Requiem for the Bone Man Read online

  They all could feel the skin-crawling fear rise within, and Galen realized that the country had just entered a new and uncertain phase of its existence, one that had not been experienced even at Pearl Harbor. The homeland itself had been attacked. Maybe tens of thousands had just died. The United States was at war.

  He looked out his front window and could see the smoke cloud rising in the southeast in the direction of the Pentagon.

  No, no flying today. And suddenly retirement again seemed like a far-away dream.

  “Bob, am I starting to look older?”

  He watched admiringly as she stood in front of the bedroom mirror, running her fingers through her still gorgeous long red hair.

  What do I say? If I agree, it’ll upset her. If I disagree, she’ll know I’m lying.

  He looked at her again, the woman who meant so much to him: wife, lover … no, something more … best friend! And that thought prompted the solution Edison desperately needed.

  “Honey, you’ve never looked more beautiful to me.”

  What a smoothie, Nancy thought, as she put her arms around him and they stood there embracing.

  Sometimes he knows just what I need to hear!

  The young desperately seek to grow up quickly and gain the freedom they envy of adults. They put on makeup, dress provocatively, take amino acid protein shakes to bulk up, constantly stare at themselves in the mirror, and incessantly ask: Are we there yet?

  The old look at their younger counterparts as reminders of bygone times while they suffer the realization of their encroaching mortality. They also look in the mirror, but with trepidation instead of admiration, and they seek out plastic surgeons, age-reversing nostrums, and exercise programs, longing to return to the temple of youth that will no longer grant them admittance.

  Then, there is the middle.

  Middle age, that is, or Middle Earth, that flat-footed, more-hair-on-the-ears-than-scalp, Hobbit-infested stage between youth and senility. It means the onset of backaches, headaches, and reflux, a time when most human beings enter a phase of consolidation and nesting. Those who have moved well into their careers, marriages or equivalents as a result are held captive by the palpable chains of responsibility.

  For some, it is a time of achievement and satisfaction. But for most, it is the breeding ground for second guesses and thoughts about what they have not accomplished so far, for worrying about the ever-shortening future, and for calculating the amount of work time left and the amount of money needed for retirement. The gremlins of age go merrily about their vanity-robbing work: thinning the hair, widening the waist, and rendering the eyesight no longer eagle keen. Erectile dysfunction emerges big time in men and menopause begins to erase the essences of womanhood.

  Time marches and Fate watches.

  “Nancy, I’m going to be away again. The company wants me to take charge of the Olympic Torch Bearer Run sponsorship. The participants will go from New York to Washington on their way to Atlanta.”

  “Why you, Bob? You’re not a PR man. You’re their top R&D guy. What does that have to do with the Olympics?”

  “Seems they think my reputation will carry some weight.”

  He sat down wearily on the couch in their New Jersey suburban home. Yes, he was tired, tired of the daily commute to New York, tired of putting his life at risk every day on Route 22, tired of arguing with science-ignorant managers who wouldn’t recognize an electrical circuit if it bit them, and tired of non-stop, non-productive meetings that repeated the obvious day after day—and now this.

  Why him? Probably because nobody in marketing wanted to handle it and so they called on one of the nerds.

  At least he could demand first-class travel arrangements.

  “Dr. Galen, here are your phone messages.”

  The list his secretary handed him ran five pages, on which most of the items were non-urgent, but he would answer them all as was his habit. And he would perform two house calls—for two of the sickest.

  He sat down and, number by number, called and spoke with and crossed off the names until he had finished. Then he picked up his bag and headed out to his twenty-year-old Jeep in the parking lot. First stop, Rosie’s place, then Mrs. Falcon’s.

  Rosie Washington was the daughter of slaves. She and her extended family lived on a fifteen-acre farm just outside town. It fronted a highway now on two sides, but the old split-log house, without electricity or inside plumbing, had served Rosie and her late husband, Abraham, for more than seventy years. She was one hundred five now, waiting to meet her Creator and be reunited with Abraham, who had died some twenty years before.

  Galen always enjoyed seeing her when she had come to his office. Mahogany skin glistening, the four-foot-eight-inch Rosie would tell riveting stories about the days when she and Abraham had first married and started to farm in the upper reaches of the old South.

  Now she was dying. She knew it and her family knew it. But it was, strangely enough, a celebration of life’s passage rather than an anticipated time of grief. She had done so much in her century-plus-five of living, and now all she wanted was heavenly rest with her mate. Her family cared for her better than any hospital could as her tired heart muscle slowly failed. Galen had anticipated her passing at any time, but he hoped for one last visit with her.

  He parked the old Jeep on the side of the highway and began the half-mile walk up to the house. There was no driveway, no road, just the fading marks of wagon wheels from a time when Rosie and Abraham took their produce to market in the city by horse-drawn cart. Now, any vehicle would have trouble making it up that path. Finally he arrived at the open farmhouse door and saw Rosie’s great-great-granddaughter standing there.

  “C’mon in, Doctor, I think she knows you’re here.”

  He entered the spotless small bedroom where Rosie, the family matriarch, lay propped up on hand-made down-filled pillows. He could see her shortness of breath, only partly relieved by the medications he had provided. A small oxygen tank ran its trickle through her nosepiece as she opened her eyes and smiled at him.

