Greenberg
Augustine Himmel
He hadn’t been this nervous since 1943, when the Nazis deported him from the ghetto in Radom, Poland, and he’d ridden in a dark and sour-smelling boxcar knowing he might never see his twenty-fifth birthday. Like many of the Jews in Radom he at first dismissed the rumors of extermination camps, of gas chambers and mass graves and incinerators that filled the air with the acrid stench of burning flesh—the world was civilized, after all—but deportations to camps of one kind or another had been going on since 1940, had during the past year hauled away his parents and sister, and as the same thing happened to him, Anton understood how their ancestors must have felt when Pharaoh’s army bore down on them, in those moments of pachad before Moses parted the Red Sea.
Now in 1990 he was an old man like Moses, and he had deliberately spent most of his adulthood not being fearful. After his rescue from Gusen II and subsequent immigration to America, he resolved to put pachad behind him; one year and ten months of it, in four camps, beginning with Majdanek, was enough for a lifetime. And until recently he had not strayed from the quietude he’d cultivated in America. But Greenberg was missing, and somehow that changed everything.
Anton, sitting on the edge of his bed in the early morning, his white crew cut bent toward the floor, was so nervous he could barely tie his tennis shoes. Decades in carpentry had muscled his naturally large hands, and this, combined with his mighty stomach, made tying his shoes difficult in the first place—though right then he struggled with the laces as if he were wearing mittens. Moreover, he’d begun to feel silly: What kind of man gets upset over the disappearance of a squirrel?
After his wife died Anton began feeding squirrels in his back yard, and the half dozen regulars whom with time he could tell apart by behavior, or when they were up close, by appearance, he named after professional baseball players. Some of the players he’d seen at Tiger Stadium once he started making decent money in America, some he’d seen on television or heard on the radio, though some he’d never seen or heard, but had read about in big-league history books. Each squirrel, male or female, resembled the player for whom it was named: Among them were Cobb, the tiny, aggressive squirrel who liked to fight and thought it was his responsibility to keep newcomers away from the food; Dizzy, the hyperactive one, ran around crazily as if high on drugs; Mays was the most graceful, could jump between tree limbs with the beauty of his namesake traversing center field; Yogi, missing patches of hair on his back, was both homely and good-natured; and Boog, whom Anton had named after Boog Powell, was by far the largest squirrel. Boog, or Booger, depending on Anton’s disposition, could never get enough to eat, and in many ways reminded the widower of himself. He’d thought about naming it after Babe Ruth, but decided it was more brawny like Powell.
Although Anton was fond of all his squirrels, none of them compared to Greenberg. Hank Greenberg was a Hall-of-Famer who’d played for the Detroit Tigers, an unshakeable home-run hitter in the days when brush‑back pitches were an accepted part of the game. He hadn’t been afraid of anything, much like Greenberg the squirrel, a male who, while he didn’t look for fights, and was missing most of his left ear from one, wouldn’t back down when challenged, even if the challenge came from Anton. The old man couldn’t help but admire that. Hank Greenberg was Anton’s favorite baseball player of all time, and Greenberg the squirrel, Greenberg the Brave!, well, he had just become very important to the widower the last few years.
When he finally finished with his shoes, he pushed himself up from the edge of his bed, relaxed his stomach, and stood still to catch his breath. In his younger days as a carpenter for a builder in Flint, Michigan, Anton’s stomach threatened to surpass his powerful, barreled chest, but good‑hearted nagging from his wife Basza, who’d also put on some extra pounds, had bolstered his wavering willpower and helped keep him in decent shape. Once he retired to the village of Edson, however, and especially after Basza died, Anton ate whatever was convenient and tasted good, and his stomach expanded like the salaries of modern-day big leaguers.
He decided to walk to the tavern, where a group of old men gathered each morning for breakfast. He usually joined them after he had fed the squirrels, and he hoped a little schmoozing with the fellas would take his mind off Greenberg.
Making his way down the sidewalk past ancient, leafless trees, the November air felt comfortable to Anton, who wore nothing over his 5X‑large T-shirt. A thin layer of frost covered the grass like the powdered sugar Basza used to sprinkle on her homemade sufganiyot. After the war, even though they had settled in a Jewish community in Flint, the couple gradually became secular, neither attending synagogue nor keeping kosher, and observing religious holidays only in ways they fancied, such as eating sufganiyot on Hanukkah. Basza would fill the doughnuts with custard or strawberry jam, both of which she also made herself, and while Anton could eat several of them as easily as he could read a floor plan, he’d limit himself to three to avoid being gluttonous.
The tavern was only a few blocks from his house, and when he walked through the front door he saw most of the fellas were there at one of the large, round tables, including Erv Watson, the undertaker with a gray horseshoe of hair and kind, grandmotherly eyes, who’d become a good friend of his since he retired to Edson. Erv had been a fine amateur athlete and was still player-manager for a sixty-five-and-over softball team, which impressed Anton, but more importantly, he and his wife Grace were the first persons in the small Michigan town to really make Anton and Basza feel welcome. The widower slid a chair up next to Erv, who asked, “How’s my little buddy?”
“Not so little... I’m afraid someday I should explode.”
“Aw, you look fine to me,” said Erv. “You’re just a growing boy!” And the undertaker gave Anton a friendly slap on the back, which he frequently did to people in the tavern—if he wasn’t wrapping an arm around their shoulders in boozy camaraderie.
“You always know what to say, even if it’s not true.”
Ted Hoetzel, who’d recently paid off the mortgage on the tavern, brought Anton his coffee and took his order, and then Sam Richemier, owner of the local hardware store and noted sports enthusiast—all his sons had been talented basketball players for Edson High School—continued explaining how, with the help of zigzagging running back Barry Sanders, the Detroit Lions would finally make the playoffs that year.
