Free The Book of Daniel by E. L. Doctorow Page A

out,” my father screams. At this moment the bus jerks to a stop, stalling in gear. The driver throws up his arms. There is the sound of shattering glass. A cry goes through the bus, the involuntary leaping out from throats of perception. My father sits back down, holding the railing of the seat in front of him. We all sit dumbfounded as if it was a show that had nothing to do with us. The driver’s face is decorated in blood. From the front to the back of the bus, people are ducking, like dominoes going down in a row, a beautiful pattern of shatter appears on the window alongside my mother’s head, and in the moment before I feel my head being forced down to the seat, I see a man with a boulder, heaving it into the rear window of the bus in front of us.
    People are shouting to get the bus moving. But the driver is out of his seat, and even if he weren’t, there is no place to go. There are buses in front, and buses behind. The thunking of rocks on the sides and roof of the bus punctures the ears. Glass breaks like music. People cry out. “What is this,” demands my father’s voice, above me. “What is this!”
    Flying in with the rocks, like notes tied to them with string, the words kike, commie bastard, jew commie, red. I listen carefully. Jew. Commie. Red. Nigger. Bastard. Kike. Nigger-lover. Red. Jew bastard. These words are shouted. The rocks, some of them as big as my head, are propelled by the motives of education. “Well teach you!” the enraged voices cry. “This will teach you, you commie bastard kikes!”
    My mother and I are squeezed down between our seat and the back of the seat in front. We are kneeling. Every rattle,every crash operates like a simple machine for the tightening of her hold upon me. I imagine some kind of system of pulleys activated by shouts, pounding rocks, shattering glass. Inch by inch I am buried more firmly under her, until my head rests on her folded leg, and her breasts and arms cover the curve of my back, and her hands hold me by the bones of my ass. I feel through the cloth of her skirt her thigh muscle twitching under my mouth and chin, quivering in what—fear? rage? exertion?—and she is laying her head on my back and muttering into my backbone. Murderers. Dogs. Scum. It is the muttering epithet of my grandma, but in English. Fascist scum. Nazi pigs. Murderers.
    I am in an intoxication of fear. The thought of my grandma has suggested a new meaning of her famous curses—not as the rantings of an old madwoman, but the exact and potent introjection of measures of doom into our lives. The bus is rocking. We are all going to die. My heart beats furiously but I am aware of the material of my mother’s skirt—a rough, wool cloth, which will leave a rashlike sensitivity on my cheek.
    I hear Mindish yelling at my father to get down. “Pauly!” my mother cries over my back. “What are you doing! Paul!”
    My father, crouching in the aisle, has seen something through the window. He steps over people and around them, making his way tortuously to the front of the bus. “Officer!” he shouts. “Officer!”
    My spindly father, spinning his way to the front. To the war. This mustn’t be permitted. “This mustn’t be permitted,” he calls back in explanation. Then he is at the door commanding the driver to open it. The bus is rocking. He holds the overhead bar, insisting that the driver open the door of the bus. But the others yell to keep the door shut. “We can’t permit this,” he turns around to say. “We cannot permit this outrage.”
    Mindish has followed him forward. The big dentist is smiling. “Get down, Paul. What are you doing! Get back here!” My father has sighted the policeman again, and is trying to pry open the double door with his hands. He shouts through the opening in the rubber guards of the door, shouts through the opening he makes with his hands. “Officer! Why do you permit this!” He struggles to fold back the doors, straining like Samsonbetween