Snow in August

by Pete Hamill

  And then fell to his knees in utter emptiness. He had no more words in him. He had no more letters. He had no more music. He wanted to vanish into a dreamless sleep. Here in the sweet dusty darkness. He could hear the cry of a bird like a sound of morning. And then the barking of a dog. But he did not rise. He stretched out on the floor, facing the Ark.

  And then the mud began to glow.

  A deep red.

  Then a brighter red. Like something in an oven. Michael rose to his feet, his heart beating in fear.

  He stepped back, afraid to look into the sink, retreating into the shadows, but the glow grew more intense. Two minutes. Five minutes. Ten. Like something deep in the coals of a sacred furnace.

  And then a chilly breeze blew through the sanctuary. The burning wick flickered in the eternal light. Dust lifted from benches, and cobwebs bent and snapped. Something clattered to the floor in the darkness. The windows rattled. Michael felt the floor tremble and heard a wild sound of birds rising from the roof and then a high-pitched sound like a dog whistle, hurting his ears, piercing his brain.

  And then a sudden silence.

  He could only hear the pounding of his heart.

  The breeze abruptly died.

  And then two dark hands gripped the sides of the tub and the Golem pulled himself up.

  It was him.

  The Golem.

  Everything was true.

  Sitting there, the Golem was as dark as Jackie Robinson, his hazel eyes full of sorrow. He looked from left to right, the sorrowful eyes taking in the desolation of the sanctuary. He seemed to have expected this sight. He leaned forward and looked at the palms of his immense black hands before turning them over to gaze at their blackness. Then he stared at Michael for a long moment. Michael did not move. The Golem bent a knee, shifted his weight, and stood up.

  Michael backed up as the Golem stood naked in the tub, his muscles rippling like bags of stones. He must be eight feet tall, Michael thought; bigger than any man I’ve ever seen. Without a sound, the Golem stepped over the wooden framework of the bimah to the floor.

  Michael needed words. The words did not come. He fought the impulse to run. Talk to him, he thought. Speak to him.

  The Golem stared at Michael and then reached forward, touching his face. His hand felt like the sole of a shoe.

  “I’m Michael Devlin,” the boy said. “Can you understand me?”

  The Golem nodded yes.

  “Can you speak?”

  He shook his head sadly. No.

  Michael tried to control his trembling. When he first had heard the stories of the Golem from Rabbi Hirsch, he imagined a figure from comic books. Made of pen lines and brush marks. Simple, sometimes even humorous, sent on missions of justice by a good rabbi. He did not expect this naked creature, as large as a tree, as dark as night. Standing before him, waiting for instructions. For a moment, he wanted to reverse the process, to send the creature back to where he came from. But then he remembered his mother’s humiliation and the battered face of Rabbi Hirsch and his own lost summer. No: he could not turn back. He had invoked the name of God. He must go on.

  “We… we have to find you some clothes,” Michael said, pulling on his T-shirt. “You understand? Clothes. Because we have some things to do out there tonight.” He pointed at a broken stained-glass window and the visible fragment of the August evening. “Out there in the street.”

  The Golem understood. He gazed around the dusty sanctuary, as if looking for clothing.

  “Come on,” Michael said. “Let’s see what we can find.”

  They opened closets and pantries, the Golem defeating locks and layers of cementlike paint as he effortlessly jerked them open. They found banners, books, old Ark curtains; but no clothes. Until the Golem suddenly emerged from a tight, small subbasement with what seemed to be a cape. There were golden cords or tassels on the ends, and he tied them at his neck to make the cape. In Rabbi Hirsch’s kitchen, he bent his knees to fit under the ceiling, and whirled the cape. The frayed tassels crumbled and the cape fell. He grunted sadly.

  “Wait,” Michael said.

  He removed the I’M FOR JACKIE button from his T-shirt and jumped up on a chair in front of the Golem. He held the two ends of the cape together and fastened them with the button.

  “Great!” he shouted. “It works.” The Golem laughed without sound. Michael said: “You look like you could fly.”

