The apartment was on the walk-up’s fifth floor, his bedroom window shoved up for air. The problem started when Izzy’s mother came home from work early from the laundry on Avenue B that afternoon. When she opened Izzy’s door and smelled what she smelled and then looked at the bottles on the table, she went bananas. The labels said Airplane Dope. To her, that was what Benny Goodman’s drummer got arrested for, that what’s-his-name Gene Krupa, who had sleepy eyes and regularly dropped his sticks in the middle of a song.
Izzy was sitting on the far side of the table. That meant he was out the door last, catching a volley of slaps on his head and shoulders from his mama. Even the sound of feet pounding down the stairs didn’t mute the noise from Mrs. Jacobs as she tore apart her son and daughter’s room, the little girl who had to sleep perpendicular at the foot of Izzy’s bed because her own room was so small. When the boys reached the sidewalk, Sammy spotted the glint of two glass bottles exiting Izzy’s window, scoring the clear blue sky while floating on the high wails of that meshuga woman.
The boys ran over to Tompkins Park and collapsed on the grass, laughing. That is, until Sammy Rabinowitz said what he stupidly said. “Izzy’s mother is a dope. Izzy’s mother is d-o-p-e-y!” He said it and said it, caught up in the giggles.
So Izzy naturally had to bust him one. Then Sammy busted him back but was quicker, turning Izzy’s nose and lips a meaty, swollen red. Maybe it was time. Maybe they had worn each other out from their differences before. From that day on, Isadore Jacobs and Sammy Rabinowitz avoided each other as much as they could, trading mild insults when they passed in school or on the street.
Seventh Precinct in the Lower East Side was the next-to-smallest precinct in Manhattan, but it was the neighborhood, and Sam was glad to walk a beat there when he was nineteen, watching out for old people and shopkeepers and little kids who played too long in the dim light of dusk. It’s where his father had been a cop and an older cousin, too, both in the 1920s.
Sam’s father died at age thirty-nine, when Sam was sixteen. His mother’s sisters were at the apartment after the funeral. His mom said to one of them she wanted to go be with Arnie, she couldn’t live without him. Sammy sat in a dark corner, his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands until that moment. He raised his head up, and his mother caught his eye. “Oh, no, Sammy,” she said, “I didn’t mean it. I won’t ever leave you! Not for a long while, God willing.”
It was up to him then to find some way to bring in money to help. His mom sewed for people but had a problem with her legs and couldn’t sit very long. Sam made deliveries for shopkeepers all around the neighborhood. As time went by, he somehow didn’t get drafted, and he didn’t enlist. He wanted to be a cop, and that was it. Heroes and protectors had to be among civilians, too, didn’t they?
But lately, every time Sam-the-Cop Rabinowitz went into Katz’s Deli on the corner of Houston and Ludlow, not only did he see the walls covered with pictures of movie and theater people, but he also saw a single sign that ripped at his conscience: SEND A SALAMI TO YOUR BOY IN THE ARMY. It kept buzzing his brain when he was on the street.
All along the wall behind the food counter hung salamis, long and short, fat and thin, hanging by the ends of their casings, even during the days of rationing. There’s always a way to get around restrictions, especially if you live in the right city. The aromas from steaming bins of pastrami and corned beef and hot dogs on the grill drew in people from the sidewalk who didn’t even know they were hungry until then. That November of 1944, Sammy purchased four salamis and brought them home and asked his mother to send them to the troops. “What,” she said, “I should know how to do this?”
The next afternoon while on his beat, he made up his mind. He saw Izzy Jacobs and Mike Kelley through a window of a soda shop, each devouring a charlotte russe. Mike always set aside the maraschino cherry for the last bite.
Sam went in, rattled up a chair, and rode it in reverse with his arms on the back. As if no time had elapsed since graduation, he said, “Hey, guys,” and looked at his watch. “At three o’clock, I’m going down to the induction center to enlist. Who’s coming with?”
Neither Izzy nor Mike had walls to paint or deliveries to make or machines to stitch leather for shoes. Jobs were hard to come by. Bosses got away with paying women less than the men they replaced, and women were feeling the glow of their own paychecks for a change. Sam’s call to enlist was an easy persuasion. The three set off to the recruitment center.