River of Angels

by Alejandro Morales

  “We need your help. I have come to invite you to our monastery in California. If you accept our invitation, you will oversee the gardens, orchards, be responsible for the maintenance of the monastery and the chapel. You will be in charge of the grounds and buildings at the Benedictine Monastery in Montebello. For your labor the order will provide lodging, sustenance and a small monthly compensation. Your ultimate blessing will come from God, my son, from God.”

  Father Charles sat back and once again contemplated the leather books on the shelves in front of him. Both Father Mark and Father Charles looked to Philip for his response, but the only sound that filled the library was the music of glasses clinking as Antonia poured wine into the priests’ glasses. Philip only allowed the wine to caress his lips after he nodded acceptance of the offer. The priests drank to Philip’s acceptance of the position.

  Antonia watched him and caught his eye, and in one second all things were said between them. She left the library to resume her regular duties.

  “Well then, Philip, we leave in the morning at six. You can follow in your truck. I’m sure you’ll put it to good use at the monastery. Thank you, thank you for helping us.”

  ERASMUS CAISSING PUSHED several documents toward Louise Rivers.

  “Mrs. Rivers, Philip Keller worked and lived at the Benedictine Monastery for about twenty years. He died peacefully in his sleep three weeks ago. He had worked for room and board and a small stipend. At the end of every month he’d deposit his money in two accounts at the Bank of America in Montebello. He had opened the accounts with two large deposits. During the twenty years working for the monastery he was able to save in the two accounts a substantial … a substantial amount of money. He had invested his money successfully. He led a secluded life, hardly ever leaving the monastery grounds. He rarely talked. I visited him almost every week to assist him in making investments. He never cut his hair or beard. He was quite a sight. Most kids, the Mexicans and their children, called him “El hombre oso.” When we went to the bank, people referred to him as “The Bear.” I think the tellers considered him a very wealthy, mysterious bear. He lived the life of a hermit. He told me he lived a life of penance.”

  Mr. Caissing paused for a moment, shuffled several papers and pushed one more document toward Louise.

  “Mrs. Rivers, your Uncle Philip Keller employed our firm to counsel him on investing money and safeguarding his estate. We did the research, he made most of the decisions, and we made all the purchases of stocks, bonds and properties as well as other financial instruments that benefited his net worth. We worked for him. I worked for him. That he did not want this wealth for himself was made very clear from the beginning of our business relationship. But he always knew, and our firm knew, to whom it was willed. Philip Keller made sure that his wealth was legally willed and legally assigned to you, Mrs. Louise Keller Rivers, and to your children: Keller Oakley, Allison Agat and Sol Louise.

  “Mrs. Rivers, I worked with Philip for many years. We investigated and knew about his past. What I am trying to say is that I don’t think that this will mean that he is asking for forgiveness, because I know that he believed that what he was involved in and what happened was unforgivable. Well, I’m sure this comes as a shock to you. As you can see, this has nothing to do with any kind of lawsuit. The accounts are at the Bank of America, Montebello Branch, the first under the name of Mrs. Louise Rivers and the second in trust for Keller Oakley Rivers, Allison Agat Rivers and Sol Louise Rivers. Mrs. Rivers, at this time you are the only person authorized to withdraw funds from these accounts. To finish up here, I must say that after so many years working with your uncle and these accounts, I believe we did an excellent job. You will see this when you contrast the opening deposits and the account balances now. My firm would like to continue working with you to assist in the management of these funds, unless you decide otherwise. We will have to go to the bank to formalize ownership. Please bring two kinds of identification, at least one with a photo. Your children should accompany you to this meeting to record their signatures. The complete transfer should happen within a few weeks, and this will be the last step. Here’s my card with my office and home numbers. You can call me any time.”

  Mr. Caissing packed his copies in the briefcase and stood up.

  “Congratulations, Mrs. Rivers, and I hope to hear from you soon. Please don’t get up. I can see the door from here. Thank you and good-bye.”

  EPILOGUE

  Hey, Alex, we better go in. I can’t get to the books. I’ll get them later.”

  I merged into the crowd with my thoughts about the bridges, the workers and the river. While I stood there at the library waiting to enter the Mark Taper Auditorium, I explored images of the workers, thinking of the daily joy and satisfaction they must have experienced in watching the huge concrete columns rise above the river. I imagined the workers constructing the bridge surface over the giant columns they had sunk into the earth. The space and time of the 1920s clung to me.

  “Come on!” Mark waved me on.

  Absorbed in the photographs, I brought the images of the bridges and the men with me. The men hesitated a little, but they joined hundreds of men and women moving forward, shoulder to shoulder, chest to back, slowly taking tiny steps, gently pushing their way through the library’s narrow hall and entrance. Mark and I and my new friends finally crossed the threshold and entered the wide auditorium.

