Trusting Calvin (19 page)

“You'll walk again, Max,” the doctor said, “but it will take a long time to get there, and there will be quite a lot of pain.”

After five days in the hospital, Max was released to a rehabilitation facility to heal and learn to walk again. Two long months he stayed there, a difficult time not so much because of the pain, but because of the confinement. It was very hard to live that way again.

Max's friend Helen Frankmann, who had assumed temporary care of Boychick, saw very early on that neither man nor dog was doing well without the other. After a few days, she loaded the dog into her car for a trip to the rehab center. Boychick, who had worn an expression of worry ever since the man had been carted away from him in the ambulance, was thrilled to see Max again. His eyes lit up, and Helen saw a big Lab grin spread across his face as soon as he spied Max in the narrow bed across the room. Knowing he wasn't allowed on the bed, the big dog gently placed his front paws on the very edge so he could get his head close enough to nuzzle his man.

“Boychick, my boy.”

That's all Max had to say. Boychick's big tail swayed back and forth, thrubbing hard up against the bedside table, rattling bottles and glasses. Max grasped a soft, floppy ear and smiled for the first time in days.

Boychick had sustained no significant injuries, Max had been assured the night of the accident, as the man had been on the side closest to the car when it hit and had thus absorbed most of the impact. And here before him was evidence, perky, if concerned, ready to do whatever Max needed.

Three times a week the dog arrived at the rehab center with Helen to spend an hour buoying the man's spirits as he fought to regain his ability to put one leg in front of the other when bones didn't line up well anymore and disused muscles roared.

A hardworking patient unusually practiced at pushing through pain, Max made excellent progress even though he was well into his eighties, and even though reigniting function at that age is a complicated proposition.

He was, however, preoccupied with thoughts unrelated to his recovery. He didn't want the woman who had hit him to be punished unduly because the man she had mowed down was blind. Punish her, yes; she was in the wrong. But it wouldn't be fair for her case to be adjudicated differently from the way it would have been if the person she had injured had been sighted.

“I want to communicate with the judge,” Max told Rich when his son visited. “I must ask that emotion be pushed aside when the sentence is decided.”

Rich had witnessed his father on a mission before. He knew there was nothing to be done but to fall in line and ride his wake, so he took dictation and delivered a letter to the judge who would be deciding the case. Max felt better. Now he could concentrate fully on doing what needed to be done to get out of this place as quickly as possible.

The judge read the letter in open court weeks later, when the case finally made its way to her courtroom. Maybe it made a difference. Whether it did or not, no Edelman, father or son, ever heard from the very busy woman who had run Max down.

As his rehabilitation advanced and Max was able to walk on a track, Boychick was folded into the therapy, walking on Max's left as he always had, the therapist bringing up the rear, holding Max's belt to provide extra stability.

Finally released to go home, Max couldn't immediately walk as far or as fast with Boychick as he always had, which annoyed him, but far worse was the fact that he'd had to cancel several presentations and other activities. When a commitment is made, the commitment is fulfilled; anything less is unacceptable. But it could not be helped, and he and his dog did the only thing they could, hitting the streets again to build up strength and stamina, walking slowly, Boychick adjusting his stride and pace, eventually working up to their usual three or four miles a day.

Max, with Boychick at his side, gave the keynote speech for the Midwest Conference of Librarians for the Blind a few months later. The Michigan chapter also invited him to speak; he was featured on video at the International Conference of Librarians for the Blind, held in Boston; and he continued his work with a Cleveland Sight Center project called Share the Vision, aimed at people who lose their sight in later years and have adjustment problems after a lifetime of being sighted.

Max was invited to speak about the Holocaust at Kent State a few times, and spoke regularly for the Ohio chapter of a national organization called Facing History and Yourself, which promotes the teaching of tolerance, diversity, pluralism, and respect for differences. And he became involved with an outreach program for the local chapter of the American Council of the Blind of Ohio, which raises money to buy Braille typewriters, large-type or talking dictionaries, and talking calculators for blind and visually impaired children whose parents can't afford them.

In 2008 Max received an unexpected call. Johannes Ibel identified himself as a historian for the Flossenbürg concentration camp, which had become a memorial site. Ibel asked Max to verify his identity by reciting his inmate number, and, once he had concluded that Max Edelman in Cleveland was the Moshe Edelman who had been at Flossenbürg, Ibel invited him to speak at the International Youth Conference, to be held at the memorial site the following summer.

Max knew it would be an arduous undertaking, both physically and emotionally. He was, after all, now eighty-six years old. On a trip to Germany years earlier, so that Barbara could visit her family, he and his brother Sig had purposefully avoided Flossenbürg, not far away.

“There is no need to return to that place of torture,” Max had declared.

He knew that this time, he had to go. He wanted to go. Maybe he had to show his face in the place of evil; maybe he had to honor all the people who hadn't survived. Ibel had said they needed him to tell his story, and he felt an obligation.

He began to make plans to return to Germany. Rich and Sue would join him on the trip, as would Boychick, so Max secured and filed all the paperwork and exams necessary to take the dog along.

He and Boychick ambled through the fall, but soon after the turn of the year, the dog suddenly grew lame. The diagnosis was a torn ligament. There was no possibility now that Boychick could go to Germany, endure the stress of the long trip and the packed-full days of appearances and visits. But Max had committed to the appearance, so Boychick would stay with Helen during those days of July.

