Requiem for the Bone Man

by R. A. Comunale

  “Mama, it’s Berto. Tell Papa when he comes home I got accepted to medical school!”

  The phone was quiet for a few seconds, then his mother responded, still strangely quiet.

  “Si, Berto, I will tell him. This is wonderful news.”

  He hung up the phone. He had expected her to be as happy as he was, but he sensed the reserve in her voice. What was wrong?

  It was true he and Papa hadn’t seen eye to eye on a number of things since he had started college. His father still dealt with him in the old way, never acknowledging his growth as a person or his reaching adulthood. He understood the cultural imperative of the old country, deference to parental authority being the highest level of respect a child could demonstrate.

  Yet he had grown tired of the petty arguments over everything, the endless fault-finding and criticism. It seemed as though his father was trying to drive him away.

  He would call later when his father had come home from work.

  He walked slowly across the campus and sat down on one of the benches outside the main library, which had served as his sanctuary.

  “Mr. Galen, are you all right?”

  He looked up and saw his favorite professor, Dr. Basily, chairman of the anthropology department and curator of the school museum. His back ramrod straight—the result of a war wound from Korea—he was never too busy to talk over class points or just about anything else.

  Galen wished he could talk to his father the way he did with Basily.

  “I just got accepted to medical school, Dr. Basily.”

  “And this is what gives you the long face? Spill it, Galen.”

  He told the older man about his encounter with Dr. Freiling and the strangely unenthusiastic response from his mother.

  “That old fart Freiling isn’t happy unless he’s making someone else miserable. Listen, Galen, let me give you some advice that took me twenty years to learn. In your life you will meet two types of people of whom you should be very wary: dream eaters and soul stealers.

  “Freiling is a dream eater. He will tell you that what you strive for is not for you, and that you don’t have the ability so you shouldn’t even try. Dream eaters can be teachers, friends, counselors, or even family. These people, like Freiling, are emotional vampires, manipulators, control freaks. Later, when you become the fine doctor that I know you will be, you will run into the soul stealers. These will be your colleagues, your bosses, collateral individuals who will try to sabotage what you do. They also are emotional vampires who live off your misery. Unfortunately, your worst enemies will be yourself and those closest to you—your family. This is when your guard should be at its highest, and you should resist with all your might.”

  Basily reached over and ruffled the hair on Galen’s head.

  “C’mon, let’s go to the student union. I’ll buy you a soda to celebrate the good news.”

  “Dr. Basily, would you mind if I asked you a personal question?”

  “Shoot.”

  “Your back must hurt quite a bit. Can anything be done for it?”

  “Mr. Galen, it hurts like a sonofabitch. And no, I’ve been told it’s as good as it will ever get. That reminds me of a third point I need to share with you.”

  “What’s that, sir?”

  “Shit happens, no matter what you do and no matter how hard you try to prevent it.”

  Galen smiled, the muscles of his own shoulders visibly relaxing—for a short time, anyway.

  “Antonio, we have to tell him.”

  “Cara mia, it is not his right to know. It is his duty to obey. I will tell him when he comes home. He will not go away until it is over. He must respect our wishes. That is the way it must be.”

  ...

  On the day of his graduation, as had been the case in high school, Galen was alone—without family—a disappointment that dampened what could have been a wonderful moment for him. He had achieved summa cum laude, and his life was spread out before him, a full plate of promise and opportunity.Dr. Agnelli had invited him to help out at his clinic over the summer, taking Galen under his wing once more. Except now that he had been accepted into medical school, Agnelli treated him as one of the brotherhood and talked frankly about the life Galen would face.

  “I’m not sure you know what you’ve signed on for, Berto. If you’re foolish, like me, you’ll let it take over your entire life, even to the point of neglecting your wife and children—if you’re lucky enough to have any.”

  He looked at the tired old doctor he had known all of his life—the doctor who had delivered him. Galen felt comfortable talking with him, just as he had with Professor Basily.

  “Dottore, you know me better than anyone except my parents. You know how much I love what you do, what you represent. I just don’t know how to get my father to understand that.”

  “What’s the matter, Berto? Isn’t your father proud of you and what you’ve accomplished?”

  “I think he is, but he never says so anymore, and now he wants me to put off going away to school. He won’t tell me why. He just says it is my duty to obey his wishes.

  “Dottore, I’m twenty years old and my father doesn’t treat me as an adult, with thoughts and goals of my own. I’ve worked so hard to get to this point in my life. I thought that’s what he wanted, what he expected of me. And now…”

  Agnelli just shook his head. This did not sound like the Antonio he knew. There had to be something wrong. He looked at Galen and gave him the only advice he could.

  “Berto, whatever your father says, follow your dreams.”

  “Anna, I must do it. He must not go, not now.”

  He looked at his wife, the scars and wrinkles of age and economic hardship dissolving as he remembered the sweetly singing girl he had fallen instantly in love with so many years ago. They had been young, so young back then, with dreams of conquering the world, but as with everyone else the world had fought back and taken its toll. Now he was dying. The foundry soot and flames had given conception to their devil spawn, the thing that grew within his lungs and liver.

