Berto's World_Stories

by R. A. Comunale M. D.

  “Okay, Hopalong Che cosa dite. Let’s see you stay on that horse!”

  Monteverdi flicked the reins, and off we went.

  Clip-clop, clip-clop, clip-clop.

  At first I was scared out of my gourd. I kept whispering in that horse’s ear, “Don’t make me fall.”

  Eventually, I calmed down and sat straight up—though I still held tight to Mandy’s neck mane.

  We entered the old neighborhood in triumph. I kept yelling, “Hi yo, Silver,” and waving to folks we knew. I looked like a total idiot.

  Giuseppe pulled the wagon to the curb in front of the candy lady’s store.

  “Thanks fer helpin’ out, guys. Here…”

  He flipped quarters to Sal and me. I slid off the horse’s back. By then I didn’t want to leave her. Sal jumped down from the seat.

  “Sure you don’t need us to unload this stuff, Giuseppe?”

  “Naw, thanks.”

  I shot a longing look at the little desk set and bookcase. Sal was even more obvious. He really liked that armchair.

  Giuseppe just said “giddap!”

  As the horse pulled away, we noticed what it had left in front of the candy lady’s store.

  Sal said he had something to do, so I headed to see Thomas the barber. My legs were a bit sore from clenching the sides of the old mare. My rump felt even worse, but I wouldn’t have traded that ride for anything.

  It was almost closing time. I walked in and picked up the broom lying in the back of the barber shop. Thomas looked me over and wrinkled his nose.

  “Phew! Berto, you smell like horse!”

  He was smiling. He had seen me riding and playing the fool.

  “Thomas ever tell you ’bout time he rode Siberian pony? I go see girl with big bazookas while her papa out and he come back early and…”

  “Yes, Thomas, you did.”

  “I tell you how hard is put clothes on while horse gallop? Pants worst.”

  “Yes, Thomas.”

  “I tell you how papa shoot gun at Thomas?”

  “Uh, yes.”

  I finished sweeping. Thomas went to his ice box, pulled out a beer and a Moxie, handed me the soda pop, and sat down in one of the barber chairs.

  “So, how you like horse, Berto?”

  What could I say? To this day I remember the look in the beast’s big brown eyes. I really think it understood what I was saying. Yes, even now I have a soft spot for large, dumb animals.

  A thought pops into my head: Giuseppe never used a whip.

  Thomas and I guzzled down our drinks and tried to outdo each other belching. He won.

  It’s a guy thing. Actually it’s a boy thing—it’s just that some boys don’t give it up.

  I headed to the clinic. It was still daylight and it was Saturday, Agnelli’s busiest day—and night. I had gotten permission from Mama and Papa to stay late.

  The candy lady’s store was on my way. As I passed by I saw her using a snow shovel to scoop up Mandy’s little gift to the street. I actually felt sorry for the old woman even though I couldn’t stand her. She was so miserable.

  “Can I help you with that, ma’am?”

  She stood up straight. I could almost hear her joints creak. She stared at me then spat out, “You go tell that degenerate old man if that horse of his does this again, I’ll shoot it—and him!”

  I kept on going.

  Mr. Huff’s store lights were out. Sure enough, he was in Mr. Ruddy’s place next door. The two Old Guys were chewing the fat as I passed. Mr. Ruddy waved at me to come in.

  “Berto, you gonna be a cowboy now, huh? What’s poor old Agnelli gonna thinka that? We all figgered you was gonna take over his place in a coupla years.”

  Mr. Huff tried to wink, but that World War One shellshock trauma sent his face into a grotesque spasm.

  Mr. Ruddy swung his half body onto the counter. His bright blue eyes were creased with laugh lines.

  “You know, Berto, I had dreams once. See, after the war I was gonna stay in the army and become a cavalry officer. Always did like horses, and I heard the military was gonna set up a whole new cavalry brigade.”

  He raised his head and grinned.

  “I’d sure look damned funny if I tried that now, don’tcha think?”

  Mr. Huff swigged his beer, belched, and laughed.

  “Harry, you could get one a’ them hookah things all them sultans used ta ride in. Don’t need any legs!”

