Button Man

by Andrew Gross

  “Zey shtil, Morris!” His mother nudged him from behind. Hush now.

  “Be my guest, then. Go work for the newspapers.” Mr. Kaufman reopened his ledger book, as if the interview had come to an end. “You’ll freeze your tuchis off all winter long, and I see you’re not even wearing a proper coat as it is. Anyway, I thought I heard your mother say you were looking to learn a trade.”

  “He ist. He ist.” His mother pinched Morris on the shoulder, more of a command than an answer to Mr. Kaufman’s question. “Morris…?”

  “Owww! All right, Momma. So if I do these things … sweep the floor and load the truck, how do I get ahead?”

  “Get ahead? You hear this, Rose?” Kaufman looked over at his wife. “I haven’t even hired the lad and he’s already angling for a promotion. Trust me, son, I can shout out that window and come back with five boys older than you who’d be happy with this job. I only called you in as a favor to Mrs. Davidowitz, who is one of my most valuable workers and who seemed to think you had this…” He snapped his fingers three times. “Zip. Drive. A quality that I’m sad to say in front of your mother that I cannot see.” He turned the page of his big leather accounting book and put his spectacles back on. “You decide.”

  “He is happy with it.” Morris’s mother nudged him again, this time with impatience. “I assure you, he will do the job.”

  “He will, will he? Let me ask you, son.” Mr. Kaufman leaned forward, knitting his brow. “Have you ever heard the word ‘impertinence’?”

  Impertinence. Morris couldn’t even pronounce it. He shook his head.

  “Well, look it up, lad, because you seem to have it. In spades! Still, it bears repeating that somehow Mrs. Davidowitz has vouched for you, so she must see something I can’t. At least, she’s convinced my wife—and she’s the real boss here.” He looked over to Mrs. Kaufman and smiled. “Isn’t that right, Rose? So that’s all that matters. She says you’re a smart lad with zip in your step. Good qualities for certain, but all that matters to me is, not can you run the Standard Oil Company, but can you do what’s asked of you here?”

  “Five dollars a week will go a long ways, Mr. Kaufman,” Morris’s mother said. “He’ll take what you offer. Thank you.”

  “All the same, Mrs. Rabishevsky…” Mr. Kaufman leaned forward. “I’d prefer to hear it from him, if that’s okay. So do you have it, boy…?” He snapped his fingers again. One, two, three. “Tell me.”

  “I have it,” Morris said. Though inside he’d hoped to come away with a least a dollar a day.

  “One more time, if that’s okay…?” Mr. Kaufman put a finger to his ear. “And with some conviction, if you don’t mind. My hearing isn’t what it used to be.”

  “I said I have it,” Morris said again. “A sheynem danken, sir.” He turned to Mrs. Kaufman. “And thank you to you too, ma’am.”

  “So if that’s settled…” Mr. Kaufman leaned back in his chair, “we work six days a week here. Seven thirty A.M. to seven P.M. We do give the Sabbath off, of course, though if you come in you’ll usually find the two of us here. Mrs. Kaufman and I are not religious. You get two sick days a year. Three, I dock your pay. Five, you might as well take that job selling papers, ’cause you’ll no longer be working here.”

  “Feshtayn.” Morris nodded dutifully. I understand.

  “Good. The truth is,” Mr. Kaufman looked at his wife, “I started at twelve myself. Isn’t that, right, Rose? As a tailor’s assistant. Back in Vilnius. No more of a sense where life was taking me than you now. So what do you say, Rose? Shall we give young Mr. Rabishevsky the chance to acquire his trade?”

  “Manny…” Mrs. Kaufman turned her chair around and gave her husband a disgruntled narrowing of her brows.

  “All right, all right…” Mr. Kaufman looked back at Morris with a blanch of guilt. “My wife thinks I’ve taken advantage of you in your wages. So how ’bout we say, three months from now, if you’re doing well enough, we’ll see about that dollar a day you’re so eager for. Until then, we’ll see if you’re cut out for this kind of work.”

  “How about I come in every day at seven and you pay me the dollar a day now?” Morris pressed.

