Lorrie Moore - 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories

That is, you do the same thing if you are Yakov Blotnik and you once had a cat on the roof.

When the engines, all four of them, arrived, Rabbi Binder had four times given Ozzie the count of three. The big hook-and-ladder swung around the corner and one of the firemen leaped from it, plunging headlong towards the yellow fire hydrant in front of the synagogue. With a huge wrench he began to unscrew the top nozzle. Rabbi Binder raced over to him and pulled at his shoulder.

“There’s no fire…”

The fireman mumbled back over his shoulder and, heatedly, continued working at the nozzle.

“But there’s no fire, there’s no fire…” Binder shouted. When the fireman mumbled again, the rabbi grasped his face with both hands and pointed it up at the roof.

To Ozzie it looked as though Rabbi Binder was trying to tug the fireman’s head out of his body, like a cork from a bottle. He had to giggle at the picture they made: it was a family portrait — rabbi in black skullcap, fireman in red fire hat, and the little yellow hydrant squatting beside like a kid brother, bareheaded. From the edge of the roof Ozzie waved at the portrait, a one-handed, flapping, mocking wave; in doing it his right foot slipped from under him. Rabbi Binder covered his eyes with his hands.

Firemen work fast. Before Ozzie had even regained his balance, a big, round, yellowed net was being held on the synagogue lawn. The firemen who held it looked up at Ozzie with stern, feelingless faces.

One of the firemen turned his head towards Rabbi Binder. “What, is the kid nuts or something?”

Rabbi Binder unpeeled his hands from his eyes, slowly, painfully, as if they were tape. Then he checked: nothing on the sidewalk, no dents in the net.

“Is he gonna jump, or what?” the fireman shouted.

In a voice not at all like a statue, Rabbi Binder finally answered. “Yes. Yes, I think so… He’s been threatening to…”

Threatening to? Why, the reason he was on the roof, Ozzie remembered, was to get away; he hadn’t even thought about jumping. He had just run to get away, and the truth was that he hadn’t really headed for the roof as much as he’d been chased there.

“What’s his name, the kid?”

“Freedman,” Rabbi Binder answered. “Oscar Freedman.”

The fireman looked up at Ozzie. “What is it with you, Oscar? You gonna jump, or what?”

Ozzie did not answer. Frankly, the question had just arisen.

“Look, Oscar, if you’re gonna jump, jump — and if you’re not gonna jump, don’t jump. But don’t waste our time, willya?”

Ozzie looked at the fireman and then at Rabbi Binder. He wanted to see Rabbi Binder cover his eyes one more time.

“I’m going to jump.”

And then he scampered around the edge of the roof to the corner, where there was no net below, and he flapped his arms at his sides, swishing the air and smacking his palms to his trousers on the downbeat. He began screaming like some kind of engine, “Wheeeee… wheeeeee,” and leaning way out over the edge with the upper half of his body. The firemen whipped around to cover the ground with the net. Rabbi Binder mumbled a few words to somebody and covered his eyes. Everything happened quickly, jerkily, as in a silent movie. The crowd, which had arrived with the fire engines, gave out a long, Fourth-of-July fireworks oooh-aahhh. In the excitement no one had paid the crowd much heed, except, of course, Yakov Blotnik, who swung from the doorknob counting heads. “Fier und tsvansik… finf und tsvansik… Oy, Gut!” It wasn’t like this with the cat.

Rabbi Binder peeked through his fingers, checked the sidewalk and net. Empty. But there was Ozzie racing to the other corner. The firemen raced with him but were unable to keep up. Whenever Ozzie wanted to he might jump and splatter himself upon the sidewalk, and by the time the firemen scooted to the spot all they could do with their net would be to cover the mess.

“Wheeeee… wheeeee…”

“Hey, Oscar,” the winded fireman yelled, “what the hell is this, a game or something?”

“Wheeeee… wheeeee…”

“Hey, Oscar—”

But he was off now to the other corner, flapping his wings fiercely. Rabbi Binder couldn’t take it any longer — the fire engines from nowhere, the screaming suicidal boy, the net. He fell to his knees, exhausted, and with his hands curled together in front of his chest like a little dome, he pleaded, “Oscar, stop it, Oscar. Don’t jump, Oscar. Please come down… Please don’t jump.”

And further back in the crowd a single voice, a single young voice, shouted a lone word to the boy on the roof.

“Jump!”

It was Itzie. Ozzie momentarily stopped flapping.

“Go ahead, Ozz — jump!” Itzie broke off his point of the star and courageously, with the inspiration not of a wise-guy but of a disciple, stood alone. “Jump, Ozz, jump!”

Still on his knees, his hands still curled, Rabbi Binder twisted his body back. He looked at Itzie, then, agonizingly, back to Ozzie.

“OSCAR, DON’T JUMP! PLEASE, DON’T JUMP… please please…”

“Jump!” This time it wasn’t Itzie but another point of the star. By the time Mrs. Freedman arrived to keep her four-thirty appointment with Rabbi Binder, the whole little upside-down heaven was shouting and pleading for Ozzie to jump, and Rabbi Binder no longer was pleading with him not to jump, but was crying into the dome of his hands.

Understandably Mrs. Freedman couldn’t figure out what her son was doing on the roof. So she asked.

“Ozzie, my Ozzie, what are you doing? My Ozzie, what is it?”

Ozzie stopped wheeeeeing and slowed his arms down to a cruising flap, the kind birds use in soft winds, but he did not answer. He stood against the low, clouded, darkening sky — light clicked down swiftly now, as on a small gear — flapping softly and gazing down at the small bundle of a woman who was his mother.

“What are you doing, Ozzie?” She turned towards the kneeling Rabbi Binder and rushed so close that only a paper-thickness of dusk lay between her stomach and his shoulders.

“What is my baby doing?”

Rabbi Binder gaped at her but he too was mute. All that moved was the dome of his hands; it shook back and forth like a weak pulse.

“Rabbi, get him down! He’ll kill himself. Get him down, my only baby…”

“I can’t,” Rabbi Binder said, “I can’t…” and he turned his handsome head towards the crowd of boys behind him. “It’s them. Listen to them.”

And for the first time Mrs. Freedman saw the crowd of boys, and she heard what they were yelling.

“He’s doing it for them. He won’t listen to me. It’s them.” Rabbi Binder spoke like one in a trance.

“For them?”

“Yes.”

“Why for them?”

“They want him to…”

Mrs. Freedman raised her two arms upward as though she were conducting the sky. “For them he’s doing it!” And then in a gesture older than pyramids, older than prophets and floods, her arms came slapping down to her sides. “A martyr I have. Look!” She tilted her head to the roof. Ozzie was still flapping softly. “My martyr.”

“Oscar, come down, please ,” Rabbi Binder groaned.

In a startlingly even voice Mrs. Freedman called to the boy on the roof. “Ozzie, come down, Ozzie. Don’t be a martyr, my baby.”

As though it were a litany, Rabbi Binder repeated her words. “Don’t be a martyr, my baby. Don’t be a martyr.”

“Gawhead, Ozz— be a Martin!” It was Itzie. “Be a Martin, be a Martin,” and all the voices joined in singing for Martindom, whatever it was. “Be a Martin, be a Martin…”

Somehow when you’re on a roof the darker it gets the less you can hear. All Ozzie knew was that two groups wanted two new things: his friends were spirited and musical about what they wanted; his mother and the rabbi were even-toned, chanting, about what they didn’t want. The rabbi’s voice was without tears now and so was his mother’s.