FORGOTTEN: A Novel

by Don Prichard

  “As you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to Me.” The old man bowed. “Then we are one. We go together.”

  The warmth that had pricked Jake’s heart earlier spread throughout his chest. This time, the men filing out of the room met him eye to eye, sometimes adding a nod, a grunt of acknowledgment, a touch on his arm. Hard to believe they were criminals. Was there another reason they’d been sent to this dead-end prison?

  He followed the old man to join the crowd in the maze. The overhead lights still glowed, crushing shadows beneath the men’s feet. “You know my name,” Jake said. “I don’t know yours.”

  “I am called Puno, head. That is good enough.” Puno’s white hair wafted like a cloud above his shoulders. It reminded Jake of Betty’s fluff of white hair.

  Sadness pierced him like a knife. She’d said she would follow him to the Philippines. He hoped he got to see her one last time before he died, if that was his fate. He wanted to tell her it was okay he’d ended up here, that God was good, that He had a purpose in everything.

  He cleared the lump from his throat. “How will this play out? The guards won’t stop the groups from fighting each other?”

  “There will be no riot. Only champions facing off.”

  Champions? Jake stifled a guffaw. Was he going to fight someone half his size? “Then what happens?”

  “Death follows defeat. Victor controls prison.”

  “I won’t kill.”

  “You have killed once; you may kill again.”

  Jake stopped in his tracks. There were no secrets in prison. “That was an accident.”

  “That was an enemy. Killed in passion.”

  “I have no enemy here.” No passion stirred coals in his soul. He was at peace—with God, with man, with himself.

  … Until he emerged from the archway and spotted, towering above prison group one, Captain Emilio.

  Chapter 27

  Jake couldn’t move. No blood pulsed through his heart. No oxygen dilated his lungs. No neurons jumped synapses to power his limbs. Only his eyes worked. And his brain. Telling him it couldn’t be.

  The man across the courtyard cannot be Captain Emilio.

  The man’s eyes caught his. There was no flicker of recognition. No sign of recalling Jake forced overboard at gunpoint. No flinch of culpability for nineteen passengers murdered at sea.

  Yet every cell in Jake’s body shrieked the man was Emilio.

  Air slammed into Jake’s lungs. Blood pounded hot lava to his face. Flames seared the bottoms of his feet. He took off across the courtyard.

  The man yelled a challenge and charged Jake. Now there was no doubt. The hawk-like Roman nose, the square jaw and cleft chin—all were Emilio’s. Jake halted and bellowed his name. “CAPTAIN EMILIO!”

  His opponent stopped. Eyes wide.

  “YOU MURDERED MY WIFE!”

  A sharp inhale, and the man rushed Jake.

  Emilio’s left arm swooped at Jake’s face. Instead of the uppercut Jake expected, a handful of grit stabbed his eyes. A right fist followed with a wallop to Jake’s head. Too late, he tried to duck the next blow. It sent him reeling backwards. A kick to his stomach doubled him over.

  Squinting through tear-flooded eyes, he saw the next punch coming. Emilio’s right fist grazed Jake’s ear, but this time Jake lunged inside and grabbed Emilio in a bear hug. He wasn’t going to win a boxing match half-blinded, but he didn’t need to see to wrestle.

  In one swift movement, he hooked his right leg behind Emilio’s feet and launched Emilio up and backwards. In an uncontrolled free fall, the men slammed to the ground. Emilio’s back and head absorbed all the kinetic energy from both men’s weight. Stunned, he gasped for breath.

  Jake’s arms were numb from the impact. His eyes stung. His head rang bells. His midsection had been swallowed by a shark. But what he felt was fire hot in his soul, fed by the bellows of hell.

  He stumbled to his feet, shaking life back into his arms and hands, grabbed Emilio’s right wrist, and flipped the man onto his stomach. Tightening his grip, he pulled his prisoner’s arm up, yanked it in a half-rotation, and crushed his right foot into Emilio’s neck.

  “You murdered my wife!” he screamed. “I want a confession!”

  Emilio moaned.

  The inmates shuffled closer.

  “You murdered nineteen passengers, Captain Emilio! You put them on two boats and set off explosions!” Jake twisted Emilio’s arm another half-rotation. Emilio’s screech reverberated off the concrete walls of the courtyard.

