The Rabbi

by Noah Gordon

  The applause following the music was strong and sustained, but it heightened when another man in shirtsleeves stepped from behind the curtain. He was a large man, broad-shouldered, big-headed, and big-handed. He had a fleshy nose and a wide mouth. The lids of his eyes were heavy.

  The trumpeter left the stage. The big man stood in its center, smiling, while the people below him clapped their hands and shouted words of praise.

  Then he raised both hands to the sky, fingers outspread. The noise was erased. From overhead a microphone dropped on a boom until it was close enough to his face for the sound of hoarse, superhuman breathing to fill the tent.

  “Hallelujah,” said Billie Joe Raye. “God loves you.”

  “Hallelujah,” said people all over the tent.

  “A-man,” muttered the blind man.

  “God loves you,” Billie Joe repeated. “Say it three times, with me: God loves me.”

  “GOD LOVES ME.”

  “GOD LOVES ME.”

  “GOD LOVES ME.”

  “That’s good,” Billie Joe said, nodding happily.

  “Now, I know why you’re here, brothers and sisters. You’re here because you’re sick in body and mind and soul, and you need the healing love of God.”

  Silence, and the amplified sound of breathing.

  “But do you know why I’m here?” asked the preacher’s mouth from the stage and from two dozen television monitors all over the tent.

  “To cure us!” somebody near Michael shouted.

  “To make me well again!”

  “To help my boy to live!” a woman screamed, pushing back her chair and dropping to her knees.

  “A-man,” said the blind man.

  “No,” Billie Joe said. “I can’t cure you.”

  A woman sobbed.

  “Don’t say that,” another woman cried. “Don’t you say that, hear?”

  “No, sister, I can’t cure you,” Billie Joe repeated. More people began to weep.

  “But GOD can cure you. Through these hands.” He held them up, fingers widely spread, for everyone to see.

  Hope was revived in a flurry of hosannas.

  “God can do anything. Say it with me,” Billie Joe said.

  “GOD CAN DO ANYTHING.”

  “So God can cure you.”

  “SO GOD CAN CURE ME.”

  “Because God loves you.”

  “BECAUSE GOD LOVES ME.”

  “A-man,” whispered the blind man, tears welling up in his sightless eyes.

  Billie Joe sucked in a breath with an electronically amplified whoosh. “Once I was a dying boy,” he declared.

  The broadcast sound of breathing, slow and sorrowful.

  “The Devil already had my soul and the worms were getting ready to play hide-and-go-seek in my flesh. My lungs were eaten with consumption. My blood was corrupted by anemia. My mammy and pappy knew I was dying. I knew I was dying and I was afraid.”

  Breathing like a chased-down stag struggling to suck one more portion of air into his lungs.

  “I had wallowed in sin. I had drunk cheap whiskey. I had gambled like the soldiers who cast lots for the garments of the Son of God. I had fornicated with wild and diseased women as wanton as the whores of Babylon.

  “But one day as I lay in my bed full of despair, I felt something strange happening inside of me. Something ’way down inside began to stir like the first soft stirring of a baby chick when it knows it has to start working away at the hard shell of the egg.

  “And the tips of my fingers and the ends of my toes began to tingle, and the place where I felt that first stirring burst into a warm glow that no whiskey distilled by man could make, and I could feel the light of God streaming out of my eyes, and I leaped out of that bed and I shouted in my glory and IN MY FULL HEALTH:

  “‘MAMMY! PAPPY! The Lord has touched me! AND I AM SAVED!’”

  Throughout the tent there passed a shudder of hope and happiness, and people lifted their eyes and thanked their God.

  Next to the fat lady a young man sat, his cheek wet with tears. “Please, God,” he was saying. “Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please.”

  Michael saw the young man’s face for the first time, and with a feeling of numb unreality he realized that it was Dick Kramer, a member of the congregation of Temple Sinai.

  From the stage, Billie Joe looked down benevolently at the people in the seats. “From that day onward, although I was but a stripling, I preached the word of God, at first at meetings throughout these parts and then, as some of you good people know, as pastor of the Holy Fundamentalist Church over at Whalensville.

