The Gravedigger's Daughter Part 13

Rebecca spoke aloud, but too softly for her brothers or father to hear.

Yet her father heard her, it seemed. He turned toward her, and came limping toward her. "You! G.o.d d.a.m.n what'd I tell you, girl! Get inside with your G.o.d d.a.m.n ma."

Jacob Schwart had become furious suddenly. He lunged at her, even with his bad knee he moved swiftly. Grabbing Rebecca by her upper arm and dragging her back to the house. Cursing her, hurting her so that Rebecca cried out in protest, and both her brothers protested, "Pa, hey" though keeping their distance and not daring to touch him. "In-side, I said. And if you tell your G.o.d d.a.m.n ma about this I will break your a.s.s."

His fingers would leave bruises in Rebecca's flesh, she would contemplate for days. Like swastika marks they were, these ugly purplish-orange bruises.

And the fury with which he'd uttered ma. That short blunt syllable in Jacob Schwart's mouth sounding like a curse.

He is the one who hates us.

But why?

That day. Hallowe'en, 1948. Her mother had wanted her to stay home from school but no, she'd insisted upon going to school as usual.

She was twelve, in seventh grade. She knew, at the school, that some of her cla.s.smates would know about the desecration to the cemetery, they would know about the swastikas. She didn't want to think that some of her cla.s.smates, in the company of their older brothers, might have been involved in the vandalism.

Names came to mind: Diggles, LaMont, Meunzer, Kreznick. Loud jeering boys at the high school, or dropouts like Rebecca's own brothers.

In town, among children at Rebecca's school, there was always excitement about Hallowe'en. Wearing masks and costumes (purchased at Woolworth's Five-and-Dime, where there was a front-window display of witches, devils, skeletons amid grinning plastic jack-o'-lanterns), going door to door in the darkness calling out Trick or treat! There was something thrilling about it, Rebecca thought. Hiding behind a mask, wearing a costume. Beginning in first grade she'd begged to be allowed to go out on Hallowe'en night, but Jacob Schwart would not allow it, of course. Not his sons, and certainly not his daughter. Hallowe'en was a pagan custom, Pa said, demeaning and dangerous. Next thing to begging! And what if, Pa said with a sly smile, some individual fed up with kids coming to his door and annoying him decided to put rat poison in the candy treats?

Rebecca had laughed. "Oh, Pa! Why'd anybody do such a mean thing?" and Pa said, c.o.c.king his head at her as if he meant to impart a bit of wisdom to a naive little girl, "Because there is meanness in the world. And we are in the world."

There had been Devil's Night mischief in Milburn, Rebecca saw as she walked to school. Toilet paper tossed up into tree limbs, pumpkins smashed on the front steps of houses, battered mailboxes, soaped and waxed windows. (Soaped windows were easy to clean off but waxed windows required finicky labor with razor blades. Kids at school spoke of waxing the windows of neighbors they didn't like, or anybody who didn't give them very good treats. Sometimes, out of sheer meanness, they waxed store windows on Main Street because the big plate gla.s.s windows were such targets.) It made Rebecca nervous to see the Devil's Night mischief in the unsparing light of morning. At the junior high school, kids stood about pointing and laughing: many ground-floor windows had been waxed, tomatoes and eggs had been thrown against the concrete walls, yet more pumpkins smashed on the steps. Like broken bodies they seemed, destroyed in a gleeful rage. You were made to realize, Rebecca thought, how mischief could be committed all the time, each night, if there was n.o.body to stop it.

"Look! Lookit here!"someone was pointing at more damage to the school, a jagged crack in the plate gla.s.s window of one of the front doors, that had been crudely mended with masking tape by the school janitor.

Yet there were no tar marks in town, anywhere Rebecca had seen. No "swastikas."

Why, Rebecca wondered. Why were the swastikas only at the cemetery, only at her family's house?

She would not ask anyone. Not even her close girlfriends. Nor would anyone speak to her about the swastikas, if they knew.

In English cla.s.s, G.o.d d.a.m.n! Mrs. Krause who was always trying to make her seventh grade students like her had this idea, they would read aloud a short story about Hallowe'en and ghosts: a shortened version of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by some old dead author named Washington Irving. It was like Mrs. Krause, whose gums sparkled when she smiled, to make them read some old-fashioned prose n.o.body could follow; d.a.m.n big words n.o.body could p.r.o.nounce let alone comprehend. (Rebecca wondered if Mrs. Krause comprehended them.) Row after row, student after student stumbled through a few paragraphs of dense, slow-moving "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"; they were faltering and sullen, especially the boys who read so poorly that the exasperated teacher finally interrupted to ask Rebecca to read. "And the rest of the cla.s.s, sit quietly and listen."

