Harry was my older brother. He was five years older than I, and since my birth had mixed emotions about my existence. For thirteen years he led an idyllic life as the favored child of our father, well at least for the first nine of those years.
From the beginning he was a beautiful child, athletic and blonde, the boy who had everything. He was first to have the best our father could provide. He went to expensive overnight camp in the summers, had the best Raleigh English Racer bicycle, and did everything he wanted. Although Daddy brought home a beautiful family dog at the same time, it was clear that the collie, Nikki was to be Harry’s dog.
When we moved from our Jewish neighborhood in Strawberry Mansion to a more upscale area called East Mount Airy, Daddy was determined to provide the best.
We bought a piano, and Harry started private in-home piano lessons with the best music teacher in the city. It was immediately apparent that Harry was a gifted at the piano.
The piano teacher owned a music school where students traveled great distances to take lessons. Harry was the only student who received lessons at home. Daddy wanted the best for him. From the first lesson, the teacher realized that Harry was gifted. With little practice he could play the most difficult pieces with great sensitivity and skill. Within a short time he was playing in recitals and concerts.
Daddy loved to sit in the living room and listen to his practice.
Years later Harry disclosed that he could never read music. Somehow when the teacher assigned a difficult classical theme, Harry would struggle through the lesson, and then ask the teacher to play the composition from start to finish. Harry would listen intently, and then after the teacher left, would play the piece through perfectly and with all the required expression.
Had we known that he had auditory “photographic” memory, many of his future school learning problems could have been overcome.
In 1948 just after we moved to our home in Mount Airy, Daddy started to exhibit symptoms of the cancer that had started some years before. Soon hospitalizations and surgeries with no effect ended in his years of life as an invalid. Harry’s piano lessons continued at Daddy’s demand and for his enjoyment.
Mother worked to maintain the family business, kept the home together and took care of Daddy. She couldn’t do it all, and soon we had additional members of the household, nurses and a live-in maid.
In January of 1951, plans were being made for Harry’s Bar Mitzvah. His thirteenth birthday and his ceremony would occur on the same day. At the time Daddy was totally bedridden in the front bedroom. He was hoping to somehow attend the Bar Mitzvah in a wheelchair.
Harry continued to play wonderful music in the living room, and practice his Bar Mitzvah portions at Daddy’s bedside.
In late January, less than three weeks before Harry’s Bar Mitzvah, Daddy died. Life forever changed for all of us, but mostly for Harry. He went to the funeral, but not yet eight, I was thought to be too young to go.
After the funeral, Harry came home, played his latest piece on the piano, put his sheet music in the piano bench, and never touched the piano again.
He didn’t cry or mourn for Daddy for a few years, until Nikki, our dog died in 1956, the year of my Bar Mitzvah. He locked himself in our bedroom for twenty-four hours, sobbing, then emerged exhausted, calm, stronger and ready to graduate from High School.
In 1953, I was ten and Harry was fifteen. For Chanukah Mother bought us exactly what each of us wanted. Harry unwrapped a Daisy Red Ryder BB rifle. Mother bought it for him with fear and trepidation. She bought me a Paul Winchell and Jerry Mahoney Ventriloquist dummy. (That’s a long story in itself to be told later)
Harry set up targets on the ancient oak in our back yard and built his skills as a marksman. I watched him with envy, but was warned never to attempt to shoot his rifle under penalty of physical harm. To make sure, he always locked the weapon in a closet in the basement.
One day after school, Harry had taken his bike out for a ride as usual. He would meet his friends and go on bike hikes that usually lasted until dinnertime.
I went into the garage to examine my bike, a used Schwinn with no fenders that as yet I had not learned to ride. In the corner leaning against the wall was the rifle. Harry had been shooting, and neglected to lock it away. It was 4:00 o’clock, at least two hours before dinner. I walked to the garage entrance and looked both ways up and down along the driveway. There was no sign of him. I had at least an hour to sneak a tryout with the rifle.
I lifted it to determine if it was loaded with bbs. Shaking it, I decided that there were enough to have a target practice. As I walked out from behind the garage to the edge of our yard I stood about a hundred feet from the tree. There were not paper targets tacked up, so I aimed for a knot in the center of the trunk. Carefully raising the rifle, with one eye closed I squeezed the trigger with my first shot. I felt a slight recoil as the shot sounded. It was not loud, just a woosh of compressed air. No one would hear that I thought. Still I looked around to see if anyone was outside in the vicinity.
