The Digger's Rest (13 page)

“
Yes, that is our Simon,” she said,
smiling affectionately. The priest spoke again.

“
Dr. Bramson is interested in knowing
about Simon’s background, Sister. I know you were here when Simon
arrived, so I thought it best if you spoke to Dr. Bramson
yourself,” he said with a voice that gave her the approval to speak
frankly.

She paused for a moment to collect herself
and choose her words carefully. She looked Mitch directly in the
eyes before she spoke. “Well, Simon’s case was one of our most
serious, Doctor,” she said with an obvious tone of restraint and
took a deep breath. “His mother was a hopeless drug addict and
prostitute in the neighborhood. No one knows who the boy’s father
is. She probably didn’t know herself. She was murdered by one of
her ‘boyfriends’ when Simon was only four. The police found him
hiding under the bed where she had been stabbed to death,” Sister
Mary said, a little too coolly, her pale blue eyes clouding
over.

“
Simon came to us because she’d been a
parishioner here once and left a letter with Father Edwards, who
was the priest here at the time, granting Holy Family guardianship
of Simon if anything ever happened to her. It seems she had the
idea that she might die of an overdose or something and wanted to
make some arrangement for Simon. The last thing the state needed
was another orphan on their hands, so when we petitioned the court
for custody, the state didn’t object and the judge just signed off
on it.” Then the coolness in her voice changed, drastically, and
her eyes, too; intense, brooding.

“
When Simon came to us, he was in a
most deplorable condition, terribly abused…the worst I’ve ever
seen. It took months for me to even get him to speak,” she said,
her voice taking on an emotional quiver and her eyes welling up
with tears. “He was more than half starved to death and he had
bruises all over his little body, and terrible cigarette burns all
over his little chest and back, some were old and healed, but the
rest were still fresh and healing from infection with the care he
got in the hospital. Then there was his…” She stopped to cover her
mouth as she broke into tears.

“
That’ll be fine, Sister,” Father Perez
said, handing her a tissue from the box on his desk. He looked back
to Mitch, who, by then, had become visibly moved by the Sister’s
story himself as it entwined itself in his mind with the letter
he’d gotten.
‘I will never forget
you.’

“
So you see, Dr. Bramson, Simon is very
special to us here at Holy Family. He’s our shining star and very
close to our hearts,” the priest said to Mitch, searching into him
once again with those intense pale green eyes as if he were trying
to speak to him without words. “Why are you here?”

“
Can I see him? Speak to him?” Mitch
asked quietly, without thinking,

“
Yes, of course. I have an appointment
coming in any minute, but I’m sure Sister Mary wouldn’t mind taking
you to see him. Would you, Sister?”

“
Not at all, Father. It would be my
pleasure,” she said and stood up, still dabbing her eyes. “If
you’ll follow me.”

He followed Sister Mary Immaculata down the
sterile, painted, cement block corridor to a classroom at the end.
“If you’ll wait here, Doctor, I’ll bring him out for you,” she said
as she opened the door and went in, closing it behind her. He went
close to the door, watching through the glass as Sister Mary
whispered in the ear of another nun seated at a desk. He heard the
teacher nun call out loud, “Simon, would you accompany Sister Mary,
please.”

A moment later he saw a pale, thin teenager
stand up and begin to move to the front of the class. As the boy
moved closer, he could see he was really little more than a mop of
big black curls and wide blue eyes. But there was something else,
something not right about the way he was moving.

As the boy got closer to the front of the
class, Mitch could see that he wasn’t walking properly. He was
limping, badly. When the boy turned the corner at the end of the
row of desks, Mitch could see the heavy metal brace on his right
leg, sticking out from under his ill-fitting, worn pants, weighing
him down.

Mitch backed away as Sister Mary and the boy
came closer to the door, his vision narrowing like he was suddenly
thrown down a long dark tunnel back to Victorian England and was
seeing a scared, lonely, adolescent Dickensian Tiny Tim come to
life.

When the door opened, Sister Mary came out.
The boy was hardly visible behind her, just those big eyes peeking
around her, filled with apprehension, and those curls. “Simon, you
remember Dr, Bramson, don’t you?” she said as she pulled him from
behind her.

