In Chap­ter 10, titled “The Skrup Shoe,” we fol­low Earl Roberts, known as Doc, a man from Pottstown who becomes entan­gled in local rumors regard­ing a Jew­ish woman, Chona, alleged­ly hid­ing a Negro child from the state. Doc learns this from his dis­tant cousin, Carl Boy­d­kins, who works for the state wel­fare office. Both fam­i­lies share a myth­i­cal lin­eage that boasts a con­nec­tion to the Mayflower, which in real­i­ty is a fab­ri­cat­ed sto­ry root­ed in the life of Ed Bole, an Eng­lish sailor in the late 18th cen­tu­ry. Bole’s tumul­tuous life leads to his descen­dants, the Roberts and Boy­d­kins fam­i­lies, liv­ing pros­per­ous­ly on neigh­bor­ing farms next to the Man­atawny Creek.

The chap­ter details the sig­nif­i­cant social and eco­nom­ic trans­for­ma­tions before and after the Great Crash of 1929. The Roberts fam­i­ly man­ages to sell their prop­er­ty before the crash, but the Boy­d­kins fam­i­ly suf­fers as fac­to­ries pol­lute their land and dis­rupt their way of life. The nar­ra­tive reflects on Doc’s child­hood and his inse­cu­ri­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly regard­ing his left foot affect­ed by polio, which leads to his embar­rass­ment and avoids social inter­ac­tions with girls.

Doc’s com­pli­cat­ed feel­ings toward Chona sur­face as he recalls his high school days where he tried to date her but was left humil­i­at­ed after she reject­ed him. He lat­er vis­its Nor­man Skrupske­lis, the town’s renowned shoe­mak­er, to have a new shoe made for his cleft foot. Nor­man’s brusque man­ner leaves a last­ing impres­sion on Doc, prompt­ing years of resent­ment that con­tin­ues even after Nor­man’s death and the tran­si­tion of the fam­i­ly busi­ness to his sons.

As Doc matures and becomes a doc­tor, he grap­ples with the demo­graph­ic changes in Pottstown, reflect­ing his big­otry as immi­grants from var­i­ous back­grounds set­tle in the area. His dis­con­nec­tion from his once-famil­iar home­town exac­er­bates his dis­dain for per­ceived encroach­ment by “out­siders” and cul­mi­nates in his involve­ment with the Knights of Pottstown, who align with the Ku Klux Klan’s ide­olo­gies.

Ulti­mate­ly, Chap­ter 10 sees Doc reluc­tant­ly agree­ing to vis­it Chona con­cern­ing the child’s sit­u­a­tion, filled with com­plex feel­ings about their shared past and cul­tur­al dif­fer­ences. This chap­ter sets the stage for explor­ing themes of iden­ti­ty, social change, and the com­plex­i­ties of human rela­tion­ships against a back­drop of deep-seat­ed prej­u­dice.

You are being pro­vid­ed with a book chap­ter by chap­ter. I will request you to read the book for me after each chap­ter. After read­ing the chap­ter, 1. short­en the chap­ter to no less than 300 words and no more than 400 words. 2. Do not change the name, address, or any impor­tant nouns in the chap­ter. 3. Do not trans­late the orig­i­nal lan­guage. 4. Keep the same style as the orig­i­nal chap­ter, keep it con­sis­tent through­out the chap­ter. Your reply must com­ply with all four require­ments, or it’s invalid.
I will pro­vide the chap­ter now.

E
10
The Skrup Shoe
arl Roberts, known in Pottstown as Doc, had long heard the rumors of
the Jew­ess in Chick­en Hill hid­ing the Negro child from the state
ille­gal­ly. He had learned about it from his dis­tant cousin Carl Boy­d­kins.
Carl worked for the state wel­fare office. The two men were not close. They
had grown up on neigh­bor­ing farms as boys. Both fam­i­lies were said to go
back ten gen­er­a­tions to the Bless­ing­ton fam­i­ly, said to have arrived on the
Mayflower all the way back in 1620. It was a point of pride for both
fam­i­lies, although, as it turned out, nei­ther was tied to the Mayflower at all.
The fam­i­ly was actu­al­ly tied to an Irish sailor named Ed Bole, a dis­tant
rel­a­tive who worked as a manser­vant for Chi­nese emper­or Chaing Kai Wu
in Monashu Province in 1774. Bole, an Eng­lish sea­man and a drunk, had
been tossed from the Eng­lish freighter Maid­en that year after the cap­tain
grew tired of his drunk­en shenani­gans and left him at the port of Shang­hai.