The back screen door of the mansion next door opened and the neighbor boy came out. He had heard the sound, and looked over to our yard, expecting to see Harry target shooting. He laughed when he saw me examining the result of my first shot. I had missed the tree altogether. The bb had ricocheted off the concrete of the barbecue behind the tree.
The next-door neighbor was Werner, a fifteen-year-old son of a wealthy German immigrant who had recently moved into the large Tudor mansion across the hedge from our twin attached home. The father was a businessman who was very formal, always dressed in a three-piece suit, and his mother a pretty but loudly emotional Argentine woman who only left the house to walk the family dog, and uncontrollable Irish setter.
Werner was fifteen and arrogant, with cold blue eyes and a slight German accent. He was the same age as Harry, but they were not friends. Clearly he was not my friend either. When he spoke he sneered, and his eyes narrowed. Immediately I felt that Werner was unkind and not to be trusted.
When I realized that he had seen me, I knew that I was in trouble. Werner was just the type to tell on me.
“So… target shooting with your brother’s rifle. As I understand it you are not allowed to do that.”
He was smiling that icy smile he had whenever he knew your secret.
“I think Harry should be told…don’t you?”
I stood a few feet away from him now holding the rifle tightly in my right hand. One shot and already someone was on to me. And of all people, it had to be that sneaky creep, Werner.
I feared Harry’s reaction to the news from Werner, who would surly tell him as soon as he returned from his ride. I was shaking with fear, visualizing the first punch from my brother.
Werner kept smiling and folded his arms across his chest with smug narrow eyed confidence.
Just then Harry returned to the garage, parked his bike, and entered the back yard. He glanced first at Werner.
“What do you want, Werner?”
Then he glanced at me. His eyes fixed on the rifle in my right hand.
He growled at me.
“What are you doing with my rifle? Give it to me …NOW!”
I stepped back holding the rifle more tightly, though shaking with fear.
“Give it to me!”
I didn’t and couldn’t move.
A few moments passed in silence, and then Werner whispered to me.
“Shoot him.”
Arms still folded over his chest, he had sneered out the simple order.
I glanced from Harry to Werner to Harry to Werner, and then back to Harry again.
“SHOOT HIM! SHOOT HIM!”
Werner was shouting.
So, I lifted the rifle and pulled the trigger. The sound of the air of the shot suddenly seemed loud.
Harry screamed.
“Ouch!” and fell to the grass.
He grabbed his foot and began to cry in pain.
I had shot my brother.
I cried too, dropped the rifle and ran into the house.
Annie, our maid burst out of the back door and ran to Harry.
She lifted him up and carried him into the house, as he continued to scream and moan.
I hid in our bedroom upstairs. Annie opened the bedroom door and laid him on his bed. He had stopped crying, and stared at me with rage.
“I’ll get you for this. Don’t think I won’t.”
I heard his words and shook with regret and fear.
My attention turned to the bedroom window, where I could hear Werner laughing in the yard.
Annie called Mother at the store and told her what had happened. Then she called Dr. Buck to come to the house for Harry had been shot by his brother.
“I’ll be right there.”
Both Dr. Buck and Mother arrived at the same time, running up the stairs into the bedroom. Harry lay on his bed suffering, and I lay in my bed cowering.
The worry left Dr. Buck’s face when he realized that Harry had suffered a superficial wound from a bb just beneath the skin surface of his foot.
Mother continued to cry with worry.
Dr. Buck removed the bb, treated the wound with antiseptic, and covered it with a band-aid.
Harry got up and limped over to my bed. He pointed his finger in my face.
“I’m gonna get you for this.”
After Mother determined that Harry would survive she walked out to the back yard, picked up the rifle and locked it in her bedroom closet.
“That’s the end of that!”
Dr. Buck could not contain himself. He left our bedroom and walked into the hallway. We could hear him laughing quietly. He assured Mother that Harry would be fine, and warned her about the danger of guns. He continued to laugh as he went downstairs and out the front doo, to his car.
Mother was not laughing. Harry was not laughing. Annie was tsk-tsking over and over shaking her head.
I continued to vibrate with worry.
Harry kept staring at me.
“I’ll get you for this. Don’t think I won’t.”
I believed him.
None of us ever spoke with Werner again.
……………………………….