Grandpa Herb
Rhonda Spiers walked along Collins Avenue, oblivious to the beauty of the art deco gems she passed. It was too hot for her to enjoy the architecture, but then she was no tourist. She was in Miami on business, not to see the sights.
I hope this place is air-conditioned, she thought when she arrived at her destination.
Before entering the sixty-year-old hotel, she took a Kleenex out of her purse and wiped the perspiration from her forehead and upper lip.
"I'm here to see Mrs. Newley," she told the girl at the front desk.
"You must be Miss Spiers. You can go right in; she's expecting you. Her office is down the hall, last door on the left."
As the owner of the hotel, Annette Newley had a large, spacious office, furnished with expensive antiques that reflected the time period of the restored 1930s era building. It was clear to Rhonda from the genteel surroundings and the designer clothes the woman wore that she was not hurting for money.
"You come highly recommended," the middle-aged hotelier announced once the introductions were made.
"Thank you. I assume you're looking for a nurse for one of your parents."
"My grandfather, actually. Grandpa Herb. He's ninety years old, and the family feels it's best to have someone nearby."
"Is he living in seniors housing?" Rhonda asked.
"No. My parents own the house across the street from his and were taking care of him until recently. Then my father had a mild stroke, so he and my mother have rented an apartment in Jacksonville to be closer to his doctors."
"Does your grandfather have any health issues of his own?"
"Physically, no," Annette answered. "Grandpa Herb's as healthy as the proverbial horse, but his mind ... I'm afraid that's another story."
"That's not unusual for a man his age. I assume your grandfather lives here in Miami."
"No, he doesn't. He lives in Key West. I'd gladly have him come stay with me, but since Grandma died, he's become quite attached to his home."
Rhonda reached into her purse for another Kleenex, which she gave to the other woman to wipe the tears from her eyes.
"Grandpa Herb is such a dear! My two kids and I adore him. Both of them offered to stay with him until my father is well enough to return home, but they're off at college now. I'd hate to see either of them put their education on hold. All too often when a student leaves school, they never go back. I try to get down to Key West as often as I can to visit him, but this place keeps me pretty busy most of the time."
Evidently, the woman felt guilty hiring a stranger to look after her beloved grandfather.
"I can well imagine, judging by the number of people I passed on my way over here."
"That's nothing! You should see South Beach at night. It's like one great, big party packed with tourists and celebrities alike. The days when the Rat Pack used to hang out at the Fontainebleau may be long gone, but people still flock here."
"Getting back to your grandfather, Mrs. Newley, is there anything about his daily routine or his behavior that I should be aware of?"
"Despite his age, he's still pretty self-sufficient. He can bathe, dress and feed himself. There's no need for you to keep an eye on him around the clock, so if you want to get out of the house for a few hours each day—do a little sightseeing on the Key—go right ahead. Honestly, he shouldn't give you any trouble," she said with unconcealed love and pride in her voice.
The two women then discussed particulars. The salary offered was a generous one, and Rhonda readily accepted the job offer. She would start the first week of January. That would give her current employer, a nursing home in Portland, Maine, an opportunity to find a replacement. She would also use that time to pack up her belongings and put them in storage.
"Do you have any other questions?" Annette asked after she gave the nurse detailed directions for finding her grandfather's Pearl Street house.
Rhonda seemed hesitant to speak.
"Is there something you wanted to ask me?"
"It seems foolish ...."
"Nonsense! You're about to uproot your life and take on a new job. Feel free to ask me anything at all."
"Is your grandfather's house air-conditioned?"
"You don't like the heat and humidity here in South Florida?" the hotel owner laughed as she walked with the nurse out to the front desk.
"I was born and raised in New England. Up north, during the first week of November we're wearing jackets and putting snow tires on our cars, not walking around in shorts and spending the day at the beach."
"There's no need for you to worry. Grandpa Herb's house has all the modern conveniences including central air."
Thank God for that! Rhonda thought as she left the coolness of the hotel lobby and stepped out into the hothouse that was Miami's South Beach.
