Pete Hamill - Snow in August

When they reached the synagogue, Rabbi Hirsch was still poking with his mop at the first swastika.

“Rabbi, I’m Joe Heaney,” the priest said. “I was a chaplain in the 103rd Airborne. Most of these men fought their way into Germany two years ago, and one of them lost a leg in Italy. They are not going to let this bullshit happen in their parish.”

“Please,” Rabbi Hirsch said, “I can do it myself.”

“No, you can’t,” Father Heaney said.

And so they went to work. Mr. Ponte, the stonemason, fingered the texture of the bricks, while Mr. Gallagher examined the paint. “Sapolin number 3,” Mr. Gallagher said. “Every moron in the parish paints his chairs with it and then sits down before they’re dry.” Together, he and Mr. Ponte mixed the solvents in a steel pail. Others peeled off their Easter jackets, removed their ties, rolled up their sleeves, and grabbed rags and mops. Father Heaney stripped to his T-shirt. Albert, the altar boy, arrived with buns and coffee, then grabbed a cloth. A police car came along and one of the cops wanted to make a report, but Father Heaney said that he and Rabbi Hirsch would take care of the matter in their own way.

“We both believe in an Old Testament God,” Father Heaney said. “He punishes all morons.”

The cops shrugged and drove away. Michael hung his jacket and tie on the picket fence, on top of Charlie Senator’s coat, and joined in the scrubbing. The men said little as they scrubbed and grunted. Their eyes seemed cloudy with memory, as if the things they had seen a few years earlier were driving them to finish. Michael was soon exhausted but pushed himself harder, thinking of the grainy black-and-white images from the Venus newsreels, the skeletal men, the hollow-eyed women, the mounds of corpses. Thinking of soldiers dead in the snow. He kept glancing at Rabbi Hirsch, but the man had retreated into himself, his lips moving inaudibly as he attacked the hated red paint. The word JEW vanished. Then the word GO. And another swastika.

He must be thinking of her, Michael thought.

His wife.

Leah.

At one point, Frankie McCarthy and four of the Falcons strolled up from Ellison Avenue and stood on the far corner beside the armory. For them, Michael thought, the hour was early. Usually, you didn’t see them until noon. They passed around a quart of Rheingold beer and wore sneers on their faces and one of them said something that made them all laugh. But they knew better than to look for trouble from this group of men. Michael thought: Come on, Frankie, shout something about the Kikes, come on. These guys kicked the shit out of the Wehrmacht , Frankie, these guys beat Tojo. Come on, prick.

For a moment, Charlie Senator glared at the Falcons, as if he were thinking the same things, then went back to work, putting his weight on his good leg as he bent into the paint with his rags. Lighting cigarettes, jingling change in their pockets, the Falcons watched the Christians cleaning the swastikas from the synagogue and then went bopping away to the park.

Finally, it was done. The walls were lighter where the swastikas had been painted. But the light patches had irregular shapes and didn’t indicate what had been put there on an Easter morning. Rabbi Hirsch walked back and forth alone, mounted the steps leading to the sealed front door of the upstairs sanctuary, examining the walls, then came back to the men. He was still shaking his head, his mouth a bitter slash. The men had finished cleaning their hands and pulling on their jackets and neckties. Most were sipping coffee and smoking cigarettes and wolfing down the buns from the bakery. They looked awkward now, saying little, staring at the wall or the sidewalk or the sky. In the war, Michael thought, they must have soldiered with Jews. But they certainly didn’t know many rabbis. The synagogue was as strange a place to them as it was to Michael on that first morning of ice and snow. He saw Rabbi Hirsch flex his fingers as if to shake hands, but his hands were covered with paint.

“Thank you, gentlemen,” the rabbi said hoarsely.

“Here, Rabbi, use this stuff to get the paint off your hands,” said Mr. Gallagher, dipping a rag into the solvent. “It smells awful, but it does the job.”

“Thank you, and thank you , Father Heaney,” the rabbi said, cleaning his hands. “And Michael…”

His body shook in a dry, choked way, but he would not weep.

“I wish to the synagogue, you all could come,” the rabbi said. “To have a big seder together.… But food we don’t have here, just tea, and matzoh, and—”

“It’s all right, Rabbi,” Father Heaney said. “Some other time.”

The rabbi bowed in a stiff, dignified way. Michael looked at his eyes and saw that he did not believe there would be another time. They would all go back to their world and he would stay in his.

“I’ll see you, Rabbi,” Mr. Gallagher said, and grabbed the pail, emptying the solvents into the gutter, nodding to the others to retrieve the mops. “Let’s move out,” he said. “It’s a beautiful day.”

Charlie Senator glanced at his watch and then at Father Heaney.

“Well,” he said, “I better go do my Easter duty.”

“You just did,” Father Heaney said, popping a Camel from his pack.

That afternoon, after hanging up his suit and taking a bath to wash away the odor of the solvents, Michael handed his mother the five dollars. He explained about Mrs. Griffin but didn’t tell her the details of his dreams.

“Och, Michael, you should keep it,” she said, holding each corner of the bill with thumb and forefinger. “It was your dream.”

“No, let’s save it for a phonograph.” He told her about the composers Rabbi Hirsch had mentioned, finding their names written into his notebook. Smetana, Dvořák, Mahler. “We can hear all the music they don’t play on the radio.”

“Fair enough,” she said, and put the bill in her purse.

Then they sat down to an early dinner. Kate Devlin did not mention what had happened at the synagogue, so he knew she must have taken the trolley car to the eight o’clock mass at Sacred Heart. If she had walked, she’d have seen the swastikas. But Michael did not want to spoil the meal by relating the events of the morning. The meal was the reason she’d risen so early to go to mass and had then rushed home to scrub potatoes and peel carrots, and prepare the small pot roast for the amazing oven of the new gas stove. That, and one other thing: although she had paid for a new suit for Michael, she did not buy an Easter outfit for herself. “I think I’ll skip the fashion show at the eleven o’clock mass, thank you very much,” she’d said before leaving. Now the kitchen was filled with the aroma of the roast, and before they sat down she toasted the hametz that Rabbi Hirsch had sent to them for Passover.

“Well, happy Easter, son,” she said, “and to all the others who don’t have food.”

She said grace then, with Michael adding an “amen,” and they began to eat. The meat was pink and savory and he cut off small pieces and tried to chew them slowly. He still ate much faster than his mother did. He slathered butter on the opened potatoes and the crunchy toasted hametz . He piled more carrots on his plate. She cautioned him about using too much salt. He sipped cold water. Then he told her what a seder was and how Jesus and the disciples were actually at a seder when they had the Last Supper and how next year Rabbi Hirsch wanted them to come to a seder at the synagogue and was going to invite Jackie Robinson too. Kate Devlin thought that was a wonderful idea and said she would cook and they could carry the food up to Kelly Street.

But when dinner was almost over, he told her what had happened that morning. Kate Devlin was furious about the swastikas and thrilled at what Father Heaney and the men had done.