The Digger's Rest (3 page)

“
Oh, for God’s sake!” Mitch grumbled as
he came out of the bedroom dressed in beat-up old jack boots, jeans
and a baggy white Polo Oxford shirt. “Come on. Let’s go see what
all the fucking hubbub is about,” he said, grabbing the knee-length
green Macintosh rain coat he’d gotten in Scotland on his last trip
off the coat hook.

When he turned to look behind him, Simon was
standing in the kitchen doorway with his blackened toast on a sheet
of paper towel. Mitch’s heart tugged at the wide-eyed boy holding
his hands out to him with his favorite remedy like a burnt
offering, reminding him again that Simon was no ordinary kid and
making him regret the gruff greeting he’d given him when he came to
the door.

Mitch took the toast, shoved a piece hungrily
into his mouth and gave Simon a slight nudge with his elbow,
smiling gratefully. “Come on. We’d better get going before the old
man goes all apoplectic,” he said, heading out of the door. Simon
Holly, blushing and smiling, trailed behind him like a spaniel
puppy, just a lame one with a hunk of metal on one leg.

***

The light drizzle of late March in New York
City splattered their faces as they worked their way up the massive
front steps to the entrance to New York’s Metropolitan Museum of
Art and went through the door.

“
Good morning, Dr. Bramson,” the
black-skinned security guard said as they rushed up to
him.

“
Good morning, Zolan. Lovely weather
we’re having, isn’t it?” Mitch asked the guard, smirking
sarcastically, having sufficiently recovered from his antics of the
night before to at least attempt a game face.

“
Yes, sir,” Zolan answered, smiling
back devilishly. After so many years of watching Dr. Bramson come
through those doors, he knew enough to know the doctor had been out
raising holy hell the night before. “Dr. Edgeworth’s been calling
down here every five minutes to ask if you’ve come in yet. I’ll
call him and let him know you’re on your way,” Zolan said, picking
up the phone.

Zolan had always admired Dr. Bramson.
It wasn’t easy when you’re born to be wild, and the man just
couldn’t help it. It took quite a man to dare to be that way in the
museum world and succeed the way he had, not only managing to make
people respect him for it, but for making them like him for it. He
always had them stuck-up rich white folks and overeducated
smart-ass types eating right out of his hand.
You go, Man!
Zolan thought, as he watched the
wave of the green Macintosh disappear into the elevator, followed
closely behind by a mop of big black curls.

When they arrived outside of Jack Edgeworth’s
office, they stood for a moment watching him through the glass
wall, gesturing frantically with his hands and shouting into the
speaker phone, both very out of character for the museum’s usually
self-possessed Director of Antiquities.

Jack’s voice was so loud, they had no problem
divining that he was shouting in dollars. Mitch and Simon looked at
each other and shrugged. Smiling, Simon motioned with his hand that
Mitch should go first. One quick knock stopped the shouting.

“
Come in,” Jack Edgeworth called out
through the closed door. He’d already cut off his call and was
directing all his attention toward them as they came in.

Jack Edgeworth was a tall man, over six foot,
still robust but thinning with age. His deep-set brown eyes and
aquiline nose supported gold horn-rimmed glasses giving him an
Icabod Crane sort of look. About sixty-five years old, but giving
away no more than fifty-five, he always joked that his long years
surrounded by natron working in the Egyptian tombs as a young man
kept him appearing so well preserved.

“
Where the hell have you been,
Mitchell? I’ve been trying to get hold of you all morning. Out
catting around all night and making a holy show of yourself again,
I suppose,” he said, shouting again but smiling wryly to himself
with a glimpse of twinkle in his eye. He’d learned long ago that he
could never really be angry at his former charge and current
colleague. He just took a deep breath and started again. “Simon,
would you excuse us, please? Dr. Bramson and I have some important
business to discuss. But don’t go far. I may still need
you.”

“
Yes, Dr. Edgeworth,” Simon replied,
leaving the room hesitantly and closing the door behind him. He
didn’t want to leave. He wanted to know what it was all about, too.
Especially if it concerned Dr. Bramson. No, he wouldn’t go very far
at all; only around the corner from the door, as a matter of
fact.