* * *
Although Rhonda could have gotten onto US Route 1 in Portland and taken it all the way to Mile Marker 0 in Key West, the seventeen-hundred-mile journey would take less time if she drove on I-95. As it was, the trip would take her two days—possibly three, depending upon traffic, weather conditions and unanticipated detours. The Jeep Cherokee that had kept her toasty warm and gotten her safely over snow-covered roads in the New England and Mid-Atlantic states, seemed out-of-place the further south she drove.
I might want to get another car while I'm working in Florida, she thought, driving through Georgia with all the windows open. One with air-conditioning instead of four-wheel drive.
By the time Rhonda finally arrived at Herb Goodman's house, she felt like a wilted flower. She put the key Annette Newley had given her into the lock and opened the front door. A smile appeared on her face when she was greeted with a blast of cool air.
"Hello," she called as soon as she entered the home. "It's me, Mr. Goodman, Rhonda Spiers. I'm the nurse your granddaughter hired to care for you."
She walked through the clean, well-maintained house, familiarizing herself with her surroundings and looking for her patient. Mrs. Newley had warned that her grandfather rarely spoke, so Rhonda was not expecting a verbal welcome.
"There you are," she said sweetly when she found the master bedroom.
Herb Goodman was lying comfortably on the left-hand side of a king-sized bed, most likely the same one he had shared with his late wife.
"Hi, my name is Rhonda. I'm happy to meet you."
The old man's eyes remained staring straight ahead. He seemed not to notice her at all, but the nurse was neither surprised nor offended by his behavior. She was used to the ways of the elderly. Geriatric patients were her specialty.
"Do you need anything?"
There was no response.
"Well, then, I'm going to bring my luggage in and start unpacking—once I find my room, that is."
The guest bedroom must have been decorated with the granddaughter in mind. The walls were lavender, and the bedspread and matching curtains were covered with lilacs. Several photographs of Annette Newley were mounted on the wall, including one of her as a baby, one of her wearing a cap and gown at graduation and another of her in a designer wedding dress. Apparently, she was the apple of Grandpa Herb's eye.
When she first began her nursing career, Rhonda felt sympathy for her elderly patients. Their time, after all, was coming to an end. But then, as she got to know these people, she began to appreciate the full lives they led. They had survived good times and bad, cried tears of sorrow and joy. They had loved and hated, succeeded and failed, celebrated and grieved. She could only imagine what Herb Goodman experienced in his ninety years on earth.
The year he was born Teddy Roosevelt was in the White House, and now Bill Clinton was about to step into the Oval Office. Her patient had lived through two world wars and the Depression, not to mention many other momentous events in history: the moon landing, the Kennedy assassination, Vietnam, the atom bomb.
I can't begin to imagine what I'll have witnessed if I live to be that age, she thought as she hung her clothes in the closet.
* * *
Rhonda was on the job for more than a month and had yet to hear her patient utter a single word. "Grandpa Herb"—as she came to think of him—responded to her instructions with no difficulty, but he never made eye contact with her. He seemed to be in his own little world, one in which she played no part.
Upon her arrival in Key West, the efficient nurse established a daily routine. Her mornings began with a cup of coffee with Aurora Epps, Mr. Goodman's cleaning lady, who—in stark contrast to her employer—never stopped talking. Then, after seeing to her patient's needs, Rhonda doused herself in sunblock, left the house for roughly an hour a day and explored the island. She browsed through the shops in Mallory Square and on Duvall Street and toured the Ernest Hemingway House, the Audubon House and Tropical Gardens and Harry Truman's Little White House. Aurora suggested she visit one of the Key's beaches, but Rhonda was still trying to adjust to the warmer climate.
When she returned to the Pearl Street house after her excursions, she would prepare dinner. It was one of the few times during the day when Grandpa Herb left his bedroom. Like a ghost, he would quietly take a seat at the dining room table and eat his meal in silent contemplation of ... whatever it was he contemplated. Rhonda, who always remained cheerful in front of patients, held a one-sided conversation while they ate.