“
Y…y…yes,” he stammered quietly, his
eyes focusing on the floor.

“
He’d like to talk to you,” she said to
Simon, then spoke to Mitch. “How about we go into the lunch room?
It’s empty now,” and they walked in silence down another corridor
to the left, exactly like the one they’d first come down. Soon they
were at another door, to a much larger room filled with folding
tables. Sister Mary spoke again. “Simon, why don’t you go on in and
sit down. I’d like to speak to Dr. Bramson for a moment.” The boy
followed her instruction without hesitation.

Once Simon was out of earshot, Sister Mary
turned her gaze to Mitch. “I just wanted to tell you that given the
violence in Simon’s background, he’s always been a very…highly
strung… nervous child. Since then, he’s never really been out in
the world and can be very…wary of strangers, so if you wouldn’t
mind, I’d like to be able to sit in on your meeting. He’s always
been comfortable with me, and I can sit well away from you so you
can still have your privacy, but he’ll still know that I’m there.
Would that be alright?” she asked nervously.

“
Yes, of course, Sister. That would be
perfectly fine.”

“
Thank you, Doctor. I know it’ll make
Simon feel more at ease,” and they went in.

Sister Mary headed left, quietly taking a
seat on the other side of the room. Mitch went straight ahead and
sat down opposite the boy at the lunch table. The boy wouldn’t look
at him at first. He just kept his eyes focused on his hands folded
on the table in front of him.

Again, not knowing how to begin, Mitch took
the letter out of his pocket and put it down on the table in front
of the boy. The boy looked up, his eyes large and glassy, afraid
and…embarrassed. Eyes brimming, he looked down again. “I…I h…h…hope
I…didn’t…offend you, sir. P…p…please d…d…don’t b…b…be angry. I…know
th…th…that you’re a v…v…very b…busy man.” The boy’s hands, still
folded on the table before him, began to tremble.

Mitch was stunned. He didn’t know what to do
or say, so he took a deep breath, then said what came naturally. He
spoke very slowly and calmly, partially so as not to frighten the
boy further and partially to keep control of his own emotions, but
never taking eyes off the boy.

“
I’m not angry at you, Simon. Please,
you don’t have to be afraid of me, not ever,” he said doing his
best to convey with his eyes and voice the sincerity of his words
to the pitifully frightened boy. “That letter is the very best
letter I have ever gotten in my life. That’s why I came to see
you.”

Simon glanced back up to him questioningly.
His eyes changed, still wide but no longer as fearful. His hands
slowly stopped trembling. He didn’t seem so much afraid anymore
as…perplexed.

“
R…r…really?” Simon asked, astounded,
his eyes taking on a quiet shine.

“
Yes, really. That’s why I came to talk
to you. I wanted to tell you that myself.” That was when Mitch
first heard it, the murmur of his conscience sounding like his
mother’s voice.
Do something,
it said, and Mitch spoke. “I’ve always loved castles and
knights, art and culture, too. That’s why I became an art scholar.
So tell me, Simon, what are you going to do when you graduate and
leave here?”

Simon thought a moment, “Well, Father Perez
says that I really only have two choices. I can either become a
priest and the Church will pay for my college or I can leave and
get a job and maybe get enough grant money to go to the community
college,” Simon said shyly, thinking it an odd question; not
understanding why this man was asking such a question.

“
Well, let’s put it another way. If you
had your choice, what would you want to do when you leave here?
What would be your dream?”

“
Dream?” Simon asked, like he didn’t
understand the word.

“
Yes. What do you dream of being?”
Mitch said clarifying the question for him. Simon’s eyes got wide
again. No one had ever asked him about what he dreamed or told him
that he could even have a dream. He thought for a moment and came
up with the only honest answer he could, then turned his eyes back
down to look at his hands folded on the table.

“
M…m…my d…dream would be…to be just
like you,” the boy said, quietly, almost inaudibly. Mitch sat back,
blown away, like he’d been struck in the heart with a pick
axe.
Like me?
he asked
himself, and it was as if Melanie Woodward was standing behind him,
nudging him with her hand, whispering in his ear.

