The Ultimate Gift

  “Are you okay?” her mother asked anxiously.

  Emily put on her own smile. “I feel much better.”

  Holding a small duffel bag, Jason stood just outside the security gates of the airport, watching the people pass him by, clutching their boarding passes and driver’s licenses, hurrying around one another like their business might be the only important thing around.

  He, too, was clutching a boarding pass and a driver’s license, but he wasn’t moving. He couldn’t move. It was like his feet were glued to the tile.

  What was moving was his mind, which hadn’t stopped since Hamilton had given him the envelope. It’s for your benefit, not your destruction. Still, it didn’t make sense. He couldn’t fathom how this, of all things, would be beneficial. This seemed cruel, and it was something he’d always suspected of his grandfather—that he had a cruel side.

  So why was he here? What had made him get out of bed this morning, pack his bags with what little he had, and stand here like he might actually go?

  An old woman with the airline emblem stitched to her polyester jacket came up beside him. “Sir, how can I help you?” Jason looked down at her. As far as he could remember, nobody had ever offered to help him at an airport, and usually when he needed help, nobody was around. “You look lost,” she added, just in case he might be confused about why she was asking.

  “No. I’m not lost.”

  “Are you found?” She smiled at her own joke. “I’m just kidding. I have a sense of humor. A lot of people don’t like it. It’s just that lost and found go so well together, don’t they? Maybe it’s because I used to work in lost-and-found, and boy, what a job that was. You couldn’t imagine the things people leave behind and the—”

  “Look,” Jason said, holding up a polite hand, “I appreciate it, but I’m not lost. Or found. I’m thinking.”

  She looked toward the security line. “Don’t let it intimidate you. It moves faster than you’d think. And I know those people get to hollerin’ about taking your shoes and belts off and your laptops out, but they’re just trying to get people through. It’s not personal.”

  “I’m not worried about security. Don’t I have a right to stand here and think?”

  “I suppose you do. People need to do more thinking, in my opinion.” She paused. “What are you thinking about?”

  “Ma’am,” Jason said, his patience sliding off him by the second, “it’s personal, okay? It’s nothing that I want to discuss or could even explain to someone I know, much less a stranger.”

  “Well, dear, that’s understandable. Is it a girlfriend?”

  Jason looked away. “It’s a lot of things. Now, isn’t there a little kid wandering around without his mother that you need to help?”

  “I tell you, what I wouldn’t have given for this kind of transportation back in my day. My Joseph and me, we were an ocean apart, and mail took forever to get back and forth. Nowadays I could just get on an airplane and be halfway around the world. Nothing would’ve kept me apart from him. I would’ve gone.”

  “I’m not going to see a girlfriend.”

  “Well,” she said, patting him on the arm, “I don’t know what it is, but it means a great deal to you.” She nodded toward the security line. “Go on. Don’t waste another minute. And don’t worry. Nobody’s going to be staring at the holes in your socks.”

  chapter 12

  jason’s fingers gripped his seat as the topless Jeep that wouldn’t know a shock absorber if it bumped into one bumbled along one dirt road after another. It seemed they’d been driving for hours. Now this was an off-road adventure that the off-road vehicle he’d bought last year couldn’t touch. Not that he would know. He’d never driven it off road.

  Earlier, from the prop plane, he’d seen the jungle, which stretched far and wide and out of his view. It was lush and green, expansive like it was its own continent. The air smelled fresh, felt thick.

  They’d come in for a hard landing on a dirt runway that didn’t look long enough for a car to stop on it. And now he was on the way to some village. By the looks of the paths they were taking, it was deep inside this beautiful and terrifying jungle.

  They finally rounded a bend, splashed through a small creek that drenched him, and came to a dusty halt in front of wooden buildings that didn’t look like they could withstand a slight breeze.

