Disposition of Remains Read online

  As we left, I couldn’t help but think of how this place was slowly tearing apart what minimal faith I had in God and the afterlife.

  “We will make one more stop before I take you to your hotel,” Victor announced.

  I was still not completely rejuvenated, but I remained silent due to my fear of missing out on anything in life, and in particular, something that Wilbur had thought I should see. After a short drive through The Cradle, we came upon the Sterkfontein Caves.

  “Two major discoveries have been made here,” Victor began as we crossed the parking area. “The first one, Mrs. Ples, a 2.3-million-year-old fossil, is the most complete Australopithecus africanus skull ever discovered. The second is the Little Foot skeleton; it was discovered in 1994 and is still being excavated. The foot, which is very small, was discovered first. It wasn’t until later that it was realized that there was a fairly complete skeleton behind it.”

  There was a small museum on the way to entrance of the caves. Inside, there were several skulls of “Apemen,” all of which had been discovered in The Cradle.

  Then I came face to face with Mrs. Ples. She seemed to mock me as I stared into the sockets that once contained her eyes. Mrs. Ples and everything in the Cradle, were proof to me that the God that Sister Constance said would save my soul, did not exist. Or at the very least, the Theory of Creation was seriously flawed. With no tangible foundation, the theory rests on the faith of its believers. But Mrs. Ples, with her vacuous eye sockets, told me another story: that man was not created in his present form. All around the place, still undiscovered in the dark caves, was the proof that when we die, the best “eternal life” we can hope for is to be put on display so that two million years down the road, some fool can gawk at us—just as I gawked at the small, tarnished skull of Mrs. Ples.

  “You look angry with her,” Victor laughed, yanking me out of my philosophical reverie.

  I hadn’t realized it was so obvious.

  “The tour is starting. This way,” he said as he handed me a bottle of water. “You’ll want this.”

  A group had gathered outside the doors that lead down to the caves. A small African woman in her thirties began to speak in English.

  “I am Kagiso. I will guide you through the caves. The passage is very narrow. There is a point where you will have to stoop down; some of you may actually have to crawl. Is there anyone who thinks this will possibly be too much for them?”

  No one replied.

  “All right, let’s go down,” Kagiso said.

  She possessed the same smiling demeanor as Victor.

  The group of fifteen or so instantly emitted a Babylonian din of languages when Kagiso stopped speaking. Dutch, French, possibly even Afrikaans were being spoken all around me. I had never learned more than a few words of a second language. My mother had never taught me a single word of the Upland Yuman dialect of “our people.” I was amazed by how everyone I had met in Italy seamlessly switched gears between languages. I realized that if I were to have my reincarnation time machine take me back to Renaissance Italy, I would only be able to ask Botticelli for directions to the bathroom. I digressed, once again, into taking an opportunity and twisting a situation into the perspective of my personal failure. I made a choice then to learn Italian even if I were never given the chance to use it.

  As a group, we proceeded to make the sixty-meter descent down the wet, slippery stairs into the caves. A middle-aged woman in front of me sank down to the ground and stopped. I thought that, perhaps, she had fallen.

  She shook her head as she turned to me and said, “Je ne peux rien faire.”

  “I’m sorry. What?”

  “I can’t do it,” she moaned with a heavy French accent. “I can’t go down there.”

  Victor and I helped her to her feet, and he escorted her back up to the entrance. Victor returned shaking his head.

  “Claustrophobia. It happens every time.”

  The rest of us proceeded single file to the excavation site of Little Foot, which was concealed behind a metal gate. The 3.5-million-year-old skeleton is still younger, Kagiso explained, than many of the fossils found in Northern Africa. The mob began to mumble amongst themselves. I imagined the disappointment of traveling from however far they had come and finding only an iron gate holding prisoner the one thing they had wanted to see. I envisioned myself traveling to Florence to see my beloved Birth of Venus, and feeling the anguish of learning that Botticelli’s masterpiece was right there, but I would be unable to see it.

