Boca Mournings

by Steven M. Forman

  I smiled uncertainly at the grateful faces around us while Mrs. Buford fidgeted nervously. Sergeant Oz backed away, leaving us alone in the center of the circle.

  What happens next? I wondered.

  An elderly woman stepped forward with a younger woman and an adolescent boy behind her.

  “My name is Gertrude Abramowitz,” she said. “Your son saved my daughter and my grandson.” She pointed to them. “They were on the bus. He shielded them. Thank you.”

  The grandmother embraced Randolph’s stunned mother, then she approached me. “Thank you for sending him to us,” the grandmother said, and she kissed my cheek. Her daughter did the same, and her grandson shook my hand.

  I’m no stranger to memorial services. I’ve attended too many of them in my life: my wife, my parents, fellow police officers, and friends. But I have never been part of a memorial like this. No one gave a eulogy. No one offered a testimonial. Most of those in attendance didn’t even know Randolph Buford. But he had given all of them the gift of life at death’s door, and that was all they needed to know. No words besides “Thank you” were necessary.

  An Arab woman holding a toddler approached Mrs. Buford and spoke to her in a language we didn’t understand, though her message was clear: “We were on the bus. Your son saved us. Thank you.”

  We were the most beloved living people in the cemetery at that moment.

  We were hugged and tugged, lauded and applauded, revered and cheered.

  I shook hands, smiled, and said, “You’re welcome,” over and over.

  I hugged so many people my arms got tired. I was about to avoid the next hug but noticed it was Zivah Oz and I was not going to turn down a hug from her. I wasn’t disappointed.

  We were all swept up in a tsunami of feelings that flooded over us and carried us away. We rode the wave of emotions until it peaked and finally ebbed . . . leaving everything in its wake drained.

  The three of us stood alone after the crowd dispersed.

  “Are you okay?” Sergeant Oz asked.

  “I’m fine,” I said, forever macho.

  “I’m stunned.” Mrs. Buford cleared her throat. “I never expected this.”

  “I didn’t know what to expect,” Sergeant Oz said. “We didn’t discuss who would say what. It was totally spontaneous.”

  “It made me so proud of Randolph,” Martha Buford said, fighting back tears.

  “We should go,” Sergeant Oz said, looking at her watch as she walked toward the car. “We have to meet Minister Kane shortly.”

  Mrs. Buford stopped.

  “I’m not meeting with Minister Kane,” she said firmly.

  “He has some important matters he needs to discuss with you, Mrs. Buford,” Sergeant Oz said.

  “I will not meet with Minister Kane or anyone else from the Israeli government,” Mrs. Buford said adamantly. “I phoned that man several times after Randolph’s death and he never had the courtesy to return my call. All I ever got from his office was an official announcement and a death certificate.”

  “I assure you he had his reasons, Mrs. Buford. He’d like to explain them to you now that you are here. It’s very important.”

  “I don’t care about his reasons.” Martha Buford was angry. “When I desperately wanted to speak to that man he didn’t have the courtesy to return my calls. Now I have nothing to say to him. It’s too late.”

  “I ask that you reconsider.” Sergeant Oz tried to do her duty.

  “No,” Martha Buford said adamantly. “And that’s final.”

  “Mr. Perlmutter?” Oz turned to me for help.

  “This is strictly Mrs. Buford’s decision,” I answered.

  “Then I must call Minister Kane and let him know we will not be visiting him,” the sergeant said. “He is expecting us.”

  She punched a number on her cell phone and walked away.

  “Am I being unreasonable?” Mrs. Buford asked me.

  “You have reason to be unreasonable,” I said.

  “I hope I don’t get the sergeant in trouble,” she said.

  “Sergeant Oz can take care of herself,” I assured her. “Don’t worry.”

  Zivah Oz returned. “Minister Kane says he understands your feelings and apologizes,” the sergeant said. “He did make a request, however.”

  “He’s got a nerve asking me for anything,” Mrs. Buford said.

  “I’m making the same request,” the sergeant said.

  “What can I do for you, Sergeant?” Mrs. Buford smiled.

