Snow in August

by Pete Hamill

  “We got us a couple of tough guys here, boys,” he snarled. “Whatta ya think of that?”

  The Russian didn’t think. He whipped open his switchblade and dove for the Golem. He was hit in midair and fell to the floor, the knife clattering from his hand. The Golem stomped his neck with his leathery bare heel and then toed him aside as if he were a stunned rat.

  “Get the kid!” Frankie said, backing up, panicky, then turning to run to the small office in the rear. “Get that fucking kid!”

  Two of the Falcons charged Michael, but the Golem stepped between them and the boy, and hit each of them with short, savage punches, knocking them down. Okay, Michael thought. Now it’s too late for mercy. I told Frankie what he had to do, and he answered with a fuck you. So now he has to be punished. It’s too late for Mister G. Too late for a lot of things. Including the cops. Again the Golem seemed to read his mind. He looked down at the I’M FOR JACKIE button, figured out how it worked, unpinned his cape and let it drop to the floor. He stood there, wearing only his breechclout, and glared at the Falcons. From the side, Tippy Hudnut suddenly threw a cueball, but it bounced off the Golem’s head and succeeded only in annoying him.

  “It’s Frankie we’re after,” Michael said. “The others are small fry.”

  The Golem gestured for Michael to go to the door and leave. Michael didn’t move. He thought: I’ve been afraid long enough. I’m not running.

  The Golem then upended a pool table, scattering the balls and kicking a hole through the green top. He shoved the other Falcons aside as if they were dolls. Michael had told him to get Frankie McCarthy; he was going after Frankie McCarthy. Michael saw that all of them were panicking now, muttering, Oh shit, oh shit, this guy, oh man, oh fuck, hey let’s—And then Frankie stepped out of the office. He was holding a gun. His feet were planted, his lip curled, like a gangster from a hundred movies. Michael felt a tremor of fear; he had never seen a real gun before, except on the hips of cops.

  “Don’t fuck with me, Sambo,” Frankie said. “I’ll blow a hole through you, and no jury will ever send me to the hot seat.”

  The Golem walked straight at him, the muscles corded and rippling in his back. Michael could see Frankie’s eyes change. Now wide and jittery. The Golem took another step, and Frankie backed up, his jaw loose, his eyes wild, and then he fired.

  Blam!

  The bullet hit the Golem and he kept coming.

  Blam! Blam!

  And the Golem reached Frankie McCarthy. He took the gun away from him, held the grip in one hand, and snapped off the barrel. He tossed the pieces over his shoulder. Then he grabbed Frankie by the lapels and heaved him ten feet against a wall. Frankie fell in a shambling pile. But the Golem wasn’t through with him. He took him by one leg and dragged him the length of the poolroom to the front door.

  “Enough!” Michael shouted. “That’s enough for now! We don’t want to kill him.”

  The Golem halted, dropped the groaning Frankie by the door, and turned to Michael for instructions.

  “Wait,” the boy said.

  Michael turned to the other Falcons. They were backed away, far from the door, drawing closer to each other, as if for warmth. They needed to be taught a lesson too.

  “Hey, listen, man, we’re sorry what happened wit’ your mother that time, okay?” said Tippy Hudnut in a pleading voice. “You see, we was drinkin’ and, you know, sometimes, you got your load on, you don’t know what you’re doing. And, hey, you know.…”

  “Take your clothes off,” Michael said. “All of you.”

  “What?”

  “I said take your clothes off. Everything. Shoes, socks, everything.”

  “Hey, man, it’s snowing,” Ferret protested.

  On the floor beside the door, Frankie moaned.

  “You take them off,” Michael said, turning to the Golem, “or he takes them off for you.”

  Ferret was the first to unbutton his shirt. Within minutes they were all naked, shivering in the poolroom, a cluster of pale bodies, tattooed, scarred, muscled. The clothes were piled on pool tables, along with brass knuckles, switchblades, a homemade zip gun, a length of pipe. The Falcons looked much younger now, stripped of their armor.

  “Now what?” Tippy whispered.

  “Go home,” Michael said.

  “Through the fucking snow?”

  Michael went to the door and opened it with the key. The wind howled. The black dog waited at the curb, snow gathering on his pelt.

  “Go.” The naked youths started reluctantly toward the door.

