Mike Schuler tried to hide his intense relief once the forty year old rabbi finally left the room. The air was unseasonably warm, and the woman seated at the computer behind the desk seemed unwilling to have the door propped open, even though the entire maze of buildings was surrounded by a six-foot high stucco-and-wire wall!

            “You don’t happen to have a smoke do you? I’m dying for a drag! “

            He asked tentatively. Reaching out to her conversationally in an effort to ease his strangeness in this sunlight and reverence dappled building since they were likely the only two non-Jews in the paint smelling building.

            “So am I! “  Susan Green admitted with a spontaneous laugh, shocking him, and then glancing up at the fully shadowed walk visible from the doorway.

            Once outside she motioned away his offer to return the pack after he’d taken one to smoke now and placed a second cigarette behind his ear. He smiled in gratitude as she looked up from his impulsive offer to lit her cigarette first, automatically cupping the betraying flash of the flame. To his relief she made no coy attempt at touching him, as if to steady the hand that proffered the light from the worn metal lighter. She exhaled hungrily and the young ex-soldier eyed her, wondering if she would change into a clingy female now that she’d ‘rescued’ him. Her deep, throaty laughter reassured him. She was more like one of the old, overweight Madam’s who stayed behind the bar and surreptitiously counted the money the girls gave them when they came back downstairs, readjusting the slim, one piece outfit they wore.

            “Keep’m. I’m quitting! “   She said sternly, in promise to herself when he tried to hand pack the crumbled pack. Then when it was time for them to lock up, she impulsively ordered him to keep this afternoon’s earned bus token in his pocket, that she’d give him a lift back to the Rescue Mission on her way home. He sensed it wasn’t as convenient as she was trying to imply, but he was too happy to have even a part time job and two dollars shoved into his pocket that she’d given him, like a kindly older sister. She said he was to buy himself a couple of packs and use the remaining change to buy a hamburger and fries incase he got back too late for the nightly

meal served after the song and the Sermon at the Mission, but money for cigarettes was hard to come by, and this would give him a few to repay what he’d bummed and still have some left to trade with.

            His heart sang more loudly than it had at anytime since he got off the transport from from their beleaguered Marine base in Khesahn in April.  Despite the time of debriefing and recovery in the hospital, it was still taking time to get used to walking on American soil again. There was almost as much hostility on the faces of round-eyed strangers as he had met in the land of Charley! This job was only three days a week to start, but it came with all the coffee he could drink and free sandwiches on the days he worked, and a sense of welcome, however slight, to the land he lost his idealism and faith to defend. His old pastor had pumped his hand vigorously, demanded to know when he was coming back to Sunday Services, then melted into the now unfamiliar American landscape of television and round bodied cars that seemed to fill the streets so thick he was being to wonder if anyone still worked inside the businesses.  

            There was more than the mark of War on his flesh, although the wounds were draining and healing nicely, hidden behind his shirt, there was the mark of Cain on his forehead because he’d answered his country’s call to service, and it confused and angered him. When the pleasant voiced man he just met at the bus stop said it was the Jewish organization behind the austere stucco walls that needed someone to work part time, he’d almost thrown it in GOD’S face. If his own kind and his own people wouldn’t accept him back, stained by the war they watched waged in miniature on their living room television sets every night, then he’d go to the minority! The other hated ones who bore a stamp of distain that set them apart from the greater population through no fault of their own. Any more than being patristic was his fault!

            “ Thank you, GOD! “  

            He whispered under his breath, even though she’d reassured him three times already that she was a Christian like himself, although she’d been married to a Jewish man for seven years before borne him a mere daughter and he raged out of their lives twelve to live with a woman half their age. She’d invited him to attend her Church and been a real pal when he explained he had to decline. Explaining that all men staying at the Men’s Rescue Mission had to attend Sunday morning services there, whether he went anywhere else or not, and that was all the religion he wanted jammed down his throat just because he had to live on their charity for a little while longer.

            Instead of rebuking him for his attitude, the way so many others had since his return, Susan finished the last of their ‘break’ together by asking him about his name, being Germanic and all, as if that automatically made it a Jewish name, then reassured him when he admitted, to her alone, that his great-grandfather or somebody suitably far removed from the Twentieth Century might-or might not-have been Jewish, because he had a high forehead and a big nose and he still claimed to be a Jew, to the rest of the family’s chagrin. She’d laughed as she leaned forward to knock off the lengthening ash from the rest of her cigarette, the way he hoped she would, and he tries not to stare at the soft lines formed against her sweater as she expertly raised the stub to her lips, pulling the biting smoke deeper into her lungs as she was trying to force herself to return to the closed in room.  Assuring him that ‘it only counted’ if his mother or his grandmother or someone in her line were Jewish. 

            On impulse, she offered him a ride ‘home’ since she was almost done for the day and she hadn’t been able to answer his question about the bus lines. Some of them stopped at six o’clock because of recent budget crunches as they all tried to deal with the demands of that foreign ever omnipresent war. If he didn’t reach the Mission by a certain check-in time that allowed him time to shower and do his light ‘chore’ for the night, he could eat but he’d have to find some alleyway or secluded bunch of bushes to sleep for the night.  

            “Isn’t your daughter half-Jewish?  “   He’d asked as they stopped at a light, the old car trembling in violent revolt at being held back against the unrelenting pressure of the stuck carburetor which he promised to fix Friday afternoon before work.

            “ No. Her father didn’t have any sisters who were willing to adopt her. You either are, because your mother was, or you aren’t, in Rabbinical terms, no matter who your father was, Jew or Gentile.  “

            The young ex-warrior seemed to look as relieved as Stacy had when she finally got up the nerve to ask the question. She couldn’t risk being angry at her long absent father, so she dishonored his memory in whatever ‘safe’; ways she could muster.

            When she dropped him off in front of the crisp, freshly painted building, Susan’s heart gave a small lurch. It’s been so long since anyone treated her like she was her daughter’s age, safe at home in her family’s arms, and she was already missing it.

            “ Thanks, Sis”  Mike said impulsively. They both liked it so much it stuck over the next three days of his time spent at the ‘Jewish Church’, working hard to clean up the mess left by the construction crew and the dozen and a half small tasks the elderly ladies of Hadassah managed to find to keep the smiling young man busy as they prepared for the first official Service in the new building.

*

            Burying himself in his work as Rabbi, Nathan sought to prolong the time before he ‘had’ to go home to the empty house with Myra and the memory of their son. Speaking with the wearied young soldier this afternoon had reopened the thin veneer of healing over his recent experiences with men’s bared and bloody souls. Turning off the light switch, he automatically put as smile on his features and looked toward the top of the computer on the other side of the high, freshly waxed and vanished counter they’d salvaged from the old building, but the emptiness there lashed out at him too with unexpected force. Not only were Susan’s blonde curls missing as she kept her head bent studiously, trying to decipher his notes for the sermon, but the plastic sheath was already covering the old IBM monitor with its new, ultra-modern glare guard. She was usually here for another hour after he left since her twelve year old daughter had band practice at school on Tuesday afternoons.

            He found himself resenting the intrusion of the goyim youth Mike Schuler! As long as you kept them solitary, you trust them, but allow two or more of them to get together and they began to act like being here was just part of a circus they could visit now and again for laughs!  He kept his anger wrapped around him as he walked out to the locked sentry gate, smiling at the two women with short, permed hair and benign smiles at what he represented as they began to challenging task of presenting a full Oneg Shabbat for the entire congregation, as if the opening service were a High Holy Day.     

