The Noodniks of Chelm, Ohio

Antonio’d give us twenty dollars a night toward “lodging,” but, even if me and Rachel combined it, good luck finding a motel for that kind of money. And when we sometimes did, Rachel wouldn’t go near it. “You can take the girl out of Bexley,” she’d say, “but not even you can take all the Bexley out of this girl.” So, most nights after we finished lining up the carnival trucks in a new town, me and Rachel would find a place to pitch our pup tents where nobody could hear us, and that’s when we did our business. Some nights she let me stay with her after, but she made me put my tent up every night all the same.

We’d just started going at it that first night in Chelm, Ohio, when I get this funny feeling someone’s watching us. I’ve got one hand up Rachel’s shirt and the other on her jaw, and I look up to see this bug-eyed kid with one of those Jewish hats on his head. He’s watching us through the tent flap, but not like he’s some pervert. Instead, he looks really confused.

After he sees me looking at him, he says, “Whatcha doing, Mister? Did you lose something?”

It’s such a dumb-ass question that I don’t get mad, I just answer it in a dumb-ass way. “Yeah, kid,” I says. “I lost a dollar, and now I’m looking for it.”

I can feel Rachel move behind my shoulder to hide her face from him.

“Why are you looking there?” he asks.

I don’t say nothing, and Rachel starts to laugh real quiet, puffing into my ear so my stomach does a little dance. The kid just keeps looking at us, moving his eyes from one of my hands to the other and back again.

Finally, he says, “Did you spend the dollar on soda, maybe?”

“What?” I say. I still haven’t pulled my hands back to myself.

“I asked,” the little boy says, “if maybe you spent the dollar on soda. If you did, then maybe your wife drank it. Because if she did, then it might be in her mouth, or it might be in her belly, and then you’d be looking in the right places for it.”

Rachel lets out one of them silent laughs and it makes my back tingle.

“Yeah,” I say. “That’s it. That’s just what happened.”

“You must be a sage, Mister,” the kid shakes his head. “When I lose a dollar like that, I never think to look any place but in the empty soda bottle. And sometimes there’s still a drop of it, but that’s the most I ever find.”

That’s when Rachel finally speaks up. “Oh, he’s a sage, all right. Make sure you come play the dart game when the carnival opens up, and you’ll see what kind of a sage he is.”

*

Most of that summer, Antonio had me working the game where you get three darts for two dollars and you have to burst two balloons for a small prize and three for a medium. We usually set it up next to the ping-pong ball booth, the one everybody thinks is easy because you win a goldfish just for landing a ball in a bowl. Rachel always worked that, and she usually wore one of them t-shirts with a tear in the collar so when she leaned forward you could start to look down her shirt.

When we get to Chelm, though, Antonio says she should wear regular shirts. “They don’t go for that here,” he says. “It’s a Jewish thing.”

“But I’m a Jewish thing,” Rachel says, and she has that sexy smile going.

“Not like they’re Jewish in Chelm, Ohio you aren’t. But this place confuses me so much,” Antonio says, “that maybe you’re the rabbi’s daughter after all.”

Later I ask Rachel about it. “You mean there’s different kinds of Jews?”

“Oh, sweetie,” she says. “You can’t even begin to imagine.”

“So does that mean you’re Jewish like these people are?” I ask. “Because if they’re Jewish, then you don’t look it.”

“Who says I don’t look Jewish?” she says. “What if I’m the one who looks Jewish and not them?”

“But you look just like everybody else,” I say, “except, of course, you’re hotter.”

“Thanks, Hon. You look pretty hot yourself,” she says. “But that’s the thing. Sometimes all I want is to look like everybody else. To go out with whoever I feel like. To piss my parents off by spending a summer different than they want.

“And then sometimes I feel guilty for forgetting that my great grandparents dressed and acted just like these people until. . . well, until that whole world turned dark.”

*

Antonio tells us the Chelm people do things their own way. “I been sending attractions here fifteen years,” he says, “and every year it’s something different. When they first got hold of me, it was the president of their community group, the B’nai B’rith lodge, who calls me up. ‘Call me Hershel,’ he says. ‘Because I’m the president, I’ve been empowered by the lodge to make all the decisions about the entertainment for this year’s carnival.’ So Hershel and I work it all out, just the two of us. He tells me which rides and which games they want, and I line them all up and send them out.

“The next year Hershel calls me up in the winter and says he has bad news. ‘I lost my re-election, and I am no longer the president of the B’nai B’rith Lodge.’