  Michael went to the small bureau where Rabbi Hirsch kept his shirts and underwear and in the bottom drawer he found a sheet. Perfect. The creature could tie it around his middle like a giant diaper. Or, what did they call it in those stories about India by Rudyard Kipling? A breechclout. When he turned with the sheet in his hand, the Golem was holding the photograph of Leah in his leathery hands, staring at her face.

  “She’s part of the reason you’re here,” Michael said, as the Golem replaced the photograph on the shelf. “That’s the rabbi’s wife. Killed by the Nazis.”

  He showed the creature what to do with the sheet, and the Golem tried clumsily to wrap it between his legs and around his massive hips, the sheet slipping until Michael tied the ends as tightly as he could. Michael stepped back, smiled, and said, “You look like Gunga Din.” The Golem did not smile. He moved a huge hand toward the framed photograph, and then Michael told him some of the story. About Rabbi Hirsch and Leah and Hitler and the millions of deaths. About Frankie McCarthy and the Falcons, Mister G on the day of the snowstorm, and what was done to Michael and to Rabbi Hirsch and to Michael’s mother. The Golem listened in a fierce way, his brow furrowing, a gash deepening through the word for Truth, which was lighter against the black skin. His head moved slowly from side to side. As his anger built, his eyes receded under his slablike brow. He did not smile. He did not laugh. His immense hands kneaded each other. When Michael told him about Frankie McCarthy’s plans, a bright sheen appeared on his black skin.

  “That’s about it,” Michael said. “That’s why we brought you here. We have to stop them. We have to make sure they don’t do stuff like this ever again. We have to make sure they are punished.”

  The Golem sat there for a long moment. Then he gazed again at the photograph of Leah, and Michael was reminded of the story about the Golem in Prague and how he fell in love with the girl named Dvorele. That was a heartbreaking story, but it also showed that the Golem didn’t simply follow orders. He had his own feelings, his own ideas. Michael began to worry that he would not be able to completely control the creature. Then he saw that the Golem’s eyes had fallen on the shofar, which lay on a lower shelf. The creature rose and gently picked up the shofar in his giant thumb and forefinger.

  “Rabbi Hirsch tried to play tunes on it,” Michael said, and smiled. “But he couldn’t do it. Maybe you could.… Maybe you could send them a message down at the poolroom. Let them know we’re coming.”

  Exhaling softly, the Golem took Michael by the hand and led him upstairs to the sanctuary. Pausing, the Golem stood with the shofar in both hands and bowed his head to the Ark. Then, with Michael behind him, he moved to the rear of the sanctuary and up the stairs to the loft. He seemed to know the way. He found another door and jerked it open. They stepped out to a small flat roof. For a dazzled moment, the Golem gazed at the million lights that were scattered across the blackness all the way to distant Manhattan. This was not Prague. He grew very still. Michael said nothing. The August heat was deadening, and there was no breeze. From this height, Michael could pick out the glow of the Grandview’s neon sign, the tower of the Williamsburg Bank Building, the arc of the Brooklyn Bridge, and off to the left in the black harbor, pale green and small, the Statue of Liberty. There were still some people waiting out the hot night on blankets on rooftops and fire escapes.

  The Golem brought the shofar to his mouth.

  He blew one long, terrifying note. It seemed to rip a hole in the heat-stricken night.

  He blew another.

  And then a third.

  Michael backed awa
y, frightened by the power and savagery of the three notes blown on the ram’s horn. Notes as old as the world.

  But the Golem placed a hand on his shoulder. Reassuring him. Cautioning him. Telling him to wait. Telling him, without words, that something was coming.

  Something was.

  It began to snow.

  Millions of flakes, radiant and beautiful, drifting down through the August night. Black when Michael looked up, brilliantly white as they passed the level of his eyes, melting as they touched the hot rooftops and the sweating foliage of trees and the soft asphalt and the torrid steel of parked cars.

  Snow.

  Driven now by a sudden wind off the harbor. Coming now at a harder angle. As birds rose in great flocks to tell the news and dogs barked and windows opened.

  Snow in August.