  “Let’s get up as close as we can.”

  Mark and I went down an aisle to about the fifth row, where we took the two seats on the end. I sat quietly, perfectly still, shuffling in my mind through the photographs of the bridge builders. I imagined my bridge worker friends taking up almost all the seats in the section in which we were sitting. Mark got immediately to talking with four women who had come in from the other end of our row to the seats next to ours. They were elegantly dressed in low-cut gowns. They all had jeweled handbags and fine sheer stoles on their shoulders. I couldn’t help but notice the diamond necklaces, earrings and rings that glittered against their tanned skin. Mark and the women were engaged in a conversation about Bastard Out of Carolina and its author. The woman next to Mark turned her shoulder to engage him eye to eye. She laughed at Mark’s comments, and he kept chattering, delighting the ladies until the lights dimmed. The auditorium became black and grey like the photographs of the bridge builders. Others in the audience as well as my bridge-making friends had probably also been watching the women, but I’m not sure exactly what they were watching. Mark stopped talking, stood up and hastily climbed over me.

  “I gotta get her books now. There might not be any left if I wait.”

  “Mark, they’re going to start any minute! You’ll never make it!”

  Mark quickly walked down the first aisle and ascended the wheelchair ramp to the doors. I sat there thinking he was going to be locked out. The lights dimmed again. Last-minute arrivals were finding seats. The master of ceremonies came onstage. I stretched my neck to hear the instructions from a photographer, like the workers probably did standing on construction scaffolding around cement pillars and buttresses just before their photo was taken.

  “In a few minutes, we’ll start. We have a slight audio problem.” He retreated backstage. I smiled at the lady next to me. She leaned into Mark’s seat.

  “Your friend is very nice. He knows so much about literature.”

  The workers knew so much about building. They were natural engineers, I thought.

  I nodded and turned my attention to the master of ceremonies, who stood ready to walk back on. In the back I heard the doors close. The lights went down. The auditorium went quiet. I looked at my watch. I guessed more than a few minutes had passed. Mark didn’t make it back. My friends knew how many workers didn’t make it building the bridges. I heard a knock at the auditorium doors. Another knock—a little louder this time—sounded in my ear

  In the dark and completely silent auditorium, I started to hear steps coming down the corridor.

&n
bsp; “Alex, Alex,” Mark whispered.

  At that instant I prayed he remembered where I was seated. The images of workers standing on narrow ledges high above the Los Angeles River, holding on with one hand and balancing on one foot and extending their bodies over the river below filled my mind. They showed no fear. They smiled. They seemed happy in the photos. By now Mark’s eyes had adjusted to the darkness. He turned his head and recognized the woman with whom he had been talking. In that instant he did not see me pointing to the step at the end of the aisle. When he finally saw me, he stepped forward.

  “Oh, Mark!!!” Then he screamed.

  I raised my hands up, hoping to support his flight downward to the river below—books, tools flew through the air; screams from the woman, the workers and the audience around me filled the Central City, throughout the construction site as Mark—trying to hold himself from falling further forward and landing on the woman and me on the muddy river bottom—ended up on top of her green thick moss dress.

  “Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh! Oh, oh!” she uttered loudly.

  “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” Mark kept repeating while he struggled to stand up.

  “Oh my, oh my. Take your hand out of there!”

  The chuckle from the audience turned into outright laughter. Mark, having a difficult time coordinating his body to stand upright, grabbed me and finally got his balance. He had landed literally on top of the woman and me. His head and the upper part of his body were over the woman while his legs and feet flailed over me. An usher and the people seated around us handed Mark his books and corralled him into his seat. At the instant of Mark’s flying fall, I imagined the frozen figures in the photos moving to show what really had happened on that day the photo was shot. Below, on the edge of the river, the workers wrapped their fellow traveler in heavy grey tarps. The photographer took as many photos as his camera set-up permitted. He was only able to photograph the man standing on the scaffolding at the highest point on the bridge and then several of the bodies at the bottom on the riverbank. The audience tried to suppress the laughter, but of course some people … for some it was impossible. The audience considered the spectacle nothing less than a Charlie Chaplin or a Laurel and Hardy scene. At first, watching their comrade’s wave while shaking his leg out and over the river, it was funny, and they laughed and joked about the acrobatics. People naturally laughed at the situation.

  “If everybody is fine, we can get back to tonight s speaker!” the master of ceremonies announced from the podium.

  “Let’s get back to work!” the foreman ordered, perched on the back of a flatbed truck.

