Was it just a recurring dream, or was it a ride on the nightmare?
Galen tried to rationalize it using his professional training as a bad case of nerves and the ever-present overwork. And yet, the apparition haunted him. The loss had hit him hard. Was it all just him sensing his own mortality?
It seemed like only yesterday that he and Country Boy had struggled through medical school together. And now his old roommate was dead, the victim of a freak auto accident.
Was Aunt Hattie right? Was everything predestined?
Over and over again, a wraithlike figure materialized at the foot of his bed, beckoning with urgency, warning him—but of what?
Three of his closest friends—Basily, Freiling, and now Dave—were gone. If the dreams were warnings, then could they be foretelling potential harm to his childhood friend Edison or his wife Nancy? He knew now what the old folks at the nursing homes meant when they talked about the “slippery slope of loss.”
He couldn’t tell them, not then. But he had surprised Edison and Nancy when he asked to go with them to the island. It for certain seemed that way with Nancy. She had figured it out right away: Galen’s life was his work, his home a protective womb against the onslaught of life.
“Bob, are you ready yet?” Nancy called down to the great one’s dungeon-like lair. “We need to get started now if we’re going to make halfway by evening. It’ll take us at least six hours to get to Galen’s place.”
“I’m coming, I’m coming,” came the reply up the basement steps. “I just wanted to make sure I have my radio gear, tool kits, and GPS units on board. You head out to the car and I’ll lock up. On to Carolina!”
“Did you call the hotel to check on the weather status? Remember, the last two times we tried this trip, we had to cancel because of storms.”
“Yep, so far everything’s quiet there. No low pressure areas, no tropical depressions. The last storm just washed out.”
Finally he bounded up the stairs and embraced her. After too brief a moment they separated and he grinned. Thirty-five years and she still was his beautiful red-haired love.
“This time we get to see Bald Head Island!”
She smiled back, her eyes suddenly matching the glint in his.
“Maybe we can leave a little later.”
“See, timing sometimes has its advantages,” Edison said with a smile. They had driven almost to Galen’s home in Northern Virginia and the traffic had been unusually light. The mid-July sky was a cloudless teal blue and the temperature was an unseasonably cool 78 degrees at noon. They had enjoyed open-window driving all the way from Pennsylvania.
“Look, Galen’s already outside and waiting for us.”
Nancy gasped as she saw the mountain of boxes stacked next to the bear-sized man. In contrast to the khaki shorts, sunglasses and tank-top shirts both she and Edison were wearing, their friend was decked out in jeans and blue surgical scrub shirt with an old Leica camera strapped over his shoulder. His head was topped by a pith helmet that would have done the late Frank Buck justice. They pulled their old green Jeep four-wheeler up the long driveway and stopped in front of the mound.
“I thought Bob was a packrat when he traveled, but you just might have him beat,” Nancy laughed as she saw Galen begin tossing bag after bag into the vehicle.
“No, these really are necessary, Nancy,” Galen interjected. I’m bringing medical supplies to some friends of mine who run a free clinic that’s on the way down. A five-minute stop and most of this will be gone. Now tell me again why you and Edison are so desperate to see this island resort.”
Edison grumbled as he tried to figure out the logistics of packing two cars’ worth of baggage into one. Finally he gave up and tied the extra boxes on the roof rack.
“It’s a long story, Galen, but back in the ‘90s, when I was seriously planning retirement from the bank, Bob and I were both trying to decide where we wanted to live. New Jersey was too crowded and too expensive for retired folks like us. We narrowed it down either to Pennsylvania, where my parents lived, or one of the retirement communities in North Carolina. A neighbor had given us some brochures about Bald Head Island, so we scheduled a stay at one of the bed-and-breakfast spots there. Only problem was that hurricanes forced evacuation of the island, and our reservations had to be cancelled twice.”
“Now that Nancy and I are very happily settled in Pennsylvania, we thought a brief trip wouldn’t be a bad weekend getaway,” Edison chimed in.
“And what he didn’t say is that we had planned on going there on vacation before the baby…”
Nancy stopped herself. Even after so long, she still couldn’t talk about it.
