Marching to Zion

by Mary Glickman

  That’s her. That’s the Jew whore. I seen her in the papers, the one with the knife said.

  That ape muss be her jigaboo lover, another said.

  Muss be.

  There was no way out. They couldn’t bolt. There were too many of them. There was no use even in trying to talk their way out of trouble. Had the thugs been of his own race, Bailey would have tried talk and maybe won their safe passage, but these boys, these boys were hurt and misery served up plain. Bailey was a big man. He thought he might be able to take down a couple of them, but no matter what, he saw straightaway that his life and maybe Minnie’s too were most certainly over. With nothing else to do, he roared like a warrior from out of one of his mama’s African tales. He roared so loud the earth shook under his feet, and the heavens opened, hurtling lightning and hail down upon them into that circle of death. He charged forth at the man with the knife, who seemed to be the leader and knocked the man down. Bailey fell on top of him and got stabbed in the gut. The man with the bat came up behind and swung hard at his skull and spine, two, three times until Bailey was bathed in blood. Then someone hauled him off the man with the knife, and through a fading eye Bailey saw that the last two held tight on to Minnie, who kicked and screamed while the hail fell and the lightning flashed. I’m sorry, darlin’, he tried to say, I’m sorry I forgot how life can change on a dime, but a stevedore’s hook ripped through his chest and another ripped through his face, and he was dead.

  They let her go long enough to collapse sobbing onto Bailey’s body, then they dragged her and the corpse into a warehouse and used her at their leisure, away from the storm outside. Minnie retreated into the still, dark place her mind had gone all those years ago when she’d spent the night in the bedroll of a bandit chief. By the time the men were done, it was late in the night. She was no longer conscious.

  They found a sack big enough to hold them both, who knows what came in it once upon a time, could have been anything, potatoes or rice or cotton or cane. They broke Bailey’s limbs first so they could fold him up. They decided she was small enough to leave whole. Then they stuffed the lovers inside the sack with a half hod of bricks even though they heard the cloth rip some. They got the sack into a wheelbarrow, hauled it by the river, and dumped the pair in. Bailey’s Minnie had been unconscious all that time, but when she hit the water, she came to. At first she struggled and got the sack open more by the tear. It wasn’t enough, and she took in water. Down she sank, down to the riverbed with her arms around Magnus Bailey, and a few minutes later she died too.

  It’s a small mystery how Minerva Fishbein’s body broke free from that sack a couple of months later and floated to the surface near the spot downriver where Tulips End once stood. Her corpse was ruined, and no one was exactly certain who it was but for the red hair and the body’s general size, along with the fact that old Fishbein had reported his daughter missing within a time frame that made it logical to decide the corpse was hers and hers alone. As there were no injuries the coroner could distinguish that might not be caused by watery decomposition and the postmortem bites of crabs, the scrapes of run-ins with branch and rock, her death was declared either accidental or suicidal, and she was planted on the outskirts of the Jewish cemetery where the wicked lay to ponder their fates eternally since neither Heaven nor Gehenna would have them.

  Magnus Bailey never surfaced. If his Minnie left him somewhere near Tulips End, maybe the best thing was for him to rest there, near his people who departed the world in ’27 that they might all unwilling save the lives of their neighbors ’cross river who’d got their hands on dynamite.

  As it happened, when Aurora Mae Stanton arrived to the old family farm, she found Mags very ill, just starting up with the lung disease that would kill her within a few years. Her household was in chaos. Her boys ran wild. Her husband, Joe, neglected his fields from the taking care of her. Sara Kate was newly married to a St. Louis man and lived there with him, struggling to make ends meet. Each of them held down more than one menial job. Sara Kate was not able to come home and help out, even on the weekends. The bank where Mags kept her savings had failed with the others in ’29. There wasn’t much to eat except what Joe could catch and no money at all for medicines.

  Aurora Mae took one look at all the trouble around Cousin Mags and rolled up her sleeves to take care. After several months, the Dunlap household was again in order, the boys tamed, and Joe back in his fields. Mags was strong enough that Aurora Mae thought to go home for a spell. When she got there, she found a locked store, a torn-up parlor floor, a nearly empty strongbox with just a few coins scattered on its bottom, and a letter from Sister Pearl. The letter said: Now that redheaded whore is dead, Magnus Bailey and I have fallen in love and run off. You will never see us again, and I’m willin’ to guess you might not think that such a bad thing.

  She was thrown into a state of confusion, anger, and grief and went to the Miracle Church of God’s People to save her soul from darkness. Dr. Willie, she was told, had left town around the same time Sister Pearl took off, some said out of a broken heart, and no one’d heard from him since. Thomas DeGrace and a handful of others kept the place going. They showed Aurora Mae much sympathy, offering to pray with her. They would pray she’d find her way toward forgiving those who had harmed her, but instead she renounced religion after that. When she got home, she cut her hair off, buried it in the backyard, and turned her back on men once and for all.

  Fishbein had mourned the loss of his daughter’s virtue for so long, the loss of her life felt like one more knot in the string of his miseries, something he’d always expected to experience before his own soul escaped the curse of Adam’s flesh. In other words, her death was a sorrow but not a surprise. He discovered that when a man thinks he has cried all of his tears, he has not, and wept more for Magnus Bailey, who was surely also dead. He had no delusions there. If it were not for Golde, he might have expired of grief. Just as her mother had rescued him from the ultimate despair when he was a young man, her child gave him cause to put one foot in front of the other in his ripe age. He kept her with him, seven days a week. The neighbors considered her his help, a girl he used for cleaning and such. When he went out for his shopping and to the minyan, he took her with him, leaning on her shoulder with one hand as his most recent sadness had made him ever more stooped. The neighbors saw this and gave her a new name, which was Golde Cane. At the synagogue, she left his side and prayed with the women in their section. Her Hebrew was accomplished, her sentiments sincere, and the ladies of Baron Hirsch Synagogue petted and cosseted her for the charming novelty of the dark-skinned serving girl who could pray.

