by K. T. Tomb
Manny could have cared less about the chest now, except that he’d like to use it to smash the Governor’s head with it. Quincy was smart though and was keeping his distance so Manny could not use it as a projectile.
“Tungsten was a fairly new thing when this was forged, so it must have cost Captain Marlowe quite a few of his doubloons to get hold of it, unless of course, he took it from someone else as pirates were wont to do. It puzzled me how anything could have survived here after the last eruption, so imagine my surprise when I found this. He was clearly a clever man, Captain Marlowe, as he must have known that Tungsten steel would survive the heat of the volcano’s lava. You saw our streetlamps in town, and the cores of some buildings no doubt. Tungsten, all of it.”
Manny nodded.
“Thanks for the science lesson, but you couldn’t find another person on earth who cares less than me. I’m here to stop you. I came here looking for this treasure, sure, but that’s not why I was sent here. You might get to keep the gold or whatever is in this box for now, but your time is coming to an end, Quincy. You know why? Because you lack compassion. I know, because I might have turned out like you one day, and my grandfather saw that. I have a chance, but you don’t. You’ll never change and, one day soon, it’ll catch up with you.”
Manny was being ushered back out towards the path over the lava.
“Touching, very touching,” Quincy said, and Manny could see him out of the corner of his eye dabbing his forehead with a pocket handkerchief. “That’s the folly of youth, my dear boy; too many emotions. Only capital matters; well, capital and the power to wield it. I have that power, and you never will, because you are weak. Now, be so kind as to move onto the walkway, and keep the chest held high so I can see it.”
Manny moved slowly over the terrible liquid rock once again, hoisting Marlowe’s treasure high over his head. He knew he was dead if he allowed Quincy to reach the other side. There wasn’t much he could do with a gun at his back, and hands in the air, on a narrow path over lava. Kang’s words were ringing in his mind again.
“Don’t fire your weapon in there. Whatever you do, do not shoot! “
What had he known that Manny did not? Don’t fire…Was it his gun that wouldn’t work, had it been damaged and he missed it? Or was it all guns? Manny reached half-way, and turned around, lowering the chest. He had to yell to be heard over the roar of the rising lava.
“I’m not taking another step, Quincy. You might kill me, but I’ll be damned if you use this chest to make anyone else’s life miserable while you get rich.”
Quincy spat in his face, the liquid was near boiling point.
“You’re insane, kid! I’ve got the gun. Be a good boy, and move…or die here.”
Manny looked him in the eye and threw the chest into the lava below. It landed on the surface of the viscous molten rock, and true enough the tungsten did not melt, but instead it slowly sank, swallowed by the earth itself.
“NO!” screamed Quincy, who stepped closer to Manny, and at point-blank range, pulled the trigger.
Manny understood now. Nothing happened. Kang had been right on the money. The temperatures in the volcano chamber were so high that the shotgun shells had melted in their magazine. The gun itself was tempered steel, like Captain Marlowe’s chest, so it would work fine, but the ammunition was something else. Quincy tried to fire again. Manny smiled at the dead man’s click.
“You’re not as smart as you thought you were, Quincy,” he shouted over the din, “Kang outsmarted you. He figured out why the guns wouldn’t work. But this will.”
Later, Manny would wish that he could have been more skilled in attacking Quincy; more like Kang had been in the prison fight. It didn’t matter, his simple right punch connected with the bridge of the governor’s nose, staggering him. The left hook slammed him in the ear, and Quincy was finally finished with a thunderous uppercut that sent him tumbling, head over heels off the narrow stone walkway and into the lava, screams rising as he went from pain to what must have been impossible agony.
Manny did not watch him die; for all his evil, he could not watch Quincy die in such a horrible way. He turned and sprinted away. The lava was rising fast, and he had no time to ensure that his footing was as careful as it had been on his first trip across.
Upon reaching the entrance of the volcano, he found Kang, still unconscious. Lava rose and lurched like a drunken man, splashing where Manny’s feet had been moments before. He managed to lift Kang onto his shoulders in a fireman’s carry, then he ran as fast as he could; feeling the heat on his back like a whip.
At the lip of the cave, he tasted cleaner air for the first time in what felt like an eternity, and with no regard for what happened next, he launched both of them into the air, over the sheer drop of the mountainside. They slid over rocks already covered with a thick layer of ash, bouncing, tumbling, and Manny felt at least one rib break as the wind was knocked out of him. Kang spun away from him, still senseless as they slid to the bottom of the slope and into the forest edge, stopping only when they crashed into young trees and bushes. For the second time that morning, Manny blacked out.
Chapter Fourteen
An hour later, Manny and Kang were awake again and headed north.
Kang was still suffering from the pellets embedded in him, but if anything his shoulder was looking a lot better when Manny had patched it up with leaves and vines. Fortunately for both of them, Kang had been brought round by his headlong slide into the forest, and was able to crawl to Manny and wake him up.