Suddenly he wasn’t at Holy Family anymore,
and he wasn’t grown up anymore either. He was five years old and
holding onto her skirt as she dished out stuffing and cranberry
sauce to a woman with a little boy and girl about his age on
Christmas Eve at the shelter in the Bowery. He was looking up at
her. “Why are we doing this?” he’d asked her innocently.

She picked him up and whispered quietly in
his ear so no one else could hear, “Because these people have no
home, Mitchell, and this is how we can give them a little piece of
ours. Home doesn’t always have to be a building,” she smiled and
gave him the big spoon as she held him up so he could dish out the
mashed potatoes to the next person in line to feel part of what
they were doing. Then he was back at Holy Family, missing her
terribly and looking into the wide, innocent blue eyes of that
lonely boy, knowing how much he’d suffered; how much he’d done
without— both materially and emotionally. He took a deep breath and
spoke again, cautiously at first.

“
Well…I…have an idea about that. Do you
think you might like it if I could arrange for you to go to my old
school, Columbia, to study history, or archaeology, or art?
Anything that would make you happy.” The words began to flow. “I’ll
make sure you get whatever grants and scholarships you can, and
since Father Perez tells me that you’ll be graduating at the top of
your class, that shouldn’t be too hard, and…I’ll pay for the rest
myself,” he said, suddenly thinking it was about time to put some
of that good old Bramson bribe money to use in a way that would
make his mother proud.

He reached out and put his hand over Simon’s
hands still folded on the table and looked intently into his eyes;
his voice deepening with conviction. “And you have my word; I will
never let anyone hurt you ever again.”

Simon’s pupils dilated, his eyelids fluttered
and the color drained from his face. The next thing Mitch knew, the
kid had passed out, fainted, and fell backwards.

“
Sister! Sister! Please help me!” he
shouted out to the nun across the room as he got up and ran over to
the boy.

“
What happened?” Sister Mary cried out
shrilly as she ran to their side.

“
Uh…I don’t know; one minute we were
talking and the next he was on the floor. I’m sure he hit his head.
Do you have an infirmary or something here?” he said, picking the
boy up, ready to carry him in any direction.

“
This way…” Sister Mary said, leading
him through the door, back into the corridor and to another room
down yet another identical corridor, into yet another sterile room,
and laid the boy down on a stretcher.

Yet another nun came running over with a cool
towel and a vial of smelling salts. As soon as Simon was under the
care of the nurse nun, Sister Mary tugged at his sleeve pulling him
back out into the corridor, he started pacing. Sister Mary could
see that he was sweating bullets and tried to reassure him,
reminding him that she did warn him that Simon was very high
strung.

“
So what exactly happened in there,
Doctor?” she asked with kind concern, for both of them.

“
We were just talking and he
suddenly…keeled over,” Mitch said, rubbing his hand over his
forehead with worry and guilt.

“
What were you talking about, if you
don’t mind my asking?”

“
Not at all. I just told him that I
would get him into Columbia and pay for it myself if I had to,” he
told her, shrugging and looking down to let his hair fall over his
face. Silence. When he looked back up, Sister Mary’s eyes were wide
and fluttering.
Jesus Christ, not another
fainter!
he thought, positioning himself to catch her
if he had to.

“
Please tell me you’re not joking,
Doctor,” she asked seriously.

“
Not at all, Sister. I wouldn’t joke
about something as impor-tant as that. I’ll mentor him through it
and see that he gets the best of everything,
personally.”

“
Oh! Doctor Bramson!” she cried out,
throwing her arms around him. “You’re an angel!”

“
Oh no, Sister. Far from it, believe
me…” he laughed nervously. “…now go back in there and see to it
that that bump on the head hasn’t hurt our brainchild any. We have
big plans for him now. Don’t we? I’ll go see Father Perez to tell
him my idea. If he approves we can get the ball rolling.
Applications for admission were due months ago, so I’m going to
have to pull some strings to get this done,” he said as he headed
back down the corridor towards the Main Office, leaving one stunned
nun in his wake.