  Blood pounded in Jake’s ears. Through the red mist in his mind, he envisioned Emilio aboard the Gateway. Arms positioned in an L. Left hand pointing to the two hapless boats at sea. Right hand raised to a cloudless sky. And then the signal. Skyward arm slashing down to join the pointing arm.

  Memory of the explosion ripped through Jake’s soul. He screamed and wrenched Emilio’s arm a full rotation. The sound of tendons tearing and bone breaking fed sweetness to his soul. Emilio’s roar of agony echoed the explosion that had torn sea and bodies asunder.

  “You like body parts, Emilio?” Jake shouted, chest heaving, limbs quaking. He swiveled Emilio’s crippled arm back and forth in a ninety-degree arc. “What do you think? How many rotations before your arm comes off? Two? Three?” His voice rose loud, hoarse, scraping his throat. “Have you ever wrung the neck of a chicken, Captain Emilio? I have. The head always comes off by three. What do you think? Shall we start with one twist, or settle it at once with three?”

  A cry went up from the inmates. Jake paused, senses perked to full alert. Barreling toward him at full speed was the tall, rotund member of group one. The man was a giant bowling ball, Jake a lone pin. Jake gulped. No bear hugs with this guy.

  He dropped Emilio’s arm and jumped back. His opponent extended both arms wide to sweep Jake into his embrace. For a second, Jake saw himself splatting onto the courtyard under the man’s weight. He swallowed again.

  The wait seemed forever. Mesmerized, he watched the rhythm of the man’s heavy-footed run. A waddle. The man was a duck out of water.

  At once, Jake knew what to do.

  He stepped to the left and planted his feet, left foot forward. Tensed every muscle in his arms, chest and back. Hunched his shoulders. Bent his knees and leaned forward. Angled his arms out at his sides to catch the full force of the man.

  His eyes he fastened on the bowling ball’s right hand.

  The bowling ball accepted the bait. He aimed straight at Jake’s chest. Lowered his head for impact. Bellowed in anticipation of triumph.

  As a batter keeps his eye on the pitched ball, Jake focused his on his opponent’s right hand. His heart thumped in rhythm with the man’s pace. His breath coursed in and out to the beat of the man’s footsteps.

  But instead of chest meeting chest, Jake snatched the man’s hand in a solid catch, pivoted a hair’s breadth to the side to miss him, and levered the captured arm up. The man flipped in a half circle onto his back. A standard wrestling move Jake had performed a thousand times at wrestling meets and practice. Except this time he retained hold of the man’s wrist. The opponent yelped as the pressure pulled his shoulder out of socket. For good measure, Jake stomped on his opponent’s sternum. The yelp segued into a whooshed shriek, and Jake grunted in satisfaction. A dislocated shoulder alone never kept an opponent down, but this oughta do.

  “Anyone else?” He flung the man’s limp arm aside. His whole body shook with the adrenaline of anger. He wanted more men to pummel. More release for the pain that had taken him from a cruise ship, through a second lost love, to exile.

  He breathed hard until sanity leveled his blood pressure. Until the red mist disappeared from his vision. Until the daggers loosened from his nerves. He gestured at the two men groaning on the packed dirt of the courtyard. “Get them out of here.”

  His group surrounded him and walked him to their rooms. He expected Puno to walk alongside him, but he was nowhere to be seen. When Ja
ke asked his whereabouts, the men looked away and shrugged.

  Jake’s gut knotted. Something wasn’t right.

  Chapter 28

  “Crystal and Jonathan sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G,” Cassandra sang. She laughed as the heat rose to Crystal’s face. “Jes kiddin’!”

  Crystal resisted the urge to slam the door. It would only feed Cassandra’s delight. She trudged to her desk and plopped her Pre-Algebra book onto it. Stupid song. Just because she didn’t talk valspeak like the other girls didn’t mean she should be mocked with something fourth graders would sing. “Jonathan isn’t my boyfriend, and we don’t kiss.” Though she wouldn’t mind. Twelve years old and she’d never been kissed. Probably the only girl at the academy who hadn’t been.

  Allie leaned out from her loft. “Like, who’s Jonathan?”

  “Miss Lavender’s hunk of a high school nephew,” Cassandra said. “Crystal’s, like, dating him.”

  Crystal rolled her eyes. “He’s tutoring me in math, and we meet in Miss Lavender’s office.”