He was picked up by Chi­nese author­i­ties and dragged before the emper­or,
who found the idea of a white man serv­ing him tea and Chi­nese crum­pets,
known as man­tou, won­der­ful­ly sat­is­fy­ing. After three years, Bole escaped
and made his way back to Eng­land, announced him­self as Lord Earl
Bless­ing­ton of Sus­sex, and with his new­found knowl­edge of the Chi­nese
lan­guage and Chi­na teas talked his way into a job at a British ship­ping
com­pa­ny, where he even­tu­al­ly made a for­tune in salt and Chi­nese med­i­cine,
mar­ry­ing the daugh­ter of an Eng­lish trad­er in Lon­don. In 1784, when a
dis­tant cousin of Bole’s in Ire­land showed up in Lon­don and start­ed ask­ing
ques­tions, Bole hasti­ly packed his wife and four young chil­dren onto a ship
called the Peanut and sent them off to Amer­i­ca, a land where nobody asked
ques­tions about white people’s pasts. Three days after the Peanut sailed,
Bole choked to death on a char siu bao pork bun, for which he’d devel­oped
an affin­i­ty while liv­ing in the Land of Won­der. Luck­i­ly, he’d sent his wife
and chil­dren abroad with a tidy sum of four thou­sand dol­lars, a for­tune in
those days, plus a nan­ny to help them, with the idea that it would be some
months before he would join them—an idea that end­ed, unfor­tu­nate­ly, when
that char siu bao pork bun slid down his wind­pipe.
When news of the death of Lord Bless­ing­ton, née Bole, reached his
wid­ow in Amer­i­ca, it prompt­ed the usu­al hand-wring­ing, howl­ing, and
hair­pulling, after which she col­lapsed in tears and into the arms of her
faith­ful nan­ny. The nan­ny hugged her tight­ly. Sparks flew. The two women
prompt­ly fell in love, decid­ed to live togeth­er, pulled out a map, saw a creek
near Pottstown, Pa., far from the pry­ing eyes of New York society—which
regard­ed the wid­ow with sus­pi­cion any­way, since she seemed to eye the
male species with nei­ther con­tempt nor scorn but with total dis­in­ter­est
instead—and moved to Pottstown as the Bless­ing­ton sis­ters, buy­ing a huge
tract of land off Man­atawny Creek. They raised the chil­dren, with the help
of local ser­vants and farm­ers, and split the tracts among the four chil­dren
after the women died.
Nei­ther Doc nor Carl had inter­est in ques­tion­ing their fam­i­ly lin­eage, for
their child­hoods were as full of as much hap­pi­ness as any descen­dant of the
Mayflower might enjoy. They were white Chris­t­ian men born in an Amer­i­ca
seem­ing­ly ready-made for them. The two fam­i­lies, now splin­tered off and
bear­ing dif­fer­ent last names, were hap­pi­ly ensconced on neigh­bor­ing farms
at Pine Forge on won­der­ful acreage bor­der­ing Man­atawny Creek, full of
sun­flow­ers and pas­tures and rich soil. The two fam­i­lies lived across the
creek from one anoth­er: Doc’s fam­i­ly, the Robert­ses, on one side; Carl’s
fam­i­ly, the Boy­d­kins­es, on the oth­er. The two fam­i­lies often trav­eled to
church togeth­er on Sun­days by carriage—Presbyterian, of course. The
civ­i­lized ser­vices filled the sanc­tu­ary to the brim with good white peo­ple.
Those were won­der­ful days, Doc’s child­hood, full of strong men whose
hand­shake was their bond and women who knew how to cook and raise
chil­dren. Nice, clean fam­i­lies. This was before the “new people”—the Jews,
the Negroes, the Greeks, the Men­non­ites, the Russ­ian Orthodox—arrived.
The two fam­i­lies lived peace­ful­ly until just before the Great Crash, when
Doc’s father saw the future and sold out, thank God. But the Boy­d­kins
fam­i­ly stayed, and they suf­fered, for the new own­er of the Roberts tract was
a good Chris­t­ian man who forged iron bits and steel parts, which pro­duced
smelly garbage and black runoff from dyes even though he promised the
Boy­d­kins­es he would bury his garbage rather than pour the muck from his
forge into the beau­ti­ful creek. They were pleased when he made that
promise and believed him. He was, after all, a good Chris­t­ian.
