An American Town by Carol K

Chicago NELSON ALGREN SHORT Tribune STORY PRIZE FINALIST 2011

An American Town By Carol K. Howell

“What is your name, sir?” the TV crew asked a man in the crowd. He rolled up his sleeve and showed them his number.

he evil was vanquished. The Yanks had pounded it back into the Euro- pean soil, good and deep this time, far below the mass graves where the swamps of blood had finally dried up. Europe was re-building. America had at last thrown open its doors and welcomed Jewish refugees (it helped that there were considerably fewer now), who settled into their own neighborhoods and Levittowns and boroughs. And one of the placesT they chose was a midwestern suburb called Kindleton. By 1977 there were almost as many synagogues in Kindleton as churches; nearly half the population was Jewish, seven thousand of them survivors. The congregations all attended each other’s ecumenical breakfasts and fund-raisers and traded guest sermons twice a year. Kindleton flourished, the big city nearby extended its tendrils, and property values continued to climb—surely everything the nation’s fathers had in mind. Until one bright fall morning when residents opened their doors to find tucked under their welcome mats scarlet fliers stamped with black swastikas and enormous bold letters stomping up and down the page:

WE ARE COMING! WE ARE COMING! WE ARE COMING!

Few survivors were taken by surprise. Most of Kindleton agreed it was a kids’ prank: ap- pallingly well planned and mean. But then everyone knew kids could be mean. Kids didn’t go to ecumenical breakfasts or listen to guest sermons. And if they were particularly mean to Jewish kids, that’s because Jews were always doing something to set themselves apart.

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Dov figured it might take another holocaust or two before the Jews worked that out. Dov himself was fourteen: Dov at home, Dave at school and on the ball field. He had been bar mitzvahed very quietly, no party, at his own request. He was quiet as well in the classroom: though he could always give the right answer, he preferred simply watching from the back. Both parents were graduates of Auschwitz; his father had also done post-doc work at Dachau and Belsen. They met in a DP camp, but it took them sixteen years to produce a child. Dov’s mother had had the honor of being selected in Auschwitz for Herr Dr. Carl Clauberg’s sterilization experiments, performed without anesthesia. It took five operations to repair what he’d done to her. Dov was different in another respect. Most survivor parents didn’t talk about their experiences, especially to their children. His talked. They talked instead of sleeping. Days they sat with glasses of tea at the locksmith shop, nights at the kitchen table with bottles of Slivovitz, remembering out loud, endlessly and in detail. Sometimes they paced, talking. Dov didn’t spend much time at home. He preferred to observe: in the diners and coffee shops, the public library and post office lobby, the town hall when there were meetings—anywhere local adults might be seen in their native habitat, the American Town. Because from the stories Dov’s parents told, from the nightmares that detonated during those rare occasions when their bodies gave out and dumped them onto mattresses in imitation of normal people, Dov knew that it was in just such a placid environment that unthinkable horror could erupt. Like Chthonic monsters, huge tentacles could burst through the earth, waving greedily, seizing everything from radio stations to bank vaults to museum masterpieces to circumcised teenagers, followed shortly by waves of shining dark gods whose speech turned everyone’s will to water and imagination to stone. Followed with swift efficiency by hell on earth.

ut ask Benny Goldblatt, and he would dutifully report that Kindleton was a paradise, a mechaya. And why? Because Jews off the boat were offered two-bedroom Bbrick ranch houses on quarter-acre lots for $2500 down and $159/per. Handfuls, piles, mountains of houses! Jews welcomed in a community of tidy avenues, green lawns, overflowing market shelves! Benny could tell you what a blessing this was because his grandfather, Isidore, proclaimed it every day: bawling, exulting, trumpeting in Benny’s ear, all the while squeezing his neck, gripping his arms, pounding his back. Isidore was no Mo- ses, forced to watch from a distant peak while his people entered the Promised Land—he slept on a nice foldout in the living room and met his cronies daily at Dot’s Donuts. He had