  At first there was silence. Morris’s mother twisted his ear, causing Morris to yelp loudly, “What’s that for?” and he spun around in pain. When he turned back at Mr. Kaufman, Morris didn’t know if he was about to be fired before he even began.

  “Impertinence, Rose. You hear it, don’t you? He’s already pushing for a raise and he hasn’t even shown up his first day. If this is how he is now I hope we’re not making a big mistake on him.”

  “Three months,” Mrs. Kaufman said to Morris, no negotiation in her voice. “Do you hear? And only if you’re doing well. Understood?”

  Morris nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “But since you’ve offered, being here at seven and getting a jump on things will not go unnoticed. Is that fair?”

  “Morris?” His mother nudged him. “Zogen di dame.” Tell the lady.

  “Yes. I’ll be here at seven. Thank you, ma’am. Mr. Kaufman, you as well.” Morris put out his hand. His new boss leaned across the desk and took it, with an impressed glance to Morris’s mother, at the firmness of his grip.

  “He’s got a shake for a middleweight. That much I can say. And for the record, son, from now on it’s English only here. Leave the Yiddish for the home.”

  “That’s fine with me.”

  “Good. So we’ll be seeing you tomorrow then. Seven A.M. Leave your address. Mrs. Kaufman will put you on the payroll.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Morris put on his cap. He and his mother took a step toward the door.

  “And, son…?”

  “Sir…?”

  “You want to get ahead so badly, keep your eyes open here. Only way to learn this business. You can’t learn it in a school. Watch Mr. Seligman in the cutting room. He can do blind what others only wish they could do with their eyes wide open. Or Mr. Beck, when he lays out a marker…” His eyes twinkled with pride. “So take things in, and learn. Maybe one day, you’ll find that trade. Farshteyst…?”

  “I thought you said to leave the Yiddish at home, Mr. Kaufman,” Morris said, his eyes in a bright smile.

  “So I did, didn’t I?” For the first time he gave Morris a smile back. “Oh, and one more thing … Rabishevsky is a fine Russian name, lad, but it’s a mouthful for some people here. Many of the workmen here are Italian. It would be helpful if we could shorten it just a bit. What if we just call you Raab? No disrespect to your late husband, ma’am. Morris Raab. Is that all right, Momma?”

  Morris’s mother thought about it a moment and then slowly nodded. “Yes, it’s all right with me. His father won’t know.”

  “And with you, boy?” He narrowed his bushy eyebrows at Morris.

  Morris said it over in his mind. He actually liked the sound of it. It sounded … more American. “Morris Raab is good,” he replied.

  “So then keep those eyes open, Mr. Raab.” Mr. Kaufman put his glasses back on and turned the page of his ledger book. “Who knows—do your job well, how this crazy world works, one day you might even end up running the place.”

  Chapter Four

  Of the five dollars Morris brought in each week, four went toward the family’s food and rent.

  One dollar he was free to keep for himself.

  Now that his father had died, and money was even scarcer, the family had been forced to move to smaller and even more modest lodgings on Cherry Street, a mile from the temple. In fact, once he began working full time, Morris started going less and less, until he hardly went at all.

  In a part of the city where squalor and overcrowding were a part of life on every block, Cherry Street was among the poorest. Buildings there were barely more than ramshackle tenements owned by indifferent landlords who had no urge to improve them, since most of their tenants were either just off the boat or would be gone soon. Apartments had creaky staircases, scant lighting, furnaces that rarely w
orked, especially in winter; water that was brown and intermittent, and rarely hot. On each floor the incessant chatter of sewing machines and the hiss of steam pressers could be heard deep into the nights.

  The family squeezed into a tiny three-room apartment on the fourth floor. Morris and his brothers: Sol, six years older, had to assume the role of the man in the family now that their father had died. He took courses in accounting at City College, but could not afford to go there full time as he had to bring money in. Harry, four years older: likeable, handsome as a movie star, but lazy and unreliable when it came to a career. Since the tragedy on Essex Street, and the feeling that in her heart his mother always held him responsible, Harry shied away from anything you might call dependable and had begun to hang out with a questionable crowd. His mother always called him Moisheh Kapoyer, Mr. Upside Down, because whatever he touched never seemed to come out right. Inwardly, however, her feelings toward him were anything but lighthearted. The hardscrabble life they lived now had taken much of the fight out of her, and Harry always felt a lack of forgiveness in her voice toward him, so that he began to spend less and less of his time at home.