  If Jason hadn’t been so ready to ditch the Jeep, he might’ve liked to stay in it. Instead, he found his boot touching the earth of this foreign place. He glanced around, noticing an ominous mountain looming in the distance. Something told him it was that mountain. Many rose from the earth, but that one seemed to call his name. Then he noticed a large wooden sign: “Stevens Biblioteca.” Jason shook his head. “Even down here, you put your name on everything.” Red’s ghost knew how to haunt a guy.

  The locals started gathering, some looking with pure curiosity, others smiling and nodding like they’d known him for years. Men immediately began unloading the crates of books in the back of the Jeep, and before he knew it, someone had taken his hand. A small woman with a large smile gazed at him wide eyed, as if she’d seen some sort of astronomical phenomenon. “Welcome. Oh, welcome!” she said in a thick accent. “Jason Stevens.” She said his name with more affection than anyone he’d ever met, including his family. And without hesitation she pulled him into a tight hug. “Oh!” she gasped and studied him with her hand on her heart. “So good to meet you. I am Bella.”

  “Hi.” Jason managed.

  Her face lit with excitement. “May I be the first to show you inside the library your grandfather built?”

  A reluctance made him pause, but it didn’t look like Bella would take no for an answer. “Yeah. Sure.”

  “Good, good.” She pulled him forward, opened the door, and gestured for him to enter. She trailed him in, right on his heels, her smile eagerly anticipating his reaction. Jason wanted to be polite, but this wasn’t what he’d expected. The floor was covered in dirt, the shelves nearly empty. The books that were there looked several decades old.

  “Where are all the books?”

  Bella glanced around inquisitively. “Ah, you joke.”

  Jason raised an eyebrow. He was beginning to think the joke was on him.

  “With the people. Is it not like that in the great libraries in los Estados Unidos?”

  Jason didn’t answer. It might be a trick question. Bella hovered near him as she gestured toward the shelves. “Villagers wait for books. You bring them new books, and they are waiting for you to pick up old books. Exchange. Library. Sí?”

  Sí. He ran his finger along an empty shelf. Dust clung to the air and shimmered in the sunlight let in from a crack in the wooden roof. He picked up a thick book, and the binding nearly ripped off as he held it. “So basically I’m in a third-world country at a backwoods library with no books, and the books that are here I can’t even read.” He snapped the book shut. “Great.”

  Bella looked undaunted, but Jason suspected nothing was lost in translation. With a knowing look, she made her way over to an old desk, pulled out a drawer, and slipped her hand inside. Turning, she put an envelope up to her chest, clutching it as her warm eyes locked with his. “This I found when I was cleaning his desk . . . once I heard of Red’s passing.” She handed it to him.

  The envelope was addressed to his grandfather in the writing of a ten-year-old boy. Jason’s handwriting. “Thought maybe you would like to keep?” The sadness of Bella’s tone faded, and the twinkle returned to her eyes. “When you sent this to him, he proudly showed it to all of us.”

  He remembered everything about the day he’d written this.

  “Then the tragedy. Broke his heart.”

  Jason folded the envelope and stuck it in his back pocket. “Listen,” he said in carefully pronounced English. “I’m tired. Tired?”

  “Sí, sí.” She guided him out the door. “You need rest, no?”

  “Sí. Yes.”

  “We have kept the nicest bed
for you.”

  As if the Jeep ride hadn’t tortured his body enough, the bed was now doing a fine job of keeping him awake. He just wanted to sleep a little, but sleeping on plywood wasn’t what he’d had in mind. There was a pillow, but it smelled musty. Still, it was a place to lay his head and do what he’d been doing a lot of lately. Thinking. What he wouldn’t give for a stupid, mind-numbing video game, pool game, card game. Anything but this.

  He closed his eyes, trying to remember what his old life had been like. How amazing that one man’s journey off the earth could cause so much trouble for someone still on it. He’d been perfectly content. Then, seemingly overnight, his life was disrupted in a way he never would’ve been able to fathom, a barely flickering flame fighting a fierce wind.

