Coney

by Amram Ducovny

  “Her name was Bear.”

  Tim replaced the handkerchief. He put on his hat, gripping the peak, pulling it down, then lifting it slightly.

  “Was he your dog?”

  “Sort of.”

  Kevin jabbed his index finger at Harry.

  “Whaddya mean, sort of? If he was yours, he shouldda had a collar and a leash. He coulda bit somebody.”

  “She wouldn’t do that.”

  “The fuck he wouldn’t.”

  Kevin pulled out a pad from his back pocket.

  “Now suppose I write you a ticket for lettin’ him run loose.”

  Yes, Harry thought. Yes, I want that!

  Tim put his hand on Kevin’s shoulder. He whispered into his ear. Kevin shrugged and put away the pad. He wrist-snapped his finger at Harry.

  “I’ll let you off this time. But if you ever get another dog, leash him. Understand?”

  Harry did not answer.

  “Did you hear what I said!”

  Harry nodded.

  “That’s better.”

  The cops turned and walked toward their patrol car. Harry heard, as he knew he was supposed to: kikes, kids who work for dwarfs.”

  Harry descended to Bear. He flailed off the feasting flies while collecting paint-stiffened rags to wrap her in. The material gave only enough to form a stretcher. He laid it on the seat of his bike and pushed it toward the beach. He wished the cop had given him a ticket so he could have buried it with Bear, as her owner.

  Under the boardwalk, Harry knelt and dug. Grains of wet sand tore the flesh under his fingernails.

  He pushed the rags to the rim of the hole and tipped in Bear. He looked down on four rigid paws. He covered her up, thinking, Shouldn’t I say something? In the movies someone always says something. Jean Hersholt’s face appeared. Harry said:

  “Good-bye, Mama.”

  Drained of energy, Harry sat on a bench on the boardwalk. On the horizon, he saw the Mauritania, not much larger than a ship target at the rifle shoot concession, glide as if on ice. He was glad it was not the Bremen. Captain Ziegenbaum would have sped up to take advantage of his fatigue.

  The Mauritania was a ship to be watched, not raced.

  It was an old liner, the sister ship of the Lusitania, the liner that had been sunk by a German submarine in 1917, killing more than a thousand people. An act so barbaric, according to his history teacher, Mr. Simon, that it had convinced the United States to enter the World War against Germany.

  One fall day Harry had seen the Mauritania playing hide-and-seek in a fog, and he knew the truth: it was really its sister, turned ghost ship, appearing on the horizon but never arriving anywhere. She was an occupant of limbo. Aboard were the souls of her drowned passengers demanding revenge, as they did on the Inner Sanctum radio story about a ghost ship. Also on board were the undead spirits of the crew, slaughtered by Dracula on his voyage to England. Now Bear’s soul had migrated there.

  He forced his protesting body onto his bike, scanning the beach for WK. At 27th Street he spotted a familiar stooped back. He ran onto the beach, shouting:

  “Soldier, Soldier.”

  Soldier turned. He held something against his chest.

  “Damn, look, Harry.”

  Soldier held out to him a pup no more than six inches long—a miniature Bear.

  Harry took it. It was as warm as boiled corn. It nuzzled Harry’s palm.

  “Where’d you find ’em, Soldier?”

  Soldier took off his wool hat and scratched his head.

  “Damn, it was the craziest thing that ever did happen to me. I was walkin’ along the beach to go to some meetin’ Woody told me about. All of a sudden this big dog comes runnin’ to me from under the boardwalk. She’s hurt, limpin’, carryin’ this here pup in her mouth. She comes up to me, drops the pup and runs back under the boardwalk. I picked up the pup and went after her, but she was gone. Craziest thing.”

  “Can I have him, Soldier?”

  Soldier tugged at his ear and then put the tips of his fingers on his lips.

  “Damn, I’m sorry Harry. But he was sorta left to me. That mother dog picked me out. You know what I mean? I gotta take care of him. Ain’t that right, Harry?”

  Harry handed the pup back.

  “Damn, Harry, don’t cry. I really gotta.”

  Soldier brought down the corners of his lips. He looked like a gasping fish.

  “Damn, I guess you’re right, Harry. I ain’t fit to take care of it.”

  He held out the pup to Harry.

  Harry jumped backward.