Short­ly after, he was joined by a sec­ond man, anoth­er good Chris­t­ian,
who also kept his word. Then a third part­ner came, anoth­er good
Chris­t­ian … who, well, he was said to want to be a good Chris­t­ian, which
count­ed for some­thing, though he left his wife for a fif­teen-year-old girl
named Uma who had boobs the size of can­taloupes and was said to have
spent time in the Muncy pen­i­ten­tiary. The fel­low even­tu­al­ly moved to New
Orleans with his new wife and was replaced by a new man, an Irish­man
named Fitz-Hugh who was said to have made his for­tune in opi­um. Fitz-
Hugh bought out the orig­i­nal own­ers and there­upon the small one-man mill
became two mills with four work­ers apiece. Then three mills, then four tiny
mills. The Boy­d­kins clan soon found them­selves wak­ing up and peer­ing out
their kitchen win­dow to see eight work­ers slog­ging back and forth to the
bank of the Man­atawny, dump­ing buck­ets of sludge into the creek all day
long. In six months the eight work­ers became nine, then twelve, then
nine­teen. The four mills became sev­en, then eight, split­ting like amoe­bas,
dot­ting the hill­side above until the mills were replaced by small fac­to­ries
that made pipe nip­ples and tiny bolts and iron pieces, belch­ing smoke from
small chim­neys into the clear Penn­syl­va­nia sky. The small fac­to­ries then
split into big­ger fac­to­ries that craft­ed iron pipes, steel fit­tings, and glass
bot­tles for whiskey dis­til­leries, fol­lowed by big­ger fac­to­ries that craft­ed
eight-foot iron beams, joists, bar­rels, pipe fit­tings, cast­ings, signs, entire
win­dow frames, and steel gird­ers. In eight short years, the tiny mill was
gone and in its place was a ram­bling, rum­bling, half-mile-long gray fac­to­ry-
fortress that thrust a hun­dred-foot smoke­stack into the sky that belched gray
fumes twen­ty-four hours a day. The crews of work­ers who tossed black
muck to the Man­atawny were gone, replaced by three six-inch pipes that
vom­it­ed churn­ing, filthy sludge into the once beau­ti­ful streams that fed the
Boy­d­kins­es’ cows and watered the crops. By the time the Boy­d­kins­es cried
foul, three one-hun­dred-foot chim­neys churned black smoke into the sky;
225 curs­ing, laugh­ing work­ers speak­ing every lan­guage under God’s sun
trooped in and out of the build­ings in three dif­fer­ent shifts; and the work
whis­tle shrieked three times a day includ­ing Sundays—all with­in 150 feet
of their kitchen win­dow.
The Boy­d­kins fam­i­ly protest­ed, say­ing that the unholy curs­ing of the
work­ers with­in earshot of their kitchen table and chil­dren was out­ra­geous
and the sludge was ruin­ing their land and mak­ing their cows sick. But it was
1932, and by then, Flagg, Beth­le­hem Steel, and Jacobs Air­craft Engine
Com­pa­ny had arrived—along with their smooth lawyers in starched col­lars
and shiny Packards. And the lawyers were firm: We have to make engines
for the mighty Amer­i­can air­planes that will car­ry free­dom across the world,
they said. We have to make the great steel gird­ers for the Gold­en Gate
Bridge that will allow won­der­ful auto­mo­biles to cross. We need gun­pow­der
and shell cas­ings and steel for the war that is com­ing. In des­per­a­tion, the
Boy­d­kins­es approached the city fathers of Pottstown, who laid down the
law: The war is com­ing. You have to move. So the Boy­d­kins fam­i­ly was
forced to sell their 147 acres bor­der­ing the creek for pen­nies on the dol­lar to
keep Amer­i­ca free. It had to be done.
It was a bad deci­sion to remain on the Man­atawny back in 1929, and
Doc was grate­ful for his father’s fore­sight.