Anton ate his breakfast and listened to the conversation, which alternated between sports, politics, and local gossip, but his heart wasn’t in it and he rarely spoke, and when the other old-timers eventually left the table, Erv, now smoking a cigar, asked him what was wrong.
“It’s maybe nothing.”
“Well, it must be something. You were awfully quiet this morning.”
“Okay,” said Anton. “I don’t like to kvetch.”
“Don’t be silly,” said Erv. “The squeaky wheel gets the grease.”
Anton nodded at the familiar expression, though it didn’t comfort him. “You know I feed the squirrels?”
“Why, yes… You feed them peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.”
“Not sandwiches,” said Anton. “Peanut butter bread. Every night I set half a loaf out to dry. Mornings I spread it with crunchy peanut butter. Then I cut it in small squares.”
“That’s right,” said Erv, “peanut butter bread.”
“Also a tray of sunflower seeds. And sometimes, for a treat, a walnut or two for my favorites.”
“Those squirrels eat better than I do!” said Erv. He bent in close, and with breath smelling of coffee and cigar, whispered, “Don’t tell my wife I said that.”
“Well,” said Anton, ignoring the joke, “two days now Greenberg misses the feeding. He never misses. He eats almost as much as Boog. I think maybe something happened to him.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t be too sure about that,” said Erv, leaning back in his chair. “Squirrels can take care of themselves. Greenberg is probably just out rutting. Bet he found a cute dish the other side of Main Street.”
“You think so?”
“Sure! He’ll come back when his dick gets tired.”
“Maybe you’re right.”
“Don’t worry,” said Erv.
But Anton did worry, and that night he slept little, and each time he dozed he dreamed of Basza and the day she died. The dream was really a memory, and it was so vivid the pain that came with it jarred him like the time a traitorous Jewish kapo—both prisoner and supervisor—beat him with a club in the Gusen II camp because he’d helped up another prisoner who, weak from labor and malnutrition, had fallen while they were in line for rations.
The day of Basza’s death, she and Anton ate dinner at Maude’s, the only authentic restaurant in Edson. The tavern served excellent sandwiches and pizza, and the town also had an independent pizza shop, Slice of Heaven, from which Anton sometimes bought takeout, but he loved the buffet at Maude’s, one of the main reasons he retired to Edson. When they finished eating and came home that cold April evening, they settled down on the sofa to watch television together, but it wasn’t long before Basza said, “Anton, I don’t feel so good.” He put the back of his right hand against her forehead—it covered all her forehead as well as her eyes—and because she seemed hot he hurried to the bathroom and wet a washcloth with cold water. Just as he returned she clutched painfully at her chest, and though she was the one having a heart attack, she said, “Anton! My Anton!”
Then she was dead, and one of the first things that occurred to him was from now on he would have to watch television by himself. Unable to have children because of an injection the Nazis gave Basza, the couple spent much of their free time watching their favorite shows together: Texaco Star Theater, I Love Lucy, You Bet Your Life, Bonanza... and of course, the Tigers. It had been a balm for them throughout their long marriage, sitting in front of their television enjoying themselves and, as much as possible, not thinking about the war and how HaShem, creator of the world and everyone in it, allowed such a genocide. Texaco Star Theater and You Bet Your Life were both hosted by Jews, but Milton Berle and Groucho Marx, like Hank Greenberg, the “Hebrew Hammer,” were as far removed from the Shoah as Michigan was from Europe.
Anton called Erv and told him Basza was dead. When he hung up the phone he looked at his wife and said, “So, now you are gone too.” He thought briefly of his parents, who’d been gassed in Treblinka, of his maternal grandfather, the shoemaker who never made it to a camp but had been shot in the head at the ghetto hospital in Radom, and of his sister, Sarah, who was nineteen the last time he saw her and had been hanged by the Nazis because as a devout Jew, she refused to work in one of their brothels. These thoughts stayed with Anton only a few seconds, and then, as he’d done so often, he put them out of his mind. He sat down next to his wife, stroked her hand and watched the television.
When Erv arrived he tried to comfort his friend, but there was no need: Though Anton had loved Basza most of his life, ever since they’d taken citizenship classes together in New York City, he couldn’t bring himself to mourn her passing—there would be no shiva—and he had already said goodbye.
Greenberg didn’t show for breakfast the third day either, but for a while Anton thought he would. After his fitful sleep he woke to the sound of Dizzy chattering feverishly on the window screen above his bed; the old man liked fresh air and kept his window partly open even in winter. Dizzy climbed the screen when he was especially hungry or impatient, and the familiarity of it seemed to Anton a good sign. He got out of bed, grabbed a squirt gun from the bedside table, pushed up the window and sprayed the sensitive underside of the squirrel with a blast of water that immediately caused Dizzy to loosen his hold on the screen and jump to the sill, and then to the ground.
“Son of a bitch!” said Anton happily. “I tell you to stay off that screen!”
Squirrels disliked getting wet, and Anton kept several squirt guns around his house for the bold ones, like Dizzy, who would otherwise tear apart his screens with their razor‑sharp nails. The only squirrel not afraid of the squirt gun was Greenberg, who had ruined a screen on the upper half of Anton’s kitchen storm door. He’d tried using the squirt gun on him, but it only worked the first couple times. After that, if Anton sprayed Greenberg, the squirrel would stubbornly hold on and then piss back at him through the screen. The retired carpenter finally solved the problem by fastening a piece of plexiglass to the frame around the lower half of the screen, starting just above the door knob and going up thirty inches. It blocked some of the breeze that would normally cool the kitchen, but not uncomfortably so, and thankfully, Greenberg never showed any interest in the other screens.
