Rabbi Petch, with whom I had thought to trade jobs, was there. At the Jewish New Year’s solemn beginning — it was early October; we were at Crystal Creek camp; at this latitude the fierce fall had already begun to drain the light, suck at its sparkle and leach its golds and yellows, tamping it flat, white, thin and dull as skimmed milk — he sat dressed in the hot woolen suit he’d been wearing when I’d last seen him, at the dead center of the congregation, not its southwest corner, but in its actual bull’s-eyed nub and nucleus. I was certain he huddled there for protection, as though maybe there were two neutral corners in the natural world, one for indoors and another for out.
Well.
This was the little reconditioned one, the short-handled, twenty-four-inch, ninety-thousand-dollar Sephardic. Or which would have been Sephardic if it hadn’t been blank. Which could be — who knew? — Sephardic yet, if all we needed was to get some specialist, someone checked out in the Sephardic hand the way old Jeers was checked out in jackhammer to go to work on it and copy down Pentateuch (which, considering the losses so far sustained, and providing the new guy was willing to work for nothing, would still come to something just over a hundred thousand bucks a teuch). Or could be if we didn’t have to fly in some extra-holy type first (the flower-bearded fellow, say) to re-deconsecrate the hoaxed-up sheepskin, reconsecrate it again and just set the scribe loose.
But that was something that would have to wait.
First I had to get through Rosh Hashanah.
I began by asking the Four Questions.
“Wherefore,” I chanted on this brisk Alaskan autumn morning six or so months after the Passover in the only Hebrew, with the exception of my haphtarah passage, a handful of broches and poems, and a few prayers for the dead, I had ever memorized, “is this night different from all other nights?
“On all other nights we eat either leavened or unleavened bread; on this night why only unleavened bread?
“On all other nights we eat any species of herbs; on this night why only bitter herbs?
“On all other nights we do not dip our herbs even once; on this night why do we dip them twice?
“On all other nights we eat our meals in any manner; on this night why do we sit around the table together in a reclining position?”
When I finished I looked up from the empty parchment, looked down again quickly, and hurriedly started to recite my haphtarah passage before the remaining Jews, McBride, the other gentiles, the redskins, and the Anchorage Seven.
I might have gotten through it, too, the first Chief Rabbi of the Alaska Pipeline ever publicly to re-bar mitzvah himself, when I felt someone beside me. It was Petch.
He took over for me, going through the service without a single mistake. Though why anyone should take my word for this I can’t say. He even had a shofar with him and sounded it, the dark, mottled, polished ram’s horn, glazed as tortoiseshell, summoning the New Year through its harsh, amplified winds like a sort of spittled Jewish weather, brusque, gruff as phlegm. He finished the morning part of the Rosh Hashanah services and started up again in the afternoon. Then again at sundown. From the Torah that never was. I stood beside him on the platform and, properly cued, even participated by chanting the broches, reading them off the blank parchment by following the silver yad that Rabbi Petch moved along the missing Hebrew.
Through the long, prayer-filled day we carried on one of those mysterious conversations inaudible to the congregation.
“I heard about you,” he said.
“I guess everyone has.”
“Is that what you want? To be famous?”
“No. Of course not.”
“ ‘Thou, O Lord, art mighty for ever. Thou quickenest the dead. Thou art mighty to save.’ ”
“I’m sorry about all this,” I said.
“You should be. This is the first time I’ve ever been so far from Anchorage.”
“What do you think?”
“Barbarous. Worse than I thought. Will you look at that raging river? I think it’s going to bust its banks and take the bridge out.”
“That’s Crystal Creek,” I said.
“I’m taking my life in my hands. How are the Eskimos around here?”
“Very tame. Gentlemen, in fact.”
“A lot you know.”
“Yeah,” I said, “there you have me. I’m a bumpkin.” I wanted to make him understand. “Because I never took it seriously. The proposition that roughnecks could ever get into any of this. Or that God would take their disengagement seriously either. On my side in this, though why I should assume so I don’t know.”
“God’s opinions?”
“That’s right.”
“ ‘Now, therefore, O Lord our God, impose Thine awe upon all Thy works, and Thy dread upon all that Thou hast created, that all works may fear Thee and all creatures prostrate themselves before Thee.’ ”
“Since,” I said, “there was going to be an Alaskan pipeline anyway, and all the red tape and Title Nines and Tens and whatever were already in place, I thought it was a good time to get out of Jersey, put a stake together, and, if things worked out, maybe trade congregations with you.”
“Out of the question,” Petch said. “No deal. Deal’s off. You aren’t serious. You were never terrified enough. I wouldn’t give a plugged nickel for your stake,” he said suddenly. Then, softly, “Someone must stand between us and the Eskimos.”
Though it was humiliating to me, I can’t say I wasn’t at least a little relieved. Here was Petch with his phantom Eskimos and chimerical natural disasters ready to throw himself into the breach, to intercede on man’s behalf for God, or God’s for man’s, whichever came first, like a limited warranty.
“Maybe,” I told him, “I wasn’t terrified enough. Though by any normally terrified guy’s standards I’m pretty terrified.”
“ ‘Let all the inhabitants of the world perceive and know that unto Thee every knee must bend, every tongue must swear. Before Thee, O Lord our God, let them bow and fall.’ That’s why … What’s his name, McBride?”
“McBride, yes.”
“That’s why McBride don’t fire you. You ain’t scared enough yet to blow in a whistle, you’re not quite afraid to make a wave. That’s why he’ll probably let you play out your contract.
“Oh,” he said, “by the way, is it true? Were the others like this?” He touched the yad to the godforsaken parchment.
“One contained highlights. One was written out in English.”
“No swastikas but? I heard swastikas.”
The scrolls were covered and placed back in the ark.
“No,” I said, “of course not. You think I would have sat still for swastikas?”
“A bold, stand-up guy like you? Why not?”
We finished the services. Then we shook hands and each heartily wished the other might be inscribed in the Book of Life for another year. Everyone did. McBride and the Indians. Jeers and the gentiles.
I walked Petch to the airstrip where his bush pilot was topping off the fuel in the gas tank and listening to music coming in over the plane’s radio on an Anchorage AM frequency.
Next week was Yom Kippur. Petch offered to come up, but I told him there was no need, I’d use the transliterated version.
“Ballsy,” he said.
“Why do you have to go? You don’t have to go. Stay over, go back in the morning.”
He looked up at the calm, perfectly cloudless sky. “Better get out,” he said darkly, “while the getting’s good.”
“Don’t you think you’re imposing a skosh too much awe upon His works? Is it necessary to dread all He created?”