The Ultimate Gift

  “Oh no . . . no, no. He must be mistaken,” Jason said, looking at Bella. “My grandfather was very generous. Everything’s named after him.”

  Bella shook her head. “No. It is the Jay Stevens Memorial Library.”

  Jason wasn’t sure which emotions were bursting through him, but they were good. They felt good. Real. He smiled at the chief and then at Bella, who seemed pleased by it all.

  “Usted es huésped honorado,” the chief said.

  Jason watched as they began sipping their drinks. Here it goes. He gulped a drink that sent a warm sensation all the way through his body. Smiling, he raised his glass back to the leader and nodded his approval. “To my father.”

  “Salud! Salud!” the chief responded. Then he gestured for a woman to get Jason another drink.

  Before he knew it, the room was spinning in the most amazing way. Was he floating? Was someone carrying him? Every time he closed his eyes, it felt like he slept. And for the life of him, he couldn’t stop grinning.

  Then he spotted him, over near the door to the tent, wearing that same hat and shirt jacket, staring at him as if he could see his soul. And, like before, the mysterious stranger vanished.

  The festivities had apparently died down, and Jason found himself comfortably napping on a cot. How he’d gotten there, he didn’t know, but his mind wasn’t as muddled now, and he was able to stand to his feet. Nobody seemed to be around. Was it morning? He couldn’t be sure, but there was daylight.

  He stumbled forward, trying to get his bearings. Then he spotted it. The Jeep sat right in front of the library. In the distance, the mountain loomed, coming in and out of focus. Jason felt like he could sleep for another three days, but instead he climbed into the Jeep. It started with a roar and, pushing the clutch in, he sped away from the village, splashing through a tiny creek. Nothing was going to stop him. He had to get to that mountain. Even if it meant it would cost him his life.

  “You cannot hope to find it without me.”

  Jason was startled and turned to find the stranger who had haunted him even in his dreams climbing out from underneath the tarp in the backseat. Jason smiled a little and got as comfortable as he could in his seat. “How’d you know I’d go?”

  The man’s eyes twinkled. “You are a Stevens, are you not?”

  “I thought you said you couldn’t take me.”

  “My purpose in coming to you is a promise I made to Señor Red, that you could learn the truth.”

  Jason remained silent, staring forward.

  “He had one desire and one desire alone,” the man continued. “To ask your forgiveness. He said one day you would come. Only then could you learn the truth.”

  They drove in silence for a while, the Jeep climbing the dirt path of the jungle, sometimes struggling up the steeper hills. They’d rounded some dense brush when the man said, “Stop the Jeep.”

  Jason shoved down on the brake, and dust rose from behind. They both jerked forward, and then the Jeep came to a complete stop. They climbed out of the vehicle, and the man pointed Jason toward a small opening in the tangled mess of the jungle. Without a word, both men stepped into the thick jungle foliage, ducking under limbs and stepping over emerald-colored vines as thick as trees. The sounds of birds and animals swelled like a chorus. Above them, Jason caught glimpses of the kind of shining sky that made one stop and breathe and take time to look up.

  They rounded more dense brush, and then Jason saw it. It seemed so small, much smaller than Jason had ever imagined. One wing was broken and bent upward, contorted like a body that had jumped to its death. Trees and bushes and vines cradled the plane.

  The man stayed distant, clasping his hands in front of him and bowing his head in respect. Jason walked forward, trembling at the reality of it all. His hands glided over a wing, and then over the door that looked to be jammed shut. The front window was shattered but still intact. The side window, however, had been busted out, with the exception of one shard. Fifteen years of vegetation had grown over it, holding it like a gnarled hand.

  Jason leaned inside, emotion catching up with him. He touched the instruments, the yoke, everything he could. He pictured his father flying high in these beautiful skies, above the clouds, enjoying the beauty of it all. He’d loved that about his father. He was able to take life and love it and live it.

  But just as quickly as they came, the images faded, and as he backed his head out of the window, he saw his father slumped forward, his head bloody, his limbs twisted, his eyes wide with the fear of knowing death had arrived for him.