  “Whatever! Can you believe it—four weeks, and she’s already flunked seventh grade.” Beulah shoved back from her desk and started unbraiding her hair. She brushed it one hundred strokes every night, for all the good it did. “Too bad you have to repeat sixth grade. You’ll look like a giant among all those babies. Grody, fer shur.”

  Why did Beulah act like she hated her all the time? Crystal swallowed back the wedge in her throat and kept her voice level. “The only sixth-grade class I’m taking is French. Other seventh-graders are in the class too.”

  Beulah stomped to Crystal’s desk and put a finger on a red textbook. “Then why do you have a sixth-grade grammar book? You’re such a liar!”

  “Miss Lavender loaned it to me to catch up on my own.”

  “Teacher’s pet, teacher’s pet!” Beulah waggled her head at Crystal and returned to her desk.

  Crystal pinched her lips together. No use saying Miss Lavender was a dean, not a teacher.

  “Here doggie, doggie, doggie,” Allie called from her loft. Beulah and Cassandra laughed.

  Crystal clenched her teeth. She wasn’t going to let them gang up on her like this. If she slapped Beulah in the face, would the school expel her? Her breath quickened. They’d send her home, wouldn’t they? And on the way she’d switch flights and go to Jake’s instead.

  Jake. She chewed her lower lip. What would Jake say?

  “Love your enemies,” that’s what he’d say. And how do you do that? She sniffled. It just seemed fairer to get even.

  ***

  “I was hoping for input on what to do now that our group is in control.” Jake dumped an oversized scoop of rice into Puno’s bowl. He had searched for the old man in the dorm rooms all morning with no luck. It was irritating that he’d disappeared. A job well done would have been nice too.

  “I see our group is first in line.” Puno said.

  “And we’re seeing to it that everyone gets the same portion. Including”—Jake nodded at the carabao herd, unsure what to call them—“those guys.” He dished up his own portion and handed the scoop to another inmate to take over. He caught up with Puno. “I couldn’t find you after the fight.”

  “I was tending to Captain Emilio. Indeed, your passion almost killed your enemy.”

  Flames exploded from Jake’s soul and set muscles and nerves afire. “He murdered my wife!”

  “Is he not in prison?”

  “Not good enough! He deserves to die!” Jake slammed his bowl of rice onto the courtyard with both hands. “He killed nineteen cruise ship passengers! And who knows how many others before and since then!”

  “So vengeance is yours?” Puno crouched, shooed away flies, and picked up the rice, dropping it grain by grain into Jake’s bowl.

  “Yes, it is!” Jake stood immobile a moment, then smashed the bowl out of Puno’s hand with a hard kick. The bowl sailed like a punt to a successful field goal and crashed against the far prison wall.

  Men rushed yelling to each other from the chow line and archways to surround Jake and Puno. Shouts of excitement pelted down like firecrackers from the guards manning the wall. Jake blinked at the feeding frenzy. They must think Puno was his next victim.

  “Puno. I’m sorry.” Ashamed, Jake crouched beside the old man to demonstrate humility. “I let my temper get the best of me. I want us to be friends.”

  For a long minute, Puno gazed at him. “You know how to treat one of these”—he indicated the carabao—“but not how to treat your enemy?”

  Agony squeezed Jake’s eyes shut. Tremors overtook his body, and he gulped hard. “I know the answer you want, Puno.” His words rasped from his throat. “But if Emilio doesn’t die, I will find another opportunity to see that he does.”

  Chapter 29

  October

  Eve straightened Brad Henshaw’s tie. “Looks good.” Thanks to him, she could relax and enjoy tonight’s event. He wasn’t crazy about her invitation, but he was the only man she felt safe with.

  A vision of her warrior wielding the two-edged sword flashed into her mind. Well, maybe not the only man. She smiled.

  “That’s what I like to see.” Brad tapped her chin, his finger a safe distance from her carefully applied lipstick. “Your smile is the diadem of a queen. You look beautiful.”

  She laughed, pleased. Compliments were rare animals in her boss’s zoo. “You say that only because I didn’t mess up today’s court case like I did last week’s.”

