and was passing through Hillside and across the railroad overpass into Elizabeth, and he hoped that it wasn't much more time before they reached the cemetery. He imagined that if Alan lay roasting in that box for much longer, the box would somehow ignite and explode, and as though a hand grenade had gone off inside, the boy's remains would come bursting out all over the hearse and the street.
W HY DOES POLIO strike only in the summer? At the cemetery, standing there bareheaded but for his yarmulke, he had to wonder if polio couldn't be caused by the summer sun itself. At midday, in its full overhead onslaught, it seemed to have more than sufficient strength to cripple and kill, and to be rather more likely to do so than a microscopic germ in a hot dog.
A grave had been dug for Alan's casket. It was the second open grave Mr. Cantor had ever seen, the first having been his grandfather's, three years earlier, just before the war began. Then he'd been weighed down caring for his grandmother and holding her close to him throughout the cemetery service so that her legs didn't give way. After that, he'd been so busy looking after her and staying in every night with her and eventually getting her out once a week for a movie and an ice cream sundae that it was a while before he could find the time to contemplate all he himself had lost. But as Alan's casket was lowered into the ground—as Mrs. Michaels lunged for the grave, crying "No! Not my baby!"—death revealed itself to him no less powerfully than the incessant beating of the sun on his yarmulke'd head.
They all joined the rabbi in reciting the mourner's prayer, praising God's almightiness, praising extravagantly, unstintingly, the very God who allowed everything, including children, to be destroyed by death. Between the death of Alan Michaels and the communal recitation of the God-glorifying Kaddish, Alan's family had had an interlude of some twenty-four hours to hate and loathe God for what
He had inflicted upon them—not, of course, that it would have occurred to them to respond like that to Alan's death, and certainly not without fearing to incur God's wrath, prompting Him to wrest Larry and Lenny Michaels from them next.
But what might not have occurred to the Michaels family had not been lost on Mr. Cantor. To be sure, he himself hadn't dared to turn against God for taking his grandfather when the old man reached a timely age to die. But for killing Alan with polio at twelve? For the very existence of polio? How could there be forgiveness—let alone hallelujahs—in the face of such lunatic cruelty? It would have seemed far less of an affront to Mr. Cantor for the group gathered in mourning to declare themselves the celebrants of solar majesty, the children of an ever-constant solar deity, and, in the fervent way of our hemisphere's ancient heathen civilizations, to abandon themselves in a ritual sun dance around the dead boy's grave—better that, better to sanctify and placate the unrefracted rays of Great Father Sun than to submit to a supreme being for whatever atrocious crime it pleases Him to perpetrate. Yes, better by far to praise the irreplaceable generator that has sustained our existence from its
beginning—better by far to honor in prayer one's tangible daily encounter with that ubiquitous eye of gold isolated in the blue body of the sky and its immanent power to incinerate the earth—than to swallow the official lie that God is good and truckle before a cold-blooded murderer of children. Better for one's dignity, for one's humanity, for one's worth altogether, not to mention for one's everyday idea of whatever the hell is going on here.
...
Y'hei sh'mei raboh m'vorakh l'olam ul'olmei ol'mayoh.
May His great Name be blessed forever and ever.
Yis'borakh v'yish'tabach v'yis'po'ar v'yis'romam v'yis'nasei
Blessed, praised, glorified, exalted, extolled,
v'yis'hadar v'yis'aleh v'yis'halal sh'mei d'kud'shoh
mighty, upraised, and lauded be the Name of
W HY DOES POLIO strike only in the summer? At the cemetery, standing there bareheaded but for his yarmulke, he had to wonder if polio couldn't be caused by the summer sun itself. At midday, in its full overhead onslaught, it seemed to have more than sufficient strength to cripple and kill, and to be rather more likely to do so than a microscopic germ in a hot dog.
A grave had been dug for Alan's casket. It was the second open grave Mr. Cantor had ever seen, the first having been his grandfather's, three years earlier, just before the war began. Then he'd been weighed down caring for his grandmother and holding her close to him throughout the cemetery service so that her legs didn't give way. After that, he'd been so busy looking after her and staying in every night with her and eventually getting her out once a week for a movie and an ice cream sundae that it was a while before he could find the time to contemplate all he himself had lost. But as Alan's casket was lowered into the ground—as Mrs. Michaels lunged for the grave, crying "No! Not my baby!"—death revealed itself to him no less powerfully than the incessant beating of the sun on his yarmulke'd head.
They all joined the rabbi in reciting the mourner's prayer, praising God's almightiness, praising extravagantly, unstintingly, the very God who allowed everything, including children, to be destroyed by death. Between the death of Alan Michaels and the communal recitation of the God-glorifying Kaddish, Alan's family had had an interlude of some twenty-four hours to hate and loathe God for what
He had inflicted upon them—not, of course, that it would have occurred to them to respond like that to Alan's death, and certainly not without fearing to incur God's wrath, prompting Him to wrest Larry and Lenny Michaels from them next.
But what might not have occurred to the Michaels family had not been lost on Mr. Cantor. To be sure, he himself hadn't dared to turn against God for taking his grandfather when the old man reached a timely age to die. But for killing Alan with polio at twelve? For the very existence of polio? How could there be forgiveness—let alone hallelujahs—in the face of such lunatic cruelty? It would have seemed far less of an affront to Mr. Cantor for the group gathered in mourning to declare themselves the celebrants of solar majesty, the children of an ever-constant solar deity, and, in the fervent way of our hemisphere's ancient heathen civilizations, to abandon themselves in a ritual sun dance around the dead boy's grave—better that, better to sanctify and placate the unrefracted rays of Great Father Sun than to submit to a supreme being for whatever atrocious crime it pleases Him to perpetrate. Yes, better by far to praise the irreplaceable generator that has sustained our existence from its
beginning—better by far to honor in prayer one's tangible daily encounter with that ubiquitous eye of gold isolated in the blue body of the sky and its immanent power to incinerate the earth—than to swallow the official lie that God is good and truckle before a cold-blooded murderer of children. Better for one's dignity, for one's humanity, for one's worth altogether, not to mention for one's everyday idea of whatever the hell is going on here.
...
Y'hei sh'mei raboh m'vorakh l'olam ul'olmei ol'mayoh.
May His great Name be blessed forever and ever.
Yis'borakh v'yish'tabach v'yis'po'ar v'yis'romam v'yis'nasei
Blessed, praised, glorified, exalted, extolled,
v'yis'hadar v'yis'aleh v'yis'halal sh'mei d'kud'shoh
mighty, upraised, and lauded be the Name of
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