Rebecca's face burned. She squirmed in her seat, in misery.

Wanting to tell Mrs. Krause she had a sore throat, she couldn't read. Oh, she couldn't!

Everybody staring at her. Even her friends, the girls she believed to be her friends, staring in resentment.

"Rebecca? You will begin."

What a nightmare! For Rebecca, who was one of the better students, was always self-conscious when any teacher singled her out. And the story was so slow, so tortuous, its sentences lengthy, words like snarlsapparitioncognomenenrapturedsuperst.i.tioussupernumerary. When Rebecca misp.r.o.nounced a word, and Mrs. Krause prissily corrected her, the other students laughed. When Rebecca p.r.o.nounced such silly names as "Ichabod Crane""Brom Bones""Baltus Van Ta.s.sel""Hans Van Ripper"they laughed. Of the thirty students in the cla.s.sroom perhaps five or six were trying to make sense of the story, listening quietly; the others were restless, mirthful. The boy who sat behind Rebecca jiggled her desk, that was attached to his. A wad of something struck her between the shoulder blades. Gravedigger! Jew-gravedigger!

"Rebecca? Please continue."

She'd stopped, and lost her place. Mrs. Krause was annoyed, and beginning to be disappointed.

What was a Jew, Rebecca knew not to ask. Her father had forbidden them to ask.

She couldn't remember why. It had something to do with Gus.

I am not Rebecca thought. I am not that.

In a haze of embarra.s.sment and misery she stumbled through the story. Seeing again the vandalized cemetery of that morning, the smashed pumpkins and the noisy wide-winged crows flapping up in alarm as Herschel clapped his hands and shouted at them. She saw the ugly marks that had so frightened her father.

Felt his fingers closing on her upper arm. She knew the bruises had formed, she hadn't yet wanted to see.

It had been nice of her brothers to protest, when Pa grabbed her like that. Indoors, when their father was mean to her, or made a threatening gesture, it was likely to be Ma who would mutter or make a little warning cry, not words exactly, for Anna Schwart and her husband rarely spoke to each other in the presence of their children, but a sound, an uplifted hand, a gesture to dissuade him.

A gesture to signify I see you, I am watching.

A gesture to signify I will protect her, my daughter.

How she hated stupid old ugly old Ichabod Crane who reminded her of Jacob Schwart! She liked it that handsome dashing Brom Bones threw the pumpkin-head at Ichabod, and scared him out of Sleepy Hollow forever. Maybe Ichabod even drowned in the brook...That would serve him right, Rebecca thought, for being so pompous and freaky.

By the time she finished reading "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," Rebecca was dazed and exhausted as if she'd been crawling on her hands and knees for hours. She hated Mrs. Krause, never would she smile at Mrs. Krause again. Never would she look forward to coming to school again. Her voice was hoa.r.s.e and fading as the very voice of Ichabod Crane's ghost"'at a distance, chanting a melancholy psalm tune among the tranquil solitudes of Sleepy Hollow.'"

"We are not n.a.z.is! Do you think that we are n.a.z.is? We are not. We came to this country twelve years ago. The war is over. The Germans are defeated. We have nothing to do with n.a.z.is. We are Americans like you."

It would be told and retold and laughed over in Milburn how frenzied Jacob Schwart was on that Hallowe'en morning. How, limping badly, he'd hiked up the road to the Esso station where he made telephone calls to the Chautauqua County sheriff's office and to the Milburn Township Office reporting the Devil's Night damage at the cemetery, and insisting that "authorities" come to investigate.

Jacob Schwart then hiked back home where he ignored his wife's pleas to come inside the house, instead he waited at the entrance gates, pacing in the road in a lightly falling freezing rain, until at last, around noon, two Chautauqua County deputies arrived in a police cruiser. These were men who knew Jacob Schwart, or knew of him; their manner with him was familiar, bemused. "Mr. Schwarzz, what seems to be your trouble?"

"You can see! If you are not blind, you can see!"

Not only had Jacob Schwart's truck tires been slashed, damage had been done to the truck's motor. He was desperate, he would need a replacement immediately! The truck was owned by the Township, not by him, the Township must replace it immediately! He had not the money to buy a vehicle himself.