  “No, Soldier. No!”

  He lifted his bike over his head and ran.

  IN THE CHERRY TREE: JULY 4, 1936

  Aba: Today we celebrate freedom, American boy.

  Harry: There will be great fireworks tonight.

  Aba: Stefan Lux will not see them.

  Harry: Who is Stefan Lux?

  Aba: A man who celebrated freedom yesterday.

  Harry: How?

  Aba: He shot himself.

  Harry: Why?

  Aba: It seems he wanted the world to take notice of what Hitler is doing to the Jews in Germany.

  Harry: Will the world notice?

  Aba: It is a civilized courtesy to grant a man his dying wish, especially if it is no bother to do so. Already the newspapers have recorded the event.

  Harry: What do they say?

  Aba: That Stefan Lux, a Jewish journalist employed by a Prague newspaper, killed himself in Geneva at a meeting of the League of Nations.

  Harry: What is the League of Nations?

  Aba: It is where all the countries of the world meet to make the world better.

  Harry: What do they do?

  Aba: Talk. For example, they told Hitler’s friend Mussolini not to conquer Ethiopia.

  Harry: And what did he do?

  Aba: He conquered Ethiopia.

  Harry: Did they punish him?

  Aba: Yes. They allowed people to say very mean things about him, especially the emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie.

  Harry: Aba, I have heard of Haile Selassie, but I didn’t know he was an emperor.

  Aba: Who did you think he was?

  Harry: He was a mystery. He is in a song: “A Shanty in Old Shanty Town”. They sing, “I’d be just as sassy as Haile Selassie.” I thought maybe it was just something that rhymed.

  Aba: Heshele, wonderful American boy, do you think now they will sing, “I’d be just as sassy as Stefan Lux?”

  Harry: It doesn’t rhyme.

  Aba: Then the world will not notice.

  CHAPTER

  25

  VICTOR MENTER HAD MADE ELABORATE PREPARATIONS. BY OBTAINING from an official at the Board of Education a large blackboard, chalks of various colors, a rubber-tipped pointer, standard blackboard erasers and individual, backless classroom seats which sprouted on their right sides palette-shaped writing surfaces, his living room had been converted into a classroom. Woody wore a blue-and-silver arm badge inscribed: Monitor.

  In the lobby of the Half-Moon Hotel, Joe Baker paraded, encased in a sandwich-board sign, its front a collage of Coney’s freak attractions, the back announcing: Victor Menter’s Annual Freak Party. Elevator to the Penthouse.

  The meeting had been called for noon. Menter smiled at the seated freaks, who reminded him of an ungraded high school class of incorrigibles, put under the eye of a muscular educator instructed to keep them quiet by any means, including fists.

  He regretted the absence of Fifi, who he had decided could not be a practical participant in the arson. He had imagined insisting that she could fit into a tiny seat, stuffed there by Otto as human derrick and aided by Woody with a shoehorn or Soldier coating her ass with petroleum jelly.

  Only Otto had balked at sitting in a baby chair, a reticence quickly overcome by a flash of meaningful eye contact. Mohu and Lohu, in abutting chairs, were chattering happily in Japanese. Olga had squeezed in by swishing a hilarious sitting shimmy. Albert-Alberta and
Jo-Jo were in a spirited spitball fight with Jamie, who had started it. Everyone was bunched together except for Soldier, who had arrived carrying a tiny pup, which appeared to be dead. He sat on a radiator at the back of the room petting the motionless animal. Menter had not planned to separate Soldier from the rest, but bowed to the logic of chance: crazy was not a freak.

  “OK, monitor,” Menter said.

  Woody handed out black-and-white-speckled three by five notebooks and freshly sharpened yellow pencils.

  “Very good, monitor,” Menter said, “give yourself a gold star.”

  He put a cigarette in his holder, lit it, dragged, blew a perfect smoke ring, through which he jabbed his middle finger, and said:

  “Just so’s we understand each other, huh?”

  His eyes slowly moved from face to face.

  “Now I want everyone to take notes, because there’s goin’ to be homework. And this is a subject nobody fails.”

  He tapped a pointer against the blackboard, which was covered by a bedsheet.

  “We’ll get to this a little later. Now we learn current events. We begin with a history lesson.”

