Chap­ter 13: Cow­boy begins with Moshe lean­ing against the rail­ing of the out­door pavil­ion over­look­ing the Ring­ing Rocks skat­ing rink, his mind lost in thought. Despite the laugh­ter of teenage skaters and the soft snow­fall around him, he feels dis­tant and detached, clutch­ing an unlit cig­ar. The cold bite of the win­ter air seems to match the bit­ter­ness in his heart, as he reflects on the series of events that have led him here. The nat­ur­al beau­ty of the land­scape, the sound of the rocks ring­ing when struck by a ham­mer, and the seren­i­ty he once felt have all been over­shad­owed by tur­moil. His thoughts are dis­rupt­ed by mem­o­ries of his wife, Chona, who is now in a coma in a hos­pi­tal, and the boy, their young charge, who is now in the care of the state. The weight of these bur­dens press­es heav­i­ly on him as he watch­es the skaters below, reflect­ing on the past with a mix of anger and regret.

Moshe’s deci­sion to vis­it Ring­ing Rocks was inspired by his old friend Malachi, whose let­ters filled with humor and opti­mism about life in Poland were a stark con­trast to the grim real­i­ty Moshe faces now. Malachi had always been a source of com­fort and encour­age­ment, espe­cial­ly dur­ing times of hard­ship, urg­ing Moshe to find moments of peace away from the chaos of his work. But now, as Moshe watch­es the skaters glide across the ice, he finds him­self unable to write to Malachi with the same light­heart­ed spir­it that once defined their cor­re­spon­dence. Instead, he pens a let­ter filled with sor­row and frus­tra­tion, unable to mask the over­whelm­ing dif­fi­cul­ties he faces. He writes not just about his wife’s con­di­tion, but also about the chang­ing land­scape of the the­ater busi­ness, where Jew­ish audi­ences no longer appre­ci­ate the Yid­dish the­ater and music that once brought joy to the com­mu­ni­ty. Moshe feels the weight of these changes, the sense that every­thing he has worked for is slip­ping away, and he won­ders whether it’s time to make a dras­tic change in his own life.

The events of the pre­vi­ous night at the the­ater had only added to his dis­il­lu­sion­ment. A book­ing fias­co involv­ing Lionel Hampton’s band and the Afro-Cubans had left Moshe in a dif­fi­cult posi­tion. As he recounts the argu­ment back­stage between Gladys Hamp­ton and Mario Bauzá over who would be the head­lin­er, Moshe real­izes how much the busi­ness has changed. The audi­ence no longer seems to appre­ci­ate the old jazz styles, and the con­flict between the bands is just a symp­tom of the larg­er shift in the musi­cal land­scape. Moshe’s frus­tra­tion grows as he tries to medi­ate between the two, but the sit­u­a­tion only wors­ens, lead­ing him to ques­tion his place in the indus­try. He begins to won­der if it’s time to let go of his old life and embrace some­thing new, some­thing that aligns with the chang­ing times.

As Moshe con­tin­ues to reflect on his past and present, he finds him­self increas­ing­ly dis­con­nect­ed from the world he once knew. The the­ater, once a source of pride and joy, now feels like a reminder of what has been lost. He real­izes that the com­mu­ni­ty he once served no longer shares the same val­ues and inter­ests, and he is left grap­pling with the uncer­tain­ty of the future. The let­ter to Malachi, though writ­ten in a moment of despair, becomes a turn­ing point for Moshe. It’s in this moment of reflec­tion that he begins to con­sid­er a dif­fer­ent path—one that might offer him a new sense of pur­pose and a way out of the tur­moil that sur­rounds him. The thought of becom­ing a cow­boy, a sym­bol of inde­pen­dence and adven­ture, offers him a glim­mer of hope in an oth­er­wise bleak time.

The pack­age Moshe receives from Malachi, con­tain­ing the tiny cow­boy pants, brings a moment of light­ness and humor amidst the heav­i­ness of his life. The absur­di­ty of the gift—a tiny pair of pants with a Star of David sewn onto them—makes Moshe laugh, and for a brief moment, he feels the weight of his trou­bles lift. The exchange with Malachi, though light­heart­ed, serves as a reminder of the con­nec­tion they share and the impor­tance of hold­ing onto humor, even in the dark­est of times. Moshe’s deci­sion to send the pants back in a pack­age that’s even hard­er to open, turn­ing the joke into a kind of rit­u­al, brings a sense of nor­mal­cy to his chaot­ic world. It’s a small ges­ture, but it’s enough to remind him of the val­ue of friend­ship and the impor­tance of hold­ing onto the things that make life worth liv­ing.

As Moshe sits at the bench, his thoughts begin to clear. The absur­di­ty of the sit­u­a­tion with the cow­boy pants, the chal­lenges with the the­ater, and the dif­fi­cul­ties with his wife all start to feel less over­whelm­ing. The real­iza­tion that he needs to make a change, to embrace a new way of liv­ing, begins to take root in his mind. The let­ter he writes to Malachi is not just an update on his life, but a dec­la­ra­tion of his inten­tion to move for­ward, to adapt to the chang­ing world around him. For the first time in a long while, Moshe feels a sense of clar­i­ty and pur­pose, and the thought of becom­ing a cow­boy no longer seems so far-fetched.