  “And it wasn’t until two years ago that I thought I was anything but a preacher of the Word.

  “Some of our men were laying out a baseball field for the youngsters of the Sunday School, on land behind the church. And out of the goodness of his heart, Bert Simmons had brought over his light tractor, and was leveling some knolls. On a rock no bigger than a beehive, all at once his tractor bucked. It flipped over, pinning Brother Simmons’ hand under its terrible weight.

  “When I was summoned from the church, I could see blood coming out of the work glove. When we pried the machine off, from the way that glove was mashed and flattened, I knew Bert’s hand would have to be cut off. And I dropped to my knees in the fresh earth and I lifted my eyes to the heavens, and I said, ‘Lord, must this good servant be punished for having aided in Thy work?’ And suddenly, my hands began to twitch and I felt power in them, surging and crackling like electricity was shooting out of the tips of my fingers, and I picked up Brother Simmons’ crushed hand in mine, and I said, ‘God, heal this man!’

  “And when Brother Simmons took off his glove, his hand was whole and unhurt, and I could not deny that a miracle had taken place.

  “And I seemed to hear the voice of God saying, ‘Son, once I healed you. Now you will carry My healing power throughout the family of man.’

  “And since then the Lord has healed thousands through my hands. Because of his goodness, the lame have walked, the blind have seen, and the afflicted have been relieved of the burden of pain.”

  Billie Joe bowed his head.

  An organ began to play softly.

  Presently he looked up.

  “I want everybody here to touch the back of the chair in front of him and bow his head, please.

  “Come on. Get those heads down. Everybody.

  “Now I want every one here who wishes in his heart to seek Jesus Christ to raise his or her hand straight up in the air. Keep your head bowed, but raise your hand.”

  Michael looked around and observed perhaps twenty-five hands raised.

  “Glory, glory what a sight, brothers and sisters,” Billie Joe said. “All over this tent hundreds of hands are pointing toward God. Now, you people who are raising your hands, stand right up on your two feet. Stand right up, quickly now. Everybody who has his hand in the air.

  “Now walk forward and we’ll say a special little prayer.” About twelve or fifteen people, men and women and three teen-age girls and one boy, came down to the front of the tent. They were taken behind a curtain by one of the preacher’s assistants.

  Then, while the organ played, Billie Joe went up and down the aisles, praying over the stretcher cases.

  While he was doing this, one team of ushers passed the collection plates while another team passed out cards to those who wished to see the healer. All over the tent, people began to sign the cards.

  “Will you show me where?” asked the blind man. As the man signed, Michael read the card. It was a release giving permission for the signer’s picture to be used in periodicals and on television.

  Cal Justice and the unseen organist played two more hymns, “The King of Love My Shepherd Is” and “Rock of Ages,” and then Billie Joe was back on the stage. “If you will form a line in the aisle and be patient until it is your turn,” he said, “we will pray to God about your afflictions, you and I.”

  All over the tent, people stoo
d.

  In front of Michael, Dick Kramer rose with them. He glanced around as he waited for others in his row to move out, and his eyes met those of his rabbi.

  For a moment they stared at one another, something in the boy’s face making Michael’s breath catch in his throat. Then Kramer turned and plunged blindly toward the aisle, his elbow thumping into the fat lady’s side. “Here!” she said, sitting down again.

  “Dick,” Michael called. “Wait for me!” He began to move down his own row of seats toward the aisle, repeating apologies as he pushed past people.

  But ultimately the way was blocked by the stretcher of the paralyzed girl. The florid man was bending over it, his mouth slack. “God damn it, Evelyn,” he was saying, “you move those limbs! You can move, if you want to.” He turned to the usher, his head trembling. “You go fetch Mr. Raye, boy. You tell him to get the hell back here and pray some more.”