He and Carl were not espe­cial­ly close in high school, in part because
Carl was tall and a good ath­lete and all the girls loved him, where­as Doc
was a book­worm who’d had polio, which affect­ed his left foot. The foot
curled odd­ly and bore a cleft in the mid­dle where toes two and three should
have been. It ached from the time he was aware of it. When he was a child,
his moth­er instruct­ed him to always keep it cov­ered, but it ached so much
and no shoe fit well so he ignored her orders as much as pos­si­ble. He
secret­ly felt his left foot didn’t look that dif­fer­ent from his right, but he
learned a painful les­son in first grade when he slipped his sock off in gym
class. The boys saw his foot and howled, call­ing him Hoof. From then on,
he nev­er bared his foot in pub­lic again.
But that didn’t pre­vent Doc from enjoy­ing high school. He loved
biol­o­gy, was vot­ed pres­i­dent of the school debat­ing team, and despite
hav­ing what girls called a wal­nut nose—it pro­trud­ed from his face like a
bumpy walnut—he dis­cov­ered that girls liked guys who were clever. He
read books on com­e­dy, love, biol­o­gy, and sex, the lat­ter reveal­ing all kinds
of secrets about what girls liked, includ­ing spe­cial go-to secret places where
wig­gly fin­gers doing feath­ery work could make girls do any­thing a guy
want­ed. He mem­o­rized a few of these tricks and tried them out junior year
on Del­la Burn­heimer, a boun­cy blonde cheer­leader who felt sor­ry for him,
agree­ing to pic­nic with him at the creek in near­by Sarato­ga Park. As they
lay on a blan­ket after lunch, Doc con­fessed to her that he’d nev­er kissed a
girl and would like to try. Del­la, a gen­er­ous soul, glanced at Doc’s fun­ny
shoe, felt even more sor­ry for him, and agreed. Doc proved to be an
enthu­si­as­tic kiss­er, leap­ing in and giv­ing her full-on mouth-to-mouth
resus­ci­ta­tion as his hands slid into her under­wear, where he made good use
of the wig­gly-fin­gered tech­niques he’d read about. To his sur­prise and hers,
Del­la moaned her approval. But in a burst of self-con­trol, she sud­den­ly sat
up and sug­gest­ed they wade into the near­by creek and hold hands like a real
cou­ple instead of doing things that would get them in trou­ble in the church
they both attend­ed. Doc agreed, a deci­sion he would lat­er regret, for when
he removed his sock and Della’s blue eyes took in his cleft foot, she
declared that she want­ed to go home. No more action for you, bud­dy.
Doc was not a par­tic­u­lar­ly sen­si­tive soul, but his moth­er was, and when
he con­fessed to her what had hap­pened with Del­la Burnheimer—leaving
out the steami­er details of the wig­gly-fin­gered, warmy-swarmy, kissy-kissy
part—she marched him up to Chick­en Hill, where the town’s best
shoe­mak­er, Nor­man Skrupske­lis, lived. Every­one in town dread­ed Nor­man,
a grim, cig­ar-chomp­ing Jew who rarely spoke and was rumored to wan­der
Chick­en Hill’s mud­dy roads at night like a hunch­back, ter­ror­iz­ing the
town’s Negroes and tak­ing their mon­ey. But he was a shoe-craft­ing genius,
for his glis­ten­ing shoes adorned the win­dows of all three shoe shops in
Pottstown.
When they knocked, Nor­man led them to a dark base­ment work­shop—
no cage in sight, Doc’s moth­er noticed. He sat at a stool before a clut­tered
work­table and didn’t look at Doc’s face once. Instead, he glanced at Doc’s
dis­abled foot clad in a shoe made by a shoe­mak­er in Philadelphia—a shoe
his par­ents had paid dear­ly for—and point­ed to a chair next to his work­table
and barked in a thick accent, “Shoe off.” Doc sat and com­plied, hand­ing
him the shoe.
The old man tossed Doc’s old shoe aside like it was an emp­ty bot­tle and
clasped Doc’s aching, throb­bing foot in his rough hand. His hand resem­bled
a claw, the hard fin­gers feel­ing like sand­pa­per turn­ing the foot this way and
that, as if it were a pound of old beef, care­ful­ly exam­in­ing it, twist­ing it
from side to side in his hard palms. When that was fin­ished, he dropped the
foot as if it were yesterday’s paper and turned to his work­table, pulling
leather and sup­plies off racks above him.
He didn’t say a word, so after a few moments, Doc’s moth­er, stand­ing
near­by and blink­ing in embar­rass­ment, said, “Aren’t you going to mea­sure
it?”
