The Digger's Rest Read online

  Once Simon was with them, Mitch took his bags and set them with the rest, then went to hail a cab. Madame Duvalier took Simon by the hand and led him into a corner. “Did you have a good time last night, my young blue eyes?” she asked him, looking into his big blue eyes and raising her hand to lightly touch his face.

  Simon nodded, “Yes Madame. I had the most wonderful time in my life. Thank you so much,” he said.

  Madame put her arms around him and hugged him tightly, her eyes misty. It seems the otherwise starched businesswoman had gotten very attached to the young Mr. Blue Eyes in a very short time.

  “You always have a place here with Madame when you need it, just like he does, my young blue eyes,” she whispered in his ear before letting him go.

  Just as Mitch came back in to tell them he’d gotten a cab, Madame Duvalier handed Simon two bags, one paper, the other the leather bag he’d seen the night before with the brushes and combs. “Breakfast for you to take with you. It’s not good to go without breakfast when you are traveling,” she said and winked at him. The next thing he knew, Mitch was ushering him out the door followed by Robert carrying the heavier bags. Madame Duvalier walked out behind them and hugged them both again. “Not so long next time. Mais oui?” she said to Mitch, kissing him on both cheeks.

  “Oui, Madame,” Mitch agreed, smiling sincerely.

  Then she shook her finger at Simon and said, “You trust your Madame. Oui?” Simon nodded and hugged her again, then got in the cab, waving to her as it pulled away.

  The strain of keeping bags in order on the train wore Simon out, so by the time they got to their coach car, he was already exhausted and in another lag cycle. “Don’t sweat it,” Mitch said to him when he saw that his eyes were drooping, about to nod. “Jet lag always hits me hardest on the third day, so go ahead and take a nap if you want. It won’t hurt you.”

  Simon laid himself down on the seat using his jacket as an extra pillow. Mitch took off his own jacket and covered him. “Nighty night,” he said as the train pulled out of the station, then set about battling his own lag.

  After about a half an hour they were well clear of London and just getting out into the suburbs. A half an hour after that, they were in the country. No matter how many times he’d seen it, he could never get over the sheer green beauty of the English countryside, neatly squared off patches of farmland framed by carefully trimmed hedgerows giving it a patchwork quilt effect that never ceased to amaze him. Being in the country always brought out the softer side of him, his city edge slowly slipping away. Combined with his increasing struggle with the lag, he looked over and saw Simon sleeping peacefully. A tide of sentimentality rushed over him thinking about how much Simon had grown since he’d first found him, and he let himself drift back.

  He remembered those days so clearly. How could he ever forget them? It was Christmas-time, and as happened with him every holiday season, the clouds of his past drifted over him, dampening his spirit and darkening his view of the festivities.

  ***

  It always began the day after Thanksgiving because it was always on that day that the radio stations started playing Christmas music in the hopes of spurring on retail sales. He couldn’t go anywhere in New York City without hearing his mother’s voice singing Poor in New York at Christmas. It came out of apartment windows, was playing in all the shops, blared out of car windows, five, ten, fifteen times a day or more. It was everywhere and the more he heard it as Christmas Eve approached the darker… emptier and lonelier he got.

  The holiday season seemed to get worse with each passing year because it signaled another year of distance from the memories he tried so desperately to hold on to, and the time he didn’t make it to Jack’s Christmas party. It always made him feel lost, adrift, and…hopeless.

  Adding to that, he was physically drained from just having finished his lecture tour of the twelve poorest high schools in New York City, a program he’d fought for against the judgment of the Museum’s board of directors, but with his passion for the project, and Jack’s politics, they let him do it. Then, of course, The New York Times got hold of it, thanks again to Jack’s politics, and he was a hero.

  It was December twenty-third and he was a wreck, his body ached and his spirit was ebbing rapidly when he got home from the Museum. He’d poured himself a large vodka on the rocks and sat at his desk staring at the stack of mail he hadn’t looked at in at least ten days. Well, no time like the present, he thought as he tipped his glass, the last of the cold vodka running down his throat, and poured himself another before reaching for the scattered stack of mail on his desk and starting to sort. “Crap, crap, crap,” he said as he pitched flyers in the waste basket next to him. “Bill, bill, crap, more crap, bill, still more crap,” he said to himself when he came to a crumpled white envelope addressed neatly by hand with small handwriting, definitely personal. He never got personal mail— other than for Jack and a few of the people at the Museum, he didn’t know enough ‘personal’ people who would write to him. He looked for a return address, “S. Holly, Holy Family, Grand Street, New York, New York. Curious, he opened it and began reading.

  Dear Dr. Bramson,

  My name is Simon Holly and I was one of the students at Holy Family who attended your lecture. I know you are a very busy man, and I don’t mean to take up your time. I just wanted you to thank you for coming to see us and to tell you how much I learned from you and enjoyed everything you had to show us and tell us about your life in the field and at the Museum. It was a special treat for me because I’ve always loved stories about castles and knights, ancient cultures and art, and other than for your visit and seeing the beautiful things you brought with you, the only time I’ve ever seen them was on the TV in our common room when I can watch The History Channel or The Learning Channel, and I would like you to know how much your visit meant to me and how your coming to see us made it real for me. Thank you for taking the time out of your busy life to come see us. I will never forget you.