  “Goin’ ta see Abe t’day, docta,” she gasped. “He tol’ me las’ night he’d be a-comin’ fer me.”

  Galen knelt down by the old four-poster bed and held the hand of a living legend. He felt the thready, irregular pulse and, using his stethoscope, listened to the labored breathing. He looked up at the old sepia-tinted photograph mounted on tin and framed on the wall showing two serious but smiling young people holding hands, dressed in their Sunday best. He knew it was the wedding picture of Abe and Rosie, taken long-ago by some itinerant tinker/peddler traveling through the farm area by wagon.

  As he continued his examination, he thought of himself, no longer the altruistic young doctor, older now but still learning from his patients. Then he was struck by what he did not see: The Darkness. He had sensed it so many times over the deathbeds of his patients, but not here.

  He heard sounds and turned to see members of Rosie’s family crowding into the small room—from sons and daughters in their eighties all the way to small children. Then he noticed a tall man, youngish with mahogany skin, moving toward the other side of Rosie’s bed.

  He saw Rosie’s eyes open, taking in the sight of her family, her immortality. She smiled, and when she saw the young man standing beside her, she smiled even more broadly.

  Galen rose from his kneeling position and stared, first at the man and then at the old photo.

  No, it couldn’t be! It must be a great-grandson.

  Then he heard what was no longer there. Rosie had stopped breathing. He felt for her pulse, listened again with his stethoscope and turned toward the family, but they already knew and began singing, not mournfully but joyously.

  Galen repacked his medical bag and walked through the house. He looked around for the young man but couldn’t find him.

  As he made his way slowly down the hillside back to the Jeep and climbed in, he wondered: ghost or coincidence?

  He shrugged to himself.
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br />   Can’t take any more time. Still have to visit the Falcon home.

  The young maitre d’ of the swank D.C. hotel almost bowed and scraped as he pored over the courses of the banquet meal Edison had specified for his Olympics-bound torchbearers. It was going to be one big publicity show, with him as the centerpiece representing the company. He couldn’t afford for anything to go wrong—not this night. He already had called Nancy twice just to hear her voice, to know that she was still there for him.

  Back in town, Galen drove through a series of neighborhoods, each one more elaborate than the last, until he reached the suburban castles of The Neighborhood. That’s how the rest of the area referred to the enclave of mansions along the Potomac River. Here lived the richest and most influential, powerbrokers to the nation and the world.

  Marilyn Falcon was a self-effacing country girl at heart who still had not understood the trappings of power that surrounded her. She lived with her daughter and son-in-law and had enjoyed all of the perks he could provide. But nothing could prevent the inner destruction, the eating away by the cancer that was killing her.

  Galen drove past the gate and up the long driveway to the coach-style turnaround in front of the Georgian mansion. The maid already had opened the door to let him in and Anne Creding, the dying woman’s daughter, stood waiting for him in the large antiques-filled anteroom.

  “Mother seems to be deteriorating very quickly today, Doctor.”

  He detected no sign of grief from the daughter, just a flat voice and flatter expression, as though she was describing a pet that had to be put down. But then, pet owners tended to show their sorrow at the impending loss of a beloved animal, and Anne Creding displayed no such emotion.

  He nodded and followed her to the mother’s bedroom, where silk blankets and pillowcases adorned the bed and special pillows helped prop up the old woman.

  He moved to her side. Marilyn Falcon was comatose now. The cancer drugs no longer held sway. Maybe it was for the best that she could not perceive her surroundings or feel any pain. He turned to Anne, who stood by looking like some cigar store Indian princess staring ahead blankly.

  “She’s going now, Mrs. Creding. Is there anything I can do for you?

  Anne just shook her head coldly—no verbalization, no sense of loss.

  Maybe she’s in shock, too upset to react in any human way.

  At least, that’s what he hoped was happening. But in his years as their doctor, he never had seen an overt sign of affection or concern by the daughter for her mother. Anne Falcon Creding had tried to ignore what she considered her mother’s lower-class background when she married the wealthy and powerful Branson Creding, a Boston Brahmin who now held a Cabinet-level position. But her mother’s very existence exposed Anne’s ill-fitting social roots, no matter how hard she tried to conceal them.

  So perhaps, Galen thought, Anne considered Marilyn’s dying a favor.

  He turned to the old woman who now exhibited the irregular gasping of the dying. Yes, The Darkness was there this time, very strong, and soon Mrs. Falcon was no more.

  Galen signed the form certifying time of death. As he prepared to leave he heard the startling words:

  “Help me with her.”

  Well, well, he thought. Maybe Anne was feeling the loss after all. Maybe she wanted to arrange her mother in a dignified pose. But his skin crawled and he shuddered involuntarily as he saw the look of grim determination on the face of the dead woman’s daughter then noticed her hands. They were holding a small hammer and chisel, and she grimaced as she stared back and said something that made him pick up his bag wide-eyed and walk out:

  “I need you to hold her mouth open. I’m not going to bury all that gold in her teeth.”