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beat the odds, he declared, grasping Benny with claws smashed by the stones of Buchen- wald, literally crawled out of the grave, though he sure as scheiss hadn’t deserved it—much the opposite, in fact—but he’d walked out of hell into paradise. As he danced Benny about the room, tears would roll down his face to pool in his broad smile, and that’s when Ben- ny’s father would come over to pry his crooked fingers loose and say “Okay, Pop,” and lead him into the kitchen for a nice glass of tea. Benny’s little sister Irene, eight years old with black braids and huge black eyes, watched this scene every day, but their grandfather was always gentle with her–-it was Benny who bore the bruises of his enthusiasm. Yet Kindleton was a paradise for survivors, a little piece of the old country mixed with the best of the new. Good streets, safe schools. Buses to take you shopping, no restrictions. Delicatessens where you could buy almost-like-home bialys, borscht, knishes. All this and the Bill of Rights! Isidore loved best the community pool where you could spend the whole day floating on your back, then go into the Men’s Locker Room and stand for an hour in a hot shower. Of course some survivors were terrified of showers—wouldn’t let them be turned on. In their houses, it was baths or nothing. Benny and Irene heard about that at Hebrew School. A lot of survivor families were weird. Jakie Hirschbaum had to call home every hour he wasn’t at school—if he missed a call, his parents alerted the cops. Everyone felt sorry for him. And Lori-Beth Skulnick couldn’t get sick. Even a cold provoked a sharp scolding from her father about worrying her grandmother. Emil Moskowitz was not allowed to have problems. “You want to know what a problem is?” his father would say. “Go five days without eating. That’s a problem.” These were the kids whose families didn’t talk about what they’d endured. They had only the vaguest ideas why their folks were so weird. But in families like Dov’s, the kids were weird in different ways. There were endurance games, for instance. Like dashing into traffic to snatch up an old pizza crust and gobble it down so you could imagine what true starvation felt like. Or holding your breath when your mom used her hairspray, pretend- ing it was Zyklon-B, to see how long you could have held out. Or refusing Novocain when you needed a filling to see how well you stood up to pain. It was hard to say whose shit was weirder. Some survivors never rolled up their sleeves. You never saw their numbers, not even on the hottest days at the community pool. Some told their children it was their phone number at work. Most kids knew not to ask, the way you didn’t ask about salaries or sex or the missing bulk of the family. And though Kindleton did seem to be a paradise for

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Jews—schools closing for the High Holy Days, almost as many windows with menorahs as with Christmas trees, Hasidim strolling serenely to synagogue—in some houses there were shrieks every night as those who could sleep were sucked down the fast tube to hell. Teach- ers at Kindleton Elementary were used to certain children showing up pale and droopy with bruises under their eyes, and for such children a little nap was often arranged in the nurse’s office. But there were other children, not Jews, who resented this practice, as did their parents. It was for the likes of them that Dov went by “Dave.” Nor did those parents appreciate the way narrow houses had been built facing sideways to accommodate the housing boom in the American Jewish paradise. When you looked out the windows, you saw not trees and grass but intimate views of neighbors washing dishes or watching TV. Not everyone liked the smells curling out of the delis like a moist hand around your neck—the sour pickles and strange meats, the beety and fishy concoctions. Not everyone gazed with anthropological fascination at the sight of bearded men in black hats and robes filling the streets Friday nights while a few blocks away, normal American teens screeched down the main drag looking for parties. No, not everything was mechaya in Kindleton. So Dov wasn’t shocked when the scarlet fliers were followed by phone calls “The( trouble with Hitler is he didn’t finish the job. We’re gonna build bigger ovens and this time get rid of you all!”) and by leaflets tucked into mailboxes. The leaflets declared thatsecret Jew- ish influence in government is giving everything to the blacks and talked about Jewish World Domination and called upon our Aryan-American brothers of the Jewized suburbs who are sick of political manipulation, economic thievery, and forced integration to join our upcoming demonstration. They also promised a pogrom in this country that would make the ones in Europe look like children’s birthday parties. They were signed: Henry Ford Wagner and THE NEW NATIONAL SOCIALISTS.

WE ARE COMING! WE ARE COMING! WE ARE COMING!

Henry Ford Wagner had named himself after two of his hero’s heroes. He was short, with thinning hair combed sideways also like his hero, though with a beer gut that would have disgusted the Führer. He denied himself the mustache, however, sure the resemblance

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was so startling that restaurants would refuse him service. It was hard enough for his men to get fed when they were in uniform. But someday, Henry knew, those very uniforms would command the exact opposite effect: the brown shirts and leather shoulder straps, the tall black boots, the peaked caps, the red-and-black swastika on the left arm with the American flag on the right—yes, that was the most shocking thing, that American flag on the right—all this would someday stun the rabble into compliance. And, as history teaches, compliance is not all that far from complaisance. In the meantime, they would make food runs out of uniform—Bob’s Big Boy was a favorite—and they would work on their manifesto and add to their collection of knives, chains, tire irons, auto jacks, and, hopefully, shotguns, while they planned their little visit to the Jewburbs.

