As I sat down at the bar, with its mirrored walls and blue backlighting, lined with bottles of Crown Royal and Jack Daniel’s and tequila of every variety, I wondered how many times my father had sat in this same spot, maybe this same seat, looking at the man who stared back at him from those mirrors. I wondered what he thought of that man, if he ever really understood what he had allowed himself to become.
And I wondered what his thoughts were just before he died.
The irony of it all struck me: the man who had hurt so many died choking on his own vomit.
It seemed fitting, in a way.
I shook my head to clear my reverie, ordered a drink from the bartender, and casually said, “Mi padre murió aquí.”
An old woman sitting on a stool nearby stared at me for a long moment and then nodded her head. “Ah, bambino Van Best.”
I tried to ask her how well she had known my father, hoping to hear some stories about his life in Mexico, but she did not speak English, and my feeble efforts to speak to her in Spanish were fruitless.
Finally I gave up and headed to the ninth floor.
I sat in one of the poolside chairs and looked at the incredible view of the city, with Popocatépetl, the second-highest mountain peak in Mexico, looming forty-three miles in the distance. The sometimes active volcano, or “smoking mountain,” is often referred to by the locals as “El Popo” or “Don Goyo.”
I imagined my mother frolicking in the pool and my father laughing at her antics. She had been so young then, only fourteen, and her playfulness must have been catching. She had been so beautiful, and Van had looked at her lovingly, ignoring the other guests, who must have been giving him strange looks, wondering about their relationship—was he her husband or her father?
The sun was setting over the mountain, and I watched until it disappeared. Finally I got up and headed back to my hotel, the Sheraton Maria Isabel. I had not wanted to stay at the Hotel Corinto. That would have been too much.
The next morning I called the concierge and asked if I could hire a driver for the day. I had important business and needed someone reliable. At 9:45 a.m., a short, white-haired Mexican who introduced himself as Sergio met me in front of the hotel.
“Señor Gary?” he said.
“Sí,” I replied.
“I understand you have a very special request today?”
“Sí, señor,” I said, shaking his hand. I had explained to the concierge that I wanted to find my father’s gravesite.
“Well, then,” he said, in his heavily accented voice. “Let’s not keep your father waiting any longer, my friend.”
Although the San Lorenzo Tezonco cemetery was less than fifteen miles from the heart of the Zona Rosa, the drive was lengthened considerably by the construction and endless traffic through the community of Iztapalapa, one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Mexico City.
“I don’t drive through here, señor,” Sergio informed me. “Never in my life. In all my years, señor, I have never had one request like this one. I feel very honored to take you to see your father for the first time in Mexico City.”
The trip south from the ancient city of Tenochtitlan—the name given to the area by the Aztecs before it became Mexico City—took nearly two hours. I thought we had reached our destination when I began to see wooden vendors’ shops with tin roofs that offered beautiful flowers, crucifixes, and monuments, including La Catrina, for the poor peasants visiting the final resting places of their loved ones. My thoughts drifted back to William’s remark when I first told him I wanted to visit my father’s gravesite.
“Be sure not to go on Día de los Muertos,” he had warned.
“What is that?”
He had explained that in Mexico, people believe that on the Day of the Dead—November 1—and the days surrounding it, their dearly departed have divine permission to visit earth. There is a festival that takes place over the course of three days, during which the living welcome the souls of the dead with offerings of flowers, specially prepared food, candles, photographs, and incense. It is a peaceful and happy occasion to keep the memory of their loved ones fresh in the minds forever.
“But it’s not for outsiders,” William said. “And you don’t want to run into any of those spirits who may have stuck around.”
I was still thinking about that when we drove into the cemetery. Black letters on a small sign made of plywood announced our arrival at Panteón Civil San Lorenzo Tezonco. My gaze fixed on that sign—the symbol for the last stop in my father’s miserable life.
My stomach began churning as we drove in.
“Here we are, señor. I’m so sorry. It is a very, very poor place.”
I looked around and saw what he meant. My father was buried in the poorest cemetery in the worst neighborhood in all of Mexico City. I began to feel everything decelerating, like a slow-motion action scene in a movie where the silence drowns the senses. Everything seemed surreal. Breathing became difficult. Although I had experienced fatigue on my first day in Mexico City, due to its 7,500-foot elevation, this had nothing to do with that. This was stemming from the reality that I was really here in this place.
With my father.
As I watched for the cemetery’s administrative offices, Sergio slowly drove up the divided, tree-lined boulevard.
“Turn right,” I said when I saw an old brick office tucked behind a grove of mesquite trees. He pulled into a parking space in front of the building while I dug through my Swiss Army backpack for my father’s death report and birth certificate.
Once inside, Sergio spoke to an elderly woman sitting in front of a typewriter and explained why we were there. She instructed us to walk around the counter to the far end of the building and go through a small door.
Inside the office, another elderly lady sat at a desk, and a middle-aged man attended to some filing. The back wall was lined with file cabinets, but it was a particular black double file cabinet with white doors that immediately caught my eye. It was labeled “1980–1984.”
When Sergio explained to the second woman why we were there, she pointed to this file cabinet.