            Traffic gave him another excuse to vent the rage broiling inside him, allowing him to push down his fierce resentment toward the Almighty One, Blessed be His Name, who had allowed his only son and best hope for the future to drown in a stupid accident with his other friends on a Saturday afternoon at the cabin on the reservoir, after he’d submitted himself to the Infinite will and dutifully returned to the stink and the rot of Southeast Asian jungles and the smell of napalm and rice paddies! By making the three Tzedakah visits to his elderly Congregants who still lived in Palo Alto, he could postpone the sudden silences between them when Myra would look at him and tears would brim in her eyes, as if in accusation because he’d left her behind to be both father and mother to their growing son. When obviously she hadn’t been p to it, or their son wouldn’t have drowned a hundred yards away from the family cabin!

            But the kindly old woman he went to visit in the nursing home lobby only wanted to talk about his dead son, and he stood to his feet angrily, trying not to see the look of shock and fear that leaped into the old crone’s eyes at his abrupt action. He managed to smooth it over, although the hair on the back of his neck stood on end as he had to pass under the Administrator’s office window and he sensed rather than felt the betraying shadow that only moved away from the window’s curtained edge once he reached for his car door and looked up in white hot rage.

            Making a mental note to call on one of his lay assistants to assign the other two visits to them, he backed out with a vicious arc, almost wishing some unidentified and unidentifiable piece of human wreckage bent over a wheeled walker might actually materialize to allow him to vent his growing resentment, he sped from the closed parking lot, leaving twin streaks of black rubber on the carefully sealed asphalt surface.     

            It wasn’t much better when he got home.  He found his wife grieving their son’s recent loss had pushed her into the first physical action she’s taken in the month that he’d been returned. The house was spotless when he walked in, smelling of the pine scented cleanser she made the cleaning woman use. All of the clothing and books which he’d deliberately left laying around in an effort to build up such an unbearable mess that she’d have to be motivated to get off her self pity kick had now disappeared. The books and magazines were stacked in their appropriate bins on the shelves and the clothes and their dry, stale odors had disappeared. Sucked into the vacuum with the dust and the dropped food, or thrown into the clothes hamper in the laundry room, either way it didn’t matter. He let out his breath even though it required him to breath in the nauseating artificial ‘piney woods’ odor he loathed.

            He’d done it! She’d come around at last! A portion of his anger drained out of him with his intense relief that they wouldn’t face another night of t.v. dinners and bickering, but it took his strength with him, and he pulled off his tie and allowed it to fall to the edge of the upright recliner. Knowing that as soon as he’d poured himself a sherry, he take the coat and tie and hang them both up in the hall closet. She’d worked too hard all day for not to show he respected her for it.

            Then a man’s voice followed her laughter out from the bedroom. He stood stock still, his hand still extended over the pale green back of the sloping chair. Myra’s eyes immediately clouded, and the accusation of his returning home early drained away whatever sympathy had been growing since he crossed the unexpectedly polished transom.

            “  Nathan! “   Myra exclaimed with a genuine look of excitement still pasted to her cheeks when she looked up and saw him unexpectedly standing in the empty hallway.

              “ This is the man I’ve been telling you about!  “

            Dale Coleman smiled the smile that made him so successful as a salesman and he pushed his way past the suddenly silent woman to extend his hand in a polished form that knew to grasp the fingers and palm and squeeze to just the right amount, lingering in the touch only as long as polite society deemed appropriate in physical contact between natural males.

            Nathan watched them as they pushed their way past him from Davies’s room. Even resenting the lingering aftermath of the man’s expensive aftershave as he was torn between straightening up any of the pillows or the toys where Davie had carelessly left them in his excitement about going to the ‘lake’ with his friends. Pleading and promising, without any expectations of fulfillment that he’d clean it up ‘just as soon as they got back’. The mess, dried now by the two months since his passing was sacred to his memory, but needing to follow after his too-brightly blossomed wife and the new man in her company who seemed to have such difficulty keeping his fingers and touch to himself!

            He knew from his own counseling experience that adults could be like children who knew their parents couldn’t be counted to forego punishment as often as they would mete it out, and complain to him in an air of injured innocence how they never intended to break up their marriage or destroy their family at the beginning of the ‘harmless’ sensitivity to lust and emotion!

            He decided on a stripped down version of both. Make sure Davies’s room was reasonably undisturbed then slip back here from his study while  Myra was busy fixing dinner to replace everything to where his boy had carelessly left it before eternity called, then let the suave man in the three piece business suit know that he meant to keep track of what was his own! But at the doorway, his senses reeled in shock.

            Gone was the motorcar shaped bed Davie’d outgrown eighteen months ago,  gone were the book cases filled with dusty toys and partially completed projects such as interested an eight, ten; eleven year old mind. He looked at the bare wood of the floor, fighting the need for his collapsed lungs to re-inflate. If he breathed, it would make this whole scene unreal! He couldn’t allow it! He wouldn’t allow it.

            In its place was a modernly stark computer table with Davies’s computer hooked up to a new printer and fax machine. A brand new telephone with thirty different functions and six primary extensions sat beside a book of new steno pads. There was more, even to the art of the wall which had been replaced with a watercolor seascape from her old boyfriend that he’d given to his mother-in-law a week after they’d been married since Myra claimed she ‘loved the painting as much as she loathed the artist’ had been defiantly stuck in the center of the light cast in from the silent hall.  

            Myra was watched, stiff backed and pale as he walked back into view. She was obviously frightened of his emotional outburst, even though she knew in his worst rages he’d never lay a hand on her.

            “  We’re going to dinner; to discuss this like civilized human beings, Nathan.  “

            He heard the words. The intent to succeed in her will, but he just waved his hand numbly, in her direction, his vision obscured by tears he no longer had the strength to deny. Though he could see the exotic colors of the brightly upholstered chair where he always sat after dinner, he still had to feel around with his hands to make sure it too wasn’t an illusion.

            “  Will you be here when I get back?  “

            “  Will it make a difference? Will it stop you from going?  “

            Myra pulled her hand back as if the back of the oversized chair were a burning rod. Then she nodded, as if to something she’d said internally and the silence wrapped itself around him as she quietly shut and locked the front door.

            He stood up at last only because the pinched seat of the chair put unreasoning pressure on his bladder. He hesitated at the doorway of ‘her’ bathroom and thought of mincing in, careful not to harm or touch anything she’d left scattered on the counter, another ‘civilized’ decision they’d made to avoid conflict and simply out the toilet seat up, knowing she’d vow urine reeked through all the rugs and dainty frills she insisted

on draping over the too masculine utility. In the end, need moved him more than rational need or pity.

            Myra blamed herself for being seventy feet away and still being unable to save their son. He would have blamed her too if she hadn’t done so much of it herself. He wasn’t a cruel man by nature.

            A quiet knock on the front door annoyed him. He’d spent nearly ten minutes washing his hands, although he hadn’t done anything more than touch his fingertips to

his penis and then found all the towels gone. Myra must have spent the day cleaning every other room in the house while the moving company packed Dave’s room to allow

a smooth transfer for the new furniture company to come in and set up their aspic, atonal,

and soulless station for her to work out of.  The clean towels were in the hall closet only six steps away, but he allowed his fingers to drip on the shining surface between the expensive runners he’d pretended to have a say in choosing when Davie was two years old. By them he’d learned that what his Grandfather had said in parting was true. “Who-

ever wants it the most gets their way. A sure-fire recipe for happiness”. The old man, a beloved scholar and much grieved husband of 58-years, had said, based on what he knew when the house was only the woman’s.

            “  Josh?  What are you doing here?   “

            He blurted in surprise, wiping his hands on the back of his trousers in sudden pleasure at seeing the young bearded man’s face. There was something gentle and likable about the soft spoken man. Nathan guessed that he’d been raised by grandparents in a deeply religious home, much like his own, for her lacked the brash ego that was the byword of each generation succeeding from his own.

