Toward the Light

by Bonnar Spring

  She ran to Evan, but he elbowed her away, keeping the gun pointed at Richard.

  “No, you can’t!” Luz cried, tugging at Evan. “It’s not about him—it’s about you, Evan. Can’t you see what’s happened to Richard? I saw it in Martin, too. Living with the aftermath of cold-blooded murder ruined their lives. You can’t shoot him, Evan. Having that on your conscience will destroy you, like it destroyed them.”

  Evan swung around; his face radiated hatred.

  “That’s why I didn’t shoot him in the helicopter,” said Luz.

  Evan shook his head.

  Luz tried again. “Let him go. Martin Benavides is on the lookout for him. So are Toño’s people. Or the jungle will get him. He’ll kill himself one way or the other. Don’t you be the one to fire the shot.”

  For what seemed like a long time, the only sound was the crackle of the fire fanned by faintly stirring leaves. Evan didn’t move. Behind him, rivulets of burning grass crept closer.

  Richard kept a half-smile on his face. Behind the smile, his jaw worked restlessly as though he was working out whether to continue his deceit or beg for mercy. Or perhaps try to goad Evan into making a mistake.

  Evan was staring at betrayal on a scale he’d never envisioned—with a gun in his hand and too little time to reconcile the uncle he knew with this cruel doppelganger. Luz stared at Richard, too, but she was thinking about how Martin justified accepting drug money to fund his struggle until he grasped the world Cesar would inherit from him. His actions could never be undone, any more than Richard’s could. Their words, their lies, could not be unsaid. The dead would not live.

  Rather than making amends, however, Richard had drawn Evan, his future, into his unscrupulous dealings. He’d exploited Evan. Then he wrapped him in a cocoon of explosives and threatened him. She didn’t know if Evan would be strong enough to resist the allure of retribution. If their situations were reversed—if, say, she’d wrestled Martin’s machete from him the night he betrayed her father—she might very well have plunged it into him.

  Wind sighed high overhead. Sparks danced in Luz’s peripheral vision.

  Finally, Evan nodded. “Find your own way,” he said. “Don’t follow us.”

  Gracias a Dios. Luz exhaled gently, so as not to break the spell.

  Richard looked from the barrel of the gun to his nephew’s grim face. Back to the gun, which didn’t waver. “Goodbye, Evan,” he said. “Goodbye, Luz.”

  They remained silent. After a pause, Richard turned and walked away. He skirted the portion of the jungle floor still burning. He slowed and appeared to consider the lay of the land. Then he strode into the darkness and disappeared without looking back.

  The fire in the helicopter hadn’t spread far outside the radius of the initial explosion. It died to snapping embers in the damp undergrowth. The light flickered, dimmed.

  Evan lowered the gun. “Thanks,” he said.

  Luz wrapped her arms around his waist and buried her head in his chest. She thought he was crying, as she was.

  “I’ll feel safer when we get away from here,” he said after a while. “I saw some clearings when we were coming down, so there must be a settlement nearby. Plus, getting away from the crash makes it less likely we’ll run into men who’ll shoot first and ask questions later.”

  Luz took Evan’s hand and, as one, they turned in the opposite direction from Richard. The light from the burning helicopter faded to a ghostly glow. They kept it behind them until it became too faint to register. No light from stars or moon penetrated the forest canopy. Although it would have been easier to walk single-file, Evan kept hold of Luz’s hand. She didn’t feel like talking. For now, that connection was enough.

  They stumbled over rotting logs, fell into a shallow pool. Vines attacked their faces, legs. Twice, they heard distant gunshots. The adrenalin wore off, but they staggered on. Then, after countless steps through immeasurable time, one minute they were in the dense thicket, the next they stood at the edge of a narrow mountain track.

  “Stars,” Luz whispered, looking up. And after eons of trudging blindly, she could see Evan, not just feel his warmth beside her.

  “Look over there,” said Evan. He pointed downhill, where a faint glow flickered above the treetops.

  Luz caught the barest hint of a tinny melody and a whiff of charcoal. “A town,” Luz breathed. “People.”

  Joining hands once more, they stepped onto the path and walked side by side toward the light.

  The waterfall at last. Evan’s hand in hers. And this time it wasn’t a dream. Slick rock made the footing treacherous, but Evan’s grip was strong as he steadied her. Luz had forgotten the secret beauty of this glade in the forest. Blazing sun overhead; icy water below. In between, warm breeze, flowers, birdsong, space to heal—if not forget.

  “Are you ready to go?” Evan asked. Only that simple question; he’d posed it several times. Never pressing harder. Not “Are you ready now?” or “Are you finally ready?”

  A week had passed since the night they stumbled through the jungle and found the small town at the end of a dirt path. The inhabitants had seen the firefight overhead, heard the helicopter crash, the gunfire. At first, they were suspicious, but they allowed Luz to use the telephone in the mayor’s office.

