RESOLUTION

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Early Monday morning found the Jean-Claude and Guy, their parents, their siblings and the aunt who would be keeping them, with a dozen other relatives and friends on the station platform as well as Père Edouard, all chattering excitedly in French as they awaited the first train to Bordeaux. Guy's favorite cousin Claudette, not quite a year younger than he, stroked his lifeless left hand and asked, "How can you let them cut off your arm?"

"Because it's no good to me. It gets in my way when I play, it hurts when I bang it into things or roll over on it when I sleep, I can't tell you how many times it's brushed up against the stove and given me burns, and it makes my shoulder ache just about all the time. Besides, they won't cut it all off, just up to here," he said as he drew his finger across his upper arm two-thirds of the way to the elbow from the shoulder. "Then I'll be able to hold onto things under it like M. St.-Jean." Pierre St.-Jean had returned from the Great War with most of his left arm shot away.

"Maybe you should go to Lourdes again," Claudette suggested. Their parents had taken Jean-Claude and Guy to the miracle shrine two years before. The more devout villagers were disappointed to see the boys come back as they had left, the many skeptics continued to scoff, but they and their parents seemed more at peace and ready to make the most of what they had.

"No, this is better," was all Guy said.

Claudette's brother François, two years older than she, asked excitedly, "Will you bring it home? Maybe in a jar of formaldehyde, or stuffed to hang over the mantel?"

"Ugh, how disgusting!" exclaimed Claudette.

"No," replied Guy, "they bury it in a special part of a cemetery there." The evening Guy's parents told him it was time for the surgery he had asked them what would happen to his arm, and they all wound up going to the presbytery at nine p.m. to ask Père Edouard, because they had no idea.

"Will they cut off your legs, too?" François asked Jean-Claude as he sat on a bench between his parents.

"No, as useless and ugly as they are, still they help me balance when I sit, so I will keep them. Nothing more can be done for me than to give me a wheelchair like the gentleman from America has. Maybe later, they will cut the cords in back of my knees so I can lie flat on my back and operate on my feet so I can wear shoes, but when they do that I will have to stay in the hospital for a long time in a big plaster cast and there is too much happening already. No matter what they do I can never stand or walk, so I can wait. I will be very content with the wheelchair."

"Ah, the gentleman from America," the boys' uncle said to Père Edouard, "He has filled up the fund, is that not so, mon père?"

"That, mon ami, I cannot say," the priest replied. The shrill whistle of the engine drew everyone's attention to the distant plume of smoke which marked the approach of the train. The chatter grew more excited and less focused as the train pulled in. The boys' father hopped into an empty compartment so that their uncle could hand Jean-Claude up to him, followed by Guy and the express wagon and their mother. "Au revoir, au revoir," those left on the platform cried out as the travelers departed for Bordeaux to a whoosh of steam and a great waving of handkerchiefs.

Late Thursday afternoon found much the same assemblage on the station platform, alerted by telegram of Guy's successful surgery and the return of Jean-Claude and his father. From the compartment his father handed down a folded metal and canvas wheelchair of the latest Swiss design and manufacture, and then Jean-Claude to be placed in it. "Look out!" Jean-Claude shouted as he rolled himself full tilt up and down the platform to the cheers of his family and friends. The pair went to dinner chez Jean-Claude's aunt and uncle, then settled down to await the return of Guy and his mother.

Eleven days later, late on a Monday afternoon, the high-pitched whistle tooted in wild abandon, startling the village as the train approached the station. As the engine passed along the platform there was Guy sitting on the engineer's knee, yanking on the whistle cord. Keeping pace with the engine as the train stopped, Guy's father stretched his arms upward and grasped him around the chest as the engineer gently handed him down, fearing to injure the bandaged stump of Guy's left arm. As soon as he was set down on the platform, however, Guy exclaimed "Regardez!" and broke into a clumsy run down the platform, enabled by the short brace and three-centimeter shoe lift that had been fitted for his lame left leg while he recovered from the amputation of his useless arm. When he settled down to walking everyone was thrilled to see that how the brace alleviated the heavy limp which had slowed him to an old man's pace all of his nine years.

