The One-Star Jew: Stories

by Evanier, David

“Non-violent! I believe in peace!”

  He drew out each word. “Oh no you’re not. You’re boiling. You take all that anger with you on the battlefield, Bruce, and you’ll be a credit to Uncle Sam.”

  “You son of a bitch,” I said.

  “Hey,” he laughed. “Hey, listen to that! Do you hear yourself?”

  “So what?”

  “Your voice! The resonance and tonal quality! Usually you sound like a weak sister! Why can’t you always make it forceful like that?”

  My head was spinning. “I can’t follow you, I can’t follow you—”

  “Bruce,” he said, “do you believe your mother is basically good?”

  “That bitch! I could slit her throat!”

  “Oh?”

  “My mother is one percent of the world.”

  “I rest my case,” he said.

  “Anyway, I don’t want to get killed …”

  “Oh … well, why didn’t you say so?”

  “Because it’s more complex than that.”

  “Sure it is. Have a drinkee, Bruce. Won’t hurt ya. You got a lot to learn, Bruce. You want it all nice. You and FDR and the fags and Adlai.”

  Selective Service. All the school counselors, the advisors, the neighbors, the shrinks, would say soothingly, “After you finish your stint in the service—”

  “What do you mean, after—” I wanted to scream— “I won’t be alive after!”

  I carried my Selective Service letter in my jacket pocket. A long white envelope, it contained my 1-A classification. I did not know how to get rid of it. I was afraid that my Communist connections would become known to the draft board and that they would induct me immediately out of revenge. I couldn’t leave the letter in my room. One of my enemies might enter when I was out, find the letter, and inform the board of my communism. I was afraid, too, that the letter might fall out of my pocket at a demonstration and be picked up by the F.B.I. who policed the picket lines.

  I lit a match to the letter in the kitchen sink.

  I placed the ashes in my pocket and walked around with them.

  I went out one midnight and, when no one was looking, emptied the ashes from my pocket into the grate in the street. I looked around angrily at the suspicious types who might be watching.

  But then I wondered if the draft board tapped my room. I talked aloud to myself all the time.

  I began to whisper in the room. Damn it, it was hard not to talk aloud. I moved my lips silently and the words struggled to get out.

  I paced around my room. I clicked my teeth shut on a word. I slammed my fist against the wall. The annual civil defense drill was coming up Thursday. The sirens would sound, the streets would be cleared. Every year the Catholic Worker crowd—Dorothy Day, Ammon Hennacy—got their names in the paper as they were carried off from Battery Park protesting. Thursday was the day. If I took part, the draft board would be convinced of my sincerity as a pacifist. I would be on TV and in the New York Times. But I would have a jail record. What if I trembled in front of the cameras? What if they placed me in a cell and took away my glasses? I wouldn’t be able to read. What if the TV reporters asked me for a statement and I was unable to speak? Confrontations always made my heart pound and reduced my words to gibberish. I might forget I was a pacifist and scream “Fuck capitalism” or “Free Sacco and Vanzetti” in my confusion. What if a guard hit me? If I was a pacifist, I couldn’t hit back. Or what if he really hurt me? They could do anything they wanted to you in jail and call it an accident. One day at a Communist rally, I had meant to tell the comrades that I was going to the bathroom. Instead I said I was going “backstage.” They had stared at me. I was so befuddled I broke out in a sweat.

  I sat down on my cot and tried to read Esquire and tossed it aside. Time to read the National Guardian, article by article, to deepen my Marxism. Oh shit, why was it so boring, so deadly, why was each paragraph torture? How could people with a vision of paradise sound like a machine cranking along a parched road? Anna Louise Strong writing about being released after years in a Communist Chinese prison—how pleased, how proud she was that the Socialist system proved its virtue by releasing her! Anna Louise, all smiles, in her maidenly dress, New England glasses, grateful for imprisonment and for release. Was she guilty—yes and no. Yes when they jailed her, no now that she was out. Whatever they said was fine. Let’s see, who’s been expelled from the American C.P.? Oh, Nat Binder, the visionary working class leader as of last Thursday, now a vermin, an agent of imperialism, a capitalist stooge. I had always thought he was a creep. Oh, Kumar Goshal, fuck you, oh, Cedric Belfrage, why are you people so hard to like? You’re supposed to be saints, God damn it, and you’re not even passable.

