Fiction

THE JEWISH COWBOY by E.L. Freifeld

Every morning on his way to Elementary School, Bobby Feldman would pass a little toy store on Cannon Street. His mother never bought him any toys and when he asked her for this or that, she would only say, “What’s so important about toys? You have enough what to eat and a place to sleep with a roof over your head, you don't need toys. You better need a pair of shoes..."

Bobby would gladly have walked in his bare feet just to have some toys and especially the little cowboy suit he saw in the store window on Cannon Street. Sometimes he’d be late for school because he would stand there in front of the window for half an hour daydreaming and wondering if he could ever save enough money from his allowance to buy it. At twenty-five cents a week it might take forever. One afternoon he got up enough nerve to ask the sales person how much the cowboy suit in the window cost, and he said five dollars. In 1948 that was a lot of money for a little kid to have all at once. When he finally got to school, Mrs. Sadofsky was furious! She was always angry and mean when he came late.

"Do you have a note from your mother? This is the third time you've been late this week," she shouted. "If you come late one more time, I'm gonna take down your pants in the bathroom and give you a good spanking."

How can a spanking be good? Bobby went to the back of the class where she instructed him to sit alone for the rest of the day, without talking. Just as well. He could sit there quietly dreaming about his cowboy suit with the blue buttons, and how to get the money to buy it.

"Now children we're going to spend the next hour making decorations for our class party." Mrs. Sadofsky was also collecting pennies for the party, which she kept in a jar on her desk. Pointing to the jar she said, “And don’t forget to bring more pennies for yummy candies and cakes.”

During recess, Bobby met Jimmy Dalton in the yard. He was the baddest kid in school, always getting into trouble and fighting all the time. "What ya say we play hooky this afternoon and go have fun in the back yards?"

"Well, I don't know," Bobby said. "I already got in trouble this morning for coming late."

"So what?" Jimmy challenged him. "That ain't nothin’. Come on we'll have some fun. Who needs to go to school anyway?"

Bobby followed along because he was afraid to say no. It takes a long time to learn to say no, especially when someone you like wants you to say yes.

On Delancey, there was an old abandoned lumberyard littered with old wood planks and piles of sawdust. They climbed over the fence. "Watch this," said Jimmy, as he wedged a plank between heaps of stones and old wood making it into a diving board for bouncing up and down. "Boing, boing, boing!" he shouted gleefully, bouncing up and down into the soft piles of sawdust. "Why don't you try it? It’s great fun."

Bobby took a turn. It was really terrific! Every so often when the sawdust settled, they stopped, heaped it back up into a hill again. They passed the afternoon in this way, bouncing, piling, bouncing, and piling all over again.

After a time, they got tired and a little hungry, so they sat down and shared a cheese sandwich Jimmy's mom had given him for lunch. They then lay down on the soft sawdust and looked up at the sky, which was beginning to look like evening. Every so often the rumble of the train passing over the Williamsburg Bridge made the ground shake and tremble.

"Feels like the bridge is going to fall down one of these days," Bobby mused. "Wouldn't be surprised. Did you ever climb up there to the top?“ Inspired with a new idea, Jimmy’s eyes brightened.

"W... what? Are you kidding? You think I'm crazy?"

"No, seriously, you see them girders? They’re hollow on the inside an' you can climb up them crisscrosses like a ladder. You wanna see? “Jimmy smiled. "N...no. I believe you. But I don't want you to do it."

"Ah, you're just a scaredy cat."

To change the subject, Bobby told him about the cowboy suit and how much he'd like to have it.

"Let's go see the suit," said Jimmy. "Why don't you steal it? It’s easy. Yes, maybe we could steal it!"

They jumped the fence, ran around the corner and up Cannot Street in no time flat.

"Wow! That suit ain't bad, pretty neat. Does it come with the cap gun an' the holster?" Jimmy asked.

"Yep, the whole caboodle!"

"How much is it?"

"Five dollars."

"Hmm."

"What do you think?"

"Be tough stealing it right out of the window," Jimmy answered in a whisper. Bobby nodded in agreement.

"Hmm, lemme think." His eyes squinted and his mouth twisted to one side as if in deep thought. Finally it occurred to him. “You know, your teacher Mrs. Sadofsky has a jar of pennies in her drawer."

"How did you know that? It's for the party."