Emile's original mission was now nearly accomplished. The preparation of the grave on the old castle grounds was complete. A private Requiem Mass in the village church had been arranged for that Thursday. Only Emile and James were to attend, with the small oak casket containing the bones of the last Viscomte. As they entered the dimly lit church, however, they saw gathered at the front Jean-Claude and Guy with their parents and three younger siblings as well as the boys' aunt and uncle and their six cousins. Père Edouard came up behind them. "The children saw the men delivering the casket last night," he said softly as they went up the aisle. "They knew this must be the day and they have waited here since dawn. Messieurs, there are no secrets in a village like this." By this time they had reached the place where the two families were gathered, behind the bench reserved for more distinguished congregants. "Bonjour, bonjour," said Emile and James as they shook each hand. The face of each, down to the smallest child, regarded them with solemn gravity. "Please tell them we appreciate their presence," Emile asked Père Edouard.

"He is of your family," responded Jean-Claude in French, and the priest translated.

"We are not stupid," interjected Guy. "We know who sent us to Bordeaux." This Père Edouard deliberately mistranslated, "Because they were helped when you came, they believe you are responsible and they are grateful."

Emile cast a look of amused suspicion at the priest. "You have not told them anything, have you, mon père?" he asked.

"No, no, believe me, I have said nothing, but as he says they are not stupid."

Emile shrugged his shoulders and wheeled himself next to the bench, where James took his place beside him. The Requiem was recited without solemnity, and after Père Edouard blessed the casket the boys' father and uncle and two oldest cousins made it their business to carry it at the head of the little procession up to the old castle while the rest of the village pretended not to notice, leaving the workmen hired for the task to fall in behind. Finally, the old Viscomte was interred among his own.

The two wheelchairs set the pace at the head of the little crowd as they made their way back down to the village. Walking between them, Père Edouard asked Emile, "Will you be returning to your country soon, Monsieur?"

"Yes, we will leave the village tomorrow and sail on Saturday, but we will return in the spring. We have another mission."

"We, Daddy?" asked the surprised James as he guided his father's chair over the rough stones. "Another mission? In the spring? What about school?"

"We'll work it out, James, all in good time." And that was all he would say on the subject. Once back in America Emile worked through the fall persuading the French government to let him arrange for the restoration of the castle walls, the chapel, and the old northwest tower, and for clearing the rest of the ruins to make room for a world-class hospital to serve the disabled children of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East just as the Albert Meadows Hospital did those of the Americas, all at his own expense. The prospect of spending six more months, the second half of his junior year, away from his school and his friends did not please James at first. The school, however, thought he could learn more from the experience than they could ever teach him, provided he was well tutored in his academic subjects. As for his father, there had always been a special bond between them. James could deny his father nothing he really wanted, and it was clear his father wanted James's help and companionship in this.

In early January Emile and James set sail once again for France. On their first full day in Chateaneuf-du-Pré they went up to the castle and found the work of clearing the ruins much advanced, and the restoration progressing as the weather allowed. The villagers were well aware that the project was putting money into every pocket and would continue to do so as long as the hospital was there, so everyone policed the contractors and the government.

As Emile and James returned from the castle site they encountered Jean-Claude and Guy in the company of several friends on their way home from school. Although father and son had been working on their French-language skills they could not at all follow the excited chatter of the boys. Guy pulled a notebook out of his schoolbag and held it under the stump of his left arm while he and a friend kicked a soccer ball a few yards down the street and back. His running gait in the short brace and built-up shoe was quite awkward but it was clear he was enjoying himself. Jean-Claude, meanwhile, crossed and recrossed the rough cobbles of the street balanced on the two big wheels of his chair. Emile had James herd all six boys to the hotel café for a snack while making it clear in his improved but still quite elementary French that this was a celebration of his return, not an everyday thing. It did, however, happen often enough in the ensuing months.

The weather favored the progress of the work so by the end of August the foundations of the Institut Grace Meadows, named for Emile's late wife, had been laid and the walls were going up. Emile left a trusted aide to supervise the construction as he himself accompanied James back to the States. In June of the following year, a few days after James's high school graduation, father and son took ship for France again. This time they rented a house and stayed until August of the following year, after the dedication which took place the Saturday before Bastille Day with the President of France in attendance. The first patient entered into the register was Jean-Claude Bouchard, for the long-awaited surgery to release his knees and feet. His room overlooked the old chapel and cemetery of the lords of Chateaneuf-du-Pré and their household. Gazing out the window during his weeks in the body cast Jean-Claude often recalled stories still told in the village of the denizens of the disappeared palace, little dreaming he was of their blood.