  He tried to keep his eyes closed, tried to force out all the memories that were beating on the doors of his mind. But he couldn’t. Whether his eyes were open or closed, all he could see was himself, ten years old, sitting at his desk in his room, where he’d begun spending more and more time.

  Sighing, he opened the letter. He first studied the bubbly handwriting, remembering when he’d decided to make it slant more like his father’s handwriting, hoping it seemed more mature.

  Dear Grandpa,

  How’s Ecuador? I miss you and Dad so much.

  Tears rushed to his eyes, and he squeezed them shut. It was like he was ten again, his heart an open wound. He’d driven his mother and every other relative crazy asking when his father would be back. He remembered putting so much thought into the letter, carefully constructing it so his grandfather would know how serious he was.

  You know my birthday is coming up, and I was thinking, instead of giving me gifts this year, could you take me on one of your trips?

  I promise I won’t cause any trouble.

  Jason smiled a little. That came from the I-can’t-take-you-anywhere line his mother was always throwing at him. He did cause her a lot of trouble, but then again, she did the same for him.

  I just want to see you and dad again soon. Write back please.

  Love, Jason

  Jason lowered the letter, and as he did, the mountain came into full view from the small window, swallowing up its space. Everywhere he looked, there it was, and Jason couldn’t take his eyes off it.

  He carefully folded the letter and stuffed it into his bag. Turning onto his back, he stared up at the wooden ceiling. It had been years since he’d allowed himself to think of his dad. Or his grandfather.

  His eyes, heavy as they closed, saw his grandfather walking into his home, clutching a box. Jason had skipped three stairs at a time to greet him. But his grandfather hadn’t hugged him or even smiled.

  Instead, he’d knelt down right there in front of the door, set the box down, and squeezed both of Jason’s forearms. He stared at the floor.

  “Grandpa?” Jason had asked. “What’s wrong?”

  He could hear his mother crying in another room, and later he found out that she couldn’t bear to tell him, so she’d made Red come over and do it.

  He never actually said it. But he cried and apologized and cried some more, then told Jason he needed to be strong. Even at ten, Jason wondered how he could be strong when his own grandfather was crying at his feet. He knew it was a plane crash, but that was all he was told. It was a few months later at a family dinner when Jason had found his grandfather in his study alone, staring out a dark window.

  “Grandpa?”

  He’d turned around. Before the crash, he would’ve opened his arms and invited Jason over. But with every day that went by, it seemed his grandfather changed more and more.

  “What is it?”

  “I want to know about Dad.”

  His grandfather’s eyes barely registered he’d been spoken to. “Grandpa?”

  “There’s nothing to say.”

  Jason stepped forward toward a man who used to make him feel at ease. He clasped his shaking hands behind his back. It had taken him twenty minutes to get up the courage to talk to him. “I want to know what happened.”

  “You know what happened. Why do you want to know more? What good thing could come of it?”

  “Why won’t you tell me?” Jason’s voice quivered.

  He watched his grandfather stare at the ground, his eyes distant and sad, his lips pressed together in a hard, straight line. “You need to leave this alone.”

  “You’re not telling me everything!” Jason’s fists were now at his side, balled up, while his face turned hot.

  “You listen to me,” his grandfather said, his tone low but curt in just the right way to make Jason fear everything about him. “Your father was a good man. He was trying to get to villagers. Sometimes bad things happen. Okay?” His grandfather’s voice choked in barely audible emotion. “There is nothing more to say.”

  But Jason had a lot more to say. At ten, though, he knew it could be summed up in three words. “I hate you.”

  And from that day on, that man had never been “Grandpa” again. He became “Red.”

  chapter 13

  jason had awoken early. The sun, barely peeking over the tops of the trees, kept watch over the quiet village. He rose and walked the short path to the library. He was beginning to appreciate the pleasantness of this time of morning. He spent the first part of the morning repairing the damaged books. He glued the spines back on, making sure the pages were level and the books still opened with ease. Then he took a good hour and a half reacquainting himself with the Dewey Decimal System. He remembered his school librarian lecturing on the importance of the stupid thing. Laughing to himself, he recalled his exact words to her: “Once I leave school, I’ll never set foot in a library again.”