“‘I’m sorry to hear that, Hershel. I thought we did a good job working together,’ I said. ‘Who will I be working with now?’

“‘Well, the new president is too busy, and no one trusts him anyway,’ Hershel says, ‘so I’ve been elected by the membership to make all the decisions about the entertainment for this year’s carnival.’

“‘That’s great,’ I said, and we went ahead, just the two of us, and worked it all out again.

“Then the next year Hershel calls me up again. ‘I have wonderful news,’ he says. ‘I have been reelected president of the lodge.’

“‘Congratulations, Hershel,’ I said. ‘Now who will I work with in planning the carnival?’

“‘Me, of course,’ he says like he’s a little outraged. ‘What else do you think a president does?’”

*

The first night we’re there Rachel comes back to our tents, and she says, “These people are crazy.”

The second night she comes back and says, “These people are really crazy.”

The third night she says, “These people are meshuggener,” but she doesn’t tell me what meshuggener means.

The last night she doesn’t come back. It gets to be midnight, and I go looking for her out where the people live. We’re not supposed to go far from the midway, but I walk past the drugstore, a tailor’s, a place that sells wigs for women, and a butcher with strange letters on the window. I even go a few blocks into where the houses are, and they look mostly ordinary except for a couple have little candles in jars in the front windows. When I can’t find her, I finally wake Antonio.

“I saw her talking to the rabbi’s wife this afternoon,” Antonio says. “These people really believe in hospitality, so I imagine they asked her to spend the night. Don’t worry about it till the morning.”

When the morning does come, Rachel walks back to our tents real slow holding this little burning candle in her hands, and I go running out to meet her. “I was really worried, Rach,” I says, and I move in for a hug.

“Not right now,” she says, stepping back and holding up the candle. “You can’t touch me cause I’m fresh from the mikveh bath.”

“What’s that mean?” I ask.

“I guess it means I’m clean,” she says. “But I’m still not sure I was dirty before.”

*

Antonio says one winter he called Hershel to see what changes they wanted for the carnival that summer. “We want you should help us have wrestling this year,” Hershel says.

“Now wrestling isn’t exactly my line,” Antonio says, “but I make some calls to see what I can do, and eventually I get hold of an outfit that does those Sumo things at baseball games. You know, the kind where they get people out of the stands to put on the big, padded Velcro costumes and then jump on top of each other. I figure it’s perfect because nobody gets hurt, and it’s funny. And it’s easy. All you gotta do is put the costumes on and let the rest take care of itself.”

But when Antonio calls Hershel back with the idea, he don’t like it. “No,” Hershel says, “the rabbi says the most interesting wrestling is always the wrestling a person does with himself. We want it should be a spiritual exercise, not a comical one.”

Antonio says, “Well, I don’t know if I can help you on that one, Hershel, but I’d like to see what you come up with.”

So that summer, Antonio says he gets the crew to set up a midway and then, at the end of it, the Chelm people put up a boxing ring. It’s just a rope around a big mat they must have gotten from the high school, and then there’s a chair in one corner and a small table in front of it. When they start the wrestling that first night, they get the marching band to play a song for build-up. It’s tubas and trumpets and bass drums going the whole ninety-nine yards.

Then one scrawny kid comes walking into the ring, and he’s wearing a singlet too big on him, especially with the way the hair on the sides of his head is so long. His face is all drawn in, and he looks wobbly. “He hasn’t eaten all day,” one of the Chelm guys leans over to Antonio and brags, “nor has he had anything to drink.”

The kid sits down at the table, and then they bring out this huge, covered platter. When they take the top off, Antonio says, it’s the most delicious food you ever smelled. “It’s a brisket,” he hears someone say, and even just standing outside the ring he starts to drool. If you could sell something like that from a stand on a midway, Antonio said, you could make a million bucks every year. And next to it there’s a big glass pitcher of lemonade with the ice clinking around and the sweat dripping down the side of it.

Then the kid just sits there for fifteen minutes. He blinks every now and then, but he don’t say nothing. Sometimes he leans forward and sometimes he settles into his chair like when the wind hits a candle flame, but otherwise he don’t move. Sometimes someone in the crowd cheers and sometimes someone, usually one of the women, says something like, “he’s so brave,” but Antonio said he couldn’t see anything happening. It’s just a skinny kid staring at a table of food.

Finally, the kid leans forward, pours himself a glass of lemonade, and drinks it in one gulp. Then he makes himself a plate of the brisket and eats it all right there. Everyone starts to cheer, the band plays again, and they lead the kid out.

