The Digger's Rest

by K. Patrick Malone

  Jack sat down in the chair next to him and read the article retracing the career of Melanie Woodward. At the end of the article it listed her surviving relatives as “…her sister, Marjaree Walsh, Dayton, Ohio; and her son, Mitchell Woodward Bramson, Columbia University student, New York City. The funeral will be held at Campbell’s Funeral Home, downtown Manhattan.” Jack put his hand over his mouth, stricken, “Oh…my…God.”

  “Yes, I know,” Janice said, nodding and wiping a single tear from her cheek, “Poor in New York at Christmas. We’re about the same age, Jack. You remember that one don’t you? From when we were young and thought we could change the world?”

  He nodded. He’d gone to see Melanie sing at least a half dozen times himself, a lifetime ago down at the Village Vanguard on Bleeker Street, when his own hair was long and they were trying to stop the war and ban the bomb. And here he had had her boy so close to him all this time.

  He got up hurriedly and took out his wallet. “Please do me a favor, Janice, call and send something special from us,” he said and handed her a hundred dollar bill.

  “Yes, of course,” she said, and he was out the door.

  When he arrived at Campbell’s, the rooms were full to brimming with flowers and famous faces. Everywhere he looked he saw a face that he could put a voice to that made it famous. Leavin’ on a jet plane, I don’t know when I’ll be back again…These times, they are a changin’…The night they drove old Dixie down, and the bells were ringin’…Has anybody here seen my old friend Abraham? Can you tell me where he's gone? …It's love's illusions I recall. I really don't know love at all.”

  The place was jammed with folkies. He was surprised to see that there were more than a few rock voices there too, and even a few R&B and soul voices. It was a virtual Who’s Who of late ‘60s and early ‘70s faces and voices.

  As he made his way to the front of the room he could see the casket, closed. God what that disease must have done to that pretty face, those beautiful green, feline eyes, he thought, remembering her face as vividly as if he were still sitting at a table in that dark, smoky club, a boy himself, all those years ago. His eyes searched the room looking for Mitch and saw the back of a head bowed in the first row, long hair neatly pulled back in a ponytail.

  Walking down the center aisle toward him, he could only imagine what it must have been like for the boy to watch her suffer and die that way. Having gone through his own mother’s death only five years earlier with morphine drips, tubes, machines and ‘do not resuscitate’ orders, he was as ready for the experience as any forty-year-old man would be, but Mitch was just a kid, and not just any kid. He had enough pure intelligence to know exactly what was going on but none of the emotional maturity to handle it.

  As he approached, he saw that a woman with long silken blonde hair had one arm around Mitch and was holding his hand with the other. As he walked over to them, the woman looked up, startling him. He knew that face and knew then where Mitch had gotten his name.

  Jack stopped before them. The woman gently patted the boy’s back and got up, inviting Jack to sit down. He nodded to her his thanks, asking, “Is there somewhere we can be alone for a few minutes.” She smiled, nodding, then took Mitch by the arm, leading them to a small room off the main corridor and shutting the door behind her, left them alone.

  He took the boy by the arm and sat down on the small sofa placed there for that purpose. A moment later, Mitch looked up at him. His eyes were swollen, his pupils dilated, telling Jack immediately that he’d been sedated, but the soul behind them…he would never as long as he lived forget the look in those eyes. The boy was completely lost, wandering alone, directionless in a vast desert of loneliness.

  “You could have come to me, Mitch,” he said quietly and before he realized it, the boy had thrown himself into Jack’s arms, sobbing great, heartbreaking, heaving sobs of grief on his shoulder. Jack caught him handily and held him tightly. “It’s alright, son. You let it go and don’t worry. I’ve gotcha,” he said, not knowing where the words came from. “I won’t let you go.”

  Jack’s eyes got as misty as the window he was staring out of remembering that day, not only for what it had done to Mitch, but what it had done for him and as he sat there staring out of that window, the same feeling washed over him again. The one that completed him as a man, because as he sat there in that tiny room, holding that sad, sobbing boy, he realized it was the first time he really felt like a father.

  It didn’t matter that he had two daughters of his own almost the same age. Annette had never really let him be a father to them anyway. From the day they were born, she’d given them everything and anything they ever wanted. In the almost eighteen years of their lives, they never once needed him for anything that mattered, and here was this brilliant, lost boy, his whole world destroyed before he’d had the chance to become a man, clinging to him for the strength and support…the love that only a father could give, needing him desperately to be that for him, and for the first time in his whole life Jack Edgeworth knew what he’d been missing. He knew what it meant to be a father to a son who needed him, and it was a feeling that would change both their lives forever.

  Later that evening Jack accompanied the boy home with his Aunt Marj. He was amazed how much she looked like Melanie, the same hair and eyes. They put the boy to bed, and sat and had coffee; small talk at first, then after she’d guessed that Jack really had more than just a passing interest in Mitch’s well being, she began to tell him things, personal, intimate things about Mitch’s life, and Melanie’s.

