Early's Fall

by Jerry Peterson

  “Aw, just barked my shin.”

  Thelma stopped Early and turned him back. “Your pants are ripped.”

  “So they are,” he said as he glanced down.

  She pulled his pant leg up. “And you're bleeding.”

  “Hon, it's nothing.”

  Granny hauled his glasses down from where they rested on his dome. He studied the wound. “That's no nothing. You come in the kitchen, and I'll get some iodine and a bandage on that.”

  A woman came up, as short and as round as Granny, and for the first time Early became aware that he had limped into a room filled with people. He sensed the gaze of a dozen pairs of eyes. “Are we interrupting something?”

  “Just some of the temple congregation,” Granny said. He waved a hand around the apartment's main room cluttered with overstuffed chairs, a couch, and half a dozen hard chairs. On every seat a person. “We were sitting ‘shiva’ for Judith.”

  “We can come another time.”

  “Oh no no no no, you should be here. Just let me get you patched up.” Granny turned to the woman, his wife. “Esther, Jimmy's gotta have new pants. Would you run downstairs to the Levis counter and get a pair of jeans, what, Jimmy, thirty-two, twenty-nine?”

  “That's not necessary. Thel can patch these.”

  “Jimmy, who owns a clothing store here?”

  The answer took all the fight out of Early's resistance. He instead followed Granny, mumbling “excuse me” and “howdy” to several people he stepped around—limped around—in his journey to the kitchen midway between the sitting room over the front of the store and the bedrooms over the back.

  Everything gleamed white in the kitchen including the gas stove Granny had bought for his wife. He patted the stove as he went past it and took a first-aid kit from a drawer.

  “The Four-H club was selling these. This is the first time I get to use it.” Granny touched the counter. “Hike your leg up here, Jimmy.”

  While Early did, with Thelma steadying him, Granny opened the iodine bottle. He splashed a portion of the contents onto a gauze pad and slapped the pad over the sheriff's torn and bleeding skin.

  Early grimaced.

  “Stings some, huh?”

  “Worse than that powder the Army medics poured on wounds.”

  “This stuff's supposed to be better at preventing infection.” To Thelma, Granny said, “Hold that there.”

  He ripped the paper covering from a fresh gauze bandage and laid it over the wound when, at his nod, Thelma took the iodined pad away. Then he pulled off strips of adhesive tape from a roll and padded the strips across the bandage and onto Early's skin. “Jimmy, time to skinny out of those pants.”

  “No no no no,” Early said as he brought his leg down. He stepped on his foot, testing the flex of his leg's muscles.

  “Out of those pants.”

  Thelma turned her husband toward her. She pointed at the floor. “Strip.”

  “Good Lord.” Early frowned as he leaned against the counter. He pulled off one boot, then the other.

  “I tell you, Granny,” Thelma said, “he's as stubborn as some of the little boys I had in my class last year.”

  Early dropped his pants at the moment Esther Weichselbaum hustled through the door, holding out a new pair of jeans. “Fresh from the Strauss company,” she said.

  “Could we maybe invite a few more people in here?” Early muttered.

  Granny went to the door. He leaned through it. “Hey, everybody, our sheriff is changing his trousers. Would any of you like to come and watch?”

  Early side-armed a boot at the clothier's well-padded rump as “no's” and snickers came from the other room.

  Granny hopped around at the hit. He waggled his finger at his guest before he picked up the errant boot and tossed it back.

  “Like children, that's what they are,” Esther said.

  Early pulled on his new pants and recovered his belt from the pair that had suffered the trauma. “Shiva,” he said, “what's that?”

  Granny leaned back. He put the heels of his hands against the stove. “We Jews have a lot of traditions and rules. You sure you want to know all this?”

  “I wouldn't of asked if I didn't.” Early pulled on a boot.

  “When a family member dies, we're required to mourn them for seven days, what we call shiva—seven. For Judith's parents, they would be home in the evening for the seven days, and the neighbors would come in and they'd reminisce and offer prayers. Well, it wasn't possible for them to get home to Kansas City tonight.”