In Kindleton the reaction to the announced demonstration was meetings. Meetings at synagogues, private homes, community centers, Town Hall, Democratic headquarters; but the most effective meeting was the one in the mayor’s office between the mayor and the town attorney, where they worked out an ordinance requiring any marchers to post a bond of $500,000 against damage done to person or property. They thought that would end it, but Wagner went straight to the ACLU—who were nearly all Jews—and lodged a com- plaint. His unalienable rights were being trampled, his freedom to speak suppressed, his freedom to assemble curtailed: it was downright un-American. The ACLU, holding their noses, agreed and sued on his behalf.

Meanwhile, Kindleton swelled: B’nai B’rith and its Anti-Defamation League sent repre- sentatives, so did the American Jewish Committee, the National Jewish Community Rela- tions Advisory Council, the American Jewish Congress, the Jewish War Veterans of the USA, local Jewish organizations, even a yeshiva or two. But mostly it was Judah’s Hammer who arrived in a caravan of cars and a bus to stay for the duration. Not just stay: agitate, vociferate, recruit, and daily practice their battle skills. Named for that small, fierce, canny band of guerilla fighters led by Judah Maccabee who defeated overwhelming Syrian forces in 167 B.C.E., this group traveled the country, showing up wherever Jews were threatened. Their official motto was “Never again!” but what they shouted in battle was“Gai tren zich!” which translated roughly as “Go fuck yourself!” Classic Yiddish insults—“You should get a stomach cramp!” “Onions should grow from your navel!” “You should swell up like a mountain!”—didn’t translate quite as neatly. Judah’s Hammer wore armbands showing a

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boot marked with the Star of David stomping a swastika. They brought baseball bats and tambourines, and, when they weren’t shouting and attempting to dominate town meetings, practiced karate kicks and danced the hora in the municipal parking lot. Town children hung on the chainlink fence to watch. In school everyone was juiced up. Teachers were nervous. Some had added Holocaust units to their curricula; others couldn’t stand hearing another word about it. But there had always been that kind of split in the schools of Kindleton: you were either pro-nap or anti- nap. There were fights after school, pushing and grappling affairs, which gradually evolved into staged warfare behind barricades: the Jewish kids behind the public library, the other kids—the ones whose parents didn’t throw the fliers away—behind the butcher shop across the street. They threw rocks. After adults came out and yelled at them, they took to the woods. Benny, tallest of the Jewish kids, was their leader. A bulky boy named Kevin Tattersall led the others. Both had half-crazy grandparents living with them and were bursting with the energy of words and acts they were forced to keep dammed up. And both were alter- nate pitchers on the school softball team and thus displayed decent aim with a rock, which improved with daily practice. Benny begged Dov to come and be their general—everyone knew what he could do on the ball field—but Dov was not available. He had taken to following Judah’s Hammer everywhere. He tried to apply for membership but was told, kindly, that he was too young. So he continued to watch—especially Abner, the leader. That was how he discovered the cache of guns in the trunk of the dented red Cutlass parked behind Reuben’s Deli. Judah’s Hammer was known for using baseball bats, that all-American weapon, and Abner had said at one meeting: “We’re not terrorists. We’re not assassins. Mainly we use our fists. But if they decide to up the ante, we’re prepared.” He’d used similar words when they’d parked the Cutlass deep in the shadows—“We won’t stand by and watch. If they want to up the ante, we’re prepared”—and glanced at the car’s trunk. Dov had been there. No one noticed him hanging about: he was dark, quiet, thin—first-generation American, bred of a people conditioned for shadows. After that, he kept a special eye on the car. So he was lurking close enough, the day they unlocked the trunk, to see the grim heap of handguns briefly counted under a canvas sheet. And because Abner’s words had made a deep impression on him, because he realized he’d spent his own life standing by, watching, he decided he would take some action of his own. The car was not always guarded. And he was the son of a locksmith. Being a locksmith was what kept

