“My God, that was you? Wow, I read that book, The Prince of Poverty. Damned good writing but really biting.
“Uh ... does Seymour really look like his press photo?”
“You noticed? Yeah, he does look like a monkey, even acts like one.”
“Geez!”
“My father got wind of the book and raised holy hell. He called me a traitor to my class. All my friends, including Tiffany, decided I wasn’t their type. That’s when I decided to follow a different path.
“But you know what galled me the most, Tony? I was the real hypocrite. I used the same power I despised to save Pumper’s life. If I had been John Smith, or even, forgive me, Tony Hidalgo, would anyone have paid any attention to me?”
Tonio remembered what had happened when Betty was taken to the hospital that last time.
No, they wouldn’t have listened to me.
“Wasn’t it Robert Frost who spoke of ‘The Road Less Traveled?’”
His phone rang.
“Tonio, we’re going to have dinner. We’ll pick you up in front of the dorm in half an hour. See if you can find Sarah and bring her along, okay?”
He found Galen’s voice strangely comforting.
“Tio, can I bring my roommate, too?”
“Of course, boy. We’d all like to meet him.”
“Okay, bye.”
“Better change into something different, JP. You’re invited to dinner by my tios and tia.”
4. Auld Lang Syne
“Just call me Edison, like old bear breath does.”
“You call him bear?”
Sandy McDevitt laughed as Galen turned beet red. She sat next to him in Wilma’s second-row seats while Edison and Nancy occupied the captain’s chairs in front.
Nancy turned around to her.
“What’s so funny, Sandy?”
“It’s just happenstance, Nancy. Did Galen ever tell you what we nicknamed him in school?”
“Sandy, they don’t need to…”
“We called him The Bear.”
Edison kept his eyes on the road but a mischievous gleam appeared in them.
“Tell us more, Sandy.”
“Uh ... I think Sandy wants to see the White House of the Confederacy, right Sandy?”
He nudged her and she gave him the look Galen used to dread. All women know how to give it, and all men know the game’s over when it appears. Not even prayer helps.
“Yes, Galen’s right. Let’s go see the White House of the Confederacy. I think it’s just two blocks over.”
Another look: You owe me, Bob Galen.
It was hard to find among the modern buildings, and it offered precious few places to park. It also seemed out of place. Jefferson Davis’s home during the Civil War was surrounded by a giant hospital complex. Even the neighboring, brown-and-red-stone, post-bellum homes had been demolished. It sat alone in a canyon of manmade darkness.
Edison drove back around on Marshall Street and valet-parked Wilma in the hospital complex parking garage. A quick walk brought the four to the entryway of the historic home.
When the guard saw the four he shook his head.
“Sorry, folks, we’re closing. Come back tomorrow.”
Sandy became the young imp Galen once knew.
“Please, we only have today. My late husband proposed to me in the garden 60 years ago.”
The guard hesitated so Galen quickly slipped him a twenty.
It worked—he opened the gate.
“Josh did propose to me, right over there.”
She walked slowly toward a garden bench and sat down. Her eyes beheld a past only she remembered.
Galen followed and sat next to her.
“We all had some great times here, didn’t we?”
She looked up, gently dabbed at her eyes with an Alice-blue handkerchief then whispered, “Bob, do you remember when Dave and Connie, you and June, and Josh and I made out here that evening?”
He did.
“Yes, Sandy, but some things are best left unsaid. Capisca?”
“You were naughty, Bear.”
“It’s good to hear that name again.”
They stood up and headed back. Nancy and Edison were pretending not to be watching. Edison broke the silence.
“Where do you want to go next?”
They answered almost in unison: “The three bears!”
The Edisons followed the couple toward the old West Hospital. Another short walk brought them to the Broad Street side—but they didn’t find what they expected to see.
“I want to go inside,” Sandy said.
She and Galen walked through the front doors and approached the security guard.
“We’re looking for the three bears,” she said, smiling.
The guard raised an eyebrow.
Hope I don’t need to have these two geezers dragged in for psych evaluation.
“Uh, ma’am, you don’t look like Goldilocks, but the guy next to you sure looks like a bear.”
“We went to school here a long time ago and there used to be a statue of three bear cubs in a little garden just outside this door. Does the school still have it?”
“Oh, yeah, they’re over in the Gateway Building, next to the Three Bears Gift Shop. Easiest thing is to cut through the hospital to Marshall Street. You’ll see it. They moved it there ’bout twenty years ago. Guess that was after your time.”
“Yes, guess it was,” Sandy said.
She and Galen moved at warp speed for their age, imitating what they used to do when they were students.
“Slow down, you two,” Nancy called to them. “I don’t want you, or me, winding up with another heart attack.”
Edison was getting a little winded as well.
“Sorry,” Galen said. “We just naturally revert to hospital walk sometimes. When you’re a student or house staff doc, you move like the devil is on your tail.”
Sandy nodded. ”And maybe Old Ketch was.”
She took his hand and squeezed it, which slowed him down.
Maybe I am being chased, chased by my own personal demons of time and memory.
They crossed Marshall once more and entered the Gateway Building. Up the escalator and a short walk down the bustling hospital corridor, then a turn to the left there stood Anna Huntington’s stone copy of her bronze statue of three playful bear cubs. It seemed incongruous at first.
The cubs were posed cavorting and licking themselves, though exposure to decades of the elements made them seem worn. Now they were a side thought to the left of a gift shop entrance.
Sandy and Galen stood before them, worshippers in a cathedral of healthcare. To the old pair it was an icon.
The legend of the bear as healer and giver of strength pervades many cultures, and this particular