  His face spasmed again.

  Both men looked at the floor. I tried to break the silence.

  “It was a helluva lotta fun riding Mandy.”

  “Watch yer mouth, boy! You’re not allowed to cuss yet. That’s just for old farts like us. Besides, if you’re gonna be a sawbones like Agnelli someday … well, docs don’t cuss.”

  He was right. Dr. Agnelli never cussed.

  Harry, if you’re up there in heaven, and you’re conscious of this old man’s ramblings, I can tell you stories about docs and cussing that would curl your wings. I don’t know if I’m going to wind up where you guys are now, but even if my afterlife is a lot warmer, we can still talk, can’t we?

  Both men could see I was embarrassed, so Mr. Huff pointed to the refrigerator. “Grab a soda pop, kid.”

  I grabbed a Moxie and leaned against the counter—I was having a drink with the Old Guys!

  “Did you know Old Joe was a horseman in the army?”

  I looked at Mr. Ruddy.

  “Yep, old Joe, he’s older than us, kid. He’s gotta be pushin’ seventy. He was in the cavalry down on the Tex-Mex border chasing Pancho Villa under Black Jack Pershing. Some damned bandito shot him off his horse and stuck a knife in his throat.”

  Mr. Huff finished the story.

  “Joe’s horse stayed by his side ’til he was rescued.”

  They watched the understanding spread across my face.

  That explained the Voice.

  “Old Joe used to be quite a lady’s man. He even dated that Donnelly woman. ‘Course her name was Lottie Smith. She was hot stuff then.”

  He stopped and grinned.

  Mr. Huff took a turn.

  “Yeah, me, Harry, Tim, Titus and Tommy, we kids used ta sneak behind her and lift the back o’ her petticoats. Harry, didn’t she give Tommy a whack on the head with her fancy parasol?”

  Mr. Ruddy laughed.

  “Yeah, she did! Then Titus snatched it from her and ran down the street singing in falsetto!”

  Now both men were busting a gut.

  “Old Joe, he finally got smart and realized what he was dealing with, so he took off. Left her for a pretty Mexican girl he met just over the border. The old biddy never forgave him. She had to settle for Shamus Donnelly.”

  I recognized the name from whispered gossip when I was younger. Old Shamus was the neighborhood sloppy drunk. One day he wound up facedown dead in front of one of the local bars.

  Funny how the memory plays tricks as you age. The only image that comes to mind of the candy lady now is a mixture of “American Gothic” and “The Scream.”

  “Mr. Huff, how did Joe get into the junk business?”

  My face must have looked stupid-innocent, because both men laughed so hard at my question they would have rolled on the floor if they could.

  “Joe, he’s one smart cookie. He went down to Texas. Did some straw boss work and bought property. Guess what? That property had oil on it!”

  Mr. Ruddy nodded.

  “Where’d we go wrong, George? How come we ain’t rich?”

  Some secret joke passed between them.

  As the sun got ready to set, I thanked the men for the soda pop and headed to the clinic.

  Dr. Agnelli looked tired. With each year the work load got bigger, and he got older. I tried to help out as best I could without getting in his way. He let me do some of the minor stuff, albeit under his hawk-eyed supervision. I helped set fractures and clean minor wounds. I actually got pretty good at simple procedures.

  The first thing Dr. Agn
elli said when he saw me was, “Berto, go put on some scrubs. You stink!”

  Damn, how come I couldn’t smell it?

  I learned the physiology much later: It’s a defense mechanism—the brain tends to ignore the body’s own odors, so it can pick up the scents of others.

  It was after eleven p.m. when things settled down. Dr. Agnelli wisely allowed some of the really late-night cases to go to the hospital. He couldn’t handle the escalating trauma coming out of the neighborhood. He was a miracle worker, but he was still human, and he recognized the increasing need for rest periods.

  In med school and residency they beat such common sense out of you. It takes years to realize how stupid it is to acquire a god complex.

  We batted small talk for a while, and then he stood up and said, “Let’s call it a night.”

  I felt really good that weekend.