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Dov’s father alive in Auschwitz—it was a skill even the Nazis valued. He had made sure to teach his son everything he knew. It would be only a minute’s work to pick the car’s lock with one of his father’s tools and shove a gun into his jacket pocket. Dov had also taken to attending the Town Hall meetings, which had grown nearly as acrimonious as the rock fights. Children were not permitted, but it was easy to fade into the edges of the group as everyone crowded forward to shout down whatever speaker was trying to shout down the crowd. The town had split into three contingents: the mayor’s office, who wanted everything left to strictly official channels, those who urged a non-violent response, and those who wanted Nazi blood painting the sidewalks of Kindleton. Nobody respected the podium or the microphone. Words flew like fists. “I’m telling you,” insisted the rep from B’nai Bri’ith. “Quarantine treatment is the way to go! They come, we turn our backs. They get a space to march, nobody watches, nobody listens, nobody’s rights are violated, and nobody can sue. It’s perfect!” “Perfect?” cried Isidore. “Ignore and it goes away? That was the mentality of Germany in the thirties. Eleven thugs in a beer hall in Munich—that’s all it took—that and the toler- ance of millions!” “Folks, listen to me,” implored the town attorney, tugging his walrus mustache. “This is just a bunch of punks playing games—that’s all it is, political theater.” “That’s what they said about Munich!” “This time we’re not waiting for the ghettoes and the trains!” “But they have a right to speak,” said one of the ACLU guys, who was viciously hissed. “The constitution has to be preserved. If people feel pain along the way, that’s the price we pay for preserving the very reasons this country was founded. Free speech! Right to assemble! What do you think makes us different from Nazis in the first place?” “We don’t let monsters march down our streets and terrorize our citizens!” Some of the yeshiva students seized the microphone and handed it reverently to an elderly man in a caftan. He spoke in Yiddish and one of them translated. “What we have here is older than Nazis, older than the constitution, older than we are—“ “Just say it, alter!“ yelled a Judah’s Hammer girl. “The time for sermons is over!” The yeshiva students glared at her. “Scholars argue the best traditions of the Book and the Law,” the old man went on, “against the evil that seethes in the darkness. We think it seeks only us. But it waits ulti- mately to destroy all civility and civilization. As for the destruction of Jewry, that will come from within, from ignorance and apathy, from intermarriage and assimilation. Look within!

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That is the great danger now!” A great groan went up. “This is what got us marched down the cinder path into the showers, arguing halacha all the way,” shouted the Judah’s Hammer girl. “Sit down, tzad- dik, and be quiet.” The yeshiva boys gasped. Another survivor popped up. “Isn’t 5000 years enough? Why do they hate us?” “It is enough!” cried one of the Judah’s Hammer men. “If Nazis come to Kindleton, they won’t be going home. We’ll make sure of that!” A great roar went up. Over the din the ACLU lawyer shouted: “You can’t wipe out our most essential freedom because a handful of bullies wants to parade in costumes. It’s the same right that let Dr. King march in Mississippi and Alabama!” “But this is not a march for social justice!” Judah’s Hammer cried. “It’s still the same right!” ACLU flung back. “They’re not just saying they hate Jews,” Benny’s father pointed out. “They may indeed be entitled to that opinion. But they’re advocating the extermination of humanity, and that is no one’s right.” Wild applause greeted his remark. But the ACLU lawyer retorted: “Those are words. Freedom to offend is not the same as freedom to harm. There’s no constitutional right not to be insulted.” Another roar went up as families gripped survivor members who were trembling. “What do you call harm?” The lawyer spread his arms. “By this logic, you couldn’t perform `The Merchant of Ven- ice’ in the park because it exposes Jews to contempt.” “So we wouldn’t buy tickets!” yelled the owner of the deli. “It’s not the same as stomping down our street and giving the Nazi salute!” “Get an injunction,” pleaded Benny’s father. “My dad’s been hurt enough. Don’t let them come.” “If you issue an injunction,” the ACLU lawyer pleaded back, “you’ll be dancing on the grave of the First Amendment.” “Then pry out your fillings so you can hand them over when the death camps open!” shouted Isidore. “That uniform you want to protect sent my whole family to the gas chambers! Sixty-one people I lost! Too bad you don’t know what it feels like!” “Too bad they didn’t drag you out of your house in the middle of the night and throw