  “There is a survivor of the bus bombing still in the hospital who could not attend the memorial service,” the sergeant explained. “Would you be willing to visit him today? I was going to take you there tomorrow, but since we have time now we could go directly there.”

  “Of course,” Mrs. Buford agreed. “I’d be honored.”

  Hadassah Hospital, high on a hill in the Ein Karem suburb of southwest Jerusalem is an immense facility with twenty-two buildings, one hundred thirty departments, and seven hundred beds.

  “We’re here to visit Private Lukas Neumann,” Sergeant Oz said to the receptionist in Intensive Care.

  “Of course.” The nurse smiled and pointed to a room.

  “Thank you,” said Sergeant Oz.

  We followed her.

  I saw the name Neumann on the wall outside the room as I walked quietly behind Zivah Oz.

  The lighting in the room was dim. I saw the silhouette of someone in the bed and as I moved farther into the room I saw that the left side of the patient’s head, including his left eye, was covered with white bandages. The contours of the blankets over the small body showed there was no left leg. His left arm was in a cast from his shoulder to his fingertips.

  I heard Mrs. Buford draw a deep breath and choke back a sob.

  The shallow rise and fall of Lukas Neumann’s chest was the only sign he was alive. He looked like half a mummy, the left side of his body entirely wrapped in bandages.

  I nudged Mrs. Buford closer to the bed and motioned her to talk to him.

  “H-hello,” she began haltingly. “My name is Martha Buford.”

  Neumann’s right eye fluttered open and was surprisingly clear compared to the damage to the rest of his face.

  “I’m Randolph Buford’s mother,” she told him.

  The young man reached toward her with his right arm. She moved closer to the bed and took his hand. “Randolph died so I could live,” he said in a barely audible voice.

  “I know,” Martha whispered and tears came to her eyes.

  “Was he always so brave?” the young man asked in his phantom’s voice.

  “No, not really,” she responded, honestly.

  “Was he a good man?”

  “He could have been a good man,” Martha Buford managed. “But he wasn’t.”

  “Did you love him anyway?” Neumann whispered his question.

  “Of course, I loved him. I was his mother,” she said. “A mother’s love is unconditional.”

  “If your son wasn’t brave and he wasn’t good, why did he give his life to save us?” Neumann asked, sounding very tired.

  “He must have changed,” Martha Buford said. “I’d like to think he was a better man when he died.”

  “I was told Randolph had a younger sister,” Neumann said.

  “Yes, my daughter Eva,” Mrs. Buford told him.

  “Where is she?” the soldier asked.

  “She lives with her father in South Carolina.”

  “Do you live with them?”

  “No, I live in Florida,” she said. “My husband and I recently separated. My daughter chose to live with him.”

  “Why?”

  “My husband is a very domineering, frightening man,” Mrs. Buford said. “He intimidated our children, and I didn’t know how to protect them from him.”

  “What could you have done?” the young man asked.

  She took her hand from the soldier’s fingers and covered her eyes.

  “I don’t
know. I should have done something.” She wept softly.

  I watched the young man reach for Martha’s hand again, remove it from her face. “Don’t cry, Mother,” he consoled her in his raspy voice and I saw him squeeze her hand. “Randolph is gone but I’m still here.”

  The highest point I know of in Palm Beach County is a garbage dump in Deerfield, across from a porno supermarket on Powerline Road. As inclines go, think bunny slope.

  The Deerfield Beach graveyard is flat like the backyards, front yards, ball yards, jail yards, and junkyards in south Florida. Monuments and tombstones provide the only elevation.

  At dusk, I stood with Martha Buford in the gathering gloom looking at a casket, six feet under. The marker read:

  RANDOLPH BUFORD

  1986–2005

  Wanting total privacy, we had paid a premium for a twilight burial in the most remote plot available. We were near a grove of trees at least two hundred yards from the nearest grave site.

  I looked at my watch. “We’ll give your husband ten more minutes to show up and then we’ll get on with it,” I said.

  A solitary grave digger stood a respectful distance away, waiting to refill the hole.

