In chap­ter 13, titled “Cow­boy,” Moshe finds him­self at the Ring­ing Rocks skat­ing rink, reflect­ing on the joys and sor­rows of his life. As he leans against the pavil­ion rail­ing, he observes the teenage skaters below, feel­ing detached from their laugh­ter and warmth. His mind drifts to the rocks near­by, a curi­ous tourist attrac­tion that res­onates with him, pro­vid­ing a momen­tary escape from the tur­moil sur­round­ing his fam­i­ly. With his wife, Chona, in a coma and their adopt­ed child in state cus­tody, Moshe grap­ples with feel­ings of despair and confusion—wondering how every­thing spi­raled out of con­trol.

Chona’s insis­tence on vis­it­ing the skat­ing rink in the past con­trasts with her cur­rent absence. He recalls how she nev­er allowed their boy to skate, insist­ing instead that he enjoy the vibra­tions of the ancient rocks. Moshe’s bit­ter­ness grows as he reflects on her notion of “help­ful­ness” amidst their dire cir­cum­stances. As win­ter snow begins to fall, he pulls out a pen and paper to write a let­ter to his old friend, Malachi. He express­es his strug­gles in the the­ater busi­ness and laments the shift away from Yid­dish cul­ture, not­ing that audi­ences now yearn for Amer­i­can cow­boy ideals.

That night at the the­ater, chaos erupts when Lionel Hamp­ton’s band and Machi­to’s Afro-Cubans clash over their per­for­mance order. Moshe, who is late due to his wife’s hos­pi­tal­iza­tion, finds him­self trapped in a con­fronta­tion he des­per­ate­ly wish­es to avoid. As ten­sions esca­late between the bands, Moshe strug­gles to medi­ate, recall­ing how Chona used to guide him through such sit­u­a­tions.

The chap­ter cul­mi­nates with Moshe real­iz­ing the shift­ing cul­tur­al land­scape around him—the diverse sounds emerg­ing in Amer­i­ca demand new inter­pre­ta­tions of music, chal­leng­ing his under­stand­ing of iden­ti­ty and art. Despite his strug­gles, he receives a humor­ous pack­age from Malachi—infant-sized cow­boy pants—prompting reflec­tion on his life and the changes that lie ahead.

As the chap­ter clos­es, Moshe rec­on­ciles the com­plex­i­ties of his iden­ti­ty and pon­ders whether he should embrace a new path, sym­bol­ized by the cow­boy, while also con­tem­plat­ing the need for change amid his fam­i­ly’s cri­sis.

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.

M
13
Cow­boy
oshe leaned on the rail­ing of the out­door pavil­ion that stood high
above the Ring­ing Rocks skat­ing rink and stared absent­ly at the
skaters below, one hand thrust in his pock­et against the freez­ing cold.
Behind him, sev­er­al teenage skaters sip­ping hot choco­late laughed, duck­ing
and toss­ing light snow­balls that whizzed past the short, squat man in a felt
fedo­ra hat and coat hold­ing an unlit, half-smoked cig­ar. Moshe ignored
them.
He loved com­ing to Ring­ing Rocks Rink, just out­side of town. The rocks
were a tourist attrac­tion, a geo­graph­i­cal curios­i­ty left over from the Stone
Age. When struck by a ham­mer, they rang in var­i­ous tones. The rink and
tow­er with its pavil­ion were built beside the clump of rocks to
accom­mo­date vis­i­tors. Climb­ing to the top of the pavil­ion and view­ing the
moun­tains sur­round­ing Berks Coun­ty for­est was a release for him. He’d
offer a Birk­hot Hashachar, a morn­ing prayer that helped to free his mind
and clear his head and enjoy a tem­po­rary respite from the chaos of his
the­ater. It was on the advice of his old friend Malachi that he’d begun these
kinds of out­ings. His friend who had wowed his the­ater with his wild
danc­ing to the glo­ri­ous music of the great Mick­ey Katz, who had writ­ten
him sev­er­al times from a small Jew­ish set­tle­ment in Janów Lubel­s­ki,
Poland, where he’d final­ly opened, of all things, a chick­en farm, sell­ing
eggs and kosher chick­ens. Malachi’s let­ters were full of his usu­al bound­less
enthu­si­asm, extolling the virtues of coun­try life and the humor­ous lives of
the cus­tomers he’d encoun­tered. Moshe admired Malachi’s abil­i­ty to adapt
after every fail­ure despite his adher­ence to the old ways. Malachi’s let­ters
were always packed with jokes and light humor, and Moshe always tried to
return the favor.
