Harry Kaplan's Adventures Underground

by Steve Stern

  When the shop was cleared of vagrants and morticians, and Oboy had reassumed his post outside, Papa went whistling back into his cage and began to reorganize the displaced merchandise. In moments the entire top of the casket was covered with assorted junk, its knotty pine hardly apparent to the uninformed eye. Then, brushing his palms and snatching an eyeshade from a hook, adjusting his necktie by the reflection in a silver serving spoon, my father stepped forth to greet the customers who had started to trickle in.

  He began formally, with an unusual reserve—as if, instead of bringing in their worthless goods to pawn, they had come by to pay their last respects. But soon Papa dropped any pretense of formality, succumbing to the infectious high spirits of his clientele. There was one old shvartzer, for instance, a rake-thin, bow-backed regular known as Cousin Jabo, who leaned on his whittled cane to click his heels. “The river she up, and the cotton she down!” he sang out like a password—he might have mistaken our shop for a speakeasy. At the same time his partner, another old scarecrow in a motley of calico patches, shook his bristled head contemplatively. “Unh unh unh,” he opined, “them foty days and nights sho do go fast when you havin fun.” Then both of them started cackling in a way that made you feel like ripe fruit was dropping on your head.

  A little later a trio of stout, tight-skirted ladies stationed along the length of an oriental rug, their bottoms graduated according to width, congaed into the shop like a darktown version of a Chinese New Year dragon. After them some joker, whose open dustcoat revealed an old-fashioned bathing costume, came in looking to make, of all things, a purchase. He went away happy after Papa had outfitted him in a full-length diving suit complete with helmet.

  The rain had driven everybody out of their minds. In the face of things, the wisest course would naturally have been to crawl into the front window with book in hand, but in the confusion surrounding Zippe’s postponed funeral I’d come unprepared. I was a captive audience. But every so often, on the flimsy excuse of dusting off the show, of passing the time with Oboy, for whom time always seemed to stand still, I ducked out the door. I checked to make sure that the Beale Street bayou had not disappeared before I had the chance to get a proper eyeful.

  All that afternoon we heard the sirens. We saw the press gangs of police rounding up errant Negroes for the purpose, as we learned, of sandbagging the levees. A number of refugees from forced labor, undiscouraged by my father, found their way into the shop, and always they brought with them some late-breaking rumor: The water was still rising; there were plans afoot for evacuating the city. The mayor’s council had moved its offices on board the Island Queen, which had slipped its moorings and drifted away. Memphis was without any government. But Beale Street never surrendered to the general alarm. Pawnbrokers and merchants alike stood in their doorways with folded arms, showing themselves prepared to sink or swim. No disaster was so great that it could disrupt their appointed hours of business, nor deter them from an opportunity of turning a profit. And my father no doubt prided himself on being a member of this fraternity.

  But around dusk Papa got one of those phone calls from my mother, which usually spelled trouble. From where I stood I could hear her voice over the line, sounding a little like a muted kazoo. Whatever she was demanding, Papa was resisting, trying for all he was worth to pass the buck.

  “Listen Mildred, we’re awful busy here,” he protested, his cheeks coloring slightly with shame. “Can’t Morris …? Can’t Dr. Seligman …?”

  By now I’d assumed the nature of her summons: Grandpa Isador must have been inconsolable again, his pacification requiring all available hands. That’s why I had to sigh aloud when Papa volunteered, “Okay, I’ll send Harry right over,” as if that settled everything. To my relief the proposal, which had overtones of sacrifice, apparently did not meet my mother’s terms.

  While his lips continued to mouth a few more silent but but buts, in the end Papa sulkily conceded to her wishes. With such tender consideration did he remove his sleeve garters and visor that I thought he was going to kiss them, like sacred vestments, before returning them to their respective hooks.

  “C’mon Harry.” His voice was approaching a whine. “We got to go home.” It was a pathetic echo of this morning’s rousing call to the funeral. Of course the family ought to be together at the end of such a day, just as we’d been together at the beginning, but the idea of going home now seemed like a kind of defeat. It meant returning to where we’d started, as if everything were the same as before the flood. But if nothing had changed, why was I seized with the impulse to say what I said?