  But now the Russian was on his feet, his jaw hanging loose. He looked at Frankie, who was facedown beside the open door. He looked over and saw Skids in a sitting position.

  “Hold on, everybody wait,” Michael said, as if addressing prisoners of war. “Russian, you go over there and help Skids get ready for his outing,” Michael said. “Take his clothes off. Then take off your own. Very fast.”

  “You kiddin’, or what?” the Russian said.

  “You’re one of the Falcons, right? Look at them.” The Russian looked at the pale shuddering mass of the others. “One for all, all for one.”

  The Golem picked up a pool cue, and casually snapped it in half, as if doing an exercise. The Russian did what he was told. Skids limped naked toward the door, held under one arm by the naked Russian. I should go over and slap their goddamned faces, Michael thought. I ought to make them crawl on their hands and knees to beg my mother for mercy. But no. Wait. We’ll save it for Frankie.

  “All right,” Michael said. “Get outta here. Run home to your mothers.”

  The naked Falcons began to run now, crowding through the door, past Michael, past the Golem, past the stricken Frankie, out into the falling snow. The black dog snapped at them, barked, lunged for them. The groggy Russian staggered out last, holding his jaw, guiding the shivering Skids. Michael closed the door behind them.

  Then they were alone: Michael, the Golem, and Frankie McCarthy. We should wreck this place, Michael thought. The way they’ve wrecked so many places and people. The Golem somehow heard him. He smashed each of the six pool tables, the phonograph, the wall telephone, the office furniture, the benches. He tipped over the table loaded with food and drinks, glasses splintering, bottles breaking, beers and ice and potato salad carpeting the floor.

  Neither of them was watching Frankie McCarthy.

  Suddenly Frankie was behind Michael. And a blade was at the boy’s throat.

  “Okay, stop right there,” Frankie shouted at the Golem, gesturing with a knife. Michael saw it glint in the light. “You tell this rat stool pigeon to unlock the fuckin’ door. You don’t do what I say, I cut his throat.”

  Michael was terrified, but he forced himself to be calm. Nobody on earth would ever again make him go in his pants.

  “It’s not locked, Frankie,” Michael said.

  “I don’t believe you. You got the key. I seen you put it in your pocket.”

  Michael slipped the key from his pocket and Frankie grabbed it. The knife remained at Michael’s neck.

  “Now, you, big boy,” he said to the Golem. “You go in the back and lie down.”

  The Golem did not move. He stared at Frankie McCarthy. His concentration was so fierce that a halo of energy seemed to rise off his head. Michael could see holes in his chest from the bullets, but no blood. And he could see a smile flickering on the dark face. If he were Jackie Robinson, he would now steal home. The Golem’s face became a hard grid.

  And then Frankie McCarthy’s knife began to melt.

  Michael could feel the heat on his neck. Then a warm dripping that was not blood. And not molten metal either.

  Frankie backed up. His hand was full of wax. His face was full of terror. He turned to the door, stabbing at the lock with the key, his hand palsied by fear. The Golem stepped between him and the door. Frankie backed away in surrender.

  “All right, enough,” Frankie whispered. “I don’t get this.”

  “Sure you do
, Frankie,” Michael said. “Don’t you ever read Crime Does Not Pay comics? This is the part near the end.”

  “Please,” Frankie said, his face runny with fear. “Whatta ya want me to say? I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry about all that shit. You know… Mister G… I lost it, know what I mean? Dumb Hebe, buttin’ in. There I was, just havin’ a little fun with your friend Sonny and—Please. And your mother, hey, man, I was in the can that night.” The Golem took a step toward him. “And what’s that rabbi doing around here anyways? We ask him for a few bucks, you know, ’cause the guy’s got a secret treasure in there, and he gives us some lip. What’s he expect?”

  The Golem inched forward, no expression on his dark face, and now Michael could smell the odor he wanted to smell. Coming from Frankie’s trousers. Tears of shame welled in Frankie’s eyes. His voice rose.

  “Please, kid,” he said whimpering now. “Gimme a break. What’s done is done, right? Let bygones be bygones. Come on…”

  The Golem looked at Michael. The boy could hear Father Heaney’s voice: We believe in an Old Testament God. He nodded, and the Golem went for Frankie. He slapped McCarthy three times. Each slap broke something. Then he bowed formally to Michael before kicking out the glass in the front door.