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you on a train!” “Or smash your child’s head with a rifle butt!” The ACLU guy reeled, then came back angry. “Listen, schmuck, don’t talk like I’m not part of this—I’m as Jewish as you are!” “Could have fooled me!” “Yeah, drop your pants and let’s see!” A yeshiva boy turned his head. “Now you sound like a Nazi,” he said, and a fistfight nearly broke out. The town attorney stepped in. By now his mustache drooped at least an inch longer. “Listen folks, don’t let them turn us against each other. They’re a bunch of loud-mouthed clowns—nobody’s going to take them seriously.” “That’s what they said in Berlin!” someone roared, still being restrained by friends. “We need the Bill of Rights to avoid turning into Berlin,” cried the ACLU. “A free society is the only protection against fascism.” “Let them come!” cried Judah’s Hammer. “We’ll scrape them up with spoons!” “We cannot sink to the level of the brutes,” the rabbi pleaded. “There must be no violence—we are a people of the Law!” “And the Law says an eye for an eye!” “Don’t give them a platform! They’re just seeking publicity!” “Right—quarantine! Ignore them and hand them a total defeat!” “We will not stand still and look away! My parents died for this! All my brothers and sisters!” “If I may be permitted, we non-Jews share your outrage and dismay, but violence is never the—” “The whole world wondered why we didn’t fight back. They’re watching us now. Do we pull our shades and hide?” “We should turn our backs,” pleaded the rabbi. “Refuse them an audience.” “Yeah, and who’s gonna keep the TV cameras away? We gonna hold them off at gun point?” The leader of Judah’s Hammer jumped onto a chair. “What have the rabbis always counseled? Prayer, study, and deeds of loving kindness.” He spat. “Last time that was a one-way ticket to Treblinka.” As if this were a signal, his entire group leaped onto chairs, pulling signs out of nowhere, jabbing them into the air: RAVENSBRUCK, DACHAU, BU- CHENWALD, MAIDENEK, BERGEN-BELSEN, BELZEC, CHELMNO, SOBIBÓR, TRE-

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BLINKA, FLOSSENBÜRG, GROSS-ROSEN, MALCHOW, MAUTHAUSEN-GUSEN, NEUENGAMME, PLASZÓW, SACHSENHAUSEN, STUTTHOF, then, like poisonous mushrooms springing up all over the room, AUSCHWITZ, AUSCHWITZ, AUSCHWITZ, AUSCHWITZ, AUSCHWITZ, AUSCHWITZ, AUSCHWITZ, AUSCHWITZ. Now the crowd began to chant that name, until every other voice was drowned out: “Auschwitz! Auschwitz! Auschwitz! Auschwitz! Auschwitz! Auschwitz! Auschwitz! Auschwitz! Aus- chwitz! Auschwitz!” The meeting ended then, perhaps because no one else could speak, perhaps because the mayor clutched his chest and threw a sharp glance at the attorney, who nodded and called for an ambulance, which came with sirens screaming though it was parked just down the block, waiting.

he town attorney found a sympathetic judge and got an injunction on the cre- ative grounds of widespread mental anguish. The ACLU went to Superior Court Tand promptly got it overturned. The town council passed three more ordinanc- es: demonstrators could not display symbols deemed offensive to the community, or wear military-style uniforms, or distribute literature which sought to disparage people on religious or ethnic grounds. The ACLU took the town straight back to court. The court wanted to know whether Kindleton was planning to secede from the nation so it could dispense with the Bill of Rights altogether, then ruled in Wagner’s favor on everything except the swastika. Upon appeal, the State Supreme Court decided the swastika had to be included. The Nazis were right. It was free speech.

The New National Socialists were jubilant. They were going to Jew Town in their fancy clothes, they were going on their special day, and they were going with smiles on their faces. There would only be six cars in their caravan, but they were fitting them up with White Power banners, little fluttering swastika flags, and a P.A. system that worked. Henry thought the effect was going to be damn intimidating. Plus he’d been ready with a good quote when that city reporter called him up after the final ruling. He’d said: “I con- sider all non-Aryans subhuman. The white race is the only race capable of creating and maintaining civilization.” Nice and crisp. Shocking. He bet that got everyone’s attention, and attention, at this point, was the point.