  “I told you he wouldn’t come,” she said.

  I shrugged. “It’s his son’s memorial service. I thought he might come to pay his final respect.”

  “I told you,” she said, “as far as Forrest is concerned,” “Randolph died the day we made our deal with the government. He wants nothing more to do with us.”

  “Well, you told him I was going to be here,” I added. “I thought the Aryan Army might send him to bury me with Randolph.”

  “They obviously don’t care enough to make the trip,” she said.

  “I’m a little disappointed, to tell you the truth,” I admitted.

  “Well, I sure wouldn’t want to disappoint you,” Forrest Buford said, swaggering out of the shadows of the tree line.

  “Forrest?” Mrs. Buford looked surprised. “I never thought you’d come.”

  “You invited me, Martha,” he said sarcastically. “I’m here to bury my son the traitor, and the Boca Knight with him. Then I’m taking you home.”

  “Hey Forrest,” I waved. “It’s not very often we can get together like this.”

  “I promise it will be the last time,” he said, turning in my direction.

  “Yes, it will,” I said seriously.

  “You remember Harland Desmond.” Buford pointed to the small man on his right who only last year had been a big man with the Aryan Army.

  “Sure. I thought you were dead, Desmond.” I said, sounding disappointed.

  “I been laying low,” Desmond grinned.

  “Like a snake.” I said.

  “Smart ass,” Desmond hissed. The third member of the group was more a mound than a man. He was holding his left arm in front of him for the purpose of pointing a gun at my head.

  “Remember me?” the big man asked. “Luther Lumpke.”

  I scanned him from head to toe. “I remember those Xelement Fearless Flame boots,” I told him. “Weren’t you trying to kick my teeth in with them last spring when I sliced up your friend’s Achilles tendons?”

  He nodded. “Now I’m gonna shoot you between the eyes and even the score.”

  “That would make us more than even, Luther,” I pointed out. “You’d be way ahead.”

  He cocked the hammer with his thumb.

  “Stop it,” Martha Buford shouted. She stepped in front of me.

  “Get out of the way,” her estranged, strange husband warned. “We’re gonna kill this son of a bitch.”

  “Over my dead body,” Martha Buford declared.

  “That is not a good career choice on your part,” I said, moving her aside. “Aryan Army will accept you . . . dead or alive.”

  She stared at her husband.

  “Y-you would shoot me?” she stammered.

  “He hasn’t got a choice, do you, Forrest?” I said, doing some quick detective work.

  “Keep your mouth shut,” he shouted.

  I ignored his order. “You, Desmond, and Haystack over there were sent here to redeem yourselves, weren’t you?”

  “You better shut up,” Luther threatened and cocked the hammer of his handgun.

  “Aryan Army has the three of you on probation,” I said, ignoring his threat. “because of last year’s fiasco in Palm Beach. Right? If you dummies want to get back in the Army you have to kill me and bring Martha back for reorientation. If she refuses to go with you peacefully you were told to kill her, too. And let me guess. The two of us get buried in the same hole with Randolph.”

  “You’re a clever guy,” Desmond said.

  “You would never do that, Forrest.” Martha stepped in front of me again.

  “Tell her, Forrest,” I said, moving her out of the line of fire.

  “You better shut up,” Luther threatened.

  “What are you gonna do, bumpy, kill me twice?” I asked. “C’mon Forrest. Be a man. Tell her.”

  “You would kill me, Forrest?” she asked in disbelief.

  “Don’t make me,” he said, pointing at her. “Just get out of the way.”

  “You’re insane,” she answered, pointing back at him.

  “I don’t want to say I told you so,” I tried.

  “Shut up.” Lumpke waved the gun in my general direction.

  It was silent in the graveyard until I heard someone whistling.

  “Who the hell is that?” Luther Lumpke asked, directing his gun at a silhouette staggering in our direction.

  “That’s the grave digger,” I told him. “We’re running late.”

  The digger was short and slight, shouldering a shovel and wearing a baseball cap, pulled low. I watched the weaving, heard the whistling, and smelled the whiskey from ten paces away.