Antonio said he had to go ask Hershel what happened.

“What do you mean ‘what happened,’” Hershel says. “You were right there.”

“I know,” said Antonio, “but please tell me anyway.”

“Well,” says Hershel, “that boy was thirsty and hungry, and the only thing keeping him from satisfying his appetite was his own willpower. Every moment he sat in that chair was a victory for man over his own impulses. We cheered when it seemed like he overcame an especially powerful impulse, and we rooted quietly when we knew he was wrestling the hunger we all feel, the universal hunger of the spirit for something grand enough to satisfy it.”

So Antonio said, “Okay. I think I understand. But why did he eat and drink all of that at the end. That still confuses me.”

“Why should it confuse you?” Hershel says. “After a victory like that, he deserves a reward, don’t he?”

*

The last day, Rachel doesn’t show up to work the ping-pong ball game and she doesn’t answer her phone neither. Antonio does what he always does, and pays a local to run the attraction. That means I got to keep an eye on Meshulem at the same time I got to take care of the darts, so I’m too busy to go looking for Rachel again.

The prices are one dollar for five balls, two dollars for twelve, or five dollars for a bucket of forty. Antonio rigs it like that to suck you in, and Rachel’s real good at making them feel like cheapskates for going after anything smaller than the bucket. There’s always a few winners, but what’s a goldfish cost? Four or five cents when Antonio buys ’em in bulk. The game turns a profit so long as we can keep pushing the balls.

This Meshulem, though, he doesn’t seem to get how it works. First time I look up, I see him telling one of the kids at the rail to give him twenty-five cents for just one ball. “Have faith, little one,” he tells the kid. “David needed only one stone to bring down Goliath. With Hashem guiding your throw, all you need is one.”

I take him aside. “No,” I say. “You gotta get them to buy as many balls as possible. You can’t sell just the one.”

“But don’t they have the same chance to win with a single ball as with a hundred?” he asks. “All it takes is one.”

“Yeah, all it takes is one,” I say. “But how do you know which one that is?”

He nods as he thinks about what I’m saying, and I figure he’s got it straight.

When I get a chance to check him out again, I see him handing money to one of the kids at the rail. “Wait a second there, Meshulem,” I say. “What are you doing now?”

“Well,” he says, “these boys paid me five dollars. One ball landed in a bowl, and that’s the one he wants. Now I am returning four dollars and seventy-five cents for the others.”

*

Rachel and me planned to spend the summer working with Antonio. The carnival took us all across Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana, and after that, she said, she was gonna go back to college at Denison. I thought maybe I’d look for a job in Akron where my aunt has a beauty shop or maybe finish the HVAC training at the community college. We were only ever supposed to be a summer thing.

Our last morning in Chelm, she still won’t let me touch her. We’re sitting at a picnic table, not eating our food, and she just stares at the citronella candle when I try to talk to her.

“These people shouldn’t be here,” she says. “That’s what’s so strange. There aren’t supposed to be any more shtetls. The Nazis and the Soviets destroyed them all. The people that survived moved to Israel or to here. The ones that stayed religious moved into these tight groups and shut out the rest of the world. The ones like my family came and made a home. But we changed because we had to. And because we wanted to.”

“But these people are here,” I say. “And they like to ride rides and play games like everybody else. What’s wrong with that even if they dress funny?”

“Maybe they aren’t supposed to be here,” she says. “Maybe they’re too. . . ‘dumb’ feels like the wrong word. Maybe they’re just too something to understand that the world decided a long time ago there’d be no one left to live life like this.”

“But aren’t people just people?” I ask. “So what if they’re Jewish or Amish or Protestant? Why does it matter? Why does it have to get in the way of us?”

“If these people seem so, I don’t know, foolish,” she says like she’s not listening to me, “but then they also seem so, maybe, wise. Then maybe I’m the one who’s really a fool. Maybe I’m the one who’s living a life that doesn’t make sense. Maybe I’m the one who’s not supposed to be the way I am.”

*

Antonio says in all the years he’s been coming to Chelm, he’s only met the rabbi three times.

The first time, he says, is the first year he worked the carnival with them. A bunch of the people in town come scurrying over, anxious, to see if the rabbi was going to approve of him. The rabbi walked behind them, looking Antonio up and down so it’s clear he’s judging him.

“Are you a man of faith?” the rabbi asks him.

