Bess Roth arranges Seldon's rescue

Bess Roth arranges Seldon Wishnow’s rescue when a late-night collect call reveals that the ten-year-old is alone in Danville, hungry, and unable to find his mother. With danger spreading and communication across the country growing uncertain, Bess turns a phone call into a practical rescue plan: she secures help from Mr. and Mrs. Mawhinney, stays with Seldon as he prepares to leave, and later has Herman Roth and Sandy Roth drive to Kentucky to bring him home. The episode shows her care taking the form of decisive, detailed action, even before she knows that Seldon’s mother will not return.

The call from Danville

At ten in the evening, while the Roth family is lying awake, the telephone rings. Seldon has reached them collect from Kentucky. He gives the operator the Roths’ Newark address and phone number and asks to speak to any member of the family. He is ten, has not eaten, and says his mother is not home. His urgent effort to reach someone he knows turns the Roths’ distant concern for the relocated family into an immediate responsibility.

Bess accepts the charges and speaks with him. At first, Seldon can barely manage to say that his mother might be dead. Bess rejects that conclusion and tries to calm him, insisting that his mother is simply late. She also directs him to find something to eat. Seldon reports that he has eaten the Fig Newtons, and Bess presses him to look for an actual meal rather than wait helplessly for his mother to feed him. Her reassurance is not yet knowledge: she is trying to keep a frightened child functioning while the facts remain unknown.

The danger behind his call is real. Earlier that day, Selma Wishnow had driven from Danville to Louisville at the request of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, whose regional office had summoned her to meet a supervisor. The journey was long, and the Roth family suspected she might lose her job. Relocated agents under Homestead 42 were finding that the sparse rural districts offered only a fraction of the commissions they had earned in North Jersey. Against this already precarious background, violence had made travel especially dangerous.

Finding help nearby

Once it is clear that Seldon cannot simply be left alone, Bess asks Sandy how far the Mawhinneys are from Danville. He estimates that the journey by truck would take about twenty minutes. Bess remembers that their phone number is in her dresser, inside her small brown change purse, and asks Sandy to retrieve it. The detail marks a shift from trying to soothe Seldon to arranging for someone near him to act.

Bess calls Mrs. Mawhinney from Newark and explains that a little boy is alone in Danville and needs help. When Mrs. Mawhinney goes to get her husband, Sandy protests. Bess acknowledges that she does not know the Mawhinneys personally and that they are not like the Roths; she also recognizes the demands of their farming life. But Seldon, she argues, has endured too many shocks for a child, having already lost his father and now facing his mother’s absence. Someone must go to him. Mr. Mawhinney agrees to do what she asks.

The call offers a brief, concrete counterpoint to the surrounding disorder. Bess tells her family that there is still some decency in the country. The help comes from people she has never met, reached through a number on a scrap of paper, and depends on their willingness to cross a short distance for a frightened child. Rather than treating that kindness as a solution to the larger crisis, the scene presents it as a small but urgent act of human responsibility within it.

A plan carried out by telephone

At quarter to eleven, Bess calls Seldon back with instructions worked out with the Mawhinneys. He is to pack his toothbrush, pajamas, underwear, and clean socks in a paper bag, put on a heavy sweater, warm coat, and flannel cap, and wait in the house for Mr. Mawhinney’s truck. Bess describes the Mawhinneys as kind and generous, and reminds him that Sandy knows their family from the summer he spent at their farm.

She also gives Seldon a way to communicate with his mother if she returns. He must write a note in his best handwriting saying that he is spending the night with the Mawhinneys, include their phone number, and ask his mother to call Bess collect as soon as she gets home. Then he is to wait in the living room for the truck’s horn, turn off the lights, lock the door, and leave with his bag. The steps turn an overwhelming situation into tasks a ten-year-old can follow one at a time.

Bess remains on the line while Seldon carries them out. She does not end the call when she has given the instructions; she waits as he packs, writes the note, and returns to report what he has done. When he hears Mr. Mawhinney outside, she tells him to stay calm, take his bag, turn out the lights, and remember to lock the door. Seldon hurries away without hanging up, leaving the phone dangling. In the events that follow, he will never enter that house again.

The truth and the journey home

The next day, Selma Wishnow’s burned-out car is found in a drainage ditch south of Louisville. She has been killed during the violence. The Roths’ effort to protect Seldon through the night had begun while they still hoped she would come back for him; the plan was not built on certainty about her fate, but on the knowledge that he could not safely wait alone.

On October 19, Herman and Sandy drive to Kentucky to collect Seldon, while Selma’s remains are sent by train. Their return to Newark completes the rescue Bess set in motion, but the journey is arduous: Herman is still recovering from injuries, and the family has reason to fear for travelers in regions where Jews have been murdered. Mr. Cucuzza lends a pistol for protection. The drive back takes far longer than the outward trip, with repeated stops because Seldon is sick and the car breaks down several times in West Virginia.

Seldon’s loss also becomes entangled with Philip Roth’s guilt. Philip imagines Selma in her coffin and blames himself for having set the chain of events in motion. Bess’s intervention cannot undo that loss, or the broader pressures that left the Wishnows far from home; it can keep Seldon from facing the immediate crisis alone and bring him back to the Roth family. The episode therefore gives rescue a precise, limited meaning: practical care protects the child, while grief and responsibility remain after the journey is over.