  “So you thought you would—”

  “It's not in strict adherence to the rules, but I didn't think Jehovah would rain down bolts of lightning upon us.”

  Esther patted her husband's hand. “My father was a rabbi. Were he alive, he would look askance at this, but my Herschel's heart is in the right place.”

  Granny smiled at his wife with a warmth that came from sharing forty years of life.

  Esther patted his hand again. “Shall we take our guests in and introduce them to the people who loved Judith? They're all members of our temple in Manhattan.”

  “Except the Silverbergs,” Granny said. He motioned for Early and Thelma to follow him, and led the way back into the front room.

  Five couples rose.

  “You know the Rennebergs,” Granny said, motioning to the old couple at the far end of the room. “Next to them, that's Zack and Myra Durskowitz . . . David and Ruth Jenkowski . . . Bernard and Rebecca Lippman . . . and, of course”—Granny stepped between the last couple and put his arms around them—“these are Judith's parents, Mishka and Ethel Silverberg.”

  Early snatched his hat off before he shook hands with Mister Silverberg. Thelma clasped Missus Silverberg's hands and whispered something that caused the woman to return an uneasy and tearful smile.

  “These good people,” Granny said, indicating the Earlys, “are friends. Missus Early—Thelma—taught school with Judith. And Mister Early—James—he's our sheriff. But he's not wearing a badge tonight.”

  Early glanced around. He nodded to those he knew. And then he saw several things that to him were odd—someone had removed the cushions from the chairs and the sofa, and the men, including Granny, stood about in stockings. Early's eyebrow, like a startled caterpillar, arched.

  Granny, with his back to the others, whispered, “Part of the rules of shiva.”

  Early gestured at his boots.

  Granny shook his head. “You're not a Jew.” Then he hauled over two hard chairs and put them next to the chairs where the Silverbergs had been sitting.

  “Come,” Granny said, motioning for Early and Thelma to sit down, then the others. “I want you to notice the sheriff's new Levis. He buys all his trousers here. So, gentlemen, if you feel you are in need, before you leave. . . .”

  Laughter moved about the room, Granny, the affable host, grinning in response. He leaned down to Early and slipped him a note card, whispering, “Read this to the Silverbergs.”

  Early studied the words, his eyebrows pinching together.

  “I'm sorry. That's Yiddish,” Granny said. “The other side.”

  Early turned the card over. He read it aloud, with care. “May the Almighty comfort you among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.”

  Mishka Silverberg, a bespectacled man with thinning hair, squeezed his wife's hand. “Thank you,” he said.

  Granny whispered to Early, “Traditional greeting at shiva.”

  The sheriff's lips formed an o, and he put the card in his jacket pocket.

  The host looked around the room. “Shiva is a time for sharing. Thelma, you taught with Judith. Perhaps there is something from the time you two worked together that you'd like to tell Mishka and Ethel.”

  Thelma squirmed on the hard chair. She tugged at her skirt.

  Missus Silverberg, slim as her daughter had been and wearing wire-framed glasses similar to her husband's, reached for Thelma's hand. “Please. It would mean so much to us.”


  “Well, I suppose. Let me see.” Thelma put her hand to her face as her mind turned back time. “There are so many things, but maybe this one. Last year, one of Judith's students came down with scarlet fever. When you teach three classes, your hands are full, but every afternoon, Judith went by the girl's house with her lessons. They worked together into the evening for almost four months so she wouldn't fall behind and have to repeat the year. Missus Silverberg, Judith loved to teach. She loved children.”

  “And Isaac—her boy, our grandson?”

  “Oh, she was so proud of him. But I can tell you he was all boy. He was a handful.”

  “Bill won't let us see him, except for the few moments at the funeral,” Missus Silverberg, said, a harshness in her tone. “He's our grandson for God's sake.”

  “Now Mother,” Mister Silverberg said.

  “Mishka, it's not right. There's something not right.”

  “Ethel, he's lost his wife. We can't imagine the pain. So what if he makes a wrong decision?”