            Thrusting a chilled beer toward the younger man who was standing by the open back door, he twisted it to one side so he wouldn’t have to see the man’s possible dislike because it was an imported beer. He and Saul used to joke that vows of poverty weren’t required for them, like priests, but it seemed to come with the job.

            “   You have a nice view.  “

            Nathan nodded, watching the crimson blaze coming to rest on darker colors on the rounded California hills. All this had been pasture land when he was his son’s age. The orchards nearer to town had gone first, dug up and sold to cookie cutter ‘tract home’ builders, then mush of the level land was bought by Corporation giants for the days they could find a way to make San Jose a commercial center worthy to rival San Francisco which was fast running out of room for the houses they were racing to build on it’s seven hills.

            “   I wish I could take credit for it.  “

            Nathan said humbly, pulling back the glass doors with their faded, peeling stickers of flowers they’d pasted on it keep eighteen month old Davie from trying to ride his tricycle straight back into the living room even when the door was shut. He didn’t notice the gentle smile formed on his companion’s lips at his softly spoken words.

            The overhead light came on automatically as day gave way to night. The ‘zap’ of the ‘bug light’ over the single door back into the garage kept track of the comfortable silences between the two men as they spoke and listened to one another without needing any other reference to time.

            After beginning to sip cautiously at his third beer, while his companion stopped with the bottle standing untasted on the outdoor table, since he was driving when they finished the steaks grilling ion the round Webber  kettle, Nathan broke his own rule about not bringing up religion in his conversations. They seemed so much alike on the surface, but you never knew what secrets, doubts, or angers hid beneath a placid surface! Look at what he was hiding from himself and Myra right now!

            For an instant he pictured Myra laughing and happy, the way she’d been when they were dating, and a stab of jealousy reminded him how much he still loved and needed it, but it fled as quickly as his anger could push away anything positive about her, or toward her. Grief, intense and unlived, has a way of locking you inside yourself.

            “   If GOD does exist, Josh? What do you think? He glances down for a split second every fifty years just to make sure He didn’t miss the sound of the crash when one of those doomsday meteorites finally smashes us all to hell where we belong?  “

            He felt rather than saw the bearded man’s look of compassion in his direction. If he had sensed pity or contempt, the natural male response to being forced to reveal too much, he would have lurched to his feet and thrown him out by the seat of his pants right then and there! Instead, a kind of calm came over him, and he covered his face with his hand to forestall any attempt at a religious answer.

            “   What do you think, Nathan?   “ 

            “   I’m drunk.  “   He temporized in apology.  “  I’m not sure what I think. Except maybe I think I’d better turn those steaks before they’re charcoal on one side and raw on the other!  “

            He braced himself for the “bonding”, the forced male camaraderie that made brothers of strangers in the midst of an incomprehensible, foreign war. But when the young man merely came and stood beside him, talking about things that were truly of an interest to him, in respect for his grief, Nathan found himself more at peace than any time he could remember as an adult.

            He allowed the sharp edged knife handle to slide down into the slight, darkened remainder of the steak sauce, knowing it would infuriate Myra when she found it in the morning and pushed away the half-eaten plate, as if its very nearness was a reproach. 

            “  With a thousand people speaking to Him at the same time in hundred’s of different tongues, how can He hear them all? And don’t pacify me with ‘Because He’s GOD’! “

            Josh caught him off guard by laughing softly in response, then looking toward the shimmering expanse of stars gaining strength over their head.

            “  I don’t have any children of my own body, but my father has a great number. You only had the one boy, right? Davie?  “

            Tears rose unbidden to Nathan’s eyes, but in the sheltering darkness surrounding them beyond the flood light illuminating the back yard gym set and the tree fort, he could feel the grief as a kind of cleansing acknowledgment rather than a burden that wanted only to force him into the cold ground beside the boy Myra had allowed to be autopsied. .

            He nodded, hearing moments of laughter and boyish enthusiasm as the faint wind over the high garden fence caused the one remaining swing to begin to rock and click as if the younger boy’s body were still in it.

            “  Push me, Daddy! Push me! Higher! Higher!  “ 

            He half turned toward the pleasant sound.

            “  I guess you’re right. If we had more kids, we’d probably get the knack of hearing each one of them too.  “   Nathan conceded, thinking about a son or a daughter playing in the unused plastic Turtle sandbox. They’d had to put the shell of the turtle shell back in place to cover the remaining sand, to keep out the rain and the feral cats who still lived in the Oak and poison ivy covered hills just beyond the formal ending of the subdivision. The contractor was going to put in another group of thirty houses with inward cul-de-sacks, like stomach pumps for acid pulled down into the thickened body of the side-by-side houses. None of the rooms were to be as big as the garage they enjoyed

in this final set of houses, and other Sellers had offered more square footage, so the plan collapsed with the rising interest rates and the threat of inflation.

            “  Did I saw something wrong, Josh?   “

            He asked in a sudden wave of compassion. He saw his companion’s Adam’s apple move twice as Josh swallowed, trying to hide a pain that shocked Nathan with its depth.

            “  Have you thought of what its like to love, and not be loved back?  Truly care, and have that feeling thrown back in your face? Holding someone in your arms while they scream and fight and claw at you, longing with all of your being to take their pain on yourself and return them only to the love and the happiness you feel they deserve?   “

            Nathan opened his mouth, having quickly scanned his rabbi’s mental index of tried and true answers to deflect thoughts away that he had no answers too, but as soon as his lips parted, a loud, vibrant belch rumbled between them, bringing up the taste of ale, hops, and a slightly soured taste of burnt sugar and molasses.

            They laughed in common apology and Nathan turned away quickly, ashamed that 

he had been interested only in protecting himself from another’s pain.

            ‘ Girl trouble huh?  ‘   He  wanted to say. But catching his toe against the edge of a buried plastic toy whose outline he couldn’t even remember, years flooded back in on him.

            “  And you said you didn’t know what it felt like to be a father!  “

            “  No.  “   Josh answered, without offering rebuke or injured pride, “  I said I didn’t have any natural seed on the earth.   “

            “  You’re a young man. There’s time enough yet.  “

            Nathan hated the sound of condescension in his tone, but he couldn’t seem to help it. Apart from the sting of the humming female mosquitoes, he feared that if the meek and tender hearted young man remained any longer, he would open up to him in an unmanly display that would only embraces them later.

            “  Let me walk you out to the car.  “

            “  Are you asking me to go?   “

            “  Look Josh, I don’t mind long hair and beards and things, I rebelled when I was young too. But I’m not really into this Hippie Love and Brotherhood thing, you know? That’s only for other rich white boys and a few colored men who are thought to be sexual and ‘hip’, and besides they have most of the drug connections to decent marihuana. You know.  “

            They slowed as they neared the light cast by the single lamp thrust out from the back of the garage. Leaving a net-less hoop shape on the summer storm tainted cement, evoking fresh memories that threatened to choke the giving father.

            “  I’m here for you, if you’ll let me. I can help you and Myra ease through the pain and become closer! If only you’ll let me, Davie!  “

            Nathan pulled his arm free and turned to confront the compassion and need on the stranger’s face,

            “  My wife’s out with her new boyfriend, as soon as she can get to be the next ex-Missus Nathan Geller, my son’s dead and twelve more kids could never fill just one of the footprints he left on my mind, and I told you! I ain’t into this Hippie Love and Brotherhood crap, Josh!  “

            But unexpectedly, the man’s arms went around him as his knees gave out, and the dam of self-hatred and self-loathing broke free with words too painful and too pointed to keep inside any longer.