  “You go ahead. I’ll stay and mind the shop for a while.”

  Papa looked at me like, Whose little boy are you? “Look, it’s Shabbos already,” he pointed out, as if this were supposed to mean something, coming as it did from one who’d told his own father that the Sabbath was a luxury a man of business couldn’t afford. For this I figured “Nu?” was enough of an answer. Then he tried another angle, telling me that my presence would be required to help make a minyan. I asked him since when did the ritual mourning come before the burial, and besides, Jews didn’t sit shivah on Shabbos.

  “A k’nocker I got here,” Papa said to the bossed tin ceiling. “Awright, Mr. K’nocker, I ain’t got time to argue.” He gave me a look that I guess was intended to probe my murky depths, then hunched his shoulders to signify that I’d won. But this was too easy. Defiant sons aren’t supposed to overthrow their father’s mandates so handily, are they? And the realization that I’d done just that resulted in my immediate loss of nerve.

  My sinking heart, on its way down, passed my papa’s on the rise. With a proud hand on my shoulder, he shrugged again, plucked a wayward thread from my lapel, and tossed me his keys. “Okeydoke, Mr. Big Shot, today you’re a man,” he informed me. “Don’t stay open too late.” And he was out the door in an arpeggio of chimes.

  His parting words, however intended, resonated odiously in my ears. They sounded to me like the kind of command you gave some flunky accomplice, that he should stand lookout while you returned to the scene of the crime.

  “This is just ducky,” I said to the ceiling, catching myself in an impersonation of my father. Was it fair to say that Sol Kaplan was finally certifiably meshugge? Not happy with having turned his pawnshop into a museum of derelict rubbish, he’d gone himself one better: he’d made it a mausoleum as well.

  I resolved to try and make the best of it, though I could have done with a little more in the way of a commencement exercise. What happened to the part where I recited the Moneylender’s Creed? Still, I supposed I was glad Papa hadn’t made a big thing of it. Better that he should treat my taking over as a matter of routine. Because, if I’d thought of it otherwise, at the appearance of my first customer—a sartorial darkie in a bug-back coat, with powder-gray temples and serious, blood-rimmed eyes, carrying what looked to be a grainy black doctor’s bag—I would have panicked.

  As it was, I was able to perform before the tired eyes of my audience a quick study of my father’s bluff spirits, screwing my face into what I thought would pass for the spitting image of his benevolent smile.

  “Howdy doody,” I greeted, excusing myself to snatch down Papa’s eyeshade. “Now what can I do you for, uncle? Heh heh heh.”

  So far so good. This is what’s known as an aptitude for meeting the public. But judging from the suspicious frown on my client’s face, I might have been trying too hard. He was hugging his bag to his chest as if to protect its contents, which I imagined as smoky vials, polished instruments, possibly cunning devices for cracking safes: augers and drills, small explosives, a stethoscope that could sense a mechanical pulse through lead.

  “Where Mr. Solly at?”

  “He’s out. I’m his son, Mr. Harry,” I informed him, tugging at my lapels to simulate an expansion of my chest. But the old sawbones, or safecracker, still seemed unconvinced. He further confirmed this when, giving a disappointed tilt to his head, he turned and left the sh
op.

  It was a scene that repeated itself, during the next couple of hours, with only slight variations. As you might guess, this took its toll on my readiness to serve. So much was one customer’s reaction the carbon copy of another’s that you’d have thought they’d attended the same school of disappointment. Each one clutched his moth-eaten skunk boa, his cracked hourglass, his still humming beehive, grisly fishing lure, last year’s Dionne quintuplets calendar, or Jose Carioca cookie jar, as if such sought-after items were much too valuable to place in the hands of a novice. Nobody even bothered to tell me a story.

  I tried to flatter myself that they could see I wasn’t such a patsy as my papa. I could recognize their offerings for what they really were, “trash” being, to my mind, too dignified a label; and as for the charade of making them loans, that was charity, if you called it by its right name. But knowing this was small consolation in the face of their wholesale distrust. What was the matter with them, that they didn’t identify me as Sol Kaplan’s son and heir, a more or less permanent fixture around these premises? It was also beginning to irk me that Oboy was being so conspicuously out-of-pocket. He was, after all, more suited than I was, by body type and disposition, to caretaking this chamber of curiosities, this shmutzerama. If you asked me, he was born for the job.