As he drank his coffee and made the peanut butter bread for the squirrels, Anton didn’t dare look out to his back yard: He didn’t want to ruin things by being overly eager. The kitchen’s inner door was open, though, to admit a little fresh air, and from where he sat at the chrome table covered with light-blue Formica, which he and Basza bought in the 1950s, he watched as Dizzy climbed the railing on the back steps, jumped to the storm door’s knob, and began spinning round and round the knob like a dreidel, the four-sided top Jewish children twirl on the floor during Hanukkah.
On each side of the dreidel is a letter from the Hebrew alphabet. Together, the letters produce an acronym meaning, “a great miracle happened there,” referencing both the military victory by Judah the Maccabee and his army over the Greeks—a victory that reclaimed the Temple in Jerusalem—and also the inexplicable way a small portion of sacred olive oil, only enough to light the Temple menorah for one day, somehow lit it for all eight days of the Temple’s rededication ceremony.
“You’re crazy!” Anton said to Dizzy, hoping that, even though Hanukkah was a month away, he might enjoy his own little miracle with the return of Greenberg.
When he finished preparing the bread—it took a while to spread half a loaf and then cut each piece in small squares— he grabbed the plate layered with food and walked cautiously to the door, leaving another full plate behind him on the table for later in the day. He banged on the door with his free hand so Dizzy would jump back to the railing. Then, stepping outside onto the tiny cement porch, he took a deep breath and forced himself to look closely at the squirrels.
Squinting against the morning sun magnified the creases in Anton’s forehead and by his eyes, so that he appeared to be only a large and serious old man with a crew cut, rather than the frightened man he was. He took an inventory: Yes, there was Boog, standing on his hind legs at the bottom of the steps, nose in the air, waiting for the crunchy peanut butter bread; Mays, who conveyed class even when eating, sat on his haunches in the aluminum tray of sunflower seeds, chewing away; a squirrel who turned out to be Cobb, ran down a maple tree and then darted across the yard to be fed; patch-haired Yogi lay sprawled across the roof of the bird feeder, which was shaped like a house and had glass sides, trying to get at the seed on its wooden floor without falling, his tail, still bushy, helping him keep his balance; and Dizzy, impatient as always, ran back and forth across the widower’s slippers. They were all there except Greenberg.
“Where are you, my friend?” sighed Anton.
And with a sadness that brought him to the brink of nausea, he walked down the steps to the grass, sat on an old metal lawn chair, steadied the plate on his lap and, reaching over the right side of the chair, began feeding the squirrels. They came to him one at a time, the meanest ones first, starting with Cobb, the gentler ones in their turn, and from habit he held each piece of bread close to the grass, making sure it was lower than the squirrel’s mouth. He wasn’t thinking about what he was doing—he could only focus on Greenberg—but he had learned when he first started feeding them that if the food was above the squirrel’s mouth, the animal might lunge for it and, unintentionally, take part of a finger as well. Most of them came back for seconds and thirds, Boog for more, and when the plate was empty Anton stood and walked slowly back into his house.
He didn’t go to the tavern that morning. How could he even listen to conversation? Instead, he sat in his living room with the shades pulled and his heart aching, unable to hold off whatever dark thoughts or memories came to him. He recalled his time in Mauthausen, the second camp in which he’d been imprisoned. He was a lean young man, then, and his will to live had been nearly extinguished in that horror the Nazis designed to work people to death. Mauthausen had a granite quarry where prisoners labored year-round, in every kind of weather, and several times a day they were forced to carry granite blocks on their shoulders from the bottom of the quarry; some of the blocks weighed over a hundred pounds, and there were 186 steps to the top of the quarry. It wasn’t uncommon for prisoners to collapse from fatigue and malnutrition, their blocks falling against prisoners behind them, causing those prisoners and their blocks to do the same, until crushed and bloodied bodies littered what had been aptly named the Stairs of Death. And those who made it to the top of the stairs still had to navigate a half-mile-long, bumpy dirt road, at which point, depending on the mood of the guards, prisoners who’d successfully delivered their blocks might be placed at the edge of the nearby cliff and given the choice of pushing another prisoner over the edge, or of being shot themselves. Often prisoners refused to choose, and instead flung themselves over the cliff as into the arms of a lover.
That’s what Anton would have done, had he been put in that position, but he never was, and amazingly, he survived Mauthausen. What a long time ago, he thought; what a way to learn about the world.
Though he had to admit, once he immigrated to America, his life had been good. His family was gone and those memories were always with him, but he’d had Basza, and while love can’t make you forget the past, it can certainly help you enjoy the present. And that was the essence of it: They had enjoyed their life together. Even if he hadn’t separated himself as far from his Jewishness as he’d thought—why honor Hank Greenberg above all the other powerful hitters?—at least he could say he’d been happy. Yes, he had been happy, and for a Jew in the twentieth century, that was no small accomplishment.
So why this despair over the disappearance of a squirrel, a petulant rodent who’d pissed through his screen? That, he couldn’t figure out, as he sat in the darkness of his living room.
When he finally lifted his bulk from his recliner and walked into the kitchen, he was surprised to see by the wall clock that it was lunchtime. He pulled a leftover Slice of Heaven pizza from the refrigerator, ate it cold out of the box with a glass of milk, and afterwards returned to his recliner. For the rest of the afternoon he brooded and dozed, brooded and dozed, then fed the squirrels and decided to go to the tavern for dinner. He was tired of thinking about the past, and he’d had all the solitude he could handle for one day.