After the meal was done, the old man returned to his bedroom. Rhonda turned on the television and sat in the chair besides his bed. She frequently changed the channel, but Grandpa Herb seemed to have no interest in any show that was on. Seinfeld, Home Improvement and Cheers failed to gain his attention, much less make him laugh. Nor would Quantum Leap, Matlock and MacGyver distract him from his private thoughts.
"Do you like sports? The Super Bowl was last month, so that leaves football out. But what about baseball? Spring training just started, so maybe we can find a televised exhibition game. Many of the teams play right here in Florida this time of the year, don't they?"
There was no response to any of her questions, but then she had not expected one.
"Maybe you'd prefer to listen to the radio," she said, turning off the television.
The dial was set to an all-news station where the newscaster was talking about a standoff in Waco, Texas, between a religious cult called the Branch Davidians and members of the Texas Rangers, the FBI, the ATF and the military. Coverage of this ongoing siege was followed by a report on cleanup efforts in New York after a bomb was detonated in the North Tower of the World Trade Center.
"Enough of that," Rhonda announced cheerfully and turned off the radio. "Honestly! Sometimes I think it's better to not know what's going on in the world. It's never good news."
She looked at her patient, staring at the wall, and wondered what he was seeing. Was he thinking of his late wife?
"Maybe we should all be like you," she said, letting her happy façade temporarily slip. "Ignore the real world around us and make our own."
To help pass the time, Rhonda got a paperback novel from her bedroom and began reading.
As she often did with her patients, she read the book aloud: "Gatsby, his hands still in his pockets, was reclining against the mantelpiece in a strained counterfeit of perfect ease, even of boredom. His head leaned back so far that it rested against the face of a defunct mantelpiece clock, and from this position his distraught eyes stared down at Daisy, who was sitting, frightened but graceful, on the edge of a stiff chair."
When the nurse turned the page, her eyes glanced at the bed and, to her astonishment, saw the patient staring at her.
"F. Scott Fitzgerald," he said, adding to her surprise.
"Have you read any of his books?"
"Yes, but I prefer Hemingway."
"Did you ever get the chance to meet him?"
"Hell, yes! He was a good friend of mine. We shared many a drink down at Sloppy Joe's."
Rhonda put the book down and listened with rapt attention to the old man's stories of the great writer and life in Key West during the Thirties. Hours later, when he finally grew tired and fell asleep, she turned off the light and went to the guest room.
That's where he's been all this time, she thought as she prepared for bed. In the past, and what an incredible place it must have been!
Having worked with dozens of patients who suffered from dementia, she knew the past was more real to them than the present. Often, they had little difficulty remembering what they did in grammar school but could not recall instructions they were given moments earlier. They could recollect their childhood playmates but not recognize their own grandchildren.
Tomorrow, he'll probably forget all about our conversation. He might not even remember that I'm his nurse.
* * *
As she had foreseen, Herb Goodman returned to his private world the next day. Sticking to her routine, after coffee with Aurora in the morning, Rhonda went about her nursing duties with the usual pleasant expression on her face. She took her walk in the afternoon, again paying a brief visit to the Hemingway House and Museum. According to her ninety-year-old patient, he had been inside this house many times when the author lived there. He had known "Papa" and his family quite well.
After dinner, she surprised the old man with dessert.
"I stopped at Kermit's and got us some key lime pie."
Although he ate the entire slice, he showed no appreciation for its delicious flavor. Rhonda wondered how he would have reacted to the pie the previous evening when he was enthusiastically recounting bygone days.
Once he had bathed and donned his lightweight pajamas, Grandpa Herb stretched out on his bed and gazed off into space. Straying from the established routine, Rhonda did not bother with either the television or the radio. Instead, she immediately opened the book she had purchased earlier in the day and started to read.
"If people bring so much courage to this world, the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these, you can be sure it will kill you, too, but there will be no special hurry."
The nurse stopped reading and looked down at her patient. There was a smile on his face and a sparkle in his blue/gray eyes.
"Papa," he said, referring to Ernest Hemingway's nickname.
"You know what story that's from?"
"A Farewell to Arms. He wrote that before I met him. I didn't move to Key West until 1934."