  The last sentence was delivered in an appreciably louder voice, while turning slightly toward an ajar door to his right.

  “Students, today we’re goin’ to learn about Jewish lightnin’. Jews are so good at burnin’ down buildin’s that they got their name on the insurance scam. It’s what kikes do best: screw everybody and walk away with all the dough. Now class, can you answer this question: What does a Jew hate more than pork?”

  “Jesus Christ,” Otto shouted.

  “Very good, Otto. Monitor, put him down for a gold star. But that ain’t today’s answer. What a Jew hates more than pork is … asbestos.”

  Menter laughed. Woody, hee-heeing, scooted among the seats, calling for response and receiving mechanical ha-has. Menter slapped his forehead.

  “Don’t you dummies know what asbestos is? Or are you all kike lovers? A Jew’ll burn down anythin’—even his mother’s house with her in it—to make a buck. Look at their names: Blazeski, Burnheimer, Flameski.”

  He paused again, waiting for laughter.

  “Oh God,” he moaned, “they think they’re real names.”

  He aimed a pointer at the freaks.

  “You are goin’ to make some Jewish lightnin’. Right Woody?”

  “Right!” the dwarf shouted.

  “Now, first I want to tell you about this kike torch I knew personal. His name was Izzy Stein. We called him Izzy the painter, on account of he said he was a painter so he could buy lots of kerosene, which is used for mixin’ paints. He mixed the kerosene with naphtha so when you lit it, it went boom and spread fast. We’ll use that. What was good enough for Izzy the kike is plenty good for this gang. You know, Izzy set the world record. Set maybe five hundred fires before one of his kike buddies squealed on him. Izzy, of course, squealed back. Got off light. I saw him in the street the other day. He’s a rabbi. Kikes respect people like Izzy.”

  Menter uncovered the blackboard, revealing an architect’s drawing of the buildings on the Bowery, also known as the Midway, a small street of food and game concessions and freak shows that ran about one hundred yards between the boardwalk and Surf Avenue from Steeplechase to West 10th Street.

  “Ain’t that beautiful?” Menter said. “Ain’t I a artist?”

  Menter tapped the blackboard.

  “There are thirty wood buildin’s bunched together here. We hit four or five and the fire jumps to all of ’em. There ain’t no alarms or watchmen. I’ve got copies of this drawing I’ll give you. Each of these shacks has a side or back entrance. That’s how you’re goin’ to get in and out. In Coney, nobody will think twice about freaks on the Bowery. I want every one of you to know the entrance to every shack. So you can do it in the dark with your eyes shut. So anyone can substitute for anyone else. Next time you’ll be assigned one of the buildin’s. We got some time. We started early because you ain’t the brightest, so we give ya plenty of time to learn. Next time I’m goin’ to ask questions. And I better get the right answers. Get me?”

  Menter tried to flip the pointer to Woody, but it slipped from his hand and knocked the cigarette holder from his mouth. Albert-Alberta laughed. Menter rolled toward him, stopping the wheels when they indented his shoes.

  “You think that’s funny? You homo limey scumbag.”

  Albert-Alberta shrugged.

  “Woody, whaddaya got on this turd?”

  Woody took from his back pocket a pad, flipped the pages and read:

  Wanted in Philadelphia for sucking a kid’s lollipop in a Market Street toilet. Jumped bail. In San Antonio the cops would like to know what happened to money a widow lady gave him to invest.

  Menter gripped Albert-Alberta’s cheeks between his thumb and forefinger. He pressed inward, forcing open his mouth.

  “It’s not funny anymore, is it, cocksucker?”

  Albert-Alberta shook no.

  Menter retrieved the pointer and thrust it at the freaks as if it were a dueling sword.

  “Remember,” he said, “Woody’s got the same or worse on all of you, in case you was thinkin’ of finkin’ out.”

  Soldier stood up. He cradled the stiff pup.

  “Damn, you’re goin’ to hurt and kill people.”

  Menter waved him down.

  “Nobody gets hurt. Nobody dies. We ain’t a bunch of scumbag kikes.”

