Pete Hamill - Snow in August

“Big tough guy,” Jimmy said.

“So what about it, Michael?” Sonny said.

“I just don’t believe the story,” Michael said, wishing he’d never told them about his visit to the synagogue.

“You believe in Captain Marvel and you don’t believe this?” Sonny said.

“Who says I believe in Captain Marvel?”

“You told me last year maybe it could be true.”

“That was last year.”

“So this year, go up the fucking synagogue and see what you can find out.”

Michael finished his cocoa.

“Let me think about it,” he said.

On New Year’s Eve, horns blew and church bells rang and pots were banged on fire escapes, but it wasn’t like the year before, the first New Year’s after the war. There was too much snow, muffling the sound, and there were too many men and women who had lost their jobs in the war plants. As 1947 arrived, Michael stayed at home. His mother went downstairs to a party in Mrs. Griffin’s flat on the second floor, and he was alone when Guy Lombardo played “Auld Lang Syne” on the radio at midnight. He wondered what the words meant. Auld was easy: old. But what did lang mean? Or syne ? He couldn’t find them in the dictionary and hoped he would remember to ask his mother about them in the morning. He read The Three Musketeers in bed, thinking that he and Sonny and Jimmy Kabinsky were like Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, and that they needed one more guy to be D’Artagnan. The title of the book wasn’t really accurate because there were actually four musketeers, but in the end, that didn’t matter. What mattered was their slogan, their motto: All for one, and one for all. That’s the way he and Sonny and Jimmy were. Even when they disagreed on some things, they were together. Friends. Musketeers. Forever. He was thinking about that when he fell asleep.

On the following Saturday, on the last weekend of vacation, Michael was assigned to serve the seven o’clock mass at Sacred Heart. The snow had ended. But cars were still frozen in reefs of black ice, and on Kelly Street the icicles were even more menacing as they aimed their frozen snouts from the burst copper drains of the armory. The giant toppled elm had been shoved to the side by a snowplow, but the smashed fence and the ruined car were still there, encrusted with ice. Michael saw them as he turned past the Venus, shoved along by the hard wind off the harbor.

When he reached the synagogue, the door was closed. He heard no voice saying please from the dark interior, and he felt a certain relief. All week long, Sonny had pushed him to go back to the synagogue as a spy. To befriend the rabbi. To locate the secret treasure. In short, to betray the man with the sad voice and the frayed cuffs and the story Michael wanted to know. For a moment, Michael hesitated, thinking he should knock and ask the rabbi if he was needed to turn on the lights. He did not knock. He kept walking, all the way to the church on the hill.

But for the entire mass, as Father Heaney raced through the liturgy, Michael thought about the rabbi. He knew he should be meditating on the Passion of Christ, giving personal meaning to the memorized Latin phrases. But Michael couldn’t get the rabbi out of his head. Not only because of the treasure. Maybe there was a treasure and maybe there wasn’t, but Michael still could not see himself entering the synagogue at night to carry it away. And besides, if Jews were bad because they were sneaky and treacherous, wouldn’t he be just as bad if he was sneaky and treacherous too? For a moment during the offertory, he heard his own voice arguing with Sonny, telling him he couldn’t do what Sonny wanted him to do. Sonny, it’s wrong. Sonny, we can’t even think about doing this because it is just goddamned well wrong. He heard Sonny laugh. He saw Sonny shrug. He heard Sonny remind him that their motto was all for one and one for all.

Then it was time for Communion, and the old ladies came up from the pews, and some young women too, and two older men, and he held the paten and then imagined the rabbi’s face. Maybe he was still sleeping, he thought. After all, last week I served the eight, not the seven, so maybe he’ll be waiting for me at ten to eight. But then maybe he’s sick. Or maybe he heard about what Frankie McCarthy did to Mister G and he’s afraid to open the door. Michael brooded, while Father Heaney deposited the host on various tongues. For a moment, Michael hoped that someone else had come along to switch on the lights, and then felt a stab of jealousy. Nobody else should do that job. I did it last week, I should do it again today.

The Communion ended. Father Heaney rushed to the conclusion, muttering his blunt Latin phrases, while Michael returned his automatic responses. But the boy’s mind wasn’t on the mass; he was too full of his own hard questions. Why did I keep walking? Was it because I was afraid of being late for mass? Or because I was so cold? Of course not. I was afraid of going in there to case the joint. Of being tempted to find the treasure and then being too weak to resist the temptation. But, hey: what the hell would we do with a treasure anyway? Answer me that, Sonny. Would we take it to Stavenhagen’s Pawn Shop and sell it? Bring it to some fence down on Garfield Place? If three kids showed up with diamonds and rubies, the cops would know in two hours. It’s a goddamned joke. And another thing, Sonny: The synagogue is a house of God. And the Christians came from the Jews. The same God! And those people wrote the Bible, man. It says so in the encyclopedia. Before Jesus, there were the Jews. They invented the goddamned alphabet, Sonny! It would be like robbing a church , Sonny. He could hear Sonny laughing. Worse, he could see Sonny turning away from him, their friendship over.

But maybe there was another reason, he thought. A much simpler reason. Maybe I kept walking because the bearded man was a Jew. Maybe it was as simple as that.

After mass, Michael hung his cassock in a closet, folded his surplice, grabbed his mackinaw, and hurried down the passage connecting the altar boys’ room with the priests’ sacristy. He wanted to talk to Father Heaney. The eight o’clock mass had already started, and he could hear Father Mulligan out on the altar, saying the mass in his more sedate, high-pitched voice.

Father Heaney had removed his own vestments and was sitting on a folding chair, his feet wide apart, deep in thought and smoking a Camel. He didn’t look up when Michael entered the sacristy. The boy eased over and stood in front of him. Father Heaney said nothing.

“Father Heaney?”

The priest looked up. “Yes?”

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure, kid.”

“Did the Jews kill Jesus?”

The priest looked directly at him now, and Michael noticed that his hooded eyes were red and watery.

“Why are you asking me such a dumb question at this hour of the morning?” he said sharply.

“I, uh, well, some kids say, you know, down on Ellison Avenue, they say that the Jews killed Jesus, and—”

“They’re jerks.”

“The Jews?”

“No, the idiots you’re talking to down on Ellison Avenue.”

The priest looked up, pulled a final drag on his Camel, and turned on the water tap in the sink. He held the cigarette under the water and then dropped the drowned butt down in the chute used for dead flowers. He cupped some water in his hands, splashed it on his face, then turned off the tap and reached for a towel. He dried his face and rubbed his eyes. Every movement seemed part of a ritual.

“The Romans killed Jesus,” Father Heaney said, with disgust in his voice. “They were the big shots in Jerusalem, not the Jews, and they saw Jesus as a threat to their power. Like most politicians. Or better, like racket guys. So they bumped him off. Just like racket guys do it. If your idiot friends on Ellison Avenue could read, they’d know that.”