            The moon went from gold to silver before Nathan paused, rocking with weariness, the hard edge of the picnic table now beginning to make an impression on his numbed

muscles.

            “  I’ve never had a man friend before, Josh.  “  He said with an awkward laugh, feeling weariness but a certain content wash over him as they joined hands and prayed.

“  If you were a woman, or a relative, I could invite you in to sleep on the couch...?  “

            He questioned.

            The young bearded man deferred without delicateness.

            “   My car is outside. But we can talk at any time. I gave you my number?  “

            Nathan found an odd weariness as he fought back sleep, patting the slip of paper he’d thrust in his shirt pocket.

            “  Right here.  “  He promised.

            “  Any time, day or night. That’s my number, not an answering service.  “

            “  Sounds like me. Sometimes they call at one or two in the morning and I have to go out to the extension in the front room so I don’t wake Myra.  Josh?  “

            The tall laborer turned as he was about to walk down the side walkway on the far end of the garage.

            “   Thank you. Shalom Aleikhem!   “

            “   Aleikhem Shalom.  “

            He replied with a smile whose familiar drew the weary man’s heart.

            Walking back into the house, Nathan checked on all the locks on the windows and doors, but pausing at the head of the doorway, he turned the three-way lamp on low for Myra’s use when she came home. He was in the shower when he heard the car door slam.

Rinsing out his mouth under the stinging spray, he braced himself for his wife’s anger at his almost forgotten rudeness to her new business partner and his necessary ‘capitol’.

But when he walked into their bedroom, Myra was already undressed and under the covers with her back turned to him.

            Her cheeks smelled of cold cream, so she’d taken the time to wipe off her make-up in her own bathroom before she came in here. Suddenly he couldn’t remember if he’d left the seat of her toilet up or not, but he promised himself to apologize for it in the morning. And so many other things.

            When he awoke to the six o’clock alarm she was already dressed and gone, a cup of warmed coffee sitting on the counter, and a new dull ache beating against his chest at this lost chance.

End Two

June 6^th, 1968                                               1:00 pm                 First Thursday of the month

.

            On Tuesday, he’d been expecting the demand for separation and divorce once their deeply religious parents accustomed themselves to this terrible failure on all their part, since his father had been the first to divorce in the history of their family on the Geller family tree, remarrying happily and sire two children, his sister and himself. But when he received the telephoned notification from Jeffery Landry, a member of the Temple Board as well as a sixty-year long member of the original congregation, Nathan couldn’t think to do anything more than simply replace the ear piece to the telephone and stand up quietly, amazed that his body still worked.

            But this afternoon, his mind refused to accept the news without being shocked and outraged at its unexpected impact! Not only was he soon to be the next ex-Mr. Myra Geller, he was ex-Rabbi David Nathan Geller in three months, if Michael Aaron Katz got his way! The duel loss left him bereft of words, or even of inner tension. At the doorway to his office he opened it just enough to be certain he could see the back of Susan’s head and hear the clatter of the keyboard keys so he could slip down the hall toward the janitor’s door and the seldom used door marked ‘Exit” which they had agreed to alarm after the High Holidays when the entire building would be electrified to guard the priceless antiquities on display, and both cash boxes. The one in his desk and the one in the Judaic Gift Shop safe.     

            Calling his wife at her office twice, once when he made up his mind to leave the house, and again as he had the car keys in his hand to drive up to their cabin on the lake, he found his inability to contact her and her secretary’s evasiveness another pound of weight bowing his scholar’s hump.  As he started the car and backed out the cluttered driveway with care lest one of the neighborhood kids be riding their bikes along the sidewalk at breakneck speeds, he found himself automatically reciting the prayer for safety and stopped, angrily. He knew there was a vague Someone at some undecipherable level but he refused to ask anything more of Him since He hadn’t seen fit to even help Davie! His fingers gripped the narrow racing car steering wheel all the tighter, but no thunder rumbled out of the sunshine filled day, nor lightening strike him dare as it had the unfortunate soul who’d steadied the Ark of the Covenant simply to keep it from being harmed as it fell. If man wasn’t allowed to help GOD, why should he expect GOD to have any interest in helping him? He reasoned angrily.

            He was vaguely disappointed in not seeing Myra’s car or even the car of her paramour as he turned off the narrow, winding path to the gravel platform of the driveway in front of the pleasant, tree-lined cabin. The more he’d driven though the heavy traffic barely ahead of the three-thirty commuter traffic, the angrier he had become. And his mood was so foul that he was in a fit mood to find a justified means of expressing his murderous thoughts against his wife, finding her in their own bed with her lover, even though they hadn’t been back to this cabin as a couple since he left for his two-year stint in the Service.

            The sounds of the trees and the unseen reservoir filled the air inside in the car as soon as he turned off the ignition and leaned against the sun warmed window frame in self-inflicted pain that seemed a temporary outlet at best for what was building inside himself. If Myra tried to get this cabin as part of the divorce settlement, he was going to fight her! He couldn’t bear to around the back to where the unnamed but strongly odored tree wakened memories of other, better summers. Out there was the broken place where the landslide had buried rocks unguessed by the diving boys until Davie struck his head on one of them! Out there was the pier where they’d fished and talked, and Davie’d begun to share some of his boyish confidences that he could never share with his own father, who was always indoors, bent over sacred scrolls that smelled like old dried leaves. Out there was the modest little lump where they’d buried Davies’s first dog, a nondescript old mongrel that had picked them as his surrogate family the year his former family left him deliberately because he was too old and they were too tender-hearted to take him to the Pound and pay to have him put to sleep.

            For the first time Nathan felt empathy for the faceless family of three kids and two adults in their station wagon, as he pictured them in his mind. It is a terrible thing to wake and know this is the day you are going to cause another’s death! But it was so for him, he acknowledge, thinking of his elderly, pious father’s grief at the news that his beloved, his best and shining star had failed so grievously in love. Better to be thought of as a martyr who couldn’t live with the death of his only son. That would be a better comfort to the tremulous old man Nathan decided, with a strange calm. 

            Yet when he turned on the switch just inside the locked door of the locked door of the rustic cabin, the annoying lack of electrical response drew him immediately into the present, giving him a new outlet for his angry energy. He checked the fuse box with a grim annoyance, jerking the door open abruptly. Four yellow wasps flew out in angry surprise and he had to back away until they were gone, but the desire for life and self preservation were once again coursing mightily through his veins, triggering one of his migraines.

            Walking across the oddly hollow sounding floor, he strode through the larger of the two bedrooms into the ‘master’ bath, no larger than one of their closets at home, and dominated by a gravity fed toilet with its oversized water tank dripping tiny droplets of rust to the stain spreading on the floor behind the toilet basin. He pulled hard on the rusted metal cabinet he remembered helping Davie nail up to the newly paneled walls and found to his relief that Myra had thoughtfully replaced the tiny tin of aspirin on the dirty glass shelf. He was forever forgetting his migraine medicine when they came up here, as if he hoped that by not having here in their rare family time together, he could simply ‘will’ them away. 

            As he turned to the cast iron sink in the kitchen and began to rummage though the partially emptied cabinets for a clean glass a new anger seized him. he didn’t know if he was angrier at the next of dried weeds and mouse fur in one corner of the unused side cabinet, or at Myra’s pointed rebuke in leaving behind a tin of aspirin, knowing that he was going to need it after all, no matter how much of his vaunted ‘will power’ he applied to the devastating headaches!

            While he let the water pour out of the seldom used faucet, chilling his fingers with its deep well cold, he popped the narrow, ridged tin open by pressing one corner, dully remembering Davie’s laughter of self confidence the first time he finally figured out how to press on the top finger while keeping the tin level with his bottom fingers, and the rebuke of his own anger against the five year old’s clumsy fingers that spilled four of the little white tablets against the damp, yellowed porcelain of the sink that had come with ownership of the cabin. 