  The Golem smiled. He handed Michael the shofar and then the boy led the way back through the synagogue. Now we will do it, he thought. Ready or not, Frankie, here we come. He left the shofar on the kitchen table and went out into Kelly Street with the Golem behind him, bending his head and shoulders under the lintel. The August snow was falling hard. Kids ran through it, shouting and yelping. An old woman came out on a stoop, looked up at the dense snow, made a steeple of her hands and mumbled prayers. Michael heard the wolf wind, and wished for Arctic fury, and the storm grew more violent. In the churning, gyrating, eddying frenzy of the sudden storm, nobody saw the white boy and his giant black companion.

  Michael prayed. In English and Latin and Yiddish. Prayed to God, to Deus, to Yahveh. Prayed in thanks, prayed in awe. But he did not turn back. He moved steadily onward, leading a procession of two, the Golem’s bare feet crunching a soup can, his face grim, his cape unfurling in the wind. The snow was so thick now that nobody could possibly see them, and yet Michael wasn’t cold. Screened by the blinding snow, they reached the alley behind the abandoned hulk of the Venus, where Frankie McCarthy once had threatened Michael with a knife. Then they came to Ellison Avenue. Across the street was the Star Pool Room, with a six-foot-long WELCOME HOME FRANKIE BOY banner draped above the front door. A stray dog came out of the snow and huddled in the doorway beside the poolroom.

  “They’re in there,” Michael said, standing beside the abandoned box office under the marquee of the Venus. “We’ll have to go and get them.”

  The Golem placed his hands on Michael’s head. His brow furrowed. The driving snow halted, then skirled and danced, before resuming with even greater fury. Michael glanced at the dirty glass of the shuttered box office, where he had once admired the look of his suit on an Easter morning. He could not see himself. He could not see the Golem.

  Jesus Christ, he thought. We’re invisible!

  He stepped out into the street, the Golem behind him, and marched through the storm, directly to the front door of the poolroom. The stray dog came over, big, black, muscled, sniffing around them but not seeing them, growling in a baritone voice. “Sticky?” Michael whispered, and the dog barked an answer. Oh, Dad. Oh, Daddy: Thank you.

  Michael gently opened the poolroom door, and he and the Golem stepped inside. The dog waited in the snow, as if for a command. About fifteen of the Falcons were bunched together in front of the six pool tables with green baize tops. All turned to the door. The wind howled. Snow scattered across the floor. But they could not see Michael and the Golem.

  “Hey,” a familiar voice said. “Close that fucking door!”

  Michael saw Frankie McCarthy coming from a room at the rear of the pool hall, buttoning his fly. He was dressed like a movie gangster, in pinstriped dark suit, thick-soled shoes, a white tie on a white shirt. Tippy Hudnut slammed the door shut, and turned to Frankie.

  “You find out anything yet?” he asked.

  “I’m on the phone ten minutes, calling up newspapers, radio stations, everything,” Frankie said. “Nothing. Nobody ever heard of it, snowing in fucking August. They treat me like I’m a fucking nut.”

  The Golem opened the door again, and he and Michael stood to the side. The dog continued to wait.

  “Hey, what the fuck is it with that door?” Frankie said.

  “You seen me close it, Frankie,” Tippy said, closing it again. “Maybe it’s that dog out there.”

  “Then give the mutt a swift kick and lock the motherfucker.”

  “We lock it, how will the broads get in?” the Russian said, as Tippy shooed the dog and closed the door.

  “They knock,” Frankie said, glancing at his watch. “Where are the broads, anyway?”

  Michael saw that they were all there. Not only Tippy, but the Russian and Skids and Ferret. Along with the other idiots who followed them around and laughed at their jokes. And Frankie McCarthy. Playing boss. Acting like a big shot. Snarling, giving orders. To the right, a table was laid out with cold cuts and cheese, baskets of rolls and bowls of potato salad, quarts of whiskey and gin, and a tub full of beer bottles. On a table in the rear, a phonograph was playing “Sleepy Lagoon.” Frankie went to the windows, his eyes glittery, his lips curled, and stared at the driving snow.

  “What the fuck is this?” he hissed. “I gotta fuckin’ party to throw.”

  He slammed a fist against the doorframe. The door swung open.

  “All right, which one of you fucking jokers is doing this?” He laughed in a weird way. “You got some kind of a fucking button or something?”

