“Tia Nancy, remember how you used to read to us when we were kids?”
Nancy smiled at the beautiful, fifteen-year-old girl who was no longer a child.
“Yes, Carm, it was one of the things your tios and I loved to do—reading, playing the parts in the story, and watching the three of you jump and laugh, as you joined in. Why do you ask?”
“Well, Freddie, Tonio, and I were thinking maybe Fai might like that—hearing stories, I mean. Could you ask the tios?”
The children sat through dinner with unusual anticipation. They knew normally this would be the time for suggestions, thoughts, complaints, or whatever, but tonight would be different. They ate silently, commenting only on Nancy’s custard dessert.
When the table had been cleared, Galen rose as if to leave but then retrieved a book from the top of the bookcase and sat back down.
“It’s been a long time since we had a story hour. I came across one of my favorites while straightening up the bookcase today. Does anyone remember ‘The Jungle Book’ by Rudyard Kipling?”
“Faisal, have you heard of this story?”
The boy shook his head. His story books had consisted of tales about the great Caliphs and the beautiful girls they rescued from evil doers.
“No, Tio Galen. Can you tell me what it is about?”
“We’ll do better than that, Fai,” Edison joined in. “We’ll let you meet the characters. We’ll all play parts in the story. Afterwards, you can tell us who did the best job.”
At first, he didn’t know how to react. He had been told that Americans did strange things for fun, and this sounded strange. But there was a man in his village—an “old one,” a teller of legends. Maybe it would be like that.
They moved from the table to the big, woven rug in the center of the living room and formed a circle around Nancy, now seated in her favorite rocking chair. She took the book from Galen and said, “We’ll start with one of the stories. It’s about a little boy—a boy named Mowgli—who was raised by wolves and who grew to manhood as the protector of the jungle creatures. I’ll read the narrator’s part, and as the passages describe each of the characters, I’ll pass the book around, so that each of you…”
She stopped, suddenly realizing that Faisal could not participate.
“Fai, ” Galen said, “we’ll read you the story tonight, but soon, if you wish, I will get some books that you can use to read stories to us.”
Nancy silently sighed in relief then began the first chapter:
It was seven o
’
clock of a very warm evening in the Seeonee hills when Father Wolf woke up from his day
’
s rest, scratched himself, yawned, and spread out his paws one after the other to get rid of the sleepy feeling in their tips.
As they took turns reading the parts, Faisal created mental images of Mowgli and the Seeonee, the wolves who fed him and cared for him; of Father Wolf and Raksha, the Mother Wolf; as well as Bagheera, the black panther who vouched for him, and Baloo, the wise old bear. He marveled at Kaa, the great python, and cheered as Mowgli defeated Shere Khan, the tiger. He remembered his little dog, Fez, as Mowgli adventured with Akela and Grey Brother, the great wolves of the pack.
Then, the written words ended and the voices stilled, he heard the wise old bear call out to him.
“You are Mowgli.”
Another weekend and the children released their energies as would any prisoners released from captivity. They jumped off the bus and ran up the mountain driveway, cutting across the field to the old blind and the den where their friends lived.
“Athena! Zeus! Mercury!” Freddie called out then waited, as the pack leaders followed by the young ones slowly moved toward them.
Tonio, busily petting the young ones, called to his brother and sister.
“Why don’t we bring Fai down here?”
Carmelita sternly reminded her brother that they had no way of knowing how the pack would respond to a stranger, no matter how friendly the animals had become to them.
“I’ll ask Tio Galen tonight and see what he thinks,” he replied, and then the siblings headed home, as luminous-green, lupine eyes followed the uphill journey of the two-legged ones.
He heard his roommate coming down the hall. Tio Edison and Tio Nancy had told him he would be attending the same school as his friends, as soon as he fully recuperated. The older folks kept him busy during the school week, but he missed the company of the other children, his new friends.
He heard Tonio open the door, and then he smelled something. It was a dog! No, not quite, something doglike but outside, wild. He remembered the feral dogs outside his village and the warnings his elders would give him and all the other young ones.
“Tonio, have you been with dogs at school today?”
The boy laughed but said nothing.
He heard Tonio’s quiet breathing punctuated by an occasional snore. He rose from his bed—he needed no light. His pajama-clad feet cast no sound, as he carefully opened the bedroom door and, led by his ears, slipped down the hallway to the living room. He felt his way to the large picture window overlooking the mountain vista. He pressed his right ear against the glass and listened. Faintly, from a distance, he heard the triple-toned cry of the Moonsingers.
“Tio Galen, your piano, it is electric?”
“Yes, Fai, and it can make many sounds, not just piano. Would you like to try it again?”
“Oh, yes, Tio!”
