Jew Store by Stella Suberman Page B

described what had really happened, told the incidents for the horror stories they were, would this man care? Of course not. Did a boil hurt under the other fellow’s armpit? This man especially would feel no hurt.
    Maybe something funny about Miss Brookie? My father started talking, sure that a good story would come to him. “Say, you must know Miss Brookie Simmons,” he began.
    â€œEverybody knows Brookie Simmons.” Tucker looked up, eyes brightening. He began to heave about, pleasurably, my father would always say, like an elephant wallowing in mud.
    Tucker had a proposal, a bet, though it was one my father never described in much detail. My guess was that the bet had a sexual aspect and that Miss Brookie was the target.
    This was not the lighthearted something my father had in mind. He told Tucker that he wasn’t much of a betting man, and the wallowing stopped.
    My father knew he was now supposed to get up and go. But this was proving difficult since he seemed stuck to the chair.
    As he sat, feelings washed over him, all of them bad. He began to face facts: the accent that he now knew he had, his lack of an education, his size. No matter what my mother thought, he was not tall. No, he was an undersized Jew pitted against Gentile giants.
    He could only think that everything was a failure, and it was his fault: He had been done in by his chutzpah, his arrogance. What had made him think that his born sal-es-man-ship would open doors? And why had he believed those Nashville big shots who were so confident that he was on well-greased wheels tosuccess? They didn’t know everything; they didn’t even know there were towns that wanted no part of Jews. And now here he sat, his good luck nowhere to be seen, his hustle out of commission, unable even to get him out of the chair.
    And so what if he did get up? What then? He had no place to go except to my mother, who would surely say that now they would go back to New York. And if they had to go back, he would have to wire my grandfather for the money.
    It was perhaps this last galling thought that got him to his feet. And, incredible as it was even to him, he managed a smile and a thanks. Thanks for what? he asked himself. For
bupkis
, for goat shit (“Excuse me, children”), that’s for what.
    As he walked to the door, Tucker was yanking at desk drawers, rummaging through them, shutting them with a bang, letting my father know he had better things to do.
    â€œYou get anything, you let me know,” my father said to him.
    â€œYou bet,” Tucker mumbled, peering into a drawer.
    I n the next moment the man was on his feet, moving out from behind the desk and extending his hand. My father was thrown into severe disorientation. Could it be the
momzer
was offering a good-bye shake? He reached out to take the hand, and when he did, saw that Tucker was looking not at him but at someone just entering the office.
    My father lowered his head and tried to maneuver past. He felt the newcomer’s hand on his arm. The man wanted him, him, Aaron Bronson.
    Tucker sat back down, his eyes deep into whatever was taking place.
    The man introduced himself as Spivey, and my father recognized the man from the furniture store. A hand was out, limply hanging, and my father shook it. What was this? Had this disagreeable guy decided he could produce something resembling a friendly gesture after all? Though at this moment my fatherdidn’t question it too closely, he later figured that because Waylon Spivey and Tom Dillon were foes of long standing, Spivey had mulled it over and decided to give himself the fun of reeling my father in before Dillon did.
    They crossed the street. Inside his furniture store Spivey sat down behind the rolltop desk and motioned my father to the spindle-backed chair beside it. Behind the spectacles pale eyes stared at my father.
    Did my father know what was what, what he was supposed to do? “No,” he always said,