I pulled out a large book marked “1984” and began flipping through the pages, checking each name. When I turned to May 23, I saw my father’s name as it had been recorded for the last time. Sixteen people had been buried there that day—eight children and eight adults. My father was number fifteen, between Francisca Quintero Cruz and Fernando Lecuona Armaz. There was a blue check by his name. I couldn’t help but wonder if that was because he was American.
I called the man over. He wrote the plot number down on a small piece of paper and then muttered something to Sergio.
Sergio put his arm around me. “His name is Alejandro. We will follow him, señor. He will take us to your father.”
As we walked out of the office, I struggled to keep it together. I had waited for years to get to this place, had experienced so many heartaches and frustrations since I had learned this man’s name. Now that I was here, I wondered what I was doing, why I was doing this.
I headed toward Sergio’s van, but he took me by the arm. “No, señor. We will walk. He says it is not too far.”
I battled with my emotions as we walked into a small, tree-lined area with dirt pathways leading to what had once been a beautiful old stone chapel. The chapel walls had crumbled around the windows and doors, and the roof had collapsed—a casualty of an earthquake that had devastated Mexico City in 1985.
Thunder, a short distance away in the mountains, rumbled as dark clouds filled the sky. I tried not to look ahead, because I could feel we were getting close, and the closer we got, the more difficult it became for me to breathe. I reached into my pocket to pull out a handkerchief and wiped my eyes. Suddenly everyone stopped.
At first I didn’t want to look, so I stared at the flowers adorning graves as far as the eye could see. I noticed litter and debris lying on the ground. I couldn’t help but think of my grandfather, buried at the glorious Arlington Nat
ional Cemetery, among the patriotic faithful in peaceful, hallowed ground.
I thought about Gertrude, whose grave I had visited not long before, in San Bernardino. She had lived through the deaths of the only three men who had ever loved her, their deaths coming in rapid succession in 1984: the commander, her first husband, in March; her second husband, John Harlan Plummer, in April; and her son in May. I had sat cross-legged at her grave and talked with her for the first time. She had died alone in a mobile home in 1986. There had not even been an obituary written.
I knew somehow that she had suffered like the rest of us in her own way. Sitting there, I had poured out my heart to her, but when I left, I didn’t say, “I’ll be back.” I didn’t say, “I hope you’re happy and at peace.” I simply told her that I loved her and that I was so sorry that she had not been able to accept love when it had first been offered to her. That had cost so many so much.
As I looked around, I couldn’t help but be happy that my grandfather had not lived to see his son buried in a pauper’s grave. This would have been unbearable for such a proud man, who had preached about the joy of heaven at so many of the dignified funerals of his parishioners.
Finally, I noticed that Sergio and Alejandro were standing between two marble grave markers that faced a small lump of barren ground. Alejandro whispered something to Sergio, reverently removed his straw hat, and placed it over his heart, then bowed his head.
“He is here, señor.” Sergio pointed to the unmarked mound of earth at our feet.
For a moment I couldn’t speak.
I stood there, silent in the presence of my father.
Again I looked around at the memorials on the other graves, placed there carefully by indigent family members who would forever miss their departed ones. Most of the tombstones displayed beautiful crosses, paving the way for their loved ones’ entrances to heaven. And then I looked at the mound of earth that had never been visited by anyone except Edith. There was no cross here.
Finally I asked Sergio to ask Alejandro if I could leave some pictures on the grave. One was of me and William, and the other showed me, Judy, and Zach.
“The pictures will be blown away in the wind and will be litter by the end of the day,” Alejandro replied to Sergio in Spanish. “But I can dig a hole over the spot where his padre’s heart would be, and I can put them there.”
Alejandro placed his hat on the ground. He dug a hole about sixteen inches deep, right over my father’s heart. Stepping back, he bowed as I knelt down and placed the pictures in the hole. After he covered the photos with dirt, I handed him and Sergio fifty pesos each.
“Un momento, por favor,” I said.
Alejandro replied in perfect English. “Take all the time you need, señor.”
Sergio said he would wait by a nearby willow tree.
I realized that for the first time since the day he had left me in the stairwell, I was alone with my father.
I knelt down, trying not to let my anger get the best of me. I loved this man in some inexplicable way. He was my father. We were bound together by an invisible, unbreakable rope, yet I hated him so much for the things he had done. I looked up and asked God to help me say the right things. I prayed the way Leona had taught me. I asked God for forgiveness for my father. I asked Him to have mercy on Van’s soul. And I asked God to forgive me for the anger I felt about what my father had done—not only to me but to so many others as well.
As I looked down at the ground, I saw my tears striking the dirt that covered my father. It occurred to me that Van had hated to hear me cry.
Right then, I let go.
I poured out my heart to him—all the pain, all the anger.
And then the forgiveness Leona and Loyd had instilled in me.
As I walked away, I noticed the storm clouds retreating behind the volcano. “Adiós, mi padre,” I whispered, wishing with all my heart that he could have been the man I wanted my father to be.
Wondering how long I had been there, I looked down at my watch. I realized it was May 17—the anniversary of the day Earl Van Dorne Best had died and Gary Loyd Stewart had been born.