Once the door was shut, Jack motioned with
his hand for Mitch to be seated before sitting down himself. “Well,
now that I finally have you here, we have a great deal to talk
about, Mitchell,” he said after taking another deep breath. Mitch
knew he was in for a good talking to about something. Jack only
called him “Mitchell” when it was serious.

“
I’m listening, Jack,” Mitch replied,
having also learned long ago that Jack would never really hurt him;
content to let the old man take a run at him.

“
I’m sending you on an assignment in
the field,” Jack said calmly, but inside preparing himself for the
anticipated contest over the issue.

“
Assignment? In the field? I don’t
understand. I’m just about to put the finishing touches on my
Charlemagne show for the Spring Gala. I can’t leave now. You’ve
gotta be kidding, Jack,” Mitch protested, gearing himself up for
the contest. These Gala openings were his babies, his moneymakers
for the Museum.

“
I’ll finish it myself…Dave Allard and
me. It’s almost done anyway, you just said so yourself,” Jack said
calmly. “This assignment is more important, both to the Museum and
to your career. You’ve had your own department now for more than a
few years, Mitch, and you haven’t published a thing. Yeah, yeah, I
know that this whole ‘enfant terrible’ thing you’ve got going for
yourself has gotten a lot of publicity for the museum and raised a
fortune in charitable contributions,” Jack said, waving Mitch’s
explosion off, “…but I didn’t hire you to be a goddamn high society
circus act, money or no money; and it’s about time you earned your
keep academically, so to speak, and mine…for posterity,” he said,
the calm in his voice beginning to give way the underlying
stress.

Mitch opened his mouth to raise an objection,
but before he could, Jack held up his hand in a ‘Stop right there’
motion setting Mitch back a pace. Not even the tortures of the
Inquisition could ever make Mitch disrespect the old man. He just
threw up his hands and kept his mouth shut.

Jack went on. “I’m not finished, yet. Now,
I’ve fostered and indulged you gladly, like you were my own errant
son for almost twenty years now because…well…just because…,” he
said, shaking his finger at Mitch, flustering. “But don’t think for
a second that I’m not aware that you’ve also spent those years
stomping around the clubs like a teenager and ravaging every
redhead in Manhattan. You’re going to be forty years old soon, for
God’s sake, and those days are over, my boy,” Jack said, jabbing
his finger at him. “It’s time you took your rightful place, the
place I’ve prepared for you, in the academic community of this
institution.”

Mitch just sat there, his mouth agape. “I
don’t understand, Jack. Where the hell is this coming from?” he
asked, completely mystified, his hands held up, bewildered.
“Preparing myself for what?”

“
There could never be anyone else who
could ever succeed me here when I retire…or die. You’re my heir.
I’ve always known it and so have you; and I’m going to see that it
happens, and that time is now. I’m sending you to England to
investigate a newly discovered site that, if it turns out to be
what I think it may be, will make you the Howard Carter or Heinrich
Schleiman of your generation, revered and studied by generations to
come. You think you’re a star now because you can take your shirt
off in public and show off those outrageous tattoos. You just
wait,” Jack spouted then stopped to take a breath, his face colored
with emotion.

“
What the hell are you talking about,
Jack? Have the doctors told you something?” Mitch’s heart rose to
his throat. “Are you sick again…dying?” Mitch asked, his voice
quavering as he leaned forward, reaching slowly to rub the scar on
his right wrist, his gut wrenching with the prospect. If his mother
was the clay from which he was formed, then Jack was the sculptor
who had created him from that clay, and the solid rock base that
had given him his foundation ever since.

“
No, I’m not dying—not yet anyway,”
Jack said, avoiding direct eye contact with Mitch, so that his
emotions wouldn’t get the better of him. “I fully intend to live at
least long enough to secure your place and your future both here at
the Museum and in the textbooks. I think I’m onto something big,
son. So big I wish I was thirty again, or even forty, so I could do
it myself. But I can’t and you can. I need you to live a dream for
me, Mitchell, our dream. It’s time,” Jack said, his tone gradually
changing from strict teacher to affectionate father.