  Aba Stolz and Moses Catzker heard to the shuffling sounds of the freaks’ departure. The small room in which they sat contained a cot covered with a khaki army blanket and a tall, bulky Philco radio on which a silver-bordered glass picture frame, usually seen in Woolworth’s caressing Joan Crawford, displayed a uniformed Adolf Hitler, extending his arm in the Nazi salute. Below his gleaming boots, which marked him as somewhat splayfooted, an inscription in blue ink read: To my good friend Vic. It was signed: “Adolph.”

  Vince wheeled in Menter. Woody followed

  “I hope you heard my lecture good,” Menter said.

  The two men nodded.

  “Do you know why you are here?”

  “No,” Catzker said.

  “See Woody, there are some things a smart kike don’t know. Well, I’ll tell ya. You two are part of this deal. The dumb freaks may fuck up, but two smart kikes won’t. Woody, give ’em sketches.”

  Woody handed each a sheet of paper.

  “Now, like I said out there, you study and walk till you know it like the tips of your circumcised dicks. I’ll reserve a good buildin’ for my kike team to torch”

  “What if we refuse?” Catzker asked.

  Menter laughed, then wheeled himself close to Catzker.

  “Listen, kike, you’re already in so much trouble that arson is a parkin’ ticket. The immigration boys are dyin’ to hear about your buddy. Aside from that, Vince here, you know Vince, he’s big, strong and mean, he doesn’t take kindly to people who say no to me.”

  Catzker, the little boy, had screamed to deaf ears. They had held him so he could not break away to help his father. No one held him now. He jumped up.

  “I’ll take my chances with the immigration!” he shouted.

  Vince shoved Catzker back into the chair.

  “Now you listen good,” Menter said. “You got a wife, you got a kid. I got no use for them, capeesh?”

  Catzker buried his face in his palms. Stolz put his hand on his friend’s shoulder.

  “Ain’t that pretty,” Menter said. “I guess we understand each other now. And if we don’t, there’s one more thing. I get anymore lip from you, I make your son part of the deal. Father and son torchin’ together, a kike thing if there ever was one.”

  CHAPTER

  26

  THE BIKE STORE WAS LOCKED. HARRY WALKED TO THE ROYAL POOL Emporium, which was run by Woody, to give the dwarf the few slips. The place was empty except for Sam, the manager, and his brother, Sidney, a victim of Down’s syndrome, who was the rack boy.

 
“Where is everyone, Sam?” he asked the manager, who was known as the fresh air fiend because he had never been seen without a cigarette between his lips. Fat and lethargic, he often dozed off with the ever-present weed implanted. Startled awake by fire singeing his lip, he would light a new cigarette with the sparks of the minuscule butt.

  Sam shrugged.

  At that moment the door opened and Woody led in all the residents of the freak house except Fifi. They were a state of high excitement.

  “What’s up?” Harry asked Jo-Jo.

  “Woody challenged Otto to a game. He spots Otto, his fifty to the Kraut’s fifteen.”

  Otto didn’t stand a chance. Woody was a shark who could easily run fifty straight balls. Otto knew that, but backing down to a dwarf, Harry figured, was intolerable to his Aryan pride.

  Woody directed Sidney, whose right cheek was a red boil, as to where to set up a one-foot-high platform. As the dwarf mounted, he said to Harry:

  “Did you know that Sidney is Otto’s English teacher?”

  Otto spat.

  Sam approached Woody.

  “Can I go out for a few minutes? Got something to do.”

  “Sure, Sam. But don’t be too long, because the game won’t be.”

  “Stop talk,” Otto said, “start game, freak.”

  “You’ll pay for callin’ me that. And not only on this pool table. We’re playin’ for five bucks, right?”

  “Yah, yah. Shoot.”

  Woody broke the rack, leaving Otto no shot. The strongman tried to follow suit, but left an opening. Woody seized it. The cue ball clicked against a ball with a purple stripe, which, rolling, became a purple-and-white magic lantern before disappearing into a hole in the corner of the table. Woody dismounted and pointed Sidney to the new location.

  Woody ran forty-two balls. As Sidney set up a new rack, the dwarf gave Otto the finger.

  “Eight more, Otto, and your five bucks are mine.”

  “Shoot, don’t talk, freak.”

  Woody swung his cue stick above his head and brought it down against the table’s wooden rail.

  “You don’t call me that! You hear, you no-balled, muscle-bound, pansy kraut? One more time and there’ll be a cop knockin’ on your door.”