  Marjaree’s face glowed as she told him how very proud she was of her sister’s independence, and her spirit, her courage in coming to New York City by herself to become a singer. But then her expression changed from pride to sorrow when she started to tell him about, what she politely called, “The Bramson Matter.”

  It seems that Melanie had developed quite a loyal following among the young people who came to hear her sing, not surprisingly the boys in particular. Jack, knowing inside that he was one of them, kept it to himself.

  She remembered getting her first letter from Melanie telling her that she’d met “a special boy” named Julian Bramson, a graduate student at Harvard. She told Jack that Melanie had known him for over a year before she found out that he was not just any boy, but the sole heir to an enormous steel fortune built by his grandfather, and then enlarged three fold by his father, making them one of the wealthiest and most influential families in the Northeast. Jack didn’t need the description she gave to know who she was talking about. He knew who Julian Bramson was, and was stunned for the second time in one day to find out that Mitch was not only Melanie Woodward’s son, but the son she had with Julian Bramson, the third.

  Marjaree went on to tell him that Melanie was less than thrilled by the money, being more or less a hippy and a social freedom fighter, but it seemed that she really loved the boy, and they ran off and got married during that summer of love. “That’s when the trouble began,” Marj told Jack over their third cup of coffee. “They weren’t even married a month when Mellie had a visit from Annabelle Bramson and two of her lawyers and they hadn’t come for tea.”

  “They’d come to tell her to her face that she was an ‘unsuitable’ match for Julian and tried to buy her off, offering her one million dollars if she agreed to annul the marriage. When that didn’t work, they threatened her. The old woman said that she’d use all the resources at her disposal to ruin Melanie’s budding career which at that point had just started to flourish. When she didn’t bow to threats, they left and took another tack.”

  “When Julian came from school to be with her again the next weekend, he brought a suitcase, an empty one, and took all of his things out of the apartment. He childishly told her that he was sorry, but that his mother was the administrator of the trust left to him by his father and grandfather until he turned thirty, and that his mother would see to it that neither of them would see a dime if he didn’t agree to the annulment. Then
he really broke her heart. When she told him that she was pregnant, his parting words to her that day were, ‘…in that case, it would probably be best if you took the million’.”

  “And she did,” Marj told Jack. “But she never touched a red cent of it. She put the whole thing in a trust for her unborn child and then went and had what they called in those days, a nervous breakdown. That bastard had broken her spirit.” Marj said bitterly and started to cry. “I came out here to be with her until she had the baby, but I could see in her eyes that she’d never be the same again. Mitch was born in a psychiatric clinic upstate six months later,” Marj said as she wiped the tears streaming from her eyes.

  “Then when Mellie was strong enough to be to be on her own again, she took the apartment in a poor neighborhood behind First Avenue and East Sixth Street. I stayed there with them for almost two years and took care of Mitch while she went back to work. I tried to convince her to use some of the money to get a better place, but she wouldn’t have any part of it. She said that for her to use any of that money would be ‘giving in to them, like she was being paid for like a prostitute’ and she would never give them that satisfaction. She’d rather struggle in poverty as an honorable woman than ever have Mitch grow up thinking she’d sold him out and have him be ashamed of her. That was when she wrote Through My Child’s Eyes, although it wouldn’t be recorded for another year.

  “That winter we struggled, all of us, so hard. I worked as a waitress over at the Second Avenue Deli while Mellie watched Mitch, then at night she would sing in the folk clubs and cafés and I would baby sit. That was when she wrote Poor in New York at Christmas.”

  “She told me she was walking over by the Bowery on the way home from a club date on Christmas Eve when she saw a young woman in tattered old clothes and no coat standing in the cold outside a shelter holding a little boy in her arms. She told me it was like looking into a mirror and her heart broke for that woman, and herself. She took off her own coat and hat and gave it to the woman, along with all the money she’d made that night, about a hundred dollars, and told her to go feed her boy and find a decent place to stay for the night.

  “When she came home and told me, I could have killed her. ‘That was half our rent for the month.’ I shouted at her. But looking back, I’m so sorry now that I did. She was my Mellie and it was just like her to do something like that. I miss her so much,” Marj cried, breaking into quiet sobs of grief that she must have been holding onto for days.

  Jack went to her, put his arm around her and gave her his handkerchief. She wiped her face then poured more coffee. “The next year, Through My Child’s Eyes was released and made her first album a hit, then the following year Poor in New York at Christmas made her second album a hit and became a holiday classic. I went back to Ohio and got married. But Mellie never forgot how we struggled and she raised Mitch the same way.

  “Every year after that she used her fame the way she wanted, giving concerts at Christmas and taking Mitch with her to bring the money to homeless shelters and work in the kitchens. And you know, for a young boy, you would think it might have scared him, but it didn’t. It was just the opposite. He loved every minute of it and loved her even more for it. He loved being with her. I don’t know what’ll happen to him now that she’s gone.” Marj shook her head and began to cry again. “I know he’ll have plenty of money now, from the trust and the royalties from Mellie’s music, but he’ll be so alone without her. I just came back to New York a few months ago when I found out she was sick. I’ve only seen Mitch when I came to visit on holidays and summers since he was a baby and I have to go back to my own children soon.”

