Requiem for the Bone Man (24 page)

And then there was one.

He walked through the empty house next to the mission clinic that Bill and Peggy Crowley had dedicated their lives to running. He came to the small office room that both had shared and gazed at the framed documents hanging from the wall: college and medical school diplomas, board and state licenses, all attesting to the competence and knowledge of the two who had lived there. But none of that spoke to who these two people really were, what they had been, what they had meant to each other. And as his emotions twisted in agony, he spotted a small, framed photograph occupying a central place of honor among the official documents. Smiling out at him were six young faces, three couples, dressed in their senior medical year whites with stethoscopes hanging out of their side pockets, arms on each other’s shoulders.

He took the photo from the wall, set it on Bill’s desk, and sat down in front of it. Finally he did what he hadn’t been able to do since he heard that recent broadcast of the accident that had claimed his two friends—he lowered his head and began to cry.

The sound of a gentle knock interrupted his grief. He sat back upright, wiped his eyes, and softly said, “Come in.”

Mrs. Canales, the elderly housekeeper, once a refugee whom Bill and Peggy had rescued, opened the door.

“Dr. Galen, I have packed the children’s belongings. They are outside with your friends.”

“Thank you, Consuela. I appreciate all of your help these past days. I hope you will be staying on to help the young doctors coming through here.”

“
Si
, Doctor. It is what the Padre and his lady would have wanted. You will take good care of the children,
si
?”

“Yes, like they were my own.”

“
Senor
, they are.”

He picked up the photograph from the desk and carried it with him outside, where Edison and Nancy stood by the rented minivan holding onto the three small ones now in their charge. As soon as the children spotted him, they ran to meet him, all calling out “Tio Galen! Tio Galen!”

As they surrounded him, Antonio, the youngest, quieted down.

“Where do people go when they die, Tio Galen?”

“Why do you want to know, Tonio?”

He watched the serious-faced little boy, now staring up into the sky.

“Tio Edison said that they go to heaven. Is that where Padre Bill and Tia Peggy are?”

“Yes, Tonio, I’m sure of it.”

The round-faced little girl looked worried.

“Are we going to live with you?”

“Yes, Carmelita, you and Federico and Tonio are all coming with us. We’re going to show you where I live, and then we’ll head to your new home in Pennsylvania with Tia Nancy and Tio Edison.”

“Are you going to live with us, Tio?”

Federico looked into his eyes.

Nancy and Edison also watched their friend and waited.

Stunned, Galen stared and said nothing until three small pairs of hands took hold of his. Then he looked at his friends and said softly, “Yes, if Tia Nancy and Tio Edison will have me.”

The minivan with its cargo of six lives, three young and three old, made its way back up the coast and reached Galen’s home shortly before dusk. It had been a quiet ride, interrupted only by food and bathroom breaks.

Galen turned and called out, “We’re almost at my house, but if everyone’s not too tired, how about if we take a quick ride into the city? Washington’s lights are a sight to see.”

Nancy looked at the three kids in the back seat, their eyes still wide at the changing scenery. Edison, tired from the drive, stretched his arms and nodded.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s do a quick bit of sightseeing.”

The sun’s late-summer dusky amber light show was coming to a close as they took Dolley Madison Boulevard to the entrance of the George Washington Parkway. The road, beautifully landscaped with forest trees and plants, followed the Virginia side of the Potomac River into Washington, where the lights of Georgetown and the city’s monuments formed a kaleidoscope across the darkened water.

They crossed the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge and followed Constitution Avenue past the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument—a stone-block space needle, backlit by the flood lamps around it—and the White House, gleaming from across the south lawn and Ellipse.

It was late for the children to be up, but they remained wide-eyed at the stately buildings and towering monuments.

“What are those buildings, Tio Galen?” Carmelita asked.

“These are the offices of federal agencies,” he replied. “That’s the Department of Commerce, and farther down is the Department of Justice.”

“Oh,” she said, seeming disappointed.

