Chains Around the Grass by Naomi Ragen Page B

his father’s “work” shirt, which meant that he put it on for hammering, oiling and fixing—everything except going to work. It was the shirt that meant he was home with them. But the thing he loved most were his father’s boots: heavy rubber with fifteen manly metal clasps, disaster-ready, wading-intodanger boots. He even forgave his father the embarrassingly baggy woolen pants because of the boots. He longed for a pair just like them instead of the flimsy kiddy galoshes he struggled to pull over his own shoes. Sometimes, secretly, he’d try on his father’s boots. But as tall as he was, they were still way, way too big.
    But this morning, even that didn’t bother him. It was all OK. They were going fishing. Him and his dad. He was happy. He found the pails and the new rod, bought by Uncle Morris (who had tried to talk him out of it and into an American Savings Bond). Jesse held it reverently.
    “Ready?” his father said, standing by the door. Jesse nodded, brushing past him out the door, a feeling of strange unease making him quicken his movements.
    “Daddy!!” Sara suddenly wailed.
    “Dad, come on! The elevator’s here already!” he said urgently. Dave hesitated, picking up the child who was by now in tears.
    “Let it go, Jess. Just a minute, okay?”
    Jesse watched the door drop back into place and the machine slide down, lost to him.
    “Jess, you wanna come here a second?”
    He saw his sister sitting on his father’s lap, her hands possessively around his neck.
    “Did you tell her she could come?” his mother accused. “I said…that is…we had this deal…about television…” “Fibber!”
    “You want to come, Saraleh,” Jesse heard his father say caressingly. His heart sank.
    Sara nodded solemnly.
    “Everything,” Ruth’s voice rang out with great conviction, “everything I give in to. But not this time. Not in this weather.”
    Jesse’s heart rose. It was what he’d counted on! His mother to the rescue, like those times long ago when she had swooped down on his tormentors in Brooklyn alleyways.
    Sara’s sobs rose.
    Dave looked from one to the other, astonished to be at the center of so much unhappiness when he had sought just the opposite—to sacrifice himself to keep them happy, giving up his precious hours of Sunday morning sleep, his warm bed, his wife’s soft, pliant body…
    “We’ll bundle her up good, Ruth. Kid’s gonna be so disappointed,” he appealed to her in a whisper, touching her shoulder. She stiffened, but he just left it there until she finally weakened, going a little hunched.
    By the time Sara had finished dressing and eating, the streets were beginning to grow light. A bitter wind made their coats flap like the wingspread of hovering birds. The rising sun and the bitter cold turned their faces ruddy.
    When they got to the bay, the best places had already been taken by silent, solitary men, who hunched over old poles, staring into the swirling, dark waters like figures in a wax museum.
    “Aw, shoot. Bet all the good fish are gone already. She always ruins everything!” Jesse swore.
    “There’s plenty left for us, Jess. Just leave the kid alone,” Dave warned, giving him a playful kick in the rear. Jesse felt the nudge with deep humiliation, giving his sister a look of pure malevolence. She shrank back, hiding behind her father.
    Oblivious, Dave took out the can of worms. “Now this is what you gotta do,” he explained cheerfully. “First, you slice up the worms, that way you get more bait out of it. And a worm isn’t like a person. You cut up a person, he dies. But a worm, he just keeps on going.”
    “You can live without arms or legs,” Jesse argued.
    “Yeah, but I mean his brain, or his heart. You take that away from a person and what you got left don’t matter. But you see, God gave everything its pluses and minuses. A worm, see, it’s the lowest of the low. It’s got to crawl on its belly in the dirt, but it never has to worry about a