  “There is an exact replica of Little Foot back in the museum,” Kagiso said in response to the group’s palpable disappointment before continuing. “All of the remains that have been discovered in the caves were from whatever primeval hominids or mammals were unfortunate enough to fall into the abyss back in the day. Nothing actually dwelled in these caves amongst the saturated limestone.”

  We reached the point where we were forced to stoop. The gentleman that was now in front of me was tall enough that he had to crawl. He rapidly began to wheeze and puff as though he might keel over. Selfishly, I tried to work out how I was going to be able to step over his body if need be. I tapped him on the shoulder, and as he turned around, I could see that his face was purple and his jugular veins were bulging.

  I asked the obligatory, yet stupidly obvious question, “Are you all right?”

  “Yes,” he gurgled in between exertive breaths in what sounded to be a Dutch accent.

  He was quite clearly not all right.

  “I think you should sit down for a minute,” I urged.

  He attempted to ignore me, but his wife intervened, grabbing his arm and scolding him in Dutch.

  He shoved her hand from his bicep and snapped, “I’m all right!” continuing to stagger through the low, narrow tunnel.

  Soon, the narrow space gave way to a large cavern, at the center of which was an underground lake. The Dutch man, still wheezing loudly, collapsed to his knees next to the dark, dismal body of water. I envisioned my mother just then, kneeling down before the blue-green waters beneath Havasu Falls. But this creepy scene stood in stark contrast to that tranquil, beautiful environment.

  I sat down next to the Dutch man and said as gently as possible, “I’m a nurse…or, I was one. Do you have congestive heart failure?”

  “I just wanted to make it here, to this lake. My…our son…drowned here while diving in this lake. He was part of the excavation team.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said, suddenly understanding his dogged determination.

  “I just wanted to see it. It’s so dark and cold here,” he muttered in a heartbreakingly anguished voice as he began to cry.

  The rest of the tour group turned their attention from the lake to the two of us. I stood up and walked over to Victor.

  “Can we stay with this couple for a minute while the rest of the tour goes on?”

  Victor proceeded over to Kagiso and spoke to her for a moment in their native language. He returned with the same warm smile he had worn since I first met him.

  “They normally would not allow it, but because I have taken this tour hundreds of times, she said I could lead you out.”

  I gave my thanks to Victor, then turned to the wheezing Dutchman.

  “My name is Stacia. May I listen to your lungs?”

  He nodded, seemingly unable to speak through his short, wet breaths. He’d become more agreeable since he had reached his destination. His wife stood silently by, focused on the dark waters of the languid underground lake.

  I didn’t have anything resembling a stethoscope, so I put my ear to his back and listened. As he took a deep breath I could hear rales: the telltale wet crackling sounds indicative of congestive heart failure.

  “Are you on a diuretic?” I asked.

  He looked at me blankly. What could the Dutch word for diuretic possibly be?

  “Do you take medicine that makes you urinate?” I tried again.

  “Ah, yes, but I forgot to take it today. I was so
focused on coming here.”

  “Do you have it with you?”

  He barked something in Dutch to his wife, who quickly pulled a bottle from her purse and handed it to me. The label read “Furosemide 20 mg.” I could regurgitate drug indications, doses, and uses verbatim at one time, but I hadn’t given a pill to an adult since nursing school, so it took me a moment to recall that Furosemide is the generic of Lasix.

  “Does this say twice a day?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  “I think you should take them both now,” I instructed, and he complied. “Your heart has become overloaded with this amount of exertion. It can’t continue to pump the volume of fluid in your bloodstream, so some of it is being pushed into your lungs. We need to get the excess fluid out of your system so you can breathe easier.”

  I then asked if I might have one of his pills. He gave me a confused nod. Ascitis could be treated with diuretics if necessary. It didn’t hurt for me to be prepared if I ran into problems in a third-world country. It felt good to make some use out of the knowledge I’d pushed aside for so many years.

