“Another wonderful idea: Jewish farmers to plow up a Jewish homeland. This is what Baron de Hirsch wastes his money on? The only thing Jews can grow are beards. Do you want to make that”—again she pointed toward Harry’s room—“a Jewish farmer? Why not a blind aviator?”
“I just thought some good country air …”
The nausea overtook her. She ran to the bathroom and threw up. He followed her, asking if she were ill. The idiot, she thought. I have no privacy even in sickness. Perhaps he would like to watch me shit.
“Get out of here,” she screamed. “Become a farmer!”
CHAPTER
34
THAT AFTERNOON, MENTER AND WOODY WERE PLAYING RUMMY YUMMY, the card game Menter had invented especially for the two of them. The cards lay on the back of a nude whore from Rosie’s, crouched on her hands and knees between them. Her mouth was buried in Menter’s crotch. Woody held her thighs and pumped lightly inside her.
Menter took a card from the top of the deck, set it among the seven cards fanned out in his hand and discarded one, face up. He cautioned the dwarf:
“You’re rockin’ the boat, Woody, gettin’ too excited. Maybe we ought to switch.”
Woody stopped moving and shut his eyes.
“Never fails. All I gotta do is think of Fifi nude and I calm down.”
“Let’s switch anyway,” Menter said. “I’d like some target practice.”
He tapped the woman.
“Gert, about-face!”
The whore, a woman of forty with stretch marks of motherhood on her flat stomach, rotated slowly so as not to upset the cards. She butted Woody’s hard penis upward and, on its descent, caught it in her mouth like a dog trained to flip a bone resting on its snout.
“Bravo, Gert!” Menter shouted.
Encircling his penis in a loose fist, he moved his chair left and right, as if it were the hinged air gun of an arcade target game.
“Gotta watch the aim. Don’t want the wrong hole—or maybe I do.”
He rolled himself forward slowly.
“Perfect bull’s-eye. Give the man a Kewpie doll.”
Woody drew a card and discarded. The familiar pain of a stymied orgasm knotted his stomach. However, he was not allowed to come before Menter.
Woody was sure that Menter faked a screaming climax because he had no feeling down there. But if Menter saw him reaching the edge of orgasm before the howl, he would crash the whore to the floor, and order her back to Rosie’s, leaving him with aching balls,
The phone rang.
“Get it Woody,” Menter said.
The dwarf took tiny steps so as not to agitate his pain.
“Hello … Vic, it’s a guy named Frank Bruno.”
“Now, Gert,” Menter said, “just stay like that. Maybe put a few fingers up and rub a little to stay warm. That’s a good girl.”
He took the phone from Woody, who began to walk toward Gert.
“Stop right there. Gert don’t like it without me. Ain’t that right, Gert?”
The whore lifted her chin and nodded.
“Hello Frank,” Menter said.
Menter closed his eyes and listened, interjecting only a few yeses or grunts, while his finger traced the holes in the speaker like a man reading Braille. Woody tiptoed back to Gert. He pumped furiously.
“Bingo!” Menter shouted, throwing his arms over his head and clasping his palms together like a victorious prize fighter. He looked at Woody and shook his head:
“Scram, Gert!”
Woody clutched her buttocks. The whore jumped to her feet. The cards floated down. One fell on Woody’s penis and stuck. She grabbed her clothes and dressed while stumbling toward the door. Menter owned Rosie’s. He punished with a weighted cane and lighted cigarettes.
Woody helped Menter dress. He felt as though he had been kneed in the testicles. He walked toward the bathroom.
“Gonna play five against one,” Menter said. “Kid stuff. But, what the hell, on a day like this, go ahead. But don’t take all day.”
“You dwarfs are plenty horny.” Menter said, as Woody walked back into the living room. “I guess it’s because your bodies are too small to hold it in. Normal people like me, we’ve got staying power. That’s what it takes to be a man.”