  Jason tried to hold back the emotion, but he couldn’t. Here he was at the very place that had taken his father. He glanced back at the stranger, who stood silently watching. “He had learned of a village . . .” Jason began, his voice cracking. “. . . in the next valley that had a plague and needed medical supplies. But he never understood why Red forbid him to go.”

  “There was no plague. There was no village.”

  “What?”

  “Red wanted to introduce your father to the oil business. But your father was restless, bored.”

  Jason shook his head. “No. No!”

  “He snuck away. He ran away and took a plane he had no business taking.”

  “No!” Jason felt as though he’d been struck in the stomach. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t talk. He could barely stand as he looked up at the man. For the first time, he saw emotion in his eyes. Compassion.

  “This is what Red wanted to protect you from. Until now.”

  Tears dripped down his face. “No.”

  “There can be no blame for what happened here. The penalty for your father’s impulsiveness, unfortunately, was a life. His.”

  Jason turned away, burying his face in his hands. How could this be? This was why his grandfather had been so distant for so many years? He’d wanted to protect him from the truth? He knew the stranger spoke the truth, because his father had been restless and impulsive. It was what had led him away many times. It was why Jason, as hard as he tried, could never quite catch him.

  His sobs turned into deep breaths, and he squeezed his eyes shut. What did it all mean? What was he supposed to do with it?

  And then he heard the click of a gun.

  chapter 14

  Abone-saturating rain drowned out any and all noise. Jason stood by the man who had brought him up here. He didn’t even know his name. But in his eyes he saw fear as they stood before a group of men. Bandits. They all had guns and spoke in Spanish. Bella had called them “cocaine cowboys.” One of them, the one who seemed to be the leader, looked Jason over. “Americano?”

  “He hired me to show him the plane wreck. He likes airplanes.”

  The bandit stepped closer to them and looked at the man next to Jason. “Up here, my friend, all men are liars.” He snatched the man’s felt hat and placed it on his own head, then turned and gestured toward the group of men who had huddled around them. “¡Exigimos su rescate! Si nadie los sigue dentro de unas semanas, ¡mátenlos!”

  A large man grabbed Jason, turning him and thrusting him forward. Shoved in short spurts, Jason stumbled along. “Wait. Please . . . please . . . don’t—” The man pushed him into a small cage. His shoulder slammed against its stone, and before Jason could even stand up, the door was shut and locked.

  Jason let his eyes focus in the new darkness. He could see only slices of the rainy sky through the wooden door. A small hole allowed him a peek into the outside world. A few bandits milled around now, but that was it. He wondered where his companion was. He had nothing left. Everything had been taken from him. Crouching with his back against one of the cage walls, he cried, but nothing came out.

  All his life he had wanted more. Now all he wanted was his life.

  Jason opened his eyes. All he knew was that it was day. When it rained, he couldn’t tell morning from evening. On the days with sun, he could watch through the slits in the cell as the sun passed from one side to the other, but whe
n there were clouds, there was nothing he could do but guess. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been asleep. Short periods of sleep didn’t give him rest. His body ached from the hard ground, and his mind was in constant motion, trying to find a way out of all of this.

  He’d even prayed. He wasn’t sure how to pray, but he did it anyway. Sometimes he would draw pictures in the dirt. Most of the time he sat in the corner, listening to them chatter in a language he couldn’t understand, picking up only a few useless words.

  Outside he heard commotion. He scrambled to his little hole and peered out with one eye. The men were huddled around something. A couple of them stepped aside, and Jason saw logs piled together. They were trying to start a fire.

  It took them no time at all, but the warmth couldn’t reach Jason. All he could do was stare at the bright orange flame and try to remember what warmth felt like.

  “No!” Jason jerked up but realized he’d just been dreaming. He peeked through his hole to see the men carrying something. Boxes. One of them turned a box over and spilled books out onto the fire.

  Fuel.

  No . . . not the books.