  He put off the sale of his home until after the mourning year. A month before her first yarhzeit, he put a marker on Minerva’s grave. He had it engraved with her name, in English script and in Hebrew, and below that the date he’d guessed years before might be that of her birth followed by a date he made up for her death. He wanted some words, an epigraph of some kind. After much deliberation, he instructed the engraver to carve into the stone the words Beloved Daughter and Mother and below that Nothing Is Certain Under the Sun.

  Around the time Germany readied for its Jew-free Olympics, he was on board a boat, a simple Greek fisherman’s vessel. He stood at the prow with one arm around the slender shoulders of Golde Cane, whose slight frame and saddened looks mirrored his own. With his other arm outstretched, he gestured across the glittering blue bay to the massive stone walls of Jaffa, its ancient spires, and red clay roofs. Look, mine meydl, he said, look! Eretz Israel!

  For the first time since her mother went missing, the girl cried out in pure, unbridled joy.

  She raised her arms and lifted her palms toward the sky in a gesture familiar to every Baptist in the land of her birth.

  Hallelujah! she said. Praise the Lord!

  Fishbein looked from her to the coastline and back. Despite his promises to Magnus Bailey, he saw that Golde would be an od
d duck wherever she went, even here.

  Oh, mine meydl, what a dear, strange bird you will seem to the good Jews of Eretz Israel, he thought. Maybe me, too, after all these years. How can I tell? America puts the stamp on you without your knowing.

  He searched for a term that everyone talked about in America these days, one he considered particularly apt for his musings. He found it.

  Technicolor. Yes, America puts the stamp on you in Technicolor.

  He studied again his Golde, her bright new smile, her green eyes set in a brown face that looked so much like Minerva’s it stabbed his heart. He studied the azure sea, the cobalt sky, the red roofs, the sparkling stone that grabbed the sun and clasped it to itself like a garment. The stamp of Eretz Israel looked to be Technicolor too. He shrugged. It’s alright, he thought, it’s alright. Then he laughed and raised his palms upward like Kohanim about to give the priestly blessing.

  Hallelujah! he said. The Hebrew felt good in his mouth. Hallelujah! We are home!

  Acknowledgments

  There was a point quite early on in the writing of Marching to Zion when I’d written a particularly dramatic scene and had no idea where to go next. I thought maybe what I had was a very long short story and that the novel I’d intended to write was stillborn. I nearly stopped working on it altogether. Enter my dear husband, Stephen K. Glickman, always my hero. He said, “Why don’t you take your own advice? Aren’t you the one who’s always saying, ‘Follow the voice, the voice never lies’?” So I did. And along the way, I discovered the plot and characters of Marching to Zion. Yet another reason to be eternally grateful to the sage I married.

  Speaking of gratitude, I must grant my agent, Peter Riva, his due, which is mammoth. Peter is a brilliant man, as good as the game, and I am proud to be under his wing. Diane Reverand, my editor, must also take her bow, especially for her stamina in the face of my stubbornness.

  Once again, for their expertise in shepherding my novels across all media, I am deeply indebted to the undeniable genius of Jane Friedman, Jeff Sharp, and Luke Parker Bowles; the shining wisdom of Tina Pohlman; the knife-sharp shrewdness of Rachel Chou; and the sundry and glittering talents of Danny Monico, Galen Glaze, Nicole Passage, Rachelle Mandik, Jason Gabbert, and of course, my own darling Laura De Silva. Thank you all. Your energy and com­mitment astound. Bravo.

  About the Author

  Born on the south shore of Boston, Mary Glickman studied at the Université de Lyon and Boston University. While she was raised in a strict Irish-Polish Catholic family, from an early age Glickman felt an affinity toward Judaism and converted to the faith when she married. After living in Boston for twenty years, she and her husband traveled to South Carolina and discovered a love for all things Southern. Glickman now lives in Seabrook Island, South Carolina, with her husband, cat, and until recently, her beloved horse, King of Harts, of blessed memory. Her first novel, Home in the Morning, has been optioned for film by Jim Kohlberg, director of The Music Never Stopped (Sundance 2011).

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this book or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2013 by Mary Glickman

  Cover design by Jason Gabbert

  978-1-4804-3558-2

  Published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

  345 Hudson Street

  New York, NY 10014

  www.openroadmedia.com

  EBOOKS BY MARY GLICKMAN

  FROM OPEN ROAD MEDIA

  Available wherever ebooks are sold

  Open Road Integrated Media is a digital publisher and multimedia content company. Open Road creates connections between authors and their audiences by marketing its ebooks through a new proprietary online platform, which uses premium video content and social media.

  Videos, Archival Documents, and New Releases

  Sign up for the Open Road Media newsletter and get news delivered straight to your inbox.

  Sign up now at

  www.openroadmedia.com/newsletters

  FIND OUT MORE AT

  WWW.OPENROADMEDIA.COM

  FOLLOW US:

  @openroadmedia and

  Facebook.com/OpenRoadMedia