The Tin Horse: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

strawberry.”
    She said at the same time, “You supplied eggs to half of Los Angeles, isn’t that what you told us?”
    “Who have you been talking to? One of your aunts?”
    “The chickens died!”
    “Sweetheart, keep your voice down.” Zayde glanced uneasily at the women milling around the fish barrels outside Rosen’s.
    “And what about the cigar factory?”
    He yanked us into a doorway between Rosen’s and the next store. “Barbara! What did I just tell you?”
    “Lies!” she spat back. “You told us lies.”
    Sweat beaded on Zayde’s brow and he leaned against the wall.
    “Barbara, stop it,” I pleaded.
    “No, it’s fine,” Zayde sighed, and wiped his face with his handkerchief. “It’s America, people can speak freely. And any accused person has the right to answer charges made against him. The egg ranch, you want to see where it was? You want I should ask your uncle Leo to take us there?”
    “But you didn’t supply eggs to half of Los Angeles,” she persisted.
    “When Harry was there we did a good business.”
    A hush always fell at the mention of Zayde’s firstborn son, who died in the Great War. But not this time.
    “Agneta’s hair,” she said. “Where is it?”
    “What?” Zayde said.
    “The hair she gave you. I want to see it.”
    “You think I kept a few hairs from a kid I knew when I was seventeen?”
    “Then how do I know any of it is true?”
    “Are you calling your
zayde
a liar?”
    Even Barbara hadn’t said that; she had only said he told lies. It was a crucial distinction for us, and the irreversibility of that word,
liar
, stopped her in her tracks. For a moment.
    “What were the tin animals you made for her?” she asked.
    “What, you don’t remember?” He wiped his face with his handkerchief again.
    Rooster, lamb, horse, lion
. Did I say it or only think it?
    “Make them for us,” Barbara said.
    “Didn’t I tell you, when I stepped off the boat onto America, I promised myself I would never work tin again?”
    “The only thing I’ve ever seen you do with tin is open a can of vegetables.”
    Zayde’s face went white. “Go home,” he said.
    Barbara, her face as stunned as Zayde’s, turned and ran.
    “Zayde!” I cried.
    “Go home!”
    I pretended to leave, but I hid among the fish and pickle barrels outside Rosen’s. When Zayde started down the street, taking big, fast strides, I trotted a little behind him. I felt as if the harm Barbara had done was mine to repair, or at least—since I had no idea how to fix this damage—not toabandon. He went into Elster’s Hardware; I lurked a few doors away. Ten minutes later, he emerged carrying a brown paper sack and went straight home.
    I lagged a few minutes behind. When I entered the house, I could hear Zayde talking to Mama in the kitchen, too low for me to know what they were saying. Then the voices stopped. A minute later I peeked in. Mama asked about my day at school. Zayde wasn’t there. He must have gone into his bedroom off the kitchen. I sat at the table and read my latest library book,
Treasure Island
, so I could keep watch. His door remained closed.
    He didn’t come out for dinner. He hadn’t been able to resist having a corned beef sandwich at Canter’s on his way home; that’s what he’d told Mama. She might have started in on Barbara and me, picking at our dinners in guilty silence, but she and Papa were preoccupied with the stock market. Their investments, although modest, represented almost all of their savings.
    Barbara and I barely spoke as we got ready for bed. I don’t know what was going through her mind, but I was shocked by what had happened—and heartsick at having hurt the one person in our house who adored me. Mama might cuddle me one moment and slap me the next, and Papa tended to be stern. But everything I did had delighted Zayde.
    Sometime during the night, I woke up feeling scared. I crept into the inky unfamiliarity of the house in the middle of night, from our bedroom