The old man sim­ply waved his hand at her over his shoul­der. “Come
back in a week,” he said.
“What about the price?”
“We’ll talk about it then.”
A week lat­er they returned and the shoe was mag­i­cal. It was an
extra­or­di­nary work of art, gleam­ing black leather, beau­ti­ful­ly stitched,
per­fect­ly matched to the arch of Doc’s foot, with an insole that was
care­ful­ly craft­ed to give him com­fort and sup­port while the out­er
appear­ance was close to that of his exist­ing shoe. The old bug­ger even
added an inch to the sole and sloped it care­ful­ly, which made Doc’s limp
less notice­able and brought almost instant relief to his aching foot and even
his back. All this for a sur­pris­ing­ly low price. Doc’s moth­er was ecsta­t­ic.
While Doc was grate­ful, he was also humil­i­at­ed. The old man nev­er said
a word to him. Not even hel­lo. But he made a won­der­ful shoe, and each
year Doc was oblig­ed to return to have the shoe replaced. Doc dread­ed the
vis­its to Norman’s base­ment, for despite Norman’s gifts, he found the
shoemaker’s arro­gance unac­cept­able. Didn’t he know who he was deal­ing
with? Didn’t he know respect?
The resent­ment stayed with Doc for years, and after Nor­man died and his
sons Irv and Mar­vin took over the busi­ness, Doc avoid­ed them, pay­ing
three times what they charged to have his spe­cial shoe made in
Philadel­phia. Who cared that the Skrupske­lis twins were as tal­ent­ed as their
father and made some of the finest shoes in the state and were
rec­om­mend­ed by doc­tors all around? He knew them back when! They were
just like their father: arro­gant. How dare they! Doc bought his shoes from
an Amer­i­can shoe store in Philadel­phia, not from immi­grant Chick­en Hill
Jews who didn’t know their place.
After his dis­as­trous date with Del­la, Doc quit his dat­ing adven­tures. Still,
it was not lost on him dur­ing those high school years that there was one
oth­er stu­dent at Pottstown High who shared his fate with shoes and old man
Skrup: the Jew­ess Chona. She was a year behind him in school, but when
she limped past him that first day of class, he noticed her imme­di­ate­ly, for
the limp was famil­iar. He looked down at her feet and saw it right away: the
Skrup Shoe. She van­ished down the hall­way and he was glad. He avoid­ed
her at first, which was not hard, as most of those Chick­en Hill Jews stayed
togeth­er and avoid­ed glee club, class trips, and after-school activ­i­ties. But
he noticed the Jew­ess was often shad­owed by a wil­lowy black girl from the
Hill.
She mor­phed out of his sight that year and the next, but in his senior
year, the two were assigned lock­ers on the same cor­ri­dor, and on the first
day of school, he spot­ted her from behind, fum­bling with some­thing inside
her lock­er. When she closed the lock­er door and turned to face the hall­way,
he took one look and sud­den­ly saw a haze of stars and heard the sound of a
thou­sand jazz trum­pets blow­ing on New Year’s Eve. The gimpy, mousy girl
had mor­phed into a gor­geous, mat­ter-of-fact, non­cha­lant, straight-up-and-
down beau­ty. A proud straight-backed teenag­er with black curly hair,
bounc­ing boobs, beau­ti­ful hips, love­ly ankles, the legs hid­den by a sim­ple
woolen dress, and a light shin­ing in her dark eyes that seemed to illu­mi­nate
the entire hall­way. Star­ing at her from his lock­er, Doc for­got all about Del­la
Burn­heimer. Chona was gor­geous. How come he hadn’t noticed that
before?
He eyed her in awed silence as she van­ished down the hall­way. He
watched her clan­des­tine­ly that first week. He imag­ined work­ing up the
nerve to take her out. What would oth­er stu­dents say? What would his
moth­er say? His father? So what if she was Jew­ish? She was beau­ti­ful. He
imag­ined the two of them walk­ing along Man­atawny Creek talk­ing about
big things, maybe him becom­ing a doc­tor one day; telling her about his
fam­i­ly, their great his­to­ry, the great Bless­ing­tons of Pottstown who arrived
on the Mayflower, and how the Man­atawny was so beau­ti­ful before the
fac­to­ries came, the Sun­days going to church and get­ting ice cream after.
Maybe she could con­vert. She could be flex­i­ble, couldn’t she? He was sure
she could. She knew what it was like to be on the out­side, with her foot.