"Never mind, must be at least ten dollars there. Whatya say we snatch it and split it fifty-fifty?"

Since Bobby couldn't stand Mrs. Sadofsky anyway, he agreed. "Why not? What the hell." "O.K. Here's what we do. Tomorrow, when Mrs. Sadofsky takes you all to the library, when you pass my teacher, Mrs. Dooley's room, knock on the door then just keep walking. She won't pay it much mind, she's a little deaf anyway. I'll raise my hand to go to the bathroom, slip into Mrs. Sadofsky’s room and get it."

"How we gonna get it out of the building? Must be hundreds and hundreds of pennies."

"I'll stash the jar in the janitor's closet. You bring a briefcase so during recess we can empty it and walk right out."

"O.K."

The following day when Bobby arrived at school, Mrs. Sadofsky asked him, “Where were you yesterday afternoon?"

"I went home. I had a stomachache."

"Did you bring a note from your mother?"

"No. I forgot to bring it."

Mrs. Sadofsky’s face turned red. "O.K. Mr. Bobby Feldman, I've just about had enough of you and your lies."

"Honest Mrs. Sadofsky, I'm not lying."

"Never mind. Johnny" she called the biggest boy up to the front of the class. "Take Bobby to the principal’s office immediately and give him this note."

The note was addressed to the principal and to Mr. DeSevo the truant officer. "Don't let him out of your sight. It wouldn’t be the first time he ran away".

"Yes Mrs. Sadofsky," and off went big Johnny dragging Bobby by the scruff of his neck.

"Don't tear my shirt will ya, my mother will get mad!"

Once inside the principal’s office, Bobby shrank into the large leather chair facing Mr. Bergman. For the first time in his life, seated before that grey authoritarian figure, he began to feel a complete sense of alienation.

At that very moment, Bobby's feelings of confusion, of fear and resentment in time would develop into an absolute contempt for authority, of any kind.

"You know, Feldman, we are going to have to notify your mother this time. Wait outside until Mr. DeSevo is able to see you.”

Time seemed to drag on endlessly, painfully, seated there with nowhere to run and no way out. Shit! He suddenly realized he had to get out of there in time to proceed with the plan he and Jimmy had devised for snatching Mrs. Sadofsky's jar of pennies. He began to see his cowboy suit riding off into the sunset on someone else's back, probably that big shmuck Bernstein from Mr. Goldberg's class.

He got up for a drink of water, edging his way towards the door. "Here, here," Mr. DeSevo cautioned. "Don't get any funny ideas. Come back and sit down."

"Can I please get back to class? I have to go to the library. Mrs. Sadofsky will be angry if I don’t finish that book report.

"Don't worry about Mrs. Sadofsky, young man. You're in serious trouble. I want you to take this note from your teacher and have it signed by your mother and returned to me first thing tomorrow morning. I have already tried to call, but she isn't home."

"She's working...I could have told you that."

“Listen,” said Mr. DeSevo, “if this note isn't signed and back on my desk by tomorrow morning I shall personally come ‘round to see her at home, in the evening."

Glancing at the clock hanging on the wall behind DeSevo’s desk, Bobby noticed it was five minutes to ten. He had only five minutes to get back to his classroom on the third floor. “Can I go now?" Upon returning to class, Mrs. Sadofsky and the children were already in the hall.

"Now I want you children to line up double file and no talking. I want absolute quiet. We don't want to disturb the other children who are studying.”

Bobby took his place alongside the others as they made their way down the hall to the library. When they passed Mrs. Dooley's room, he tapped on the door as planned. Mrs. Sadofsky turned about sharply but said nothing.

Jimmy's part of the plan went almost as well as expected and before long the precious jar of pennies was securely hidden under a wet mop in the janitor's closet.

Bobby fidgeted with his pencil and pretended to be writing his book report. The stuffed bird perched atop the bookcase in the library seemed to eye him suspiciously, as he leafed through the pages of his book trying as best he could to make head or tail of the dull dry stuff between the pages. Now, things in books seemed irrelevant to him. All he could think of was the sound of the bell for recess and the moment fast approaching when the cowboy suit would actually be his own. The note to his mother and morning troubles with the truant officer faded away in direct proportion to this image he had of himself, the little Jewish cowboy riding off on his Palomino horse into the horizon while the sun sank slowly into the west beyond the prairie -- klippityklop, klippityklop....