He sat at the console, as the old man guided his fingers over the buttons that would switch the digitally created sounds into different instruments. Faisal’s fingers pressed each key as he sampled the sounds of oboe, flute, horn, organ, bass, and more, and as the notal tones swirled in his brain, his fingers carried them forward to the keyboard.
Galen listened in amazement, as the swirling sounds conjured up the boy’s native land: blowing sands, the five calls to prayer from the muezzin in the minarets, the movement of people in the bazaars, and the ever-shimmering heat.
Nancy and Edison once again stood in the doorway. As the adults listened, the music shifted effortlessly to cool breezes, birds, mountain forests, water, and air, reaching a crescendo in the startling, elemental, harmonic howl of the wolves.
Sightless glass eyes pierced them, as the boy turned and asked quietly, “Where are they?”
The band of seven moved slowly down the mountain path, Tonio guiding Faisal. The forest sounds played counterpoint to their footsteps, the crunching leaves serving as tympani to the birds and crickets.
They reached the observation blind, and the boy’s nose twitched, its alar wings expanding to take in the multitude of forest smells: decaying leaves, and tree and plant scents blending with the feral.
“Zeus! Mercury! Athena! Come out,” Freddie called. Faisal’s sensitized ears picked up the quiet padding of the four-legged ones.
They came in threes, moving slowly toward the pack that was of them and not of them. Now their moist, black nostrils took in the scent of a new, two-legged one. They stopped. The three oldest sat, as their three successors moved forward, green eyes watching, ears on point.
Faisal took three steps and dropped to his knees. He extended his arms slowly, performing the ancient prayers he had been taught. He had no prayer rug, but Allah would grant the forest floor that honor. He bowed his upper body the ritual four times, then placed his hands on his thighs and waited.
The young alpha male walked forward first, inhaled deeply of the boy’s scent, then touched its muzzle to Faisal’s right hand. The two others followed in turn, then they returned to sit by the three seniors. From the remainder of the pack, a young, medium-sized, dark-gray male approached slowly, tail at half-mast. It went down on all fours and slowly inched forward. Its muzzle touched both hands, then it stared upward into the sightless eyes and whimpered.
Faisal reached out gently, placed his hands behind the beast’s head, and whispered, “Akela.”
The drumbeat of life begins in the womb and continues until the Three Sisters select, measure, and cut the strings that bind us to this mortal coil. It is a steady yeoman’s beat, regular with few skips. It speeds up in love or fear and slows down at rest. But there are times, maybe a warning of the approaching scythe, when it performs a Tango of Death.
He felt the sudden fluttering. There was no pain, just the sensation of wings beating inside trying to escape from within a cage of muscle and bone. He rubbed his chest, hoping it was just fatigue, and it seemed to abate. He was a man, after all, so he ignored it.
Ben Castle, sergeant, Pennsylvania State Highway Patrol, got dressed. It was good to have his partner back on duty again. Lachlan Douglass was quite a guy—a good cop, loyal soldier, loving husband, and now adoptive father to young Faisal. The boy who went to the Iraq war had come back a man, one whom Ben would have been proud to call son.
The former high-school basketball champ was turning into one damned fine cop. He soaked up Ben’s advice like a sponge.
The old trooper stood in front of the mirror. Everything looked straight and spit-polish bright. He adjusted the badge over his left chest and felt the flutter again.
That’ll teach you to eat pork chops before bedtime!
He looked in the mirror once more and saw his father’s face staring back: stocky, almost bald, with rounded lopsided grin, and azure-blue eyes that still caught the ladies’ attention when he pulled them over for speeding.
Not bad for an old guy in his fifties.
Must be those good Polish genes!
He adjusted the crown of his trooper’s hat and strode out to the patrol car.
Time to pick up Lachlan and the kid
.
Faisal, guided by his wolf-dog, Akela, waited outside the Douglass house, ready to be dropped off at the bus stop, where he would meet the Hidalgo children. Another year at the private academy then off to The Juilliard School of Music in New York City.
The Douglasses still couldn’t believe it. The three old-timers up on the mountain had said they would pay Fai’s tuition and cover his expenses at Juilliard.
Lachlan heard the honk of Ben’s patrol car. He kissed Diana and headed to the driveway to join Faisal.
Then the horn became one steady, ominous tone.
At usual, Diana watched her husband depart from the front window. Each time he left for work, she would recite the universal prayer of wives and husbands of all police and service officers:
Dear God, let my loved one return safely
.
She knew as they all did that every phone call or unexpected visitor could be the one bearing the message of loss.
Then she saw Lachlan dash toward the police cruiser and fling open the driver’s side door. She raced outside.
“Tio Benny, Tio Benny!”
He heard Faisal’s voice from the bottom of a mental well. He sensed vaguely that his face was pressed against the steering wheel, but he couldn’t move. He tried to speak, but nothing came out. A loud noise was roaring inside his head, reminding him of a childhood visit to the beach and the pounding surf that used to frighten him. Then he drifted away from what was happening around him.
