Reb Saltpeter. Then, unthinking in his marathon weariness, he put on the shell coat and bowler of Mrs. Weintraub’s absconded husband without resorting to any cosmetic effects. Only half conscious of having returned to his original disguise—though aware enough of having missed it—he ventured out into Delancey Street to purchase a bit of kippered herring or maybe a piece of fruit. It wasn’t lost on him either that the evening’s weather showed signs of a warming trend, or that he was lonely.
As he strolled toward a produce stand beneath the shuddering uprights of the Second Avenue El, a fellow in a floppy golf cap turned about jockey style stepped up to greet him familiarly: “You’re so pretty,” he said, “you just got to be Max Feinshmeker.”
IT WAS THE young man from the ship. Despite his dowdy apparel, Shmerl was as sure of his identity as he had been of little else during that long cold season of carting dung. He was amazed at how relieved he was to see him, though they had yet to exchange a word, but while Shmerl thought he might now have much to say to him, his anticipation left him timid and reticent. So rather than cross immediately over the road to accost him, he followed the yungerman awhile from the other side. There was, after all, no particular hurry; hours remained before he was scheduled to make his rounds with the shit patrol, and it calmed him somewhat to observe the lad from a distance; saddened him as well to see how the intervening months had taken a toll on his former dignity. After a block or so along Delancey, Shmerl noticed that another, a lath-legged character in knee breeches and a turned-around caddy’s cap, also seemed to be dogging the young man’s heels. Then the caddy cap accelerated his pace, drawing alongside the yungerman to speak to him, upon which the youth, who had paused at a fruiterer’s bin, took off like a streak. Shmerl’s heart kicked at its cage as he watched the lad hotfooting it down the sidewalk, trying madly to dodge the passersby. In flight he looked over his shoulder, then turned around just in time to run smack into the arms of a big fellow in an ankle-length duster who had planted himself athwart his path. Thus embraced, the youth from the ship was manhandled by the duster—along with the caddy cap, who’d bolted forward to grab his collar from behind—into an alley off the crowded thoroughfare.
Shmerl was not the only one who had witnessed the abduction; others behind stalls and in horsecars saw the young man, a hand clapped over his mouth, struggling with his captors as they dragged him off. But while those who’d stopped to watch resumed their business as soon as the unpleasantness was out of sight, Shmerl recognized the event as the fateful moment he’d been waiting for. Confident in the strength that pressing irons and dung shovels had imparted to his stooped physique, he straightened his shoulders as best he could and drew forth from the walking stick he carried a slender metal wand. “Shemhemphorash!” he cried aloud, which was the name of the magic hat of Moses as mentioned in the Sefer Sheqel ha-Kodesh. It was as good a Hebrew battle cry as any he could think of. Zigzagging through heavy traffic, he crossed Delancey and charged the alley, where he began to thrust here and there in the gloom. The stock prod, which he’d devised on the principle of Aaron’s rod (it was a cane with a serpent’s sting) quivered like a fencing foil in his hand. He’d fashioned it with a trigger that sent a six-volt charge from a carbon battery to the platinum spikelet at its tip. The thing was designed for the purpose of encouraging horses in the livery stable to behave, but the nags were already so docile that he’d as yet had no occasion to try it out. This was his invention’s debut, and judging from the response of the young man’s attackers, it worked to good effect—especially now that Shmerl’s eyesight had adjusted to the halflight and he was aiming his thrusts with more accuracy. Both the duster and the caddy cap yowled as if they had fallen into a nest of electric eels; they dropped the blackjack and the naked shiv respectively to clutch at their parts, doubtless as shocked by the bent creature wielding his stinging weapon as they were by the weapon