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Continued… THE JEWISH COWBOY by E.L. Freifeld

Every Saturday morning Bobby went to the movies on East Third Street to see Charles Starret the Durango Kid gallop into his heart on his beautiful white horse. When he asked his mama to buy him the cowboy suit she only laughed and said,"Look at this, my little Jewish cowboy, he wants to be a cowboy. Maybe I should also get you a cow."

Bong! Bong! The bell rang for recess and he awoke from his reverie.

Back in the old lumberyard on Delancey Street, the two boys emptied the pennies on a plank and began to count. One for you, one for me, one for you until the entire amount was divided in half. Bingo! Bobby's share was $6.96. Off he went to buy his cowboy suit while Jimmy shouted, "Meet me here tomorrow morning before school."

Carefully counting out the money on the counter into fifty little stacks of ten pennies each, the salesman nodded his head in agreement. He removed the suit from the window and packed it neatly in its original box. Bobby still had some pennies left over to buy caps for his gun and some chocolate from Whitey's candy store.

Later that evening, when the rest of his family was asleep, Bobby took his cowboy suit out of the box and laid it out carefully on the bed. The hat, the flappy pants, the vest, the gun, and the holster with the belt was all there and belonged to him, his very own!

But how would he explain it to his mother? Oh well, no matter, he would think of something. And guess what? wouldn’t you know it, when he tried it on, the vest, the pants, the hat, they didn't fit! Even the belt was too small.

"Oh golly," he panicked, "what am I gonna do now?" He nearly tore the vest trying it on and the pants barely got up above his knees. He sat there for a moment, dejected, on the verge of tears.

All night long Bobby twisted and turned in his bed and could hardly sleep. In the morning he got up real early while everyone was still asleep, stuffed the cowboy suit into his little briefcase and quietly tip-toed down the stairs and into the street.

Only 7:00 a.m. and he had an hour or so to kill before meeting Jimmy in the yard.He took the long way round Lewis Street, passing the old ice factory and horse stables near the river, on Baruch Place. Under the bridge on Delancey Street, men loaded up newspaper trucks with the morning edition of the Journal American.

Bobby sat there for a while watching smoke rising from the old Domino sugar factory across the East River, in Brooklyn. The river was choppy and the wind made whooshing sounds across the surface, curling into splashes of white foam. Every so often, a tug chugged by, parting the waves, and leaving a trail of water like an ever-widening furrow slapping up against the piers. Wave after wave, the events of that day would remain in his mind and be remembered for the rest of his life.

"Where have you been?" Jimmy asked when Bobby showed up at the old lumberyard.

"I was down by the river, thinking.”

"Thinking about what?"

"You know something, after all that trouble to get the money yesterday, my cowboy suit doesn't even fit me. It's too small. Usually things are too big on me." He sat there on a plank with his elbows on his knees, holding his face in his hands.

"Whadya do with it?"

"I got it here in my briefcase."

"Maybe you can return it, exchange it or something."

"Nah, I couldn't do that. I don't feel like going to school at all today.

"Neither do I."

"What do you suppose Mrs. Sadofsky will think when she finds the pennies missing?"

"I dunno. Who cares? Let's go play down by the river, we'll thinkasomethin."

Bobby did care. What if they found out he paid for the suit with pennies, or found the suit in his possession?

"Maybe we should throw it in the river," Bobby suggested, looking into Jimmy's sharp Irish green eyes, "or in the garbage."

"C'mon. Let's have some fun." Jimmy and Bobby bolted over the fence and headed for the drum.

Alongside the river between Delancey and Houston Streets was a large playground in the center of which was a very large replica of a drum. After school and in the evening the park was a local hangout for kids in the neighborhood and many gang wars were fought between whites and later blacks and Puerto Ricans for control of the drum. During the day, the place was just a place to go for wayward kids and truants. Bobby and Jimmy sat down on a bench and began to talk. "You know," Bobby said, "I hate to go to school. But sometimes I get nervous having the whole day off with nothing to do."

"It's better than sitting like an idiot all day in school studying those stupid books."

"Oh, I don't know, I like to read some books okay. It's just sitting indoors all day that bothers me." They sat there quietly thinking of things to do.

"You got any money?" Jimmy asked.

"Yeah, I got some." Bobby reached into his pocket and along with some change he pulled out a crumpled piece of paper.