  “Well, he just dug his own grave,” Lumpke said, taking aim.

  Suddenly the grave digger stumbled on a tombstone and sprawled face first in the dirt, dropping the shovel.

  Lumpke laughed.

  “Dumb son of a bitch,” Harland Desmond cursed.

  I watched the drunk struggle upright, pick up the shovel, and stagger head-first, toward Lumpke.

  “Luther, shoot that silly bastard,” Harland Desmond ordered.

  BING!

  The business end of the shovel hit Lumpke like an iron uppercut, directly on the knockout button at the tip of his chin. Luther toppled backward into the grave and we heard a loud thud when he landed on the casket.

  “Get down,” I ordered Mrs. Buford, forcing her to the ground from behind and blanketing her body with mine. I was on her back, the left side of my face flush with the right side of hers.

  “What’s happening?” she gasped.

  Before I could answer we heard Harland Desmond shout, “Don’t shoot,” followed by another thud.

  I figured Desmond had stumbled into the open grave and landed on the casket or Luther Lumpke. Loud footsteps surrounded us.

  “Where the fuck did all you Jews come from?” Forrest Buford shouted, which was probably the same basic question General Custer asked the Indians at Little Big Horn.

  Suddenly the air was filled with the pop . . . pop . . . pop of automatic weapons muffled by silencers. I heard another thud and assumed Forrest Buford was now four feet under . . . allowing two feet for the casket. A deadly silence followed and I got off Martha’s back. We both rolled over and turned toward the grave. A dozen men were pointing smoking machine guns into the hole.

  “Please,” I heard Harland Desmond’s voice from the grave.

  Martha and I winced when a dozen machine guns set the night on fire. She screamed in horror and made a dash for the graveside. The grave digger stood in her way.

  “You killed them,” Martha screamed, striking out and knocking the cap off the grave digger’s head. Long black hair tumbled down to the digger’s shoulders. Martha Buford stopped struggling. “Sergeant Oz?” she said.

  It was then H
arland Desmond talked from the grave a second time. “Buford, get your bony ass off my face,” he said.

  Zivah Oz took a dazed Martha Buford by the arm and escorted her to the hole in the ground. I followed. The shooters stepped aside so we could pass. We stood at the grave’s edge and looked down.

  “Not a pretty sight,” Sergeant Oz said, and she was right.

  Harland Desmond was sprawled on Luther Lumpke and Forrest Buford was on top of Harland Desmond. Buford’s ass was, in fact, in Desmond’s face. The three of them were covered with lumps of dirt that had been blown off the four walls of the grave by machine-gun bullets. Lumpke spat out a clod of dirt. Howard pulled something out of his ear. Desmond coughed up some grass.

  “You cut that pretty close, Sergeant,” I said to Oz, a little annoyed.

  “Sorry,” Oz said.

  Martha stared at the two of us. “What’s going on here?” she demanded.

  “It’s a Zionist plot,” I said.

  Martha turned to Oz and Oz pointed at me. “It was his idea,” she said.

  Martha turned to me again. I shrugged and took her by the arm, leading her away from the graveside.

  “You scared me to death,” she said, and slapped my shoulder. “You didn’t tell me this part of the plan.”

  “I didn’t know if it was going to be necessary,” I told her. “I wasn’t sure Forrest would even show up or what he would do if he did come. I had to get some answers.”

  “Well, you got your answers.” She quieted down a little. “Aryan Army wants us dead.”

  “Actually, if Aryan Army wanted to kill us they would have sent real killers,” I said, “Not the three stooges down there in the hole. This was an Army maneuver they couldn’t lose.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You know your husband is not real popular with Aryan Army right now because of the mess he got them into last spring,” I reminded her. “And Lumpke, down there, was one of the executioners who couldn’t execute my execution. And Desmond, as you know, blew the whole rally. These guys were lucky they didn’t face a firing squad when they slinked back to Army headquarters. Instead they were sent here to kill or be killed. I don’t think the Army cared which way it went. It was a win-win for them. Either they get rid of enemies or idiots.”