This time it was Hemingway, not Fitzgerald, who held the key to unlocking the past and awakening Grandpa Herb. She wondered how—or if—he would respond to All Quiet on the Western Front or The Maltese Falcon.
Again, Rhonda put down her book and let her patient provide the evening's entertainment.
From that night on, there was a change in Rhonda's routine. After-dinner television and radio were replaced with a short excerpt from a novel written during the Twenties or Thirties and an engaging stroll down Herb Goodman's memory lane. The change suited the nurse just fine. Who wanted to hear about the continuing siege at Waco when you could listen to stories about the 1935 Labor Day hurricane, the Wall Street crash or Prohibition?
Over time, the stories the old man shared changed from his personal experiences on Key West to accounts of the exploits of Baby Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd and "Creepy" Alvin Karpis, with occasional references to Ma Barker and her boys and Bonnie and Clyde. Rhonda assumed he gained his knowledge of these notorious bank robbers from newspapers and books. Grandpa Herb was quite the reader, after all. His immediate recognition of the works of Fitzgerald and Hemmingway was proof of that.
What Rhonda found surprising was that her patient never spoke about his wife.
"I'm curious," she said, interrupting his tale about FBI agents descending upon the Little Bohemia Lodge. "Did you meet your wife in Key West, or were you already married when you moved here?"
"My wife? I don't think about her much. Hell, I was hardly twenty-one when we married. And when I went to prison—well, things with Beryl weren't so good after that, and she eventually divorced me."
Grandpa Herb's talk of a divorce did not agree with his granddaughter's description of his visiting his wife's grave every day or with the framed photographs of the happy couple on display throughout the house. And what was that talk about prison?
"Hey, you wanna hear a good joke?" the old man asked. "Special Agent Melvin Purvis walks into FBI headquarters one day and sees J. Edgar Hoover prancing around his office, wearing his mother's dress. When ...."
"I never knew you were in prison. What did you do?"
He must have found the question quite amusing because he laughed so hard, he literally cried.
"You mean you've been sitting here night after night listening to my stories, and you don't even know who I am?" he exclaimed, wiping the tears from his eyes.
"You're Herb Goodman."
"I sometimes use that name—as well as Jimmy Lawrence and a few others."
"What's your real name then?"
"John Dillinger."
"Dillinger?" Rhonda echoed with disbelief. "You think you're John Dillinger, the gangster?"
"Al Capone was a gangster. I was a bank robber."
He then talked in great detail about his bank jobs with pals Harry Pierpont, Russell Clark and Homer Van Meter, after which he described his spectacular prison breaks.
"After I broke out of Crown Point jail by fooling the guards with a wooden gun, many people would refer to the prison as Clown Point!"
He really believes he's Dillinger!
The realization that her patient had completely lost touch with reality not only saddened the nurse, but it also made her question everything else he had told her.
Did he ever even meet Hemingway? she wondered.
The following evening—and every evening thereafter—the television was turned on after dinner. Rhonda no longer read excerpts from books, and there were no more strolls down memory lane, whether they were accurate memories or not.
* * *
Rhonda, who had been working in Key West for six months, noticed the temperatures were getting progressively higher. With mercury in thermometers often topping ninety degrees, she preferred remaining in the air-conditioned house to venturing out into the Florida heat. Besides, it was a relatively small island, and she had already seen most of the sights.
To stave off boredom, she would drive to the Monroe County Public Library and check out a stack of books. On one of her trips there—on impulse—she took out a biography of John Dillinger.
What would happen, she wondered, if I confronted Grandpa Herb with proof that he can't possibly be Dillinger?
Since she was a nurse, not a doctor or psychiatrist, she would never take that responsibility on herself. Not only did she not want to upset her patient, but she also did not want to risk angering him. Experience had taught her that dementia patients could become violent.
When she got back to the house on Pearl Street, she put a copy of The Cider House Rules on her nightstand and placed the other library books in the closet. Four days later, Rhonda was sitting beside Herb Goodman's bed, reading the final chapter of John Irving's novel, when she noticed a disturbing change in her patient's breathing. Although he had been sleeping soundly only moments before, he seemed to be struggling for air. The nurse immediately picked up the phone and called the doctor. Within minutes, the nonagenarian was transported to the Lower Keys Medical Center.
