Come Pour the Wine Read Online Free PDF Page B

a tree, not a flower. At least his little village in Russia had been pretty, everyone polite enough to greet each other. Here he was just a faceless person in the crowd. Who invited Yankel to a Shabbes? No one. No, this was not for him. So with his little vending case filled with pins, ribbons and thread, he decided to take the advice of someone who mentioned a place called California where giant redwoods grew. That was for Yankel.
    Yankel soon found himself in the backwoods and byways of America, safely away from the noise and uncaring crowds of the city. He slept contentedly in a meadow, a forest and an occasional hayloft, wherever was handy as he moved west. And no matter where he was, whether at the side of a stream or deep in a glade, a morning never graced the sky that Yankel didn’t commune with his God. The ritual started by putting the tallis around his shoulders and placing the yarmulkah on his curly black hair. Then he took out the phylacteries containing the sacred text, slipped the thong of one of the small square boxes around his forehead, wrapped the thin leather strip attached to the other around his left arm and began to recite from Exodus 13:9. “And it shall be for a sign unto thee upon thine hand, and for a memorial between thine eyes, that the Lord’s law may be in thy mouth.” He ended with a similar commandment in Deuteronomy 6:8.
    After he had finished his morning prayers, Yankel lifted his eyes toward heaven and sighed contentedly. “Good morning, God, I slept very well last night. I’ll have my breakfast and then we’ll move on.” Yankel fried the fish he’d caught and as he sat on the ground with his back against a tree, he said, “So, God, where do you think we should go now? Just walk, you say? That’s a good idea. We’ll walk.” Yankel rolled up his bedding, put the tin pans into his knapsack while whistling an old Hebrew song he’d been taught sitting on his mother’s knee, and was again on the road west.
    After many days and nights trying to defy the elements, Yankel found himself in a place called Wichita, Kansas. The only resemblance between Wichita and Riga was that they both happened to be on the same planet. There the similarity ended, but somehow it looked like a place he might stay for a while on his way west. He didn’t know why. It just felt right to him.
    Yankel stood in front of the white clapboard boardinghouse and looked at the garden with the dahlias and yellow hollyhocks. Wisteria and sweet peas wound around each other as though embracing. The white picket fence reminded him of the one his father had built … nu, so it wasn’t exactly the same. His father had only used wood stakes cut from a tree, but a fence it was. Opening the gate, he walked up the path, up the four wooden stairs and stood before the door admiring the stained glass oval window. He knocked on the door. When it was opened he took a step backward. The young woman before him with soft, taffy-colored hair was not at all what he expected. When he had been told that Pegeen O’Hara had rooms for rent, he had imagined she would be a middle-aged lady. Pegeen was far from that. She was slender, rosy-cheeked and maybe nineteen … twenty at the most. In the purest Irish accent she asked, “And what would you be wantin’?” This was a new English accent to Yankel—from the northern part of Protestant Ireland, as he would later learn—and he didn’t quite understand. How did he answer when he wasn’t even sure what she had asked? But she realized that Yankel was new to these parts from the attire he wore, especially the broad flat beaver hat and dangling earlocks, and looking at his confused face, Pegeen repeated, “Would you be lookin’ for a room?”
    The word room Yankel understood. He nodded, and Pegeen opened the door wider. Yankel found himself standing in the front hall gazing at the golden oak banister which led to the second floor and then looking uncomfortably downward to the hooked rug.