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he children of Kindleton conducted their own meetings—not just in the woods, but in buzzing classrooms, on playgrounds, sidewalks, even at Hebrew School, Twhere the Jewish kids whose families talked finally enlightened the kids whose families didn’t. They heard about towns where the entire Jewish community, from grand- pas to toddlers, was lined up, stripped, and mowed down with machine guns. They heard how babies were used for target practice, ripped in half, smashed against the pavement so their mothers would let go. They heard about the cattle cars, the showers, the ovens, the fire pits into which children, the sick, the elderly were tossed alive because it was cheaper than gassing them first. The ones who told talked boldly in voices of awe, of relish, the way they’d narrate the details of a Saturday horror matinee. None of the children were sure what was real—it all sounded like the kind of TV their parents never let them watch. But no one stopped to wonder why grandparents would lie or so many would say the same thing. The Holocaust units at Kindleton Elementary had a similar effect on Kevin’s troops. His boys took to drawing swastikas on the inside covers of their notebooks, where teachers couldn’t see, and flashing them at Jewish kids in class. In the lunch line they hissed, long and slow and sinuous—it was supposed to sound like poison gas. On the playground, they goose-stepped, and one of the dimmer boys, borrowing from the TV show “Welcome Back, Kotter” and a confused notion of Nazi tortures, took to shouting: “Up your nose with a rub- ber hose!” The Jewish kids, physically weaker—the result of centuries of crowded ghetto life and a cultural obsession with study—found limited means of fighting back on school property. Instead, they swaggered, adding a twist to their own TV heroes, sticking lollipops in their mouths like Detective Kojak, shouting “Who loves ya, baby?” while pointing their fingers like guns. Once Kevin and Benny did get into it right on the playground. What started the fight were actual words, almost a real argument, but it didn’t get far: “My dad says anyone who destroys the rights of others to express unpopular ideas has more in common with Nazis than he thinks!” Kevin declared in one long breath, something he had evidently heard so often he could recite it. “Well, how would your dad feel if the Nazis made your family dig their own grave, then shot them with a machine-gun so all the bodies fell in, but you were only wounded, and you waited till dark and crawled up past all the dead bodies and blood and dirt and clawed your way out but got caught later and put in a death camp anyway?” Benny cried, shaking.

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This was, indeed, what had happened to his grandfather. He had finally pried the informa- tion out of his father in compensation for the bruises. “My dad says most of it’s exaggeration to get money out of the government,” Kevin re- plied, and that’s when Benny charged him. “They think they’re Starsky and Hutch,” said one of Kevin’s boys, citing another favorite show. “Did you know Starsky’s Jewish? In real life, I mean?” said one of Benny’s boys. “Was he in a death camp?” the other kid asked in a rare moment of true curiosity before teachers broke up the fight. The war in the woods that afternoon was particularly fierce. But no child struck by a rock let his parents see his blood. And the parents were too distracted to notice their children bleeding.

The war in Town Hall had spilled outside as well. The Quarantiners wore t-shirts that said: Violence Does Not Belong in the Gardens of America. Their tactics included an open- air ecumenical worship service, Bible study, a citywide Holocaust Memorial Day, which included posters, poetry, and the teaching of Israel’s national anthem Hatikvah—“The Hope”—to a grade-school choir, plus plans for a 24-hour vigil at Democratic Headquarters on the fated day, where they would recite Kaddish and as many of the names of the six mil- lion as they could manage.

Judah’s Hammer, on the other hand, swarmed over parking lots to practice kicks, thrusts, tumbles, barely-pulled punches, clashes with chains swiftly concealed when police cruisers rolled by. Dov watched as their leader, Abner Levy, worked out attack strategies with his lieutenants, while everyone else rumbled or did push-ups or danced the hora. They never seemed to relax or even hold still. Except for when Abner read the manifesto. Someone had got hold of a scroll entitled The New National Socialists’ Manifesto, includ- ing the following goals, which Abner read aloud to the group in his booming voice: l Establishment of an American Racial Purity Commission for the elimination of all racial impurities. l Ruthless prosecution to the full extent of the law of all individuals guilty of race-mixing activities. l Awarding of American citizenship only to those 18-or-older Americans of proven pure Aryan descent.

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l Final Solution of the Jewish Question through documented elimination of Jewry throughout American society and western civilization.

Abner stopped and gazed at his shabby little army who, despite their constant prepara- tion, seemed shocked at hearing these aims expressed in specifically American terms. Ab- ner looked like a big friendly bear. He made his voice soft but they all heard when he finally spoke: “I joined Judah’s Hammer because my own family did nothing to help the Jews during the Holocaust. You’ve heard the saying that all it takes for evil to triumph is for a good man to stand by and watch?” He waited for the nods. Then the bear roared: “Well, we do not stand by!” They all cheered, leaping into the air, brandishing their bats, their chains, whatever they had in their hands, their very fists. “We’ll twist them into swastikas!” someone yelled, and to Dov’s surprise, it was him. The men beside him grinned and thumped his back. The group began chanting: “Never again! Never again!” Someone slung his arm around Dov’s shoulders, and, while he chanted, he gave thanks that, although he was not trained like they were, his father was a locksmith. And he knew where the red Cutlass was parked. Good men would not stand by.