  Jack got that ‘father’ feeling again and his mouth opened without even a thought about what he was saying. “He won’t be alone. I’ll look after him. He’s my friend and…I care about him a great deal. I’ll take good care of him. I give you my word. He’ll never have to be alone.”

  Marj looked up at Jack and nodded. “I could tell that from the way you stayed with him at the funeral and came here with us, the way he knew he could lean on you. He’ll need that so much now, Dr. Edgeworth, now more than ever.” But Jack didn’t know at the time how true those words would become.

  After Marjaree went back to Ohio, he took hold of Mitch’s life, guided him through everything. He seemed to be coming along well enough. He was quieter, sadder, and lonelier, of course, no matter how hard Jack tried to include him in everything in his own life.

  Looking back though, he should’ve seen it coming. The signs were all there, he just didn’t know enough to recognize them in time.

  Right after Thanksgiving, Mitch started making excuses every time they went out to eat, not hungry, already eaten. It went on like that for weeks but Jack didn’t see it. He could kick himself every time he thought about it since then, the kid was starving himself.

  Whether it was just a loss of appetite from depression or intentional deprivation, it didn’t really matter. He was starving, and Jack took it on himself as guilt. Guilt for promising to take care of him and failing; guilt for watching Mitch get thinner every day but not seeing it.

  In the end the only thing that saved them both that Christmas Eve was Jack’s little voice, the one that came to him at the party. It got into him at the funeral and had stayed with him ever since, that “connected” feeling parents get when they know their child is in trouble.

  Jack took a deep breath as he sat in his chair that afternoon in his office, secured only by the fact that he’d just seen Mitch leave his office and knew he was safe before he could let himself go back that Christmas Eve.

  He thanked God every day for that little voice because, had it not spoken to him and urged him so loudly, so repeatedly, or if he’d let that selfish, whining wife of his delay him even a few minutes longer in his entry hall that evening, Mitch would have been dead and Jack would have been lost forever, so when Mitch opened his eyes that night in the hospital and asked him, “What’s going to happen to me now?” Jack gave him the only answer possible. “You’re coming home with me,” swearing to himself that he would never, ever be so lax in his attention to the boy again, and he kept his word, to both of them, ever since.

  As soon as Mitch was able to leave the hospital, Jack took him back to his townhouse. Annette and the girls had gone back to Philly by then, so he did the only thing he could think of, he paid off Mitch’s lease and had his things moved to Park Avenue so he could come there straight from the hospital and never have to go back.

  From that day on he watched every move Mitch made, every meal he ate, knew where he was every minute of the day. He counted himself lucky because they both spent so much time at the school and the Museum, it wasn’t as difficult as it could have been had Mitch been the deceptive type or had interests different from Jack’s.

  The first year was the toughest. For weeks Jack had to listen to Mitch cry himself to sleep almost every night through his bedroom door, but at least he didn’t have that worry. He’d had the locks removed from all the doors in the townhouse before Mitch came to stay, but he really didn’t get that feel from him anymore anyway.

  Mitch ate properly and Jack got him a card so Mitch could use his gym membership, which Mitch seemed to take to easily. And he could confess it to himself now, all these years later, he coddled the boy shamelessly, like he was the most precious thing in the world, never for a moment pausing to regret it, and more importantly, it worked.

  Mitch’s body grew steadily stronger and his academics were never better. It was worth it. Then when Mitch graduated, Jack was so proud. He clapped louder than his upbringing would have normally allowed and louder than anyone else in the room. He even whistled as Mitch got called up to take his diploma. From there, he got Mitch admitted to his graduate program at Columbia, which was a given since it was Jack’s alma mater, and an internship at the Museum, another given. Then after Mitch received his doctorate, Jack rewarded him by buying him a place at the Dakota.

  The separation tugge
d at him, but he knew in his heart that it was time for his broken bird to fly the nest and took his consolation in the fact that he’d intentionally found him the place at the Dakota because it was less than ten blocks away from his townhouse on Park, running distance if he had to, but by then that particular memory was just that, a memory.

  They spent the next ten years searching the secret parts of the world for art and ancient relics they could bring back to the Museum, digging in pits everywhere from Jordan in the Middle East to Machu Picchu high in the Andes Mountains.

  He would never forget the first time he took Mitch to a local tapas bar in Spain’s glorious medieval city of Toledo to see the El Grecos; the two of them drunk as sailors on shore leave, swaggering their way back to the hotel pretending to be Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, tilting at windmills as they stumbled down the dark narrow streets of the city

  He loved remembering the first time he actually got Mitch into a deep pit to uncover a buried Roman settlement in Andalusia in the south; hearing him excitedly call out, “Jack! Jack! Look what I found,” as he popped his head up out of the trench, his face covered in mud, his hands and arms caked with it as he held up an Ancient Roman bust of Mars, fully intact, from the time of Hadrian; the shining excitement in those beautiful green, feline eyes, his mother’s eyes. His smile beaming out like a spotlight from behind his muddy face like a small boy covered in paint who’d just brought home his first finger painting from school, “Look, Dad, look what I made!”