56
In 2002, when Leona and Loyd first met Judy and Frank, I had been in a state of pure happiness as we sat at the table sharing a meal. I had felt so blessed to have not one but two beautiful mothers. As time went on and I began to search for my father, I often worried about how all of this would affect my adopted parents. They had been so good to me, and I didn’t want to hurt them through my search for my father.
I had always realized how much the strength of my mother and her extraordinary faith had shaped my life. But one year, around Father’s Day, I began to recognize how much the search for my identity had strengthened my love for Loyd, how much he had quietly supported me in his own way. Father’s Day had never meant as much to me as it would now.
When we were children, my sisters and I would always sign the card my mother had bought and give it to him before going to church. As we got older, everyone in the family would pitch in to buy Dad a nice gift—a barbecue pit, a new television—and we would each give him our own personalized Hallmark card. This year, there was no Hallmark version that could say the things I wanted to say to my daddy. By 2009 I had a better understanding of what Father’s Day really meant, so I made my own card:
Daddy,
Today, I had to go down to the City Court Building on St. Louis Street to take care of some business down there. As you know, parking is always a problem downtown, but I found a space on the corner of America Street and St. Charles that charges five dollars for the entire day. I parked there and went to take care of my business.
You know, now that I have spent so much of the past years researching my past and finding all of the complicated details about my abandonment on North Boulevard, that area of town has become a favorite place of mine. I guess in my heart I wish Van had really tried to leave me at the First Presbyterian Church there, but I know and have now accepted that I may never know the real story about what happened on that cold March day. What I do know is that this area of town, Beauregard Town, is now very special to me. In my heart and mind, it is a sacred and holy place. Every time I get a chance I try to drive by or park my truck and walk by the old Lytle apartment building. I do this quite often. There’s just something about the place that draws me there, back to my beginnings.
But something different happened to me today. When I exited the parking lot on America Street, I turned left and drove three blocks, then turned left onto St. Joseph. As I drove north, I saw the courtyard where Van must have carried me into the back of the apartment building. I stopped there for a minute just to wonder and daydream and listen to what God was trying to tell me. For so long now, I have wondered just what Van might have been thinking and what was in his heart.
Did he love me? Did he care? Did he cry? Was he sorry for what he was about to do? All these things have been in my heart and on my mind for so long. As I sat and cried and listened, I got my answer. It doesn’t matter what Van did or what he felt. There is only one thing that matters about what happened that day. What matters is what God did.
For four and a half hours, I was alone. But Daddy, now I see I was never alone. Today, I realized that the moment Van placed me on that floor and walked away from his crying son, someone very special was watching over me. I’m sure as Van slipped out of that building hoping not to be discovered with his evil heart, he might have looked back or maybe even shed a tear. I don’t know. But I do know that God saw the whole thing. He knew that this child was alone, unprotected, and He wrapped me up in His love and protected me until Mrs. Bonnette came home from work.
Maybe Van didn’t shed a tear, but I bet God did when He witnessed the actions of this father abandoning his only son. I just think it breaks God’s heart to look upon evil. I think as God watched Van exiting that building, His displeasure with Van fueled His heart to find the perfect father for this child. I believe that in those hours, God calmed me and s
at with me there on those cold and lonely steps, comforting me and making His plan for my life.
I know that as God babysat me that day, He decided this child had to be given to someone very special, someone with His heart. That must have been when God hand-picked you to be my father. He knew that it would take a special kind of love to heal the scars left by the biological father, and there was only one person suited to fill that role.
I just wanted you to know how grateful I am that God made the right choice by giving me you. I love you with all my heart.
Happy Father’s Day
Gary
My dad didn’t want to read the card in front of everyone who’d gathered at his home that Sunday afternoon, so he went into his bedroom. In a few minutes, he emerged with tears streaming down his face. He told me that card was the best gift he had received in his life. He wrapped his arms around me in a big hug and whispered, “I love you, Gary.”
I will never forget that moment.
Three years later, on June 16, 2012, the day before Father’s Day, my mom and dad got up to their usual routine. Mom made Dad’s coffee and then returned to her bedroom for her daily devotional time. Dad took his coffee to the computer room, as he called it, where he read the Bible every morning.
When Dad finished reading, he put on his old work tennis shoes and his sweat-stained ball cap. “Okay, hon. I’m ready,” he called out to Mom, letting her know it was time to work in the garden.
As they walked out the back door onto their new brick-paved patio, Dad looked around at the sunny blue sky. Before he even closed the door, he began to sing, to thank God for the beauty of the day.
Oh, Lord, my God.
When I in awesome wonder
Consider all
The worlds thy hands hath made.
Interrupting, Mom did what Mom sometimes does. She couldn’t help herself. It was too early in the morning.
“Loyd, shush. Not so loud. You’re going to wake the entire neighborhood.”
Dad just smiled. “Well, they need to hear it,” he said.
“How great Thou art!” he sang louder, bending over to pick up a brick that was holding down a tarp he had used to protect the flower beds from recent heavy rains. He stood up with a brick in his right hand and looked toward the sky.
The Most Dangerous Animal of All Page 28