  Naturally I appreciated the unsolicited corned beef and soda he brought me from Segal’s deli, but what I needed was moral support. Okay, so that wasn’t a service that typically figured among the puller’s duties, but tonight I had the feeling he was leaving me alone on principle. Was this supposed to be some kind of test? If so, I resented it. Here I was, doing my papa this favor, looking out for his interests and all, and what sort of thanks did I get? You couldn’t blame me for feeling a little put upon, confined as I was to this white-elephant graveyard. No wonder I decided to take the first opportunity to close up the shop.

  By about eight o’clock (though the reckoning of time in Kaplan’s was always only an educated guess) such traffic as there was had anyway ground to a halt. I supposed that my father’s customers must have put the word out that an imposter was at large in his shop. So I locked the register, closed the account books, and rehung the accessories of the pawnbroker’s trade. Then I switched off the lights and felt my resolution falter.

  Though my heart was hinting vigorously that I ought to hurry up, something else made me want to linger. The drowsy glow from my father’s scarlet neon sign was falling over me the way the poppy dust settles over Oz. It was powdering the padded shoulders of the suit coats, enflaming the glass eyes of stuffed animals, highlighting the brass of the instruments, which smoldered as if they were playing red-hot music beyond a pitch that mortals could hear. There was also the quiet, the type that suspicious heroes in cloak-and-daggers call “too quiet.” I felt like an uninvited guest, though I still couldn’t leave. I knew that the instant I stepped out the door, I would have missed my chance to see how the typewriters and pruning hooks, the fretless banjos, the scored china dishes and the birthday spoons, began their secret lives.

  I tried to tell myself there was nothing special about this particular brand of quiet; it was just that I’d never been alone in the shop before. Then I remembered that, in a sense, I wasn’t alone.

  “Good Shabbos, Grandma Zippe,” I called out half in jest, though of their own accord the words turned reverent in the air. “Aleha ha-sholem,” I thought I’d better add, and by way of further assurance: “You’re in good company. Nothing but the choicest merchandise here at Kaplan’s.” Hoping that Kaplan’s was satisfied at having reduced me to talking to myself, I judged it was time to make tracks.

  Outside I unfolded the lattice and locked it, then looked east where the street was a mirage come to life. The lagoon was still bobbing with shadowy skiffs, some of them hung with lanterns on the end of cane poles like fishing rods baited with light. There were reflections that the boat hulls scattered into running schools of electric minnows, and now and again a lanternless boat would scoot by like a dark blade in the air. Despite the persistence of the sirens and the faint, tinny music off in the distance, you could still hear the splashing of oars. Maybe it was because I’d been stuck inside the shop for so long, or maybe I just hadn’t counted on the kind of changes that night would bring, but the scene took me by surprise all over again. You could lose yourself in it if you weren’t careful.

  The awning had to be cranked up for the night, a chore I performed so distractedly that I never noticed Oboy sitting beneath it. Consequently, some residual rainwater that had collected in the canvas spilled over, drenching his cap and streaming down both sides of his face. This likened him, in my mind, to a sculpted rainspout on a cathedral.

  “Uh-oh,” I think I said as I produced a handkerchief to make a clumsy pass at drying him off. But when he lifted his face, offering me the insoluble riddle of his hatch-marked features, I thought it best to let him tend to himself. I tucked the hankie into his fist, thrust my hands into my pockets, and tried to look casual. “So sorry,” I told him, hoping he’d assure me that these things happen. When he stayed silent, I threw in an apology for the early closing. “Business isn’t so terrific tonight, eh Oboy?” Once spoken, his name seemed to contradict the regret I meant to express. “Oh well, good Shab—I mean, g’night.”

  I’d intended to walk away, leaving him to think what he might. That’s why it startled me when, before I’d taken a step, I heard him croak, “You the boss,” as he slid from his perch with a smart salute. Since it was my understanding that only the proprietor had the authority to make the puller budge, it gave me a jolt to see him lurch off like that, as if my wish were his command.