  Michael thought: Now. We’re going to do it now. No more waiting. We’re going to wipe that smile off his face.

  The Golem seemed to understand. Skids came over to close the door, taking a key from his pocket to lock it. The Golem placed his hands on Michael’s head. The lights above the pool tables dimmed, then came back to full strength. Michael and the Golem stood there, visible to all.

  “What the fuck?” Frankie McCarthy said, backing up, his face twitching. The others inched to the side, looking at the huge black man and the kid they had tried to terrify out of the parish. “Hey, what—hey, Devlin, who is this guy?”

  The Golem stared at him, then turned to Michael. A smile flickered on his face.

  “That’s Frankie McCarthy,” Michael said, as if making a formal introduction. He took the key out of the locked door and slipped it into his pocket. “He’s the one I told you about.”

  Frankie backed up, his hand darting inside his jacket but not finding what he was looking for. He’s scared, Michael thought. Scared out of his goddamned wits. Without taking his eyes off the Golem, Frankie reached in a fumbling way for a pool cue, finally gripping it by the narrow shaft. The other Falcons began spreading out. Their hands went into their pockets. They picked up pool cues. Their eyes were wide and uncertain, as if calculating odds. Glancing at the other Falcons, Frankie McCarthy was suddenly a little braver.

  “You’re looking for fucking trouble,” he said, “yiz’ll find it here.” His bravado was cut by the crack in his voice. “This is members only. So leave now. While you can still fucking walk.”

  Michael saw Skids slap the butt of his pool cue into his hand. The hand that had mauled his mother’s body. Most of the others followed Skids’s example. Michael could sense their thinking: Good odds. Fifteen to one. Or fifteen to one-and-a-half. Good odds, no matter how big the guy is that’s wearing the cape. The Russian put his hand in his back pocket and whipped out a knife. Ferret eased around to the side, holding an eight ball in his right hand.

  “Just so you know, Frankie,” Michael said, taking a step forward, “I never said a word about you to the cops.”

  “Don’t horseshit me, you fuckin’ punk.”

  “I’m not horseshitting you, Frankie,” Michael said. “I didn’t rat. But you know what I learned? I should have told them everything. I should have told them right from the start what a goddamned coward you were, beating up poor Mister G.” Michael remembered what the rabbi had said one night in early spring. “That’s what I learned. I learned, you keep your mouth shut about a crime, sometimes that’s worse than the crime.”

  “A rat is
a rat.” Frankie sneered.

  “No, Frankie. A cowardly bum is a cowardly bum. And you are a goddamned coward and a goddamned bum.”

  Frankie saw that all of them had weapons now. He winked at Skids and moved to the side, turning his back on the Golem.

  “How’s your mother, kid?” Skids said, and then made a panting sound. The others made sucking sounds or sounds used to summon dogs. Some of them laughed.

  Michael rushed at Skids, but the Golem wrapped a huge hand around the boy’s chest and shoved him back.

  “You prick, Skids!” Michael shouted. “You gutless bum.”

  Suddenly Skids came in a rush, swinging the pool cue like a bat. The Golem grabbed it in midair as if it were a twig. He yanked it away from Skids, used both hands to snap it in half, and dropped the pieces on the floor. Then he grabbed Skids by the shirt, whirled, and heaved him twenty feet. Skids landed between two pool tables.

  Silence, except for groans from Skids.

  “That’s just a start,” Michael said. “Now, Frankie, you want my friend here to take care of you too, or do you want to do what’s right for a change? You know, go down to the precinct, ask for Abbott and Costello, and tell them what you did. To Mister G, to me, to Rabbi Hirsch. Tell these friends of yours to go and apologize to my mother. Tell my friends that I didn’t inform on anybody and we can live the way we used to. Do something really goddamned brave, Frankie. For a change.”

  There was a pause.

  “I’m warning you, Frankie. It’s your last chance.”

  Frankie said, “Fuck you, kid.”

  He looked at the others as if saying, Hey, nothing to worry about. Saying it to them, saying it to himself. There were too many of them for these two. His mouth curled, then became a slit, but his eyes were glittery.