  Morris was the only one of them born in the States, and before he could even read, he would pick up The Jewish Daily Forward or magazines left on the street and see how other people lived, some even Jews, who resided in fancier neighborhoods uptown, which might as well have been different countries. Once, he and his friend Irv Weschler took the tram up Broadway and walked around Central Park, which to Morris seemed to go on forever—in his life he had never seen so much green!—staring at the tall apartment buildings that lined both sides, with white-gloved doormen opening carriages and rich tenants who stepped out. He and Irv looked at each other with awe—such grandeur was a sight they’d only heard tales of—imagining the servants, the high-curtained rooms with glass chandeliers hanging within, until a policeman, noticing their disheveled clothes and unwashed state, shooed them away like they were fleas carrying pestilence. “Go back to your own neighborhood, boys. You don’t belong up here.”

  “One day, I’m gonna live up there,” he said to Irv on the long tram ride back home.

  “You better save up your pennies then,” Irv said, “because it’ll take a lot of them.”

  “It won’t always be pennies,” Morris said. “You’ll see.”

  * * *

  Most boys left school in their early teens, needing to bring in money for their families. Oftentimes women continued with their education, as their money-earning options were slim. Anna held a part-time job as a bookkeeper; after school, Bess helped out in a bridal shop. Harry never brought in much of anything, always losing jobs, whether it was as a newspaper hawker or a stock boy, and he started to hang out with a group of older ne’er-do-wells, drawn to pickpocketing and gambling. Still, he did bring in a few bucks playing lookout for some of the back-alley gambling scams, and every dollar was needed. He wasn’t a bad kid—he just seemed drawn to the promise of easy cash instead of working for it.

  In summers, the neighborhood kids would escape the heat by jumping off the docks into the East River for a swim. It was like a country club to them. Morris was the best swimmer among their friends. He could hold his breath for what seemed like forever. He was able to swim from pier to pier without even coming up for air.

  But even their fun contained a measure of danger. Rival gangs of Irish and Italians all used the same overcrowded docks, and they had no urge to share them with newly arrived immigrants who spoke a language no one could figure out, grew their sidelocks long, and looked at a dunk in the river as their weekly bath. There were always fights and people being taunted. Teenagers of all origins went around in packs. One of their neighbors’ kids on the fourth floor on Cherry Street was even drowned one day; one minute he was frolicking next to a barge, the next minute he was gone, and a group of freckle-faced Irish boys were grinning how Jews couldn’t swim, weighed down by their big noses. Those who had no urge to fight back required protection just to get around, generally from the Irish or Italian kids, who had turned it into a business. Scrapes and tussles were an everyday event, as were the insults and taunting that went with being a Jew. And as they got older, the bullies began to carry knives. Then lead pipes wrapped in newspapers, and occasionally guns. The jostling and pickpocketing escalated into armed robbery and assault.

  Morris’s friend Irv was pudgy and curly-haired. He was good in school and talked about one day going to college. His mother was a librarian and his father had an office job for the city, so Irv was reading and speaking English fluently at an early age. At thirteen, he was accepted into the Washington Public School on Irving Place, a half-hour trek through the dangerous neighborhoods north of Houston. Italian ground. And Irv was someone who was far more comfortable with a book than he was using his fists.

  “My parents wouldn’t let me go unless we found someone to look out for me,” he confided to Morris, their feet dangling over the East River pier in the heat of an August Sunday.

  “I’ll look out for you,” Morris said. “I can handle myself.”

  “I know you can, but you work. Besides, we found someone.”

  “How much do you have to pay?”

  “Two dollars a week.”

  “Two dollars! Those Italians will rape you if you let them. I’d do it for a buck.”

  “He’s not Italian,” Irv said. “He’s a yiddisher actually.”

  “A Jew?”