The tavern was crowded, but when he entered a spot opened at the short end of the L-shaped bar, so he sat down and asked for a club sandwich with fries and a large glass of Coca‑Cola.
Just as he finished eating, Erv walked over from a table on the other side of the tavern where he’d been playing euchre, and told Anton he needed a new partner. Anton had seen Erv when he first arrived, and avoided the table because he didn’t want to be asked to play. He liked euchre, but he could tell from the way Erv had begun slouching in his chair that he’d been drinking for quite a while, and although the undertaker was an excellent euchre player when sober, and even a very good player if he’d only been drinking an hour or two, if he’d been tossing them back all afternoon, as it seemed he had, he became careless and would frequently get euchred when he made trump. That made it frustrating to be his partner, especially for someone like Anton, who didn’t drink.
However, Erv was his friend, and he didn’t want to disappoint the first person who’d welcomed him to Edson. Also, there was a chance of the games continuing until closing time, and if nothing else, staying at the tavern might help Anton keep his mind off Greenberg and postpone his dream of Basza, which he sensed would come to him again that evening.
“Sure, Erv,” he said. “We kick some ass.”
Of course, they were beaten every game, no matter who their opponents were, and after walking the undertaker home in the cool night air, Anton returned to his own bed, but each time he started dozing the memory of Basza’s last day appeared, the scenes as clear as those on his television, and he would force himself awake while they were eating dinner at Maude’s, because he refused to watch his wife die over and over again. At five a.m. he made a pot of coffee and started fixing the crunchy peanut butter bread, even though the squirrels were still sleeping.
Greenberg didn’t show for the feeding later that morning. This time, Anton really hadn’t expected him. Yet it bothered the widower no less, and he decided he would try to find out what had happened to the squirrel. So around noon, after giving Erv a few more hours to sleep off his drunk, and during which time Anton busied himself about his own yard—he didn’t dare isolate inside his house again—he walked over to the undertaker’s and asked for his help in finding Greenberg.
At first Erv thought he was joking. He didn’t believe Anton really planned on traipsing the streets of Edson in search of a squirrel. He even accused his friend of having some fun at his expense—trying to confuse an old man with a hangover. But once convinced Anton was serious, Erv immediately agreed to help. In fact, it was Erv who suggested they split up, and that way cover the town more quickly; they would meet back at Anton’s when they finished. Anton told Erv about Greenberg missing most of his left ear, so the undertaker would recognize the squirrel if he saw him. He feared, however, that while his friend had consented to help, he might instead just walk to the tavern, or to Maude’s Restaurant, where he also liked to drink, and ease into the day with a couple Bloody Marys.
But nearly an hour and a half later, after his own fruitless search—which had reminded him of when he and his father scoured the Radom ghetto for a doctor to mend his grandfather’s broken leg—and then after another ten minutes pacing his small front yard, Anton could see that bald-headed Erv, wearing a burgundy jacket with white, scripted letters advertising Maude’s, the sponsor of his softball team, was sweating as he walked up to him. He obviously hadn’t been sitting around drinking. And the look in his friend’s eyes, which were usually so vibrant, made certain to him Greenberg was dead. Anton had known that for the past two days, but he didn’t want to admit it to himself; he’d known it as surely as he had known, in that cramped and stifling boxcar, that Hitler was trying to eliminate an entire race of people.
“I’m sorry,” said Erv.
“Where did you find him?”
“Over on Saginaw Street.”
“A car?”
“Yes.”
“I like to see him.”
“No,” said Erv. “You don’t want to see him.”
“It’s bad?”
Erv nodded somberly—but then, all at once, his expression and voice were as calming as a well-stocked buffet: “It must have happened very fast. I’m sure he didn’t feel a thing.”
“That’s good,” said Anton.
“Yes. A quick death is a good thing.”
“What about the body?”
“I buried it at my house, right behind Gracie’s rose bush. Everything’s been taken care of.”
“Thank you, Erv.”
“Anything for my little buddy.”
Anton scratched the top of his crew cut with a meaty hand. “I must be stupid… to be so sad about a squirrel.”
“Aw, I don’t think so,” said Erv. “If you really love something, what does it matter? You’ve got a right to be sad.”
“You think it’s not stupid?”
“No. Of course not.” And then the undertaker’s eyes brightened. “Say, why don’t you come over for dinner? That should improve your spirits!”
“Not tonight, Erv. Tomorrow maybe I want to.”
“Tomorrow it is! And listen, I’ll have Gracie make a pot roast with potatoes and carrots. How does that sound?”
“I like Gracie’s pot roast.”
“Okay… I better be going. If I don’t get a drink pretty soon, a little hair of the dog, this hangover might last all day!”
“Thank you, Erv.”
“You get some rest, now,” said the undertaker, clasping his palms on both sides of Anton’s right hand and pumping it vigorously. And then he turned and nearly ran down the sidewalk toward Main Street, to either the tavern or Maude’s.
Pulling on the railing, Anton climbed the steps to his house. He went in the front door and through the living room and on into his bedroom. He took the framed photograph of his wife from atop his dresser, and then walked slowly to the kitchen, all the while looking at Basza’s smiling face. It was his favorite picture of her, taken on her sixtieth birthday at the Sears Portrait Studio in Flint. She wore the new pearls Anton had bought her.
He sat on a chair, his stomach and forearms pressing against the vintage table, the photograph resting in his oversized hands. He continued looking at Basza, recalling their life together. His breathing gradually became more rapid. His chest heaved up and down like the ocean he’d crossed so many years before. He knew the tears were coming, and he feared there would be six million.
Originally published in the Beloit Fiction Journal.