  He shoved Frankie ahead of him into the blizzard. He reached for the banner welcoming Frankie home, pulled it down, and then tied an end of it around Frankie’s waist, making a crude leash. The black dog tore at Frankie’s trousers, shredding them. Michael stepped over the shards of broken glass and followed them into the street, carrying the Golem’s cape.

  Holding the end of the banner, the Golem pulled Frankie to the middle of the avenue. He smacked him again, knocking him down, then grabbed his ankles. He snapped each of them. Frankie’s screams filled the air. Windows opened. Michael shivered, but not from the cold.

  “Remember, no killing!” Michael shouted into the howling wind. “We save him for the cops!”

  The Golem looked at Michael, inclined his head slightly. Then he grasped the end of the banner tied to Frankie’s waist and swung him around. Around and around and around, like a hammer thrower. With Frankie’s feet flopping loosely and his arms straight out as the speed increased.

  And then, with one final, immense effort, the Golem let him go.

  Frankie flew high through the driving August snow and landed with a skittering crunch on the top of the marquee of the Venus. His screams turned to moans. Well, Michael thought, he won’t be hurting anyone for a long, long time. And now, barely audible above the howling wind was Frankie McCarthy’s pleading voice. Help me, he called through the snow. Please, somebody help me, please.

  The Golem paused and then turned to Michael, who was standing at the curb, holding the cape. The black dog howled in triumph and farewell and then disappeared into the snow. Michael walked to the Golem and handed him the cape, thinking: I’d better call the cops to pick up Frankie. And he now noticed that the Golem’s eyes were like tombs, as old as the Bible. The Golem slung the cape across his shoulders and fiddled with the Jackie button until it closed. Then he put a huge hand on Michael’s shoulder and together they vanished into the storm.

  36

  When they reached Garibaldi Street, they faced a border. Behind them was a blizzard. Across the street, there was no snow. Before leaving the safety of the storm, the Golem once again placed his hands on Michael’s head. They walked without being seen by sweating men who were emptying the bars to look at the snow falling a few blocks away. Kids poured out of houses. Women called them home. Nobody had ever heard of such a thing. Snow that fell on six square blocks and nowhere else? Snow in August?

  In the lobby of the hospital, interns talked about freak meteorological conditions and how hailstones often fell before thunderstorms, and then one of the nurses said that nothing had been the same anywhere since they dropped that damned atom bomb and all of them laughed. They did not see the white boy with the slight limp. And they did not see the huge black man who was with him.

  Michael led the way up the back stairs to the seventh floor. He cracked open the stairwell door and looked down the corridor. The nurses were crowded at a picture window at the far end, trying to see the storm, chattering and giggling in an amazed way. Michael and the Golem stepped into the bright white hall and walked away from the nurses to the room of Rabbi Hirsch.

  He was asleep. His battered face was bloated and raw. Tubes were still dripping into his good arm.

  The Golem looked down at the rabbi and his eyes filled with pity and tears. Michael wished that the clock could be rolled back, the rabbi healed. The Golem gestured to Michael to close the door. Then he leaned down and kissed the rabbi on the forehead. He placed his giant hands to the stricken man’s temples. He touched the word for Truth on his own brow and then touched the rabbi’s lips.

  The swelling instantly receded. The flushed raw color evaporated. The Golem gripped the bottom of the plaster cast and gently tore it apart and then dropped it on the floor. The rabbi’s eyelids fluttered, his mouth tried to form words, to decode alphabets in the dark.

  The Golem motioned to Michael to find the rabbi’s clothes, pinching the boy’s shirt to explain, as the boy had explained to him. Michael opened the closet beside the sink. The clothes were on a hanger. He lifted them out.

  Rabbi Hirsch opened his eyes.

  He fixed the Golem in a steady gaze, without wonder or astonishment; his eyes seemed almost surgical in their objectivity. Then he turned to Michael.

  “God exists,” he whispered, and his eyes widened in wonder. “Not just sin.”

  The Golem carried him home in his arms. The snow was now gone without a trace. They could hear sirens in the night. Michael opened the synagogue door on Kelly Street, glancing down the block at the turning dome lights of the police cars and the blinkers of the ambulances, all clustered around the poolroom. The Golem carried the rabbi into his cramped room and sat him in a chair.

