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  “See those little clay figures?” he said, pointing at the mantelpiece, “and those charcoal drawings? Miri did those.”

  “May I see her?”

  He nodded.

  “I think Lem has things under control. Sometimes when she can’t find paper or clay, she gets … uh … upset.”

  They headed toward Miri’s room, where Lem was picking up drawings strewn about the floor.

  “She done run outta paper, Ben. I gave her more.”

  Sandy watched, fascinated, as the girl, now in her late 20s, sat cross-legged on a floor mat, both hands moving simultaneously like insects over two sheets. Beside her sat a tan-gray canine.

  “That’s a Safehaven wolf, Sandy,” Galen said. “The pack gave it to her.”

  She looked at him, wide-eyed.

  “It’s the only living creature for whom she shows any emotional attachment. There are times when I think they actually communicate.”

  “I’ve seen children like this in Africa. Most of the tribes consider them special to their gods.”

  Lem nodded.

  Sandy bent over to look at the drawing. She let out a gasp.

  “That’s me! She’s drawn me!”

  Lem deftly snatched the sheet before she could complete it.

  “Here ya go, ma’am, a gift from Miri.”

  They headed up the mountain trail. The sun had set but the “magic hour” provided enough daylight to guide the two old-timers back to the big house at the summit.

  “It’s later, Galen. You said you’d tell me later.”

  “Lem lost his entire family when his farmhouse burned down. He still has nightmares, hearing their screams and not being able to rescue them.”

  “Poor man!”

  “It gets worse. It was arson and the arsonist was his younger son, a sociopath. He had escaped from prison with his two cellmates and came back here to kill the officer who caught him.”

  “Ben?”

  “Yes, and Tonio and his girlfriend Betty had the misfortune of showing up at the same time as Lem’s murderous son.”

  The words came harder and he began to tremble.

  “Lem had to shoot his own son to save Ben and Miri and the kids. The wolves took care of one of the escapees.

  “And I … I killed the third man.”

  “My God,” she said softly. “I thought you were just going to tell me about their medical conditions.”

  “No, I didn’t think I’d need to.”

  He smiled. She sighed.

  “Okay, professor. Let’s take Lem first. He’s an alcoholic but has been dry for a while. From his body frame and height I’d have suspected Mafran’s Syndrome—Abe Lincoln’s body build. But his eyes appeared normal and his arms weren’t super long. Still possible, though.”

  “Not bad. What else?”

  “I didn’t see anything else.”

  “You missed his limp. Shrapnel from the war. Also a bunch of skin cancers on his face and hands. I’ve got him set up with a dermatologist.”

  “What about Miri?”

  “She’s easiest. We already know her status, though her idiot-savant artistry is fascinating.”

  “I’d say autistic savant.”

  “You’re right. Call me politically incorrect.”

  “And Ben?”

  “He’s not well. Looks like he’s had a stroke in the past. You must have caught it early, just a slight weakness on his left side. But did you notice the veins in his neck and the slight bobbing of his head? I hope he’s on heart meds. I’ll bet his heart is decompensating, probably a bad aortic valve.”

  “I’ve tried to persuade him to stay on the pills and see the cardiologist, but he’s a stubborn man.”

  “Did he study with you?”

  “Funny,” he snorted. “I hate saying this, but I think he wants to die.”

  They were climbing the steps when Edison opened the front door for them.

  “You two love birds go wash up. Nancy will have dinner ready in a few minutes.”

  Sandy snorted as she passed Edison.

  Ben felt the slight acid sensation, the constriction at the base of his neck, and the tingling in his arms. It was the anniversary of his betrothal to Irene and it always stirred up feelings of loss and despondency. He stared into his past and heard the music, smelled the blossoms, and heard her sotto voce singing of the wedding dance, the words gently rocking his soul

  I will love you ’til your death, and beyond .

  Safehaven was quiet now. The two men and their guest had applauded the meal of stir-fried orange beef and broccoli, to Nancy’s great delight. Now they sat in the living room, the evening sky casting a lavender haze over the mountain. Each pretended to read and listen to the haunting tones of Barber’s “Adagio for Strings.”

