6. What Anshel Did To Us

“Imagination” was not the word that assailed me whenever I contemplated the being who was Anshel. Say “Anshel,” and without delay I would envision my cousin consulting a book of Jewish law to see what God decreed he could or could not do. He was so empty of creative urges that when “Onkel Dovid!” flew out of him, I expected to see my father, whose name was David but became “Dovid” in Yiddish, the blend of Hebrew and medieval German that Anshel spoke as easily as I spoke English.

I hadn’t seen Daddy since June of ’61, two months after the war started. He’d gone up north to New York and joined a regiment led by an old friend from Columbia College. In the beginning, he was able to get letters to us by way of an artist who followed the war for a popular magazine. The artist would put the letters in an envelope when he reached a Confederate state, then post them with a return address that he would make up and write himself. We never wrote back. Daddy had told us not to. He didn’t want our letters to be discovered if the artist was captured or killed in the South. After a while, Daddy’s letters stopped. We figured something had happened to the artist, not to Daddy, because if Daddy had died or been captured, somebody would have sent word. So, when Anshel cried “Onkel Dovid!” I turned, believing I would see him.

My belief lugged with it all the tinglings, thrills and throbbings that exert themselves in the sudden sighting of a loved one. For a moment those sensations hung like breath standing still on a frosty night. Then I realized the object of Anshel’s greeting was not my father but the deserter in the barn, concealed in the clothes Mama had brought out to him.

I suspected Anshel must dislike me to Biblical proportions to pull such a heartless trick on me. My fist would have become part of his shoulder had he not spun around me, chattering something about the wind blowing away his onkel’s kippah. I recovered my footing in time to see him plop his own kippah on the deserter’s head. “Here! Take mine!” (He was almost shouting.) “The head of the house should never be without his kippah. Not to worry, not to worry,” he continued, slapping the hat back atop the deserter’s head as the man tried to sweep it off, “It’s yours now. Tante Laurencia can make me a new one.”

Mama seemed not to have noticed my attempt to throttle her nephew. Nor did she appear to notice that she was now married to a stranger. She poured more fake coffee for Boniface Antony, who drank and chewed and as if he were penned into a world whose boundaries began and ended with the sustenance he ingested. In all fairness, I must say that he interrupted his feast to stand when the stranger appeared.

“Elodie,” Mama said. “Elodie, please help Anshel with his new kippah.”

Now?

“Yes, Elodie. Now. Help Anshel with his new kippah.”

She spoke as though I’d said, “Now?” though I was not aware of having made a peep. And why was she using my name so much? I knew who I was.

“Yes, yes, that’s a good idea, Loydie,” Anshel added. “Tante Laurencia is right. I need a new kippah. Get the tape measure. I’ll wait here with Tante Laurencia and Onkel Dovid. Sit, Onkel Dovid. Tante Laurencia will get you coffee.”

The deserter loomed over the chair that Anshel pulled away from the table for him. “I don’t know, Nephew. You and this young fellow here? You both look like you could eat a house between you. Maybe I should go and get more eggs.”

Boniface Antony spoke through a mouthful. “Not for me, sir. I’m so full of eggs, thanks to your wife’s hospitality, that I could grow feathers.”

“Feathers won’t protect you from this snow, son. I’ve never seen a storm like this in all my life. Whatever your officers sent you out to do, you won’t be able to do it until tomorrow, if not later.”

“As I told the missus, sir, I’m ordered to apprehend deserters. I was commissioned in this enterprise by General T.J. Jackson himself.”

“Is that so? Well, I’ll tell you, young man, that sounds to me like a mighty big responsibility. How many deserters do you think you’ll round up?”

“As many as come my way, sir.”

“You’re by yourself? How do you propose to bring these deserters back to camp?”

Boniface Antony fingered the delicate handle on the coffee cup. “Sir, I do not propose to bring any one of them back to camp. My orders are to apprehend them and dispatch them with speed.”

“Dispatch them to where?”