He’d come to write to his old friend this morn­ing, and he’d planned to
keep his news light and airy as much as he could, for that was the
unac­knowl­edged rule between the two, to keep the news bright and
cheer­ful. Except now there was noth­ing to be cheer­ful about. His wife lay in
a Read­ing hos­pi­tal in a coma. Doc­tors were unsure what was next. The boy
was in the hands of the state. He didn’t want to think about it. It was a
hor­ri­ble spi­ral. How had this all hap­pened?
He gazed down at the skaters and sighed. Chona had insist­ed on escap­ing
with him to the skat­ing rink after the boy came. They were an odd fam­i­ly,
the Jew­ish mer­chant, his dis­abled wife, and their twelve-year-old Negro
charge put­ter­ing up the hill into the park­ing lot in his old Packard, com­ing
to a stop not more than ten yards from the rink entrance where a sign had
been post­ed not many years before stat­ing “No Jews, no dogs, no nig­gers.”
That sign had since been removed, but Chona nev­er skat­ed on her vis­its.
Not once. Nor did she allow the boy to skate. She com­plained that her foot
pre­vent­ed her from skat­ing, but Moshe knew bet­ter. Chona could do
what­ev­er she set her mind to. She could have a spe­cial skate made. Marv
Skrupske­lis would do any­thing for her—he would have made her one in a
hot sec­ond. And the boy—he didn’t need a skate. He could fly across the
rink in his shoes, he was so ath­let­ic. Moshe tried to con­vince Chona to let
the boy skate, but she refused. Instead, she com­mand­ed, “Go to the tow­er
and smoke your cig­ar,” and he hap­pi­ly oblig­ed, climb­ing to the top, where
he’d puff his cig­ar in peace and watch from above as the two clam­bered
among the clump of ring­ing rocks below. He’d watch as she struck the
rocks with a ham­mer while the child placed his hands on them to feel the
vibra­tions. He thought the whole busi­ness fool­ish and at one point said so,
but Chona dis­agreed. “The rocks are as old as the earth. He can hear them a
lit­tle. They’re help­ful to him,” she said.
Help­ful, Moshe thought bit­ter­ly. That’s how she thought. Help­ful here,
help­ful there. Now look. Who was help­ing them now? “All that is past now,”
he said aloud, ignor­ing the teenagers who gig­gled behind him and play­ful­ly
romped about the odd man at the rail­ing chomp­ing on the unlit cig­ar and
act­ing as if they weren’t there. An errant snow­ball land­ed near him, so
Moshe moved to a bench. He dust­ed the light snow off it, seat­ed him­self,
pro­duced a pen and paper, and began his let­ter to Malachi.
He scrib­bled fast, the unlit cig­ar clenched between his teeth, ignor­ing the
cold in his hands. It wasn’t just Chona being in the hos­pi­tal, he wrote. Nor
the Negro child placed in the nut­house, that was bad, too. It’s the the­ater
busi­ness, he explained. Times are chang­ing. You were right, he wrote. Jews
here don’t want Yid­dish the­ater and Yid­dish music and good old frol­ic and
fun any­more. They want Amer­i­can things. They want to be cow­boys. Even
the Negro jazz musi­cians have grown dif­fi­cult. Last night was the last straw.
He paused, intent on telling Malachi in detail the events of the pre­vi­ous
night. He tried three times, crossed out what he had writ­ten, then stopped
writ­ing and pon­dered how to explain it. He sat a moment, think­ing back
over it, unsure how to pro­ceed, the cold begin­ning to work its way into his
neck, for he’d for­got­ten to wear a scarf. He reached into his pock­et for a
match to light his cig­ar, found none, thought a bit more, then sim­ply
scrib­bled, Just so you know, I’m think­ing of get­ting out.
It was last night’s inci­dent that bore that out. After leav­ing Chona in the
hos­pi­tal, he’d rushed to the the­ater and arrived at 7:30—horribly late for an
8 p.m. start—to find him­self in a hot mess.