Augustine Himmel
He hadn’t been this nervous since 1943, when the Nazis deported him from the ghetto in Radom, Poland, and he’d ridden in a dark and sour-smelling boxcar knowing he might never see his twenty-fifth birthday. Like many of the Jews in Radom he at first dismissed the rumors of extermination camps, of gas chambers and mass graves and incinerators that filled the air with the acrid stench of burning flesh—the world was civilized, after all—but deportations to camps of one kind or another had been going on since 1940, had during the past year hauled away his parents and sister, and as the same thing happened to him, Anton understood how their ancestors must have felt when Pharaoh’s army bore down on them, in those moments of pachad before Moses parted the Red Sea.
Now in 1990 he was an old man like Moses, and he had deliberately spent most of his adulthood not being fearful. After his rescue from Gusen II and subsequent immigration to America, he resolved to put pachad behind him; one year and ten months of it, in four camps, beginning with Majdanek, was enough for a lifetime. And until recently he had not strayed from the quietude he’d cultivated in America. But Greenberg was missing, and somehow that changed everything.
Anton, sitting on the edge of his bed in the early morning, his white crew cut bent toward the floor, was so nervous he could barely tie his tennis shoes. Decades in carpentry had muscled his naturally large hands, and this, combined with his mighty stomach, made tying his shoes difficult in the first place—though right then he struggled with the laces as if he were wearing mittens. Moreover, he’d begun to feel silly: What kind of man gets upset over the disappearance of a squirrel?
After his wife died Anton began feeding squirrels in his back yard, and the half dozen regulars whom with time he could tell apart by behavior, or when they were up close, by appearance, he named after professional baseball players. Some of the players he’d seen at Tiger Stadium once he started making decent money in America, some he’d seen on television or heard on the radio, though some he’d never seen or heard, but had read about in big-league history books. Each squirrel, male or female, resembled the player for whom it was named: Among them were Cobb, the tiny, aggressive squirrel who liked to fight and thought it was his responsibility to keep newcomers away from the food; Dizzy, the hyperactive one, ran around crazily as if high on drugs; Mays was the most graceful, could jump between tree limbs with the beauty of his namesake traversing center field; Yogi, missing patches of hair on his back, was both homely and good-natured; and Boog, whom Anton had named after Boog Powell, was by far the largest squirrel. Boog, or Booger, depending on Anton’s disposition, could never get enough to eat, and in many ways reminded the widower of himself. He’d thought about naming it after Babe Ruth, but decided it was more brawny like Powell.
Although Anton was fond of all his squirrels, none of them compared to Greenberg. Hank Greenberg was a Hall-of-Famer who’d played for the Detroit Tigers, an unshakeable home-run hitter in the days when brush‑back pitches were an accepted part of the game. He hadn’t been afraid of anything, much like Greenberg the squirrel, a male who, while he didn’t look for fights, and was missing most of his left ear from one, wouldn’t back down when challenged, even if the challenge came from Anton. The old man couldn’t help but admire that. Hank Greenberg was Anton’s favorite baseball player of all time, and Greenberg the squirrel, Greenberg the Brave!, well, he had just become very important to the widower the last few years.
When he finally finished with his shoes, he pushed himself up from the edge of his bed, relaxed his stomach, and stood still to catch his breath. In his younger days as a carpenter for a builder in Flint, Michigan, Anton’s stomach threatened to surpass his powerful, barreled chest, but good‑hearted nagging from his wife Basza, who’d also put on some extra pounds, had bolstered his wavering willpower and helped keep him in decent shape. Once he retired to the village of Edson, however, and especially after Basza died, Anton ate whatever was convenient and tasted good, and his stomach expanded like the salaries of modern-day big leaguers.
He decided to walk to the tavern, where a group of old men gathered each morning for breakfast. He usually joined them after he had fed the squirrels, and he hoped a little schmoozing with the fellas would take his mind off Greenberg.
Making his way down the sidewalk past ancient, leafless trees, the November air felt comfortable to Anton, who wore nothing over his 5X‑large T-shirt. A thin layer of frost covered the grass like the powdered sugar Basza used to sprinkle on her homemade sufganiyot. After the war, even though they had settled in a Jewish community in Flint, the couple gradually became secular, neither attending synagogue nor keeping kosher, and observing religious holidays only in ways they fancied, such as eating sufganiyot on Hanukkah. Basza would fill the doughnuts with custard or strawberry jam, both of which she also made herself, and while Anton could eat several of them as easily as he could read a floor plan, he’d limit himself to three to avoid being gluttonous.
The tavern was only a few blocks from his house, and when he walked through the front door he saw most of the fellas were there at one of the large, round tables, including Erv Watson, the undertaker with a gray horseshoe of hair and kind, grandmotherly eyes, who’d become a good friend of his since he retired to Edson. Erv had been a fine amateur athlete and was still player-manager for a sixty-five-and-over softball team, which impressed Anton, but more importantly, he and his wife Grace were the first persons in the small Michigan town to really make Anton and Basza feel welcome. The widower slid a chair up next to Erv, who asked, “How’s my little buddy?”
“Not so little... I’m afraid someday I should explode.”
“Aw, you look fine to me,” said Erv. “You’re just a growing boy!” And the undertaker gave Anton a friendly slap on the back, which he frequently did to people in the tavern—if he wasn’t wrapping an arm around their shoulders in boozy camaraderie.
“You always know what to say, even if it’s not true.”
Ted Hoetzel, who’d recently paid off the mortgage on the tavern, brought Anton his coffee and took his order, and then Sam Richemier, owner of the local hardware store and noted sports enthusiast—all his sons had been talented basketball players for Edson High School—continued explaining how, with the help of zigzagging running back Barry Sanders, the Detroit Lions would finally make the playoffs that year.