            Tears ran down his cheeks, pausing uncomfortably in the stubble on his chin. If only they had guessed how short their time would be with him! He would have laughed Outloud for joy in his small heir’s accomplishment and kissed the chubby little fingers which were trying to take away the pain raging against his progenitor’s brow!  Even as a little boy he had seen and responded to other people’s pain. He was the first to befriend the littlest boy being picked on by the school bully, the first to help the friend in Hebrew Class would couldn’t find a reason to be so precise in a dead language he’d never have to use till he was an old man, too old to work any more, so he’d have time to go to shul every Friday night with the other equally old and useless men davening[1] in the back of the temple.

            “  You didn’t learn that from my father, I didn’t. You were a gift, Davie. A Gift I wish I’d preserved better!  Understood, a little better.  “

            The sound of his own voice startled him and drew him back to the uncomfortable chill of his fingers. Thrusting the rinsed glass under the water he filled it to the rim and forced himself to down it all, even after the aspirin tablets melted and dissolved and melted down his throat. Urinary and bowel health was a silent but certain responsibility like prayer, and he motioned to allow his father’s eyes to see that he was fulfilling these necessary steps, even as a man before his hard, wise eyes. 

            He turned off the rapidly flowing water as a level of unused liquid gathered above the slow moving drain and he had to fight himself consciously to avoid the compulsive need to wash his hands. His throat contracted against the drying effect of one of the four older tablets at the back of his throat but seizing one of the fresh Mexican apples from the box of groceries he’d left on the table, he walked toward the back door, savoring the crunchy sweetness of it between his teeth as he watched the five figures on the sun shimmering waters of the reservoir.  

            He had to pick up a toothbrush and some blades to shave with when he drove back to the tiny country store at the Y to get fresh fuses. But he had no desire to climb back into his superheated vehicle and retrace his steps because of his own carelessness, so instead he sprang loose the metal hook that keep the screen door locked on the inside with a great deal of difficulty, almost breaking one of his nails, and pushed the door open against the cluster of dried leaves that had compacted against the foundation under last winters rains and mud and the squeaking protest of the rusted hinges.

            The log they usually used for a step, promising themselves to build a real set of steps...some day...when Davie was physically matured enough to swing a hammer to his satisfaction...had rotted away, betraying a spangled spider’s web containing hundreds of cast off termite wings which they had bitten off once they took up their abode in the rotted wood stacked against the house.

            The weight of this neglect seemed to call back his father’s rebuke against his mind, and Nathan deliberately held to the heated metal lid of the garbage can longer than it took to toss the half-eaten fruit into the depths of the bottomless metal container. It was a small defiance, but he was tired of being his own judge and jury using his father’s image to punish himself for less than the perfection that pleased the old man so much and brought light to his squinting eyes.

            ‘  You’re too hard on yourself, Davie!   ‘  He remembered his fifth year Yeshiva teacher saying, veined and tobacco stained fingers pulling on the thin, requisite beard demanded of a scholar.

            “  But you didn’t mind holding me to my father’s standard, rebbe!   “

            He said out loud, startling a noisy Blue Jay into the motionless air above the braches of the Maple Tree. Then he stopped and smiled through fresh tears. Davie had insisted they salvage the weather and diseased ridden old thing rather than having it cut down by a tree surgeon and stacked against the side of the house for free firewood. He had thought some winter they could come up here, make cuts in the bark like he learned about in school and boil down their own maple syrup! 

            The pull between laughter and pain, life and death tugged on him on a way he was only beginning to recognize. Why drive back down for fuses and razor blades since they represented another day, a day he wasn’t even certain he wanted to see?  Then the sound of laughter as a teen aged girl finally stood upright on the water-skis, negotiating the slight waves made behind her parent’s motorboat titled the balance once again, and he watched until they tired of the sport and eased the boat to the public landing dock. The only two people on the edge of the reservoir was a young man seated at the end of the pier fishing, and the old man who ran the Bait Shop.

            Listening to the happy laughter of the family approach, he leaned forward, allowing the chairs two front legs to touch the weather-beaten boards of the porch in front of his miniscule establishment and he pushed himself to his feet with obvious difficulty, seeing their intentions to come in and buy soda pop and snacks while the boat drained out the excess water on the slanting cement. A happy impulse seized him. he stall had three or four hours of sunlight left to the afternoon, and there was no one compelling him to make any decisions at this moment, one way or the other, so he half-raced back to the door, trying not to breath in the brownish cloud of rust as he pulled open the protesting frame. Turning to his right, he saw the agonizing mess of dried up rubber wading boots, broken down cardboard boxes filled with only heaven knew what, two stiffened old pieces of fabric and the prize he sought, the plastic tackle box. Seizing the larger of the two fishing lines, he forcibly shut out the pain at the second smaller, one, and whistling, allowed the screen door to slam shut behind him.  

            He was all the way past the shade of the tree, at the edge of the heated sunlight when he paused, looked back at the empty but welcoming cabin and decided the prudent thing to do would to be sure the telephone connection worked! If at the same time, he happened to call Myra’s office and ask her to meet him up here tonight, wouldn’t that simply be an economy of steps and an efficient use of his time?

            Still humming under his breath, remembering that it was considered bad luck to whistle in the house, he lifted the heavy, dusty receiver and held it gingerly near his ear. It buzzed in a convincing manner and Nathan automatically reached for the Speed Dial button on his new phone, only to hit air-hardened plastic. Laughing at himself a little, he took the time to plug each appropriate hole in the rotary dial, listening to the pleasant whirl and click as the dial righted itself to display the numbers typed in red ink across its broad, bland centerpiece.

            Davie had learned this number before he could memorize his home number and address incase he ever got lost and had to tell it to a policeman.

            His enjoyable preoccupation with the nearness of the past and its agreeable memories ceased so sharply it seemed like a slap in the face! Myra’s secretary put him through to Mr. Harmon’s private secretary, Marta Castillo.

            “   She doesn’t work here anymore, Rabbi Geller.  “  She said in a strange mixture of compassion and professional distance.  “  Blanche was just too embarrassed to tell you the way she should have the first time.  “  He could hear the scorn in the older woman’s voice and could well imagine the look that accompanied it. “  Mr. Coleman from our New York office offered her a promotion, working with him, but she refused it after she’d said she would, and he fired her yesterday, telling her that her position had already been filled! It was. By me! I thought you knew!  “

            The kindly woman suddenly became the enemy and he had no desire to reveal the shocking rift between he and Myra before her. Office gossip was more truthful than any executive would dare to be, and mumbling words he couldn’t even remember later, he hung up off her persistent use of his title and the demand to know when Myra was going to clean out the things from ‘her’ office. He didn’t know if Mrs. Castillo meant ‘her’ as in her new possession, or ‘her’ as in Myra’s expendable possession and he hung up before asking or answering her.

            When was Myra planning to tell him that she was going to take the job in New York? After it was done and accomplished? Like cleaning out Davie’s room? And for what? A job that she was going to quit in twenty-four hours? Gloom settled on his shoulders. He didn’t even remember going back outdoors, or picking up the fishing rod and oddly smelling plastic tackle box, but finding himself outside being scolded by an angry tree squirrel from the upper limbs of the Maple tree he simply walked into the furnace like heat of the two o’clock sun high overhead.

            “  Josh?  Joshua bar Abbas! What are you doing here?  “  He demanded angrily when he drew near enough to the man seated at the very end of the pier, his and Davie’s favorite place for fishing because the current allowed their lures to drift back under the cool shadows of the long pier where the biggest fish waited out the heat of the day. From this angle their lines weren’t as visible as they would have been in the glare of the slanting sunlight from the length of the moving pier.