“But here on your right is the Museum of American History, where they keep the gowns of the First Ladies, and next is the Museum of Natural History—where they keep the giant elephant and the dinosaur skeletons.”

The three kids oohed and aahed.

“Turn right here, Edison, on Seventh Street.”

Edison complied.

“Where’re we headed, Galen?”

He pointed to the huge gray-white building with its symbol of The Freedom of Flight, the Smithsonian’s crown jewel—the National Air and Space Museum.

“We’ll visit here soon,” Galen promised.

They headed back to Virginia, and when they returned to Galen’s home the three adults carried three sleeping munchkins inside to their beds.

“Thanks, Galen. That was beautiful,” Nancy said.

Edison nodded then added, “But it doesn’t match our mountain.”

Galen just smiled.

It had been a while since he had slept in his own bed. He washed up and changed into the pajamas and robe that Cathy had given him when he turned forty-five. He sat on the edge of his bed for a time, trying to adjust to the rapid changes in his life. It felt strange, even more so when he realized there were five other lives in his home/office. It hadn’t been that way in years. He wondered what might have been if the fates hadn’t intervened.

There might have been children with Leni. He got up and opened the upper-right desk drawer and looked at the handwritten card from long ago that had hung from the neck of the little stuffed toy dog and sighed.

Cathy and he had talked about adoption. And June, there could have been grandchildren when her son, Tom, finally settled down. Now he felt the spiritual closeness of three rescued strangers who had captured his heart. He sighed again and lay back down, the arthritic twinges in his back making him groan slightly as he tried to get comfortable. He took off his glasses, and the world blurred into the incandescence of the small night light on the shelf by his bed. He reached over and turned it off. After a while the turmoil in his mind quieted and he slept.

He had dozed off, but years of training suddenly brought him fully awake.

He wasn’t alone.

He turned the night light back on and saw a small blurred figure looking at him.

Glasses, where are my glasses—ah, there they are.

He peered into the face of little Antonio.

“What is it, Tonio?”

The boy, dressed in blue bunny rabbit pajamas, climbed up on the edge of the bed. He held a stuffed toy dog in his left hand.

Galen’s eyes widened as he sat up with a start.

“Boy … Tonio … where did you get that?”

He caught himself and tried to keep his voice down. He didn’t want to upset the child. But Antonio was holding Leni’s stuffed toy dog, the reminder of that nightmare so many years ago. Galen had kept it as a sad memento—no, more, a sacred relic of that time, but he had placed it high up on a shelf and only he knew its significance.

“The nice ladies brought it to me.”

“Nice ladies?”

“I was sleeping and then I woke up and they were standing by my bed.”

Galen’s heart was now racing, but he knew he had to remain calm in front of the child.

“Okay, tell me about the nice ladies.”

Antonio moved next to him, still clutching the stuffed toy and stroking it.

“There were two nice ladies. They were as tall as Tia Nancy. And they had the most beautiful colors in their eyes, Tio, like my purple crayons.”

“That’s very good, Tonio. You are a very observant boy. What did the two ladies do? Did they say anything to you?”

Galen reached over absent-mindedly and also started to stroke the sad-faced stuffed toy beagle dog. How many times had he sat holding it, doing the same thing?

“I don’t understand, Tio. The nice ladies didn’t talk to me. I mean, I didn’t see their lips move. But I could hear them—and the tall man. He was nice, too.”

Galen felt himself start to shake, but he tried to stay calm.

“What did the nice man look like, Tonio?”

“He had hair under his nose and he wore white clothes, like the pictures in the doctor book you gave me. He took my hand and told me to tell you that Country Boy was watching. What’s a country boy, Tio?”

The bear-sized man suddenly felt small and weak.

“Then the two ladies and the tall man told me to tell you to follow your heart. What does that mean, Tio?”

Galen just shook his head silently.

“Can I play with the doggy? Can I take him to bed with me, please? The two ladies and the man, who are they? Do they live here, too? I didn’t see them leave but then they were gone.”