The truck was the Township's responsibility, the deputies told him. The sheriff's office had nothing to do with the Township.

Jacob Schwart told them that he and his sons could clean up most of the damage in the cemetery, but how to remove tar! How to remove tar! "The criminals who have done this, they are the ones to remove it. They must be arrested, and made to remove it. You will find them, eh? You will arrest them? 'Destruction of property'eh? It is a serious crime, yes?"

The deputies listened to Jacob Schwart with neutral expressions. They were polite, but clearly not very interested in his complaints. They made a show of examining the damage, including the swastika marks, saying only that it was just Hallowe'en, just kids acting up, nothing personal.

"See, Mr. Schwarzz, cem'teries are always targets on Devil's Night. Everywhere in the Valley. d.a.m.n kids. Getting worse. Lucky they don't set fires like some places. Nothing personal, Mr. Schwarzz. Nothing against you and your family."

The elder deputy spoke in a flat, nasal drawl, taking desultory notes with a pencil stub. His partner, prodding at one of the broken gravestones with his boot, smirked and suppressed a yawn.

Through the blood in his eyes Jacob Schwart saw suddenly how they mocked him.

He saw, like the sun breaking through clouds, and his battered hands shook with the yearning to grip a poker, a shovel, a hoe.

He had no weapon. The deputies carried pistols, holstered, on their hips. They were cunning coa.r.s.e-faced peasants. They were storm trooper n.a.z.i brutes. They were of the very stock that had saluted Hitler, had marched and wished to die for Hitler. He would buy a twelve-gauge double-barreled shotgun to protect himself against them. But he had not the shotgun yet. Only his bare, battered hands, which were useless against brutes with guns.

It would be reported everywhere in Milburn how Jacob Schwart began to rave, excitedly. His ridiculous accent so strong, he was practically indecipherable.

"You are related to these 'kids,' eh? You are knowing them, eh?"

For suddenly it was clear, why the deputies had driven out here. Not to help him but to laugh at a man's misery. To mock a man before his family.

"Yes. You are all related here. This h.e.l.lhole, you protect one another. You will give one like me no help. You will make no arrest of the criminals. In other years, you have not arrested them. This is the worst of it, and you will not arrest them. I am an American citizen yet you scorn my family and me like animals. 'Life unworthy life'eh? You are thinking, seeing Jacob Schwart? Goebbels you admired, eh? Yet Goebbels was a cripple too. Goebbels killed his family and himself, yes? So why you do admire the n.a.z.i? Go away then, get out of here and to h.e.l.l, d.a.m.n your n.a.z.i souls to h.e.l.l, I am in not need of you."

In his vehemence Jacob Schwart misspoke. His sons, listening unseen to his ravings from one of the sheds, winced in shame.

What an outburst! Like some kind of hopped-up dwarf, gesturing and spitting and you couldn't understand half of what he said. The deputies would joke afterward it was d.a.m.ned lucky they were armed, that poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d Schwarzz looking like he was some kind of smashed Hallowe'en pumpkin himself.

One-quarter Seneca blood.

Somehow he'd acquired that reputation. In the Chautauqua Valley among those who knew Herschel Schwart without knowing his family.

He'd quit school at sixteen. He'd been suspended from Milburn High for fighting and during the two-week suspension he had turned sixteen and so he'd quit. G.o.d d.a.m.n he'd been relieved! Kept behind in ninth grade, biggest kid in his cla.s.s and made to feel shamed and murderous. Immediately he got a job at the Milburn lumber mill. Friends of his worked there, none of them had graduated from high school and they made good wages.

He still lived at home. He still helped the old man in the cemetery, sometimes. He felt sorry for Jacob Schwart. Each time he quarreled with the old man he made plans to move out, but by the age of twenty-one in October 1948 he had not yet moved out. It was inertia binding him to the stone cottage. It was his mother binding him. Her meals he devoured always hungrily, her tending to him in silence and without reproach. He would not have said I love her, I could not leave her with him.

He would not have said My sister, too. I could not leave her with the two of them.

His brother Gus, he knew could take care of himself. Gus was all right. Gus, too, had quit school on his sixteenth birthday, at their father's urging, to help in the d.a.m.n cemetery like a common laborer, full-time. But Herschel was too smart for that.