  Brad’s lips twitched a smile. “Last week’s was a doozy all right.” He escorted her from her apartment to the elevator and out to his car. For an October in Chicago, the weather was unseasonably chilly, and she wished she’d worn a coat that was warm rather than pretty. She had to defrost in the heat of his car before she could tune back into what he was saying. “… The defense attorney wouldn’t speak to me for days before I could convince him you honestly didn’t know you’d accused him of perjury.”

  Eve sighed. Grasping the legal language of the courtroom and the correct timing of its use was proving her hardest challenge. Tonight would be a nice escape, give her motivation to keep going.

  The dinner was at a modest restaurant appropriate for a fundraiser for a women’s shelter. She and Brad found their assigned seats at a table for eight. Two older couples, a man her age, and a child she guessed to be twelve were already seated. Support of the shelter was a recently discovered memory, but if she was familiar with any of these guests, her recall didn’t claim them.

  Her seat was next to the child. “Hi, I’m Natasa Katsaros,” the girl said, holding out her hand to shake Eve’s. A huge smile that rivaled the grin of Alice in Wonderland’s Cheshire cat animated her face. Chocolate brown eyes radiated confidence that love made the world go ’round, and that Natasa was a dispenser of its warmth.

  A sudden ache pricked Eve’s heart. A child, someone precious to her, hovered at the edge of Eve’s memory. Another teen like Marikit, perhaps, caught in Romero’s trafficking? A second pang pinched harder. No. No, this was someone close to her. Someone dear. A youngster that deep down she missed horribly.

  Tears threatened Eve’s eyes. She blinked them back and managed to smile. “Hi, I’m Eve Eriksson.” Natasa’s slender hand in hers beckoned to the girl lingering in the shadows of Eve’s memory. If she could just keep hold of Natasa’s sweet, little hand, maybe …

  “Hi, I’m Rock Giannopoulus, Nat’s uncle.” The man seated on the other side of Natasa extended his hand, and Eve had no choice but to forsake Natasa’s and shake his. “Mom had a crush on Rock Hudson when I was born, so my father’s choice of a Greek name lost out to Hollywood.”

  Everyone chuckled. By the time entrees were served, the entire table was charmed by the young girl and her handsome Uncle Rock. As it turned out, Eve was correct that Natasa was twelve years old. She was not actually Rock’s niece but a daughter of Rock’s cousin on his mother’s side. However, “niece,” everyone agreed, made an easier introduction than th
e confusion of “second cousin” or “cousin once removed.”

  Rock was not married, had graduated from Stanford with a Master’s, had a doctorate from Harvard, and owned a small technological consulting firm. His double-breasted, pinstriped Armani suit testified to the success of having invested in such a lengthy education.

  Just the kind of man Marianne said Eve had been attracted to before her memory loss. Good looking, snazzy dresser, financially set. Ha! It was all Eve could do to listen to him yap. The man was shallow and way too full of himself. Reminded her of the jerk who’d parked in her space at the Beachwood Apartments. He’d seen her in the lobby a week later and apologized over and over for the mistake. It had taken five minutes to break free of his fawning.

  At the end of the meal, two speakers shared brief testimonies to the shelter’s worth: a middle-aged woman who finally dared to leave an abusive marriage, and an older teen who escaped trafficking. Both stories left Eve’s heart tied in knots of compassion.

  She glanced at Natasa clutching her uncle’s hand, tears dripping from her eyes. Acid bit the back of Eve’s throat. How dare he bring such a sweet innocent to hear these stories!

  Natasa’s voice quavered in a loud whisper to her uncle. “Is that where Auntie Calandra went? I’m going to tell Sissy to go too.”

  “Shhhhh, let’s not talk about family here.” Rock dabbed at Natasa’s tears with his dinner napkin.

  Tenderness washed the acid from Eve’s throat. She could barely hold back from leaning into their huddle and slipping her hand in with theirs. Was there some way she could help this sweet child’s family? It would be an intrusion into Natasa’s life, but if she talked to Rock, worked her way in through him …

  “—Recognize the special contribution of Rock Giannopoulus.” The speaker at the microphone stumbled over the pronunciation of the Greek surname. Rock stood, and applause accompanied him and Natasa as they wound through the diners to the front of the room. “We especially want to thank Rock here for donating weeks of labor to transform our paper-and-pencil office work into something we can finally handle on a computer.” The speaker rattled off technological terms that Eve could only raise her eyebrows at.