  Antonio Galen knew he was being eaten from within, that soon his beloved Anna would be alone. The boy had to stay, at least until after.

  She started to ask again: Why not tell him? But then she remembered her own father and the men of the village where they were born. It was a loss of face to show weakness, to admit it even to one’s children and sometimes even to one’s wife.

  She knew her husband and she knew her son. They were so alike. She feared the outcome of the impending contest of wills. The very thought of it worsened the chest tightness she had told no one about. The women of her village were not so different from the men: They kept their vulnerabilities to themselves.

  His bags were packed. It was his last day at home.

  “I have to go, Papa.”

  “A son must respect his father’s wishes.”

  “Papa, you’re not listening to me!”

  Then he did something he had never done before. He was a man now, stocky, muscular, and full of the electricity of his prime. He reached out and touched the now-shorter, gray-haired man. He meant it as an entreaty, a way of breaking through the wall between them.

  For the first time, his father turned and faced him. The old man’s fire-darkened eyes stared at his son for a moment that would haunt the young man forever. He saw his father’s jaw muscles tighten and his facial expression harden as he spoke to him for the last time.

  “Non ho figlio!”

  As Antonio Gallini uttered those words, Pietro Gallini’s ghostly laughter echoed in his mind.

  CHAPTER 2

  Chrysalis

  “She’s really going to the prom with you?” Edison said to himself as he looked in the mirror.

  He still couldn’t quite believe it—he’d actually asked her to the senior prom and she had accepted. What would Galen have thought?

  Galen.

  Because of him, Edison had been able to finish high school without too many bruis
es. For one thing, the rabbity kid had developed the small-animal instinct of running at the slightest hint of danger. For another, the calls of “Let’s get Four Eyes” had become a distant memory ever since that chance meeting with Greg Thornton in the stairwell when, miracle of miracles, he’d found a protector and a friend in the schoolmate he came to call Big Brother.

  Galen was long gone, but the effects of their friendship lived on in the confidence Edison had gained about himself.

  Still, he missed the big guy. They had made quite a team in radio club, and life had gone a lot smoother when they’d put their heads together on school projects. They had won the science fair two years in a row, and that last idea of theirs, a device to make people’s hearts work better, had become a legend among the high school faculty.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Edison, it’s so nice to see you again this year. The boys have done some splendid work again with their project. I just hope the judges will be able to understand it!”

  All of the exhibits at the East Coast Science Fair, where their son and his friend Robert Galen had entered their project, dazzled Ron and Gloria Edison. They shook the hand extended by Concepción High School’s principal and nodded thanks.

  “Ron, why don’t you walk around and check out the competition, while I see how the boys are holding up.”

  “Sure. Just come get me if anything happens.”

  So Gloria walked back to the boys’ exhibit and Ron wandered down the aisles of displays representing the different age groups, from junior high on up. Some of the stuff was routine, but a lot of ingenuity showed as well.

  He was proud of his boy, who could beat him hands down with anything mechanical or electrical. Bobby truly was his father’s son. He smiled quietly to himself as he remembered how the boy had found that old cathedral-style Philco radio in the attic—the one he himself had rescued from the trash, fixed up, and given to Gloria as a wedding gift back in 1941—and actually restored it to working condition.

  How much he had loved those old broadcasts.

  “Okay, guys and gals, jivesters and beboppers, this is your old professor, Kay Kaiser, and his School of Musical Knowledge. We’re gonna play some special stuff for all our brave men and women in the armed forces overseas. Maestro, let’s hear it!”

  As Ron’s mind drifted, he could hear the strains of “Don’t Sit under the Apple Tree with Anyone Else but Me” pouring out of the radio’s single speaker. And he could see himself getting up to turn the volume down then going back to sit next to his wife of one month.

  ...

  “Honey, I got my notice. We ship out in two days.”

  Gloria looked at him, the lanky Michigan farm boy she’d fallen for at first sight at the enlisted men’s dance, but she didn’t say anything. Back then he hadn’t known, hadn’t seen in her eyes, the secret she carried.

  “Will you write to me?”

  He hadn’t known, as he’d gazed at his rosy-cheeked Gloria, why the tears had begun to glisten in her hazel eyes. He’d just pulled her to his chest and hugged her.

  “Silly, you know I will,” she replied.

  Then she hugged him tight—as though she couldn’t let go.

  ...

  “Ron, I think the judging is going to start soon.”

  He snapped out of his flashback and turned around to see her standing behind him.

  “Okay, let’s head on over.”

  Just then, he noticed a man standing next to a young girl and her exhibit in the junior high school section. He knew that face!

  “Wait a minute, Gloria, there’s someone here I think I know, but I can’t remember from where.”

  As he started to walk toward the man it hit him.

  Ira. It’s Ira!

  Now he was standing on the deck of the troopship conveying its human cargo of soldiers to the War in Europe, headed toward Naples now that Italy had fallen to the Allies.