How, the eldest son of German-born immigrants, he had acquired a local reputation as part-Seneca, Herschel himself could not have said. Certainly he had not made such a claim. Neither did he deny it. His straggly dark hair that was lank and without l.u.s.tre, his eyes too that were gla.s.sy-dark and without l.u.s.tre, his quick temper and eccentric manner of speech suggested an exotic background of some kind, perhaps unknowable. A shrewder young man would have smiled to think Better Seneca than Kraut.

By the age of eighteen he bore an angular horsey face scarred like filigree about the mouth, eyes, and ears from bare-knuckled fights. At the age of twenty he'd been wounded by another young man wielding a broken beer bottle, twelve clumsily executed st.i.tches across Herschel's forehead. (Reticent, stubborn, Herschel had not told the sheriff's deputies who had wounded him. He had revenged himself upon the young man, in time.) His teeth had been rotting in his head all his life. He was missing several teeth back and front. When he grinned, his mouth seemed to be winking. His nose had been broken and flattened at the bridge. Though he frightened most Milburn girls he was an attractive figure to certain older divorced or separated women who appreciated what was special about Herschel Schwart. They liked his face. They liked his good-natured if explosive and unpredictable manner. His loud braying laugh, his nerved-up sinewy body that gave off heat like a horse. His ropey p.e.n.i.s that remained a marvel even when its bearer was staggering drunk, or comatose. These were women who drew their fingertips in fascination over his skinchest, back, sides, belly, thighs, legsthat was coa.r.s.e as leather, covered in bristling hairs and dimpled with moles and pimples like shot.

These were women of coa.r.s.e affable appet.i.tes who teased their young lover inquiring which part of him was Seneca?

It was no secret, Herschel Schwart had a police record in Chautauqua County. More than once he'd been taken into custody by law enforcement officers. Always he'd been in the company of other young men at the time of the arrests, and always he'd been drinking. He was not perceived by county officers as dangerous in himself and he had never been kept in jail more than three nights in succession. He was a brawler, his crimes were public and boisterous, he lacked the subtlety of slyness or premeditation. Not cruel, not malicious or woman-hating; not one to break into houses, to steal or rob. In fact Herschel was careless with money, likely to be generous when he drank. In this he was admired, and perceived to be utterly different from his old man Jacob Schwart the gravedigger who it was said would jew you out of your last penny if he could.

And yet the tale would be told through Milburn for years how, on that Hallowe'en night, the night following the vandalism in the Milburn cemetery, several young men were surprised and attacked by Herschel Schwart who acted alone. The first of these, Hank Diggles, dragged out of his pickup truck in the dimly lighted parking lot of the Mott Street Tavern, could not claim to have seen Herschel Schwart but only to have felt him and smelled him, before he was beaten by his a.s.sailant's fists into unconsciousness. There were no witnesses to the Diggles beating, nor to the even bloodier beating of Ernie LaMont in the vestibule of his apartment building just off Main Street, about twenty minutes after the Diggles beating. But there were eyewitnesses to the attack on Jeb Meunzer outside the Meunzers' house on the Post Road: at about midnight Herschel showed up on the front porch, long after the last of the trick-or-treaters in their Hallowe'en costumes had gone home, he'd pounded on the door and demanded to see Jeb, and when Jeb appeared Herschel immediately grabbed him and dragged him outside, threw him onto the ground and began beating and kicking him, with no more explanation than Who's a n.a.z.i? f.u.c.ker who's a f.u.c.kin n.a.z.i? Jeb's mother and a twelve-year-old sister saw the beating from the porch, and cried out for Herschel to stop. They knew Herschel of course, he'd gone to school with Jeb and intermittently the two boys had been friends, though they were not friends at this time. Mrs. Meunzer and Jeb's sister would describe how "crazed" Herschel was, terrifying them by stabbing at Jeb with what appeared to be a fishing knife and all the while cursing Who's a n.a.z.i now? f.u.c.ker who's a f.u.c.kin n.a.z.i now? Though Jeb was Herschel's size and had a reputation for brawling, he appeared to be overcome by Herschel, unable to defend himself. He, too, was terrified and begged his a.s.sailant not to kill him as with both knees Herschel pinned him to the ground and, with the knife, crudely carved into his forehead this mark that would scar Jeb Meunzer for the remainder of his life.

It would be told how Herschel Schwart then wiped the b.l.o.o.d.y knife calmly on his victim's trousers, rose from him and waved insolently at the stunned, staring Mrs. Meunzer and her daughter, and turned to run into the darkness. It would be said that, at a bend in the Post Road, a car or pickup truck was idling, with its headlights off; and that Herschel climbed into this vehicle and drove away, or was driven away by an accomplice, to vanish from the Chautauqua Valley forever.