  28

  Dick Kramer first learned that he had not gotten away free and clear one autumn morning in the middle of the pine woods outside Athens. He and his cousin Sheldon had been methodically working their dogs through some small hills. Since they were among the best shots at the University, the house committee of their fraternity had assigned them to supply the frat’s kitchen with squab and quail, relieving them of less attractive duties so that they might hunt. The two boys were hunting competitors of long standing, and now Dick was feeling especially fine. He had counted only three shots from Sheldon’s direction, and he knew that even if each shot meant a bird in his cousin’s bag, he was far ahead. It was his virgin effort with a new 20-gauge Browning over-and-under. His old shotgun had been a 16-gauge, and he had been afraid that the smaller pellet area of the new piece would handicap him, but he had a brace of quail and two mourning doves in his bag, and even as the thought of this warmed him another dove rose with a sudden flutter, wings blurring black with motion against the blue sky, and he snapped the shotgun to his shoulder and at precisely the right instant pressed the trigger gently, feeling the jolt and watching the rising bird pause and then turn to stone and drop.

  The Redhead recovered the dove and Dick took the bird and patted the dog and reached into his pocket. His hand closed over a dog candy—his right hand—but when he took it out of his pocket his fingers wouldn’t uncurl to give Red his reward.

  Sheldon came trudging over the hill, looking upset, with old Bessie panting and slobbering after him. “Son of a bitch,” he said. “This keeps up, those guys are going to have to open a couple of cans of baked beans.” He drew his shirtsleeve over his forehead. “I got only two. How’d you make out?”

  Dick held up the dove he had just removed from the Redhead’s muzzle. What he thought he said next was, “I got four beside this one.” But his cousin looked at him, grinning.

  “What?”

  He repeated it, and the grin slowly faded from Sheldon’s face. “Hey, Dick. You all right, Dickie boy?”

  He said something else and Sheldon took him by the elbow and shook him a little bit. “What’s the matter, Dickie?” he said. “You’re white as a sheet. Sit down. Right here.”

  He sat on the ground and the Redhead came and nuzzled his face with a cold wet nose and in a few minutes his fingers opened and he was able to feed the dog the candy. His hand remained curiously numb but he said nothing of this to Sheldon. “I feel better now, I guess,” he said instead.

  At the sound of his voice Sheldon looked relieved. “Are you sure?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “All the same,” Sheldon said, “we’d better go in.”

  “I feel fine,” Dick protested. “Why quit this early?”

  “Dickie, back there a few minutes when your face went so white. Do you remember saying something to me?”

  “Yes. I guess so. Why?”

  “Because it was . . . completely unintelligible. You were incoherent.”

  He felt a small fear, like an annoying insect that he chased away with a laugh. “Come on. You’re giving me the business, right?”

  “No. Honest to God.”

  “Well, I feel fine now,” he said. “And you understand me, don’t you?”

  “You’ve been feeling all right lately, haven’t you?” Sheldon asked.

  “Jee-zuz, yes, it’s been five years since I had that operation,” Dick said. “I’m as healthy as a horse, and you ought to know it. When does a person stop being an invalid?”

  “I want you to see a doctor,” Sheldon said.

  His cousin was a year older, as close to a big brother as he would ever have. “If it will make you feel better, dammit,” Dick said. “Look at this.” He held out his right arm. There was not the slightest sign of tremor. “Nerves of plutonium,” he said, grinning. But the numbness was still there he noticed as he walked with Sheldon and the dogs through the pine woods toward the car.

  He went to the doctor’s on the following morning, and he told the old doc what had happened.

  “Anythin’ else been botherin’ you?”

  He hesitated and the doctor glanced at him appraisingly. “Lost some weight, haven’t you? Hop on the scale.” It was nine pounds. “Nothin’ else been givin’ you pains?”

  “A couple of months ago I had a swollen ankle. It went away after a few days. And a pain down here.” He indicated the right side of his groin.

  “Been sportin’ the girls a little too regular, I suspect,” the doctor said, and they both grinned. Nevertheless, the old doc picked up the telephone and had him admitted to the Emory University Hospital in Atlanta for tests and observation.

  “On the afternoon of the Alabama game?” Dick complained. But the old doc only nodded.

