Free The Hoods by Harry Grey

for us. He said he couldn't help it. He had to make a deal. Two of us had to face the music. Pat and I decided to take the rap.
    Max promised to deliver the ten dollar union money, maybe more, every week to my home.
    Patsy was sent to a Catholic Protectory. I was sent to the Jewish Home, Cedar Knolls, up in Hawthorne, New York.
    My stay wasn't too bad. The food was good, and there was enough of it. This was my first time out of New York, so the country atmosphere was a novelty. We weren't treated as criminals; the place was run more on the style of a boarding school. I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of freedom of movement allowed. A great deal was left to our honor. Rarely did anybody abuse his privileges.
    To tell the truth, I enjoyed my stay. The change of air did a lot for me. The clean, open country smells were so different from the hemmed-in stink of the poverty-stricken ghetto. What I took delight in more than anything else was the library. I buried myself in books. Through that medium I visited every country in the world as well as other worlds—the moon, Mars and other planets. I flew in planes and explored the bottom of the seas. I was a pirate, a missionary. I was a highwayman, a priest, a minister, a rabbi. I was a surgeon and his patient. I was one of the arrogant rich and a man of the people. I was a king and his lowliest subject. I was everybody and everything. I was there with Moses on the Mount: I looked over his shoulder as he sat on the rock and wrote his ten commandments. On the way down he and I discussed the best way to present it to the people. I chuckled with admiration when he told me the story he was going to tell.
    I sat at the feet of Jesus, with the rest of his disciples. I listened with awe to his revolutionary teachings for the betterment of all peoples. I helped him carry the cross up Calvary. My heart bled as I watched the pain and suffering on the face of Jesus as they drove spikes into him. Then I saw how, ever after, the same type of people, in every generation, who were afraid of progress and Jesus' true teachings, prostituted his name, twisted his meanings, and crucified him over and over again for their own selfish purposes. I saw how other poor unfortunates were encouraged to use his anguished image as a fetish to fill a gap in their lives, or to cover a neurosis of some sort. All of it made me very sad.
    The day I was to be dismissed from Cedar Knolls, the rabbi called me into his study and gave me his final sermon, “How a good Jewish boy should behave.” It went in one ear and out the other. In conclusion, he smiled and gave me a pat on the back.
    He said, “I have a surprise for you; there's a friend outside to drive you back to New York.”
    I wondered who it could be. Jauntily I walked out of the building. Leaning up against a new shiny black Cadillac, smoking a cigar and grinning at me, was Big Maxie.
    Even though we had grown up together, and he had been my intimate companion since the days at Soup School, now, somehow, he seemed like a stranger. I guess it was the eighteen-month separation. He looked entirely different. Maxie had grown tall: he was well over six feet. He was big all right, big all over, with broad shoulders and narrow hips. He must have done plenty of gym work while I was away. He looked in the pink. His sharp black eyes were shining. He had the same contagious grin, and showed his white perfect teeth.
    “Noodles, old boy, it's good to see you. How are you?” he said.
    He extended his hand; his grasp was like a vise.
    A warm, embarrassing surge of affection swept over me. I returned his grin. “I'm okay. You're looking good, Max.”
    “You don't look so bad yourself, Noodles. I hardly recognized you; you're almost as tall as I am.”
    He turned me around.
    “Some pair of shoulders on you, Noodles, you certainly developed, up here in the country. Plenty of exercise, hey?”
    “You mean plenty of work,” I said, “to keep us out of mischief.