Lachlan gently grasped Ben’s shoulders and pulled him back against the seat, stopping the horn. The right side of his face was drooping, and his right arm hung loosely. His breathing was labored. Saliva dripped from the flaccid right side of his mouth.
“Tio Benny, Tio Benny!” Faisal repeated.
Douglass grabbed the car microphone and called in.
“Central! Central! Sixteen-oh-eight. Officer down! Need Medevac now!”
“Roger, sixteen-oh-eight. Who is your ten-five-three, and what is your ten-four-five?”
“Central, it’s Sergeant Castle. He appears to have had a stroke. Please notify Medevac EMTs. We’re in front of my house.”
Momentary silence from the radio voice.
“Uh … Roger, sixteen-oh-eight. Dispatching Medevac. ETA your position ten minutes.”
“Copy that, Central—tell ‘em to hurry!”
“Will do, Lach.”
“Sixteen-oh-eight, out.”
He turned back to his partner, as Diana cradled the older man’s head and kept repeating, “It’s going to be all right, Ben.”
Faisal and Akela sat next to her.
The outside speaker for the phone was ringing—ringing insistently, it seemed.
“Now what?” Nancy asked aloud, putting down her garden trowel and heading for the house. She had just finished changing the annuals in her bathtub plant holder. The resident chipmunk raced back and forth from under the tub, where it found safety from the hawks and other creatures that preyed on its kind. She had carefully begun placing small piles of peanuts and seeds near the tub, so that the frenetic little rodent could stuff its cheeks and safely bring the food home to its burrow.
Edison and Galen were working about a hundred yards away. He had dragooned Galen into helping erect one of his antennas, and the two men were soaked with sweat, as they attempted to raise yet another part of the mountain communications array.
“I’m too old for these shenanigans, you old goat. Why can’t you just listen to local radio stations?”
Galen took off his workman’s gloves and massaged his hands, while Edison grinned back at him.
“Do you good, you fat old couch potato. About time you got some real exercise like the rest of us.”
Edison was younger by a year and a half, and he never let his friend forget it. But they both knew they weren’t spring chickens anymore, especially when their joints started acting up. The two limped back toward the doorway of the house, where Nancy was frantically waving them inside.
“It’s Lachlan. Something’s happened to Ben!”
She handed the phone to Galen, who listened for a few seconds.
“Yes, it does sound like he’s had a stroke, Lach. If we’re lucky, and it’s the right type, it might be reversible. But it’s a race against time. How did they take him? By Medevac? Good. I’ll call the hospital, and we’ll meet you at the ER.”
The three friends quickly changed, Edison fired up the van, and they rolled down the mountain in silence, each one thinking about the officer they had first met while trying to protect the wolves.
They found the children still waiting for the school bus. Edison pulled over and Galen called out, “Get in. Sergeant Castle has been taken to the hospital. Faisal and his parents will need us.”
He felt them lift him onto the stretcher, but only on his left side. He was vaguely aware of the instruments they were applying to his body: the stethoscope on his chest, the needle entering his left forearm. But where was his right arm? He felt them wiping the left side of his face and gently opening his mouth to be sure that nothing was blocking his breathing. He felt his left eyelid being lifted and a bright light being shined in his eyes. He saw the faces staring down at him and heard them asking if he understood what was going on. He felt the left side of his chest go bare, as they opened his uniform shirt, the one he had worn so proudly just a short lifetime ago. He felt the stickers being placed on his left chest. And he heard someone call out something that sounded like, “He’s in A-fib! Bet a clot did this to him.”
He wanted to escape, but his right side wouldn’t follow orders. So his subconscious mind took over and led him into the past…
* * *
“Papa, tell me again about the old country.”
Ben looked up from where he was playing with his toy soldiers made of lead on the floor of their small apartment’s living room—the soldiers his father had cast for him and his brothers.
Jerzy Zamek watched his youngest son. The coal dust would never leave the heavyset man’s lungs, even when the wracking spasms of coughing could not expel it. His mine-pale skin would turn pink only when he smoked, and that habit was increasing day by day.
Big, hairy arms reached down, picked up the boy, and set him carefully on thick knees. Ben was his and Sophie’s last child. His Warsaw wife had given him three healthy boys, and he grinned as he saw her plump shape peering through the open kitchen door.
Jerzy loved Sophie in so many ways, not the least of which was her skill with sweet cabbage, sour cream, and sauerkraut. His bright-blue eyes sparkled, as he told his son how his own father had organized a resistance group against the Nazi invaders, and how the family had escaped, when Joseph Stalin decided to pluck the golden pear that was Poland.
