gonna tell you again. His name’s Leo, he’s a good kid, and if you talk to him like that one more time, you and me are gonna have it out. Now how about let’s get this goddamn work done before Red shows, huh?”
Oscar wiped the back of a filthy hand across his mouth, beamed hate at the two of us. Murray didn’t seem to notice. He pointed at the two big piles of metal. “See, we got scrap here, but all mixed up together. Them little piles…” He pointed at six mounds to the right of the two big ones. “Brass, copper, iron, steel, tin, zinc, alphabetical order. Go see what they look’n feel like. Then take off pieces from the big piles, sort ’em out. You don’t know what a piece is, ask me or George. Kapeesh?”
“Sure.”
He worked a pair of heavy gloves out of a back pocket, flipped them to me, gave me a friendly shove, then turned back to his job. I bent over the sorted piles, one after the other; looked, hefted. Then I walked to the big pile Oscar wasn’t working at, grabbed a long, heavy rod, chucked it onto the iron heap.
Good thing I was a big kid, and strong. Murray, George and Oscar tossed those steel pipes as if they were toothpicks, threw blocks of brass as if they were marshmallows. I leaned into the work, wasn’t about to look anything like the name Pop called me. George caught my eye, slipped me a nod of approval. I picked up, tossed, picked up, tossed. No one said a word.
Another hour, we were done, six more or less neat piles against the wall, two large circles of brown dirt and metal bits gleaming in the sun like silver and gold. I could’ve wrung water out of my shirt. Murray grinned. “Good job, Dockie.”
Oscar hawked, spat.
Murray gave him a hot-eye. “Got it done in less’n two hours, we were figuring three. Break time, cool off. There’s Nehi, Yoo-Hoo an’ Pepsi in the office, Dockie.”
We hunkered against the fence, drank our sodas in silence. When Red Dexter strolled through the gate and saw the piles of metal, he blew a low whistle and rocked back on his heels as if he’d never been so surprised in his life. Then he took off, goose-stepping past the loot, singing to the tune of “Colonel Bogey,” “Hitler…has only got one ball. Goering’s…are teeny-tiny-small. Himmler…is very sim’lar. And Goebbels ain’t got…no balls…at all.” In front of the zinc by now, he turned back to us, snapped to attention, extended his right arm, shouted, “Sieg Heil!” Then he swept his snap-brim off his head and put his left hand to his belly to execute a full bow.
Murray nudged me. “What a character.”
Dexter half-turned to scrutinize us, slyly, I thought. “My, my, my,” he said. “Ikey, Jakey and Rastus eat steak this week, whatever the butcher’s gettin’ for it.” Then he looked at me as if I were amusing him in some vague way. His thin red mustache stretched into an upcurving pencil line, dark teeth barely showing.
“Samuel Firestone’s kid, remember?” Murray said. “He’s—”
“Fixin’ his granny’s music box. So he can give it to a certain little sugar-cookie, Miss Harmony. Goin’ good, is it, Leo?”
“Jeez.” Murray was clearly impressed. “That’s right, you were here before, when him and me…but what was that other part? Miss Harmony?”
With a flourish of his hand Red passed me the conversational ball. “My friend,” I said. “Harmony’s her name, she lives next door. She wants the music box after I’ve fixed it.”
Red’s face went from sly to wicked. “She and him, uh, ran into me yesterday on the sidewalk.”
Murray poked a finger into my ribs. “Hey, you didn’t tell me… You’re a cagey one, Dockie. You sure ain’t Samuel’s kid for nothing.” He looked back to Red. “And you. What the hell ever goes on you don’t know about?”
“Not much, Murr.” Dexter looked about to break into a buck-and-wing; all he needed was a walking stick. “In my business, not knowin’ about stuff could be a bad thing for a person’s health.” He whipped the Luckies out of his pocket, shook one free, closed lips around it, flicked a match into flame with his thumbnail, lit up, took a deep drag. “Yeah!” Speaking through smoke. “Truck’ll be here in the morning. Keep goin’ like this, time the war’s over, you guys’re gonna be sittin’ very pretty. Credit where credit’s due.”
“Fuck credit, Red,” Murray growled. “It’s cash and carry.”
“Ho ho ho.” Dexter sounded like an evil Santa Claus. “You got things just a little bit backwards, Murray. It’s carry and cash, like always. Truck’ll be here in the morning, I’ll be here three days after that.”
Dexter doffed his hat again, then turned and disappeared around the corner. Oscar sent an evil eye after him. “I don’t like that son of a bitch. Acts like he knows more about our busine
ss’n we do.”
Much as I hated to, I had to agree with Oscar.
Murray laughed. “He’s got his ways, is all. I figure with what he’s doing for us, I like him just fine.” Murray put a hand to my shoulder. “Okay, come on, Dockie, deal’s a deal. Get ourselves another Pepsi, then I’ll show you how to put that music box back together.” Another poke in the ribs. “Girls don’t wait around forever for a guy.”
We went out back, pulled the tarp off the table. Murray studied the array of shiny brass and steel, belched absentmindedly, then pointed with the Pepsi bottle. “First off, we gotta put all them little pieces into their right groups. Spring-barrel parts, governor, cylinder, comb. Four piles. Like we just did with the metal out there.”
My opening. “Where’d all that metal come from?”
“Guy died,” Murray mumbled. “Another junkman. Widow sold us the stuff.”
“Old man?” I asked, trying to sound casual.
“Not as old as he coulda got.” Murray aimed the Pepsi bottle at me. “Hey, you wanna fix this thing or not? I’ll help you sort out what goes where, then you can make alla little pieces into four big ones. When that’s done, call me.”
I must’ve been concentrating hard on making big pieces out of little ones because when Oscar barked, “Somethin’ I want to tell you,” I shot to my feet, scattered music box parts all over the table. Oscar snickered. “Oh, dearie me.” Gruff falsetto. “Did I frighten Little Miss Pussy? Make her drop her pretty music box?”
Blood zipped straight through my cheeks into my brain. “You want to tell me something, you can call me by my name,” I snapped. “Leo.”
Oscar shot out a hand, grabbed my wrist and twisted. I kicked the chair away, tried to pull free. He leaned into my face, two crooked rows of greenish-brown teeth, breath rotten enough to gag a hyena. “Far’s I’m concerned, you’re Pussy. Now, get that fuckin’ music box done, Pussy, and get the hell outa here.” He narrowed his eyes, shook my wrist. “I see you in my yard any time after that, I promise you ain’t gonna like how I get you out.” He turned his head to let fly a thick gob, thup, into the dirt, then wiped the corner of his greasy red neckerchief across his lips. “You think you can spend your whole life hidin’ behind your brass-nuts ol’ man, well, you got another think comin’. A big one.”