“I’m not sure,” says Antonio. “Maybe? I guess I can’t tell you one way or the other, Rabbi.”

“That is the right answer,” says the rabbi, “because only a man of faith can truly doubt.”

*

When there’s a lull in both the games, Meshulem and me are talking. He says everybody in town is supposed to want to “learn” all day. Most of that time, they’re in what he calls cheder studying the Torah and the Talmud and trying to make sense of it all. “Though,” Meshulem says, “after all that learning, I have learned I am not very good at learning. Every morning I am distracted by thinking about what the afternoon will bring, and every afternoon I am distracted by remembering all the things I got wrong in the morning.”

I tell him how I hated high school the same way, and we’re laughing together when Rachel comes walking toward us with three of the Chelm girls. She is wearing the kind of clothes they wear, with long sleeves and everything buttoned up, and she has her hair pulled back. She looks fantastic, somehow sexier because she is trying so hard not to look sexy.

She doesn’t exactly look at me as she walks down the midway talking with the girls. When she finally gets closer, she keeps her body walking past us but turns her head and barely nods at me.

“Boy, that’s good news,” says Meshulem when Rachel and the girls are past.

“What’s good news?” I ask.

“That she likes you so much,” he says. “You can tell a girl likes you when she is so careful to pretend she don’t notice you.”

“Well, then maybe it is good news because I don’t think she sees me at all,” I say. “She’s been acting completely crazy since we got to this town.”

“There is a girl I think maybe I am interested in myself,” Meshulem says. “And I do not think she even knows my name. My friends say that is a sign she will want to marry me.”

“Well, Rachel certainly never thought about marrying me when we were together,” I say, “so maybe this is some kind of progress.”

*

The second time Antonio met the rabbi was a few years after. Two girls had managed to win one of the giant prizes, a teddy bear near as big as they are. It’s taken them all four days of the carnival and probably all their babysitting money to do it, trading in small prizes for mediums, then mediums for bigs, and bigs for the giant. They’re squawking and fighting because each one wants to take it home with her.

“I could take it back for two of the big prizes,” Antonio says. “That way you could each have something.”

But the girls keep fighting so much that finally the rabbi has to come settle the dispute.

“I put up the first dollar,” one of the girls says.

“But I put up more money,” says the other.

“I suggested we put our money together for the biggest prize,” says the first.

“And I’m the one who selected this exact one,” says the second.

“Enough,” says the rabbi when he walks through the circle that’s gathered around them. And everybody gets real quiet to listen.

“It is clear that both of you have a claim on this bear,” says the rabbi. “Therefore, it is only just that you should both have it. I decree that this bear should be cut in half.”

“We have heard this story, Rabbi,” says one of the girls. “One of us is supposed to love the thing so much that we would prefer to see the other get it to seeing it destroyed. So we will both say that’s what we want.”

“And that means,” says the other girl, “we should both get it.”

“No,” says the rabbi, who pauses because, Antonio says, he’s surprised the girls are so smart. “This is different.”

Then the rabbi asks one of the older ladies to take out her sewing scissors and cut the bear in half. When she does, all those little Styrofoam beads go flying around the street. It’s like snow in July, Antonio says. There are beads in the rabbi’s beard, on the lady’s fingers, at the end of some people’s eyelashes. The wind picks up and they swirl even crazier, until they’re whipping around in all directions. The two halves of the bear are just fabric flapping in the wind.

“This is what happens when you fill yourself with material things,” the rabbi says. “It leaves you empty.”

The girls are both crying, but one of them sobs out, “But, Rabbi, if we truly overcome our desire for this thing, can we have it back?”

“Yes, if you have learned your lesson,” says the rabbi, looking, Antonio said, like a Jewish Santa Claus since his beard is so white with the beads. “But first we should maybe clean up all this mess.”

*

I don’t know if Rachel is coming until right before we’re on the bus heading out of town. While we’re waiting, Antonio says not to worry. “Every year,” he says, “there’s someone who gets off the bus halfway through the summer. As long as we know she’s safe, we can leave her behind.”

But then, right before we pull out, Rachel walks up to the bus in her regular clothes with her backpack like usual. She takes the seat next to me like always, and I can’t tell if things are the same as they were or if they’re all changed.

“So you decided you aren’t going to stay with these people, huh?” I say.

“I’m not sure what I decided. Maybe I’m staying and maybe I’m going,” Rachel says. “Maybe we were never in this place. Maybe it doesn’t even exist.”

“Well, you’re here,” I say. “What’s that mean for us?”