“
Okay, Jack. What’s it all about? The
Knights Templar? More burial mounds around Stonehenge? Or is it
that nonsense about Renne Le Chateau again?” Mitch asked with a
deep sigh of relief that Jack’s cardiologists hadn’t handed him a
death sentence. Relieved, he was more than willing to accept
whatever it would take to make ‘Papa’ happy. Mitchell Bramson could
never refuse Jack Edgeworth anything…not ever.

Jack was like a father to him…more than a
father because Jack’s fondness for him was one of choice rather
than biology. From the day they first met, there had never been any
doubt that they would get on like bandits. He loved having Jack’s
undivided attention and unconditional approval; the honor of being
hand fed a lifetime of rarified knowledge by a Master; coddled and
stroked like he was some rare and precious creature that Jack had
brought back from one of his more exotic adventures.

Mitch never even took the time to regret the
fact that he’d never met his own father. Then there was that “bad
patch” he’d gone through all those years ago, the one they never
talked about but always remembered whenever they look at each other
and had no need to speak.

Deep inside, Mitch couldn’t help but compare
everything Jack was to him with the fact that his own blue-blooded
bastard of a father let his grandmother, a Rose Kennedy in her own
mind, have the marriage to Mitch’s mother annulled before he was
even born. High-brow Boston stiff necks they were; bloodless was
more like it; and when their spineless golden boy of a son went
slumming on Bleeker Street and eloped with his mother, a
long-haired, hippy girl, and a folk singer of all things, the old
lady went insane.

When Jack’s arms opened up to him during that
‘bad patch,’ claiming him out of the void and caring for him,
teaching him and…loving him, he was like a font of life. When Jack
put his hand on Mitch’s shoulder, patted him on the back or hugged
him at one of their Gala triumphs telling Mitch how very proud of
him he was, Jack was his inspiration to achieve; why shouldn’t he
let his heart open wide to him in return? Why shouldn’t he want to
be like him, or be what he wanted?

Even when Jack scolded him, or shouted at him
for getting into all kinds trouble, the affection that was always
behind it made it almost a joy to take. Jack cared about him,
genuinely and unmistakably, and in all the years they’d know each
other, he’d never felt anything else from him.

He loved Jack, very much, for being the
strong, caring man he was, for doing all that he had done for him,
helping make him what he had become, one of the most respected
historical art scholars in the country, and all out of the kindness
of his heart, the generosity of his spirit, and the strength of his
humanity. He had learned how to be a man from Jack, his sculptor.
That’s just the way it was. No Contest. Fini!

It’s not like that fucking worm, Julian
Bramson the third would ever give a shit anyway. He had his own
useless icicle children from that iceberg he had married; cool
blond brothers he’d never met, or ever cared to. No, when all was
said and done and all the dust had settled, the essence of Mitchell
Woodward Bramson was to be introspective, thoughtful; an emotional
activist like his mother, the late Melanie Woodward, ‘60s folk
icon, famous for her ballad Through My Child’s Eyes and her
Christmas song, Poor in New York at Christmas and Jack I used to be
a ‘real’ Indiana Jones Edgeworth, passionate, fearless and yes,
daring…to live and be alive. These were the things that made Mitch
and Jack so much alike. For either of them to fear what others
thought would be allowing themselves to be controlled, and they
would never be controlled, neither of them.

Fuck convention! Fuck safe, and fuck
ordinary. Those were not part of Mitchell Woodward Bramson’s
physical or emotional make up, either through genetics or adoption,
and he shoved it up the blue-blood’s ass every chance he got, every
time he made the newspapers, whether it was for showing off his
tattooed muscles by dancing shirtless on the bar at a nightclub in
SoHo or opening the Museum’s Gala by shaking hands with the First
Lady of the United States. No, he would not be controlled, he would
succeed, and he would thank Jack every day of his life for
that.

Father. For you, Father.

Chapter III

DIGGERS

…
told a story about a man
who is too afraid to fly so he never did land. Tell me did the wind
sweep you off your feet. Did you finally get the chance to dance
along the light of day? And head back to the Milky Way? And tell
me, did Venus blow your mind? Was it everything you wanted to find?
And did you miss me while you were looking for yourself out
there?