  I thought of my father’s face when he would hear of the arrest. Now he would know I was serious, that I wasn’t kidding, that I wasn’t afraid of my shadow like him. But I would need a pair of jeans and a workshirt to get arrested in, wearing a suit would look ridiculous. Oh Christ, where would I get the money to buy the jeans? I had spent my weekly allowance already. I would have to call my father and plead with him, and he would be suspicious. He always wanted me to wear a suit and a tie so that I could find a good job.

  I was called to the phone in the hallway. “DON’T DO IT, BRUCE—”

  “What?” It was Grinaldi.

  “You heard me.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about—”

  “Don’t do it, Bruce—”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Thursday.”

  “Thursday?”

  “Thursday.”

  “But how do you know about Thursday?” I had to admire the bastard, although I felt weak. I had never said a word to him.

  I held on to the wall. “I don’t know what—”

  “Shut up,” Grinaldi said, and clicked off.

  I had a part-time job at a Communist bookstore in Queens. Thursday was a working day, and when I got to the store I felt relieved. It was far from Battery Park. I knew I was safe.

  The owner of the store, Harry Stemm, had bulging eyes, and urged me to join the party, burn something, bomb something.

  When I came in the door, Harry put down the books he was marking. “Tsk, tsk, tsk,” he shook his head. “So you’re not going through with it? I was hoping not to see you today.”

  “I’m sorry, Harry.” I searched for the words that would satisfy him. “I wasn’t sure politically it was the right tactic.”

  “Hmmm,” Harry said, “perhaps you’re right.” He was happy to see I had made my decision on political grounds.

  The phone rang. Harry picked up the phone and looked puzzled. “Guy wants to talk to you. Sounds like a ruffian.”

  “DON’T DO IT, BRUCE—”

  “I’m in Queens, for Christ’s sake, at my job—”

  “Okay, Bruce. Don’t let that Commie sell you a bill of goods.”

  “I won’t.” I said good-bye.

  Harry stared at me suspiciously. “Who was that?” he said.

  “My therapist.”

  “Progressive?”

  “Very.”

  At that moment, a girl I had never seen before came into the store. She was dark and pretty, her name was Angela, and she was looking for Look Homeward, Angel.

  Suddenly she said, “God, I feel guilty about today. I wanted to take part in the civil defense protest, and my parents wouldn’t let me.”

  Harry looked up. “Oh ho! Listen to that! Young lady, Bruce here had the very same idea!”

  “You’re kidding!” she said.

  We all burst out laughing. Harry was beside himself, doing a little dance around us.

  “I would really have liked to,” I said, “but it’s too late now. Here we are all the way out in Queens—”

  “What’s wrong with Queens?” said Harry.

  “It’s an hour from Battery Park,” I said.

  “So who says you have to do it in Battery Park? You’ll be the first to take a stand in Queens!”
<
br />   And we’ll be carted off to jail, I thought, with no press, no TV, no nothing.

  Angela looked at me. Her eyes were warm.

  “This is really amazing,” she said, and she and Harry burst out laughing again.

  The air raid sirens began whining.

  “I don’t believe this,” she said. She stared at me.

  Harry gave me a push, a twinkle in his eye. “So?” he said.

  “I’m going out there!” Angela said suddenly, and marched out into the deserted street.

  I stood still for a moment.

  I rushed out after her.

  Angela and I walked along the sidewalk. Policemen passed us, told us the drill was starting, and kept walking. A few people shouted at us to get off the sidewalk, but no one stopped us. Finally we walked out into the street to attract more attention.

  When a policeman finally stopped us, we had to explain what we were doing. I wasn’t too clear. “Being as this is a day of drilling,” I began, “that is, in preparation for—”

  Angela interrupted me. “We’re protesting the civil defense drill.”

  “Oh,” the policeman said. “Well, you kids will have to go inside—”

  “We refuse,” Angela said. I shook my head in total agreement.