It snowed on Hitler’s birthday. Thirty-four years earlier, Mrs.Yetta Klatzkin had reso- lutely squeezed her thighs shut so her child would not be born on that evil day. She staved off the birth pangs till 12:19 a.m., then, fearing brain damage, finally unclamped her muscles and let the squalling little brat into the world. She was successful in one respect. He didn’t share his birthday with his hero. His mother had willfully deprived him of that honor— cause enough to despise her right there, even if there weren’t more glaring reasons. Still, it was glorious to be bumping along the pot-holed U.S. Interstate on the Führer’s birthday performing the Führer’s business, P.A. system blasting The Ride of the Valkyries, even if the April blizzard blunted its effect and the police escort they’d picked up wouldn’t let them go above forty. Henry Ford Wagner, who had changed his name the minute he turned eighteen, tried to make his parents change theirs, and tried, unsuccessfully and painfully, to have his foreskin restored, reflected that in the Aryan States of America, there would be plenty of disposable labor to keep the roads pothole-free. And the parks white. And traffic unsnarled. The trains, as the venerable saying went, would run on time. But his reflections were interrupted as the caravan, turning on its blinkers and veering

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onto its exit ramp, was blocked by what appeared to be a flotilla of police cars and TV news vans spread across a sea of snow.

In Kindleton the crowd of protestors seethed. They wore football helmets, yarmulkes, fedoras, ski caps with pom-poms, and they had yellow stars pinned to their coats. Dov, returning from his errand, wondered who they were, these soft-bellied civilians in their puffy winter jackets slung with purses and cameras, mittened hands clutching signs, snow- spotted spectacles slipping down noses that would shatter with one swift punch. Victims, he decided, that’s who. He went to stand with Judah’s Hammer, who were bouncing on the balls of their feet, squinting through the snow, chanting and, every so often, flinging handfuls of white chicken bones at the ACLU lawyers. Red paint would have been too messy. Bones made the point well enough. Their pockets clanked softly. They clutched baseball bats instead of signs. And some, he knew, had handguns tucked under their sweatshirts. It was Omaha Beach. The Battle of Yorktown. The O.K. Corral. Where were the bastards?

here were City cops as well as Kindleton, sheriff’s deputies, and even a few Stat- ies spread along the ramp. When the caravan finally halted, the Kindleton police Tchief took personal pleasure in noting how the little swastika flags attached to the hoods wilted and fell still. He opened Henry Ford Wagner’s door himself and showed him a piece of paper that was so hot off the press it was practically melting the snowflakes. He watched while Wagner read it over and over, then finally stated the obvious. “It’s a search warrant.” “That’s right, Mr. Wagner.” He wanted to say “Herr,” but he hadn’t got to be chief by giving in to smart-ass urges. “We got a tip about possible illegal weapons you might be carrying. So this is a warrant to search you and your vehicles.” “That’s ridiculous. We have a peaceful demonstration planned, and any weapons we might possess are legal and registered. This is nothing more than—“ “Yes sir. Would you please step out and stand by the side of the road?” All the doors were being opened by police, all the New National Socialists escorted to stand, shivering, on the shoulder where the snow was piling up. They were quickly patted down and their pockets lightened. The cars took longer, but in the end the police had a nice little pile.

14 Chicago NELSON ALGREN SHORT Tribune STORY PRIZE FINALIST 2011

“The guns are all licensed and registered,” said Henry, his voice quivering. “Perfectly legal.” “Well,” said the top City cop, “we’ll just have to go back and check up on that. Sorry for the delay.” One of the deputies eyed the pile of jacks, tire-irons, and crowbars. “You expecting a lot of car trouble today, Mr. Wagner?” Henry stared out at the white field. “I don’t have to answer questions without a lawyer.” “That’s right, sir, you don’t,” the police chief said softly, “because the constitution pro- tects everybody’s rights. In the United States of America. Have a pleasant drive back.” “Hope your car don’t break down,” added the deputy. While the caravan and its escort turned itself around, the police chief got back in his car with the town attorney who was talking by radio with a judge. Since deadly weapons had been found, an injunction had been granted and extended indefinitely. There would be no demonstration in Kindleton. The attorney handed back the radio. The police chief was grinning, but the attorney just felt exhausted. His mustache was drooping so low he decided to shave it off that afternoon. He glanced at all the news trucks packing up. “You know,” he said. “I think he got what he wanted anyway.”

And indeed, on the drive back to the City, Henry, having noted with satisfaction all the cameras and microphones, decided that it was time to move on. They had momentum. Next they would focus their energy on a City park taken over by menacing black youths who played basketball between drug deals while their welfare-check girlfriends pushed their bastard babies in strollers. “Take Back The Parks For White America!” would become his new theme. Publicity was worth its weight in gold teeth. He began to plan the fliers.