Galen snapped himself out of his paralysis.

“It’s okay, little one. Do you want me to take you back to your brother and sister? Do you want to go back to your bed?”

“Can I stay here, Tio?”

“Yes, you can. Just let me get up so I can tuck you in.”

Galen slowly rose from the bed and the child curled himself up with the toy dog on the pillow as the old man pulled up the blankets to cover him. Antonio soon fell back to sleep, but Galen sat at his bedroom desk fighting for control of his emotions—and maybe his sanity.

After a while, he stood up and walked through the office area of his home. How many people, how many lives had he watched walk through those doors? The babies that turned into children and then adults and having children of their own, and the old, the ones he had watched deteriorate over time, going from active to inevitable decline.

Funny he should recall, just now, that first patient on the very first day he opened his office, the woman in her late sixties who had come to the door without an appointment.

...

She saw he was new to the neighborhood. She didn’t have a doctor and wondered if he could give her a quick checkup.

He wasn’t exactly busy. Actually he wasn’t doing anything, so he welcomed her himself because his newly hired secretary had not yet shown up.

He took the clipboard and began to ask for her name, address, all of the pertinent information for new patients. When he got to occupation, he had expected “retired,” but suddenly she began to laugh.

“I’m a white witch.”

He looked at her more carefully. She didn’t seem deranged. Well dressed in a mixed floral pattern with brown pumps and matching shoulder purse, her face remained unlined, even as it creased into a smile that highlighted the mixed silver-gold of formerly all-blond hair. Her blue, highly intelligent eyes framed what must have been an attractive pug nose when she was younger.

“That’s very interesting. What’s a white witch?”

“Young doctor, you don’t believe me, do you? You’ll see.”

As he started the exam, he very carefully covered each body system until he had reached the point where he normally would do a heart recording.

“You won’t be able to do that on me,” she smiled.

He hooked her up carefully to the EKG machine, turned it on and got … gibberish!

“Okay, now try it,” she said, and suddenly the machine’s printing arm moved normally, like a conductor’s baton, tracing out the electrical music of her heart.

She came back two days later to go over her test results. After they concluded and he had told her how healthy she was, she looked at him.

“Dr. Galen, let me give you a gift. Think of it as an office-warming gift.”

Carefully she set a dried floral arrangement on his desk.

“Keep it as long as you wish to continue working. When you are ready to quit, whether in retirement or a change of careers, and only then, burn it. Never throw it in the trash.”

...

He stared at the door, remembering her and the countless thousands of those who had passed through its portals. He walked into the living room/waiting room and opened the fireplace damper. Then he stood on a straight-backed chair to reach the high shelf and took down the small wicker basket with its badly aging dried flowers. Reverently he placed the basket on the log holder and lit a match. He suddenly yelped when a large flame jumped out at him, burning his flesh.

Galen sat up quickly as morning sunlight streamed through his bedroom window. He looked around then sighed as he got out of bed in the empty room.

Nancy had found pots and pans, long unused, in Galen’s kitchen, and she whipped up what for that house was an unusually great breakfast.

Then the kids played outside in the yard as the three adults did the dishes and packed the minivan for the day’s trip back to Pennsylvania.

Six hours later they pulled off the Pennsylvania highway onto a stretch of road that wound up the side of a mountain just outside of Scranton.

The wheels crunched on the gravel turnaround in front of the rustic ranch-style mountaintop house that Nancy and Edison had called home since their retirement.

Federico and Carmelita followed the couple into the house. Galen hung back to take in the scenery, and Antonio remained by his side.

“Don’t you want to go in, Tonio?”

“I want to stay with you, Tio.”

“Okay, let’s stretch our legs a bit.”

They found a narrow side path through the trees, and as they walked the large older man pointed out different colored birds and plants to the small boy, who seemed in awe of all the newness. And Galen felt something he hadn’t experienced since Leni was taken. Could it be the child needed him?

He paused, his eyes misting over.