  Nancy had just finished reading Sense and Sensibility , her favorite Jane Austen novel, for the umpteenth time. She looked up.

  “It still feels strange with no kids in the house.”

  “Yeah,” Edison mumbled, caught between post-gastronomic slumber and relaxed wakefulness. “Just like it was when we started here.”

  Galen looked up from his newspaper.

  “It does seem kinda quiet.”

  He set his paper down, a crooked smile on his face.

  “‘Puff the Magic Dragon.’”

  Sandy and Edison shot him quizzical looks but Nancy laughed.

  “Bob, you remember the old song from the ’60’s. We used to sing it while we were canoeing. Isn’t that what you mean, Galen?”

  “That guy wooed you in a canoe?”

  “Uh-huh, he even sang to me. Right, Bob?”

  Edison looked at her and mouthed an “I love you.”

  Nancy returned his words and sang. “Painted wings and giant rings give way to other toys.”

  Sandy cast a longing look at Nancy’s wedding band.

  “Kids do grow up. We just get old … and alone.”

  The four sat staring out the picture window, a kaleidoscope of memories coursing through each one. They grieved for children who might have been, remembered children now grown, and imagined the children of this new generation.

  Kiri te Kanawa’s voice filled the room with Rachmaninoff’s “Vocalese” as the octogenarian quartet retired for the night.

  Scientists and philosophers speak of the Biological Imperative, that genetically programmed drive to procreate, to pass on the genetic message to succeeding generations. It is the single overt form of immortality we can recognize in our daily lives.

  That imperative is matched by another one, even more powerful. We struggle against its inevitability, deny the signs, and seek to prevent its onset. Our poets wax eloquently on its romantic virtues and its all-encompassing finality. More often than not we do not “go gentle into that dark night.” But go we must.

  Ben Castle felt exceptionally tired that evening. He had let Lem cook dinner while he guided Miri to the table and sat with her. Each day both men watched over her and fed her, but she had always remained oblivious. She would cast a meaningful gaze only in one direction: at the she-wolf lying at her feet.

  “I’m going to bed early,” Ben said, as he cleared away the dishes. “You know what today is.”

  Lem nodded, his craggy, weatherworn face, deeply creased by his own memories, “Sure, Ben. I’ll get Miri settled down in a little while.”

  Ben headed to his room and changed into pajamas. Maybe he would read awhile, propped up in bed, enjoying a mystery or police-procedure novel. But he kept thinking of Miri, wishing against all odds that someday she would hold him and utter the word he had longed to hear since she was a baby: “Daddy.”

  He pulled the blankets back and set one down-filled pillow atop the other. The nightstand lamp cast his silhouette on the opposite wall as he sat on the edge of the bed and removed his slippers. He lay back, stretching his stocky legs out, catlike, trying to dissipate the tension that had been building all day.

  It seemed like only yesterday when he was a
young army grunt, joking with his friend Bandana in downtown Saigon. A burst of machine pistol bullets had taken away that friendship when it maimed him and cut his friend in half.

  He had found Irene in a storybook romance and then, in the blink of an eye, lost her in that fatal crash.

  The one remaining link to his love, the only tangible remnant of his Irene, was never his. She was a living ghost incapable of love.

  He closed his eyes and the room filled with wedding guests and music. He felt Irene’s arms around him, her white gown casting limpid flower petals on the floor.

  The words caused him to look up from Irene’s shoulder. She was smiling as she called out, “Papa, you and Mama are so beautiful! I love you both.”

  His soul soared.

  Thank you, God! You’ve given me my daughter!

  The tempo quickened as they danced faster and faster. The guests clapped in time with their steps. He saw his parents, Jerzy and Sophie, among them. They smiled and swayed with the music.

  As he danced ever faster, he felt the tightness building in his neck. Then he heard his beloved whisper to him, “Do not fear, my love, I will love you ’til your death and beyond.”