  He could feel the letter in his pocket that he had been carrying with him everywhere.

  Dear Ron,

  Congratulations, Daddy, you have a son!

  I didn’t want to tell you that last day. You would have tried to stay and we both know that wouldn’t have been possible. Our little Bobby, Robert Aaron Edison, was born on September 18th. Now there are two of us you have to return to.

  Be careful. The Red Cross lady said she would get this letter to you.

  I love you!

  Gloria

  He had received it months later, just before he shipped out, but he had read it every day.

  ...

  “All hands, commander on deck.”

  He stood at attention by his bunk.

  “At ease, men. The Dewey is transferring a platoon of Marines to our ship by special orders. Must be secret stuff for them to transfer troops from the Pacific. I know it’s already crowded, but we’ll have to double-bunk them. We’re only two days from destination, so it won’t be for long.”

  The commander turned and left.

  He heard the other men complaining, but with sixteen brothers and sisters back home, it was nothing to him. Double-bunking was a luxury compared to that.

  “Edison!”

  “Yes sir?”

  “Think you can do something about the air in here? You’re a machinist’s mate, ain’t you?”

  The chief knew the extra men on board would make it like an oven in the bunks.

  He had the fan unit apart in no time. He pulled out the heavy-duty C wrench from the tool kit and began to work. Within minutes the fan was purring again. He hefted the wrench and began to clean off the grease. Beautiful workmanship, he thought as he read the markings stamped on the handle: NEWARK FOUNDRY 3.

  Now he had to endure the gauntlet of backslapping and hair rubbing from the happy men.

  They all heard the heavy boots tromping down to their level. The door opened and a gravelly voice boomed out:

  “Awright, you jarheads! Git yer gear stowed! The Navy is sharing its luxury accommodations with us, so no fights or crap like that. Anybody steps outta line, you gotta deal with me!”

  Tired-looking Marines poured into the compartment. One stopped by his bunk, a short, powerfully built, Levantine man, with eyes sunken in chronic sadness.

  He stood up and held out his hand.

  “Ron Edison, machinist’s mate.”

  The guy looked at him.

  “Seligman, Ira Seligman, corpsman. Thanks.”

  “So who’s the foghorn?”

  “That’s our old man, Gunny Crowley. He’s twenty-five if he’s a day.”

  ...

  His mind continued to flip through those past scenes of men under wartime stress, occasionally coming back to the present as he pushed slowly through the crowd. Judges were all around the girl’s display now, but the face he thought he’d recognized wasn’t there, so he kept heading toward the boys’ entry. Then he spotted his son off by himself staring across the room at the red-haired girl.

  She’s really cute. I just can’t believe a girl, and a seventh grade girl at that, could do a project called “Avitaminosis A and its effects on baby mice.” She must be smart. But she’s too young for me. I’m sixteen! Uh-oh, Dad’s coming over. I’d like to try and talk to her, but I’d better get back with Galen .

  As Galen waited for his friend to return, his mind drifted, too.

  I wish Papa and Mama could have come. But they probably wouldn’t be comfortable here. Besides, Papa has to work.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, the judges have made their decisions. Let’s start with the younger folks first. For junior high school, best original idea and best in her category: Nancy Seligman.”

  Applause rang out from the crowd as the principal read each award category.

  Edison grew nervous. Someone else won in their category, a kid from Virginia. He hadn’t quite heard the name, but it sounded like Crowley.

  “Now, the winner of the Grand Prize and the science scholarship. This one’s a twofer, folks, in more ways than one. For the second year in a r
ow, our winners are the team of Robert Edison and Robert Galen. Congratulations, boys!”

  The project had come out just as they’d planned it, from the design of the circuitry to the demonstration of their device’s ability to restart a frog’s heart with a time-pulsed direct current. But neither one of them dared tell anyone how they had hatched the idea. Even now Edison had nightmares about it. What if they’d been wrong?

  ...

  “Sweet Jesus!”

  Edison’s words rang out as they watched the ’51 maroon Ford veering from one side of the quiet stretch of road to the other before finally ramming into the power pole. The hood sprang open and steam poured out of the ruptured radiator.

  As they ran toward the car, Edison’s first glimpse of the driver made him stop and spew up his lunch, but Galen kept going.

  The guy, who looked old to them, maybe mid-thirties, wasn’t going to have any more birthdays. His head stuck halfway out the broken windshield, his body impaled by the steering post.

  Automatically, Edison started thinking about the idea of a collapsible steering column and maybe even some type of restraining belt to halt the body’s forward momentum. Then the nausea hit again. What remaining bile he had in his stomach ended up on the pavement.

  “Hurry up, Edison! There’s another guy in here! We need to get him out in case the car goes up.”

  They both grabbed the passenger door and pulled. It moved slowly and Edison figured it probably yielded more to Galen’s strength than his own. The passenger had been thrown forward but hadn’t gone through the glass. And there was, of course, no post to skewer him.

  Galen was muttering to himself.

  “Dr. Agnelli said to always check the airway and neck first—then the mouth, chest movements, heart pulsation.”