            “  I thought it was a public dock. I’ll go.  “

            The bearded man offered quickly, beginning to raise the slender bamboo stick he was using for a pole.

            “  No please, don’t go! I’m sorry about how that came out.  “

            Nathan said quickly, noticing the man’s dusty Birkenstock hiker’s sandals on the dock behind him.  Smiling shyly he slipped off his own shoes and the thin, ribbed socks and set them safely behind him as the younger man had done, then rolling up his trousers in like fashion he cautiously edged to the end of the pier and sat down. Placing the heavy yellow and green tackle box to his left, to provide a polite ‘wall’ between them.

            “  They’re not biting huh?  “  He asked with a smile, trying to hide his distain for the piece of string he could see tied to the edge of the prepossessed bamboo which had been meant as a growing guide for tomato plants in people’s back yard, Opening the box as he waited for the glimmer of inspiration which would be Davie telling him which one of the furred, feathered or plastic pseudo-insect shaped lures he wanted him to use first.When he glanced up and noticed the other man’s amused smile in his direction, he felt a quiet peace move across him as surely as the slightly breeze that ruffled the surface of the suddenly quiet and empty body of water.

            Y’shua smiled all the more deeply then lifted the remainder of the string from the ripples gathering strength as they blew toward the shore. There was only a large knot, meant only to hold down the coarse twine.

            “  If people see you sitting, staring off into space, they’ll call the men in the white coats from the nearest mental institution, thinking that they’re missing an inmate, but drop a line in the water and you can sit and dream at the edge of the water all day and people will just assume your fishing.  “

            “  I know what you mean, Josh. Even on good days, I don’t like to drown a worm when I don’t even know if I can justify its sacrifice.  “

            Pushing the knots of his fishing net to one side, with the knots of the memories raised by the simple act of casting out his expensive lure into the waters emptied by the recent powerboat, he felt the line go snug, caught in an underwater current, and he could almost feel most of the tension knotting up inside him being pulled up the fiberglass reed, through the unpolished loops and then down the polyester line, following soundlessly into the limpid greed depths of the silence and the water.  

            Gradually the sounds of city forest dwellers, birds and mammals, resumed and though he could hear the traffic of the people using this side road to a major arterial into the back sloped of the Santa Cruz mountains, he turned it into a stony rapids of shallow water and dismissed it. For the first time since his return the smells of the war, of napalm and men crying in their pain were nowhere near him. He was above time; it ceased to exist for him in a respite demanded by his very soul. Nature had her own timetable, and it flowed through the years of memory for Nathan as he sat companionably beside the other man. He smiled inwardly remembering how Myra sat here that last summer, eight and a half months pregnant with Davie and they’d dangled their feet in the water and talked. Then when they stood up, her legs had gone to sleep and they both fell in when he tried to help her up!

            He laughed out loud and raised his chin to gaze at the restless tips of the tall trees on the other side of the busy side road, seeing only the past. The water was so shallow that year, because of another drought, that they’d both just dog paddled to the edge of the reservoir, then Myra, in one of her rare spontaneous moods, refused to get out of the water. They’d both been badly sunburned, but they’d floated there, on the graveled edge of the water, holding hands without speaking, and watching the clouds as they changed shapes before entering the wind currents engendered by the freeways just thirty miles to the north, leading to San Francisco. 

            Though he made several instinctive tugs and gestures with the rod and line, he couldn’t help but notice how his companion’s hand remained still against his paint splattered overalls. The strong but finely tapered fingers at the end of narrow, arched bones and sinew, the sun burnt skin covered with fine hairs and scars. The edges of the finer visible where they tapered around the motionless green stem bore calluses, a man accustomed to physical labor. His father and grandfather would approve.

            “  Not every man is destined to be a scholar, Davie!  “   His father’s voice gravely intoned, presuming failure from his physically active second child. His first born, a daughter had excelled in so many things he was simply grateful they had to call for a Moyleto circumcise the second and final child whatever its gender! Children were a blessing from the One on high, Blessed be His Name, but a blessing forbidden to the young couple who had to depend on his wife’s income so he could be free to spend his days studying and teaching from the Holy Books! Not like his next oldest brother Aaron who owned three furniture stores in the Bronx and Queens but who resented being asked by the family to contribute money he’d ‘sweated for’ for his ‘lazy, youngest’ brother. Always feeling that he had to live up to the expectations of those who invested so much time and money into him, the elder David Nathan Geller had promised himself never to make any demands on his own son, but simply accept whatever the active, handsome boy felt he could offer! 

            To silence the voices suddenly booming in his head, even though he’d been enjoying the comfortable lack of speech flowing between them, Nathan used the ploy that helped him unlock soldier’s tongues when they sat in front of his desk in clean uniforms but shattered souls. Start with the obvious, the simple, non-threatening. Soon the very thing they don’t even want to talk about will burst out like an overdue pimple to the slightest touch.

            “  So? Josh? What are you doing up here?  “

            “  I have a job waiting just up the road, had all afternoon to myself, so I thought I’d see about drowning a knot.   “

            Nathan laughed from his gut, even though the words themselves weren’t that funny. When he risked looking at the young handyman, whom he assumed to be a  Hippie because of his causal distain for formalities, he found an ease slide down into the empty places he usually kept filled with régime and routine. Who knew where his soul would be tonight after sundown tonight?

            “   You work hard for a living. I didn’t mean to pry!  “   He added quickly at the sad, soft sigh that escaped his companion’s sun dried lips.

            “   I did. Till I was about thirty.  “  He answered, nodding, his dark eyes gazing soulfully across the top of the water where it was beginning to lap defiantly at the gravel laid down by the public picnic area.

            Time was finding a way on intruding itself on the wearied man as he realized the younger man’s shadow had slipped up from the surface of the water, to stand over him as they sat side-by-side on the rising pier.

            “   You don’t look much older than that now.  “

            Y’shua laughed and looked at the man to his right.

            “  I’m a lot older than I look.  “   He said softly, watching to see if Nathan was inviting confidences and conversation, or just getting bored with sitting there?  

            “  Why’d you stop?  “   Nathan asked in genuine interest, placing the ribbed handle under his leg so he could feel any pull or tension on it that would tell him a fish was coming out to feed in the rapidly cooling waters.  It was a pleasure to actually be able to invite intimacy without walling himself up first with his ‘rabbinical’ role as listener and Chaplin for men far too young for the horrors of war they had already endured and would face again as soon as they stepped outside the tent. 

            “  I came into my inheritance. Now I help people daily, and it’s what really gives me the most satisfaction. To see someone, broken and distraught, be able to stand up on the inside and find hope through a very dark tunnel? I imagine it was like that for you too, In Country?  “

            Nathan grimaced at the remark, but this wasn’t someone eager for gory details of a conflict they saw only in its reduced scale on the television set as they ate their dinner on t.v. tables and listened to Walter Cronkite and Chet Huntley attempt to explain away the insanity of a barbarous war. This was a man who’d been a warrior, a poet, a friend,

and deep in his being Nathan trusted him as he had no one else in his life. 

            “  You never know if you helped someone? A smile as you shake hands goodbye, a clasp and a hug from the younger men, a promise in the eyes of the older, wanting to be the warrior they thought I saw in them? It’s difficult to explain.  “

            “  You don’t have too, if you don’t want too?   “

            Hearing the carefully spaced words, Nathan exhaled, allowing many of the worst ghosts of his failure slip out between his clinched lips and fall into the water rising slowly to the level of their feet. Either there was a storm somewhere in the Santa Cruz mountains, or more water was being released by the Municipality that exercised control over the forty acre reservoir for the coming of more crowds this weekend. It was only the second weekend of the official start of the 78 days of Summer.  Tomorrow night he would be in his best suit facing the enlarged congregation for the first use of the new worship facility.