  “I've lost my daughter. What of my pain? I will not let that Gentile stand between me and my daughter's child—Isaac, my grandchild.”

  “Now Mother—”

  “Don't 'now Mother' me.” She turned away, the handkerchief in her hand going to her eyes.

  “Ethel,” Granny said, “there are some things we cannot control. Maybe we should have a little something to eat. Everybody, please, come to the kitchen.”

  The women rose, except for Missus Silverberg, and moved with dispatch. The men shambled after, most stopping to chat with Early before they moved on. Mister Renneberg, the last, asked, “Have anything that will tell us who did this terrible thing?”

  Early put his arm around the old man's shoulders. “Sam, I wish I could say yes.”

  “Nothing, huh?”

  “Now I didn't say that.”

  “So then you do have something.”

  “I didn't say that either.”

  “Well, sheriff, you can't have it both ways.”

  “Sam, we've got some ideas, and that's all we've got. Until we've got some proof, I can't talk about it.”

  “So you think it was Bill.”

  “I didn't say that.”

  Renneberg looked up at Early, hound-dog sadness filling his face. “Sheriff, it's gonna be hard to vote for you come next election.”

  He went on, and Granny swung in beside Early. He ushered him along, after Renneberg. “Jimmy, I don't envy you your job.”

  “There are times I don't have much envy for it either.”

  As they passed through the doorway, one of the women handed Early a plate on which resided a hard-boiled egg shucked from its shell, a handful of chickpeas, and something that looked like a doughnut only it didn't have any sugar on it.

  Granny saw the quizzical look. “That's a bagel. It's a kind of boiled bread.”

  Early salted the egg, then took a bite from it. From across the kitchen, Thelma pushed through with her own plate and two cups of coffee, one she handed to her husband.

  “Isn't this wonderful?” she asked.

  “I guess.” Early tore a bite from the bagel and chewed. “Bread's kinda tough.”

  “No no no, Jimmy,” Thelma said, “everything on your plate, it's round.”

  “So?”

  “Husband mine, there's symbolism here. Ethel was telling me the egg is fertility, the renewal of life in the face of death. The chickpeas and the bagel, they're circular—the never-ending cycle of life and death and life again.”

  Early forked up a mouthful of chickpeas. “Least these aren't bad.”

  “Jimmy—”

  “Hey, if it's food, I eat it.”

  “It's not just food.” Thelma pulled on Early's sleeve. He leaned down, and she burred in his ear, “Sometimes you are so dense.”

  Granny chuckled. “And thus endeth the lesson for today,” he said.

  The locals made their good-byes. They rattled down the inside stairs and out to the street to their cars, leaving behind three women—Thelma, Esther, and Ethel Silverberg—clustered around the sink, washing and drying dishes, Granny and Mishka Silverberg hunched together in a corner, visiting, and Early alone at the table, salting a fourth egg, wondering how the hell he was going to ask the questions that had been plaguing him.

  Granny pushed Mister Silverberg toward a chair next to Early and took another for himself. “Looks like something's working on your mind,” he said.

  Early dabbed his egg at some stray grains of salt on his plate. “I s'pose.”

  “What is it?”

  He turned to Silverberg. “The more I dig into this, the more I realize how little I know about your daughter. She served in the war?”

  “Yes, Judith joined the Army to drive ambulances. Mother and I were opposed to it. We felt it was too dangerous.” Silverberg took a Meerschaum from one side pocket and a pouch of Prince Albert from the other. He packed the pipe's bowl with tobacco. “I understand you and your lovely wife are expecting a child.”

  “Yes.”

  “You will find, Mister Early, that a time will come when that child does what he or she wants to do despite your desires. You can either argue endlessly or you can give him or her your blessing, then ask God to watch out for your child. That's what we did with Judith. Were you in the war?”

  “Infantry.”

  Silverberg struck a match. He put the flame to the tobacco and sucked on the stem of his pipe. He blew a cloud of cherry-scented smoke toward the ceiling. “You came home all right?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “He has a leg full of shrapnel,” Granny said.

  “Sorry.”