The injury had additional implications, however. Boychick, the vet said, would have to be retired soon as a working dog. He would probably do fine as a pet, but he couldn't be required to deal with the rigors of getting a blind person around obstacles and up and down stairs on four-mile walks.

The pair cut back significantly on their errands and outings. Once again Max struggled to come to terms with the fact that he would have to say good-bye to a dog who had ushered him through so much, providing not only the mobility assistance he had been trained to do, but also a gentle sort of quiet support that Max could always feel, an encouraging presence that always reassured. There was no darkness Boychick couldn't light, and even if Max couldn't see that, he could feel it.

He had more difficult conversations with the people at Guiding Eyes for the Blind. In the fall, school officials told him, after he had returned from Germany and taken a couple of months to catch up, they would come to his home with a dog that would be the right guide dog for him. Boychick would go to Helen to live out his final years with the woman he loved in a home almost as familiar as his own.

On a sweltering July day, Rich, Sue, and Max began the ten-hour flight to Munich, driving an additional three hours to the place where so many had endured such pain.

As they drove up the long hill, the same hill that Max had climbed day after day, virtually blind, through biting snow and bitter cold to make airplane parts, Max held strong. When they passed through the gates of the former concentration camp, Rich describing what he was seeing—roll-call square, the barracks, the laundry, the kitchen, Max remembering moments in all of them—the man held himself erect, absorbing it all, stoic.

But when Rich described the old battered book bearing the names of all who had passed through the gates, most of whom had died here—beaten, gassed, hanged, shot, or starved and then hurled into the incinerator, or stacked up in a pile like debris, doused with gasoline, and set afire—and the rest, the survivors, nearly killed with cruelties beyond comprehension, Max broke down, fully and completely.

The demands made of him during the several days in Flossenbürg were great: media interviews, his own speech, a panel discussion, and six talks in three days to high school students, requiring him to resurrect his rusty German.

One of the questions a student asked was, “Having suffered so much in the Holocaust, do you hate us Germans?”

He hadn't expected such a question. Decades earlier the answer would have been different than the one he gave that day, born of time and distance.

“One of the things I have learned in the eighty-six years of my life is that hatred is not beneficial. The young generation of Germans has no reason to feel guilty for the crimes committed by your grandparents' and great-grandparents' generations. Feel ashamed, feel a sense of national responsibility, yes, but no guilt.” The emphasis today, he said, should be mutual understanding, or at least tolerance. “The Holocaust must never be forgotten. Let's use it as a guidepost in our quest for a more-tolerant society.”

His speaking obligations and the dredging about in the slime of his memories left him drained, but also queerly anxious and jittery. Details of incidents and moments he had not recalled for a very long time tumbled about, banging against his resolve, making sleep even harder than usual.

Still, he had no regrets. He had, in returning, done something of importance.

Flossenbürg had become a different place. It was quiet. It no longer carried the stench of fear and death, the horrid stink that he had never smelled before or after, the one that he had decided was the odor of evil.

On the plane trip home, he felt wrung dry, but mostly he felt deep sadness. For the way the world had been then. For the anguish that millions had endured.

Back in Cleveland, after taking a few days to rest and compose himself, he leapt back into his schedule. Autumn was coming, the school was planning to send him another dog, and he had to make sure his calendar was clear.

He was surprised to discover that he wasn't feeling good about bringing another dog into his life, even though Boychick was now spending part of his time with Helen and seemed perfectly content. It seemed disloyal, somehow, to Boychick, because of all the dog had done for him. But with his guide dogs, he had carved out a completely independent life that disrupted no one else's. The dogs had brought him many other things, too, truth be told. He couldn't imagine giving up any of that. A new dog was necessary.

In October an instructor arrived with Lees, a placid animal with the right walking speed for Max. He was a nice enough dog, a willing partner, perfectly attuned to his responsibilities, but Max realized quickly that this dog wasn't the one for him. It wasn't just a case of the new dog not being the old dog.

“He's lazy,” Max declared to the trainer. If not lazy in the strictest sense of the word, Lees certainly wasn't up to the three or four miles that Max still walked every morning, in addition to the regular errands and obligations that filled his calendar.

The dog went back to the school to be assigned to one of the many applicants with a life more appropriate to his constitution. The trainers went back to the drawing board. When they had the right dog, they said, they would let Max know.

Before they had time to do so, in December, Boychick suddenly became sick. He wasn't eating properly and had developed wrenching diarrhea. There was every chance it was nothing more than an intestinal upset, but Max had a bad feeling. A man knows his dog, and this seemed serious.

The veterinarian agreed to see him promptly and took his time examining the animal and performing tests. When he called for Max to join him in the examining room, Max heard something he didn't like in the man's tone, and braced himself.

“Boychick has lymphoma, Max. Incurable cancer.”

Soon the dog wouldn't be able to hold down food or water, the vet said. Max could take a few days to say good-bye, but Boychick would have to be euthanized.

Max and Boychick went home to grow accustomed, if such a thing is possible, to the fact that their time together was almost done. Dogs can sense many things that people cannot, Max knew, and he figured this one, so incredibly sensitive, was aware he couldn't be with Max for much longer.

Too few nights later, soon after 2009 arrived, Max knew it was nearly Boychick's time to go. Boychick probably did as well. Max sat on the floor, took the big dog's head into his lap, and stayed that way with him all night, cradling and petting him, telling him what a fine guide he had been, what a good pal to Barbara and to himself. There weren't enough words to say what he wanted to say, or the right words, but he had to speak, he did speak, and he hoped Boychick understood.