Lionel Hampton’s band and Machi­to and his Afro-Cubans were booked
to play a dual date. The Afro-Cubans were a last-minute replace­ment for the
orig­i­nal head­lin­er, Louis Arm­strong, who was hung up in Den­ver because
of bad weath­er. It was not a good sit­u­a­tion to start. Armstrong’s man­ag­er
was the pow­er­ful Joe Glaser out of New York. Glaser had offered a sub, but
Moshe, dis­tract­ed by Chona’s ill­ness and tired of pay­ing Glaser’s huge
per­cent­age, declined and decid­ed to book the replace­ment him­self. He
called his old friend Chick Webb. But alas, his old pal, the first Negro he’d
ever booked, the won­der­ful hunch­backed musi­cal genius, was very ill. “Get
Mario Bauzá and his Afro-Cubans,” Webb croaked over the phone.
“They’re fan­tas­tic.”
It was in trib­ute to the ail­ing Webb that he’d booked the Afro-Cubans,
because he was cer­tain that his Chick­en Hill audi­ence had no idea who
Mario Bauzá, Machi­to, and the Afro-Cubans were. Mario was a won­der­ful
musi­cian, and Moshe was sure the Afro-Cubans were fan­tas­tic. But he’d
assumed the Afro-Cubans would be the warm-up act and Hampton’s band
would close as head­lin­ers. He should have worked that out before the two
acts arrived. Instead, when he walked back­stage last night, both bands were
milling around while Lionel Hampton’s wife, Gladys, who ran her
husband’s band, and Mario Bauzá, who ran the Afro-Cubans, were at each
other’s throats about who would play last.
“We play last,” Gladys said. “We’re the head­lin­ers.”
“You can go first,” Mario said.
“Act your age, not your col­or, Mario. G’wan out there.”
“Ladies first, Gladys.”
As Moshe stepped in the door, both turned to him. “Moshe,” Gladys
snapped. “You bet­ter tell us some­thing.”
Moshe stood at the stage door entrance afraid to speak—he hat­ed
confrontations—while both bands, clad in suits and ties, milled about
anx­ious­ly, clasp­ing horns and smok­ing ner­vous­ly, pre­tend­ing they weren’t
lis­ten­ing.
He looked at his watch. “It’s near­ly eight,” he said meek­ly. “Can’t you
two work it out?”
He spoke to both, but he was real­ly address­ing Mario, the cool­er of the
two. Mario was calm and pro­fes­so­r­i­al. Gladys, on the oth­er hand, was a
hur­ri­cane. She was a hand­some Negro woman, always dressed to the nines,
and would fight with any man in the busi­ness.
Instead of answer­ing, Mario, a gen­teel Lati­no clad in a blue suit, bow tie,
and wire-rim glass­es, stepped to a bill­board poster hang­ing on the wall, a
few of which Moshe had man­aged to get print­ed up at the last minute to
adver­tise the event. He dropped his fin­ger on the words “Fea­tur­ing Mario
Bauzá and Machi­to and the Afro-Cubans.” He did it calm­ly, like an
eco­nom­ics pro­fes­sor point­ing out an equa­tion to a class, then said, “Gladys,
what’s this mean?”
“It means you can read Eng­lish.”
“It means we’re the head­lin­ers.”
“No, it doesn’t. Pops was the head­lin­er,” Gladys said, using the name
musi­cians affec­tion­ate­ly called Louis Arm­strong.
“That’s right,” Mario said, “and we’re replac­ing him.”
“Mario, you can look in the mir­ror ten times and comb your face ten
times, and you still won’t see Pops look­ing back at you.”
Mario’s pro­fes­so­r­i­al calm dis­si­pat­ed and he mut­tered in Span­ish, “Tienes
razón. Te pare­ces mucho más a Pops que a mí. Y eso es un hecho.” (You’re
right. You look a hell of a lot more like Pops than I do. And that’s a fact.)
Sev­er­al Afro-Cubans stand­ing near­by chor­tled.
Gladys turned to a mem­ber of her band. “Pedro, what’d he just say?”
The man looked away mum­bling. “I don’t know, Gladys.”
Gladys turned back to Mario and point­ed to the stage. “All right, ya cow-
walk­ing turd! Get to work!”
“I am at work!”
“On the stage!”
“The con­tract says we’re the head­lin­ers!”
“What con­tract?” she said.
“Did you read the con­tract, Gladys?”
“We played DC last month with Pops and we went last, Mario!”
“That was DC!” Mario sput­tered. “This is Potthead … Pottsville—”
“Pottstown,” Moshe inter­ject­ed polite­ly.
Mario was seething. He glanced at Moshe and mum­bled in Span­ish.
“Todo el mun­do alrede­dor de este maldito lugar está en la niebla!”
(Every­one around this god­damned place is in a fog!)