  The fire consumed them within seconds, roaring into a blaze that caused the men to gesture like they’d just created a masterpiece. Papers, one by one, swept upward toward the sky then slowly drifted back to the ground.

  Jason couldn’t watch it anymore. Going back to his corner, he slid downward thinking about Emily, how she’d suffered in pain and lived with the unknown. If he ever saw her again, he’d be better able to look her in the eye. He would understand her more, and maybe she would understand him too.

  Suddenly a tin plate slid under the door, pushed by the hand of a man Jason couldn’t see. He didn’t care. It was food. A piece of bread and a small bowl of beans with no spoon. Some days he got nothing to eat. On those days, he tried to drink the rain when it came.

  Snatching the bread, he ripped it apart with his teeth, chewing ferociously and swallowing the pieces nearly whole. He cupped the bowl and drank the beans and soup, all gone in a matter of seconds. He knew he should eat one bite at a time, try to make it last for a few hours. But he was too hungry.

  His thoughts carried him back to that awful Thanksgiving when his freaky family decided to show their true colors. He imagined all the food, platefuls, stretching all the way down the table. He’d eaten a few bites. What he wouldn’t give for that now. For part of that. For the leftovers off of everyone’s plates.

  The tears had dried up awhile back, but his heart still hurt. He missed Alexia. She probably thought he’d abandoned her. How would she ever know that he was here, in a cage not fit for an animal, starving to death and going slowly insane?

  Would they find his body like they’d found his father’s? Would this mountain take both the father and the son?

  Miss Hastings handed Alexia a tall coffee with cream and then sat down with her at one of the tables in the hospital cafeteria. Alexia tried not to seem anxious. This kind woman had come all the way to the hospital to tell her something, but she was taking her time getting to it.

  Finally, she looked at Alexia. “Jason is missing.”

  “Missing?”

  “He went to Ecuador. It was part of this . . . this . . .” Miss Hastings sighed. “The gift.”

  Alexia shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

  “Jason has been working at a library there, one that was founded by Red and named after Jason’s father. It’s in a very tiny village.”

  “Really?” She tried to imagine Jason, who could hardly get himself to ride on public transportation, working in a South American village. But as she looked at Miss Hastings, she could tell something else was wrong. “What’s the matter? Can’t you find him?”

  Miss Hastings’s eyes lowered to her coffee. “We think he went searching for the crash site, which is in—” Miss Hastings swallowed “—lawless territory.”

  “I’m sorry, crash site?”

  “Where his father died.”

  Alexia’s fingers wrapped around her coffee as she tried to absorb all of this. So that was what this trip was for. She hadn’t really understood why he’d had to leave, but something told her he needed to. At the time, all she could think about was that he was leaving her. But maybe he’d found something—something that might bring him back.

  “Is he in any danger?” Alexia asked.

  Miss Hastings’s eyes glistened, and she looked up apologetically. “I’m so sorry.”

  Combing his fingers through his short beard, he continued to count the strokes. Yesterday he’d made it to 532. He wondered what he looked like with a beard. He’d never grown one. Not even a goatee, when that was the fad.

  Food got stuck in it and bugs seemed to think it was their home, so he guarded it any way he could, mostly just with his fingers pulling it. And it proved to be a good distraction from all the thoughts that made him yearn to be dead. He wanted death now. But he couldn’t even give himself that. He was stuck, at the mercy of men who hardly regarded him as human but for the small meals given to him when they thought about it.

  He’d dreamed last night of Alexia. She was smiling, radiating that warmth that had drawn him to her the first time. Her eyes sparkled with life. But then he’d awoken. Everything was reversed now. When he was awake, that was the nightmare. When he was asleep, that was the reality he wanted to stay in.

  Suddenly Jason heard what sounded like paper rattling. He looked out his hole, but he could see no one nearby. Then something caught his eye, above him. It was paper, and it was being slid to him through a crack between the roof and the wall. Jason snatched it and looked at it in the dim light. The writing was in Spanish.

  “Fue . . . el mejor . . . y el peor . . . de los tiempos.”