Anton ate his breakfast and listened to the conversation, which alternated between sports, politics, and local gossip, but his heart wasn’t in it and he rarely spoke, and when the other old-timers eventually left the table, Erv, now smoking a cigar, asked him what was wrong.
“It’s maybe nothing.”
“Well, it must be something. You were awfully quiet this morning.”
“Okay,” said Anton. “I don’t like to kvetch.”
“Don’t be silly,” said Erv. “The squeaky wheel gets the grease.”
Anton nodded at the familiar expression, though it didn’t comfort him. “You know I feed the squirrels?”
“Why, yes… You feed them peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.”
“Not sandwiches,” said Anton. “Peanut butter bread. Every night I set half a loaf out to dry. Mornings I spread it with crunchy peanut butter. Then I cut it in small squares.”
“That’s right,” said Erv, “peanut butter bread.”
“Also a tray of sunflower seeds. And sometimes, for a treat, a walnut or two for my favorites.”
“Those squirrels eat better than I do!” said Erv. He bent in close, and with breath smelling of coffee and cigar, whispered, “Don’t tell my wife I said that.”
“Well,” said Anton, ignoring the joke, “two days now Greenberg misses the feeding. He never misses. He eats almost as much as Boog. I think maybe something happened to him.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t be too sure about that,” said Erv, leaning back in his chair. “Squirrels can take care of themselves. Greenberg is probably just out rutting. Bet he found a cute dish the other side of Main Street.”
“You think so?”
“Sure! He’ll come back when his dick gets tired.”
“Maybe you’re right.”
“Don’t worry,” said Erv.
But Anton did worry, and that night he slept little, and each time he dozed he dreamed of Basza and the day she died. The dream was really a memory, and it was so vivid the pain that came with it jarred him like the time a traitorous Jewish kapo—both prisoner and supervisor—beat him with a club in the Gusen II camp because he’d helped up another prisoner who, weak from labor and malnutrition, had fallen while they were in line for rations.
The day of Basza’s death, she and Anton ate dinner at Maude’s, the only authentic restaurant in Edson. The tavern served excellent sandwiches and pizza, and the town also had an independent pizza shop, Slice of Heaven, from which Anton sometimes bought takeout, but he loved the buffet at Maude’s, one of the main reasons he retired to Edson. When they finished eating and came home that cold April evening, they settled down on the sofa to watch television together, but it wasn’t long before Basza said, “Anton, I don’t feel so good.” He put the back of his right hand against her forehead—it covered all her forehead as well as her eyes—and because she seemed hot he hurried to the bathroom and wet a washcloth with cold water. Just as he returned she clutched painfully at her chest, and though she was the one having a heart attack, she said, “Anton! My Anton!”
Then she was dead, and one of the first things that occurred to him was from now on he would have to watch television by himself. Unable to have children because of an injection the Nazis gave Basza, the couple spent much of their free time watching their favorite shows together: Texaco Star Theater, I Love Lucy, You Bet Your Life, Bonanza... and of course, the Tigers. It had been a balm for them throughout their long marriage, sitting in front of their television enjoying themselves and, as much as possible, not thinking about the war and how HaShem, creator of the world and everyone in it, allowed such a genocide. Texaco Star Theater and You Bet Your Life were both hosted by Jews, but Milton Berle and Groucho Marx, like Hank Greenberg, the “Hebrew Hammer,” were as far removed from the Shoah as Michigan was from Europe.
Anton called Erv and told him Basza was dead. When he hung up the phone he looked at his wife and said, “So, now you are gone too.” He thought briefly of his parents, who’d been gassed in Treblinka, of his maternal grandfather, the shoemaker who never made it to a camp but had been shot in the head at the ghetto hospital in Radom, and of his sister, Sarah, who was nineteen the last time he saw her and had been hanged by the Nazis because as a devout Jew, she refused to work in one of their brothels. These thoughts stayed with Anton only a few seconds, and then, as he’d done so often, he put them out of his mind. He sat down next to his wife, stroked her hand and watched the television.
When Erv arrived he tried to comfort his friend, but there was no need: Though Anton had loved Basza most of his life, ever since they’d taken citizenship classes together in New York City, he couldn’t bring himself to mourn her passing—there would be no shiva—and he had already said goodbye.
Greenberg didn’t show for breakfast the third day either, but for a while Anton thought he would. After his fitful sleep he woke to the sound of Dizzy chattering feverishly on the window screen above his bed; the old man liked fresh air and kept his window partly open even in winter. Dizzy climbed the screen when he was especially hungry or impatient, and the familiarity of it seemed to Anton a good sign. He got out of bed, grabbed a squirt gun from the bedside table, pushed up the window and sprayed the sensitive underside of the squirrel with a blast of water that immediately caused Dizzy to loosen his hold on the screen and jump to the sill, and then to the ground.
“Son of a bitch!” said Anton happily. “I tell you to stay off that screen!”
Squirrels disliked getting wet, and Anton kept several squirt guns around his house for the bold ones, like Dizzy, who would otherwise tear apart his screens with their razor‑sharp nails. The only squirrel not afraid of the squirt gun was Greenberg, who had ruined a screen on the upper half of Anton’s kitchen storm door. He’d tried using the squirt gun on him, but it only worked the first couple times. After that, if Anton sprayed Greenberg, the squirrel would stubbornly hold on and then piss back at him through the screen. The retired carpenter finally solved the problem by fastening a piece of plexiglass to the frame around the lower half of the screen, starting just above the door knob and going up thirty inches. It blocked some of the breeze that would normally cool the kitchen, but not uncomfortably so, and thankfully, Greenberg never showed any interest in the other screens.