  “Is that so?” she asked with measured patience. “Won’t you read books?”

  He smirked at her. “Of course. But I’ll buy them.”

  Jason looked down at the heavy book in his hand, trying to remember the last time he’d actually picked up a book to read. After his father had died, he’d become a voracious reader, immersing himself in worlds where things turned out okay in the end. But after he left college, books became a thing of the past.

  His finger rubbed the spine of the book he was holding. Maybe he was still waiting for his happy ending.

  Shaking off the memories that continued to swarm him like gnats, he sat down at the simple wooden desk where he’d been working. The book he held had been damaged by what looked like sun and water. The pages were warped and the spine bent nearly in half. His hands moved over all of it. The smell was sour, and mold dotted the paper.

  This is me.

  It’s what he felt like, anyway—an old, used book, insignificant with all its damage.

  Behind him, Jason heard someone walk in. People had been coming and going all day.

  “Un momento, por favor,” Jason said.

  “You look just like your father.”

  Jason froze, lifting his eyes, gaining the nerve to turn around. He set the book down carefully and turned to find a man leaning against one of the bookcases. He wore a dark felt hat and a blue shirt jacket. His expression gave nothing away.

  “I was here the night he died.”

  “It happened up on that mountain, didn’t it?” The man simply stood there. “Take me there?”

  “You cannot go. It is now the province of the drug lords.”

  Jason stood, his words impulsive. “You don’t understand. I’ll pay you.” He paused. “Well, someday.”

  “I understand you perfectly,” the man said calmly. “But, señor, I only have one life.”

  “You’re just bargaining now, aren’t you?”

  “Señor Stevens, you do not want to pay the price it would take.” The man’s words held a dire warning. “No one who goes there returns.”

  Suddenly a noise erupted outside, jolting Jason. Drums thumped and wooden instruments whistled festive melodies. A girl appeared in the doorway.

  “Is time!” she said excitedly. “Venga!”

&nbs
p; Jason was ushered outside, pulled by his arms into a crowd of revelry. He glanced back, trying to find the stranger, but he’d vanished.

  Absorbing the emotion of it all, Jason allowed himself to be pulled into a tent, where everyone sat in a large circle. Their eager smiles urged him in. Bella gestured grandly. “Our guest of honor! Mr. Jason Stevens!”

  The noise grew louder as they greeted him with claps and shouts and all forms of affection. Jason felt a little silly, but then again, he couldn’t remember the last time anyone had made him feel this appreciated. He still wasn’t sure what he was being appreciated for, but it was in his nature to always enjoy a party.

  Bella put a headdress of brightly colored feathers on his head, then took his hand and led him to what Jason could only guess was a privileged spot for the feast. “Sit, sit,” she said enthusiastically as the tribal music continued to beat all around him.

  “Um . . . okay . . .” Jason had just sat down when women began bringing food to him. Hardly a thing on the plate was recognizable, and although he hated caviar, he thought he’d rather eat bucket loads of it rather than whatever it was he was getting ready to consume—which, oddly, looked as though it might’ve been killed just a few minutes ago.

  “Uh . . .” Jason began. “I’m afraid to ask . . .”

  “Oh, you will love it!” Bella assured him. “It’s so rare that we catch one!”

  “Oh . . .”

  Suddenly, to Jason’s surprise, the music stopped, and for a moment he thought it was because he wasn’t gobbling up the contents on his plate. Then Bella leaned over and told him, “The chief is going to talk.”

  “Estamos aquí para celebrar los que mantienen viva la biblioteca com-menorativa de Señor Jay Stevens,” the chief said, smiling.

  As the crowd cheered, Bella turned to Jason and explained, “He says we are here to celebrate you and those who keep the Jay Stevens Library alive.”