“In any event, it sounds like an interesting place,” she continued. There’s quite a bit of history. The oldest lighthouse in North Carolina, ‘Old Baldy,’ was built there in 1817 to protect ships in the molasses/indigo dye/slave trade from the treacherous Frying Pan Shoals. They’ve even found evidence of Indian settlements, and supposedly Blackbeard the Pirate had his headquarters there. Maybe we’ll find some buried treasure!”
“Or, more likely, we’ll all get sunburned, in which case some of the stuff I brought along might help,” Galen added. “Let’s get moving.”
As they pulled out of his driveway Edison yelled to him in the back seat, “How does it feel to be away from the office?”
Galen couldn’t lie.
“Mentally I haven’t left.”
His whole life had been focused on his practice since Leni, then Cathy, were taken from him. What else did he have?
Hours passed as the three traveled down Interstate 95 through Richmond all the way to the North Carolina border and into the middle of the state. Now was as good a time as any to satisfy her curiosity. Nancy turned away from the window and toward the back seat and asked point blank: “What brought about this sea change, Galen?”
She still felt awkward using his last name, but Bob had explained to her how that had gotten started so many years ago when the two Bobs first met.
He looked up from a medical journal he had brought along to read and stared at her thoughtfully for a few moments. He could see the time changes, minimal compared to most women, but his eyes were used to looking for differences. The hair, naturally red, was becoming more burnished. What little lines she showed on her face came from smiling, though there were signs of suffering a long time ago. His own personal experience and that of seeing countless patients had honed his eye to the hidden signs of grief.
At last he replied.
“I lost a dear friend the same day I rediscovered two others.”
He told her the story of his friend and classmate then he turned away, staring out the driver’s side window, sadness creasing his brows into an inverted V.
“I’m sorry, Galen, I didn’t mean to pry.”
Still, she wanted to know more. What had he done since high school? She had heard from Bob about what the two of them had gotten into, most of which she dismissed as tall tales. But then what? Had he married, did he have children? How could she delve into that, having met him so recently? She tried to smile and make it seem like a joke.
“So how many young ladies did you enchant?”
He looked back at her then down at the old camera that had belonged to Leni’s parents, the V deepening.
She stopped waiting for the answer and respectfully turned back toward the oncoming road.
One stop before reaching the motel where they would spend the night, a side trip to a small concrete-block building with a large red cross and Aesclepian staff painted on its front wall.
Galen and Edison already had managed to unload most of the supplies before a short stocky figure in white doctor’s coat walked out the front door. Bill Crowley was smiling as he embraced his old friend and classmate and the two men stared at the changes in each other.
Bill had been a divinity major in college before medical school. Now, along with the free clinic, he and Peggy were living their dream of running a church mission for the poor.
Galen remembered the shy baby-faced boy who was the first to shake his hand on that scary first day of medical school. He had been best man when Bill married Peg. Now, rounder, bearded, and graying, Bill stood confidently in front of his clinic.
“We can always use another good doctor, Bob,” Bill said expectantly. “Aren’t you getting a little long in the tooth for what you do?”
Galen flushed, whether in embarrassment or realization of the truth in what Bill had said—he wasn’t sure.
“You’ll be the first to know, Bill. I have to admit, what you do is very appealing to me.”
He still had bittersweet memories of the last time the A Team had gotten together here to help Bill and Peggy with the onslaught of migrant workers.
“Bob, you knew that Dave and Connie were planning to join us here before he…”
“Yes, Bill, and the four of you would have done great work, just like old times.”
“You and I made quite a team, too, back then, Bob. Remember what the nurses called us?”
“Baby Face and the Bear!”
“And when the three of us were on call?”
“Baby Face, Scarecrow, and the Bear!”
The two men, older and tempered by time, began to laugh softly until tears came to their eyes.
For Galen, they were tears of loss.
Edison had stood by listening and kept staring at Crowley.
I’ve
seen that face before, a long time ago, but where?
“Dr. Crowley, I…”
“Call me Bill.”
