He looked down at the sidewalk.
A tall boy stood there looking up at him and smiling.
"I been lookin' for yuh all day."
"We been in Brooklyn," David answered. "My father will be here in a minute."
"I’ll make it quick, then.
Shocky'll cut yuh in for ten bucks if yuh bring the horse an' wagon tonight.
We got to move a load uptown."
"But it's Friday night."
"That's why.
The streets down here will be empty. There won't be nobody to wonder what we're doin' out at night.
An' the cops won't bother us when they see the junky's license on the wagon."
"I'll try," David said. "What time, Needlenose?"
"Nine o'clock back of Shocky's garage.
Here comes your ol' man. See yuh later."
"Who were you talking to?" his father asked.
"One of the fellers, Pop."
"Isidore Schwartz?"
"Yeah, it was Needlenose."
"Keep away from him, David," his father said harshly. "Him we don't need.
A bum. A nogoodnik. Like all those other bums that hang around Shocky's garage.
They steal everything they can get their hands on."
David nodded.
Take the horse to the stable. I’m going to the shul.
Tell Mama by seven o'clock she should have supper ready."
Esther Woolf stood in front of the Shabbas nacht lichten, the prayer shawl covering her head.
The candles flickered into yellow flame as she held the long wooden match to them.
Carefully she blew out the match and put it down in a plate on the small buffet table.
She waited until the flame ripened into a bright white glow, then began to pray.
First, she prayed for her son, her shaine Duvidele, who came so late in life, almost when she and her husband, Chaim, had given up hope of being blessed.
Then she prayed that Jehovah would give her husband, Chaim, a greater will to succeed, at the same time begging the Lord's forgiveness because it was the Lord's work at the shul that kept her husband from his own. Then, as always, she took upon herself the sin for having turned Chaim away from his chosen work.
He had been a Talmudical student when they'd first met in the old country.
She remembered him as he was then, young and thin and pale, with the first soft curl of his dark beard shining with a red-gold glint.
His eyes had been dark and luminous as he sat at the table in her father's house, dipping the small piece of cake into the wine, more than holding his own with the old rabbi and the elders.
But when they'd been married, Chaim had gone to work in her father's business.
Then the pogroms began and the faces of Jews became thin and haunted.
They left their homes only under the cover of night, hurrying about like little animals of the forest.
Or they sat huddled in the cellars of their houses, the doors and windows barred and locked, like chickens trying to hide to the pen when they sense the approach of the shochet.
Until that night when she could stand it no longer.
She rose screaming from the pallet at her husband's side, the letter from her brother Bernard, in America, still fresh in her mind.
"Are we to live like rabbits in a trap, waiting for the Cossacks to come?" she cried. "Is it into this dark world that my husband expects I should bring forth a child?
Even Jehovah could not plant his seed in a cellar."
"Hush!" Chaim's voice was a harsh whisper. "The name of the Lord shall not be taken in vain.
Pray that He does not turn His face from us."
She laughed bitterly.
"Already He has forsaken us. He, too, is fleeing before the Cossacks."
"Quiet, woman!" Chaim's voice was an outraged roar.
She looked at the other pallets in the damp cellar.
In the dim light, she could barely see the pale, frightened faces of her parents.
Just then there was a thunder of horse's hoofs outside the house and the sound of a gun butt against the locked door.
Quickly, her father was on his feet.