            Tears rose to his cheeks. Davie was suppose to stand before the bema next year and take his Bar Mitzvah, taking his place among the men of Israel!  They’d been saving for it since the enutro-testing proved it was to be a boy! Now they would have to use that money to raise up a headstone for him next year! It seemed so unfair! A heavy weight pressed against his heart until he felt the soft pressure of the man’s fingertips.

            “  You can’t change it. Myra couldn’t change it. You just have to accept it. In time, the pain will ease. With acceptance and faith, it will ease and you can continue that for which you were shaped and placed into your mother’s womb to achieve.  “

            Nathan tried to focus on the gentle austerity of the face looking at his in such compassion but it was difficult to see through his tears.

            “  You’ve lost people who were dear to you, haven’t you, Josh? You’ve felt what I’m talking about, haven’t you?  “

            He found it difficult to breath at the look of pain his words engendered on his

companion.

            “  Far too many!  “   The low Voice answered, and Nathan found a release from his own pain in sharing his companion’s unspoken pain. It made him feel less alone, less set out for punishment by GOD ALMIGHTY to be reminded that man, the son of woman, is destined for pain and loss, just as Job and his friends recorded in the first written text of the Torah. In that instant, he was linked from the questioning face of a wrinkled old man looking up at the desert night sky with GOD as a companion, to the face of ninety year old barren Sarah as they laid her newborn son in her arms and her wrinkled breast provided milk to the puckered mouth, to the names aunts and uncles and cousins he would never know because of their death in the charnel houses of Europe, to the shocking memory of his own father’s face on May 18^th, 1948, the day after the State of Israel was confirmed by their rebbe.

            His face had glowed, though tears trembled from his bead as he dared to nail a picture of Jerusalem’s walls and the golden Dome of the Rock, the monument to Islam built over the sacred place it was believed that Abraham intended to offer his son Isaac

to GOD, Blessed be His Name, as a blood sacrifice on Mount Moria.. Life for a small, impassioned nation coming full circle as a picture was hung on the West Wall for the

first time in his life!

            “   It doesn’t end with me, does it Joshua?  “

            “  No. There will always be a remnant sacred unto Him, Who alone is worthy. But we walk from this marker in time where we are born, until we reach the marker where our earthly existence ends and eternity begins. Davie’s journey was brief, but he is in his Heavenly Father’s arms now. In time all will stand there, our deeds and thoughts and will made evident to the Ancient of Days even as foretold from the beginning. I think Davie will be very proud when he sees the comfort you’ve brought to others, even at the cost of our own ease. The lives you saved from a self-inflicted bullet, the lives that life saved. The people you’ve sought to give answers to in spiritual matters beyond any man, which is why the Tenach was given. Even when it put them in a bad light, the sons of Abraham kept faithful witness of their deeds and the Almighty. This, you have continued to the best of your ability, but please stop trying to shove Him aside and do it for yourself? Alright?   “

            “   Alright.  “     

            Nathan agreed with a slight laugh of contentment and peace as the fingers which had touched his for emphasis and connection moved down to twist his wrist upward enough for them to both see the hands on the wristwatch.

            “  I have twenty minutes to get to the top of the mountain. I’d better go.  “

            He pulled up the green bamboo stick and carefully wound the wet twine, putting it in overall breast pocket, Nathan noticed with a certain measure of pride. He’d never been partially ‘earth conscious’ before, but it pleased him in a way he couldn’t explain to see a resource saved for later reuse when it was still servable.

            ‘  Rather like me, GOD.  ‘  He said inwardly, in sudden insight.

            Y’shua’s smile deepened.

            “  I think you’d better get out your net. That’s a pretty big fish on the end of your line!  “

            Nathan forgot about his intention of offering a ride to the muscular man as he scuffed two of the smaller dead fish back into the water and bent over on one knee and struggled to keep the line taunt and still snag the grandfather of trout’s attempting to get free. By the time he look up, careful to wet his hand before he touched the fish, and gotten the hook out of the gasping creature’s hard rimmed mouth, the tall, bearded man in work overalls had already reached the end of the bridge which would take him over the narrow span of the water as if he had wings on his feet. The man paused, the sun glistening off him in a soft halo of late sunlight, and waved. Nathan returned it as eagerly.

            “  Don’t run so fast, Davie! There’s plenty more fish in...   “

            The stranger’s boy looked at him in open mouthed shock.

            Forgetting his parent’s frequent admonitions not to talk to strangers, the boy gasped out breath sweet with Juicy fruit gum.

            “  How’d you know my name, Mister?  “

            “   I’m a good guesser, son.  “  He said easily, deliberately turning him back on the hurting illusion, he reached down near the edge of the water and allowed the oversized rainbow hued fish to return to the water. It lay motionless for several seconds, and he feared it was too late. He’d taken too long to make the decision for life over death, but then suddenly it shook itself three times, as if hit with an electric shock and quickly dived to the emerald, murky depths beyond the reach of unseasonable insects!  

            Picking up his pole and net and closing the lid on the fishing tackle box, as if on the pain of the recent past, Nathan forced himself slowly to his feet, only to be confronted by a hostile man who seized his arm painfully.

            “  Who do you think you are? I don’t like the idea of grown men with dark skin cozying up to little boys! Especially my little boy!   “

            “  He didn’t do anything!  He didn’t mean anything by it, Dad!  “  The little boy pleaded, in genuine fear for what the outraged and aggressive posture foretold.  

            Glancing to the closed Bait and Tackle shop and the empty parking lot, Nathan was suddenly seized by a new and greater calm, gently prying the belligerent man’s fierce grip from his arm.

            “  I’m Rabbi Nathan Geller, and I own that cottage over there.  “

            “  A Jew?  “   The man exclaimed, recoiling in horror and contempt.

            “  You probably learned that attitude from your father. Who learned it from his father. I’ve just spent several pleasant hours realizing that we can choose the legacy we give to the next generation. Why don’t you think about that it little?  “

            The man angrily spat at Nathan’s bare feet but he just stepped around the glittering globule. A whistle coming to his lips once he stepped into the uncomfortably chill shadows of the Maple tree. It was dark by the time he had the leaves cleaned up that had stuck to his feet. A light knock on his back door rattled the metal hasp he hadn’t thought to relock when he came in.  He set the oil lantern to one side with a measure of trepidation and went to answer it. To his relief it was a tall, thin woman in a striped sundress, her eyes questioning and worried.

            “  My husband asked me to give you his apologies for the misunderstanding this afternoon, and he’d like you to come over for a beer and the bar-b-que since apparently the one fish you caught got away?  “

            She bit her lower lip in distress as she read his automatic rejection.

            “  I’d be pleased to accept your kind offer of hospitality, since we’re going to be neighbors.  “

            The woman let out her breath joyfully, trying to talk at the same time.

            Brent Millwood introduced him to the other two couples seated at the paper covered picnic table.

            “  You’re the man whose little boy drown here, aren’t you?  “   One of the short haired women asked, trying to hide her pity and compassion.

            “  Yes, I am.  “

            No pain flooded in, just an ache he was finding he could live with.

            “  We were hoping you could show us where not to let the boys swim? We don’t know what’s safe and what isn’t, we just got here this afternoon. We heard there’s work if you belong to the Union?  “

            She was unable to hide her uncertainty as she watched the two men wrestling in mock bear fights on the other end of the small yard.

