SATURDAY STORY - MAY 22, 2021 - Ruben Story - part I

 SATURDAY STORY - MAY 22, 2021

As a kid, I dreamt of secret doors and rooms.  

*****

All the neighborhood kids were scared of old man Ruben.  The house was dark, dark red brick, with so many trees and scrubs you couldn't see his house.  It was an old house, built about 1900.  My dad thought it was one of the first houses in Keokuk Iowa.  

Keokuk was an unusual place.  At one time, there were rapids on the Mississippi River, and boats coming up the river stopped there.  Some things were carted a few miles upstream and loaded onto boats and barges going to the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul.  Some things just were sold off as to pay to cart them above the rapids was sometimes more than the furniture and items were worth.  The story was that Ruben’s house had all kinds of exotic things from the time before they built Lock and Dam #19 at Keokuk.  

I saw him three times prior to this story.,  Once as he backed his black Citroen (or, I thought it was a Citroen, it was old, mostly black and mud-splattered), out of his gravel driveway. Once as I was mowing our backyard and I thought he was watching me to make sure I didn’t cross into his yard.  And, once when he came on our porch and asked to see my mother and then proceeded to tell her to keep me and the neighborhood kids out of his yard.  (I hadn’t been in his yard, but I think Bobby had dared Dan to go into the yard and retrieve a frisbee).  His English was terrible and I (smart kid that I fancied myself) thought it was more Russian than English (and the Russian/American cold war was on).  I knew he must be some sort of Russian spy, or maybe he was related to the Tzar and was hiding from the Soviets.

That last time I really saw him.  Big black beard, hair that hadn’t been cut in a century, and grubby clothes, with oil and grease stains.  He was about my mother’s height, and I was on a growth spurt and was probably taller than he was.  

Actually, the last sighting made me a hero in the neighborhood as I told the other kids that I had seen Ruben up close, and in-person - and I didn’t die of some strange plague.  

*****

But my real story starts here.

About six months after he had been on our porch telling my mother to keep the kids out of his yard, he came back to the porch.  He was coughing and spitting up phlegm and asked my mother if I could shovel out his driveway after a big snowstorm, and he would pay me five dollars.  With his cough, he sounded like he was dying and must have needed to get his car out, maybe he could drive that Citroen directly to the morgue.  (Or turn into a bat and fly away).

But, for five dollars I would shovel all the driveways in the neighborhood.  Mom looked at me, and could see I was eager for the money but scared to be in his yard!!!  I nodded “yes”, and a deal was struck.  

It was a Saturday and I shoveled that gravel driveway for three hours - may be the hardest five dollars I had ever made.  As I knocked on his door to say I was done, he hobbled out and inspected my work.  It was good enough to get his old car out of the driveway, and now that the city street crews had plowed Grand Avenue he could get out.  Coughing, he invited me into his house.  That was a shock - was he going to change me into a bat, give me poison to eat, or lock me into a cage?  I stood in the entry while he got five dollars.  He placed five old silver dollars in my hand, and then a crystal paper-weight-like thing.  It had a picture of an old Russian cathedral, but the lettering was in Cyrillic and I couldn’t read it.  

Upon arriving at home, my mother (the saint that she was), made a pot of beef stew and insisted I take it to our neighbor.  So, here I was again, on his doorstep with a Tupperware container of hearty beef stew, cornbread, and pickled beets.  I don’t know if Mom knew he liked pickled beets, but his eyes lit up when he saw the beets.  

He insisted I sit at a table next to him while he ate.  He greedily wolfed the meal down, like it had been several days since he last ate.  He told me to get a bottle out of his refrigerator.  I thought it might be vodka, as I knew that all Russians drink vodka (thanks to James Bond). But, it was just bottled water.  

He explained to me in broken English, that somebody was after him, so he didn’t trust the local water.  He had retired recently from an import company that imported the matryoshka dolls, and icons for Orthodox Churches.  I was Methodist and didn’t understand the Orthodox Churches, other than priests with big black beards swinging incense burners.  

As I listened more and tried to understand that he had a daughter and family still in Russia.  He fumbled around on a desk and brought me an address (or it looked like an address) of his daughter, and a picture of her and his three grandchildren.  He said that I reminded him of his youngest granddaughter - blonde and tall.  (Later, I learned that centuries ago, Sweden and Russian were trading partners and some Swedish immigrants had mixed with Slavic Russian ancestry).  

*****

In the next few weeks, I spent many evenings with Ruben, my mother would cook and I would take it next door.  Sometimes, my mother would go with me to figure out what foods he liked. (Beef, meat).  Mom also took him to a doctor twice.  She also helped him get Medicare insurance to pay his bills.  

He did have television, but generally was listening to classical music - Tschaikowsky, Rimsky-Korsokf, Rachmaninoff, Mussorgsky, Shostakovich, and Stravinsky.  One night he brought a balalaika out of his closet and played some folk tunes. 

As winter passed, we became close friends, the old black-bearded Russian and the young blonde American girl.  Ruben became a regular at our dinner table.  My father loved talking with the old man, and my mother enjoyed seeing him slowly regain health.  

*****

But, in July that year, he took a turn for the worse, a few strokes left his left side partially paralyzed.  He stayed in the hospital for two weeks and came home and stayed at our house and Mom (who had trained as a nurse), gave him care.  

I was a second nurse to Ruben.  One day, he insisted I bring the crystal paperweight into his room at our house.  He directed me to carefully remove the back from the paperweight, and there was a small key.  He kept saying chimney key, but that didn't make sense.  Chimney didn't have keys.  Two days later as his condition worsened, he tried to describe where this key went - still Chimney Key.  I went to his house and scouted around and in an upstairs bedroom was a small door next to the chimney.  I tried the key, but with the years, and rust, it didn’t want to turn.  I borrowed Dad’s WD-40 and sprayed it into the lock.  The key went in and turned and then seemed to catch on something.

I went home and told Mom and Dad about the key and the lock.  This time, Dad came with me and had a strong flashlight.  This time the door still seemed to barely open and Dad sprayed the area with WD-40, he pushed gently and used his life to check things out.  It seemed like a little spring was on the floor of the box and kept the door from opening.  Dad asked me to get a wire clothes hanger from a closet and when I brought that back, he gently caught the spring on the floor - and that spring somehow was loaded as the whole chimney fixture shuttered and moved an inch.  Dad and I pushed and it opened wider; another push and it was wide enough for me to barely get through the chimney door.  I was in a small room, maybe 4 feet by 4 feet.

Dad gave me his flashlight and I looked around.  I was standing on just about the only place you could stand, there were boxes, both cardboard in Cyrillic and metal, stacked on the floor.  I handed out one of the boxes to Dad.  I had to put the flashlight on the floor as the box was too heavy for me to hold in one hand.  Before I pushed my way out, I showed the flashlight around the room -  fourteen cardboard boxes, twelve metal strongboxes, and then several canvas and fabric bags.  

We went back to our house, but Ruben was asleep.  We didn’t know if all of this was his or stolen, or some other contraband.  

To be continued