  A voice came from the other side. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness.” Jason smiled through tears. It was his friend. He was still alive and in the adjoining cell.

  He handed another paper over, and another. Jason couldn’t believe it. These were the pages long missing from the books in the library. Hours went by. Jason read the Spanish on the pages. His companion would translate. He’d never known how hungry he could be for words.

  “. . . cuanto tiempo o permiso corto al cielo.”

  “Neither love nor hate thy life; but what thou livest, live well, however long or short may the heavens permit.”

  Lying on his back, Jason contemplated these words. There was plenty of time to contemplate, and he didn’t know how many pages his companion had left, so he didn’t want to rush through them. Instead, he took each sentence and thought about it, trying to understand it in every way possible.

  Silence guarded the time. Then Jason said, “Tell me about my father.”

  “In many ways he was very similar to you. Restless. Rebellious. Angry.” Jason closed his eyes. The words stung. But he listened anyway. “I think Red saw something in him that he didn’t see in his other sons. A fire. The same fire that he saw in you.”

  Jason rolled over. Everything looked different now. Things he’d been sure were real were now replaced by the truth. He closed his eyes and fell asleep.

  In the morning, a loud noise jolted Jason. He leaped to his feet, but the noise was coming from the next cell. “Oh no . . .”

  Through the small hole, he could see his companion being dragged off, fighting. The bandits were poking at him, beating him with their guns as he struggled helplessly. A trail of dust was all that remained.

  “No . . .” Slumping against the wall, he buried his face in his hands. Every single thing, every small moment of joy, had been taken from him. All he had left was the air he breathed.

  chapter 15

  thump. Thump. Thump.

  Jason slowly opened his eyes to the sound. The line between reality and dreams often blurred, so he wasn’t sure he was really hearing anything.

  Then he heard muffled voices outside. Steps hurrying toward him. He g
asped as his cell door flew open. Two arms reached in and pulled him out. Bright sunlight glared hot and white. He barely had time to squint before one of the bandits placed a blindfold over his eyes and secured it tightly behind his head.

  Tripping over his own feet, Jason tried to regain his balance. With every step came another hard shove to his back.

  “Amigo?” Jason tried to raise his voice. “Amigo? Are you here?” He could see nothing, and the voices around him spoke in Spanish. Was his friend dead?

  Then the hands that were shoving him grabbed him by the shoulders, fingers pressing hard into his bones. As he was forced onto his knees, a fear that Jason had never known seized him. He gasped for breath as he listened to rounds being loaded into the chambers of their automatic weapons.

  “No, no, no . . . No, no, no, please . . . No!” In his mind flashed pictures of the many hostages he’d seen on the news—blindfolded, hands bound, ready for execution. This was how he was going to die? Executed on the same mountain that had taken his father’s life? “I can . . . I can pay you! I have money! Please!” The words left his tongue quickly, too quickly. He had to bargain. But how? What did he have that he could give? “Oh, God, God . . . Does anyone understand what I’m saying?” What Spanish did he know? Not enough to communicate. Maybe he could—

  Gunfire. Jason screamed, covering his ears, ducking as though that would help avoid a bullet. More gunfire. Rapid. And more. More. More.

  Then silence. Jason waited for the bullet that would take his life.

  Suddenly his blindfold was yanked down. Jason stared at the two men on their knees in front of him. Their expressions reflected each other’s. No one was dead.

  Laughter erupted, and the leader held a bottle of mescal high in the air. “¡Feliz Navidad!” he roared, and the others joined in, passing beer around like it was a party. “¡Feliz Navidad!” they mocked, jabbing one another with an air of revelry.

  Jason couldn’t even look at them. Instead, crumpling to the ground, he cried. Pain deeper than he’d ever felt clutched his heart . . . his soul. He was alive. But these men held the power to keep him alive or to kill him. So although he had his life, it wasn’t his anymore, to give or to take away. He existed now simply for the pleasure of these cruel and heartless men. His pain was their delight.