From where they stood, perhaps two miles north of the Soufriere Hills Volcano, they were nearly deafened by the explosion of the eruption when it blew. Chunks of ejected rock flew far over their heads, but the pyroclastic flow only seemed to be running down the east and south sides of the terrible mountain, both directions leading the lava straight into the sea.
Filthy, exhausted, and bleeding, they had to kick their way through some dense jungle before eventually finding a road, one that was well worn, presumably by the vehicles carrying tourists to the volcano observatory. With any luck, Kang reasoned, a vehicle might come this way to ensure the volcano was not a threat to the rest of the island.
Manny shared the tale of the events in the Volcano, and the death of Quincy. For the first time, Kang actually looked impressed.
“So you threw away the treasure, without knowing what it was? It could have been a fortune.”
“Well,” Manny replied, “I figured once we reached your side of the bridge over the lava he would have tried to shoot me, or club me to death with his gun if that failed. I couldn’t let him get away with it, you know? After all he put us through…I mean, I did get myself arrested, so I probably could have avoided going through all of this. I made the choice, though I was doing it for myself. I threw the treasure away because I realized that it was never the treasure I was supposed to find. Padraig wanted me to learn a lesson. He could have just told me I was an ass when he was still alive. Now I’ve learned way more than I think he ever intended me to, and I can’t even go and talk to him about it.”
Kang had a thoughtful look on his face.
“For what it is worth, I think you made the right choice. Without Quincy, his operation here will collapse. It’s only one part of the problem, but it will be a big help in shutting down the illegal arms trade in my country. For that, you have my thanks. You know, I forget who has saved who’s life more now, I think it’s still with you, so thanks for my life, as well.”
Kang bowed deeply despite the pain. Manny grinned broadly.
“I guess we can be friends after all, Mr. Kang. What will you do now?”
“First, we find a doctor to remove these shotgun pellets out of my rear end and this shoulder patched up. Then I will go home and explain everything that has happened to my leaders. How about you? What happens next for you?”
Manny thought for a minute as they walked.
“I guess I’ll go back to New York, tell my family what I’ve be
en doing out here, and why I came. They’ll probably offer me money, but I don’t think I want it anymore. My grandpa earned his, by being smarter than people around him, and doing what he thought was right at the time. I guess that’s what he was trying to teach me too, you know? How to do what feels right, instead of doing what will benefit me the most. There’s more to life than pirate treasure, illegal drugs, weapons dealing and volcanoes, after all.”
The two burst out laughing at Manny’s words.
It felt good to laugh. It felt great to be alive, walking away from an erupting volcano, with his new friend, the Chinese spy with no name. Manny felt good, because of everything that had happened. He hoped that if there was an afterlife, his grandfather knew what he had done here on Montserrat, and was proud of him.
Epilogue
Manny stood by the ancient mahogany desk and looked out the window.
The expansive lawn that stretched down to the now deserted duck pond was covered in a blanket of spotless, white snow. He half smiled to himself and scoffed. The one thing about Montserrat that he had thought he would miss was the balmy weather, but Manny found he couldn’t even fathom missing that. It had been a long week on the volcanic island, he had been to hell and back—he and Kang both—but the lessons he had brought back with him were priceless…the gold and gems were too, of course.
Yes, they had found the chest.
In fact, the most profound epiphany he’d had on that fiery mountain had been when they discovered it lying at the bottom of a huge lava flow that had made its way down to the road after the main eruption.
The two men had been surprised by the glint of metal in the sunlight as they sat on the side of the road resting and hoping that a vehicle of tourists or the local reservation guards would come along and give them a ride into Salem.
“What’s that?” Kang had asked, squinting his eyes against the glare.
He was pointing to the edge of a river of lava that had snaked down the slope closest to them. Manny looked up and shaded his eyes with his hand. He distinctly saw something catching the rays and shimmering in the light.
“I don’t know,” he replied. “It could be one of the guns.”
“I think you should go see what it is,” Kang advised in a weak voice.
Manny wasn’t keen on trudging back up the hillside in the heat of the morning. It was only about nine o’ clock but it felt like they were sitting in the middle of the Sahara Desert. Still, he stood up and started walking.
It was cooler under the shade of the trees in the little forest at the foot of the hills and he made a mental note to break some branches to shade themselves with on the roadside. They had decided not to walk all the way into town. Someone had to come along sooner or later; after all, there was only one road on this island! Kang had lost too much blood and it was now confirmed that Manny had a broken rib.
Near the tree line, he came across one of the backpacks Quincy’s men had carried with them during their hike through the tunnels; it was barely damaged. He rummaged through it and couldn’t believe his luck! There were two huge bottles of water, a light blanket, some packages of M.R.E.’s and a first aid kit. In another pocket, he found an army survival knife which he put in his pocket.
Ha!
He hung the backpack in a nearby tree and continued toward the shiny object on the ground, all the while asking himself what the point was to this.
He soon found out, because as Manny approached the object a wave of disbelief washed over him. Was he hallucinating? A mirage; maybe he had finally lost his mind.