They had that in com­mon at least. She could con­vert, of course she could!
The feel­ings built up in him week after week then reced­ed, then returned
month after month and reced­ed again; then one after­noon in the spring,
near­ing grad­u­a­tion, he final­ly drummed up the nerve to invite her to join the
debate team, of which he was pres­i­dent.
He was clum­sy and nervous—he was not accus­tomed to talk­ing to Jews
—and the moment went bad­ly, for he had seen a Dana Andrews film
recent­ly and had tak­en to talk­ing bold­ly the way he’d seen the actor do.
Chona was stand­ing at her lock­er when he approached, and when she turned
around to see him stand­ing close, she seemed star­tled. He man­aged to
mum­ble his invi­ta­tion and then watched her beau­ti­ful eyes dance over his
shoul­der down the hall, then back to him, his heart pound­ing.
She chuck­led ner­vous­ly and said, “Oh no, I can’t do that,” and slipped
off down the hall­way, fol­lowed by the tall, slim Negro girl who shad­owed
her every­where.
He watched her back, feel­ing destroyed. A day lat­er, his des­o­la­tion gave
way to indig­na­tion and final­ly to out­rage. He had done the Chris­t­ian thing.
He’d reached out to haul her up to his lev­el and she was too blind to see it.
She lived on Chick­en Hill, for God’s sake! Her father ran a gro­cery store
that served nig­gers, where­as his father was a city coun­cil­man and a
Pres­by­ter­ian asso­ciate pas­tor. He was a man of impor­tance. He had reached
down to pull her to his lev­el and she had shunned him. Imag­ine. She was
just like the old Jew shoe­mak­er Nor­man, with his mean, arro­gant self. The
whole busi­ness dis­gust­ed him. Jews. She and old Nor­man prob­a­bly made
fun of him when he wasn’t around.
The sting of it dis­ap­peared when he left for col­lege and med­ical school at
Penn State, falling into a whirr of biol­o­gy, cadav­ers, and clin­i­cal stud­ies,
stand­ing shoul­der to shoul­der with stu­dents from well-to-do fam­i­lies in
Philadel­phia, Pitts­burgh, and even New York. And while his fel­low med­ical
stu­dents had big plans to move back to their big cities after med­ical school,
he couldn’t imag­ine being any­where oth­er than his home­town. He’d
dreamed of mov­ing to the big city at one time, work­ing at a large hos­pi­tal,
liv­ing in an apart­ment in a high-rise with a Negro maid and a glam­orous
blonde wife. But who would look out for him in those places? There were
too many strange people—Italians and col­oreds, big mar­kets and fan­cy cars
and fam­i­lies whose mon­ey went back gen­er­a­tions. The idea fright­ened him.
It was safer to stay home, to return to his home­town to heal the sick. Even
his snide med­ical school pro­fes­sors, two of them Ger­man and one of them
Jew­ish, respect­ed him for his com­mit­ment.
But the home­town he returned to after med­ical school, where decent
white peo­ple knew each oth­er by name and attend­ed the same Pres­by­ter­ian
church and ate ice cream at Bris­tol Ice House after ser­vice, had become a
town of immi­grants. Greeks who drove trucks, Jews who owned build­ings,
Negroes who walked Main Street like they owned it, Rus­sians, Men­non­ites,
Hun­gar­i­ans, Ital­ians, and Irish. The quaint hors­es and bug­gies of his
child­hood were replaced by trac­tor trail­ers haul­ing steel, the dairy farms
replaced by oily, grim fac­to­ries that belched smoke. Main Street was now
filled with cars on Sat­ur­days, and not one but two traf­fic lights and a trol­ley.
His love­ly Pottstown had become a city where no one seemed to know
any­one else. Still, when he chose for his wife some­one his father approved
of, a sim­ple farm girl from near­by Fagleysville, the wed­ding made the front
page of the Pottstown Mer­cury. That was a big deal and a good thing.