With her patient admitted for an upper respiratory infection, Rhonda had plenty of free time on her hands. Since she had finished The Cider House Rules, she took down the biography of John Dillinger from the shelf in her closet. As she read, she recognized events in the bank robber's life from the stories Grandpa Herb had told her: his enlistment in the Navy followed by his desertion, the early marriage to and divorce from Beryl Hovious, the robberies, the arrests, the prison sentences and the escapes.
Now I know where he got his wealth of information on Dillinger, she surmised. He must have checked this book out of the library at some point and read it. The Little Bohemia Lodge, Homer Van Meter, Harry Pierpont, Crown Point jail—they're all here.
What Grandpa Herb never mentioned during his after-dinner reminiscences was the events of July 22, 1934. Having been declared Public Enemy Number One by the FBI, Dillinger underwent plastic surgery to change his appearance; and using the alias Jimmy Lawrence, he hid out in Chicago. After attending a showing of Manhattan Melodies with brothel owner Anna Sage and a young woman named Polly Hamilton, Dillinger was gunned down outside the Biograph Theater. Shot four times, he was declared dead upon arrival at Alexian Brothers Hospital.
When Rhonda came to the last page, she found an article that had been ripped out of a 1985 magazine, folded and tucked in the index of the biography. The journalist who wrote it—no doubt dubbed a "conspiracy nut" by many of his colleagues—contended that it was not John Dillinger who was killed by FBI agents. He claimed the dead man's fingerprints did not match Dillinger's (the bank robber had once used acid to try to remove them), the eye color was wrong (the dead man's eyes were brown whereas Dillinger's were blue/gray) and the dead man was taller than Dillinger. Furthermore, the autopsy found that the corpse showed signs of rheumatic heart disease, yet Dillinger was not known to have anything wrong with his heart.
Could it be possible? she wondered, rereading the magazine article.
She took the book out to the living room and compared the photograph of Dillinger on the cover to that of a younger Herb in the Goodmans' wedding picture that hung on the wall above the sofa. There were a number of similarities as well as differences.
"It could be him, if what the author of the article claims is true. Dillinger was supposed to have been killed in 1934, and Grandpa Herb arrived here in Key West that same year."
After careful consideration, Rhonda decided to show the book to the old man, ask him about the shooting outside the Biograph and hope he gave her a lucid, truthful answer. Before she had the opportunity, however, his condition deteriorated and pneumonia set in. He died peacefully in his sleep before his nurse could ascertain his true identity.
* * *
By the day of Herb Goodman's funeral, Rhonda had packed her things and made arrangements to return to Maine. She even found time to help Aurora box up her former patient's belongings, which were to be shipped to Good Will.
"I guess I ought to go home, take a shower and dress for the service," the cleaning lady announced an hour and a half before the funeral was to begin.
"I'll empty out the contents of his dresser for you."
"You don't have to. I can finish up here tomorrow."
"I don't mind. I have nothing else to do. I already returned my books to the library."
"Thank you. I'll see you later at the funeral home."
Rhonda found an empty cardboard box in the garage, took it into Grandpa Herb's bedroom and began putting the old man's clothes into it. During her tenure as his nurse, she had often removed clean pajamas and underwear from that dresser. However, she never had any reason to open the drawers of the night table. In the top drawer were old greeting cards, family photographs, postcards and recipes his late wife had clipped from women's magazines.
Mrs. Newley might want to go through these, she thought and put them aside.
In the bottom drawer were more family keepsakes. Among the sentimental souvenirs from the old man's long life was a first edition copy of The Old Man and the Sea, autographed on the inside cover, "To my good friend, Herb. Love, Papa."
At least his stories about knowing Hemingway were true.
Rhonda also found a 1930 Rand McNally road atlas. Someone—presumably Grandpa Herb—had mapped out a route from Chicago to Florida. Tucked inside the atlas, there was a newspaper clipping, yellowed with age, cut from the Chicago Tribune. It was a 1934 account of the fatal shooting of John Dillinger.