As he drank his coffee and made the peanut butter bread for the squirrels, Anton didn’t dare look out to his back yard: He didn’t want to ruin things by being overly eager. The kitchen’s inner door was open, though, to admit a little fresh air, and from where he sat at the chrome table covered with light-blue Formica, which he and Basza bought in the 1950s, he watched as Dizzy climbed the railing on the back steps, jumped to the storm door’s knob, and began spinning round and round the knob like a dreidel, the four-sided top Jewish children twirl on the floor during Hanukkah.
On each side of the dreidel is a letter from the Hebrew alphabet. Together, the letters produce an acronym meaning, “a great miracle happened there,” referencing both the military victory by Judah the Maccabee and his army over the Greeks—a victory that reclaimed the Temple in Jerusalem—and also the inexplicable way a small portion of sacred olive oil, only enough to light the Temple menorah for one day, somehow lit it for all eight days of the Temple’s rededication ceremony.
“You’re crazy!” Anton said to Dizzy, hoping that, even though Hanukkah was a month away, he might enjoy his own little miracle with the return of Greenberg.
When he finished preparing the bread—it took a while to spread half a loaf and then cut each piece in small squares— he grabbed the plate layered with food and walked cautiously to the door, leaving another full plate behind him on the table for later in the day. He banged on the door with his free hand so Dizzy would jump back to the railing. Then, stepping outside onto the tiny cement porch, he took a deep breath and forced himself to look closely at the squirrels.
Squinting against the morning sun magnified the creases in Anton’s forehead and by his eyes, so that he appeared to be only a large and serious old man with a crew cut, rather than the frightened man he was. He took an inventory: Yes, there was Boog, standing on his hind legs at the bottom of the steps, nose in the air, waiting for the crunchy peanut butter bread; Mays, who conveyed class even when eating, sat on his haunches in the aluminum tray of sunflower seeds, chewing away; a squirrel who turned out to be Cobb, ran down a maple tree and then darted across the yard to be fed; patch-haired Yogi lay sprawled across the roof of the bird feeder, which was shaped like a house and had glass sides, trying to get at the seed on its wooden floor without falling, his tail, still bushy, helping him keep his balance; and Dizzy, impatient as always, ran back and forth across the widower’s slippers. They were all there except Greenberg.
“Where are you, my friend?” sighed Anton.
And with a sadness that brought him to the brink of nausea, he walked down the steps to the grass, sat on an old metal lawn chair, steadied the plate on his lap and, reaching over the right side of the chair, began feeding the squirrels. They came to him one at a time, the meanest ones first, starting with Cobb, the gentler ones in their turn, and from habit he held each piece of bread close to the grass, making sure it was lower than the squirrel’s mouth. He wasn’t thinking about what he was doing—he could only focus on Greenberg—but he had learned when he first started feeding them that if the food was above the squirrel’s mouth, the animal might lunge for it and, unintentionally, take part of a finger as well. Most of them came back for seconds and thirds, Boog for more, and when the plate was empty Anton stood and walked slowly back into his house.
He didn’t go to the tavern that morning. How could he even listen to conversation? Instead, he sat in his living room with the shades pulled and his heart aching, unable to hold off whatever dark thoughts or memories came to him. He recalled his time in Mauthausen, the second camp in which he’d been imprisoned. He was a lean young man, then, and his will to live had been nearly extinguished in that horror the Nazis designed to work people to death. Mauthausen had a granite quarry where prisoners labored year-round, in every kind of weather, and several times a day they were forced to carry granite blocks on their shoulders from the bottom of the quarry; some of the blocks weighed over a hundred pounds, and there were 186 steps to the top of the quarry. It wasn’t uncommon for prisoners to collapse from fatigue and malnutrition, their blocks falling against prisoners behind them, causing those prisoners and their blocks to do the same, until crushed and bloodied bodies littered what had been aptly named the Stairs of Death. And those who made it to the top of the stairs still had to navigate a half-mile-long, bumpy dirt road, at which point, depending on the mood of the guards, prisoners who’d successfully delivered their blocks might be placed at the edge of the nearby cliff and given the choice of pushing another prisoner over the edge, or of being shot themselves. Often prisoners refused to choose, and instead flung themselves over the cliff as into the arms of a lover.
That’s what Anton would have done, had he been put in that position, but he never was, and amazingly, he survived Mauthausen. What a long time ago, he thought; what a way to learn about the world.
Though he had to admit, once he immigrated to America, his life had been good. His family was gone and those memories were always with him, but he’d had Basza, and while love can’t make you forget the past, it can certainly help you enjoy the present. And that was the essence of it: They had enjoyed their life together. Even if he hadn’t separated himself as far from his Jewishness as he’d thought—why honor Hank Greenberg above all the other powerful hitters?—at least he could say he’d been happy. Yes, he had been happy, and for a Jew in the twentieth century, that was no small accomplishment.
So why this despair over the disappearance of a squirrel, a petulant rodent who’d pissed through his screen? That, he couldn’t figure out, as he sat in the darkness of his living room.
When he finally lifted his bulk from his recliner and walked into the kitchen, he was surprised to see by the wall clock that it was lunchtime. He pulled a leftover Slice of Heaven pizza from the refrigerator, ate it cold out of the box with a glass of milk, and afterwards returned to his recliner. For the rest of the afternoon he brooded and dozed, brooded and dozed, then fed the squirrels and decided to go to the tavern for dinner. He was tired of thinking about the past, and he’d had all the solitude he could handle for one day.