"Oh shit!" It was the truant officer's note to his mother. "Now I can never go back to school. I can't even go home. I'm really in trouble now." Jimmy looked at the note. "What does it say?"

He never learned to read. Bobby explained its contents. Jimmy crumpled the note and threw it away. "Bullshit."

The note blew off into the bush somewhere, joining the general litter of broken bottles and beer cans and candy wrappers. "Whadya say we go to the movies later. I think the first show at the Palestine starts at 11:30."

"Sure," said Bobby. "But what are we going to do until then?" Again silence.

Then Jimmy asked, "Are you a Jew boy?" The question struck Bobby like a bolt of lightning out of the blue. W...what do you mean? What difference does that make?"

"Me mudder told me never to hang out with no kikes."

"My mother told me to stay away from the goyim."

"What's goyim?"

"People who believe in Jesus."

"You got somethin' against the Irish?" Jimmy threatened.

"No," said Bobby, losing his temper. "You got something against Jews?"

They began to laugh, boxing playfully on the grass, pretending to be angry at each other. After some time they settled down.

"Let's go climbing," Jimmy suggested. "Let's go climb up the bridge and hang from the bottom."

"Sure, what the hell," added Bobby, grabbing briefcase with the cowboy suit in it.

"Wait a minute." He never hesitated. "Let's dump this cowboy suit in the river first."

"Yeah," said Jimmy. "But let's fling it off the top of the bridge and watch it float down to the water."

"Good idea."

Carefully they climbed the concrete base of the bridge and made their way up slowly through the hollow steel girders.

"Go slow," warned Jimmy. "Take your time to rest whenever you feel like it."

Bobby was scared but Jimmy was his best friend and he didn't want him to think he was afraid. Higher and higher they climbed, step by careful step. The crisscross struts were like the rungs of a ladder, their little feet fitting perfectly between them. Separately they climbed this way, facing each other until they reached the top, Bobby in one box girder and Jimmy in the other. Far out in the harbor, Bobby could see the Manhattan Bridge and the Statue of Liberty, and a good view of the Domino Sugar Factory and the bridge at Fifty-Ninth Street.

"Ooo wee," Jimmy shouted, "isn't this great! Let's climb out and have a look." Bobby was terrified at the thought of climbing out on the horizontal girder. "Don't do it Jimmy, let's go down." Too late. Jimmy had already climbed out onto the horizontal girder and was making his way slowly across on hands and knees. "C'mon Bobby, don't be afraid.” He extended his hand. “Here, hand me the cowboy suit. I'll fling it out over the water."

Bobby untied the suit he had secured about his waist, and handed it to Jimmy who was almost within reach. He edged his way out on the girder gradually to make it easier for him. Jimmy grabbed hold of the garment, and as if seized by some strange unknown excitement, began waving it about his head, shouting "Yippee i ay, yippee i-oo." Round and round and round he twirled it in his left hand, standing up and balancing himself on his two feet.

In the distance, they could hear the slow rumble of a train from Brooklyn making its way slowly toward the Manhattan side.

"Sit down Jimmy, sit down!” Bobby screamed. “Are you crazy? The train is coming, can't you hear it?"

"So what?” he shouted back. “C'mon out, don't be a scairdy cat."

As the train approached nearer and nearer, the bridge began to tremble and shake more violently.

Bobby gazed at the terrified look on his friend’s face as the boy began to slip, his expression changing from complete confidence to absolute desperation.

"Bobby, Bobby," he kept shouting, "help me, I'm falling." He hung there with one hand on the girder, holding the cowboy suit in the other. Bobby lost all fear and in a desperate heroic gesture dashed out on the beam to help his friend. He could almost reach out and grab Bobby’s hand.

"Throw it away, let go of the suit," he screamed, but it was too late. The train was passing directly overhead, the rumble and shaking, the grinding and shrieking of the wheels, the monotonous continuous klak-klaking of the monstrous thing as it faded into Manhattan and disappeared into the dark, miserable stench of the underground subway.

Three days later, the body of a nine-year-old boy identified as James R. Dalton was found dead, floating in the East River in the vicinity of the Williamsburg Bridge, his left hand still clinging to Bobby's cowboy suit.

09.10.83 – 08.18.2015

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09.10.83 – 08.18.2015

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