  “A glass tea I need,” the rabbi said, and Michael saw that his teeth were intact again. “Put the water, then tell me everything.”

  The Golem went to the sink. Michael tried to run the tap, but the Golem gave him an offended look and assumed the task.

  “Let him be,” the rabbi said. And ignoring the huge creature, he listened as Michael told him what the Golem had done. He nodded, he shook his head gravely, he chewed on a cuticle, he raised his black eyebrows in astonishment. He never once said “Good.” Then Michael was finished, the kettle whistled, and at last he smiled.

  “So what is Jackie doing?” he said.

  “He went two-for-four yesterday.”

  “Home he has stolen again, like on June twenty-fourth?” the rabbi asked.

  “Not yet. He will.”

  “I hope we are at the game,” he said. His voice was weak and strained. “I hope he does it to the Philadelphias. That would be something. We’d be sitting in the catbird’s seat.”

  He looked at the Golem’s broad back and then glanced at Leah’s photograph. For the first time, his eyes were troubled.

  “Why now?” the rabbi said, more to himself than to Michael. “Why not then?”

  Michael understood, remembering the cord on the ancient box. “Did you try then?”

  “Yes.”

  “In the attic of the Old-New Synagogue?”

  “Yes.” His eyes glazed over. “I failed.”

  The night was warm again, August again, sweaty and hot. The Golem poured water over tea leaves.

  “Why I failed, I think now I know,” the rabbi said. “I was not pure enough.” He paused. “I did not believe enough. Maybe, God I did not love enough.”

  His mouth started to form other words, but they would not come. The Golem handed him his glass of tea.

  “A dank,” he said.

  The Golem passed another glass to Michael, who accepted it and added his thanks. The boy looked at the rabbi, who smiled in a sweet, sad way. He stood up, refreshed by the tea.

  “You are safe now, no
? And your mother too. Di tsayt ken alts ihermakhn. Time, it changes everything.”

  “Der beste royfeh,” Michael said. The best healer.

  “And now we have to deal with… him.”

  He looked at the Golem, who was squatting beside the sink and gazing at them.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Him we have to send back,” the rabbi said. “With men, he can’t live.”

  Michael felt a stab of regret. To send him back was unfair; they hardly knew him. But the Golem understood; there was a fatalistic look in his eyes as he sat on the floor. He held up his huge hand and then pointed upstairs. Rabbi Hirsch nodded, Yes. Upstairs. The box was there, like a small coffin. The Golem waited until they finished their tea. Then he stood up, bowed under the low ceiling, and picked up the shofar. They climbed the stairs together. The rabbi, the boy, and the Golem. On Shabbos.

  At the top step, the Golem smiled as Rabbi Hirsch pushed open the door to the sanctuary.

  And halted in astonishment.

  The sanctuary was again what it had been long ago. A thousand candles burned in holders along the walls and beside the Ark. The Torah was unrolled. The carved oaken pillars gleamed with fresh oil. The copper flutings on the bimah were burnished. The chandeliers were constellations of light. The stained-glass windows were healed and the dust was gone and the plaster whole. And the rows were filled with men holding prayer books, young and bearded and vital and proud, safe in America, their tall sons beside them, together on Shabbos. Among them, Michael saw Mister G, with a full head of hair, and three young boys, holding their prayer books. But there were so many others. There seemed to be thousands of them, millions, all the dead, all those who had vanished, Jews from Poland and Romania and Austria and Prague. The loft above them was full of women, and as Rabbi Hirsch walked out to face them, tentative and hopeful, hearing the old prayers in the old lost language, he gazed up through the dazzle of lights.

  And then he saw her.

  “Leah,” he whispered.

  She was among the women, her face pale and beatific, and Rabbi Hirsch walked quickly, almost running, to the rear of the crowded sanctuary, his jaw loose, his eyes wide, and scrambled up the stairs, with Michael and the Golem behind him. In the loft, the women were jammed together like a wall, and then Leah Yaretzky shouldered her way through, her face dissolving in happiness. Rabbi Hirsch embraced her, holding her fiercely, almost desperately, whispering into her dark hair, and then they stepped out through the open door to the small roof, where the spires of Manhattan blazed magically in the distance.