Gladys broke in. “Stop jab­ber­ing, ya bush-league greas­er! The crowd’s
wait­ing! G’wan out there so we can make our mon­ey and get down the
road!”
The insult struck the demure Mario like a light­ning bolt and rage
climbed into his face. Before he could respond, Moshe stepped in.
“Please!” he said.
They both glared at him now. He was pet­ri­fied, star­ing down at the
floor­boards, wish­ing he could dis­ap­pear beneath them. He hat­ed moments
like this. He had no idea what to do. If only Chona was here. How many
times had she helped him work these things out before­hand, talked through
prob­lems, made him put his foot down, and point­ed him in the right
direc­tion? He glanced at Gladys’s hus­band, Lionel Hamp­ton, hop­ing for
some help, but the great band­leader stood in a far cor­ner with his vibes,
which were on wheels, ready to be rolled onstage. Hamp­ton seemed to be
focused on his mal­lets, which sud­den­ly need­ed all sorts of tam­per­ing and
adjust­ing.
“Maybe Mario can go last … tonight,” Moshe said weak­ly. “And you
guys can go last tomorr—”
Gladys spun on her heel and stomped off toward the back­stage pay
phone before he even fin­ished. “I’m call­ing Joe Glaser,” she said.
That did it for Moshe. If Joe Glaser found out he’d booked anoth­er band
behind his back, he was sunk. Glaser was a book­ing pow­er­house. Cross Joe
Glaser and the lucra­tive stopover dates that small the­aters like his depend­ed
on—the Louis Arm­strongs, the Duke Elling­tons, the Lionel Hamp­tons—
would van­ish.
He called out. “Wait, Gladys, please! Just gimme a minute!”
She paused and looked back, nod­ding sat­is­fac­to­ri­ly as Moshe gen­tly
touched Mario’s elbow and led the great musi­cian through a side door as far
away from the oth­ers as he could. The door led to a hall­way that sep­a­rat­ed
the stage from the dance hall.
Moshe stood with his back to the dance floor, the bustling of the
crowd­ed dance hall buzzing behind him, and looked at Mario, whose face
was tight with fury.
“I’ll nev­er play this bat­shit town again,” Mario said.
“I made a mis­take, Mario. I’m sor­ry.”
“You should’a worked this out before. You know how Gladys is.”
“I couldn’t reach her.”
“That nut lives on the phone.”
“She was on the road, Mario. I was … my wife is sick.”
Mario nod­ded terse­ly, cool­ing slight­ly. “So I heard. What’s she got?”
Moshe sighed. “Got” didn’t seem the appro­pri­ate word. Peo­ple “got” the
flu. “It’s a brain tumor … or some­thing. The doc­tors … there was a fight
in her store … she had a bad seizure. She hasn’t come around yet.”
The great musi­cian, hold­ing his trum­pet at his chest with both hands,
peered at Moshe for a long moment, the col­or return­ing to his face. Then
the usu­al patient kind­ness for which the great trum­peter was so well-known
worked its way back into his face. He glanced down at his instru­ment,
fin­ger­ing its valves ner­vous­ly. “That’s bad news, mijo. It’s going around.
Chick’s sick, too.”
“I know. You seen him?”
Mario nod­ded, frown­ing, at the floor. “Not good, mijo. He’s not doing
too good.”
The two men were silent a moment. Moshe, think­ing of the great Chick
Webb, so heart­ful and tal­ent­ed, bang­ing his drums, laugh­ing with joy,
shout­ing to his thun­der­ing band as the cus­tomers danced, his music roar­ing
through the great All-Amer­i­can Dance Hall and The­ater, bring­ing light to
Moshe’s life, his the­ater, the town, and his wife. It was too much, and
Moshe found him­self wip­ing tears from his eyes.
“I’m los­ing every­thing,” he said.
Mario sighed, then said, “We’ll open the show.”
Moshe recov­ered and cleared his throat. “My cousin Isaac runs the
Sey­mour The­aters down in Philly. I’ll get him to book you down there.
We’ll do it next year, when you’re going west. Then you can come here
after.”
“You gonna book it through Joe Glaser or me?” Mario asked.
“How­ev­er you want.”
“I don’t wan­na do noth­ing with Glaser. I want to go through my peo­ple,”
Mario said. “Lemme show you some­thing.”
Moshe was lean­ing on the door. Mario gen­tly pushed him aside and
cracked open the door behind him. The sound of excit­ed Span­ish chat­ter
flowed into the hall­way. Then Mario closed the door again.
“Hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“That’s Span­ish, mijo. That’s the sound of the future. These peo­ple don’t
want swing music. They want the descar­ga, pon­chan­do, tan­ga, piano
gua­jeos, mam­ba, Africano-Cubano. Swing’s not enough.”
Moshe couldn’t help him­self. The pro­mot­er in him came through, and he
thought, Where do these peo­ple come from? Read­ing? Phoenixville? Where
did Nate put up those posters? He felt ashamed at that moment, think­ing of
busi­ness when his wife was in the hos­pi­tal fight­ing for her life. But it was,
after all, an oppor­tu­ni­ty. “I didn’t know there were so many Span­ish peo­ple
around here,” he mum­bled.
Mario smiled. “To you, they’re Span­ish. To me, they’re Puer­to Rican,
Domini­can, Pana­man­ian, Cuban, Ecuado­ri­an, Mex­i­can, Africano, Afro-
Cubano. A lot of dif­fer­ent things. A lot of dif­fer­ent sounds mixed togeth­er.
That’s Amer­i­ca, mijo. You got to know your peo­ple, Moshe.”
Mario opened the back­stage door­way, sum­moned his band, and moments
lat­er, Moshe watched in awe as the Afro-Cubans pro­ceed­ed to burn the
wall­pa­per off the walls of the All-Amer­i­can Dance Hall and The­ater with
the wildest, hottest Latin beats Moshe had ever heard. The audi­ence went
mad, danc­ing like demons. And when Mario’s band was done, the hard-
charg­ing Lionel Hamp­ton band took the stage demor­al­ized, their swing
music falling on ambiva­lent ears, leav­ing even the usu­al black cus­tomers in
their seats, reach­ing for drinks, talk­ing, chortling, and laugh­ing, using the
time to drink and joke and as a chance to rest their tired feet, which had
car­ried them all week as they swept floors and poured cof­fee and emp­tied
garbage bins and slung ice. It was a les­son. And Moshe received it in full.
Seat­ed on the plat­form above the Ring­ing Rocks ice-skat­ing rink as fresh
snow began to fall, Moshe took his let­ter out again. You are right, he wrote.
The old ways will not sur­vive here. There are too many dif­fer­ent types of
peo­ple. Too many dif­fer­ent ways. Maybe I should be a cow­boy.
He sealed the let­ter and sent it.
—
THREE WEEKS LATER, Moshe received a pack­age in the mail that was care­ful­ly
wrapped in a series of three box­es, with news­pa­per in each, each care­ful­ly
bun­dled with string with a label marked “Frag­ile.” It took him a good
twen­ty min­utes to open it, and when he final­ly did, he burst out laugh­ing,
for inside was a tiny pair of cow­boy pants made of what appeared to be
some kind of mole­skin, too small to be worn, infant-sized, with frills on the
side and with a tiny Star of David sewn onto the back. Attached to them
was a note from Malachi in Yid­dish say­ing, Try these, cow­boy.
Moshe respond­ed by send­ing the awful pants back in a pack­age that was
even hard­er to open. He rolled them into a tight ball, stuffed them in a met­al
tobac­co can, filled the top of the can with news­pa­per and corn husks, then
insert­ed the can into yet anoth­er larg­er cof­fee can that he sealed with wax.
He insert­ed that into a larg­er emp­ty pret­zel can stuffed with paper
wrap­pings and cel­lo­phane, then walked into the the­ater and told Nate, who
was atop a lad­der fix­ing the cur­tain pul­ley, that he want­ed it sol­dered shut.
Nate, high on the lad­der, stared down in silence a moment, then said,
“You want it what?”
“Sol­dered shut. I’m send­ing it over­seas to my friend Malachi. It’s a
joke.”
“I don’t know how to sol­der.”
“You know any­one who can?”
“Fat­ty learned to sol­der over at the Flagg fac­to­ry. He can do it. He
sol­ders stuff all day.”
“Can you ask him?”
There was a long silence. From the floor, Moshe watched Nate lift his
head to stare into the dark shad­ows of the walk­way above, the net­work of
pul­leys, ropes, and skele­tal met­al rods that lived atop the stage.
“I’ll get it done.”
Moshe placed the can on the floor. The delight in this sil­ly exchange
light­ened his heart, and he began to think things through more clear­ly—
about his wife, and their cir­cum­stance, and that of Dodo, of whom his wife
was so fond. A clar­i­ty arrived in his head for the first time, and he called up,