Woody nodded. Menter reminded him of Molly, the singin’ whore, who always put on a show for her customers by screaming that no one did it to her that good before and she loved it so much that if it wasn’t for Rosie she wouldn’t take any money. If you shoved a cannon up Molly, she wouldn’t feel it. He had caught Menter staring jealousy at his ample cock.
Menter lit a cigarette, giving Woody his Roosevelt profile.
“You know why FDR’s a great man?”
“’Cause he’s president.”
Menter slapped his forehead.
“No. But he got to be president because he knows how to get the most out of everything he does.”
“Oh.”
“And now it’s my turn.”
Is he going to tell me that he’s going to be president, Woody thought? Sure he’ll be president, right after he gets a hard on.
“To do what?” Woody said.
“To mix business with pleasure.”
Menter wheeled himself around the room, shouting: “Oh, boy, oh, boy!” He stopped at the telephone, lifted the receiver and said:
“Right in there. A gift from heaven. Thank you, Frankie.”
Woody wished Menter would get over whatever it was that was making him crazy. Jerking off had only increased his need for the real thing. He needed a woman. He needed Rosie’s.
“Woody,” Menter said, “I’m goin’ to make a lot of dough from this fire. That was always true. But now I also get to rid the world of disgusting freaks and a kike.”
“What? I don’t understand.”
“The fire-setters. The freaks, Soldier, that kike writer. They all die. My friend Adolf would be proud of me.”
Menter took a long drag on his cigarette and, without inhaling, let the smoke escape his mouth. A translucent cloud covered his face, then curled its way through his hair. The top of his head seemed to be smoldering.
He’s crazy, Woody thought. I’m tied to a crazy man. So what’s new? Crazy men always called the tune, especially for dwarfs. What was sane? His dumb brother in Hollywood making that all-midget Western, The Terror of Tiny Town?
“How you gonna kill all those people?”
“I ain’t gonna kill ’em. They’re gonna’ kill themselves.”
“Huh?”
“Oh, yeah. We’re goin’ to make them a suicide cocktail: kerosene, gasoline, naphtha, acetone, and shake well. In the hands of an experienced torch, Frankie told me, it’s surefire.” He laughed at his cleverness. “A good torch knows the mixture gives off vapors that explode like a bomb. So he soaks a long rope or leaves a paper trail that slowly crawls to the doused spots. And when it goes boom he’s walkin’ the street. But amateurs, they just sprinkle it around and then throw a match, thinking they got time to get out before everything goes up. They think that because you, Woody, tell ’em that’s the way it is. But the real way it is”—he clapped his hands together loudly—“is when it goes boom, they go boom and the world is rid of a shitload of freaks and worse.”
He means it, Woody thought. He wants to kill six, seven people just like that. I got no feelin’ for nobody, but I ain’t no murderer.
Menter raised his left palm in front of his face and spat on it.
“I’m readin’ my fortune,” he said. “It says there are happy days in store for me. But one thing is wrong: there’s a gutless dwarf who could fuck me up because he’s scared shitless.”
He spit again.
“My fortune says to get rid of him. To put him in the ground and it will be smooth sailing. Whaddya think about my fortune, Woody?”
Maybe I could skip town, Woody thought. Sure, I’m tough to find. Blend in with everybody. Christ, if I could only get to Rosie’s and clear my head.
> “It must be some other dwarf your fortune is talkin’ about. This one is with you one hundred percent.”
“That’s good, Woody. Make sure you don’t go talkin’ to that other dwarf. He’s bad news.”
“Sure.”
“Now, here’s what you do. You buy as many one-gallon gas containers as we need. Bring ’em here. Frankie will fill ’em just right. Then you get the word out that the fire setters should come to your bike shop to pick them up. We already told ’em to just sprinkle it all around and throw a match. You tell ’em that we got the best stuff. That it’ll take five minutes before the fire really gets going, because that’s how the stuff in the containers is mixed. They got plenty of time to get out before it starts. Got it?”
“Yeah, I got it.”
