Free Jew Store by Stella Suberman

Despite appearances, the men were happy, extraordinarily happy, and they were about to make my father happy as well.
    The drama began when a man stepped in front of the contingent and announced himself as Mr. Pomerantz. Gripped tightly in Mr. Pomerantz’s hand was a long roll of paper, which he waved about. In a series of complex moves, he spread the paperon the enamel table, put the salt shaker at one end, the pepper shaker at the other, the sugar bowl in the middle. At last seeming satisfied that the paper was holding, he propelled my father’s head over it, stuck his own forefinger on a spot on the map, for that’s what the paper was, and advised the assemblage that he was calling my father’s attention to the northwest corner of the state of Tennessee.
    Northwest corner? State of Tennessee? My mother knew she was in the state of Tennessee, but
northwest corner
? What was this
northwest corner
? Was it something she shouldn’t like the sound of?
    Pomerantz held his finger on the map for some seconds, up around the northern rim of the sugar bowl. My father looked at the spot. He made out the name “Concordia.”
    Pomerantz affirmed this. “There it is—Concordia.” He squinted his eyes. “A town you got to have good eyes to see.”
    My father waited. He knew a disclosure was coming, and finally Pomerantz disclosed it. Pomerantz said he had it “absolutely, positively, no mistake about it” that a shoe factory was going to open up in that little town, in that “Concordia.”
    My father floated a little smile, weighting it with a touch of puzzlement. It was his trademark look for projecting innocence. “So what’s it got to do with me?” he asked Pomerantz.
    Pomerantz’s hands went up for silence. He was clearly getting ready to deliver the blockbuster he had in his possession. And a blockbuster it was. Pomerantz drilled his eyes into my father’s and revealed the awful truth: There was as yet no Jewish “dry goods” in the town.
    Pomerantz stood waiting, waiting, for my father’s expression of shock. If my father was not shocked, he was something better
    â€”joyous. The men were talking a store here, and for him. Still, to prolong the drama, to give the men their money’s worth, he thought to produce his most elaborate shrug, as if to say, Sowhat does it have to do with me?
    Pomerantz took on the look of a witness to heresy. “Do you know, young Mr. Aaron Bronson, do you know what it means for a town to be without a Jewish dry goods?” His tone was baleful. “What do goyim know from small dry goods? From small ready-to-wear? Groceries, yes. Furniture, maybe. Hardware, definitely. But small dry goods?
Never!
”
    My brother could stand it no longer. This seeming inability on my father’s part to grasp the obvious was proving too much for him. He ran to my father’s side. “Don’t you understand, Papa? Mr. Pomerantz is . . .”
    My father just put his hand on Joey’s shoulder, squeezed hard, and Joey stopped talking.
    And now Pomerantz came out with it. “Young Mr. Aaron Bronson,” he said, “this is a proposition that fits you to a T.”
    My father didn’t have to tell me that euphoric as he was, he would find it very hard to resist a joke. And sure enough, “No, it don’t,” he said. “The pants is too long in the rise.” He didn’t expect a laugh and didn’t get one, so he shook his head in a sober way and told the men what they already knew—that he had no money for such a venture.
    Pomerantz told my father not to excite himself, that the merchants of Nashville had been keeping “a eagle eye” on him. My father, he said, was in for “oh, boy, some surprise.” And then, with deference due a potentate, Pomerantz introduced “Mr. Morris Cohen, owner of Cohen’s Department Store in the Number One location in uptown