  “You want me … to arrest you?”

  We said yes. “Really?” he said. “Well, okay.”

  He said to me, “You seem awfully nervous. Are you all right?”

  “Perfectly!” I replied.

  At the jail, I was separated from Angela, and I crumpled to the floor. I was not protesting, I was just unable to move. They picked me up and carried me to my cell. They asked me if there was anyone I wanted to call. I gave them Grinaldi’s phone number.

  I was afraid my chest was going to explode. I was unable to get up, and they brought my food to me.

  When my father came, he paid my bail, and, with the aid of a policeman, carried me to his car.

  I felt better the next morning, and rushed out to buy the New York Times. There was a large picture of Dorothy Day and Ammon Hennacy on the front page. At the end of the story, there was the news that two young protesters had been arrested in Queens. No names were given.

  Trial was set for the following week.

  I called Grinaldi on the phone.

  “Yeah?” he said.

  “It’s me, Bruce.”

  “I know it’s you, Bruce. How did they get my phone number?” he said furiously.

  “I wanted you to know—”

  “You gave them my phone number—how dare you?”

  “But, you’re my therapist!”

  “Listen, Bruce, I’m not anything to you. Don’t get me involved in this bullshit. I told them I didn’t know you!”

  I almost broke out crying. “I’m sorry, Marius, you’re the one friend …”

  There was a long pause. Grinaldi sighed heavily. “Oh Jesus, Jesus Christ. What did you have to go and fuck up for, Bruce? I warned you, didn’t I?”

  “I did the right thing! To protest against nuclear warfare and Hiroshima and the killing of millions of innocent people is the right thing and you goddamn well know it!”

  He sighed. “Keep regressing, Bruce, and you’ll be permanently fixated at the oral-anal stage of the puberty circle.”

  “And the girl felt the same way!” I said, gasping for air.

  “Say that again.”

  “I said the girl felt the same way!”

  “What girl?”

  “Angela Goldberg!”

  “Which masochist are you talking about? I don’t remember an Angela—”

  “I only met her that day!”

  “What?”

  “I met her at the bookstore!”

  He whistled. “Ohhh …”

  “We did it together—”

  “I get it.” A warm note crept into his voice. “Well, Bruce, you didn’t mention a girl—” His voice became merry, he laughed.

  “Now I get it. Bruce, why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Tell you what?” I said, confused at the switch but relieved at his friendliness.

  “Cunt.”

  “Wunt?”

  Laughter surged across the wires at me.

  “You can’t stay away from it, can you, young man?”

  “That has absolutely nothing to do with it!” I said angrily. “I didn’t touch her!”

  He sighed. “Well, hurry up! And come see me when you’re out of jail. You’ve made me happy, Bruce. G’bye, Papa.” He hung up.

  My lawyer was late for the hearing. I stood with my father before the judge, and Angela stood with her parents and her lawyer. Her parents looked balefully at me; they wanted Angela to say that I made her do it against her will. She had refused.

  My heartbeats were so loud I was sure I would not be able to hear what the judge said. I heard nothing. I might get a month in jail. How did I get myself into such a mess? Pacifism, communism (which one was it, anyway, I tried to remember)—they were far away. A member of Pacifist International had come by to cheer us up, and I heard him as if he were speaking from across the street to me. He was tall and blond, with a blatant Irish name. You’re a cold bastard, I thought, an anti-Semite at heart, with the biggest Adam’s apple in God’s green world. You don’t give a shit about me; if you did, you would get me out of this; I might go to jail. Angela wouldn’t talk to me. If only she would, it would be all right. She acted as if it had all been an aberration. Her parents surrounded her, shaking their fists at me. But she wouldn’t even betray me. That, somehow, made it worse. She wasn’t a fink, but she didn’t love me. My father held my hand, and I shook it off, afraid Angela would see.

  We stood around, waiting for my lawyer. “Is your lawyer here?” my father said.

  “I don’t know. I think I would recognize him, but I’m not sure.”