  Very truly yours,

  Simon Holly

  Mitch took a deep breath, poured himself another drink and read it again. It was the only personal letter he’d received from a student on the tour. He’d gotten many letters at the Museum from the teachers and signed by all the students, but this one was different. This kid clearly had written it all by himself, and had found out where to mail it. There was nothing pro forma about it. It was personal, apologetic in its tone and those words, “Holy Family…common room…never forget you.” Something… some-thing about it tugged at him, something…sad, lonely.

  Mitch didn’t sleep well that night. The next day was Christmas Eve and he was already starting to crumble from the inside. He got up every few hours to have a drink and reread the letter. By the next morning, his eyes were bloodshot, his head ached, and he was ready to go out on his usual Christmas Eve tear which always ended up with him passed out on Jack’s couch, not really remembering how he got there.

  He started out that morning by taking the subway downtown to Thirty-fourth Street and walking south, revisiting his memories of his mother every time he passed a homeless shelter or soup kitchen that they’d worked in, now long closed, hearing her song come out of an opening or closing shop door.

  He went back to their old apartment on First Avenue and stood outside staring; trying desperately to recall what little things he could from his childhood there. Then he just wandered aimlessly for what seemed like hours, and when he looked up, he saw the sign, Holy Family Catholic School, and went inside.

  It had only been a few weeks since he’d been there, so he knew where to go. In the office, he saw one of the same habited nuns who’d greeted him on his first visit, a stout woman in her fifties with a freshly scrubbed look to her round cheeks and chin. “Dr. Bramson,” she said, surprised to see him again.

  “How are you Sister? Merry Christmas,” he said quietly.

  “Merry Christmas to you, too. What can I do for you? You’re not giving another lecture he
re so soon are you?”

  “No, Sister. I was just in the neighborhood and was wondering if Father Perez might have a few minutes for me,” he asked her, the sound of his own words echoing in his ears.

  “Well, let me check,” she said politely and went to look at a calendar book on her desk. Just then a door to the right opened and a tall, slim man of about thirty-four or -five with dark blonde hair and pale green eyes came out wearing clerical blacks and a white collar. He went to speak to the Sister but saw Mitch instead. “Dr. Bramson! I didn’t think I’d be seeing you again so soon. Did you forget and leave something when you were here?” Father Javier Perez asked.

  “No, Father, I just stopped by to see if maybe you had a few minutes to talk to me.”

  “Why, yes, of course, please come in,” he said kindly to Mitch, then spoke to the secretary nun. “When would my next appointment be, Sister?”

  “Twenty minutes, Father,” she said dutifully.

  “Please come in, Doctor,” the priest said to him politely. Mitch went in and waited for Father Perez to close the door behind them.

  “Please make yourself comfortable,” the priest said, motion-ing with his hand for Mitch to take a seat before going around his desk and taking his own.

  “Now what can I do for you, Dr. Bramson?” Father Perez asked, his eyes brimming with a mixture of curiosity and concern. It was no effort for the priest to see that the man sitting before him was struggling with something intense. Mitch stumbled for an answer, then not able to find the words, took the letter out of his pocket and handed it to the priest.

  Father Perez just smiled and shook his head as he read. “Yes, that’s our Simon,” he said fondly, then looked at Mitch, searching his eyes for why such a man had bothered to come down there in person, and in such a state of…what? Torment? Grief? Confusion? He couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

  “Can you tell me about him?” Mitch asked humbly, shifting nervously in his chair.

  “Why, yes, of course. Simon’s our very best student, head and shoulders above any of the others academically. He’ll be our valedictorian when he graduates in the summer,” Father Perez answered, still searching Mitch with his intense pale green eyes from behind his high Castilian cheekbones.

  “Can I ask how he got here, Father?”

  “Well, Simon has been with the Holy Family Foster Home since he was a young child. I’ve only been here for five years but I can tell you that, although he is one of our success stories, how he came to us is one of our…well…saddest,” the priest said hesitantly while coming to the conclusion, at least in his own mind, that Mitchell Bramson’s presence there that day was more than just a casual call. “But I’ll tell you what, Sister Mary Immaculata was here when Simon came into our care. Let me see if she’s available to speak to you,” and he got up and went to the door, calling out to the secretary nun, “Sister Helene, can you please see if Sister Mary Immaculata is available to come in?”

  “Yes, Father.”

  A few minutes later, there was a knock at the door. “Come in, please,” the priest called out and the door opened. Another habited nun entered and went over to stand beside Father Perez. She was about forty or so and rather plain but with kind, earnest blue eyes and a humble demeanor. “Please, Sister Mary, have a seat. You remember Dr. Bramson, don’t you?”

  “Yes, of course. Good to see you again, Doctor,” she greeted him, her eyes wary as to why he would be there, or what it could possibly have to do with her. Father Perez spoke.

  “May I?” he asked Mitch before handing Sister Mary the letter.

  “Yes, please,” Mitch said nodding. Sister Mary read the letter to much the same reaction as Father Perez.

  “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 peeki
ng 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.