Free Prayers for the Living by Alan Cheuse

morning, we can go if you miss it. Me, I don’t miss it. I’m glad I have a reason not to go. All those men humped together like cattle in a barn. Maybe in the cold weather it feels good. But I remember it mostly for the heat. What for? What for, boy? In the old country it went well for those who believed it, but here it’s a new world, a free country. And I’m free to walk in the other direction from the rest of them.”
    â€œWhy was Mama crying, Papa?”
    â€œCrying? From the joy of it. From slicing onions for the eggs. Because she once had a dead dog and she remembered today was its birthday. She remembered her dead dog.”
    â€œCan I have a dog, Papa?”
    â€œIn the house? No, no, darling, but sometime like your little friend Arnie you’ll have pigeons.”
    â€œReally, Papa?”
    â€œReally.”
    Here was the store yard where Jacob kept his cart. If he had had a horse he would have hitched the animal to the front. As it was, he stood in front of it and pulled while he directed Manny to push from the rear. In a moment they had it rolling up the alley and out onto the street. Jacob sweated despite the cold, and was thinking to himself—and how do I know? Here I’m guessing, because I know him so well I can figure it—thinking to himself, I’m working, and with every foot forward toward the square I’m stepping on the remains of a Commandment—and this was even before they stopped at the wholesale place to pick up the day’s fruit.
    â€œReading changed my life,” Jacob was saying to Manny as they hauled their full load. “It was an accident, but it changed everything. Who would say that a hostler’s son would ever learn to read Hebrew, let alone German and now English?” And how he told him an old story, one I’d heard from him a million times but still a charming story.
    â€œOne spring,” he said, “we hauled a load of hay into the city and the wagon broke down and we had to wait for the repairs and for two days I had nothing to do but talk to the students drinking tea in the café where my father made me sit while he watched the carpenter work on our cart. It was a game. They showed me letters, taught me a few words, and I listened while they discussed such matters as the origins of creation and the movement of the stars. That was the first time I heard about the lost continent. I love to talk about it because it reminds me of that wonderful stay in the café where for once in my life I could pretend that I was a student and not a wagon man’s boy.But you, Manny, you will become a fine student, and perhaps make a living at it too. After all, this place is better than Atlantis, because it’s a found continent, not lost. Here’s a curb now, come around to the side there, watch your step, don’t spill no apples, don’t catch your foot. So. Now it didn’t take you no two days to learn to read, did it, boychick? No, it took one. You’re a little genius. And this new world will open up for you. One day I’ll have a store. And we’ll work together, Bloch and Son. Or sons, maybe. Who knows but what sometime a brother and even a sister might come into the world? Would you like a brother? Uh-huh. But not a sister? Oh, pupkin, the things you’ve got to learn! Watch it now! There, up, hup, there! Pretend we’re back on board that ship—remember how the sailors!—there!”
    And Manny looks up toward his father over the orbs of oranges, apples, lemons, over the half-moon clasps of bananas, touching a place here, a piece there as if for luck, thinking of seabirds, of the roll and swell of the waves, confusing them with the fields of waving wheat he’s heard so much about.
    The two of them walking, father and son. Approaching the square.
    And in the distance, the wind whirls away with the sound of
    bells bells bells bells bells
    I can hear them clanging still, and the