Bob, you’re still a little boy, even in retirement.
She heard a man’s voice ask, “Is this the residence of Robert Edison who attended Concepción High School in Westfield, New Jersey?”
“Hold on,” she said then cupped her hand over the mouthpiece.
“Bob, do you owe anybody money?”
Not that he would. He never spent any to begin with. He wasn’t cheap. He just could do everything by himself. But he would spend his last dollar on her if she wanted it.
“Why?”
“There’s a man on the phone, wants to know if you’re the Bob Edison from Concepción High School.”
“What’s his name? It might be an old classmate of mine.”
She uncovered the phone and asked, “May I say who’s calling?”
The voice that replied still held a hint of New Jersey, but it was softened by a southern lilt.
“Your husband and I were friends in high school. My name is Galen, Bob Galen.”
She cupped the phone receiver once more.
“Bob, this guy sounds strange. Maybe I should hang up.”
“What’s his name?”
“Galen.”
He snatched the phone from his wife’s hands, grease smearing the handset.
“Is this who I think it is?”
He felt the excitement course through him.
“It’s been a long time, little brother.”
He was surprisingly happy that night when he finally decided to go to bed. The telephone call reconnecting him with his friend had picked up his spirits and brought back memories of the good times they shared in high school. He turned off the lights and lay there thinking of his life and wondering if maybe he should consider retiring and going to work at the mission with Bill and Peggy.
Then came that after-midnight call—that cursed, damnable call ordained by the Fates.
“Bob, it’s Connie.”
He could hear the strain in her voice immediately.
“Connie, what’s the matter? Are the boys okay?’
Is Old Aunt Hattie calling?
“Bob,” she choked out, “they took Dave to the hospital. They don’t think he’s going to make it. I’m here in the emergency room waiting for them to get done with him.”
“What happened?”
He almost yelled the question at her through the phone.
“There was an auto accident. He was coming back from hospital rounds. It was his last day there. He didn’t tell you but we were going to retire this week. We wanted to travel, maybe help Bill out at the clinic part time. Dave even talked about getting the old team together at Bill’s free clinic.”
Now as she continued, she was barely breathing in, unable to stop the torrent of words. She was in shock. He couldn’t get her to stop rambling.
“Connie, put the ER doctor on.”
He waited then heard the receiver being picked up. But he already knew. And now he knew the cause of that terrible pain earlier in the day. His mind heard the voice of his old friend.
City Boy, Aunt Hattie was right about this, too.
“Dr. Galen, this is Tom Eastman. I’m the ER doc here in Lakeland. Mrs. Nash tells me you and Dr. Nash were long-time friends.”
The word “were” rang in his ear. He felt his eyes filling.
“I’m afraid that Dr. Nash expired at the scene of the accident. We did what we could when they brought him in, but the brain damage was too massive. I’m sorry.”
He slowly put the telephone receiver down and began to weep.
The church was filled with friends, patients, colleagues, all those who had been in close contact.
The minister stepped to the dais, led the group in a short prayer then announced, “I have been asked to let another speak of the deceased. I, too, wish to learn more about him.”
He beckoned and Galen rose from his chair and approached the microphone. He looked at the large group, thinking how Country Boy would have found it amusing. Then he began.
“It was a strange Mutt and Jeff relationship between the City Boy and the Country Boy. The Fates had decreed that we would share a room in the grueling process of our education, and no more dissimilar young men had ever been thrown together.”
As he continued, he talked about Dave’s humble background as a farm boy, the first in his family even to finish high school, much less college and medical school. He watched as the audience nodded at the familiar information and expressed surprise at some of the exciting points in Dave’s life.
Galen paused and looked out over the crowd, seeing the capacity-filled church with standees. Connie and the boys were sitting next to Bill and Peggy, who was holding Connie’s hand tightly.
He saw the back doors open. Two African-American men, tall, middle-aged, in the uniforms of the U.S. Navy and Army, removed their hats and walked halfway up the aisle to stand. Galen apologized for the length of his eulogy. But he wanted to tell one more, final story, to demonstrate what kind of man Dave had been. And as he spoke, the years slipped away and he and Dave were back on Church Hill, students once again.
...
“Are you sure this is okay, Dave?”
They were at the very top of the hill that looked down on the southeast side of Richmond, Virginia. Here once stood the Confederate Army Hospital, Chimborazo. And like the great works of Ozymandias, it was now rubble and brick pieces.
But the hill held another monument, this one deep underground. At one time, the railway line had bored through the hill and run tracks from the old gas works and icehouse to the very top of Church Hill. Trains would enter that nether world and exit into the light at the summit.
One fateful day, the residents of lower Richmond felt a rumble. Some thought it was an earthquake, others a great storm. But it was neither. It was the death cry of a tunnel as countless tons of earth collapsed inside, entombing the unlucky train and its passengers inside forever. Rescue attempts proved futile, so the city fathers sealed the lower entrance with a giant concrete slab inscribed with the date of the tragedy. That was 1926.