21.

Earnestly he insisted, "My son, he is a good boy! Like all your boys. Your Milburn boys. He would not harm another. Never!"

And, "My son Herschel, where he is gone I do not know. He is a good boy always, working hard to give his wages to his mother and father. He will return to explain himself, I know."

So Jacob Schwart claimed when Chautauqua County deputies came to question him about Herschel. How adamant the poor man was, in not-knowing! In a craven posture clutching his cloth cap in both hands and speaking rapidly, in heavily accented English. It would have required men of more subtlety than the literal-minded deputies to decipher the gravedigger's sly mockery and so the men would say afterward of Jacob Schwart Poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d ain't right in the head is he?

Among your enemies, Rebecca's father advised, it is wise to hide your intelligence as to hide your weakness.

A police warrant had been drawn charging Herschel with three counts of "aggravated a.s.sault with intent to commit murder." Of his three victims, two had been hospitalized. The swastika-mutilation to Jeb Meunzer's face was severe. No one in the Milburn area had ever been so attacked. Bulletins had been issued through New York state and at the Canadian border describing the "dangerous fugitive" Herschel Schwart, twenty-one.

The deputies did not question Anna Schwart at length. The agitated woman shrank from them trembling and squinting like a nocturnal creature terrified of daylight. In her confusion she seemed to think Herschel had himself been injured and hospitalized. Her voice was quavering and near-inaudible and her English so heavily accented, the deputies could barely understand her.

No! She did not know...

...knew nothing of where Herschel had gone.

( Was he hurt? Her son? What had they done to him? Where had they taken him? She wanted to see him! ) The deputies exchanged glances of pity, impatience. It was useless to question this simple-minded foreign-born woman who seemed not only to know nothing about her murderous son but also to be frightened of her gravedigger husband.

The deputies questioned August, or "Gus," Herschel's younger brother, but he too claimed to know nothing. "Maybe you helped your brother, eh?" But Gus shook his head quizzically. "Helped him how?"

And there was Rebecca, the twelve-year-old sister.

She, too, claimed to know nothing about what her older brother might have done, and where he'd fled. She shook her head wordlessly as the deputies questioned her.

At twelve, Rebecca still wore her hair in thick, shoulder-length braids, as her mother insisted. Her dark-brown hair was parted, not very evenly, in the center of her head and gave off a rich rank odor for her hair was not often washed. None of the Schwarts bathed frequently for hot water in large pails had to be heated on the stove, a tedious and time-consuming task.

In the face of adult authority Rebecca's expression was inclined to be sullen.

"'Rebecca,' that's your name? Is there anyone in your family in contact with your brother, Rebecca?"

The deputy spoke sternly. Rebecca, not raising her eyes, shook her head no.

"You haven't been in contact with your brother?"

Rebecca shook her head no.

"If your brother comes back, miss, or you learn where he's hiding, or that someone is in contact with him, for instance providing him with money, you're obliged to inform us immediately, or you'll be charged as an accessory after the fact to the crimes he's been charged withd'you understand, miss?"

Stubbornly, Rebecca stared at the floor. The worn linoleum floor of the kitchen.

It was true, she knew nothing of Herschel. She supposed that, yes he was the man the deputies wanted. Almost, she was proud of what Herschel had done: punishing their enemies. Carving a swastika on Jeb Meunzer's mean face!

But she was frightened, too. For Herschel might now be hunted down, and himself injured. It was known that fugitives resisting arrest were vulnerable to severe beatings at the hands of their pursuers, sometimes death. And if Herschel was sent to state prison...

Jacob Schwart intervened: "Officers, my daughter knows nothing! She is a quiet girl, not so bright. You see. You must not frighten her, officers. I plead you."

Rebecca felt a pang of resentment, that her father should misspeak. And malign her.

Not so bright. Was it true?

The deputies prepared to leave. They were dissatisfied with the Schwarts, and promised to return. With his sly mock-servile smile Jacob Schwart saw them to the door. Again telling them that his elder son was a boy who prayed often to G.o.d, who would not raise a fist even to a brute deserving of harm. Nor would Herschel abandon his family for he was a very loyal son.

"'Innocent until guilty'yes? That is your law?"

Watching the deputies drive away in their green-and-white police cruiser, Rebecca's father laughed with rare gusto.

"Gestapo. They are brutes, but they are fools, to be led by the nose like bulls. We will see!"