  Within a short period of time, the man’s lungs began to sound clearer. Nevertheless, I watched as a look of desperation washed over his face.

  “Victor, he needs to go to the bathroom.”

  “He can go in the lake,” Victor replied with a casual shrug.

  “No!” the Dutchman cried.

  I turned my back to him and whispered to Victor, “His son died here. He doesn’t want to pee on his memory. Victor, can you please drink your water?”

  Clearly understanding my intent, Victor smiled and gulped his water down like it was a Corona on a hot summer day. I drank mine in the same manner, and we both handed our empty bottles to our patient to use as makeshift urinals.

  As the Dutchman went to do his business, we heard the next tour group approaching, so Victor and I left to run interference until he was done. When we returned to his side, the man had his arm around his wife, and the two were staring forlornly into the cold, dark water. After some had time passed, he nudged his wife, indicating that they should leave. Victor then led us slowly up and out of the cave. At the top, the man headed directly to the bathroom inside the museum.

  The Dutchman gave Victor and me a quiet “thank you” as we parted ways. We smiled and shook his hand, but it just didn’t seem like enough to me. That was no way to have said their goodbyes to their son. It was so tragic. I turned and ran back to them.

  “Your son was lucky to have had you,” I blurted. “I think he felt that you were here. In fact, I’m sure he did,” I managed as convincingly as possible. I had never been the touchy-feely type, but adopting that attitude seemed appropriate and necessary.

  As tears spilled from her eyes, the man’s wife placed her hand on my cheek, and whispered, “Bless you.”

  It still wasn’t enough, but it was all I could think of to say. When Sister Constance said that God has a surprise for me, had she really believed it? Or was she doing what I was doing: just tossing out some random comforting words? As if I had any knowledge of what their son might be doing in the afterlife.

  CHAPTER 22

  It was so strange saying goodbye to Victor—even a little bit sad. We had bonded somewhat over the peeing Dutchman ordeal. On the long trip to the hotel, Victor had opened up quite a bit about his wife and kids and what life was really like during apartheid. He explained that Wilbur had been instrumental in his return to South Africa. Wilbur was just setting up his company in Africa and needed a South African guide, as all of the major flights come into Johannesburg. They had met in Botswana and, despite their racial and cultural differences, had become fast friends.

  The funky modern hotel that Wilbur had arranged in Johannesburg, or Jo’burg, as the locals call it, was modeled after an aircraft hangar. The stairs and primary décor were constructed from brushed metal and were of a far more contemporary style than I would have expected to find in Africa. Johannesburg itself was much more of a bustling city than I had anticipated as well. It was stocked with high-rises, shopping malls, and restaurants galore. I suppose I still possessed the notion that the entire continent was like the topless images I’d come across as a child within the pages of National Geographic.

  I was grateful for the opportunity to take a long, hot shower, which I did immediately after setting down my backpack in my luxurious hotel room. Afterward, I wolfed down a delicious dinner alone in the hotel restaurant, without regard for the possibility of dysentery or any other gastrointestinal malady. Then I crashed for ten glorious hours.

  Victor had instructed me to be in the hotel lobby at eight o’clock sharp the next morning to meet the rest of my travel group. Wilbur’s company was in the business of escorting assemblies of six to eight tourists at a time around the countries of southern Africa. That was all I knew about what was in store for me. I approached the small gathering of people in the lobby and introduced myself to David and Mary Reily, John and Sally Callahan, Clifford Hunter, and Carol—who would only tell us her first name, as though she were Madonna. But that woman was definitely no Madonna.

  A shuttle picked us up and carted us to the airport where we were set to fly to Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe. After planing and deplaning, we were corralled into the crowded, hot, stuffy customs area, pungent with the odor of human sweat. Since I had been unable to acquire a visa ahead of time, I had to purchase one at the “special” negotiated price at the airport. I got the clear impression that the “special” price changed depending on how gullible one looked. It was equally clear that if I refused to pay their price, my only option would be to turn around and leave. In other words, they had me and they knew it.