Immediately, the memory of the time in the hospital delivery room waiting area flooded in. It was the young round-faced man who had sat next to him that terrible night and slowly explained what had happened to Nancy and their baby. He had burst out crying and the other man had put his arm around him and let him cry.
“You don’t remember me, Bill, but a long time ago you rescued a young man from despair. You broke the news to me about my wife and baby. I knew that Dr. Ross had done all she could. If you hadn’t stayed with me, I’m not sure what I would have done.”
Galen stared at Edison, Nancy, and Crowley, and as he began thinking of June, his mind swirled in a symphony of irony.
After saying their farewells, the three friends returned to a much emptier Jeep and set off for their destination. Galen looked back out the rear window, watching one of the few true friends he had left. Even Edison remained quiet—unusual behavior for him—and Nancy sensed the tension in their passenger.
Wisely, she said nothing.
The next morning they soon reached highway 40E then 17S and 87S. Finally highway 33 took them to the middle of Southport, and a short drive down Indigo Plantation Way led to the ferry terminal.
“Okay, we need to leave the car behind, take our stuff on board, and be prepared to walk everywhere once we get on the island. No cars there, only legs and bicycles. Galen and I can be the pack mules, honey. Most of this is our junk anyway.”
“Yeah, right, two walking heart attacks in the making,” she snapped. “I can carry better than the two of you.”
Nancy picked up several luggage packs and moved to the dock. The two men shrugged meekly and followed with the rest of the bags.
The two-mile ferry ride was spent taking in the beauty of the water-surrounded land. The sky was that clear sea blue, rivaling the water in its bright monocolor. The conflicting currents of salty ocean water and the fresh water efflux of the Cape Fear River caused a slight wave buffeting as the ferry neared the Bald Head Island Marina landing.
“Think you’ll get bored seeing this all the time?” Galen asked Nancy and Edison, who both smiled in response.
They headed slowly up the crushed-shell and gravel pathway toward the white clapboard Victorian-style house that was to be their B&B retreat. As they neared the entrance, the proprietor, a gray-haired stocky woman in blue-gray slacks and pink shirt, approached. She wore a name badge that identified her as “Teddy.” The big grin on her face widened as she looked at the three human pack mules.
“Why didn’t you folks use one of the baggage carriers?”
Embarrassed at the wasted effort, the three signed in and followed her to their assigned rooms.
“Mr. and Mrs. Edison, you have the special suite,” Call Me Teddy said. “Normally it’s reserved as a bridal suite, but we don’t have any newlyweds this time.”
Edison’s eyes lit up, and his face told Nancy all she needed to know about his thoughts. A few moments later, he looked in at the spacious paneled room with its king-sized poster bed and said: “What’s that on the pillow?” He walked over and picked up two gold-foil-wrapped items, one in the shape of an old doubloon, the other formed like a Folsom point arrowhead. He opened them, found chocolate, promptly ate one and gave the other to Nancy.
“Don’t you folks know about the Legend of Bald Head?” Teddy asked.
“Seems that after the lighthouse, Old Baldy, was built, the keeper got pretty busy trying to keep the ships away from the shoals and rescuing the unlucky sailors whose vessels didn’t make it. He claimed that whenever he managed to save lives he would find a gold doubloon and an arrowhead on his bed. He thought it was a reward from the spirits of the Indians and the pirates who used to live here.
Now, of course, no one believed him, but he sure had a lot of money and Indian artifacts when he retired. At least that’s what his replacement claimed—and that man never said nothin’ later on!”
Nancy moved into the room, sat on the edge of the bolster-covered bed and sighed in relief.
“Indians and pirates notwithstanding, I think we all need to rest up before dinner.”
“That sea air and sunset sure do make even an average dinner magnificent,” Edison commented as they took their post-meal walk along the marina. The sun was slowly sinking to the west, lighting up streaks of clouds like shadow boxes.
“I think we should take in the lighthouse and the old wedding chapel tomorrow,” Nancy added. “I found out we can rent bikes at the general store. It’ll be just like the old days, Bob.”