The Blood Lie by Shirley Reva Vernick Read Free Book Online

produce the powerful blasts. He sounded several short notes and then the longest one he could hold.
    Yom Kippur services were long. Some people would come and go, especially the ones with small children, but Jack would
stay. The only time he’d leave the building would be for Yizkor , the special prayer of remembrance for people who’d lost a loved one. Those lucky enough to have intact families waited outside the temple doors. Both of Jack’s parents stayed inside. So did Jack’s friend Abe Goldberg. Meanwhile, everyone waiting outside knew that one day they’d move inside to recite the Yizkor prayer, and that sometime later, the prayer would be said for them.
    When Jack released the last note, he sat up and stared out his window. He could see the Main Street Bridge standing vigil over the St. Lawrence, which, in another few miles, would enter Canada on its journey east to the Atlantic. He thought about his father’s voyage along this waterway on his way to America. Mr. Pool said it was the coldest weather he’d ever known—January in Quebec—and that the ferrymen showed him how to test the temperature. “Go outside and spit,” they’d said. “If it freezes the second it hits the ground, then it’s twenty below. But if it freezes in midair, then it’s at least forty below. Either way, the ferries don’t run.”
    If only Mr. Pool had entered America through Ellis Island like thousands of others, his family would probably be living in Brooklyn or Boston or some other city. Then Jack would have music schools at his fingertips, and concerts and sheet music shops. But Mr. Pool’s poor vision prevented all that. When he immigrated, people were so afraid of trachoma—a contagious, blinding disease—that if your eyes didn’t seem quite right, you could be standing right next to the Statue of Liberty and still get sent back to your homeland. So he didn’t risk it. He came in through Canada instead, first to Montreal, then across the St. Lawrence to Northern New York State.

    Jack cursed his father’s eyes.
    And yet, if he had been able to see, Mr. Pool might not have come to America at all. He might have stayed in his shtetl —Zininka, one of the many Russian ghettos where the Jews were forced to live but were forbidden from owning land, attending school, or practicing the more profitable trades. He might have endured the empty belly, the isolation, the encroaching violence against the Jews. But word had it that American doctors could restore eyesight. Jack’s father could live without food or security, but he desperately, urgently wanted to see. And so he came.
    Of course he came. Who wouldn’t, if it meant being able to see clearly for the first time? Jack thought the only thing worse than blindness would be deafness, because then there’d be no music. Having no music would be like having no language, no passion, no inspiration. He couldn’t bear the thought.
    When Mr. Pool found out that the American cure didn’t exist, there was only one thing left to do: he threw on a shoulder pack and walked from town to town, peddling notions and a little clothing. “Lucky for me I can weigh the difference between a five-spot and a ten in my hands,” he’d joke. After a couple of years he bought a horse and wagon so he could travel farther, and that’s how he met his future wife in Santa Clara.
    When Jack’s parents opened Pool’s Dry Goods, Massena was enjoying the tail end of an odd sort of heyday—thanks to its stinking water, of all things. The Mohawks had discovered a sulfur-water spring at the edge of town just after the War Between the States, and people believed it could cure a slew of conditions. Visitors started coming from all over the country,
as well as from Canada and Europe. Even the Netherlands’ Queen Wilhelmina, who supposedly had a bad case of eczema, made a point of stopping by