The police chief took his news to the waiting protestors. He showed them his piece of paper and told them it was over. There would be no demonstration. No blood spilled in the gardens of America. They had won. There was a lot of cheering, a lot of sobbing, a good bit of cursing. The snow helped the police disperse the crowd. The protestors took their signs home and stored them in their garages, just in case. Judah’s Hammer secreted their weapons and had a raucous lunch with lots of beer, then got back on their bus and went in search of the next battle. B’nai Brith returned to their offices in the City. The ACLU started work on their next case. The

15 Chicago NELSON ALGREN SHORT Tribune STORY PRIZE FINALIST 2011

Jewish community continued celebrating and sobbing.

But no one remembered to tell the children, who had worked all morning constructing two snow forts. A wet April snow on Hitler’s birthday made very good material for a snow fight. But their weapons weren’t limited to snowballs, nor knuckleballs—snowballs packed around a stone—nor even something new, kikeballs: snowballs packed around chunks of broken glass. Once one side invented this technology, both sides used it. The children of Kindleton had been observing their elders, not just those who shouted at meetings but those who read the scarlet fliers, laid them on the table, tapped them with a finger, and said: “They have a point.” Whose faces reddened when told about Jewish kids who were allowed to nap at school and twisted with disgust when passing the smelly delicatessens and crowded sideways houses and strings of shops with European names jammed with too many letters. Such families hoped for a point to be made: not for a pogrom—America was a civilized nation, the most advanced in the world, after all—but a point could be made all the same. Such distinctions, however, were too fine for children who made snowballs with chunks of glass in the middle. By the time Dov got there, it was full mayhem. The snowballs were used up, the forts trampled; the children had shed hats, gloves, coats, and—scratched, bleeding into the filthy snow—engaged each other with rocks and their own baseball bats. Mostly they rolled over and over without a chance to effectively wield their weapons. But Kevin had Benny pinned down, rearing up, rock in hand, primed to do real damage. Dov, a watcher no more, ripped off his own jacket with a roar meant to distract and flung himself on Kevin, knocking him sideways. It worked. But none of them saw what happened in the meantime. Judah’s Hammer had been so charged up—and so full of beer—when they left Kindleton, that they neglected to do a final weapon count. As a consequence, they didn’t discover until much later that one of their handguns was missing. Dov himself had forgotten that he was carrying it in his jacket pocket. He didn’t see it tumble out when he threw his jacket down. But someone else who watched did. Benny’s quiet sister Irene, who listened to their grandfather’s rants, hid behind trees during rock wars, and couldn’t pack a decent snowball of any kind, had watched Kevin Tattersall smash her brother’s face. She picked up the gun. The safety was off, though she didn’t know anything about that. All she knew was what she saw on TV. Indeed, the other kids, seeing her, hooted, yelling: “Look out, it’s Pepper!” after the female cop on Police

16 Chicago NELSON ALGREN SHORT Tribune STORY PRIZE FINALIST 2011

Woman. All Irene knew was, you pointed the gun, squeezed the trigger, and vanquished the bad guys. Vanquished evil. Saved the brothers. So, with both pudgy hands, she pointed in Kevin’s direction and squeezed, not hearing Dov’s “No!” She landed backward in the snow, temporarily deaf. The bullet, once released, traveled its own trajectory, serving its own inevitable and oblivious law. People called it destiny, accident, tragedy, fluke, divine will—but none of these terms accounted for the chain of ruinous and twisted human responsibility which led to this moment. The bullet buried itself in the smallest target on the field—the skull of Patricia Purcell, called Posy by everyone who knew her, a third-grader who was supposed to be home tidying up her room. She had sneaked out mostly for one last chance to play in the snow. While the others were shaping ammunition, she had been secretly making a family of tiny snowmen, half-hidden under a curve of the snow-fort. Her body smashed them as she fell.

After much debate, many meetings at Town Hall, and a suitable period of mourning, the town decided to put up a memorial to Posy and to the Nazi demonstration that the town of Kindleton fought off. Everyone agreed that the proper place for it was the spot where Posy died. They commissioned a sculpture—something abstract and pointy, representing Ameri- ca and hope—and by August it was finished. The unveiling ceremony was very moving. The children’s choir sang Hatikvah. Two days later, someone spray-painted a swastika on the new monument. Probably kids, the cops said. The town took another vote and decided not to wash it off.