The Institut Grace Meadows in its brief thirteen years treated hundreds of children, including many whose limbs were damaged or lost amid the horrors of the Civil War in adjacent Spain. In May 1940 the French government, responding to dark tales of Nazi experimentation on disabled children, ordered the Institut evacuated in the face of the German invasion. When the country was surrendered Chateauneuf-du-Pré lay in Vichy France right at the border with the occupied zone. In the name of security the German authorities ordered everything on the old castle site reduced to rubble – the hospital, the chapel, the walls, the tower, everything. Only the ancient cemetery remained unscathed. Unable to do anything for France during the war, Emile began providing funds to improve treatment of disabled children in Soviet bloc countries. As the Cold War set in the work became utterly discreet and unpublicized but still continued, as it does yet in Russia and Eastern Europe.

After the war Emile Meadows never again found the heart to visit Chateauneuf-du-Pré. However, the Meadows Foundation which administered the family charities set up a substantial endowment for the development of care of disabled children at the hospital in Bordeaux where Guy Bouchard had his arm amputated. It kept the hospital as current in the field as any in the world. A condition of the trust was that any child from Chateauneuf-du-Pré was to be treated without charge of any kind, even to the state.

In the summer of Brian's eleventh year his father took him to the ancestral village. They visited the graves of their noble ancestors and met the few who remained among the villagers whom James and his own father Emile had known. Many recalled the mysterious condition that had crippled Brian's grandfather as well as his distant uncle Jean-Pierre. The thought that the trait had expressed itself in the old seigneurial line once again fascinated them. Guy Bouchard, now mayor of Chateauneuf-du-Pré, hosted them in his home, happy to have his wife and family meet the son and grandson of the gentleman from America who had done so much for him as a child. His brother Jean-Claude, now administrator of the Meadows Foundation programs in Bordeaux, did the same there. While touring the clinic they were spotted by Jean-Claude's eight-year-old nephew Raoul, the son of one of his younger sisters who happened to be there for examination that day, as he raced up to them in his wheelchair to greet his beloved uncle and show off his English to the American visitors. Raoul had been unable to stand or walk since age four, much to the puzzlement of the clinic staff who could find no medical reason for his disability. Mindful of his promise to the late Père Edouard, James said nothing to them, nor to Brian at that time, of their actual relationship or of the persistent emergence of this trait in their family.

I met Brian as a classmate in the prep school we attended. Nothing about his manner or his appearance would have led one to believe that he was heir to a fortune. He was still driving his first car, a plain old Chevy whose only extra was hand controls. His clothing was of good quality but not showy, conservatively casual but not inordinately preppy, tailored so cleverly to the disproportion between his gymnast's upper body and his underdeveloped hips and legs that at first sight you would think them purchased off the rack. Only those familiar with the world of disability would note that his lightweight alloy crutches, finished in flat black, with their leather-clad forearm cuffs and sophisticated shock absorbing tips, were custom made at several times the cost of off-the-shelf adjustable models.

The will of Grandpere Emile endowed Brian Meadows with a very substantial trust fund. Brian would, however, receive only the cost of his university education and a truly modest living allowance, until he had earned his M.B.A. At that time he would also take possession of the old mansion formerly occupied by the old patriarch, to be maintained as he left it until it became Brian's. In the will Grandpere Emile expressed the hope that Brian would be employed in the foundation which administered the family charities, without obliging him to it if he found some other endeavor of public service more engaging of his talents. It went without saying that once the full income of the trust fund became his to dispose of, Brian would be in a position to engage in anything he might choose.

The disproportion of Brian's body, enhanced by his somewhat large head, very round face and round wire-rim glasses, coupled with the fact that he stands only five feet six inches tall, lends him an engaging gnome-like quality. His ready and genuine smile, his outgoing but not at all pushy manner, his quick and gentle wit and his conversational skill deeply grounded in a wide-ranging intelligence modestly presented soon endear him to everyone who gets to know him, pushing his wealth and his disability well into the background. I never knew what to make of his peculiar turn of mind, even as I came to know how it reached as far back into his ancestry as anyone knew. In the end it didn't matter. He's just good to know and I feel privileged to be his friend.


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