Thirty seven years later, two young men in their prime stood at the top of the hill, looking at the partially boarded-up top exit of the tunnel as they picked up loose bricks to make student bookcases. They rationalized it was not really stealing. When they finished school, the bricks would be returned, as they had been by countless other students over the years, as the cycle repeated itself.
Then they heard a frantic cry.
“Mista, Mista, com hep us! Ma bruther, he in da tunnel!”
It was Marcus, one of the black youngsters in the same housing complex where Galen and Dave lived. Marcus’s little brother, Jeremiah, was always getting into things and needing a rescue. But this was the most dangerous so far.
The two medical students ran to the opening where Marcus stood and pointed inward. Collapsed crossbeams and warning signs had not been enough to stem the curiosity of a six-year-old boy. Now, he was partway inside, captured by the weight of a collapsed wood strut.
Dave looked at Galen.
“Come on, Bob, the two of us can get him.”
Galen remembered the old abandoned buildings in his neighborhood, deadly mousetraps for curious children. His hackles were rising as Dave picked up a discarded length of wood.
“We can use this to pry the beam off of him.”
He started to squeeze into the tunnel. Galen followed with more difficulty. He wasn’t the scarecrow that Dave was. But they both reached the boy soon enough. The light from the afternoon sun penetrating through the mouth of the tunnel was just enough to give faint illumination to the scene. The young men, scientists by nature and training, saw the natural fulcrum of a fallen piece of stone.
“Dave, you grab his arms. I’ve got more weight. I’m going to try to lever that thing off. If we’re lucky, you can pull him out. If not, I guess the three of us can spend eternity talking to the train crew and passengers below.”
The drip of seeping water and something scurrying from God knows wh
at played counterpoint with their heart beats.
“Listen, Jeremiah, Bob is going to try to lift the beam and I’m going to pull you out. And then we’ll all get the hell outta here. Understand?”
The tearstained brown face nodded and Galen began the counterpressure, hoping the lever wouldn’t break. He felt some bending in the old wood and then the give as the fallen beam lifted several inches. Immediately, Dave pulled and the boy slid out from under it just as the tension in Galen’s muscles gave way and the beam settled again.
Ominous creaking noises started and Dave let out a “Let’s move it!” He picked up the little boy and the two young men inched their way back up and out. Galen had barely cleared the tunnel entrance when the four of them, two urchins and two foolhardy adults, heard the grinding collapse of ancient wood and a cloud of dust rise at the entrance they had just left.
...
“And that, ladies and gentlemen, was the type of man my friend was. I do not know why bad things happen to good people, but if I know Dave, he would come back from the afterlife if he could to help a friend.”
After most of the crowd had left, Connie stood with Bill and Peggy and the boys as the minister handed her the cloth-wrapped box containing Dave’s ashes. Galen saw the two military men had remained, so he approached them and shook hands. Their name tags read CMDR. JEREMIAH BAILEY and COL. MARCUS BAILEY.
CHAPTER 12
Epiphany
They were sinking!
The captain and mate had tried to save themselves in the single small lifeboat aboard the fishing vessel, making no attempt to rescue the couple and their three small children with them. Felicita and Sandoval Hidalgo watched them perish as the lifeboat capsized under the force of the furious wind-roiled water.
The small boat had departed from Mafanzas earlier that night. The family had hidden under fish-stench-laden tarpaulin in the back of the captain’s truck as it traversed the back roads from Havana to the side quay in the fishing port village. Felicita had given the children honey cakes, and they remained quiet as a succession of security post guards waved the truck through. The whole country was one big military camp, Sandoval thought.
There was no moon, only the low growling of the diesel engine pushing the little boat out into the Straits of Florida. They were free!
If things went according to plan, they would reach the Florida coast in seven hours, assuming the Cuban Navy patrols did not stop them in the open sea. And the American Coast Guard would be watching at the other end to block the land arrival of any more refugees.
Sandoval had it planned, even to the small raft that would carry them within swimming distance of the crowded Florida beach. They would drop the small raft over the side of the fishing boat, reach the swimmers in the water, and conceal themselves among the beach crowd dressed in swimming outfits like the rich Americanos wore at the Miami resorts as they tanned and drank their piña coladas.
It would be easy, if his information source was correct, to reach help in the Cuban expatriate community once they got to dry land.
He had planned carefully, and for good reason. Others raised questions about his loyalty to Fidelisimmo. He had risked becoming one of the “lost” and his family with him. He knew he shouldn’t have disallowed the expense voucher submitted by the nephew of a high-ranking official, but he was loyal to his country and did not tolerate waste or inefficiency.
So, he was stunned when his superior at the finance office began criticizing his work output, even his dedication to his job. It did not take long to see the handwriting on the wall.
“Felicita, we have to leave. It is going to get worse. And if I am taken, what will become of you and the children?”