Boniface Antony swept glittering eyes over Mama and me. “I’d rather not say in the presence of the ladies, sir, but I do ask you to believe that the destination is the place, below ground, where all traitors must be consigned.”

“He means to execute them.” Mama’s offered the news with not the slightest touch of sensitivity.

“I see.” The deserter, my false Daddy, stirred his coffee, clanked the spoon on the rim of the cup. “General Jackson ordered you to shoot them?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And General Jackson ordered you to bury them?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Where?”

“Wherever they take their last breath, Mister … Forgive me, sir, I don’t believe I caught your name.”

“Sternbach.” Anshel and Mama spoke together. Anshel was louder.

“And you are willing to follow those orders?”

“Orders are orders, Mr. Sternbach.”

My false Daddy glowered, drawing his mouth so tight that it seemed to vanish in the safety of his beard.

I’d never known a man to receive a notice of his death while he was so acutely among the living. What would this man do? He was twice the size of Boniface Antony. I had no doubt he could reach across the table, grab the youth by the throat and squeeze him into the bosom of Abraham. Considering the tableau, with all its attendant sights and sounds, made me feel unwell, as if my breakfast couldn’t decide which way it wanted to go. I sought refuge by excusing myself to start sewing a new kippah for Anshel.

My sewing box was in the parlor, near the piano, but I wanted to go farther away from the impending scene of carnage. I went up to my room and fussed around the chest of drawers, pretending to look for muslin and thread I knew weren’t there. I found vast satisfaction in slamming shut the drawers, and opening others, repeating the futile search. I didn’t realize Anshel had followed me until I heard his voice. “Loydie! What are you doing?”

“I have to make a muslin to make sure the kippah fits.”

“Make a muslin? It’s a kippa, not a bodice. You take the measurement, you leave enough for the seam. Trust me. My mother’s uncle in Glauchau is a tailor. He taught me some things about making clothes.”

“I thought your mother’s uncle was a rabbi.”

“He is a rabbi.”

“And he’s a tailor?”

“He’s got to make a living. Why are you so angry?” Anshel steadied the oil lamp that rocked atop the bureau as the latest drawer to be rifled slid into place with an energetic push.

“I am not angry.”

“Yes, you are. You’d breathe fire, if you could.”

“Pay no mind to me. Go back to Mama. She shouldn’t be alone with those men.”

“But that officer, he’s got to believe the deserter is your father.”

“The deserter is not my father.”

“Do you want Boniface Antony to shoot him in front of us? Loydie, don’t you know the story of Amalek, and how he attacked innocent men, women and children as Moses led our people out of Mizrayim, the land you call Egypt? General Jackson is Amalek. He must be, to want to kill men who would risk death to leave the war and return home to their families. The Torah commands us to remember Amalek.”

“I don’t care about something that happened during Bible times. I care about what’s happening now, today, in my home. You’re a lunatic to say that rebel soldier is my father!”

“He is a man who would be murdered. It’s a mitzvah to save his life.”

“By saying he’s my father?”

“We’ve got to make Boniface Antony believe the deserter belongs here with us.”

“Not as my father! Mama asked him to come in here as part of the family, nothing more.”

“What was I supposed to call him? Wouldn’t it look funny if your mother lived with a man who wasn’t related to her?”

“You could have said he was her brother.”

“If she had a brother, he would be here, in my place. I’d still be over in Germany.”

As well you should be, I thought. Having nothing more to say, I grabbed a piece of the old petticoat that I’d ripped up to use as a dustcloth after the fabric had grown thin and frayed.

I had not yet reached the stairs when I remembered Mr. B telling us about General Jackson earlier in the day: “He’s killin’ his own men. And if he’s killin’ his own men, you know he’s gonna start killin’ civilians–if he’s not doin’ it already.”

Boniface Antony had been quick to proclaim his business on behalf of General Jackson. But what if Mr. B was right, and Boniface Antony was out to kill more than deserting soldiers?

What if he was out to kill us, as well?