  Ben and Irene Castle danced the Pani Mloda into eternity.

  Lem Caddler had reached the stage in life when middle-of-the-night bathroom excursions became routine. But that wasn’t what awoke him.

  He had heard their polytonal harmony echoing through the woods. He peered out his bedroom window and saw the phalanx of four-footed Moonsingers, ears back, muzzles to the sky, howling their lupine dirge outside Ben’s window.

  The Safehaven wolves knew.

  Lem also knew, but the rational mind denies the unexplainable. He moved quickly to Ben’s room. He knocked gently then slowly opened the door and saw his friend lying there, propped up on pillows, eyes half open.

  At the foot of the bed lay Miriam and the she-wolf.

  He went to Ben’s side and felt his hand. It was cold and pale white.

  He bent over Miriam, picked her up, and carried her back to her room, the canine padding quietly behind him. He tucked her back into bed then headed for the telephone.

  The ringing woke Galen from a light slumber. He had slept poorly that night but didn’t know why; no dreams, no bad memories, none of the inconveniences of old age that required pain pills or frequent nocturnal bladder emptying.

  He had fallen asleep quickly, waking only to the moonlight serenade of the wolf pack and the persistent ringing.

  “Doc, it’s me, Lem. You better get down here. Ben’s had a turn.”

  “Did you call the rescue squad?”

  “Won’t do no good.”

  He dressed quickly and grabbed his timeworn black bag from the closet. He knocked lightly on Edison and Nancy’s bedroom door and Edison, who had just returned from a bathroom interlude, opened it.

  “Lem just called. Ben’s gone. I’m heading down there.”

  Edison nodded. He and Galen had reached the age when receiving word of another’s passing was no longer unusual. It wasn’t something they had gotten used to, exactly, but time grants understanding. He went over to Nancy, who had awakened. He bent over and whispered to her.

  Galen heard the “Oh, no!”

  He turned to head down the hall but almost knocked over the fully dressed woman who had appeared behind him. She, too, held a time-worn black bag.

  “You were right, Sandy.”

  The two stepped out into the mountain coolness. Autumn was rapidly approaching, the season of change as Persephone prepared to return to the underworld. And Ben Castle had gone ahead to prepare the way.

  Galen’s face creased in sadness as he trudged down the path leading to the cottage. Sandy stepped more lightly and contrapuntally.

  Miriam, little Miri, what’s going to become of her if Lem’s right?

  He saw the swirling red lights of the Pennsylvania State Police cruiser parked in front of the house. Lem must have called Lachlan and Diane Douglas. It was only natural. Lachlan had been Ben’s partner and the younger man had looked up to him as a second father.

  He didn’t bother to knock; the door was open.

  How many times had he done this—getting a call in the middle of the night, heading to a patient’s home, seeing the traumatized and grieving family hovering around the remains of a once-living being that had become a shell, a husk, soon to return to the dust from which came.

  “I’ve done this so many times, too, Galen.”

  Had Sandy read his mind? No, it was an understanding among the sons and daughters of Aesclepius: the human condition, that final victory they all must concede.

  Lachlan was leaning over the body of his mentor and friend, his own head showing the beginnings of a palette of gray hairs, his wife Diane at his side holding a handkerchief to her face.

  Galen approached Lem, who stood silently behind them.

  Caddler was no stranger to grief and loss. Ben had become the closest thing to the family he had lost to his psychotic son’s rage. The inverted V-line on his forehead said it all.

  “Doc, I got up early like I always do. I went to his room and shook him like usual, ’cause it takes a while to get him up. But he felt cold and ... well ... guess it was quick.”

  Galen moved to the bedside and placed his practiced fingers at the side of his friend’s carotid artery. No pulse; no facial contortion showing evidence of pain or struggle. Probably a massive MI that couldn’t have happened more than an hour ago.

  He caught himself.

  Damn, can’t ever stop thinking clinically .

  Then he noticed something else: Ben Castle’s expression—he was smiling.