They both knew the answer to that. She would be offered a job as “hostess” to foreign visitors bringing desperately needed hard cash into the country. Hostess meant many things in Cuba, but for her it would mean the ultimate degradation: prostitution. And their children, no matter what they did, would always be considered outsiders.
Cuba had survived thirty years as a closed, tightly controlled society because it was considered strategic by the Soviet Union. With all their troubles, the Russians had poured massive amounts of money into the island’s economy, both directly through tourism and by outright grants for “educational development.” The missiles of Soviet manufacture publicized by President Kennedy, and then by President Johnson, were part of that development.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, and with it its deep pockets, the hard-line Communist country had nowhere else to go for support. But “El Jefe” would never loosen the grip he had established on the people. The paranoia of the bearded dictator over the possibility of invasion by the United States drove him to ever-more Draconian measures to prevent “his people” from deserting their island “paradise.” He placed Cuba on permanent red alert, meaning political witch hunts and increased surveillance of the civilian population rose exponentially.
It did not deter those seeking to flee.
Now, Sandoval Hidalgo, dedicated accountant in the Ministry of Finance, loyal supporter of all that his country stood for, had decided to leave his beloved homeland. He had come to realize the greater power that love of family held over him.
The childhood memories of his own father and mother overwhelmed him.
...
He was born in the eleventh year of the Revolucion. His father would proudly announce to his barbershop clientele that his son was a true son of the revolution, born on the anniversary date of the great Fidel’s defeat of the wicked Battista.
His father was a quiet man. By chance his shop was located in a section of Havana that brought the rich turistas and the high-ranking officials of the new government past his door, so he had never wanted for paying customers. It also led to his downfall. Success breeds envy, and this time the envious were relatives of the decision-makers. The young Sandoval never understood why his father had to close the shop and move his family into a less-desirable section of Havana.
Even then, the powers that be were not satisfied. Soon the Committee for Defense of the Revolution, the block-by-block network of spies and guardians of political correctness for the Castro regime, declared his father an enemy of the state for listening to the music broadcast by Radio Marti.
Sandoval had arrived home from school one day to find his mother crying. She told him his father had taken sick and had to go away. He was only six so the news did not carry any of the true ominous nature his mother had tried to hide from him. He missed his father but assumed he would get better someday, and his mother agreed through the veil of her tears.
School work was easy for Sandoval. He could readily memorize the history of the great ones of the Liberación, recite the evils of the United States puppet Batista, and the glories that Uncle Fidel had brought to Cuba. His teachers rewarded him and held him up as an example of a true believer.
He trained with the rest of the children in the military drills required of all the young, carrying wooden toy rifles and marching in step to become the next generation of defenders.
As he grew, his skills as a planner and mathematician became more evident. Everyone knew that he would be a shoe-in for classes at the University of Havana. Naturally, because education was free for all, he would not have to worry about money. Of course he would have to take oaths of allegiance, avoid risky behavior such as listening to U.S. radio stations, and be ready to report what was considered suspicious behavior on the part of any of his classmates.
When he was fourteen, he began the required agricultural service demanded of all students. By law, he had to spend at least one month out of each year in the outlying farming areas to help with crop sowing and harvesting. His skin had toned to the golden brown gift of the sun his people were known for. And by sixteen, he was an impressive-looking young man—impressive enough to catch the eye of the young women working alongside the men in the fields.
He had seen her, skin glistening in the early morning heat, working ne
arby. There was something about her that made his sixteen-year-old heart beat more rapidly.
“What is the matter, Sandoval?” his friends had asked, as they saw him staring at her. They laughed.
“Aha,” they sang out, “the beast has seen the beauty!”
How sly he was, shifting over, row by row, till suddenly they were side by side. He knew she saw him. The flush on her neck had overpowered even her sunlit tan.
“Hello,” he said boldly. “I’m with the Revolution Brigade. My name is Sandoval, Sandoval Hidalgo.”
She smiled then looked from side to side making sure her mates weren’t within hearing.
“Felicita Jimenez. I’m with the Gueverra Brigade.” And in that planted field was sown the future for Felicita and Sandoval.
They both entered the university, he to study accounting and business management, she to become a nurse—and there they decided to share their lives forever.
...
Now those lives, all of the acts of life that fill every marriage, were over. They would start again for the sake of their children.
How proud they were. Carmelita, so round-faced, even as a baby seeming to listen to every word they said. A good baby, the nanas would say, as Felicita received her first state award for the act of motherhood. Federico, not the quiet little one his sister had been, entered the world with loud proclamations and never stopped doing so. He was bright, but like a magpie. And finally, Antonio, named for his grandpapa who never returned from being “sick,” became the watching one, always watching, as if absorbing the world with his eyes.
Sandoval had met the boatman at a small side-street cantina. Not a place for family meals or turistas, he noted. He wasn’t sure how to approach the subject, but his trusted friend had told him of the fisherman and his “special catch of the day.”
The captain was the first to speak.
“So you would like to take a fishing trip, eh?”
Requiem for the Bone Man Page 17