            “  I’m not familiar with it myself, but I just hired a man who works out of the Union, I’ll give you his number and I’m sure he can set you right up, even take you there and introduce you around.  “

            “  Oh!  That would be wonderful! Only, we don’t have a phone.  “

            “  I’m leaving in the morning, but feel free to use mine for any local calls you need!   “

            “   Oh! We couldn’t do that! I...we. Jim? Jim, honey?  The reverend here has just said we can use his phone and he knows a man who can introduce you at the labor temple?  “  Her relief at his pleased assent was difficult to miss.

            “  But Honeybee, he’s a rabbi, not a reverend. “

            The young pregnant woman, already pale, blanched white under her freckles but Nathan only laughed, to put her at ease.

            “  Just call me Nathan! We’re neighbors, aren’t we?   “

            Her teeth slowly became visible between her lips, a peaceful feeling emanating around them as the thickening buzz of insects warned that it was time to light the citronella candles.

            “  We’re good Christian people, Rabbi.  “  She promised,  “  I give you my word of honor, on my grandmother’s gave, we won’t make you sorry that you’ve extended us such generosity to my family and me!   “

            “  At the moment I couldn’t think of a finer recommendation that that.  “

            Nathan answered, to the questioning in her eyes.

            Having been called over by his young wife, the man she called Jim seemed a little uncomfortable at first, but he caught Nathan off guard, who was preparing his standard “Jews-don’t-have-a-tail-and-horns speech, as he reached for the reassurance of his heavily pregnant young wife.

            “  It’s a good thing that friend of yours, what’s his name? Yahuda?  “

            “  Y’shua.  “

            The man nodded then sipped on his beer bottle, obviously buying time to repeat the name in his head several times so he wouldn’t embarrass himself by mispronouncing it again. “  If your friend hadn’t flagged us down to speak to us, we would have been rolling downhill when that right rear tire blew out! We all could’ha been killed, man! I mean, you just never know when stopping to try to do another man a favor can flat out save your own life or that of someone you love! It’s sure given me something to really think about, you know what I mean? I would have passed him right on by if Turk hadn’t stopped, just figuring he was a long haired Hippie you know? “

            “  GOD moves in mysterious way, Honey. Just like the good book says.   “

            Jim, whose last name Nathan didn’t know, belched slightly as he bent to kiss his wife’s upturned lips, apologized softly and then finished the gesture with a tenderness that made Nathan ache for the days when and Myra had been young and that much in love twenty-two years ago. He wasn’t even sure they noticed when he excused himself and walked away from the smoke of the dying embers. 

            He was startled to see the lonely figure of a woman standing near the rockslide where Davie and his friends had been playing and diving before the accident.

            “  Myra!  “  He demanded in shock, as she dropped the heavy rock she had clutched to her bosom.

            “  That could have crushed your feet, by the grace of GOD it didn’t!  “ He shouted, running up to her. Only this close did he see how swollen and red her eyes were from crying.

            “  You could have gotten hurt! Or died, like Davie!  “

            “  Would you have even cared? An eye for an eye! A Tooth for a tooth!  “

            “   You silly little....lonely, lovely woman. Light of my life.  “  He amended softly as he gathered her unresisting form next to his body. Her arms lay limp as her head fell against his shoulder in fresh sobs and self-condemnation.

            “  It was a terrible accident. A loss we both feel. But it wasn’t in our hands to decided, Myra. But this is. That I want to ask your forgiveness for all my coldness, all my blame, all the times I allowed civilized walls to push us further and further apart? “

            “  How can you say that? After everything I’ve done? I hate myself as much as you do!  “

            “  Oh Myra, we got to talk more, instead of just assuming!  Just this afternoon, I almost got beaten to a pulp by a man whose sacred to death because he brought his family and best friends out here for a job that fell though and they didn’t even have enough food to eat!   “   

            “  But we’ve got a whole freezer full of food!  “

            “  Had! The electricity went out last night and we had to eat most of it at a bar-b-que tonight. Simply to keep it from spoiling, of course!  “ 

            He winked at her, pleased to feel her body soften with her smile.

            “   Why was he going to beat you up?  “ 

            She asked in a low, puzzled voice, bringing up her hands up to rest comfortably against his chest.

            “  I threw away a fish that would have at least given the children something to eat,

I think. “

            Myra nodded, yielding willing to his slight tug to carry them back toward the cabin where the light from the lantern he’d forgotten flickered in vain struggle against the darkness inside the cabin.

            “  GOD works in mysterious ways, His wonders to unfold.  “

            “  Really! Today while I was fishing, someone said they believe we’re even counted righteous when the lives we save, save other lives. The children would have played here and maybe got hurt or worse if we hadn’t known, from our pain, to warn them away. Who knows, maybe one of those kids will grow up to be president of the United States some day?  “

            “  Or the baby I’m carrying, Nathan? Maybe he or she could grow up to be President one day?   “

            She questioned hesitantly, completely unsure of his response till she saw the joy and shock replace his disbelief. “  I would have killed us both if...   “

            “   Stop! Stop Myra! Let’s take a deep breath and start our marriage right now! At this moment! Only what happens from this moment forward even counts!  All right?  “        
            She dropped her head to his chest trembling, as he tightened his arms around her and whispered a prayer of thanksgiving to the Holy One of Israel as His great arms encircled them in His love.

            “  I can’t promise I’ll always understand what your saying. But I can promise to listen to you, Myra?   “

            “   All I ask, Davie. “  She said quietly, laying her hand on his chest and then risked looking directly into his expressive eyes at this nearness, “  Is that whatever we have to face at shul tomorrow. We’ll face it together!  A couple; united in marriage, untied in pain.

            “  United in commitment.  “   He agreed, nodding and shutting his eyes until the chill inquiry of her fingertips on his cheek, disturbing the unmanly flow of tears.

            He knew what she was asking of him. To take down the ‘civilized walls’ between them and his heart began to pound so loudly he could feel it’s strike against his chest. His left ear seemed to close and a high pitched hum trickled through his consciousness, and he tensed awaiting the pain of the migraine, but it didn’t occur. After a few seconds the thin wheedling hum ceased as well, and he risked opening his eyes, opening his heart to her as he had those first few minutes of union under the canopy of the Chuppah. That’s a good enough start for them to join arms and walk back toward the empty cabin.

            “  What brought you all the way out here?   “

            “   I was driving to the spot where Davie was killed.  “  She explains haltingly. “  I thought you didn’t want me in your life any more, and I just couldn’t live like that! But as I was driving past, I saw the light on in the cabin, so I turned around and I found you all alone...and I realized how unfair I was being to you. I’m sorry, Davie.   “

            He crushed her to his chest, in promise, in hope, in deepest regret.

            “  I wasn’t alone. I was with the new friend I made today. You know, the young man I was telling you about whose working on the Habitat for Humanity house? Y’shua

bar Abbas?  “

            “  What a co-incidence. Doesn’t Y’shua mean ‘light’?  I mean, I only turned around because I saw the lights on in the cabin.  “ 

            He started to pontificate about the complexity of Hebrew roots which arise from a single stem but take on different meanings, so that the same word for ‘Light’ could also mean ‘Salvation’, but seeing the fear creep back in her eyes, he deliberately struck down the inner wall he was rebuilding between them.

            “   It’s wonderful to be married to a woman whose as intelligent as she is beautiful, my love. “  

            Part of her wanted to disagree with him, but she was too busy searching out the warmth of his lips pressed eagerly against hers in renewal and promise.   

            “  Does mean I have to give up my own bathroom and try to share yours?  “

            She teased as he pulled back slowly, as sated as any lover has the right to be, unable to keep the devotion and hope out of her voice.

.