  “That’s right. He was sent away to a reform school and now he’s got his own gang. This guy’s even tougher than the Italians. My father says, what a world when such behavior is rewarded.”

  “Let’s take a swim. Last one in has to lug home the towels,” Morris said.

  Chapter Five

  Friday was payday in the factories. By March, Morris had worked four months and earned the raise to a dollar a day that Mrs. Kaufman had promised.

  Just making the long walk home from Chrystie Street back to Cherry, his pockets stuffed with a week’s wage, temptations and risks arose on every corner. Any card hawker worth his salt knew the look of a ripe young man flush with cash in his pockets, even a twelve-year-old boy, and they would urge Morris to come over, “Just for a look, young fella, you don’t have to play. But who knows, you might win big,” sometimes even following him halfway down the street.

  Once or twice, Morris actually stopped at a three-card monte swindle off Delancey Street and studied how the game was played. One time, sure that he spotted the scheme that was meant to take advantage of an unsuspecting tourist or those just off the boat, Morris plunked his own money down on the table and lost his entire week’s pay. When his mother found out, she was furious at him for risking the family’s welfare. “You of all people, Morris. You’re no one’s fool. How could you let yourself be stolen from like that?” He felt ashamed, and vowed he would never be taken advantage of like that again.

  But making his way back through the maze of crowded streets and alleys was fraught with danger too. Especially on Fridays, when anyone keen to take advantage was on the prowl. South of Monroe Street were the Irish; north of Houston, the Italians; to the west, German Catholics, all hostile to a ragtag immigrant who didn’t look or talk like them, and who believed that their Savior was not the son of God.

  But the toughest of the troublemakers were the Jews themselves. “Don’t let the yarmulkes fool you,” his mother would say. “These people will cut you blind.” Because for every lad looking to make it out through hard work or enterprising spirit, there was one whose ticket to riches was punched by crime. Every corner harbored roving bands of thugs who would shake you down and steal what you had, and rackets—gambling, prostitution, robberies, pickpocketing. And the street-smart Jews preyed on their own kind just as willingly. On any corner, a pushcart filled with clutter could haphazardly knock into you, a pretty girl could sidle up and steal your attention, someone’s hand could slip inside your pocket and your hard-earned wages would be gone.

  Mor
ris always protected his cash by keeping his hands in his pockets and avoiding signs of suspicious bands of youths—Gentiles or Jews. But one Friday, the wind whipping off the East River, right through Morris’s new wool coat—a gift from Mrs. Kaufman, who had gotten it from a friend in the business and who was sympathetic to Morris’s long trek to work—Morris was carrying a bag of potatoes and turnips and had six dollar bills in his pocket, when he came face-to-face with a band of cigarette-smoking toughs heading his way.

  He thought it wiser to duck through an alley off Broome, which led to Delancey and the safety of crowds. But the alley was narrow and unlit and ahead Morris heard voices—peals of exultation mixed with groans of frustration. He saw a group of men sitting on fruit boxes, with two young toughs overseeing a card game.

  The con men were older, one short, in a suit and black coat and homburg, the other in ragtag clothes and a flat wool cap, twice his size. Morris knew how to handle himself, but not against thugs like these; they looked like the real thing. He looked behind and saw the band of street toughs congregating at the alley entrance, so he thought the safer course was to continue on rather than to turn back. He figured if these guys gave him any trouble he could always make a dash for it to the other side.

  As he approached the card game, one of the con men caught sight of him and came up with a cocky smirk. He was dressed in an ill-fitting black coat and black homburg, tilted slightly to the side. Though he really wasn’t a man at all, but more of a youth trying to look like one, dressed all dapper, chubby-cheeked and with a dimpled chin. Morris pegged him as no older than seventeen. He was shorter than Morris, but not short on boldness, blocking Morris’s way. “Want to get through? It’ll cost you, kid. A buck. For protection,” the tough said.

  His crony, the slope-shouldered bruiser in the tweed cap, looked over too.

  “I don’t need protection,” Morris replied.

  “Hear that, Jacob,” the one in the suit sniffed, “the young man says he doesn’t need any protection. Everyone needs protection, kid. It’s a rough world to navigate out there.”