  I watched him scurrying down the sidewalk toward the water’s edge and wondered where he went. With a bandy-legged gait that his limp arms did nothing to assist, he looked like something you might throw a net over, then demand he show you his pot of gold. It wouldn’t have surprised me to see him duck down a manhole or nip under a fat lady’s skirts. Or was there a room waiting somewhere, furnished only with a single three-legged stool? Then, jostled by a couple of evening strollers (“Watch yosef, young ge’man!”), I realized that I was following Oboy.

  Among the things of this night that I couldn’t previously have pictured was the sight of so remote a character as the puller rubbing shoulders with his own kind. Nevertheless, when he reached the part of the pavement that might now be called the shore, Oboy began saluting here and there, chummily waiting his turn in the boats. In front of him was a sporty fellow in an acey-deucey fedora and a suit with shoulders at least three feet across. He had the arm of an elegant lady, slender as a licorice whip, hair coiled in the shape of an inverted tornado. She was daintily lifting her gown to steady a rocking skiff, pinning its hull under a heel the length of a carpenter’s awl. A burr-headed kid in rolled-up bib overalls, waving the white flag of an unraveled diaper, chased a naked, squealing infant into the shallows. Nearby stood a rag-headed mama shouting threats in the name of the Lord, shaking her muslin parasol like she had a nagging hold of the Lord’s own leg.

  All around, the colored people played ducks and drakes with slab bottles and chicken wings. They flirted, swapped insults and shadowboxed, gigged a bullfrog with a brace and bit. In general they behaved as if, rather than a recently materialized wonder of the Western world, this choppy pool of standing water had been there all along.

  I had stationed myself behind a lamppost to spy on Oboy and prayed that my jackhammering chest wouldn’t give me away. He was negotiating with a couple of boys, one sitting and one standing in a grounded skiff. Tossing a coin to the standing boy, who snatched it out of the air with a practiced motion, the puller stepped gingerly into the weather-beaten skiff and took a seat. That should have been my cue to turn around and quickly lose myself among the strollers. But in the instant that I hesitated, leading with my receding chin from behind the post, I met Oboy’s eyes through a gap in the gathered ranks.

  It was too late. I had no choice but to ste
p out into the circle of light. I stood there foolishly, a bashful debut during which I tried to remember my lines, but all I could manage was “Um, what it was, I mean, the thing I forgot to mention …,” before falling speechless over the nothing I’d forgotten.

  Meanwhile the kid who’d taken the coin leaped over the bow onto the pavement, the wind scissoring the tails of his hopsacking coat. Issuing strict orders, apparently to himself (“Heave ho, ya’ll bad man rousterbout! Suck a egg, ol River George!”), he began to shove the boat back into the lagoon. He paused, however, when Oboy, who hadn’t seemed the least bit perplexed by my presence, asked me, “Is you want to ride?”

  I looked around like he must have been talking to somebody else, and even pressed an inquiring forefinger to my shirt button. “Oh no,” I assured him, shaking my head emphatically. I couldn’t possibly, had to get back, they were waiting for me on North Main Street, don’t you know. But it was clear that no one was going to go out of his way to persuade me; no one was interested in talking me out of playing coy. In fact, if I hadn’t decided on the spot to hold my breath and hoist my already too short trousers to take the high step over the gunnel, I guess I would have missed the boat.

  Before I could sit down, the boy who was still delaying the business of launching put his face uncomfortably close to mine. “Ain’t no free ride on the earth,” he apprised me, turning his head to spit. “Now, take this here ferry, that it a cost you for yo information a nickel.”

  “Pardon?” My giddiness combined with his faintly whiskey breath left me slow on the uptake.

  “Cost you what we calls the bumper, in yo Negro language, which it are five cent all round the world. What you thank, we in this fo our health?”

  I didn’t see why he should have to take a such a high-handed tone with me. This was disrespectful, wasn’t it? Of course it didn’t help to look to Oboy for guidance. You’d have thought it enough that I had stepped into this leaky tub in the first place, never mind I should have to pay for the privilege. Indignant, I saw myself splashing out of the boat and back up the street, then turning to wave goodbye to myself still in the boat, dredging my pocket to grudgingly hand over the whole of my carfare.