  At the hospital, the medical resident who did the work-up observed for the record that the patient was a slightly pale, well-developed male of twenty, with right-sided facial weakness and some thickening of speech. He saw with a quickening of enthusiasm that there was an interesting history. The records showed that an exploratory laparotomy had been performed when the patient was fifteen years old, resulting in discovery of adenocarcinoma of the head of the pancreas. The duodenum, the distal portion of the common bile duct, the head of the pancreas, and a small section of the jejunum had been resected.

  “They cut away some bellyaches for you when you were a kid, huh?” he said.

  Dick nodded and smiled.

  The patient’s hand was no longer numb. There was a right-sided Babinski sign; neurologic examination otherwise revealed nothing.

  “Can I get out of here in time to see the game?” Dick asked.

  The doctor frowned. “I don’t know about that,” he said. His stethescope revealed that a soft systolic murmur was audible over the precordium. He had the patient lie down and began to probe his abdomen with searching fingertips. “Do you think we can take ’Bama this year?” he asked.

  “That kid Stebbins will pass them to death,” Dick said.

  The searching fingers located a firm, lobulated mass that was palpable midway between the umbilicus and the xiphoid and slightly to the left of the midline. It seemed to overlap the aorta. Every time the heart pulsated the mass pulsated with it, until it was as though two hearts beat in the boy’s body beneath the doctor’s hands. “I wouldn’t mind seeing that game myself,” the resident said.

  Sheldon came to see him, and some of the boys from the House, and Betty Ann Schwartz, wearing a tight white sweater with long hairs of wool all over it. Nobody else came to see him the evening she was there, so there was nowhere else he could look, and the sight of her almost made him unglue. “No matter what anybody tells you,” he said, “they don’t put anything in the coffee here.”

  He had expected the remark to float up over her head, but she looked right into his eyes and smiled, as if what he said had pleased her. “Perhaps you can take up the problem with a nurse,” she said, and he made a mental note to date her as soon as he was released.

  His Uncle Myron came on his fifth night in the hospital.

  “What did Sh
eldon have to tell you for?” Dick said in annoyance. “I’m feeling perfectly fine.”

  “This isn’t a sick call,” Myron said. “This is a business meeting.” For years Myron Kramer and his brother Aaron had run identical businesses in different towns, manufacturing hardwood dining room sets. With Myron in Emmetsburgh and Aaron in Cypress, they enjoyed the independence of nonpartnership, yet as brothers they felt free to enjoy such economies as sharing the same furniture designs and employing a single sales representative to push their twin line at the national furniture shows. When Aaron had died of a coronary two years before, Myron had taken over the management but not the ownership of his brother’s business, with the understanding that Dick would assume this responsibility when he was graduated from the University.

  “Something wrong with the business, Uncle Myron?” Dick asked.

  “The business is fine,” his uncle said. “What should be wrong with the business?” They talked of football, about which the elder Kramer knew almost nothing.

  Myron Kramer sought out his nephew’s doctor before he left Atlanta. “His mother died when he was a little boy. Cancer. My brother went a couple of years ago,” he said. “Heart. So I’m the only one. I want you to tell me how my nephew is.”

  “There is a mediastinal mass, I’m afraid.”

  “Tell me what that means,” Myron said patiently.

  “There is a growth. In the back of the chest, behind the heart.”

  Myron grimaced and closed his eyes. “Can you help him?”

  “I don’t know how much, with a tumor of this type,” the doctor said carefully. “And there may be others. Advanced cancer is a plant that seldom throws a single seed. We want to determine where else in your nephew’s body there may be trouble.”

  “Will you tell him?”

  “No, at least not yet. We’ll wait awhile, and watch him.”

  “And if there are other . . . things?” Myron asked. “How will you know?”

  “If metastasis has occurred,” the doctor said, “it will be too easy to tell, Mr. Kramer.”

  On the ninth day Dick was released from the hospital. Before he put on his clothes, the doctor gave him a supply of multiple vitamins and pancreatic enzymes. “These will build you up,” he said. Then he added another bottle of capsules. “These pink ones are Darvon. Take one anytime you feel pain. Every four hours.”