  Early turned up the palm of his hand as he shrugged. “Still I was lucky. And after the war for your daughter?”

  “She caught the fever.”

  “What fever?”

  “The Zionist fever. Mister Early, we Jews have been wanderers for almost two thousand years, a people with no homeland of our own. The war ended and Judith and friends from Holland—Dutch Jews who had been in hiding—joined the exodus to Palestine. They went to establish the new Israel.”

  “I expect that was a bit more dangerous than driving an ambulance,” Early said.

  “More than a bit, but Mother and I know only snatches. Much of what Judith did that year she wouldn't talk about.”

  Early pulled a bagel apart. He dunked half in his coffee. “Not bad this way,” he said. “You think she made enemies who would want to harm her?”

  “The Jews who sneaked into Palestine had enemies all around them. But I can't imagine anyone would follow her here, not three years later.”

  “But wasn't she raising money for Israel here?”

  “Yes, and a very persuasive fund-raiser.” Silverberg chuckled. “Let me tell you, I would see this very wealthy man write a check to the XYZ fund and Judith would look at it with those great sad eyes of hers, and he'd write another check, and, if she didn't smile, he'd write a third. And then came that rich, warm, genuine smile that would thrill you to the very depths of your heart, that would tell you you had just done what God had wanted.”

  “Who should I be talking to?”

  Silverberg took a long pull on his pipe. “You come to Kansas City, I can introduce you to some people.”

  Early dunked the second half of his bagel. “Mind if I ask what you do?”

  “Like my daughter and your wife, I'm a teacher, only college—Eastern European history, not terribly exciting. My Ethel, she plays first-chair viola for the Kansas City Symphony. I'm afraid the only exciting thing we ever did was get out of Vienna with little Judith before the brown shirts marched in.”

  “When was that?”

  “Nineteen Thirty-Three. Seems like a lifetime ago.”

  “How old was Judith at the time?”

  “Fourteen, I think. Fathers never remember these things.”

  “I never heard an accent.”

  “Oh, our Judith was so good at learning to speak American. A couple year
s and she sounded like every other teenage girl in our neighborhood. Ethel and I joked about it, we would introduce her as our American daughter.”

  The women, finished with putting dishes away, came to the table, Esther Weichselbaum with a pot of hot water. “Tea, anyone?” she asked. Only Ethel Silverberg raised a hand.

  “Mother,” Mishka Silverberg said, “Mister Early was asking about Judith's time in Palestine. Well, we can say Israel now. Judith was there when Mister Truman recognized our new nation. Mister Early, we can only wonder if he might not have done it had not his partner in the haberdashery been a Jew.”

  Ethel Silverberg sniffed. “Not likely. We are not a loved people, but you were asking about Judith in Israel.” She reached for her husband's hand. “We know so little. Judith wrote only four letters during that year. In one, she told us of having been taken a prisoner with two others in an ambush.”

  “How did she escape?”

  “She wrote that they did not search her boots. She had a knife, so she killed her guard. A terrible thing, but what more terrible things they might have done to her had she not?”

  CHAPTER 9

  * * *

  August 26—Friday Morning

  The Post

  Trooper Plemmons swerved his cruiser over to the guard post at the east entrance to Fort Riley, the post a wooden structure in the middle of a boulevard flanked by limestone pillars. He touched his badge when the guard, a corporal in a well-pressed uniform, turned to him, a clipboard in hand.

  “State trooper to see the commanding general,” Plemmons said.

  “You expected, sir?”

  “No.”

  “You'll have to wait a moment then, sir.” The guard waved an Army deuce-and-a-half through the entrance, then picked up a telephone receiver. While he talked to a distant presence, Plemmons spit a stream of tobacco juice into his empty Coke bottle.

  “Hate these damn waits.”

  “That's the Army way,” Early, his passenger, said.

  The corporal put the receiver back in the bag of his field telephone. He turned to Plemmons. “The general's not in, sir, but if you'll drive on to HQ, the adjutant says he'll direct you to him. You know where HQ is?”

  “Been there a time or two.”