“And just to make sure you say it right, Vince is going to hang out with you for a while, listen to your instructions.”
Woody nodded.
“Good boy, Woody. You’re a lucky dwarf. I’m king of Coney, and you’re right there with me. We’ll shovel shit down everybody’s mouth.”
“Great!” Woody said.
Menter crooked his index finger.
“Now come here and give me some luck.”
Woody lowered his head over Menter’s lap. Manicured nails burrowed under his hair. His scalp felt filthy.
“I hope you don’t have any cooties,” Menter said.
Woody let his head fall a bit more, enjoying the odor that lingered on Menter’s crotch: the smell of where he would soon be, and where Menter was useless.
CHAPTER
35
HARRY AND HIS MOTHER WALKED TO THE NORTON’S POINT TROLLEY stop. He was still unconvinced that they would board the trolley as the first leg of a two-hour journey to Yankee Stadium to see the Yankees play the Detroit Tigers.
Five years ago she had promised to take him to a baseball game. However, all subsequent requests were ignored. Eventually, he had stopped asking. Then, yesterday, she had stunned him by asking:
“Can we go to a baseball game tomorrow?”
“But it’s a Wednesday, you work,” he had reminded her.
“I’ll take the day off. I’ll call in sick. It’s a long time since I played hooky.”
The surprising answer was further evidence of a change that recently had come over her, altering previous dogma. She no longer chastised him for leaving his clothes scattered on the floor. In fact, did not even notice a stray garment. She had stopped screwing up a sour face to express disgust with him when he cracked his knuckles or drank milk directly from the bottle.
On several occasions he had looked up from reading to find her staring at him as if he were a stranger, a curiosity. It had been weeks since she had yelled at him for playing his records too loud and once she had come into his room, listened and asked:
“What is that? And what do you find wonderful about it?”
“It’s Benny Goodman and his band playing Sing, Sing, Sing,” he had answered, “and it makes me feel like I can do anything I want to, that anything is possible.”
“That’s a good feeling,” she had said, “I’m happy for you.”
Now, missing work. Unheard of a month ago!
He would have preferred Ebbets Field and the Dodgers, but they were playing on the road, and he was not about to risk a postponement. But the loss of his beloved Bums would be compensated for by the chance to see Detroit’s Hank Greenberg, the first great Jewish baseball player.
“You will explain the game to me during our trip there,” she had said. “Tickets must cost a lot and I want to get my money’s worth.”
Seated next to his mother on the trolley, he opened a notebook, drew the diamond and identified the positions.
“You see,” he said, “this is the defending team and where they stand. If the batter hits the ball in the air and they catch it before it hits the ground, he is out. If he hits the ball on the ground and they throw the ball to the first baseman before the batter reaches first, he is out …”
He accompanied his words by sending his index finger in a parabola that culminated at the outfielder catching the fly ball, and jabbing it progressively forward to indicate the ground ball, the batter running, the shortstop throwing the ball to first base.
Her eyes were not on the diagram. They were on him. Her expression was more melancholy than usual. He wondered if she was regretting her impulsive act, especially since the temperature was around ninety degrees.
“Now if the defending team puts out three batters, they become the offense and the opponents the defense. Understand?”
She did not answer. She had not heard. Something in his face seemed to fascinate her, absorb all her attention. Perhaps she was struck by his resemblance to her. He sometimes looked at her and wondered if nature’s magic carried with it an obligation of closeness. He closed the notebook.
“Why did you stop, Harry?” she said, still staring at him.
“I didn’t think you were listening.”
“Oh, but I was. Maybe not to the words, but the voice. You explain like your father. You get caught up, excited.”
“Is that good?”
“Only if someone is listening.” She laughed and stroked his cheek.
They boarded the express subway to the Bronx. It was twelve-thirty. They were the only passengers in the car.
“This is better than the rush hour I travel in every morning,” she said. “Some people don’t wash too often. How do you get to school?”
“I ride my bike.”