Jerzy laughed while telling young Ben about how he and Sophie had met after arriving separately in the United States as war refugees, finding friends in the local Polish American community, and eventually settling in the coal country of eastern Pennsylvania.
He laughed even harder, barely avoiding a coughing spasm, as he told his son how red-faced his older twin brothers, Stanley and George, were when they were born.
“But Ben, my little Ben, you came out thoughtful and quiet. You seemed to be watching everything.”
And both would laugh, as his father bounced his knees up and down, shouting “Hi-yo, Silver, away! The Lone Ranger!” until he began to cough again.
Sometimes the boy would reach up and touch the soot-stained sputum that darkened his father’s lips, his blue eyes peering into his father’s, his mind filled with questions.
* * *
“Papa, where does our name come from?”
He was twelve now. Girls noticed him—and he returned the favor. His growing self-awareness now extended to his origins. He knew the songs and tales of the old country. But his name, the magical talisman of family ties, remained a mystery.
He knew what it meant in Polish: Castle. Many famous and royal ancient buildings began with the word Zamek.
His father, skin sallow and loose, the color of his eyes now fading, told him that his ancestors were soldiers, guardians of royalty, like the rooks of the ancient game of chess.
Ben grew proud.
* * *
At last he was eighteen—draft age. His two older brothers had gone before him to the killing fields of Southeast Asia. Papa was gone, too, the big, happy-faced man shrunken to a death’s head by the lethal crab devouring him from within.
He enlisted, not waiting for the lottery to call his number. College wasn’t for him. The stories of his ancestors defending the kings of Poland moved him, as only a young man with no life experience can be moved. He relished the military life of discipline and structure, and he believed in the cause that his superiors offered him.
And so it was that his unit moved to Saigon, and then to Da Nang and the Mekong Delta. The coal miner’s son saw his friends die, singly, in pairs, and in some cases groups. Yet his beliefs remained fixed, until the day he and his best friend—the big, black kid from Chicago everyone called “Bandana”—went to help the old lady with the baby carriage. The machine-pistol fire cut Bandana in half and wounded Ben in both legs, before he pulled his sidearm and shot a bullet into the woman’s brain.
After that he was shipped home, a hero with medals and lifelong guilt for not having been more observant. He would never make that mistake again. But he knew it wouldn’t bring Bandana back.
* * *
At twenty-three, honorably discharged, and seeking meaning to his life, he faced the world with wounds that had healed and no residual weakness in his slightly bowed legs.
The G.I. Bill would pay for his education. His natural inclination was law enforcement, so he took some courses at the local community college before applying to the Pennsylvania State Police Academy in Hershey. Then he took one final step.
Ben was never quite sure why he did it. Maybe it conferred on him an added sense of protection, or perhaps he needed to hide from the ghost of Bandana. He changed his name to its English translation: He became Ben Castle.
* * *
College still wasn’t for him, but it did bring him Irene—beautiful Irene Strzewski. Shortly after completing his training at the academy, they dodged the rice tossed at them and headed with his wedding party to the reception hall. His mother greeted the couple at the entrance, holding out the traditional offering of bread and salt to the newlyweds. His two older brothers, sharing their younger sibling’s haunted look, slapped him on the back and told him he would always be a Zamek.
They danced, the stocky, blue-eyed, state policeman and his auburn-haired, hazel-eyed Irene. She seemed doll-size next to him, her petite body complementing his intrinsic strength. But she fed him the doughy, triangular piroghis and the bowtie-shaped, sugar-coated cruller cakes—the
krusziki
. She also decided the order of those with whom she danced the Pani Mloda. And she held him tightly, her tiara of mock orange blossoms scenting the air below his nose. As they danced to the final verse of the Polish Money Dance, the rest of the party sang, “Take the bride away with you and love her ‘til your death.”
* * *
He heard voices hovering above him.
Is that Dr. Galen?
“Get the interventional radiologist to TPA him now. His atrial fibrillation is controlled, and the scan shows definite embolic blockage in the middle cerebral artery where it branches. Ken Drake’s a good man. Had him as a student.”
More gibberish, Ben’s brain decided, and retreated back in time once again...
* * *
He felt on top of the world, as he joined his sergeant in the patrol car. Even the veteran of the force who had mentored him mellowed his usually gruff voice, as he spotted the unmistakable symptoms.
“So, what’s it going to be, Ben, boy or girl?”
The words startled him, but he grinned and nodded up and down.
“I don’t care, as long as it has Irene’s good looks.”
The sergeant laughed and added, “Hopefully her brains, too!”
They headed along the road just outside Scranton, Ben reading the dispatch reports he had picked up on the way over.
“She’s going to see the doctor again today. It’s getting pretty close.”
Just then the squawk box blared, “Car one-twenty-one, car one-twenty-one, robbery in progress. Go to…”