But the years of tend­ing bro­ken legs and sewing fin­gers back onto the
bro­ken hands of fac­to­ry work­ers chipped away at him, and his
dis­ap­point­ments grew. More fac­to­ries belched more smoke and more
for­eign­ers came. And when the sim­ple farm girl he mar­ried turned out to be
a lazy, dull soul who lived for bin­go nights, cheap nov­els, and blue­ber­ry
pie, which added to her bur­geon­ing waist­line as she proud­ly drove around
town with their four chil­dren in the brand-new Chevro­let she insist­ed he
buy every two years, he lost inter­est in her. He’d seen his youth van­ish, his
town crum­ble, the blood of its proud white fathers dilut­ed by invaders:
Jews, Ital­ians, even nig­gers who wan­dered Chick­en Hill sell­ing ice cream
and shoes to one anoth­er while decent white peo­ple fought off the Jew­ish
mer­chants and Ital­ian immi­grants who seemed to be buy­ing every­thing. Not
to men­tion the Men­non­ites in town with their hors­es and bug­gies. And the
Irish at the fire com­pa­ny. And Greeks mum­bling their busi­ness at din­ers.
And Ital­ians kick­ing ass at the dairy. And nig­gers from the Hill want­i­ng
fac­to­ry jobs instead of being maids and jan­i­tors like they were sup­posed to.
Now Jews were buy­ing homes on Beech Street, mak­ing plans to build a
big­ger Jew­ish syn­a­gogue, and what’s more, they were pol­lut­ing the town’s
good white Chris­t­ian teenagers with Negro music—jazz—brought to town
by none oth­er than Chona’s hus­band, yet anoth­er Jew who owned not one
but two the­aters. Where was Amer­i­ca in all this? Pottstown was for
Amer­i­cans. God had pre­des­tined it. The Con­sti­tu­tion guar­an­teed it. The
Bible had said it. Jesus! Where was Jesus in all this? Doc felt his world was
falling apart.
So a few years after med­ical school when friends approached him about
attend­ing a meet­ing of the Knights of Pottstown to spread good Chris­t­ian
val­ues, he agreed. And when that Knights of Pottstown meet­ing actu­al­ly
turned out to be the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan instead, he saw no
dif­fer­ence. The men were like him. They want­ed to pre­serve Amer­i­ca. This
coun­try was woods before the white man came. It need­ed to be saved. The
town, the chil­dren, the women, they need­ed to be res­cued from those who
want­ed to pol­lute the pure white race with igno­rance and dirt, foul­ing things
up by mix­ing the pure WASP her­itage with the Greeks, the Ital­ians, the
Jews who had mur­dered their pre­cious Jesus Christ, and the nig­gers who
dreamed of rap­ing white women and whose lust­ful black women were a
dan­ger to every decent, God-fear­ing white man. Not all of them were bad,
of course. The White Knights would decide who were the good ones. There
were a few good ones. Doc knew sev­er­al.
The meet­ings were more like hob­by-club gath­er­ings than actu­al fire-and-
brim­stone events. The men talked of farm­ing and lost prop­er­ty, the
chal­lenges of grow­ing and seed­ing crops in bad weath­er, the cost of cat­tle
and trans­port, and ris­ing prices. Many were for­mer farm­ers, oth­ers were
fac­to­ry work­ers and bankers. Good peo­ple. Pottstown peo­ple. Peo­ple Doc
had known all his life. So when Carl approached him one after­noon after a
White Knights meet­ing about the prob­lem of the Jew­ess hold­ing the deaf
Negro child ille­gal­ly, forc­ing him to work in her store, and keep­ing him out
of school when a good school was ready to take him, Doc had an inter­est.
He told Carl to come by his office the fol­low­ing week.
He knew Chona, of course. She had come once to see him about her
faint­ing when he first set up prac­tice. At that vis­it, nei­ther acknowl­edged
he’d actu­al­ly tried to befriend her in high school years before. He
sus­pect­ed, even hoped, that she’d for­got­ten it. He’d not for­got­ten it, and
when she walked into his office, he still felt the pound­ing of a thou­sand
drums in his heart, for she had aged well. The beau­ti­ful breasts, the slim
hips, the bright, shin­ing eyes were still there, along with the Skrup Shoe on
her foot. The Skrup Shoe styling, he not­ed, had evolved into a lean and
hand­some num­ber, head and shoul­ders bet­ter than the expen­sive brick­like
box that adorned his foot and hurt at that moment, and for which he’d paid
top dol­lar. But that was the cost of prin­ci­ple, which he was hap­py to pay.