  “Dr. Edison, is something wrong?”

  The hotel manager felt sudden panic as he heard the troubled voice on the other end of the telephone line.

  “Yes, we’re all sick. We need a doctor for the whole team, including me!”

  Edison hung up just as the latest overwhelming wave of nausea hit him. He had suffered through food poisoning before but this was different. His skin was turning beet red and he felt like millions of worms and bugs were crawling across his flesh. He was the last to be hit, after he had received calls from several of the torchbearers complaining of the same symptoms.

  The hotel doctor came to his room and examined him.

  “Damnedest thing! I’ve never seen food poisoning do this. Dr. Edison, I’d like to call a friend of mine. He’s local and often consults at the White House. May I use your phone?”

  By then Edison didn’t care if the quack called the Pope. He had never felt so physically miserable. Saliva poured from his mouth, his skin burned and itched, and his intestines felt more like fire hoses. Now he was starting to wheeze, and he felt numb around his mouth.

  Galen had arrived back at his office still shocked at that last turn of events. He had left the deathbed of Rosie with a sense of … what? Elation? Proof of something intangible? But then there was Marilyn Falcon. What did that poor dead woman ever do to deserve such malignancy on the part of her daughter? He sat down and seriously contemplated quitting. He felt the same inner torment as he did when Leni and Cathy had been taken from him.

  Then the phone rang.

  Naturally! What if it’s that Creding woman again?

  “Bob, this is Jack Stevens. Yeah, I’m still doing hotel medicine. Beats working for a living. I got a strange one here. Can I tap your brain?”

  Galen felt weary, but he would help his old friend.

  “It’s like food poisoning but not like any food poisoning I’ve ever seen,” Jack told him. “They’re all beet red, vomiting, salivating, and crapping up the place. They’re wheezing and they’re ready to tear their skin off.”

  “What did they eat for dinner?”

  Galen felt that old itch in his head as he scoured his little gray cells and came up with an idea even before Jack’s next words confirmed his suspicions.

  “Salmon,” he said. “The chef said it was freshly caught and brought in down at the E Street wharf.”

  “Don’t believe him,” Galen replied. “This is scombroidosis. Get them all on steroids and diphenhydramine, stat! They’re getting whacked by histamine release.”

  He hung up the phone, shaking his head.

  Scombroidosis! He hadn’t seen a case since med school. Bad stuff. Chemicals released by salt water fish when their skin starts to rot and break down.

  Can trigger one helluva allergic reaction!

  After the hotel quack had given him two injections, Edison began to feel human again. In a little while he would call Nancy to let her know he was okay.

  “You were right, Bob, that seafood dinner was bad news,” Jack told Galen after the emergency had passed. “We had the lab run tests on it. I think that chef, and maybe the food supplier, need some closer scrutiny.”

  “Glad to hear it, Jack.”

  “Nancy, how soon can we retire?”

  She heard the plaintive tone of his voice on the phone. He was still in D.C., the Olympic affair had ended, and the effects of the illness had passed, but the powers that be had told him not to come back just yet. They needed him to take a short hop to South Carolina to check on a government security lab that was having some trouble.

  Not even an extra day to recuperate from his banquet fiasco! Even worse, he couldn’t find a direct flight to the small southern town where the lab was located.

  Another one of Uncle Sam’s damn hidden facilities!

  The only way he could get there by tomorrow was to rent a car and drive or hire a puddle jumper, but he surely didn’t feel well enough to drive that far.

  Why does this have to be done on a Saturday, anyway?

  “Take it easy, Bob. I’ll spend the weekend analyzing our finances. You just get this last thing done, and if they try to make you do more, tell them to go lump it!”

  She hung up the phone and sighed to herself. Things were getting worse
at the bank, too. She was manager now—actually manager of the whole state—but upper management had no clue about the training deficiencies of the new employees they were hiring and no understanding of the need for increased security with the new computer systems. She felt like a voice crying in the wilderness. But she also knew that if anything did go wrong, she would take the blame. This was no way to live.

  She carefully laid out all of their assets and liabilities on a spreadsheet. They certainly couldn’t afford to stay in the New York-New Jersey area. The taxes on the house and the utility bills alone would eat up their savings within several years. They would have to move.

  She had heard that Bob’s company was considering changing the retirement and pension plans to something far less satisfactory. And, if Bob was right about the rumors he had heard, the company was trying to get rid of its higher salaried employees—like him. Her mathematical mind did some quick calculations and she smiled.

  Gee, it actually would be better if he did retire, but only if they offer him a buyout and allow him to keep his old pension plan.

  She had watched her own retirement plan at the bank very carefully. They wouldn’t get away with anything while she had anything to say about it.

  Maybe it was just the day, or maybe it was because he was away, but Nancy suddenly started feeling blue. Up popped the memory of that long ago day when the hope of having children of their own was lost, followed by more memories of the denials by the adoption agencies. It overwhelmed her. She put her head down wishing Bob was there to hold her.

  She sat up again.

  Snap out of it! Bob needs me to be logical now! Could we really do it—retire, escape the rat race, and move away? Could I see myself not working?

  Then she smiled as she remembered something her mother had told her when she was first married.