  Sandy noticed it first: the scent of orange blossoms.

  Galen caught it, too.

  Ben is with Irene.

  He stopped himself from thinking further.

  “Don’t worry ’bout Miri, Doc. I’ll take care o’ her.”

  Galen looked warmly into the eyes of the man whom he had once decked with a solid right hand to the jaw. He had seen Lem in so many guises, from war hero, farmer—boozer and local troublemaker—recovering alcoholic and trusted friend. Now he would be fulfilling another role: the sole caretaker of Safehaven.

  Nancy and Edison entered the cottage.

  Nancy looked around. “Where’s Miriam?”

  Caddler pointed to the girl’s room.

  “She’s still asleep. I didn’t think I should wake her.”

  He didn’t tell them what he had found when he first entered Ben’s room.

  “I’ll take care of the arrangements, Dr. Galen,” Lachlan said. “He’s owed a veteran’s and trooper’s funeral.”

  He held Diane’s hand tightly. He had seen death in many forms. Maybe Ben had the right kind, if there ever was a right kind.

  Edison nodded.

  “I’ll call the stone mason in Tunkhannock for the headstone and engraving.”

  He and Nancy held hands as they looked upon their neighbor and friend. Then Nancy and Sandy went to Miriam’s room and quietly opened the door. As Lem said, she was still asleep, the she-wolf sprawled at her feet, awake, eyes watchful but unmoving. Both women caught the scent of orange blossoms.

  Nancy’s foot scraped against a paper on the floor and she bent over to pick it up. By now nothing surprised her in Miri’s drawings. This one showed them all standing around Ben’s bed, a death scene tableau.

  But who was the young woman wearing a tiara of blossoms?

  She folded the paper and put it in her coat pocket.

  Back at the house they all sat quietly in the living room.

  “Could this have been prevented, Galen?”

  Nancy asked the question he never wanted to hear. He caught Sandy watching him.

  He shook his head.

  Sandy understood Galen’s anguish as a doctor. She reached out to him, placed her hand on his, and whispered, “Dragons live forever, but not so little boys.”

  7. Grandma, What Big Eyes You Have
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  Snowflakes whirled in spiral swirls that cold November morning .

  She spied him through the flurried haze and knew he wanted her. So did the others. Her life was either feast or famine. Today was her lucky day .

  She desired only the best, not some plain Tom, Buck or Harry who would fawn over her but fail in the clinches. A girl has to be choosy .

  He didn’t let her down. He was strong. One at a time he had locked horns with her other suitors and easily racked them up. In the end he stood triumphant, magnificently statuesque, chest heaving and nasal alars flaring. The muscles in his torso stood out behind his dark brown and white chest fur. The fifteen points of his antlers towered over his defeated challengers .

  She moved toward him, her four hooves carefully navigating the frozen ground. Her ears bent backward. Her erect, white-furred tail semaphored her intent .

  Slowly they walked together into the dark, ice-dappled woods .

  Winter melted into spring and summer. As the heat intensified, she felt the rising pressure in her belly, the protuberance growing larger and larger as the warm winds rustled the field grass into edible dryness .

  She had to find her special place—and soon. Her time was drawing near. She left her herd of sisters and, by some mysterious tracking sense, found the field of high grass surrounded by Ionian pillars of forest trees. There it was: the shallow cast in the ground, the familiar birthing site of prior years .

  Carefully she moved soft leaves, twigs and grasses to cover the natal bed. As she finished, she felt the sudden contraction. Her entire body tightened as the fawn, head and forelegs first, made its way down the birth canal. It fell 2 feet to the padded depression below .

  The sudden impact tore the umbilical cord, the newborn’s full breathing mechanism was triggered, and the female fawn let out a barely audible gasping bawl .

  Mother moved quickly to daughter and began to vigorously lick the newborn’s face, instinctively clearing nose and muzzle of birth debris. She listened as the fawn’s fitful breaths cleared its lungs of amniotic fluid .