“Of course. What do you do, Harry?”
“What do you mean?”
“All the time I don’t see you. What’s your life like?”
“Oh, I do homework. Ride my bike on the boardwalk. Eat hot dogs at Nathan’s with the money you leave and tell me not to.”
She laughed.
“Jokes, like your father.”
“Don’t you like jokes?”
She didn’t answer. She tilted her head back and closed her eyes, as if inviting sleep, then opened them and asked:
“Will you miss me?”
“When? Are you going on a trip?”
“No. I just meant that when I die before you, which is the normal way of things, will you miss me?”
“But I’ll be a man by then, probably an old man. I don’t know how an old man would feel about that.”
“He would probably feel the same as a young boy.”
“Well, if he would feel the same as a baby, then the answer is that I would miss you.”
He recounted his memory of the realization that she would not always be with him and the infant’s wail it had provoked. She nodded her head.
“Do you remember that?” he asked, eagerly. “Do you remember what you did?”
“I can’t say that I remember that specific time. But if you cried, I picked you up. That was my way.”
“I’m glad.”
“You’re a funny kid.”
“Why?”
“Well, I just saw you turn a painful memory into a happy one. A perfect about-face. I wish I could do that.”
The game was scheduled to begin at three-fifteen. They arrived at the stadium at two-fifteen. The crowd was thin. He led her to the bleacher entrance.
“Are these good seats?” she asked.
“They’re the cheapest.”
“For my first and probably last baseball game, I want better. I want the best!”
They bought tickets for the lower boxes behind first base, which allowed an unobstructed view into the Yankee dugout. An usher led them to the seats and brushed them off with a cloth.
The Tigers were taking batting practice. Hank Greenberg stood behind the batting cage, waiting his turn. He pointed him out to his mother, who looked at him and said:
“He is more Jew than baseball player.”
“How do you mean?”
“Oh, he is big and strong, maybe the strongest one there, but those eyes, those sad eyes … and that large nose for sniffing dange
r … that’s what he is mostly about.”
Greenberg stepped into the batter’s box and sent tremendous drives into the left-field stands. The crowd oohed and ahed.
“Is he allowed to do that? … hit the ball where no one can get it,” she asked
“He sure can. That’s the best you can do. It’s a home run.”
“He takes no chances, your Mr. Greenberg. He hits the ball beyond any plot that has been hatched against the Jew.”
She showed little interest in the rest of the Tigers and the Yankees until one Yankee came running in from the outfield to take batting practice.
“Who is that?” she asked, pointing, her voice suddenly animated by excitement.
“Joe DiMaggio.”
“He is a god.”
“A god?”
“Yes, Harry. See how he carries himself as if the air dare not resist him. He glides so lightly. I can imagine him standing on water and not sinking.”
DiMaggio sprayed a few line drives and a home run.
“He shows so little effort, yet the ball travels as far as when hit by the others who grunt and twist their faces. Oh, he is certainly a god.”
DiMaggio left the batting cage and walked to the Yankee dugout. He took off his pin-striped cap and smoothed his hair.
‘He is a funny-looking god,” his mother said. “His head has not yet caught up with the rest of him. But it will. It will.”
“Have you seen many gods?” Harry asked.
“A few.”
“Is Pop a god? Is Aba?”
“No, Harry, They chase God. They try to catch him and open him up so they can see what makes him tick and copy him. It doesn’t work.”
In the top of the first inning, Greenberg hit a tremendous home run into the left-field pavilion. Two men scored ahead of him. But his mother had eyes only for DiMaggio.
“Your Jew,” she said, “played it safe, but the god was not fooled. He never moved. He knew the ball would be out of reach. He’ll get even.”
She was prophetic. During the game DiMaggio roamed the outfield like a restless spirit, denying fly balls to the left and right fielders as though the entire outfield was his domain. He had ten putouts—one short of the major league record—and at least four remarkable catches that brought the crowd to its feet. After each ovation his mother said:
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