  The lights went down and I sat staring into the dark, pursued by scenes of workers who had constructed the intriguing and magnificent bridges across the enduring Río de Nuestra Señora la Reina de Los Angeles de la Porciúncula.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Ever since I can remember, I enjoyed going with my parents to the Montebello Branch of the Bank of America to make a monthly deposit. My mother made a deposit in the Christmas Club, and my father put part of his salary and some gambling funds in a savings account. There were occasions when Father went by himself and took me along in case he needed an interpreter. It was during the late 1950s: I remember this because I was in Montebello Junior High School about the time that the bank hired a teller who spoke Spanish. Father always looked for Mrs. Berry because she enjoyed speaking Spanish with him and with every Spanish-speaking client who came into the bank. Father was a man of habit. He always went to the bank at the same time on the last Friday of the month at about three in the afternoon and always got in Mrs. Berry’s line, no matter how long it was. Also on that day and time, another man would walk into the bank to make a deposit. He, like my father, always marched directly to Mrs. Berry’s window. When this man came into the bank, tellers and customers stopped talking or at least turned to see him. When I was a boy in junior high school, I was never afraid of him like the little kids who saw him and cried. What was perhaps shocking and fascinating about the man was that he appeared big and strong, and his face was completely covered with long hair. He had long bushy hair and a full wide and long beard. No matter if it was hot, very hot or cold, very cold or rainy, he always wore heavy clothing with long-sleeved shirts and a large wool sport coat. His hands were covered with gloves with the tips of the fingers cut off. When Mrs. Berry was hired, the man was aware that she spoke Spanish and started to go to her line. They conversed in Spanish. She giggled and he laughed at her comments. She was polite to him and seemed to enjoy talking with him. I never got tired of watching him, but I certainly understood how he could scare little kids, even adults. There were occasions when my parents and I lined up right behind the man. Mother wanted to move to another line, but Father refused and did not move. I sensed that Father had a kind of respect for the man who banked the same day and time that he did.

  When our turn came up, we walked up together. “Hello Mr. and Mrs. Morales! And how are you, Alejandro?” Mrs. Berry always greeted her customers by their names. It was because of the happy way she said your name that I enjoyed hearing her say other people’s names. I listened to how she said the name of the person ahead of us in line. That’s how I heard her say the man’s last name—Mr. Keller—but on just about every visit we made to the bank when the man was there, the manager came to say hello and Mrs. Berry would call out “Mr. Philip Keller has a question, Mr. Torrymen.” That’s how I got to know his full name—Mr. Philip Keller—the man whose face was covered in hair, who banked monthly with my dad at the same day and hour. My father never asked about him; he wasn’t curious about a man who obviously stood out. The man got consistent attention and respect from the bank manager and from Mrs. Berry. To most people the man looked like a homeless derelict, a dirty bum to be avoided. My father never ventured into inquiring about the man’s personal history. I think it was his way of respecting him.

  By the time I was in high school, I had a part-time job working at a supermarket and I had my own savings account at the Montebello Branch of the Bank of America, and I banked on the same day and time as my father and mother always had. By then my father was a little older, and so Mother and he gave me the money to make the deposits in their accounts. In 1963, the year I was to graduate from high school, I remember seeing several times that large hairy man at the bank, but on those occasions he was accompanied by a very professional-looking man who wore a three-piece suit and carried a fine leather briefcase. “Hello, Mr. Keller! Oh, and you brought Mr. Caissing. I’ll call Mr. Torrymen.” Of course, Mrs. Berry greeted them clearly and loudly. Mr. Keller and Mr. Caissing spoke quietly with Mrs. Berry. They stepped aside and allowed me to make my deposit. I felt kind of privileged to know Mr. Keller’s name. Still, after all those years growing up with him, the man still intrigued me, maybe even more. By then I figured Mr. Keller must have had a healthy account to get so much special attention from the branch manager. Yet Mr. Keller never changed: he looked clean, but he always wore the same clothes, and his hair was as thick and as long as before. I was sure he had to trim it. While Mrs. Berry was counting my parents’ cash and running our savings deposit booklets through the machine, the two men were escorted to the manager’s office. Mrs. Berry counted my cash deposit and studied my savings booklet. When she was about to stick the booklet into the calculator machine, I asked: “Mrs. Berry, what is the hairy man’s name? It’s Keller, right? Who is he?”

  “Alejandro, I can’t tell you his name because of privacy issues. I could be fired. You wouldn’t want that to happen. I can tell you what you probably already know, because I’m sure you have heard the kids yell it out. Sorry to say, people call him The Bear, el oso.”

  She gathered the two savings booklets and my mother’s Christmas Club booklet and handed them to me. “Here you are. Say hello to your mom and dad.”

  I exited the bank and sat in my Volkswagen Beetle reviewing the figures in my savings account when el oso and Mr. Caissing walked out and drove away in an old pickup tru
ck. That might have been the last time I saw el oso, but I followed him on Montebello Boulevard and turned left on Beverly, drove for about a couple of minutes, then watched him turn right and disappear behind the Benedictine Monastery, where Father Charles was the administrator.

  Alejandro Morales

  Santa Ana, CaliAztlán