Uncle Monty

Uncle Monty, Herman Roth’s brother and the proprietor of a produce market, gives Herman work after he quits his insurance job rather than participate in a government program. That act of family support draws Monty into a confrontation with the FBI: when the agency targets Herman for his political views, Monty pays Agent McCorkle to make the investigation stop. The resulting debt leaves Herman working for his brother under difficult conditions, making Monty both a source of help and a figure of obligation in the family’s increasingly precarious life.

Family and the Produce Market

Monty’s place in the family is established through practical, recurring acts of care. Herman’s mother lives with Monty, and Herman visits her at his brother’s home on Sunday mornings; when she cannot be brought there, Monty brings her to the Roth household. The market, too, becomes a point of family connection. After Herman resigns from his insurance job, he starts working nights at the Miller Street market in Monty’s truck, beginning a punishing routine that reshapes the household’s days and nights.

Herman works from Sunday night through Friday morning. He comes home around nine or ten in the morning, eats, and goes to bed; in the late afternoon he leaves again as farmers begin bringing in produce. Buyers arrive through the night, including retail grocers, restaurant owners, hotelkeepers, and the city’s remaining horse-and-wagon peddlers. Herman sometimes has to drive before dawn to farms in Passaic and Union counties to collect produce himself when Monty can secure a better deal that way. These details establish the market as more than a job: it is a demanding operation that depends on Monty’s commercial decisions and Herman’s labor.

Hiring Herman and Its Costs

Monty’s offer of work follows a sharp change in Herman’s circumstances. Herman has left a good job because he refuses to join a program presented as a way to unify and strengthen the country. He is now supporting a wife and two children on a reduced income, and Monty’s market gives him a way to keep earning. The help is real, but it does not restore Herman’s former security. His work is physically taxing, the schedule separates him from the household for much of the week, and the family must adjust around his daytime sleep.

The employment also places Herman under his brother’s authority. Monty tells Longy Zwillman that Herman is a poorly educated man with a family to support, not someone capable of harming the country by hauling produce crates six nights a week. The defense is protective but grounded in the smallness of the work itself: Monty presents his brother as a man trying to make a living, not as a political threat. His own business becomes a refuge from the public pressure on Herman, though not a place beyond its reach.

Surveillance and the Bribe

The FBI’s attention turns to Monty’s market after earlier questioning of members of the Roth family. Agent McCorkle appears at the market and the diner where its workers eat and drink coffee, asking what Herman says about America and the president. The information reaches Monty through one of Longy Zwillman’s associates. McCorkle’s reported view is that Herman has already housed and fed a supposed traitor and has now quit his job rather than participate in the government program. The scrutiny therefore follows Herman from his home and former workplace into the livelihood his brother has provided.

Monty first appeals to Longy, who comes to the market office in a handmade silk suit. Their exchange mixes old familiarity with present danger: they remember one another from grade school, and Monty asks whether he can give his own brother a job. Longy answers by raising the question of FBI surveillance. Monty acknowledges that the pressure has already led him to get rid of his nephew Alvin, but insists that Herman’s case is different. He promises to resolve the matter quickly or send Herman away.

The next morning, after closing the market, Monty approaches McCorkle at a neighborhood bar. He challenges the agent’s claim that he is merely doing his job, arguing that Herman is doing the same by working. Monty apologizes for suggesting that McCorkle is against Jews, then slips him a small brown envelope. The encounter converts an ideological dispute into a private payment: Monty does not persuade the agent to change his view, but buys an end to the immediate pressure on his brother.

Obligation and Narrative Significance

The payment does not disappear as a cost. Philip learns only later, through Sandy, that Herman must repay Monty the full bribe from his already meager wages, at ten dollars a week for six months. Herman cannot change the arrangement. His brief explanation of Monty’s character is that his brother has always been this way and always will be. The repayment makes Monty’s assistance double-edged: it keeps Herman employed and shields him from the immediate demand that he leave, while binding him more tightly to a brother who controls the work.

Monty’s account of the episode also includes an irreverent joke for Philip, whom he teases about having stolen a horse from the church. He laughs with the boy, briefly plays horse with him, and turns the FBI into the subject of a family joke. The shift from surveillance and bribery to teasing does not erase the danger; it shows how Monty moves between adult dealings and familiar, rough-edged affection. In this episode he is neither an uncomplicated rescuer nor simply a source of hardship. He uses money, connections, and a job to help his family navigate political intimidation, but the solution transfers its price onto Herman and makes family loyalty inseparable from dependence.