  Four weeks passed. It was nearing the end of the school year, and everyone was cramming for finals. I doubt that was Sal’s case, but he wasn’t around even when I did have some breathing time. So I started a habit I have kept ever since: I took long walks.

  I walked and walked and walked. Most times I really didn’t know where I was going or why. I just ambled.

  That day I was ambling past the storefronts of my friends, including Mr. Buck’s. I saw a new sign in the window: B&C’S WATCH AND CLOCK REPAIR.

  I hadn’t noticed that before. The door was open, so I stuck my head in. The old man and the young man sat at the workbench: Mr. Buck and Paolo Cherubini.

  I hadn’t seen Paolo since grammar school. He wasn’t the same little kid I knew. Puberty does that.

  He was almost as tall as I was, and his face was still weird looking, but it showed something I and most of my friends didn’t have: contentment.

  Neither looked up, so focused were they on those tiny gears and levers and pinions.

  I left the store as quietly as I could.

  Corrado, my mentor, my friend, would we have done the same if you had lived after I graduated medical school?

  I walked to the end of my world and into the world that was “Theirs.”

  I still wasn’t sure what I was doing, walking without gawking at the American Taj Mahals, their elaborate, sculpted metal beasts on four wheels parked out in front awaiting the whims of their masters. I saw well-dressed people, well-fed people. None of them showed the contentment that Paolo’s face displayed.

  I passed the house where my Marigold Lady once lived. Are you content now, Lady?

  Suddenly I noticed I had neared the big, Tudor-style mansion. I hadn’t really studied it the last time, being too busy and overwhelmed by the treasure of furniture so casually disposed of.

  Wrought iron fencing surrounded the house. A large, ornate, double metal gate lay open, exposing a block-long driveway that curved both in front and to the rear. There was a manicured lawn with numerous, flowering bushes—azaleas—which I later cultivated at my Virginia home filling in the front and sides. Several well-kept flowerbeds, adorned with early and mid season tulips, had been strategically placed around dwarf trees and a garden fountain.

  It was far too large to be Hansel and Gretel’s enchanted cottage, but I stood there in the driveway, enraptured by the sheer beauty of it all. I didn’t snap out of my reverie for several minutes. Then, as I turned and began to walk back the way I had come, my ears heard what my mind refused to believe: From the back of the house came the distinct sounds of a neighing horse and a human bumblebee calling out, “Easy, old girl. Easy.”

  The Working Girl

  They’re known by many names.

  For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of spending a typical night in a hospital emergency room let me be your guide. I was finishing my junior year in medical school and beginning the first of three rotations in emergency service. It was daunting. We shifted back and forth between two distinct units, one medical, and the other surgical/trauma.

  Yes, I had already seen more than most as a boy, helping Dr. Agnelli at his clinic in the tenements. Those weekend crushes with patients milling around, people assaulted by various injuries and illnesses, proved invaluable if difficult experiences. They pulled at you, demanding treatment as adults while descending into childlike dependence and fear—I had seen it all

  But this latter day Gehenna exceeded anything I had encountered back home by logarithmic magnitudes, including the Saturday Night Knife and Gun Club types, or the poor souls staring blankly with alcohol- or drug-glazed eyes. Those cases involved people making stubborn and repeated bad judgments, and receiving a bullet hole or knife wound—or self-induced stupor—as a result.

  Here, it was the sheer number and utter starkness of the dead, fatalities caused by riding in moving vehicles that had suddenly met immovable objects or, maybe, someone at the wrong place at the wrong time, a piece of industrial equipment rending the body, or an individual suffering unspeakable cruelty at the hand of a family member or lover. Sometimes they lay by the dozens on carts along the wall, the deceased among the living and injured.

  My ears rang with the moans and outbursts of screams, and the sobbing of family members standing by a lost son or daughter, imploring whatever deities they believed in to bring their loved ones back. It was a scene from “Dante’s Inferno.”

  “Galen, we’ll start you off easy.”

  I couldn’t be sure if the ER surgical resident was serious or joking. His face was inscrutable, something I later saw out in the field as well. It was the mind’s self-defense against horror delivered on a daily basis. It was shell shock, PTSD—you name it.

