Free Red Love by David Evanier

didn’t see this in America.
    Welfare came to investigate us when my father was out of a job. They refused us. But we got along. My mother used to make a hard-boiled egg, divide it, and we’d share.
    We lived first on Stanton, then Pitt, and then Delancey. A step upward—you had hot water and steam. The radicalism was so common among the poor children.
    Solly’s children. After the arrest, I took them to the park, bought them candy, ice cream. When I’d leave, the little one—she was afraid, you could see the fear—she’d jump up at me. With her little ruffled pants. She was only four years old.
    Dolly was a super-duper person. She won’t talk against anyone. I was with her when a man undercharged her for some merchandise. She said, Mister, you didn’t charge me enough. She couldn’t afford to pay that extra two or three cents, but she paid it. That was Dolly. And they were so in love with each other.
    I would come into her cell. Her apple would be on the metal window, a round of toilet paper, pictures of the children. She was short. Without shoes, she was even shorter. Everybody said they were supposed to have money from the Russians. But my brother and Dolly were so poor. If our mother didn’t give Solly money to fix his soles, he would go without shoes. They ate dinner at our mother’s house and he took a roll from my father to take home. They didn’t have anything. I mean, they were schleppers.
    Imagine, the very last day, I went to see Dolly, then I went to see Solly. The stay had come through. They were so happy. She had a little can of chicken she had set aside to celebrate; they shared it. But we didn’t know the stay had been suddenly overturned that day. Solly evidently got wind of it over the radio. I was with Solly. Mama was with Dolly. And Solly said to me, “Take Mama home, take Mama home.” He cut it short. He didn’t want to see his mother, because he would break down. But I didn’t know what was happening. “Just take Mama home,” he kept saying. “I don’t want Mama to come here this afternoon.” That’s all he said to me. So I took our mother home. When I got home, I heard the news.
    This here was my brother’s Hebrew book from the yeshiva. June 12th. Twelve o’clock. Four o’clock. Room seven. Five o’clock. He was a little boy then. Written by Sol. That’s his handwriting. Upside down. Why did he write it upside down? No, wait, Sol’s right. This is the way to hold it. I forgot, this is the way it goes, he was right! My brother’s Hebrew book … held in my brother’s hands.
    I had envelopes addressed by him to their friends. I kept them. Where did I put them? Goddamnit. I’ll find them … I’ll find them. …

Saturday-Afternoon Parade, 1930
    Solly was strange fruit.
    —G. L.
    Solly and his father moved to Mitchell’s Dam, Alabama, when Solly was eleven. Solly’s father opened a work-clothes store on the railroad track from Red Mountain. His father had done everything from loading pig iron on railway cars to selling tombstone insurance. They lived in one big room behind the store. The mountain was thirty miles long, with solid iron ore. The track from the steel plant went straight on a level past the highway crossing where they lived.
    Behind the store was the large shanty area called Niggertown. The store became the Jewtown corner of Niggertown. The white community lived on the other side of the tracks.
    Most of Solly’s new friends were black: Ray, Louie, Smitty, and Ronnie. Their mothers fed him at lunchtime. They called him their honey. A little Jewish boy. He could not insult them by refusing and telling them he was kosher.
    At a crossing point of the tracks, Solly would hop the freights from the steel mill with the other kids. They fished and swam in a rock quarry. They shot marbles. Pitched horseshoes. Chased water moccasins, cottonhead rattlers, down the creek together in the running rapids. At the base of the mill, where the water came through the sluice,