  “Oh, my God,” my father moaned. He buried his face in his hands, as someone called “Here I am, Judge!” A short, squat, black man with the face of an aging squirrel, thick lips and heavy horn-rimmed glasses came smiling down the aisle carrying a pile of law books. It was my lawyer, Eugene Collins. “Where did you get a Negro?” my father whispered out loud, his face ashen. “You’re trying to destroy me, aren’t you?” he said, shaking his head, and making shrugging motions with his shoulders to the judge as if asking his forgiveness that his son was so disturbed that he would resort to this.

  Eugene Collins grinned at me and at the judge. He apologized to the judge for his lateness.

  The judge said it was an open-and-shut case, but that he would consider suspending sentence if I would promise never to do it again.

  “Oh my, no,” Collins said, smiling. “Your Honor, this young man would not in good conscience promise that. He considers what he did an act of good faith and moral conscience, an act of defiance of the vicious capitalist war machine that is trampling the freedom-loving peoples of all nations—”

  My father gurgled.

  “All right, all right, never mind,” the judge said. “I’ll pronounce sentence then—”

  “If you don’t mind, sir, I am sure that Bruce would like to make a statement at this time, as a pacifist, as an enemy of this heinous war—”

  No, no, no, no, please, I wouldn’t know what to say, I’m a leaf, a pebble, a feather, a pulsing heartbeat, that’s all I am, I don’t know why I’m here, I just want to go home—

  “Never mind all that,” the judge said. “I don’t want to hear what he’s got to say.”

  I remembered to look angry, muffled, and offended. The relief was so great that I could think more clearly. I looked around and stood up straighter.

  “Inasmuch as this is a felony,” the judge began, “I must—”

  “Uh uh uh!” Collins said, pointing a finger in the air. “Excuse me, Your Honor, this is not a felony. If I may, may I cite, excuse me, let me find it—” Collins had taken his books in his arms and was thumbing through the pages of one of them, sticking his finger in his mouth to moisten it s
o that he could turn the pages more quickly. The judge looked annoyed, but waited.

  “May I cite—” Collins cited page and reference. The judge grunted and asked to see it. Collins stood on his toes, smiling, and handed up the book.

  The judge read. “You’re right. Misdemeanor.”

  I had no idea what they were talking about, although I sensed that something was happening.

  The judge pronounced sentence. “Twenty-five dollars or ten days in jail.”

  My father rushed up to Collins to thank him and asked him what his fee was.

  Collins patted him on the back. “No charge; it’s an honor. Your son is a hero, Mr. Orav.” Collins told me to call him sometime, shook hands with my father and me, and scooted off.

  I looked for Angela. She nodded coldly, and walked off with her parents.

  I went to see Collins at his office to talk about evading the draft. I had heard many stories about him: that he shipped guns to Cuba, that he had been in jail himself during World War II as a Trotskyite because he refused to fight in a capitalist war.

  “I’m afraid my connections to the Communist Party will get me in trouble when I claim I’m a pacifist,” I told him.

  “What you gotta do, Bruce, is get into one of the far-out numbers. The C.P., that’s run by the F.B.I., so the draft board ain’t scared of that shit, no way. In the old days I’d tell you to join the Trots, but they’re class collaborators now too. No, you gotta join somethin’ crazy, if you know what I mean. Selective Service gotta be scared of you. Like Progressive Labor. The draft don’t mess with those guys.” Radical papers and books were scattered all over Collins’s desk. He held up a copy of the Progressive Labor newspaper. A slogan in big black letters said: “CASTRATE CAPITALISM.” Collins laughed, his white teeth shining.

  “Wait a minute, something even better.” He riffled through the pile and held up a four-page sheet called Proletarian World. There was a poem beneath the masthead:

  Black and White,

  Get Your Machetes Together, Brothers!

  Unite and Fight for a Proletarian World.

  “It’s a family, just a husband, wife, and daughter, Bruce. You call up, see, spell out your name slowly and clearly so the F.B.I. gets it right on the tap, make sure PW puts you on their mailing list. That’s very important, in case the F.B.I. misses your call or fucks up somehow. Have a money order made out for a dollar with your signature on it, and mail it to them. The F.B.I. and the C.I.A. will open the letter.