The Legend of Safehaven by R. A. Comunale

still waiting for the school bus. Edison pulled over and Galen called out, “Get in. Sergeant Castle has been taken to the hospital. Faisal and his parents will need us.”
     
    He felt them lift him onto the stretcher, but only on his left side. He was vaguely aware of the instruments they were applying to his body: the stethoscope on his chest, the needle entering his left forearm. But where was his right arm? He felt them wiping the left side of his face and gently opening his mouth to be sure that nothing was blocking his breathing. He felt his left eyelid being lifted and a bright light being shined in his eyes. He saw the faces staring down at him and heard them asking if he understood what was going on. He felt the left side of his chest go bare, as they opened his uniform shirt, the one he had worn so proudly just a short lifetime ago. He felt the stickers being placed on his left chest. And he heard someone call out something that sounded like, “He’s in A-fib! Bet a clot did this to him.”
    He wanted to escape, but his right side wouldn’t follow orders. So his subconscious mind took over and led him into the past…
    *   *   *
    “Papa, tell me again about the old country.”
    Ben looked up from where he was playing with his toy soldiers made of lead on the floor of their small apartment’s living room—the soldiers his father had cast for him and his brothers.
    Jerzy Zamek watched his youngest son. The coal dust would never leave the heavyset man’s lungs, even when the wracking spasms of coughing could not expel it. His mine-pale skin would turn pink only when he smoked, and that habit was increasing day by day.
    Big, hairy arms reached down, picked up the boy, and set him carefully on thick knees. Ben was his and Sophie’s last child. His Warsaw wife had given him three healthy boys, and he grinned as he saw her plump shape peering through the open kitchen door.
    Jerzy loved Sophie in so many ways, not the least of which was her skill with sweet cabbage, sour cream, and sauerkraut. His bright-blue eyes sparkled, as he told his son how his own father had organized a resistance group against the Nazi invaders, and how the family had escaped, when Joseph Stalin decided to pluck the golden pear that was Poland.
    Jerzy laughed while telling young Ben about how he and Sophie had met after arriving separately in the United States as war refugees, finding friends in the local Polish American community, and eventually settling in the coal country of eastern Pennsylvania.
    He laughed even harder, barely avoiding a coughing spasm, as he told his son how red-faced his older twin brothers, Stanley and George, were when they were born.
    “But Ben, my little Ben, you came out thoughtful and quiet. You seemed to be watching everything.”
    And both would laugh, as his father bounced his knees up and down, shouting “Hi-yo, Silver, away! The Lone Ranger!” until he began to cough again.
    Sometimes the boy would reach up and touch the soot-stained sputum that darkened his father’s lips, his blue eyes peering into his father’s, his mind filled with questions.
    *   *   *
    “Papa, where does our name come from?”
    He was twelve now. Girls noticed him—and he returned the favor. His growing self-awareness now extended to his origins. He knew the songs and tales of the old country. But his name, the magical talisman of family ties, remained a mystery.
    He knew what it meant in Polish: Castle. Many famous and royal ancient buildings began with the word Zamek.
    His father, skin sallow and loose, the color of his eyes now fading, told him that his ancestors were soldiers, guardians of royalty, like the rooks of the ancient game of chess.
    Ben grew proud.
    *   *   *
    At last he was eighteen—draft age. His two older brothers had gone before him to the killing fields of Southeast Asia. Papa was gone, too, the big, happy-faced man shrunken to a death’s head by the lethal crab devouring him from within.
    He