* * *
When Rhonda entered the funeral home, she needed no introduction to the white-haired man standing with Annette Newley and her family. He was clearly Herb Goodman's son, Russ, who had driven down from Jacksonville for the service.
"This is Miss Spiers, Dad," Annette announced. "Grandpa Herb's nurse."
"Please accept my sympathy for your loss, Mr. Goodman."
"Thank you and thanks for taking care of my father as well as you did."
"You're welcome."
"Will you be going back to Maine now?" Annette asked.
"Yes. I'll be leaving tomorrow. Shall I drop off the house key at the hotel on my way through Miami?"
"That won't be necessary. You can either leave it with Aurora or mail it to me. I'll stop by the house later, after the service, and give you your last check."
"There's no rush."
"There'll be a bonus from me in that envelope as well," Russ added. "A sign of my appreciation for your services."
"You really don't have to ...."
"Nonsense! I want to. I realize taking care of my father must have been ... difficult at times."
"He never gave me any trouble at all," Rhonda said.
"I'm afraid his mind had been going for some time."
"I worked at a nursing home. I'm used to the eccentricities of the elderly."
"What was wrong with my father had nothing to do with his age. I was only sixteen when I had my first doubts about his sanity. He took me aside one day and told me he wasn't really Herb Goodman."
"He told me the same thing," Rhonda said and described the after-dinner conversations she had with the deceased. "I wasn't sure what to believe."
"It's true that my father was a close friend of Hemingway, but I hope you didn't fall for that old chestnut about his being Dillinger."
Rhonda told Russ about the newspaper clipping and the sixty-year-old road atlas she found in his father's nightstand.
"I admit I don't know anything about my father's life before he relocated to Key West. He may have lived in Chicago when he was a young man, but I doubt very much he was once Hoover's Public Enemy Number One!"
"Look, Dad," Annette interrupted. "Here comes Dr. Zuckerberg. Excuse us, will you, Miss Spiers?"
"Certainly. It was nice meeting you, Mr. Goodman."
"The same here."
Rhonda walked into the viewing room where Herb Goodman lay in an open casket surrounded by dozens of floral arrangements. His head rested on the white satin pillow, his blue/gray eyes permanently closed.
Grandpa Herb had the same color eyes as Dillinger! she realized, remembering the article that claimed the man shot in front of the Biograph had brown eyes. And there was something about the fingerprints ....
Since no one else was near the coffin, Rhonda reached over and took hold of the dead man's wrist. She turned it slightly, enough to see that he had once tried to obliterate his fingerprints. Stunned by her discovery, she quickly let go of the cold, wax-like hand. She looked around the room for Russ. Here was proof of his father's identity.
But does he want to know the truth? she suddenly asked herself. Probably not.
He would no doubt prefer to think of his father as suffering from delusions. His mental state aside, he would be remembered as a simple, honest man who led an ordinary, law-abiding life and died at the ripe old age of ninety-one. A respected member of the community who was a close friend of one of the country's greatest writers. A devoted husband who adored his late wife and loved his son, granddaughter and great-grandchildren.
By all accounts, that was what Herb Goodman was: a good man.
Why should he be remembered for the mistakes he made in his youth, at a troubled time in America's history when desperate men committed desperate acts? Wasn't it right he should rest beside his beloved wife in Key West Cemetery beneath a tombstone bearing the name of Herb Goodman?
Rhonda Spiers thought so.
Thus, with one last look at her former patient, the departing nurse bid John Herbert Dillinger a silent farewell and returned to the empty house on Pearl Street.
For years, there have been theories that the man killed outside the Biograph Theater was not John Dillinger. People cite discrepancies between descriptions of the corspe and John Dillinger: eye color, fingerprints, heart disease, etc. In September 2019, members of Dillinger's family went to court to request his body be exhumed. Perhaps we'll soon discover the truth of these theories.
I don't know if Salem deserves to be Public Enemy Number One or not, but he certainly qualifies as Public Nuisance Number One.
