He hadn’t finished his first cup when a noise outside his door startled him. He sat up and waited for a knock, but one never came. Odd. It was unusual for him to be summoned at this time of night, and no one stopped by without an invitation. They were respectful of his privacy, apologetic even when there was an emergency.
Maybe it had been the wind. He sat back again and listened to the rain. Tonight it tapped soft and gentle on the tin roof. He listened, and he realized there was no wind.
Curiosity made him set his mug aside. He stood, but stopped suddenly, feeling a bit light-headed. Maybe it was the heat. He steadied himself, then approached the door slowly, quietly, still listening if anyone was on the other side. It was silly to be so paranoid. No, not paranoid—simply cautious. Something else he had learned long ago out of necessity.
He unlocked the door and swung it open with such force he startled the small boy and almost knocked him to the ground.
“Arturo?” he said, and he reached out to steady the boy.
He recognized him as one of his faithful altar boys. He was smaller than others his age, thin and frail with sad dark eyes and always so anxious to please. He looked even more vulnerable, standing in the rain holding out the brown cardboard box.
“What are you doing here?” Then noticing Arturo’s confused look, he repeated, “¿Arturo, qué hace usted aquí?”
“Sí, para usted, Padre.” Arturo presented the package with outstretched arms, smiling and obviously proud to have been entrusted with this mission.
“A package for me? But who? ¿Quién lo mandó?” he asked, taking the package from the boy and immediately noticing how light it felt.
“No sé. Un viejo…old man,” he added.
Father Keller squinted in the dark to see down the worn path to the church. There was no one. Whoever had given Arturo the package was gone now.
“Gracias, Arturo,” Father Keller said, patting him on the head, thinking the boy had so little in his life he was glad to make him smile. Arturo reminded him of himself as a boy, wanting and needing someone to notice them and care about them. “Hasta domingo,” he told him with brief stroke of the boy’s cheek.
“Sí, Padre.”
The boy was still smiling when he ran off down the path, quickly disappearing into the black mist.
He picked up the box, finding himself a bit anxious. Perhaps it was another special package from his Internet friend in the States. More teas and cookies. Arturo said it had been an old man who had given him the package, but it could have been a substitute postman, someone Arturo didn’t know. To young boys, anyone over thirty was old. But there was no mailing label this time. No postage stamp—nothing at all.
He brought it in, noting again that it was light—too light to cause much harm. Yet he set it on his small wooden table and began to examine it from all sides. There were no markings anywhere on the box. It didn’t even look as if a label had perhaps been removed. Sometimes packages were a bit battered by the time they reached him. After all, this was the rain forest.
Finally he gave in and reached for the fillet knife. He sliced through the packing tape and hesitated before slowly pushing back the flaps. He was still pulling out tissue paper when he saw it. And he snatched back his hand as if he had been burned.
What kind of a joke was this? It had to be a joke. Who would know? And how had they found him?
His hands were already shaking when he took the plastic Richard Nixon Halloween mask out of the box.
COMING NEXT MONTH
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