What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank: Stories by Nathan Englander Page B

the story of brave Trumpeldor, who, Boris claimed, lost an arm in the battle of Tel Hai and then continued fighting with the one.
    Galvanized, we went straight to the Anti-Semite’s house. Zvi Blum, beaten, bothered, dug a hunk of paving stone out of the walkway to avenge his family’s bay window. He tossed that rock with all his might. Limited athlete that he was, it hooked left and hit the wall of the house with a great bang. We fled. Still imperfect, still in retreat, we ran with euphoria, hooting and hollering, victorious.
     
    · · ·
     
    A newfound energy emerged at the start of the next class, which was also the start of a new session. We lined up to pay Boris what was now a quarterly fee. He took three months’ worth of cash in one hand, patted us each on the back with the other, and said, “Not yet leaders, but you’ve turned into men.” Boris even said this to the Conservative boy, though it was Elliot’s first lesson. He then addressed us regarding our successful mission. “Anti-Semite will come back harder,” he said, declaring that only a strong offense would see this conflict to its end. Pyrotechnics were in order.
    We ventured out to the turnpike that marked the border of our town. In the alley behind ShopRite, we worked on demolitions following recipes from Boris’s training and inspired by some pages torn from an Abbie Hoffman book. We made smoke bombs that didn’t smoke, and firebombs that never burned. And though we suspected that the recipes themselves were faulty, Boris shook his head as if we’d never learn.
    We stuck with our bomb making, working feverishly, with Boris timing each attempt and at intervals yelling, “Too late, already dead.” Then Elliot stood up with a concoction of his own, a bottle with a rag stuffed in the top, and announced, “This is how you build a bomb.”
    To prove it, he lit the rag, arced back, and threw the bottle. We watched it soar, easily traceable by its fiery tail. We heard it hit and the sound of glass and then nothing. “So what,” Aaron said. “That’s not a bomb. By definition, it has to go boom !” We went back to work until Boris said, “Lesson over,” and a yellow light began to chip at the darkness in the sky, a warm yellow light and smoke. “Not a bomb,” Elliot said, looking proud and terrified in equal measure. His bottle, we discovered,had hit the Te-Amo Cigar & Smoke Shop. It had ignited the garbage in the rear of the store. The drive-through window was engulfed in flames. “Simplest sometimes best,” Boris said. And then: “Class dismissed.” We started to panic, and he said, “Fire could be from anything.” Right then, his pocket full of our money, and already in full possession of our hearts and heads, Boris walked off. He walked toward the burning store, so close to the flames that we covered our eyes. True to his teachings, Boris didn’t turn and run. He didn’t stop, either. We know for sure that he went back to Royal Hills and worked another day. All our parents ever said was “green card,” and we heard that Boris continued west to Chicago and built a new life.
     
    · · ·
     
    Mr. Blum was still at the office. The three boys Blum were each manning a window at home and staring out into the dark. They had, on their own and in broad daylight, gone down that hill with toilet paper and shaving cream. They’d draped the trees and marked the sidewalks, unleashing on their target the suburban version of tar and feathers. Then they’d run up to their house and taken their posts, holding them through nightfall. When their mother pulled the car into the garage after her own long day at work, she saw only what the boys hadn’t done. She made her way back down the driveway to the curb, where the garbage pails stood empty, one of them tipped by the wind. Basic responsibilities stand even in times of trouble. She had not borne three sons so that she’d have to drag garbage pails inside.
    No one knew the quality of the