Wednesday the Rabbi Got Wet by Harry Kemelman Page B

Cohen found her husband unusually silent, she naturally attributed his unease to the death of his patient and wisely made no attempt to cheer him up, the next morning, however, when she noticed that his mood continued, she said. “Why don’t you go to that retreat this afternoon, Dan? It will do you good to get away for a couple of days.”
    “I don’t think I can, they leave early in the afternoon, and I’d have to postpone a couple of my patients.”
    “I’ll tell you what, put a bag in your car anyway, then if you decide to go, you can just take off. Have Madeleine call me and say you’re not coming home.”

Chapter Seventeen
    Just happened to be passing and saw your car in the driveway, David.” It was Hugh Lanigan.
    “Come on in.” Rabbi Small said to the stocky man with the broad red face who was Barnard’s Crossing’s chief of police, the two men had been friendly from the first year of the rabbi’s incumbency, reason enough for the casual call. But from long experience, the rabbi had learned that there was usually some official reason for these visits, and he wondered what was in back of the police chiefs mind.
    “We were just having a cup of coffee.” said Miriam. “You’ll join us, won’t you? I’m taking a little breather from preparing for the Sabbath.”
    “Don’t mind if I do,” Lanigan replied, he set his uniform cap on the floor beside his chair and ran thick, stubby fingers through his hedge of short white hair.
    “Try one of these,” the rabbi urged. “It’s called kichel. It goes well with coffee.”
    “Mmm, very nice. What do you call it? Kichel? You’re right, it does go well with coffee, maybe you could give Amy the recipe.”
    “Glad to.” Miriam said.
    The chief sipped at his coffee and sighed contentedly. “This is the first restful moment I’ve had in the last forty-eight hours, we were all day Wednesday preparing for the storm, and all day yesterday cleaning up.”
    “Isn’t it mostly the town repair crews that are involved?” asked Miriam.
    The chief laughed shortly. “Sure, they do the actual work – clearing away a fallen tree or fixing a water main. But it’s the police who are notified what roads are blocked, we check them out and tell the department that’s going to do the repair work. Say a store window gets broken, we’ve got to stand by and guard it until they can get it boarded up. Take the harbor, we had the two police boats working around the clock checking moorings and chasing boats that had broken free, there are auto accidents, and people get hurt and we have to get them to the hospital. Take old man Kestler, who was buried yesterday, well, it was the officer in the cruising car who delivered his medicine to him, and late that same night we had to send the ambulance to take him to the hospital. So you had two police services there for that one man. By the way, just as a matter of idle curiosity, why did they bury him yesterday? I mean, he dies Wednesday night, and you bury him the next day. Was there any special reason they couldn’t wait?”
    The rabbi shook his head. “We always bury the dead the next day, or as soon as possible, we don’t embalm, you see. It’s traditional, because the land of Israel is tropical or semitropical, I suppose. So it would be for a special reason if we waited.”
    “You don’t hold a wake? You don’t let him lie in state for the family and friends to take a last look at him?”
    The rabbi went to the bookcase and reached for a dictionary, he thumbed it, found the word, and read, “Here it is: Wake– to keep a watch or a vigil, as over a corpse.’ It comes from an Old English root that means to watch, well, we do that. It’s considered a good deed, what we call a mitzvah. In most communities there’s a sort of society, Chevurai Kedusha, that undertakes to wash the body, dress it in grave vestments and then sit with the corpse all through the night reading from the Book of Lamentations.
    Normally, we do