In front of him, lying inconspicuously in a still soft flow of volcanic ooze, was the same box of tungsten steel that Quincy had forced him to carry over the precarious land bridge in the cave. At the thought of Quincy, Manny looked around nervously, hoping he wouldn’t see any of the man’s remains in the lava as well.
Of course, there weren’t any.
Gingerly, he walked towards the box and stooped beside it. He licked a finger and touched the lock to test how hot it was. It was fairly cool. Instantly, Manny was nervous. He looked around quickly, checking his surroundings for any possible attackers. Satisfied that he was alone, he snatched up the chest and ran back to the safety of the tree line.
***
Looking back at the events of that day, he still couldn’t believe how he had reacted. It was just more confirmation that the person who came out of that cave wasn’t the same as the one who had been arrested for antagonizing tourists in his mindless search for pirate’s treasure.
Manny shook his head and smiled again as he continued to look at the peacefully falling snow outside the window.
***
The backpack had been an army issued one with a frame that supported its weight against the wearer’s back. Manny zipped open the main compartment and adjusted all the buckles and straps, widening the bag to its full capacity. The box barely fit in it but he managed to force it in and zip it closed. He hoisted it onto his shoulders trying to ignore the intense pain in his chest as he stood up under the bag’s weight. The trek back to the road was easier and at the edge of the woods Manny took the knife from his pocket and deftly cut a long branch from a tree to use as a makeshift umbrella for his friend.
“What was it?” Kang asked him feebly as Manny laid him on the blanket and propped the tree limb up to shelter him from the sun.
“It was the chest from the cave,” Manny answered softly, but saying nothing more. He handed Kang one of the bottles of water.
“What!?” Kang exclaimed, “Did you open it? What’s inside?”
“I didn’t look,” Manny replied as he sat down beside him and started to tear pieces of bandage from a roll he found in the first aid kit. “It’s not important what’s in it, Kang. I already have everything I came here for.”
“That is profound, Grasshopper,” Kang joked, “but you came here for money; everything else you got is extra.”
“I know, but the money isn’t as important as the things I’ve learned. I realize that now.”
“Fair enough, Manny, but have you seen the wisdom in this event as yet?”
“What do you mean?” Manny asked as he dabbed his friend’s wounds with hydrogen peroxide.
“What are the odds of the box would being pushed out of the volcano, and even if it did, that it would end up practically at your feet?”
“Slim.”
“Indeed! Your final lesson here, my friend, is that of patience and providence. It is always when we stop searching for what we think we want that everything we truly need appears in our lives. When we have accepted the things that we need, then the things that we want come within our grasp and we are free to take them.”
***
Manny smiled again and turned from the window just as the study door swung open. Mansfield stepped into the room and held the door open.
“Mr. J. William Wright, esquire to see you, Mr. McMillan,” he announced in his haughtiest voice.
“Thank you, Mansfield. Could you send in coffee, please?”
“Certainly, Sir.”
Manny smiled to himself again.
A few weeks ago, the ever reserved Mansfield would have slashed his own wrists before he’d ever address him as Mr. McMillan. Such was the level of disdain everyone had held for him, that even the staff wouldn’t speak to him respectfully. All that had changed within days of his return to New York and now the family lawyer had arrived to let him know exactly how much more things were going to be changing around McMillan Manor.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Wright,” Manny said cordially. “Please sit down.”
“Thank you, Manny,” the old man replied, “I must say, I was very surprised when you called to tell me about your trip. It seems you had a coming of age over there in Montserrat. I’m sad that Padraig didn’t live to see it.”
“So am I, Mr. Wright.”
“Jeffrey, please. Call me Jeffrey; everyone else does.”
“Jeffrey,” Manny repeated, touching the metal
box that was in front of him on the desk.
He walked around and took a seat in his grandfather’s office chair pulling himself up to the desk.
“I still don’t know why you insisted on coming to see me after I told you what happened though, Jeffrey. I really only called you so you could be aware of the situation in case any lawsuits came against me or ‘at the very least’ when the hospital bills and insurance claims started to roll in. There are just two things, really. I need to know what the costs are since I intend to pay all those bills myself and also if anything comes in regarding Mr. Kang, I’d like to pay for those as well, please.”
“Oh dear, you really have changed, Manny. I, for one, am very impressed by the new you. It doesn’t seem to be an act at all; you’re a completely new person.”
“Who thought I was acting?”
The lawyer paused and looked down at the ground instead of answering. That pretty much answered the question for Manny; his entire family thought his ‘new leaf’ was a sham but he couldn’t find the strength to care.
“Anyway,” Jeffrey continued, “There’s the matter of your grandfather’s will that I’d like to discuss with you.”
“The will? We already went through that, didn’t we? It’s how I ended up on that blasted island in the first place.”
“You seem to have forgotten about the caveat, Manny, and that shows me even more how much you’ve changed. That’s an entirely fantastic thing, by the way, because it was really only me who you needed to convince in order for it to be put into action. I have to say I am certainly convinced that you have become the man your grandfather hoped you would, if not more so.”