“When I was with these people,” she says, “it was like I was looking at one of the lives I might have led if the world had been completely different. It wasn’t the life I wanted, but it was a life I might have wanted. I don’t know if that makes any sense.

“You know my parents have it all mapped out for me,” she says, “and I’m mostly on board with it. Go to college, get the right degree, go on and marry the right guy. They’re even willing to put up with a summer fling. And that’s what this is, sweetie, a summer fling.” She puts her hand on my shoulder when she says this, and it feels like when your teacher touches you to make a point you don’t seem to be getting.

“But this place,” she says, “this weird-ass place. It made me feel like I was missing something I never had.”

“So what’s all that mean for us?” I ask her again.

“I guess I figured this much out,” Rachel says, “and I suppose I sound like those crazy people when I say it. It’s just that I’ve realized the only way I can stay in Chelm is if I leave it.”

*

The last time Antonio met the rabbi was only a couple years ago. Antonio says he was trying to relax at the motel, when one of the workers calls and says he’d better hurry over to the milk bottle toss. When he gets there, the rabbi is standing with four or five other guys, each with a longer beard than the next, and a lot of children who seem excited to watch.

It seems, Antonio says, that the rabbi has decided he wants a closer look at what he calls the “distractions” of the carnival. He wants to play the milk toss himself.

Now this game looks easy, all you gotta do is throw a softball and knock three metal bottles off a little stand, but it’s a lot tougher than you think. Even if you hit all three, one usually just rolls around and doesn’t fall off.

But the rabbi takes the softball and holds it up, and Antonio starts to wonder if maybe he’s a ringer, somebody who played a lot of baseball once upon a time. He brings it back like he’s going to throw the curveball, and then the ball falls straight to the ground.

There’s an embarrassing silence and a lot of the kids have these big eyes trying to figure out what’s just happened. The rabbi just stands there for a second.

“Sometimes the best way to satisfy your desire is not to reach for it but rather to stand still,” he says. “If we chase too hard after what we want, we can lose our sense of where we are. It is better to retain the treasure you have than to seek something you may never find.

“So you see,” says the rabbi, “I do not need to throw the ball to achieve what I am after. I can claim my reward simply by remaining myself.”

Antonio says it’s a beautiful speech, and all the old guys and kids around him applaud it. This is their holy man, their wise man, and you can see that they’re proud of him for showing how easy you can get caught up in a kid’s game. It’s okay to play these things, he seems to be saying, but never forget who you are when you do it.

Antonio says even he doubts, just for a second, whether what he does makes any sense. What kind of a life is it to spend every summer driving from town to town with a bunch of carnies and college kids, setting up games that are half-rigged. Maybe there is something else he would have wanted that he passed up because he was so busy hurrying from one place to another. Maybe he ought to just drop his own ball and see where it lands rather than always trying to throw it as far as he possibly can.

“And then,” Antonio says, “the rabbi turns to me and asks, ‘Now would you bring me one of the stuffed animals for my prize? I’d prefer the little orange frog if any are left.’”

*

It’s dark out, and the bus is going through some part of Ohio or Indiana. Rachel has fallen asleep with her head on my shoulder. I’m afraid if I move I’ll wake her up or make her fall to the other side. I like having her this close to me, so I hold still even though my arm is falling asleep.

I don’t know where we’re going, and I’m not in any hurry to get there. When the summer ends, I know that’s it. Rachel will go back to school, and I’ll find something somewhere. Maybe her-and-me won’t mean anything more than a carnival prize you forget about when you get home. And maybe it’ll be something that will feel like another life I might have led.

When we wrapped that last day in Chelm, Ohio, Meshulem came over to say goodbye. He was just some guy I worked next to for a day, but I think he thought we’d somehow turned into friends.

“Before you go,” Meshulem says, “let me give you a gift.” And he pulls out a small candle from his pocket. “In my family,” he says, “it is a custom to give candles when we say goodbye.”

“Thanks, Meshulem,” I say. “I appreciate it very much. But I feel bad I don’t have a candle to give you.”

“But there’s one in your hand right now,” says Meshulem, and he points to the one he just gave me.

“Well, okay then, I guess. Can I give you this candle, Meshulem?” I ask.

“Why, thank you,” he says. “What a considerate gift, my friend. I will miss working alongside you.”

In a way, sitting here on this bus, it feels like I still have that candle, like I could light it if I wanted. But that would spoil this moment me and Rachel are having, even if I am having it mostly alone.