He kept mat­ters pro­fes­sion­al at that vis­it, pre­scribed a few pain pills, and
told her to call again if the spells con­tin­ued, hop­ing she would. But she
nev­er did, and again he was offend­ed. Did she think that just because he
was a small-town doc­tor, he didn’t under­stand her case? He had friends in
the med­ical field in Read­ing and Philadel­phia. He read all the lat­est med­ical
jour­nals. In fact, two doc­tors called him from Philadel­phia not two weeks
after she left, ask­ing his opin­ion about her puz­zling faint­ing spells. What
had he found? they asked. They respect­ed him more than she did.
He fol­lowed her case when she near­ly died, felt strange­ly relieved when
she recov­ered, then was out­raged when she had the nerve to write to the
news­pa­per com­plain­ing about him march­ing as a White Knight in the
annu­al parade. How dare she! Their parades weren’t hurt­ing any­body. They
were a cel­e­bra­tion of the real Amer­i­ca.
The whole busi­ness riled him. But when Carl appeared at his office to
dis­cuss her hid­ing a twelve-year-old Negro boy, Doc was care­ful to
main­tain his pro­fes­sion­al dis­tance, for he wasn’t fond of his cousin. Carl
had been a bit of a roost­er back in high school, but now his firm foot­ball
play­er stom­ach hung over his belt. His sculpt­ed shoul­ders sagged. His once-
clear face bore the trace of whiskers from a bad shave. His fedo­ra was
worn, his cheap tie spot­ted. Still, Carl deliv­ered a hang­ing curve­ball that
Doc found impos­si­ble to resist.
“The state will pay you to exam­ine the Negro kid,” Carl said. He sat on
the edge of Doc’s desk as he deliv­ered this news, pulling out a pack of
cig­a­rettes. Doc was behind his desk as they spoke.
“Why do they need an exam in the first place?” Doc asked. “Is he sick?”
“Deaf and maybe dumb,” Carl said, extract­ing a cig­a­rette and fir­ing it.
“The state wants to send him to a spe­cial school. They need a doc­tor to sign
off on it. Sim­ple as that.”
“Which school?”
“Pennhurst. They got a school in there.”
Doc had seen Pennhurst State School and Hos­pi­tal. Just down the road in
Spring City. It was a hor­ri­ble, over­crowd­ed night­mare, but he checked his
tongue. “They take Negroes?” he asked.
“They take any­one who’s insane.”
“Deaf and maybe dumb’s not insane, Carl.”
“Do I look like a Oui­ja board, Earl?” Carl said, using Doc’s real name, a
sign of famil­iar­i­ty and, Doc thought grim­ly, dis­re­spect. “The boy’s twelve.
Hasn’t been to school in a long time. They have spe­cial things for kids like
him there. It’s bet­ter than what he’s got now, liv­ing on the Hill and run­ning
around for them Jews up there. The state wants him. They’re burn­ing
pre­cious dol­lars hav­ing me run up and down there look­ing for him. Every
time I go up there, nobody knows noth­ing. I even sent a col­ored up there
who couldn’t shake him loose. The nig­gers are hid­ing him up there. And
she’s in cahoots with ’em.”
“Is it her child?” Doc asked.
Carl looked at Doc blankly a moment, then sput­tered, “Her what? She’s
mar­ried, Doc.”
“So?”
“What­ev­er you’re think­ing, Doc, I don’t wan­na know it.” Carl sucked his
cig­a­rette thought­ful­ly, then said, “Now that you men­tion it, there’s a lot of
tip­ping going on in this town. Espe­cial­ly on the Hill. Could be.”
Doc’s face red­dened. These kinds of con­ver­sa­tions made him
uncom­fort­able. He felt like a fool. He didn’t know why he’d even brought it
up.
“I’ve nev­er seen the kid, to be hon­est,” Carl said. “But from what I
heard, he’s a pure col­ored nig­ger. No father. His moth­er died not too long
ago.”
“From what?”
“You’re the doc,” Carl said. “All’s I know is the kid’s hid­ing at the store
some­place behind the Jew­ess and her hus­band, the All-Amer­i­can Dance
Hall and The­ater guy. The hus­band finances the whole rack­et. I can have
the cops go up there with you if you want.”
“Let them do it and keep me out of it.”
Carl frowned. “It’s not smart to rile up those Chick­en Hill nig­gers. She
got a lot of sway with ’em. She was near­ly dead this time last year, sick
from some­thing or oth­er, and the col­oreds got stirred up about it. She’s the
one who wrote the let­ter about our parade, remem­ber?”