The tavern was crowded, but when he entered a spot opened at the short end of the L-shaped bar, so he sat down and asked for a club sandwich with fries and a large glass of Coca‑Cola.
Just as he finished eating, Erv walked over from a table on the other side of the tavern where he’d been playing euchre, and told Anton he needed a new partner. Anton had seen Erv when he first arrived, and avoided the table because he didn’t want to be asked to play. He liked euchre, but he could tell from the way Erv had begun slouching in his chair that he’d been drinking for quite a while, and although the undertaker was an excellent euchre player when sober, and even a very good player if he’d only been drinking an hour or two, if he’d been tossing them back all afternoon, as it seemed he had, he became careless and would frequently get euchred when he made trump. That made it frustrating to be his partner, especially for someone like Anton, who didn’t drink.
However, Erv was his friend, and he didn’t want to disappoint the first person who’d welcomed him to Edson. Also, there was a chance of the games continuing until closing time, and if nothing else, staying at the tavern might help Anton keep his mind off Greenberg and postpone his dream of Basza, which he sensed would come to him again that evening.
“Sure, Erv,” he said. “We kick some ass.”
Of course, they were beaten every game, no matter who their opponents were, and after walking the undertaker home in the cool night air, Anton returned to his own bed, but each time he started dozing the memory of Basza’s last day appeared, the scenes as clear as those on his television, and he would force himself awake while they were eating dinner at Maude’s, because he refused to watch his wife die over and over again. At five a.m. he made a pot of coffee and started fixing the crunchy peanut butter bread, even though the squirrels were still sleeping.
Greenberg didn’t show for the feeding later that morning. This time, Anton really hadn’t expected him. Yet it bothered the widower no less, and he decided he would try to find out what had happened to the squirrel. So around noon, after giving Erv a few more hours to sleep off his drunk, and during which time Anton busied himself about his own yard—he didn’t dare isolate inside his house again—he walked over to the undertaker’s and asked for his help in finding Greenberg.
At first Erv thought he was joking. He didn’t believe Anton really planned on traipsing the streets of Edson in search of a squirrel. He even accused his friend of having some fun at his expense—trying to confuse an old man with a hangover. But once convinced Anton was serious, Erv immediately agreed to help. In fact, it was Erv who suggested they split up, and that way cover the town more quickly; they would meet back at Anton’s when they finished. Anton told Erv about Greenberg missing most of his left ear, so the undertaker would recognize the squirrel if he saw him. He feared, however, that while his friend had consented to help, he might instead just walk to the tavern, or to Maude’s Restaurant, where he also liked to drink, and ease into the day with a couple Bloody Marys.
But nearly an hour and a half later, after his own fruitless search—which had reminded him of when he and his father scoured the Radom ghetto for a doctor to mend his grandfather’s broken leg—and then after another ten minutes pacing his small front yard, Anton could see that bald-headed Erv, wearing a burgundy jacket with white, scripted letters advertising Maude’s, the sponsor of his softball team, was sweating as he walked up to him. He obviously hadn’t been sitting around drinking. And the look in his friend’s eyes, which were usually so vibrant, made certain to him Greenberg was dead. Anton had known that for the past two days, but he didn’t want to admit it to himself; he’d known it as surely as he had known, in that cramped and stifling boxcar, that Hitler was trying to eliminate an entire race of people.
“I’m sorry,” said Erv.
“Where did you find him?”
“Over on Saginaw Street.”
“A car?”
“Yes.”
“I like to see him.”
“No,” said Erv. “You don’t want to see him.”
“It’s bad?”
Erv nodded somberly—but then, all at once, his expression and voice were as calming as a well-stocked buffet: “It must have happened very fast. I’m sure he didn’t feel a thing.”
“That’s good,” said Anton.
“Yes. A quick death is a good thing.”
“What about the body?”
“I buried it at my house, right behind Gracie’s rose bush. Everything’s been taken care of.”
“Thank you, Erv.”
“Anything for my little buddy.”
Anton scratched the top of his crew cut with a meaty hand. “I must be stupid… to be so sad about a squirrel.”
“Aw, I don’t think so,” said Erv. “If you really love something, what does it matter? You’ve got a right to be sad.”
“You think it’s not stupid?”
“No. Of course not.” And then the undertaker’s eyes brightened. “Say, why don’t you come over for dinner? That should improve your spirits!”
“Not tonight, Erv. Tomorrow maybe I want to.”
“Tomorrow it is! And listen, I’ll have Gracie make a pot roast with potatoes and carrots. How does that sound?”
“I like Gracie’s pot roast.”
“Okay… I better be going. If I don’t get a drink pretty soon, a little hair of the dog, this hangover might last all day!”
“Thank you, Erv.”
“You get some rest, now,” said the undertaker, clasping his palms on both sides of Anton’s right hand and pumping it vigorously. And then he turned and nearly ran down the sidewalk toward Main Street, to either the tavern or Maude’s.
Pulling on the railing, Anton climbed the steps to his house. He went in the front door and through the living room and on into his bedroom. He took the framed photograph of his wife from atop his dresser, and then walked slowly to the kitchen, all the while looking at Basza’s smiling face. It was his favorite picture of her, taken on her sixtieth birthday at the Sears Portrait Studio in Flint. She wore the new pearls Anton had bought her.
He sat on a chair, his stomach and forearms pressing against the vintage table, the photograph resting in his oversized hands. He continued looking at Basza, recalling their life together. His breathing gradually became more rapid. His chest heaved up and down like the ocean he’d crossed so many years before. He knew the tears were coming, and he feared there would be six million.
Originally published in the Beloit Fiction Journal.