  “You are safe?” Martin had asked.

  “For now.”

  “I’ll send a car. Cesar is miserable; he misses you.”

  “No.” That was too shrill. “No,” Luz repeated, as evenly as she could. “I need to stay here for a while.”

  Perhaps he heard her panicked emptiness. Certainly he, too, was healing from the raw pain of love betrayed. “What can I do?”

  “My mother died.” And Luz explained about the jar on her mantel.

  “It will take a few days to arrange it. Let me speak to the mayor.”

  Here in the remote mountains, the villagers may have been supporters of the regime in power. Possibly, they were rebel sympathizers who feared Martin’s security service. Most likely, they were an uneasy mix of both, but with Martin Benavides vouching for her, all doors opened.

  The mayor’s cousin offered them the use of an empty cottage he owned on the outskirts of town. Luz slept around the clock, without dreams, suspended in time, and woke to Noche Buena, Christmas Eve.

  The mayor came at dusk and escorted them to the church. Luz and Evan sat in the front row with local dignitaries while the village children performed the familiar tale of the infant born to save the world. After the priest ended the Mass by exhorting them all to go in peace, there was a Christmas feast at one of the fancier houses in the village—cinder block with a tin roof and a gate guarded by ten-inch-tall rampant lions.

  The adults sat around a heavy oak table while children milled around on a floor strewn with pine needles. But the traditional Christmas tamales in this region were stuffed with pork and a red sauce, instead of the simpler turkey and potato filling Luz remembered. And the fruit ponche was too sweet—even for Luz.

  A full moon overhead bathed the ground in white light that looked like snow—snow with palm trees, their swaying fronds silhouetted against the starry sky. The radio played Bing Crosby and the Harry Simeone Chorale. The unreality of the preceding days caught up to her: the food, so close, but not quite right; the music that, after decades in New Hampshire, evoked ice-skating and hot cider. Luz tugged on Evan’s arm and motioned to the door.

  The firecrackers, when they began at midnight, startled Luz out of another sound sleep.

  Luz spent the next days wandering the village and the nights sleeping beside Evan. They cooked simple meals and ate them at the tiny table by the front window with a view of cornfields. While Evan sketched charcoal portraits of the local children, Luz tried to imagine her path forward.

  Answers came slowly.

  Martin checked in daily. True to his word, he turned over the records Luz had stolen—in fact, news of his providing incriminating information leaked even before Toño’s contacts were able to
publish the material. Bobby had been arraigned on drug trafficking charges. Martin swore he would not use his influence to sway the outcome.

  Luz correctly guessed the allegiance of the village schoolteacher and, through him, sent Toño a message conveying Martin’s offer of a truce.

  A black SUV arrived, trailing plumes of dust, Joaquín bringing her mother’s ashes. The entire population of the village came out to stare. The mayor made a speech about the future.

  Joaquín also brought news that Richard’s body had been found, not far from the site of the helicopter crash. When he began describing the wounds to Richard’s body, Luz screamed at him to stop and bolted for the forest. Evan found her, hours later, sitting on a mossy log.

  “I was thinking about the time Richard brought lobsters for Christmas dinner,” Luz said when Evan sat beside her. “My mother set the bag on the kitchen counter—not knowing they were alive—and we went off into the living room. The next thing we know, these gigantic orange and black bugs are scuttling across the floor. My mother’s swatting them with the broom, and the lobsters are banging into the furniture and each other like bumper cars, and I’m standing on the sofa screaming …”

  They told stories from simpler days until the light failed.

  Before Joaquín returned to the city, Luz gave him the reply she’d received from Toño, a guarded, qualified yes. So the two men—or their lieutenants—might sit down one day and put an end to the bloodshed.

  Her part was finished.

  One task remained.

  Instead of enlisting Toño’s help, she hired a boy from the village to lead them into the mountains to the waterfall. The makeshift cemetery was overgrown with vines. On a gentle slope in the shade of a towering cedar, Luz found where her father lay, his name on the makeshift wooden cross faded to ghostly squiggles. Evan and Luz spent hours digging into the warm earth together to clear a space next to the cross.

  Luz placed the urn with her mother’s ashes deep in the dark, rich soil. One handful at a time, she sprinkled dirt into the hole. “You’re home now, Mama.” She smoothed the soil, patted it as she might caress a sleeping child. “Sleep well.”

  Luz stood and walked to the cool running water, knelt to wash her hands. Evan joined her. They slipped off their shoes and waded into the stream. Luz thought about Evan’s question as her gaze wandered from the waterfall, to the valley, to the surrounding mountain peaks, back to the profusion of bright flowers in the glade where her parents lay in peace, together once more. To Evan at her side.

  “I’m ready,” she said to Evan. “Let’s go home.”