  He handed me a clipboard with an attached admission form. The admitting nurse had filled it in: the patient’s name, age, race, and sex:

  LAST NAME: Stanley

  FIRST NAME: Billy

  AGE: 15

  RACE: White

  SEX: Male

  The rest of the form was blank, except for big red letters rubberstamped across the bottom:

  DOA

  “Hit and run,” the resident muttered. “He was trying to cross a highway and got clipped. The bastard never stopped to help him. You need to tell the family. All they know is that the kid’s here.”

  He turned and walked away. A nurse guided him to someone he could actually help.

  I walked in to ER Bay 3 and lifted the sheet to look at the teenager lying on the gurney cart. He was wearing what we then called dungarees—blue jeans now—and Keds sneakers. No, make that one Keds sneaker. His left foot was shoeless. The red plaid shirt he had put on earlier that day was torn and bloody. His left leg was sitting at a severely unnatural angle.

  Then I looked at his face.

  It wasn’t there.

  His head was a giant, purple grape that had been rolled over by a tire carrying a two-ton vehicle.

  Where his hair should have formed dark brown waves, gray-white and bloodied tissue protruded like a mushroom.

  “Where’s Billy, where’s my Billy?”

  I turned at the sound of the woman’s voice. Reflexively I re-covered the boy, just before she entered the bay. When she saw the sheet-draped body, she collapsed to the floor.

  The man who had walked in with her helped me to seat her in a nearby chair. He looked at me. I knew that he knew.

  “May I see him?”

  “Uh … sir … I … uh … I don’t recommend it. He was just brought in.”

  He stared at me, seeing me for the neophyte that I was.

  “Son, I’m a doctor. This is my nephew. Please…”

  I stood back as he moved toward the cart and slowly raised the sheet. When I heard him gasp, I moved forward to help, but he raised his hand to me and lowered the covering.

  The morgue attendant was kind. He waited, until I had guided Billy’s family out to the special area, where social workers would assist them through the government-mandated hell of paperwork. Then he pushed the cart into the corridor and headed to the morgue.

  I heard him humming a tune from “Show Boat.”<
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  My whites soaked with sweat, I walked to the nursing station. I wanted to sit down, but the charge nurse handed me another clipboard and leered at me.

  “Don’t know why, but the resident said to go easy with you, seeing as how it’s your first day. Least this one’s alive.”

  Her face softened.

  “You ever deal with a working girl?”

  I realize now that the first case had stunned me. All I could give her was a quizzical look.

  “Boy, I’m talking about a prossy, a street lady, a lady of the night.”

  A blank stare from me.

  “Damn it, boy, a whore!”

  I nodded. My childhood tenement neighborhood had its share of red-light ladies.

  “From the looks a you, I guess you were never a john."

  Another stupid look.

  “Hell, boy, you know what I mean. You never used one?”

  Never did, but I knew about them—Sal had made sure of that.

  Once more the nurse got down to business.

  “This girl got herself beat up by her pimp. She’ll need the full evaluation, including the rape kit—though I don't know what that will prove. You’ll need a nurse to chaperone. You done pelvics before?”

  I nodded meekly.

  “And kid, get outta those whites. Put on some scrubs. You’ll be a helluva lot more comfortable.”

  Crusty old gal, but she was right. From then on it was hospital blues—scrubs—for me in the ER.

  I walked into Bay 6, accompanied by a nurse fresh out of training. Her nametag read LUANN. We both stood staring at the woman lying on her side on the cart. I read the admission sheet, with the name and age omitted. The only background information was obvious—she was a white female—but at least the admitting nurse had done a preliminary workup on her:

  Multiple contusions and lacerations. Signs of blunt trauma. Possible physical/sexual abuse.

  I later learned her name and age—Ruby Joseph, thirty-five—but she looked much older than that. Like Billy Stanley, she also looked like she had been run over. She had open wounds and bruises on her face, arms, chest, and abdomen. I could see the boot imprints where she had been kicked on her belly and thighs. And there were unusual swellings just below her umbilicus (belly button) and from her rectum.