  It was noon by the time we made it through customs in Zimbabwe, and the group clustered together once again. I was the “kid” of the ensemble by a wide margin. The next youngest was most likely Carol, but in the same way she would not divulge her last name, she also would not confess her age. It figured that I’d ended up with what I would have referred to in my youth as “the closer-to-death crowd,” and yet I was the one least likely to survive the trip. The old codgers probably had years on me.

  The two couples, the Reilys and the Callahans, were like carbon copies of one another. These old friends of many years clung to each other and avoided the rest of us like some wrinkled, silver-haired clique. They huddled and whispered and laughed at their own G-rated jokes. I’m sure that deep down they were lovely people, but I couldn’t relate to them at all.

  Carol and Clifford were traveling as singles, and from what I could see, they were unlikely to rectify their solitary situations anytime soon. Carol was a seventy-something trying to embody a twenty-something. She was overly bleached, tanned, and collagened, as well as stuffed into obnoxious clothes that were two sizes too small. She clearly loved to hear the sound of her own voice and completely ignored everyone else’s…though perhaps she simply needed a better hearing aid.

  Clifford was round and boorish, and spoke with a heavy Southern accent. He embraced his age a bit better than Carol, but was prone to heckle just about everyone, as though he were some crazy Confederate version of George Carlin.

  When the minibus arrived to retrieve us, we were greeted by a muscular African man who introduced himself as Edison. He announced that he would be our guide for the duration of our journey. Carol jostled past the rest of us to guarantee herself the front seat on the bus. There is one in every group, and it was instantly clear that Carol was our one. Once she claimed her throne, the rest of us filed onboard, anxiously awaiting our next destination.

  Before long, the bus crossed a bridge over a mammoth waterfall, at which point Carol asked, “Excuse me, Guide. What is that?”

  Carol apparently deemed him unworthy of his given name. She never called him anything but “Guide,” and Edison never corrected her.

  Edison was extremely polite. He knew his job was to please unruly hordes of American tourists by any means necessary. He swallowed a laugh when Carol a
sked about the waterfall as if she were looking at her backside in the mirror and wondering aloud what that large protrusion was. I was just as in the dark as Carol about the waterfall, so that was one stupid question I was rather glad she’d asked.

  “That is Victoria Falls, otherwise known as The Cloud of Thunder,” he said, pausing for some recognition. “The largest waterfalls on the planet?”

  From his reaction, I could tell in return he’d received a look of vacancy from Carol. I cringed at the thought of having anything in common with her, even if it were only ignorance. I nodded my head as if I were reinforcing Edison’s claim, and shot her an Are-you-an-idiot? look.

  “One of the seven natural wonders of the world?” Edison prodded as he searched her face again.

  Still nothing. By now everyone else was staring.

  “We will be spending more time here at the end of the trip,” Edison conceded and turned toward the front of the bus.

  Edison was tall and brawny with a shaved head, a gap-toothed smile and an Eddie Murphy-style laugh. He was a native of Zimbabwe and had a fantastic accent to go along with his booming voice. He spoke perfect English along with thirteen different African dialects. He was like a giant sponge jam-packed with a plethora of interesting factoids, just waiting for us to squeeze them out.

  We were to take a three-hour bus ride before we reached our destination just outside of Chobe National Park in Botswana. I hadn’t prepared for the trip, so of course, I had no idea that I should expect a wild elephant to charge, angrily trumpeting, out of the trees and head straight for our bus. The driver actually had to speed up to avoid a collision with him. I sat dumbfounded, while everyone else reached for his or her camera. I’d finally seen an animal!

  The driver pulled over so everyone could take pictures of the four-ton beast, who was now quietly staring at our motionless vehicle. Clifford extracted a camera from his luggage with a lens as big as his ten-gallon head. In fact, each member of our group was sporting some serious photo equipment. I hadn’t even brought a camera. I didn’t see the point of taking pictures except to toss them in with my rotting corpse. Instead, I did my best to sear the magnificent images into my brain.